Suggestion concerning summonings

[Somnium]

Two words.  Dire Tiger.

I prefer the red slaad to the dire tiger.

[monkseal]

A Dire tiger's not a celestial.

[Akril]

Forgive me if I'm wrong (I'm basing this on when I played old 2nd Ed Ravenloft)- but the whole point of the Domain of Dread is that you cannot leave.

And that always used to include summons.  

So duration should not be an issue here because once you summon the creature, when the spell runs out the creature cannot return to its native plane.

What happens is you lose control of the summons.

That summons then normally becomes mighty peeved at you, the person who has taken it from his home, and who it no longer has to serve.

Very techy, but this would be an awesome way of adjusting the spell.  Upon expiration - you fight your own elemental.

Or in one game of mine you caste haste and see if you can out run the thing (*wondering an hour later whether elementals ever get tired*)

[Ravenous]

Ok here goes again
Summons spells(summon monster, summon animal) calls creatures from the same plane of existence if i´m not totally wrong, at least summon animal does. So those does not count as bringing outer planars, outer planars are the domain of Planar Ally spells, Planar Binding and Gate spells.
And all undead creation spells are permanent in PnP so their durations are not so wierd if they were at 24h still. Not that many casters that would use them anyway for the risk of being exposed as necromancers and grave defilers, unless of course you are those things
But the summons need a duration shift again, now they are pretty much useless unless you are high lvl and can keep them for awhile.

I vote for a change : 24h duration for undead creation spells and maybe 1 turn/lvl for the others, maybe even 1h+ 1 turn/lvl so they are at least useable at low lvls, when they are needed.
And/or we need a bit of variety in what is summonable, by alignment or something.

[Akril]

Summons spells(summon monster, summon animal) calls creatures from the same plane of existence if i´m not totally wrong, at least summon animal does. So those does not count as bringing outer planars, outer planars are the domain of Planar Ally spells, Planar Binding and Gate spells.

To say you are wrong would be wrong because any Worlds mechanics and any persons game is how you choose it to be.

But traditionally (and I'm sure someone will correct me if this has changed) but when you summon a creature you call it from their native plane.

So if you summon and animal or normal monster (like orc) etc you probably are summoning it from the same plane as your existence (since that's likely to be their native plane).

However, outer planar creatures, elementals etc will all be coming from the Elemental Planes (formerly the Inner Planes) or one of the Outer Planes.

Summoning undead was always pulling them from the Negative Plane and Ghosts from the Ethereal Plane.  Of course Ravenloft had a twist on this.

Anyway, under the old 2nd Ed rules, the above meant that once the summons spell finished (as opposed to the creature being destroyed) rather than it return it simply stayed and was no longer controlled.  I dont know if 3rd Ed Ravenloft says anything since I havent gotten around to purchasing it yet.

[Ravenous]

Summoning Undead is not really summoning, its animating a corpse
Though for it to work correctly we need those spells to be usable only on corpses of some kind or other.
The spells that "summons" undead, like Animate Dead and Create Undead will always be the raising of undead, making dead bodies undead, to me at least. So saying summon to undead would be wrong.

[Carlton]

Has the length of summing spells been changed?

C

[Axel]

Yes. They've been changed to fit the 3.5 version + a little time to make up for nwn not being pen and paper.

[DM Solidus]

I know it dosnt really matter but....there IS a spell that summons undead rather than create...Its called summon undead : P I know its in Magic of Faerun, but I dont think thats where it originated.