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Shadow Conjuration summons

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King Pickle:

--- Quote from: Marcus Weyland on March 18, 2021, 10:11:53 PM ---Mechanically in Neverwinter Nights, creatures summoned with Shadow Conjuration are identical to their normal, non-shadowy variants.

--- End quote ---
That's just PotM.
In vanilla NWN the spell summons a Shadow, Shadow Mastiff, Shadow Fiend or Shadow Lord, according to the caster level.

JustMonika:

--- Quote from: Marcus Weyland on March 18, 2021, 10:11:53 PM ---Mechanically in Neverwinter Nights, creatures summoned with Shadow Conjuration are identical to their normal, non-shadowy variants. The shadow visual effect even disappears when they die, briefly. In pen-and-paper D&D, per the rulebooks, Shadow Conjuration should produce identical creatures to normal Conjuration, but with reduced health pools and reduced damage against targets who pass a Will save. The base creature's abilities and weaknesses still apply in all cases.


--- Quote from: JustMonika on March 18, 2021, 09:15:17 AM ---While I find Plato's reference a little dubious -

--- End quote ---

Plato quoted the Systems Reference Document (SRD) for D&D 3.5, which is server canon in most cases. Neverwinter Nights uses 3rd Edition mechanics, though. The 3rd Edition SRD's writeup for Shadow Conjuration is almost the same as 3.5's, but the differences are in things like the percentage reduction of damage in the case of the target passing their Will save, which we don't implement in NWN.

The Ravenloft 3.5e Player Handbook specifies that Shadow Conjuration is further altered in this setting, but again only in a few ways, which are not implemented.

--- End quote ---

I'm not doubting the source as a quality reliable DnD source, but it could be very misleading to anyone who reads it and then expects the game to work anything like it in pratice.

While the first line of description is roughly correct this;

Shadow conjurations are actually one-fifth (20%) as strong as the real things, though creatures who believe the shadow conjurations to be real are affected by them at full strength.

Any creature that interacts with the conjured object, force, or creature can make a Will save to recognize its true nature.

Spells that deal damage have normal effects unless the affected creature succeeds on a Will save. Each disbelieving creature takes only one-fifth (20%) damage from the attack. If the disbelieved attack has a special effect other than damage, that effect is only 20% likely to occur. Regardless of the result of the save to disbelieve, an affected creature is also allowed any save that the spell being simulated allows, but the save DC is set according to shadow conjuration’s level (4th) rather than the spell’s normal level. In addition, any effect created by shadow conjuration allows spell resistance, even if the spell it is simulating does not. Shadow objects or substances have normal effects except against those who disbelieve them.

Against disbelievers, they are 20% likely to work.

A shadow creature has one-fifth the hit points of a normal creature of its kind (regardless of whether it’s recognized as shadowy). It deals normal damage and has all normal abilities and weaknesses. Against a creature that recognizes it as a shadow creature, however, the shadow creature’s damage is one-fifth (20%) normal, and all special abilities that do not deal lethal damage are only 20% likely to work. (Roll for each use and each affected character separately.) Furthermore, the shadow creature’s AC bonuses are one-fifth as large.

A creature that succeeds on its save sees the shadow conjurations as transparent images superimposed on vague, shadowy forms.

Objects automatically succeed on their Will saves against this spell.



Is all non-implimented, and so anyone looking at the source and then expecting the results in game [An easy mistake for a new player] would be sadly dissapointed.

Bizarro:
About the alignments

Playing a sorcerer with the shadow affinity feat i noticed that the alignments of the summons is usually true neutral (dire spider, dire tiger, I'm pretty sure the dire crocodile is too. I am unsure about ankheg and basilisk).
Some are NE, those are the direwolves that one gets in Barovia and Dementlieu. I'm unsure about the normal direwolf since having shadow affinity my characters summons a spider and not the dire wolf, but the dire wolf pack leader (summoned with greater conjuration and shadow affinity) is NE.

This is probably because of summon monsters and not because of shadow conjuration, since shadow conjuration (and shadow conjuration greater) copy the summon monster spells.
In other words: I'm pretty sure the shadow version of the creature has the same alignment that the creature summoned with summon monsters would have.

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