[Suggestion] Summoning Revamp

[Nezmith]

I personally think the necromancer character is incredibly strong for the first 10 levels or so. They're capable of quite a lot. It's simply that after that, they become completely useless.

Undead are supposed to have very little HP. Much of their tankiness comes from innate resistances to specific types of damage. People cite this as a problem not realizing the enemies they face. Naturally, there are different types of undead suited to each opponent. The problem I faced as a level 10 necromancer is that many of my skeletons would then be facing a large variety of bludgeoning monsters that basically hard-counter skeletons. One of my biggest gripes is you can't select an even-level undead alternative to fit the job of what they should be fighting.

I'd absolutely love to see radial menus added with this in mind. I'd consider putting together a list of summons myself, but it may take awhile before I get that ball rolling.

I also believe it's absolutely essential that they receive alternative summons as they increase in level, as I suggested in my Dread Necromancer class thread. Summon Undead I-IX would solve many of our problems, and most of the summons for those spells are already delineated in the Heroes of Horror source book. I don't believe a character that invests all their roleplay into being a necromancer, which is truly NOT a well-explored concept on this server, should be forced to stop being a necromancer simply because of mechanical worries.

To that regard, I've noticed the concept of soloing came up once again. On the one hand, there is already an absurdly large capacity for characters to solo just about any of the content in the game as it is. I've made the argument that with the limited time you can maintain a summon, they deserve to be powerful with this in mind as it will do absolutely no harm to the current soloability of the game's content. On the other hand, you have a summoner and their summon. That's duoing. 

[McNastea]

Clearly buffing a summon without altering the duration is a buff to the summon.

I'm not against buffing summoners, or even being able to solo content if you know what you're doing. I just don't think that's the best argument to make your point.

The real issue with summons comes down to 2 things, in my opinion.

1) They soak xp

2) How strong do you make them

On point number 1, I see the merits of it, I do. However I think that soaking xp is reason enough to not ever summon them as they are. They either need to be strong enough that it's worth the xp soak or they need to not have one but be weaker - kinda like they are now I suppose. (except that they do soak xp, yannow)

On point 2, balancing summons is -hard-. There are a lot of summons and a lot of different monsters they might face and they can get a -lot- of buffs with the right groups. Sure, you can try to balance them so that they are more suitable for soloing or small groups but you can't ignore the fact that what you do to them will still be there for larger groups who might just put every spell they have on it and let it kill everything.

Do you extend the duration? Well, if you do then the buffs that you can potentially stack on them become that much more valuable. Do you reduce their duration but increase their base stats/resistances? Maybe, but then you're just nudging another piece in the diretion of power creep.

I have a hard time feeling sorry for any caster, to be honest. They are all very strong, all in their own way, if you know what their strengths are. You can definitely play a caster who likes summons. Unfortunately, people are probably not going to be happy with you for soaking up their xp and they are never going to solo everything for you. But you can use them in place of another spell to satisfy that summoning itch to almost no loss to a real groups overall ability. I don't really know what the right answer here is I'm just talking a lot.

[Merry Munchkin]

There are several ways to make summons better but at a reasonable cost -- add more feats that are specific to conjuration summons.  I can think of a few that would be interesting to play with, such as feats that grant damage reduction, damage resistance, different types of elemental on-hit damage, or spell resistance.  Combat summons don't last very long anyway, so making them more survivable without spending spell buffs seems to make the most sense to me, but at the cost of burning feats.  I can envision a feat that gives a 5/+1 to your summoned dire whatever, and have a second feat that might increase this to 5/+2, then a third feat to raise it to 5/+3, or some sort of similar progression.  The same goes for resistances.  Beckon the Frozen could be augmented with a "Beckon the Firey" or "Beckon the Venomous" or whatever.  A "Greater Augment Summoning" to boost the STR and CON past the original +4 could be considered.  If you are going to make a dedicated summoner, then burning your feats to buff them up is a sacrifice casters might be willing to make for their storyline.

I also think that having a way to have more granular control the actions of the summons during melee would be helpful.  You can exercise some rudimentary control, but every once in a while you just want to reel them back in rather than having them pursue in melee.

[Edward]

Honestly I think summons are fine the way they are, but that’s just my opinion.