What can go wrong when summoning/calling creatures?

[Eldan]

I was thinking about abilities like summoning rituals, circles, demon summoning and so on. They regularly come up in fiction but, and this is important, they tend to go haywire about as often as they actually succeed. So, since I've been typing around on spell revisions again (for 3.5, but this concerns media in general), I was wondering: what can you think of could go wrong when attempting to summon a creature in a large ritual?

Imagine the following situations as examples:
The Apprentice, under the watchful eye of his master, draws a chalk circle on the floor and casts the incantation from a book, trying to, for the first time, summon a minor fiendling. He mispronounces the last syllable, the magic fizzles and crackles and...

Thirty cultists are dancing around a fire under the full moon, chanting the name of their demonic patron. Aat the last moment, Our Hero sweeps on his home-built glider, stabs the high priest with a rapier, grabs the princess to be sacrificed and swings out on a rope. But behind him, the fire suddenly roars, the flames turn green, and...

And so on, and so on. What can go wrong? Here's a few ideas I had so far:


-Instead of the intended creature, a fiendish trickster in disguise is summoned, pretending to be the target with illusion magic. He will twist the caster's wishes and be almost suspiciously helpful.

-The fabric of reality rips open. The resulting rift to the astral plane slowly starts growing, eventually swallowing the entire immediate area.

-A Thing from beyond reality answers the feeble call of the mage. A misshapen lump of slime and pseudopods, that shatters the circle like it was not even there.

-The summoned creature attempts to enter this world, but the force is not strong enough and so, only a weak copy of the intended creature is manifest, with barely any of the original's power.


Any other ideas? I'm really just looking for fluff.

[Excession]

The portal opens with the wrong polarity, sucking yet another hapless apprentice into the depths of hell. Now where did I leave that "Help Wanted" sign...

A gust of wind or a misplaced foot breaks the ring of salt that forms the summoning circle, allowing the small but annoying fast demon to lead it's summoner on a merry chase around the tower.

The summoning circle is too small, and the innocent demon is killed, messily.

The circle is drawn around an overlooked cockroach. The demon escapes by possessing the insect and legging it.

[Shadowknight12]

I love this thread with the fury of a million suns.

* Backlash damage for everyone involved. Truckloads of d6's in untyped damage.

* Everyone is affected by a Polymorph Any Object spell and then by an Insanity effect. The cultists, now turned into random creatures, start slaughtering each other and everyone around them.

* The spell summons many kinds of elementals, from several different planes.

* The spell's wasted energies tap into a demiplane-prison full of creatures most foul, who are all too eager to be freed.

* A tear in the fabric of reality appears, followed by an unearthly scream of utmost pain, as if the world itself cried out in agony. A Gate to a random plane appears, followed by a Wail of the Banshee.

* The spell's energies are forcibly abjured from the premises, stripping life away from the summoners and turning them into incorporeal undead before they have the slightest chance to figure out what happened.

* Nothing happens. The summoners shrug and go to sleep. When they wake up and open their front door, they realise that they're in another plane.

* Everyone is targeted by a persistent Weird effect, over and over and over again until they find a way out of the building. Tragically, the building is now filled with illusions of all kinds. Patterns, Figments, Shadows, randomly-placed illusions, they all make surviving the ordeal almost impossible.

* An aspect of Death itself is summoned.

* The entire city disappears.

* The core of the Far Realm is contacted. The locale becomes a focal point of a terrible reality-warping infection, and the connection with the nightmarish plane must be severed before it spreads to the rest of the universe.

* Nothing happens. The next time the summoners attempt the spell, it automatically fails again, as outsiders have set up an ambush to "hijack" the spell and get a free ride to the Material Plane.

[havocfett]

-A group of waiting Archons (Or angels) gank the demon on its way in, a minor angelic being is summoned in its place and rants about the dangers of demonology

-The summoned creature has FOF switched around. (It registers friends as foes and foes as friends)

-A random quantity of food is summoned. It is poisoned.

-A random quantity of food is summoned, it bestows the effect of (Insert High Level beneficial spell x here), utterly messing with magical society as low level mages begin to duplicate the high level spell with the purposefully borked spell.

-As above, but it was a one-time-fluke orchestrated by a major demon or lovecraftian horror.

-It messes with an insignificant event millions of years ago. Everyone is now anthromorphic velociraptors.

-As above, but instead replaces all death and undeath related gods with Discworlds death.

-"I am you from the future! No time to explain- (http://www.kongregate.com/games/I_smell/no-time-to-explain)

[Milo v3]

Instead of bringing a creature it brings part of the plane to the summoning area. For example if your trying to summon a fire elemental but fails there is a slight chance it will instead summon pure primordial fire.

I used this once and the players started to freak out when they realised that lava started to pour out of the air. And it didn't stop.

[Eldan]

Good ideas! Keep 'em coming, people!

Next step: write this up in a mishap table, weighted by severity. And how badly the ritual has to fail (probably some kind of skill check).

[Poil]

-How about the spell kills whatever they tried to summon so they're left with an open portal and the upper half of a corpse?

-Everyones genders are switched.

-The universe breaks and a portal to another setting/system opens.

-A strange magical explosion clones everyone nearby.

-They receive a huge fine for not following proper summoning procedures.

[Eldan]

-They receive a huge fine for not following proper summoning procedures.

Love this one.

-A Tridrone (or something) appears with a fine and a cease-and-desist order, to be enforced by inevitables.

-The creature appears, but the spell doesn't stop. Another appears. And another. And another. Soon, a small legion of minor demons presses against the walls of the circle, and it is already straining against their combined magical assault...

[Tengu_temp]

A chibi version of the intended creature is summoned instead. It's weak, clumsy and mostly useless, and it doesn't want to get away, instead sticking with the mage and eating all of his food.

[Eldan]

Ah, yes. The Anime approach.

[Totally Guy]

I had a player attempt to call trolls from the mines to him. It went wrong and he instead got golems from the village. The sorcerers there were not far behind.

I had a player try to summon a demon but the one they got demanded far more from the players than they would part with. He was asking for the hands of one character, an arm of another and the ears of the last character. Then he lowered his request. He asked for those things from but one of the characters.

I had a player sell his soul to avoid joining the big bad but that time the demon was summoned by someone other than the players.

[Aux-Ash]

My favourite:

The summoner summons a demon to help him summon and compel a more powerful demon. He performs all the proper safety precautions and binds the demon to his will. It simply cannot go against it's master.

The summoner then devotes his time to prepare for the summoning the greater demon and asks his new servant to fetch a heart (or any other essential organ) for the ritual.

The demon then asks: Which heart?

Summoner: Any heart, now hurry and don't bother me.

Demon: Any heart?

Summoner: Yes!

The summoner then looks up into the demons wicked grin and realises the folly of that last order as the demon pulls out his heart and hands it to him.

[Ossian]

From on A.C. Clarke's fantastic short story "Technical Error"

Apparently it is all nice and dandy, and the ritual worked out fine, but everyone (or just the demon(s) or both, it's up to you) is switched into the mirror image of him/her/itself. Apart from the fact that, like in Clarke, you can't eat and die of starvation because you would have to synthesise the isomers of all basic nutrients, there is the inability to read unless one uses a mirror, which has all sorts of funny consequences when you are desperate to QUICKLY read a magic formula to ban the demon back to the pits from whence it came. It could be a temporary nuisance, or require magic/a quest to switch back to normal (in which case, the risk of malnutrition can be interesting, say you lose a point of CON and STR every week). Or maybe it could affect the demon's ability to perform the services for which it was summoned. In Clarke, the clue was the X-ray of the cavity fillings in the "victim's" mouth (exactly flipped over). In D&D it could be stuff like scars, or anything that can look 99% the same except for the fact that it a mirror image :smallsmile:

[Tengu_temp]

Ah, yes. The Anime approach.

Nah, the typical anime approach would summon a female version of the creature who sticks around the summoner for seemingly no reason and is totally not in love in him.

[Xanmyral]

Well, many things can happen.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing happens at all. Just a fail really. The summoner in question should be mocked horribly.

A hole appears, not really large enough for anything to appear, roughly the size of a door knob. Nothing comes through, and it won't go away unless a very powerful dispel is used.

The summoning goes off without a hitch, but the circle was drawn wrong. Maybe it ended up an oval instead, or they added/missed a line, leaving a crack in the abjuration magic for the demon to slip out.

Instead of what they wanted, they get a far weaker version, say a runt of the race instead.

Instead of what they wanted, they get a far stronger version, maybe too strong for the current circle.

They mispronounced the name and get some relative of the creature.

Instead of summoning, a vortex appears, pulling in everyone around.

Accidentally creates a demi-plane. Would definitely be interesting.

Suddenly, stuff starts appearing in the circle. Weird. "Hey, you know, that sword looks a lot like mine." "Yeah, so does that book. And that rope. And those... Uh... Pretend you didn't see those." "Great. The wizard opened up a portal into our bag of holding. Good job, you are a credit to all spell casters everywhere. Really."

[Amiel]

A shining, nascent god is summoned upon an unsuspecting mortal coil. The visitation of this creature causes the seals preventing unmentionable horrors from invading the material plane to weaken and gradually disintegrate; causing blood and putrescence to rain from the sky.
These abhorrences impale the bleeding sky and fetid tentacles descend; this nascent god grotesquely stretches its abdomen, gluttonising itself upon these horrors.
A miniature dying sun is born where the nascent god once stood, and it opens its six mouths to sing the doom of the world.

[hewhosaysfish]

The summoning goes off without a hitch, but the circle was drawn wrong. Maybe it ended up an oval instead, or they added/missed a line, leaving a crack in the abjuration magic for the demon to slip out.

I like the idea that if you draw an oval magic "circle" then the conjured demon that appears is all stretched and flattened. And presumably peeved about such a shoddy summoning.

[Ossian]

I was thinking about abilities like summoning rituals, circles, demon summoning and so on. They regularly come up in fiction but, and this is important, they tend to go haywire about as often as they actually succeed. So, since I've been typing around on spell revisions again (for 3.5, but this concerns media in general), I was wondering: what can you think of could go wrong when attempting to summon a creature in a large ritual?

Imagine the following situations as examples:
The Apprentice, under the watchful eye of his master, draws a chalk circle on the floor and casts the incantation from a book, trying to, for the first time, summon a minor fiendling. He mispronounces the last syllable, the magic fizzles and crackles and...

Thirty cultists are dancing around a fire under the full moon, chanting the name of their demonic patron. Aat the last moment, Our Hero sweeps on his home-built glider, stabs the high priest with a rapier, grabs the princess to be sacrificed and swings out on a rope. But behind him, the fire suddenly roars, the flames turn green, and...

And so on, and so on. What can go wrong? Here's a few ideas I had so far:


-Instead of the intended creature, a fiendish trickster in disguise is summoned, pretending to be the target with illusion magic. He will twist the caster's wishes and be almost suspiciously helpful.

-The fabric of reality rips open. The resulting rift to the astral plane slowly starts growing, eventually swallowing the entire immediate area.

-A Thing from beyond reality answers the feeble call of the mage. A misshapen lump of slime and pseudopods, that shatters the circle like it was not even there.

-The summoned creature attempts to enter this world, but the force is not strong enough and so, only a weak copy of the intended creature is manifest, with barely any of the original's power.


Any other ideas? I'm really just looking for fluff.

Black hole? (supermassive gravitational pull, slowly eats away all the planet)

Anti gravity sphere(s)? (can be collected, and installed on ship)

Fusion? (not the nuclear one, that'd be 50000d6).All cultists are merged into one being. Not a deformed one, but one with ALL the subconscious of the ones performing the ritual. You might wanna check "United States of Tara" to prepare for this new role as a DM

[Mewtarthio]

The spell itself works just as intended: You summon a minor demon that cannot escape your circle. Unfortunately, your poor technique made the spell too efficient. The demon immediately grabs the excess magical energies you failed to expend and summons something that can escape the circle.
No, they can't intentionally repeat that mistake and use the excess energies themselves for another free demon. Just say that the spell is easier to cast when you don't want to control the demon, or the little guy knew the big guy's direct line, or demons are naturally good summoners, or something.

[Eldan]

So, to put these into broad categories, sorted, more or less, by severity:

Weakened creature

The intended creature arrives, but is somehow weakened. Examples inlude:
-Creature is "scrambled" and takes damage.
-A lesser version of the intended creature is summoned. Smaller ,weaker, more annoying, anything.
-Only an image of the creature. It can talk, but neither leave the circle, nor fight or use it's powers.

Curious, cosmetic or vaguely beneficial side-effect

This includes anything from a lump of inert matter to magical food to strange noises or visual effects.


Nothing happens

What it says.


Non-hostile, different creature

A creature other than the intended target is summoned, but it is not immediately hostile. This may include a fiend in disguise eager for a trade, an interplanar lawyer telling the caster to stop summoning, an angel lecturing them on the evils of demonology or a helpful creature similar, but not identical to, the intended target.


Backlash

The caster is directly and personally affected by a magical effect gone haywire. He takes damage, is affected mentally, like by insanity, or cursed in some way.


Hostile creature

A creature other than the intended target is summoned, and it's pissed. An Angel takes up the righteous war against the wannabe demonologist. A raging elemental runs amok. A mischievous swarm of lesser demons or elementals escapes and does minor, but annoying damage. The creature is replaced by a shape vaguely resembling it, made from raw protoplasm and pulsating, black flesh.


Rift

A rift or gate opens to elsewhere. On a local (the lab) or even regional (the province or country) scale, magical effects take place. The tower is drawn into the astral plane. A portal to the abyss opens and demonic armies pour out. Primordial light explodes outwards. The Negative Energy plane rips the life from everything within a mile.


Anything that wouldn't fit in one of these?

[RPGuru1331]

You might want to look into side effects to completely successful summonings as well. The Roll of Glorious Divinity, from Exalted's second edition, had a thing I've never seen before as someone who takes an interest in summoning as a concept in fiction and as a mechanical thing that occurs; A way for summons to be disloyal out of loyalty. Not sure if that's a good way to put it, but a condensed explanation... the first template for a summoned creature's desires? It wants to feel useful to its master, above all else. If it is useful, it is happy. If circumstances prove that it is not, or if it loses confidence, it seeks to make itself irreplacable or otherwise invaluable by... taking its own initiative. Often in ways that are unplanned for by the summoner and may conflict with their agenda. And sometimes are a gross breach of the master's interest, such as damaging other assets to force the summoner to rely more on itself.

They're not all interesting, but a number of these are. Further, a number aren't necessarily applicable to what you may use them for (For instance, one of them involves attempting to corrupt the summoner. While this could be altered to recruit the summoner or make them pliant to their own higher cause, that still necessitates a higher cause).

That's not to say that things that can go COMPLETELY wrong are bad, it's just an option you may, or may not, want to look at as well.

[Qwertystop]

I'd suggest writing up an enormous random-effect table that would apply to just about anything with a few tweaks. Maybe make it a mix-and match. For example:
(all/2d%/a random) (noun)s (within/not within) (distance) (change color/change shape/switch between sentient and non-sentient/get a compulsion of some sort/become deathly ill/becomes a different noun/begins an action/take 2 of these) (for a little while/permanently/after a week).

Resulting in:

All cows outside a 1-mile radius turn green after a week interval.
or
A random pointy hat within 5 feet becomes sentient permanently and turns into a Psicrystal intermittently.

[Amiel]

The summoning spawns a nascent god upon an unsuspecting mortal coil.


The summoning deposits an angel upon the material realm; who begins to lecture the PCs on the evils of the occult, spiritualism and subservience to divine will.

[Amnestic]

Nah, the typical anime approach would summon a female version of the creature who sticks around the summoner for seemingly no reason and is totally not in love in him.

She'd have the useless, chibi version as a pet/assistant though, and cause hi-larious antics for the protagonist.

Also I'm pretty sure you'd need at least 2-5 more love interests.

[valadil]

Not quite what you had in mind, but I always wanted to run a plot where the PCs keep getting summoned into some extraplanar adventurer's battles.

[Amiel]

Not quite what you had in mind, but I always wanted to run a plot where the PCs keep getting summoned into some extraplanar adventurer's battles.

The summoning unceremoniously deposits a contingent of Blood War devils/demons/mercernaries upon the material plane shunting the PCs to the distant conflict in their place.

The PCs wind up on one of the fear-scourged, war-ravaged planes of Gehenna.
The fiends wreck havoc upon the mortals and their world.

[Knaight]

The mind of the called creature comes through and possesses someone, the body stays behind. Said mind then acts completely normal for a while, at least up until they are capable of launching a sophisticated plan, probably against everyone involved in summoning them.

The demon comes through. Unfortunately, some demon was ill, and the circle isn't capable of holding in the pathogens involved.

[Eldan]

I'd suggest writing up an enormous random-effect table that would apply to just about anything with a few tweaks. Maybe make it a mix-and match. For example:
(all/2d%/a random) (noun)s (within/not within) (distance) (change color/change shape/switch between sentient and non-sentient/get a compulsion of some sort/become deathly ill/becomes a different noun/begins an action/take 2 of these) (for a little while/permanently/after a week).

Resulting in:

All cows outside a 1-mile radius turn green after a week interval.
or
A random pointy hat within 5 feet becomes sentient permanently and turns into a Psicrystal intermittently.

These sound more like general magic mishaps, really, and I'd like to keep it at least remotely summoning-related.

[Mastikator]

Instead of the actual thing being summoned, only its mind is summoned, into the casters head.

[Starshade]

You could try summon a creature, and your random demon for the day resists the summon (he is busy tending to something important), and you randomly gets one creature nearby the demon; a Fiendish Cow. :smallbiggrin:

[Mono Vertigo]

The mind of the called creature comes through and possesses someone, the body stays behind. Said mind then acts completely normal for a while, at least up until they are capable of launching a sophisticated plan, probably against everyone involved in summoning them.

The demon comes through. Unfortunately, some demon was ill, and the circle isn't capable of holding in the pathogens involved.


Instead of the actual thing being summoned, only its mind is summoned, into the casters head.

Or just the body comes through... completely mindless, and falls limply on the floor, seemingly lifeless. Or the body does look alive, it just doesn't react much at all, stays silent, and responds very poorly to orders if at all, only obeying extremely basic instincts. The mind may or may not join its original body after some lag.

[claricorp]

Nothing happens.

Or at least that's just how it appears, it(or something else) summoned alright, but it has made itself invisible and is biding its time...