Balancing "Will negates" summoning spells?

[TuggyNE]

I just had an interesting idea to possibly reduce the raw power of the various Conjuration (summoning) spells, by requiring a failed will save on the part of any creatures summoned. Presumably the monster lists would need to be bumped up a few notches to make up for the immediate loss in power, but just how far would this need to go? (Also, one supposes that summoning hordes of lower-end creatures might get more attractive in some cases -- given that their Will saves are likely to be lower and the distribution more even anyway.)

Discuss this well-intentioned but ultimately flawed idea here! :smallwink:

Maybe this should go in Homebrew....

[watchwood]

Summon Monster spells are already kind of weak, IMO. Especially at higher levels. You'd definitely need to jack up the power of them creatures, and maybe extend the duration of the summon or something as well.

[Starbuck_II]

I just had an interesting idea to possibly reduce the raw power of the various Conjuration (summoning) spells, by requiring a failed will save on the part of any creatures summoned. Presumably the monster lists would need to be bumped up a few notches to make up for the immediate loss in power, but just how far would this need to go? (Also, one supposes that summoning hordes of lower-end creatures might get more attractive in some cases -- given that their Will saves are likely to be lower and the distribution more even anyway.)

Discuss this well-intentioned but ultimately flawed idea here! :smallwink:

Maybe this should go in Homebrew....

If you do this, lower casting to standard action.
Elemental summoning used to do this 2E (was also standard action). They required control check. Success: you controlled them utterly.
Failure: they attacked everyone, starting with caster if possible.
Summoning Monsters didn't though.

[Quintessence]

feels like it would make summoning very undesirable :smallconfused:

[ericgrau]

Since they're such weak creatures they're going to fail the save most of the time anyway. But since they pass it sometimes I'd say that's worth an extra 1/4 to 1/3 of a creature (to make up for losing your summon about that often) which I think is about +1 CR. So maybe bump all the summon creature lists up a level to match.

[eggs]

What's the goal here?
Since you're "bumping them up a few notches", I don't imagine it's to nerf the spells.
And the spells themselves aren't notably bad from a balance standpoint (unless this nerf is part of a larger casting system overhaul).

And don't the alignment requirements already impose these restrictions?
Or would a Good Outsider be treated as unwilling in helping a Good summoner?

So I'm not getting it. As it is, it just sounds annoying.

[bloodtide]

Why would conjuration (summoning) spells get a save? You just conjuring a copy of the creature that does not effect or hard the creature in any way.

How are summoning spells unbalanced anyway? Is it unbalanced to make a creature to fight for you? Is it any different if you just said it was a 'magic force'?


Though I added a Will save to my Gate spell fix years ago and it has worked great.

[hushblade]

Why not add the option to use a lesser summon spell to attempt to summon something the equivalent of one(maybe two) spells higher, with the will save or the summon will attack anything, but a normal summon is unchanged?

[TuggyNE]

Why not add the option to use a lesser summon spell to attempt to summon something the equivalent of one(maybe two) spells higher, with the will save or the summon will attack anything, but a normal summon is unchanged?

That could work rather well, actually (although I think without the "attack anything" clause, despite history).


Since they're such weak creatures they're going to fail the save most of the time anyway. But since they pass it sometimes I'd say that's worth an extra 1/4 to 1/3 of a creature (to make up for losing your summon about that often) which I think is about +1 CR. So maybe bump all the summon creature lists up a level to match.

Yeah, that was the general idea. I don't want to massively weaken the spells, just take them down a little bit and reduce some of the variability in summon-quality.


If you do this, lower casting to standard action.
Elemental summoning used to do this 2E (was also standard action). They required control check. Success: you controlled them utterly.
Failure: they attacked everyone, starting with caster if possible.
Summoning Monsters didn't though.

Fair enough, although this idea doesn't have the monsters appear at all if they pass their will saves (so the attacking everyone bit won't happen).


Why would conjuration (summoning) spells get a save? You just conjuring a copy of the creature that does not effect or hard the creature in any way.

How are summoning spells unbalanced anyway? Is it unbalanced to make a creature to fight for you? Is it any different if you just said it was a 'magic force'?


Though I added a Will save to my Gate spell fix years ago and it has worked great.

Gate definitely needs it more, but summons tend to be used (from what I know) especially for SLAs and similar. And since I suspect creatures with more SLAs have higher will saves*, there is a certain amount of balancing going on there.

Also, the fluff is at times a bit confusing as it is; there are suggestions that it's actually conjuring the original creature itself, but in a bizarre way that gives it a free resurrection (after 24 hours) if it dies. If you use that interpretation, the Will save is easy to understand. Even if you use the more common interpretation of conjuring a copy, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to expect the copy procedure to face resistance from either the copy or even the original (depending on exact nature of the process); one can suppose that the spells' designers were at least able to avoid summoned monsters turning on you, but were unable to guarantee success.

As far as balance goes... they're not horrible, but they can be a little too powerful at times. Also I just had this idea. :smallwink:


*Note: this was a spur-of-the-moment idea; I didn't actually do any checking to ensure this is the case.