Confounded Summoning Caps!

[Tvtyrant]

Bear with me for a minute. My first RPG was Final Fantasy 6 (or III as it was marketed in the US), and since then my favorite archetype has always been the summoner type. I know Espers aren't exactly the best system of summons, nor Final Fantasy 7's materia summons, but they basically informed my interest in the subject.

My later love of D&D 3.5 (and I will admit Pokemon) changed my expectation of a summon from a large splashy attack to someone who basically fights through an assortment of replaceable pets. Rather like making your own big fighter to tank for you, but at the end of the day you don't have to heal him.

So when I started trying to get into more modern computer RPGs, I was a little disappointed to find that many games limit you to a single summon at a time. In addition to single summon regulations, these summons tend to be horribly underpowered and fragile for the time that you get them.

The biggest offenders to me were DDO and Oblivion. DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) is an MMO set in the Eberron campaign setting. There is exactly one level in my experience where a summon can be useful, which is level 1. After that it takes more and more resources to keep them relevant, and by level 10 they simply aren't. You are also strictly limited to 1 subpar summon at a time, so you can't even make up for the weak, stupid (the AI I mean), subpar pets with numbers. You can get around the limits by playing as a Wizard and investing in the Pale Master prestige track, which gets you some equally cruddy undead pets (1 at a time, fragile as all get out).

But DDO has a relevant excuse, which is that in 3.5 the casters so far outstrip the mundanes that allowing unlimited summons would effectively remove the melee characters relevance from the game (charm, ooze puppet, control undead and dominate monster already make casters self-reliant in some levels).

Many single player games also grant you a single cruddy summon, even though you don't have anyone to tank for you and no one is going to get their toes trod on by it. This rant is already long enough, so I'll quit here and say that the shaft that summons get in many games is really irritating to me. Sometimes I just want to summon a couple of dragons and have them actually do something, is that too much to ask?

TL;DR I keep being disappointed by the handicaps video games put on the summoning archetype.

[factotum]

In an awful lot of cases I reckon this is entirely down to limitations of the game engine. Try playing the summoner class in Torchlight and be amazed at how often your minions get stuck on inch-high walls, and how difficult it is to get them to attack the target you want them to! Not to mention that adding more summons in a modern game massively increases the graphics processing power required due to all the extra polygons...

[Tvtyrant]

In an awful lot of cases I reckon this is entirely down to limitations of the game engine. Try playing the summoner class in Torchlight and be amazed at how often your minions get stuck on inch-high walls, and how difficult it is to get them to attack the target you want them to! Not to mention that adding more summons in a modern game massively increases the graphics processing power required due to all the extra polygons...

I'll be honest, I hadn't given even a seconds thought to technological reasons for it. It makes considerable sense, especially in games where lag is already a problem.

I still want to play a summoner though... Maybe if a game did something like Pathfinders Summoner which gets a really strong Eidolon rather then some crappy skeleton or spider.

[fizzmaister]

I'll just pop in and point out the Lagmancer and Druid in D2: LoD

[Divayth Fyr]

I'll be honest, I hadn't given even a seconds thought to technological reasons for it. It makes considerable sense, especially in games where lag is already a problem.
This is true in some cases - but not always. Both in Oblivion and in Skyrim (which is just marginally better in this department) people have modded in the option to use multiple summons without much problem.


I still want to play a summoner though...
Perhaps try Bard's Tale? There also was a game named Summoner - though I never played it, so can't comment on the quality.

[NecroRebel]

It's kind of hard to reach a good balance between the level where summons are useful and the level where they're simply too powerful. If you can call up 10+ minions, each half as powerful as one of your party members, you've basically doubled a 5-man party's strength, and if the game is balanced for the strength of a 5-man party, well, you're just going to crush everything in your path. For that reason, I think some limitation on summons has to exist.

On the other hand, you're absolutely right, a lot of games go too far to the point where you're always better off not summoning anything. I just think most game designers don't really know how to work that balancing act, because I have seen games where a summoner can be a useful, but not overpowering, member of a party.

[Zen Monkey]

One problem is AI. Computer opponents aren't often very bright, and tend to get confused when flooded with options. Many fights in Baldur's Gate became very simple when you just fill the screen with summoned trash and watch the enemy become unable to prioritize the important targets or find paths around the obstacles they present. One option might be a game like Overlord, where I've heard that the strategy is about managing your swarm of little minions.

[Tvtyrant]

I take it that a single strong summon is better than a swarm of weak summons then? Easier for the computer AI and graphics to deal with, and less visually distracting.

I think an extremely durable summon with weak area of effect attacks (like some sort of chubby fire breathing dragon) would be the best balance. The area of effects would draw attention to it, keep it from outshining the DPS people, and reduce the chance of fidgety AI (since it basically walks around burning people).

Also, what is D2: LoD?

[Godskook]

Dungeon Fighters Online plays true to the mob-man summoner archetype, and is an MMO. Has the actual summoner, the mechanic, and iirc, a third one in one of the newer classes.

Summoners as a system is *REALLY* hard to balance, both from a mechanical and from a 'fun' perspective(moreso on the part of the person facing the summons in pvp). You need to balance DPS issues, healing issues(AoE heals are *OP* on summons), tanking issues(related to healing), and 'presence' issues(i.e., how much of the battlefield should one character be able to affect at the same time).

The FF7-esque 'event' summoner, by comparison, was *REALLY* easy to balance, cause they weren't summons by any real stretch. Just flavorful spells.

[pffh]

Also, what is D2: LoD?

Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction.

In Diablo 2 the necromancer could have dozens of skeletal minions and one strong golem minion. The Lord of Destruction expansion added the druid class which can summon a bunch of ravens, wolves and a bear.

[SiuiS]

Diablo 2, be a necromancer. You can eventually pack 20 skeletons, 20 skeleton magi, and a golem. Although I'd suggest saving points for the animate dead variant, which gives you a minion that is the same as an enemy but at a percentage (anywhere from 75% to 250%, I believe, so they'd re always relevant). Your game will crash all the time though.

The Druid's evens were less summons and more a charge effect; each one would inflict X damage an dissapeared.

Also? An old GameCube game, Lost Kingdoms. It's a live action, card based summoner game. You get three cars types; dramatic summon FMVs with a single effect, instant summon with a. Single effect, and actual, mobile monsters. You're a girl who runs around with a deck of magic cards that contain monsters. You throw a card, as where it lands is where the monster pops up at. Some examples are the Rhebus, an FMV, which has a gorgeous animation, heals you and reills some of your deck; te dragon knight which appears directly in front of you where you cast it, and slashes down, once, very hard; and the monster flower, which creates a Mario style piranha plant that walks around on it's roots. There's also an AoE elephant
That just routinely stomps the ground sending out shockwaves. It's pretty fun.

[KillianHawkeye]

Diablo 2, be a necromancer. You can eventually pack 20 skeletons, 20 skeleton magi, and a golem. Although I'd suggest saving points for the animate dead variant, which gives you a minion that is the same as an enemy but at a percentage (anywhere from 75% to 250%, I believe, so they'd re always relevant). Your game will crash all the time though.

My necromancer had an army of over 50 skeletons+magi and 15 or 16 revived monsters before the patch that nerfed army size in favor of stronger skellies. His power went way up after the patch, though, so I was in favor of it even though it knocked my skellie count down into the 30s.

His name was LAG_MAN! :smallwink::smallamused:

[SiuiS]

My necromancer had an army of over 50 skeletons+magi and 15 or 16 revived monsters before the patch that nerfed army size in favor of stronger skellies. His power went way up after the patch, though, so I was in favor of it even though it knocked my skellie count down into the 30s.

His name was LAG_MAN! :smallwink::smallamused:

I played WAAAAAY back, so I don't even know if I was affected. I stuck to two skeletons, six magi and a golem. I named the skeletons J and Silent Bob, answer had adventures.

This was before LoD. When that came out I used a Werewolf Druid. Good times~

[Artanis]

There also was a game named Summoner - though I never played it, so can't comment on the quality.

Summoner was terrible. The story was alright, but the mechanics were awful and the summoning system was actually worse than useless because you permanently lost health every time a summon died.

[Tvtyrant]

Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction.

In Diablo 2 the necromancer could have dozens of skeletal minions and one strong golem minion. The Lord of Destruction expansion added the druid class which can summon a bunch of ravens, wolves and a bear.

Ravens, wolves and a bear. Oh my. :smallamused:


I might try the Oblivion summoning mods, see if that slakes my summon-lust.

[Tome]

Let's see, modern-ish games with decent summoning abilities...

Overlord 1 & 2 are pretty good if you want the 'horde of weak minions' type.

Darksiders 2, strangely enough, has a fairly robust skill tree for summoning. It's actually one of the stronger builds in the endgame, though you can't rely on it entirely.

Some of the Shin Megami Tensei games could be seen as summoning based, depending on the game, and how you classify things as 'summoning'.

[factotum]

Diablo 2, be a necromancer. You can eventually pack 20 skeletons, 20 skeleton magi, and a golem. Although I'd suggest saving points for the animate dead variant, which gives you a minion that is the same as an enemy but at a percentage (anywhere from 75% to 250%, I believe, so they'd re always relevant). Your game will crash all the time though.


Sounds like you only played a fairly early version of the game. They reduced the numbers of skeletons you could have in patch 1.10, IIRC, but compensated by making them stronger via synergies between the summoning skills. (And I never, ever had the game crash on me, even if I *did* have a bunch of Revives going--never found them that useful, though, due to their 3 minute life; you essentially spent all your time recasting them once you had more than half a dozen, and since monsters in D2 were often highly resistant to their own attacks and didn't do much damage compared to their life anyway...well, you can do the maths there!

[SiuiS]

My problems with summoning were the problems I had all around. My very first game, I played a barbarian andha that shout that drove enemies away from you. I went to blood raven, and was surprised not to see any zombies; so I rushed her. I got all the way to where she was before the entire hedge of fifty or so magically appeared on screen. I spammed right click during the lag time, and managed to finally shout as I died. My inal sight was a bunch I zombies too afraid to go near my corpse.

And wow, that patch is dumb. I miss 1 skeleton per skill point now...

-

Any other summoning games? Lost Kingdoms is still my very favorite.

[FireJustice]

Yeah, as said, best way to play a real summoner would be diablo 2 (lod).

Druid, or Necromancer.

Druid have wolves, spirit wolves, Bear, a "Earthcrawler" and a Spirit.

Necro has Melee Skeletons, Golems, Skeleton Mages and Revives.

Also, both can have a hireling that is a minion per se.


If you are into modding (its quite easily), you can make necromancer's golems non unique (you can have Clay, Iron, Blood and Fire Golem at the same time).
Same thing for druid (Spirit and Wild wolves at the same time).
Or even increase the max quantity of minions.

[Maxymiuk]

Titan Quest has what I consider one of the best implemented summon AI's in any game I've played. The nature specialization allows you 2 wolves (3 if you could push the skill past the cap - easy enough with a +skill shrine) and a dryad archer. They have no pathing issues that I've noticed, they keep up with you just fine, they are fairly strong, and most of the time they end up doing exactly what you were hoping they would.

Sacred has the Vampire character who could summon several types of bats to her side. They didn't do all that much damage, but were apparently strong enough to push enemies up to halfway across the screen, so they were great at breaking up large groups.

Sacred 2 has the Shadow Warrior who can summon 2-4 skeleton warriors, thus making him the most broken character in the game. Their most valuable ability is to split the enemies' attention, thus reducing the damage you take, but their own damage output on top of the skeletal sentry, the boost from the banner and, of course, you, means you can jump into fights against 20-30 enemies at once and win without breaking a sweat.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

I did love me a lag-o-mancer. It was fun watching my horde of critters run around and then mash corpse explode once my curse of attraction + horde killed one. On Nightmare it would just domino effect the whole pack. Hell less so, but it was still fun.

[Bayar]

You could try playing Sacrifice if you want to summon monsters.

[KillianHawkeye]

I haven't played the more recent Final Fantasy games, but FFX had better summoning than any of the ones before it. FFX's summons weren't simply big attacks, they were legit creatures which took over the battle and had multiple forms of attacks. They could take hits and store up energy for their limit breaks, which mimicked the big attacks summons used to specialize in. Also, you could teach them magic.

[factotum]

Sacred 2 has the Shadow Warrior who can summon 2-4 skeleton warriors, thus making him the most broken character in the game
.
.
.
you can jump into fights against 20-30 enemies at once and win without breaking a sweat.

Is there a Sacred 2 character that CAN'T jump into fights with 20-30 enemies and win without problems? It's not the most difficult action RPG ever coded, that's for sure!

[Sipex]

I find MMOrpgs tend to do summoning pretty well. Usually it involves summoning one partner at a time who is actually essential to having your character be fully effective.

World of Warcraft has both the Warlock and Ranger classes which play off this idea, having a summoned pet to help you.

Final Fantasy 11 had a summoner who was much closer to the idea which you outlined. A summon which is essentially your main strength. Although grinding to a respectable level to unlock the summoner class and then grinding summoner to a respectable level made the path undesirable by many.

If you want to go retro, you could try out Legend of Mana for the PSX. While you don't start with summons you eventually get pets (weaker monsters you raise who help you fight) and a golem (a customizable helper who was actually fairly powerful). It's not summoning per-say, but it's the same end result.

[Maxymiuk]

Is there a Sacred 2 character that CAN'T jump into fights with 20-30 enemies and win without problems? It's not the most difficult action RPG ever coded, that's for sure!

Having played with all the characters in the game, I have to say... not really. Especially not when there are champions involved. Most other characters either lack high enough sustained damage or rely on high cooldown area nukes. They do OK against about 10 enemies at once - any more than that is where the trouble starts.

To put it bit differently, the Shadow Warrior is the only character with which I purposefully aggro every enemy I can see just to make things at least a little challenging for myself.

[Traab]

I did love me a lag-o-mancer. It was fun watching my horde of critters run around and then mash corpse explode once my curse of attraction + horde killed one. On Nightmare it would just domino effect the whole pack. Hell less so, but it was still fun.

For me I loved my lagomancer because it meant I never took a hit from anything. I was always surrounded by meat bone shields taking the hits for me. Amplify damage would be cast on each new swarm of mobs and then move on to the next batch. Only time it sucked to be him was during act 2. Maggot lair and arcane sanctum SUUUUUUCKED!

I swear they nerfed me at some point though. My pets get obliterated by diablo before I even see him. Like half die to that stupid fire ring attack he can launch from off screen. It used to be I could survive long enough to get my clay golem up to taunt diablo into facing away from me so my pets didnt get clobbered, now i cant even get to that point.

[Sipex]

Likely, you know how blizzard forums like to complain about balance until they're blue in the face.

[Shovah]

I get my summoning fix primarily from two games at the moment:
Skyrim and Path of Exile.

I have the SkyRe mod (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/9286) installed for Skyrim, which (among many, many other fixes) gets summoning to a very nice point balance-wise.
Unless you're a Breton in which case you can flood the world with wolves.

Path of Exile (http://www.pathofexile.com/) is my other game for it, and I love it to pieces. It's still in beta (they'll be doing a public weekend (http://www.pathofexile.com/publicweekend/) open to everyone this weekend), but there's quite a lot of support for various minion-based and supported classes. Could take a while to get in to though.

[chainer1216]

Dust off the PS2 and pick up a copy of chaos legion! It was a game specifically made to test how many things can be on screen at once.

[Tome]

Dust off the PS2 and pick up a copy of chaos legion! It was a game specifically made to test how many things can be on screen at once.

I can't believe I forgot about that game.

Yeah, Chaos Legion has a pretty good summoning system. It's the main gimmick, so it's well polished. If summoning is what you want, give it a glance.