which Conjuration effect?

[Dimers]

I'm writing a fix for the arcane swordsage. It's got at-will spellcasting (as SLAs that you can recover as full-round actions) but a bunch of restrictions, among them being, you can really only focus on one spell school other than Abjuration/Evocation/Transmutation if you want high-level effects in it. The class's power is fine but versatility is low due to all the restrictions. To add a little versatility back in while making different schools' "builds" different from each other, I'm designing abilities that let you expend maneuvers for school-appropriate effects like:

spend an Abjuration maneuver to reduce an enemy's CL as an immediate action
spend an Enchantment maneuver to simultaneously buff allies, fascinate neutrals and scare enemies near you
spend a Necromancy maneuver to increase/decrease turn resistance or to turn/rebuke one undead or deathless


The abilities' effects are based on the level of the maneuver expended. I'm not sure which Conjuration-style effect to include. There are very few summoning effects the swordsage is allowed to pick, so summoning is attractive, but teleportation is maybe more useful ... ?

With the assumption that you can't otherwise summon creatures, which of these would you rather be able to spend a spell slot to do on-the-fly? You can spend a full-round action regaining the spell slot.
(A) Teleport one touched creature as a swift action (Will negates, SR:No, distance = spell level x 10', doesn't have to be onto a supporting surface)
(B) Summon a highly mobile beatstick with 1 round casting time (beatstick's stats depend on level of spell slot like augmenting an astral construct, lasts 1 round/CL)

And which option feels more Conjuration-y to you?

[RandomPeasant]

A seems like the option that an Arcane Swordsage would have as a Conjuration effect. That class is a gish, and tele-fragging is way more of a Gish thing than summoning.

[Dimers]

Thankee.

Any other opinions? (*bump*)

[sleepyphoenixx]

I'd probably use something like conjuring a couple of dancing copies of your weapon for this.
Neither teleportation or creature summoning feel very swordsagey to me.

Same for the necromancy one, really. Maybe make it give the ability to crit undead instead? Or suppress their supernatural and spell-like abilities for a few rounds?
Or something else that somehow involves your weapon. You're a gish after all.

[Dimers]

Thanks for the feedback.

I've gotten away from thinking of the arcane swordsage as a gish, really. The big issue is the spell list. The ToB guidelines suggest Abjuration/Evocation/Transmutation spells primarily at personal or touch range. That shapes the spell list heavily toward buffing* … and your chassis isn’t the best one to buff for weapon use. Low hp, low Fortitude, low AC unless you spend your spell picks heavily on improving it. Probably low Strength as well, because you want Wisdom, Dexterity and Constitution. Low or even middling Strength means you’re not going to be much of a melee beast, and of course improving ranged weapon combat is a struggle.

* My writeup says that cones, rays, centered effects, weapon-like effects and spells that create weapons are fine too, but that doesn’t help much. Mostly it just adds some blasting and a little debuffing.

The tendency gets worse with high-level spells. Apparently high-level arcanists aren’t encouraged to mix it up in melee. You get some debuffing and action denial to add to the buffing and blasting, but you get relatively fewer effects that improve weapon use. Looking at the spell list as a whole, it's just a lot more "full caster" than "gish".

My writeup introduces one other significant problem. I use SLAs rather than spells or martial maneuvers, which means the swordsage can’t enter most PrCs to improve gishiness and can’t do much with metamagic to really improve their chosen spells. They can't even take the Arcane Strike feat to turn spells directly into weapon buffs. I'm very reluctant to "fix" all that by turning the SLAs back to spells. There are just too many consequences and interactions.

[Aracor]

Here's how I personally translate the Arcane Swordsage's "guidelines":

Any buff spell should be a either a stance or a boost. They don't get to have a "Mage Armor" maneuver that they poke once and get a +4 bonus to AC for hours per level. They either choose to be in the "mage armor" stance, or they get it as a boost, which reduces the duration to 1 round.

Any instantaneous spell simply works as normal, translate initiator level for caster level. Most likely it's going to be a standard action activation. Like a Fireball or a Lightning Leap.

Utility spells should be strikes or boosts. Like Dimension Door is very similar to Shadow Jaunt.

And there are plenty of immediate action spells to dip into for counters. But counters should normally be an instantaneous duration. They create an effect that lasts for one attack or one defensive 'thing', and then it's gone. But for the most part, it's simple. They don't get access to every single spell in the game of the listed schools. It's always subject to GM limitation.


To answer your specific question, I'd allow a summon to work as a swift action but last only one round. But I wouldn't allow either effect to occur 'on the fly' - they'd need to be a maneuver known.