I was thinking that it would be cooler and more useful as a secondary ability to allow a summoner to use his/her summoner SLA as a standard action to summon a creature for one round only.
This way, the ability could be differentiated from the summon spells a summoner can choose.
Also it reminds me of Final Fantasy which I love.
Also it allows the summoner to have its own unique flavorful way of having a standard action attack, but it has more applications than most other classes have.
Also, this reduces creature clutter unless the summoner sus one of its own spell slots, in which case thats fine, because any caster could ahve done it.
So thoughts?
I like that... as long as it is not limited to like 3/day
Erm, I see this being somewhat of a problem, especially if it's not capped once per day.
The new summons, if they last for only a round, cannot effectively be "killed." The only way to cut off these attacks is to kill the summoner. This effectively makes it a ranged attack for the summoner. Most summons typically have pretty strong melee attacks, which for a pseudo-ranged attack would be rather unbalancing.
Especially if we're talking about summoning deities. Hoo boy.
I like it, brings the flavor back to the summoner. Every 6 seconds *bamf* bear maul *bamf* lion pounce *bamf* squid grapple.
Would require some tweaking. Like when the summon vanishes. If it ends at the start of your turn or the end. Things like that.
Or keep it like it is but require them to make a ranged touch attack vs. an intersection with a small red and white ball.
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You could limit it to the Summoner's Charisma Mod + level uses per day. Have each summon appear make an attack and then disappear at the end of the summoner's turn.
About the argument of them not being able to be killed, well if they just disappeared at the end of turn then it would be like they were killed so I don't see a problem with this.
About the argument of them not being able to be killed, well if they just disappeared at the end of turn then it would be like they were killed so I don't see a problem with this.
The problem is that once they're summoned, they typically can't be killed before they get their attacks off. The whole point of killing something is to prevent it from doing damage or something else.
Killing normal summons is significant because they aren't able to continue harassing your forces. One-round summoning means that you effectively get free attack attempt wherever you want it. You don't need reach -- you can just summon the thing you want into an adjacent square and let it maul to its heart's content (for this one round)!
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About the argument of them not being able to be killed, well if they just disappeared at the end of turn then it would be like they were killed so I don't see a problem with this.The problem is that once they're summoned, they typically can't be killed before they get their attacks off. The whole point of killing something is to prevent it from doing damage or something else.
Killing normal summons is significant because they aren't able to continue harassing your forces. One-round summoning means that you effectively get free attack attempt wherever you want it. You don't need reach -- you can just summon the thing you want into an adjacent square and let it maul to its heart's content (for this one round)!
OK, but what is the difference between the summon appearing getting an attack and disappearing and the summon appearing getting an attack, the enemy acting and killing the creature at that point anyways. You do know that a summoned creature acts immediately right after it is summoned anyways right? The enemy doesn't get to react to the creatures attack either of the options.
Overall I see this option as weaker since the summon doesn't distract the enemy for even a single attack compared to a normal summon, and at higher levels when the summon could survive more than a single attack they don't even get to stay for more than a round.
Where is the problem in that? This option is significantly weaker than a normal summon spell, and if you limit it the way that I suggested than I don't see the problem with this ability at all.
OK, but what is the difference between the summon appearing getting an attack and disappearing and the summon appearing getting an attack, the enemy acting and killing the creature at that point anyways. You do know that a summoned creature acts immediately right after it is summoned anyways right? The enemy doesn't get to react to the creatures attack either of the options.
If the regular summon doesn't get attacked, then it has the potential to do damage each turn. Not a great deal, but it's at least as effective as, say, an extra attack while TWF.
It's the difference between having paratroopers insert themselves into the battlefield and having cruise missiles shot at the target. They both wind up in the same general vicinity, but having a summon in a group of monsters, for example, might make one think twice about shooting off a couple fireballs where a durable bit of tied-down resources is.
So the original argument was that this was to powerful of a option because it was a free attack, now it is to powerful because you can shoot off a fireball into the area without hurting the summon? I still think that this is a good option and an interesting option.
I should clarify -- I'm only really against the concept in general if it's at will, as it seemed to me that that was what the OP was describing.
I never meant it to be at will. i just thought it would be an interesting way to differentiate the SLA from the spell while also not forcing extra clutter into the game 9though of course the normal spells can clutter, but its always worked that way)
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I never meant it to be at will. i just thought it would be an interesting way to differentiate the SLA from the spell while also not forcing extra clutter into the game 9though of course the normal spells can clutter, but its always worked that way)
Yeah, I personally like the idea, using the limitation I suggested I think it would be a nice addition. You could even customize the summons to look different with the same statistics as a normal summoned monster, this can make it kind of like a FF game. So at first level I can summon Ifrit (fire beetle), Valefor (eagle), or Chocobo (riding dog).