I had a small question I wanted to throw out there to you all. I have a player whom is constantly using the monster summoning spells during combat. he will summon 1d4+1 monsters each round sometimes having as much as 15 monster out on the map at one time. I tried looking to see if there is a limit to the number for creatures allowed to be summoned at once but couldn't find anything. Is there such a rule or is he allowed to summon as many as he wants. I personally don't care that he is doing it, but some of my players are complaining that it is slowing down the combat horribly, which in truth it is. what say you ??
Welcome to the conjurer's "battlefield control" tactic. This is pretty much the entire reason to become a conjurer, to overwhelm the enemy with numbers. I've never been able to find a way to close the loophole, either. As a GM you'll just have to:
1.) Use Protection Against _______ to keep the summoned creatures at bay.
2.) Use a monster with AoE effects or spells to kill all of them at once, and rule by the book that once a creature is killed, the conjurer can't re-summon that creature for 24 hours. Rule that this means the conjurer can't summon that creature as a 1D4+1 summon, and this will prevent the conjurer's favorite mobs from coming back too soon.
3.) Switch to long-range tactics to hit the conjurer in the rear who's casting the Summon Monster spells. Rule that a Concentration loss means the summoned creatures lose the summons and blink out.
The Complete Psionic nerfed this in 3.5 for Astral Construct (only 1 at a time), but I cannot see anything similar being ruled for arcane/divine summoning.
If other players complain about the conjurer taking 15 times as long to play combat during his or her turn, try to speed things up by having the player roll only one tactic for the entire 1D4+1 monsters as a set or grouping. Rule that the summoned creatures either play fast or don't do anything their (his) turn. Put a timer clock on the table and give the player 60 seconds to declare and roll action + damage. Etc.
I have the same problem on my table.
Can i add some questions ?
- an area dispel magic can be a solution ?
- Can't find the rule about the "re-summon the same creature for 24 hours." Where is it ?
I tried looking to see if there is a limit to the number for creatures allowed to be summoned at once but couldn't find anything. Is there such a rule or is he allowed to summon as many as he wants. what say you ??First, don't single the player out but rather make a general rule for the players.
Second, it's not about summoning lots of creatures but about slowing down combat, focus on that.
Tell the player that its fine to do what they are doing but that they have to keep pace with the rest of the players.
-James
Yeah I really don't see anything wrong with what he is doing I just feel bad for tha other players at the table. I may bring it up for a table top discussion. have all the players chime in and discuss how we can tweek it to speed up play.
thanks for your input
I have the same problem on my table.
Can i add some questions ?
- an area dispel magic can be a solution ?
- Can't find the rule about the "re-summon the same creature for 24 hours." Where is it ?
Yeah where do we find the re-summon rule?
Yeah where do we find the re-summon rule?
p. 210 of the Core rulebook, in the Magic chapter, under "Spell Descriptions - Conjuration":
"Summoning: A summoning spell instantly brings a creature or object to a place you designate. When this spell ends or is dispelled, a summoned creature instantly sent back to where it came from, but a summoned object is not sent back unless the spell description specifically indicates this. A summoned creature also goes away if it is killed or if its hit points drop to 0 or lower, but it is not really dead. It takes 24 hours for the creature to reform, during which time it can't be summoned again.
When the spell that summoned a creature ends and the creature disappears, all the spells it has cast expire. A summoned creature cannot use any innate summoning abilities it may have." (emphasis mine)
Off the top of my head - could you come up with a house rule that the more monsters he summons into a single combat the greater likelihood that he will lose control of some of them? It seems perfectly reasonable to me that the more creatures you are trying to control, the less absolute that control is. Some monsters might simply not turn up, or go off and do their own thing, but it'll be particularly bad if they summon a pack of devils who take against being dragged there. It may make for one very messy combat, but conjuror might be more realistic when using summoning from then on. More importantly the time and enjoyment of the other PCs will not be impacted upon so much.
I think peer pressure (a.k.a. "don't be a dick") is the best solution here.
What level is the PC in question? If the monsters he's summoning are small enough, opponents should be able to ignore them or bull rush/overrun them fairly easily.
If he is summoning 1d4+1 critters, he is summoning 2 full spell levels below his max (ie a Sum Mon 3 to get 1d4+1 Sum Mon 1 critters). At best they should be an afterthought to a decently designed enemy/encounter. Archers, AoE spells, hell, just being big enough to step OVER them are all valid options.
But if it is seriously slowing things down, talk to the player. It may be that his wall of spam is the only thing allowing the rest of the party to get buffed and ready to face your BBEG, and taking them away will hurt the rest of the gang too. Or they could be sick of it, and willing to start considering his summoned critters as "collateral damages" when slinging spells :)
Greetings, fellow travellers.
I agree with James Maissen and his post on this topic and I personally handle it the same for the druid I am playing in a PF round. I have all the stat blocks up and ready (although I rarely cast more than two summons per combat encounter).
And I do not roll initiative and attack rolls for every single monster summoned, but only once per type - might speed up combat as well.
Ruyan.
3.) Switch to long-range tactics to hit the conjurer in the rear who's casting the Summon Monster spells. Rule that a Concentration loss means the summoned creatures lose the summons and blink out.
This is the first thing I thought of -- because they're full round casts, the summon monster spells shouldn't be all that hard to disrupt in combat.
And, yeah, that summoning 1d4+1 of something means you're summoning two lists down (e.g. you're picking monsters from the Summon Monster 2 list when casting Summon Monster 4), which should mean that except as a wall of flesh they're kind of irrelevant to the combat.
I had a small question I wanted to throw out there to you all. I have a player whom is constantly using the monster summoning spells during combat. he will summon 1d4+1 monsters each round sometimes having as much as 15 monster out on the map at one time. I tried looking to see if there is a limit to the number for creatures allowed to be summoned at once but couldn't find anything. Is there such a rule or is he allowed to summon as many as he wants. I personally don't care that he is doing it, but some of my players are complaining that it is slowing down the combat horribly, which in truth it is. what say you ??
It takes a 1 round to summon. Why not fill him with arrows so he has to make a concentration check. It is perfectly logical and within the rules to do so. He will also be more careful with his summons. Spellcrafting his spell as he is trying to cast it justifies the shooting. Now if the bad guys have nobody to spellcraft for them then the second time he is "casting the long spell" common sense should set in, and once again he is filled with arrows.
PRD:Casting Time 1 round
PRD:A spell that takes 1 round to cast is a full-round action. [b]It comes into effect just before the beginning of your turn in the round after you began casting the spell.[b] You then act normally after the spell is completed.
edit:ninja'd
Yeah where do we find the re-summon rule?p. 210 of the Core rulebook, in the Magic chapter, under "Spell Descriptions - Conjuration":
"Summoning: A summoning spell instantly brings a creature or object to a place you designate. When this spell ends or is dispelled, a summoned creature instantly sent back to where it came from, but a summoned object is not sent back unless the spell description specifically indicates this. A summoned creature also goes away if it is killed or if its hit points drop to 0 or lower, but it is not really dead. It takes 24 hours for the creature to reform, during which time it can't be summoned again.
When the spell that summoned a creature ends and the creature disappears, all the spells it has cast expire. A summoned creature cannot use any innate summoning abilities it may have." (emphasis mine)
You are assuming they are the exact same monsters, and I would just summon a different type of monster if a DM put that restriction(exact same monster) on me. It seems the player just wants to fill the board with summons so he probably does not care what it is.
Another option is to take the average results of his summon attacks.
"Let's see. You have 8 dogs attacking the ogre. The ogre's AC is 22, they have +4 to hit, so they hit 15% of the time. You expect 8*0.15=1.2 hits and average damage of 1d4+3 is 5.5, so they do 1.2*5.5 = 6.6. They do 7 damage to the ogre."
If he has a laptop, it's simple to set up a spreadsheet that calculates this. OTOH, if he likes rolling his 8d20, he needs to get good at quickly figuring out hits.
Also, I agree with James that you definitely want to avoid slowing combat down and boring the other players, rather than preventing the player from doing what he wants to do if at all possible.
It is possible that he summons a different type of creature with each summon, then mentally adds in smite and augmented summoning bonuses and asks the cleric if the dogs arrived before or after bless was cast, then has each dog attack a different enemy. If that is his style, I'm not sure that you can avoid the "if at all possible" clause in the above paragraph.
One more idea...
Give some of the monsters to the other players to control so they can at least participate in the monster mayhem, its also likely to speed play if they are all directing them instead of just one person.
You can also ask to your player to summon monsters who have only one attack per round. Dire wolfs don't slow the game as much as dire lions.
Yeah where do we find the re-summon rule?p. 210 of the Core rulebook, in the Magic chapter, under "Spell Descriptions - Conjuration":
"Summoning: A summoning spell instantly brings a creature or object to a place you designate. When this spell ends or is dispelled, a summoned creature instantly sent back to where it came from, but a summoned object is not sent back unless the spell description specifically indicates this. A summoned creature also goes away if it is killed or if its hit points drop to 0 or lower, but it is not really dead. It takes 24 hours for the creature to reform, during which time it can't be summoned again.
When the spell that summoned a creature ends and the creature disappears, all the spells it has cast expire. A summoned creature cannot use any innate summoning abilities it may have." (emphasis mine)
This is true with any specific creature, but nowhere does it say that the basic summoning spells actually call specific creatures each time that caster uses them. The caster doesn't care which fiendish dire frog he gets, and the spell makes no mention of this - caster only gets to pick the type of creature not call them by name. Getting the same beast every time might be cool, and a decent house rule, but there would be follow on rulings that you might not like - what if the party gives a monster something to hold before it disappears? That 1st level summoning spell becomes awfully useful if Mojo the celestial riding dog has the gear you couldn't sneak past the guards strapped to his back.
For the higher level summoning spells where you have to bargain with unique entities for service the re-summoning rules apply, but it won't help with the 1d4+1 generic mooks cluttering up the tabletop.
If you give something to a summoned creature, it will drop to the ground at the end of the spell's duration, it will not stick with the summoned creature. You need to travel to the summoned creature's plane, find it (no small task) and give the gears you want to her. If you do all this, then you'll be able to summon the creature along with the things you gave to her.
By the Rules and Raw
Have no answer for you.
-------------------------
By some NON-Rule options:
Talk to your players. Let them know that this has gotten out of hand, by slowing down the game. See if they will all agree to the (2 HD per level limit of total creatures they control --- this also counts toward undead). Let the players know that this rule also goes both ways, and that NPC Villeins will be so restricted. Any monster that go over the HD limit vanish. This still lets you summon one big monster, or lots of little ones, but does put a hard limit on total HD the player can use.
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Welcome to the conjurer's "battlefield control" tactic. This is pretty much the entire reason to become a conjurer, to overwhelm the enemy with numbers. I've never been able to find a way to close the loophole, either. As a GM you'll just have to:
1.) Use Protection Against _______ to keep the summoned creatures at bay.
2.) Use a monster with AoE effects or spells to kill all of them at once, and rule by the book that once a creature is killed, the conjurer can't re-summon that creature for 24 hours. Rule that this means the conjurer can't summon that creature as a 1D4+1 summon, and this will prevent the conjurer's favorite mobs from coming back too soon.
3.) Switch to long-range tactics to hit the conjurer in the rear who's casting the Summon Monster spells. Rule that a Concentration loss means the summoned creatures lose the summons and blink out.The Complete Psionic nerfed this in 3.5 for Astral Construct (only 1 at a time), but I cannot see anything similar being ruled for arcane/divine summoning.
If other players complain about the conjurer taking 15 times as long to play combat during his or her turn, try to speed things up by having the player roll only one tactic for the entire 1D4+1 monsters as a set or grouping. Rule that the summoned creatures either play fast or don't do anything their (his) turn. Put a timer clock on the table and give the player 60 seconds to declare and roll action + damage. Etc.
Interesting dilemma, I currently am playing a conjurer in the Council of Thieves adventure path. Currently, level 7, just got the improved familiar feat (imp). I tried so hard not to make the encounters boil down to my monsters vs the DM's but sometimes you just gotta let loose :)
I would propose handling it in a similar fashion to the amount of undead a cleric or necromancer can control at one time. I believe it's something like 2 or 3 times your current character/caster level in HD that can be controlled at once. I think this would prevent "massive lag" or "mob saturation" while also allowing such characters to operate as intended. Anyone see a problem with that?
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Yeah where do we find the re-summon rule?p. 210 of the Core rulebook, in the Magic chapter, under "Spell Descriptions - Conjuration":
"Summoning: A summoning spell instantly brings a creature or object to a place you designate. When this spell ends or is dispelled, a summoned creature instantly sent back to where it came from, but a summoned object is not sent back unless the spell description specifically indicates this. A summoned creature also goes away if it is killed or if its hit points drop to 0 or lower, but it is not really dead. It takes 24 hours for the creature to reform, during which time it can't be summoned again.
When the spell that summoned a creature ends and the creature disappears, all the spells it has cast expire. A summoned creature cannot use any innate summoning abilities it may have." (emphasis mine)
Couldn't the player argue that he isn't summoning THE SAME creature and is just summoning a different one, but same type?
1 - restrict unlimited summoning
caster level + casting modifier maybe ?
Possibly allow 1d3 = 2, 1d4+1 = 3 if that is more beneficial to the player, it would be unfair to lose summoning over his HD limit while still risking to roll 1 for example.
or
forbid summoning 1d4+1 at all, 1d3 = 2 always
2 - make summoning single creatures a more attractive option
give a single summoned creature a free +2 enhancement bonus to a physical ability score for example, this will help to avoid flooding the battlefield in short time at least.
Whatever works, but discuss it with the player and be willing to compensate a bit if you think you cut into his strengths too much, it is afterall not meant as a power nerf, but just to keep things flowing smoothly.
sorry it is not intended for rule forum ofcourse, but maybe the OP wants to use it anyway.
I am not sure I see too much of a problem, as long as the player acts in a 'professional' manner and his summonings don't slow down combat too much (and there is some excellent advice above on how to handle it so that the summonings don't slow down combat so much)... after all to get 15 critters on the battlefield, the character had to spend at least 3* full rounds of doing nothing but casting (and maybe taking a 5 foot step), and used up at least 3* spell slots of 3rd level or higher. and as noted earlier those summoned critters are not going to be overly effective in combat other then as bodies to take up space and absorb attacks.
*given average rolls it would actually take 5 casting to get 15 critters
Assuming you don't fall into the one combat then rest, rinse and repeat trap, the player may be hurting for spell slots in later encounters.
In our group we have a house rule that a character can only use one Summoning spell at a time. If you cast another summon spell, any creature(s) from previous summons disappear.