Alright, so I've been playing in a campaign for some time now where one of the members of my party is a druid. Recently our DM has been rather aggressive with limiting the spells my friend is casting, but he's trying to justify it through Pathfinder RPG rules. So far, the biggest disagrement has been over the fact that he's saying my friend cannot summon anything with SNA unless he's personaly seen the creature up close. Studying the creature or things of the like won't work, my friend has to get right up clos and personal to ever be able to summon it, the same also goes for his wild shape. I'm wanting to know if there's actualy anything in the book that either supports of opposes his viewpoint.
The only restrictions I can find on Summon Natures Ally is the environment must support the creature, so you couldn't summon a dolphin on land etc.
The other restriction is your alignment must be similar to the creature summoned.
While the GM is within their rights to restrict magic to fit the world, consistancy is important. So Summon Monster should have similar restrictions.
However people with ranks in Survival or Knowledge Nature would know about certain creatures, so perhaps the GM and Player could sit down and list a bunch of creatures native to the PCs starting area.
To keep that consitancy people could not create items without having encountered one before or heard/learned about it via ranks in Knowledge Arcana, Religion or Spellcraft.
Alright, so I've been playing in a campaign for some time now where one of the members of my party is a druid. Recently our DM has been rather aggressive with limiting the spells my friend is casting, but he's trying to justify it through Pathfinder RPG rules. So far, the biggest disagrement has been over the fact that he's saying my friend cannot summon anything with SNA unless he's personaly seen the creature up close. Studying the creature or things of the like won't work, my friend has to get right up clos and personal to ever be able to summon it, the same also goes for his wild shape. I'm wanting to know if there's actualy anything in the book that either supports of opposes his viewpoint.
If he claims it is by the rules ask him for a reference. If he can't do it he should just admit it is DM fiat.
We have used the idea that casting SNA allows you to choose which animal you get, regardless of familiarity with them, so long as you were summoning something appropriate for the environment (land animals on land, water in water, etc.). The spell has no familiarity restriction that I'm aware of.
But for wild shape you did, indeed, have to be familiar with the animal and that did not include just a Knowledge: Nature check. If you weren't from a land where dinosaurs roamed then you couldn't wild shape into a dinosaur. You could, however, use SNA to summon animals and then "study" them during the encounter and after a few such encounters become familiar enough to wild shape into one if you wanted. It didn't seem unreasonable to me (and I was the druid PC). It's still the rule I would employ today as DM if one of my players wanted to play a druid.
Applying that sort of restriction to summon nature's ally is jank. If so, it should apply to summon monster as well. And since it's highly unlikely that they've ever seen a Feindish or Celestial template version of those creatures, it nerfs the whole spell.
And even without the fiendish/celestial bit, look at some of the upper summon monster lists. Here's 5th level:
5th Level Subtypes
Ankylosaurus (dinosaur)* —
Babau (demon) Chaotic, Evil
Bearded devil Evil, Lawful
Bralani azata Chaotic, Good
Dire lion* —
Elemental (large) Elemental
Giant moray eel* —
Kyton Evil, Lawful
Orca (dolphin)* —
Salamander Evil
Woolly rhinoceros* —
Xill Evil, Lawful
Yeah, right. Who sees these things before they turn 11th level? What, do they have a Monster Zoo at the local mage's tower?
Convention says summon what you want, and knowledge nature check for wildshaping into stuff. If the player has dumped his knowledge nature skill for combat skills or something I could see being a hardass about it, but come on. It's a freaking druid. I can't imagine what that GM would do if someone decided to play a truly broken class, like Fighter.
But for wild shape you did, indeed, have to be familiar with the animal and that did not include just a Knowledge: Nature check. If you weren't from a land where dinosaurs roamed then you couldn't wild shape into a dinosaur. You could, however, use SNA to summon animals and then "study" them during the encounter and after a few such encounters become familiar enough to wild shape into one if you wanted. It didn't seem unreasonable to me (and I was the druid PC). It's still the rule I would employ today as DM if one of my players wanted to play a druid.
+1 -- This is exactly how we've played it in the past and it seemed more than fair to everyone. (We also restricted Dire varieties until you'd either encountered or summoned them). We also found that the party druid would, on down-time, often spend a day studying new forms.
Applying that sort of restriction to summon nature's ally is jank. If so, it should apply to summon monster as well. And since it's highly unlikely that they've ever seen a Feindish or Celestial template version of those creatures, it nerfs the whole spell.
I agree. If you're going to apply it to SNA then you have to apply it to SM as well, which makes the spell pretty useless. It reminds me of the old summoning line where once you reached SM VII or so there was only one option. One of my players said "I summon a random monster with SM VII (or whatever it was)" and the only thing you could summon were mastodons with that particular spell (and higher level versions only had whales iirc).
We also found that the party druid would, on down-time, often spend a day studying new forms.
I did that a few times during downtime as well, so long as I wasn't endangering anyone by doing so hehe. It's a great idea. I should have done more of it, quite frankly. /salute!
Well, first off, the answers have been great; however I have another question. One of the things that my friend tried to do a session or so back was turn into a larger version of an animal he already knew (scaling it up, if you would). The DM ruled that my friend didn't know of any animals that size so he couldn't turn into them. When we looked through the bestiary we found that there are only three or four animals that are "Huge" in their size and most of those are dinosaurs. I know I'm throwing out a lot of questions here, but my friends getting close to just re-rolling cause his class is getting hit so dang much.
Well, first off, the answers have been great; however I have another question. One of the things that my friend tried to do a session or so back was turn into a larger version of an animal he already knew (scaling it up, if you would). The DM ruled that my friend didn't know of any animals that size so he couldn't turn into them. When we looked through the bestiary we found that there are only three or four animals that are "Huge" in their size and most of those are dinosaurs. I know I'm throwing out a lot of questions here, but my friends getting close to just re-rolling cause his class is getting hit so dang much.
Frankly it sounds like the problem is with the GM not the rules or the player. He's making up houserules on the fly. This is grossly unfair and shows some poor GMing, IMO. If he is going to nerf PCs like that it should have been made clear at character creation and not during play.
He is what I would refer to as a tool.Everyone here has given great advice but unfortunately if the GM is going to throw his toys out of the pram because a player wants to be effective and use his class abilities then nothing said here will help.
Well, first off, the answers have been great; however I have another question. One of the things that my friend tried to do a session or so back was turn into a larger version of an animal he already knew (scaling it up, if you would). The DM ruled that my friend didn't know of any animals that size so he couldn't turn into them. When we looked through the bestiary we found that there are only three or four animals that are "Huge" in their size and most of those are dinosaurs. I know I'm throwing out a lot of questions here, but my friends getting close to just re-rolling cause his class is getting hit so dang much.Frankly it sounds like the problem is with the GM not the rules or the player. He's making up houserules on the fly. This is grossly unfair and shows some poor GMing, IMO. If he is going to nerf PCs like that it should have been made clear at character creation and not during play.
He is what I would refer to as a tool.
Everyone here has given great advice but unfortunately if the GM is going to throw his toys out of the pram because a player wants to be effective and use his class abilities then nothing said here will help.
This is actually a case of applying the rules correctly. If there isn't a monster of the appropriate size, you can't change into it. There was a developer post about that a while ago. That being said, I think many GMs would allow it specifically because wild shape loses some of its scaling otherwise.
I don't really know if it's rules-legal or not, but given that there are few huge animals available to choose from, using wild shape to turn into an advanced animal doesn't seem too much of a stretch to me. Just be sure DM and PC sit down, prior to the session, and go over the stats so that everyone is on the same page and the DM has his/her input. Good luck!
This is actually a case of applying the rules correctly. If there isn't a monster of the appropriate size, you can't change into it. There was a developer post about that a while ago. That being said, I think many GMs would allow it specifically because wild shape loses some of its scaling otherwise.Well, first off, the answers have been great; however I have another question. One of the things that my friend tried to do a session or so back was turn into a larger version of an animal he already knew (scaling it up, if you would). The DM ruled that my friend didn't know of any animals that size so he couldn't turn into them. When we looked through the bestiary we found that there are only three or four animals that are "Huge" in their size and most of those are dinosaurs. I know I'm throwing out a lot of questions here, but my friends getting close to just re-rolling cause his class is getting hit so dang much.Frankly it sounds like the problem is with the GM not the rules or the player. He's making up houserules on the fly. This is grossly unfair and shows some poor GMing, IMO. If he is going to nerf PCs like that it should have been made clear at character creation and not during play.
He is what I would refer to as a tool.
Everyone here has given great advice but unfortunately if the GM is going to throw his toys out of the pram because a player wants to be effective and use his class abilities then nothing said here will help.
The GM got one thing right...my bad
Well, I had a nice long sit down with my DM today and brought up the things everyone shared with me and he conceded to the SNA. So I just wanted to say you guys have been a great help and thanks to all!
Nice! Tell your GM they made the right call in the end. Well done on sitting down and working it out with them. Enjoy!
Other posters have covered my opinion on the DM's view on SNA.
Also, succeding in a knowldge nature check gives you a lot of information, i think that this counts as familiar.
Other posters have covered my opinion on the DM's view on SNA.
Also, succeding in a knowldge nature check gives you a lot of information, i think that this counts as familiar.
Not only that, the knowledge nature check gives the GM every bit of room he needs to nerf it fairly. If he doesn't think you know what a velociraptor is, then that's a legitimate position as a GM, but the response is not to tell you 'no,' it's to ask you to make a check. And maybe that check is high (20? more?) for stuff out of Turok 2 Dinosaur Hunter in your particular game, and if so, so be it, but there should at least be a roll.