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It is widely believed on these boards that summoning is pretty much the apex tactic at mid and higher levels for powerful characters.
I disagree with your entire premise that a summoning arcane caster is the apex of anything. Any comparable level evoker will crush a caster that summons. IMO they are so worthless that it is difficult to figure out a way to actually keep them alive without a lot of help.
if summoned between friend and foe, for example, have a 50/50 shot of attacking the wrong guy unless clarified by the character summoning them.
I disagree.
I think there is something in the spell that indicates to the summoned creature who is friend vs. foe, If there were a chance of the creature attacking the wrong people, it would be part of the spell description.
Yeah. Summons might not use optimal tactics, but they don't backfire.
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Your best tactic is to make it so the party needs those summons to overcome some encounters.
Add five or six low CR mooks to the enemy party, so the summoner needs his summons actions to deal with them expediently. Summoning is so powerful simply due to the massive action economy boost it grants one side. Make it so all those extra actions are spent making the fight equal and you've balanced the encounter.
Naturally this will require finesse to avoid overpowering the party, as well as other PCs using area effect spells to wipe out those extra mooks, leaving the summoner free to overpower the enemy with said action economy. But sometimes the party should be rewarded for such teamwork.
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I did not say summoned monsters would not attack, but that a) they would be on autopilot to the best of their respective intelligences without handle animal or a common language, and b) they have no means of intrinsically telling friend from foe aside from the one who summoned them. This means without a means of directing them, they will not know whom to coordinate tactical movement with and who to attack and who to ignore. They just show up and go after the person closest to them that didn't summon them in the most efficient way they can do so alone UNLESS they can somehow be told not to, whether that's handle animal, speak with animals, or in the case of the sentient, a common language.
EDIT - I also clarified they would recognize and work with those summoned as part of the same spell, but again, they would not intrinsically work with the rest of the party, and if summoned between friend and foe, for example, have a 50/50 shot of attacking the wrong guy unless clarified by the character summoning them.
You made a bad decision here. No wonder your player decided to choose a different option.
The summon text explicitly calls out foes, not just other creatures. The spell is not supposed to backfire like that, and by making it do so you've just utterly ruined all summon spells.
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I did not say summoned monsters would not attack, but that a) they would be on autopilot to the best of their respective intelligences without handle animal or a common language, and b) they have no means of intrinsically telling friend from foe aside from the one who summoned them. This means without a means of directing them, they will not know whom to coordinate tactical movement with and who to attack and who to ignore. They just show up and go after the person closest to them that didn't summon them in the most efficient way they can do so alone UNLESS they can somehow be told not to, whether that's handle animal, speak with animals, or in the case of the sentient, a common language.
EDIT - I also clarified they would recognize and work with those summoned as part of the same spell, but again, they would not intrinsically work with the rest of the party, and if summoned between friend and foe, for example, have a 50/50 shot of attacking the wrong guy unless clarified by the character summoning them.
But that is NOT how the spell works. Compare Summon Monster to Summon Swarm:
It attacks your opponents to the best of its ability.
You summon a swarm of bats, rats, or spiders (your choice), which attacks all other creatures within its area. (You may summon the swarm so that it shares the area of other creatures.) If no living creatures are within its area, the swarm attacks or pursues the nearest creature as best it can. The caster has no control over its target or direction of travel.
There's something built into the spell that lets summons distinguish friend from foe. When in doubt, I'd go with friend/foe as understood by the caster, so a doppelganger masquerading as PC wouldn't be attacked either. Likewise, the summoned monster would attack a gross-looking but benevolent thing that the arcanist thought was an enemy.
I think that in your desire to stop summoning from being "OP", you're going far beyond what's fair or reasonable.
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You don't need Handle Animal to make a summoned animal attack your enemies: Correct, you don't need it in order to have them attack most creatures.
It is questionable if a summoned animal would attack undead, aberrations, and other unnatural creatures probably should require a Handle Animal trick.
Attack (DC 20): The animal attacks apparent enemies. You may point to a particular creature that you wish the animal to attack, and it will comply if able. Normally, an animal will attack only humanoids, monstrous humanoids, or other animals. Teaching an animal to attack all creatures (including such unnatural creatures as undead and aberrations) counts as two tricks.So the question becomes what makes up the 'best of their ability'? You couldn't make a pony attack undead normally.
By that logic, a T-Rex wouldn't attack a tiefling PC because it's an outsider. I think you're stretching that rule beyond its intended scope.
You need a second trick when using Handle Animal to make an animal fight an outsider. But when you use Summon X, you're not using Handle Animal. Instead, the spell just says what the summoned critter is going to do.
Flanking with other wolves, perhaps.Flanking with a specific character (such as the rogue), better make the roll.
This can be argued, but even animals can recognize that a PC is hostile to an NPC and exploit that opportunity.
I believe the other points stand though.
Anyone who is going to summon should have the creatures stats before doing so. Not doing so slows down the game. That should be made clear to all the players who may want to summon.
For every monster you actually want to summon, yes. That's good sense.
For every monster with awful stats that you will never summon, no.
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I support the 'mooks' argument.
I also strenuously disagree with the idea of coming up with hard counters. It hurts verisimilitude if every bad guy has a summoner counter. If we're talking experienced bad guys or guys who've encountered the party, that's different.
Let me sing you the song of my woe and I'll tell you how I deal with it. So you may take wisdom from another who deals with this.
I've had a summoner in my party for a while. The party is also over sized (was 8 man, is now 6).
For earlier levels the summoner primarily relied on his eidolon, a large beefy but ultimately manageable thing. Eidolons and Synths don't bother me too much, its like having a really nasty barbarian or a druid's animal companion on steroids. After he hit say, level 10 or 11, he switched to utilizing his summon monster ability primarily. He'd used it prior to then for lantern archons, or a lillend for healing, but now, now he could really cook with it.
The party has a force multiplier which I don't think OP's party has, namely a super-buff focused bard. Through a combination of feats and equipment, our bard friend gives a +6/+6 to-hit/damage buff to allies within 30 feet of him, and about half that to those who can hear him but who aren't within 30 feet.
On top of augmented summoning, this bardic support is what we call in the business a force multiplier. The rather numerous, already powerful summons come in even meaner, beefier and angrier and they are available at the drop of a hat and able to be literally zotted right into full attack position and able to act immediately.
How do I deal? To a certain extent I don't. I don't try to hard counter. My aim isn't to beat the heroes, its to entertain the players.
Players like when their builds work.
The trick is to give everyone something to do. Summoners (barring masters) can only pull in one or two flavors of summons. The summons have limited capabilities. They're a toolbox, but if you call in sledgehammers they're no good for dealing with screwdriver problems.
My summoner player likes earth elementals, huge ones. He's level fifteen now though so summoning in mountains of angry rock is well, what he's supposed to be doing. And he rips through baddies like nobody's business.
Earth elementals though are slow. Implaccable but slow. So they're good for dealing with slow, or trapped guys, or guard duty. If he's got high mobility enemies he keeps them close to the vest for defense. If he switches out to faster elemental types (air or fire) he loses out on damage. And summons, are still CR-2 or -3 creatures so they can get easily gummed up fighting the mooks of the enemy.
The number one mistake people make with the mooks thing though is they think Bad Guy and his Minions. Don't.
Think parties.
Think armies and squads.
If you need to make one epic encounter instead of two normal encounters, go epic.
And that CR system? Its a guideline. Look at what monsters or characters actually do . The Challenge Rating system rates stuff on a white room experience. That CR 10 monster with a +8/+8 claw attack? Oh but he has a DR 15/Magic! Whoopti-freaking-doo. He's chum.
Conversely that CR 1/2 mephit who has a fort save area effect for 2d4 damage? Maybe...maybe two dozen of those guys is a better use of your time (death of a thousand cuts) then having a CR 8 bard along whose buffs don't do anything, who's spells nobody will fall for, and who's rapier can't get past even the summoner's squishy AC.
You don't need Handle Animal to make a summoned animal attack your enemies: Correct, you don't need it in order to have them attack most creatures.
It is questionable if a summoned animal would attack undead, aberrations, and other unnatural creatures probably should require a Handle Animal trick.
Attack (DC 20): The animal attacks apparent enemies. You may point to a particular creature that you wish the animal to attack, and it will comply if able. Normally, an animal will attack only humanoids, monstrous humanoids, or other animals. Teaching an animal to attack all creatures (including such unnatural creatures as undead and aberrations) counts as two tricks.So the question becomes what makes up the 'best of their ability'? You couldn't make a pony attack undead normally.By that logic, a T-Rex wouldn't attack a tiefling PC because it's an outsider. I think you're stretching that rule beyond its intended scope.
You need a second trick when using Handle Animal to make an animal fight an outsider. But when you use Summon X, you're not using Handle Animal. Instead, the spell just says what the summoned critter is going to do.
The tiefling is still a humanoid, so the T-Rex is free to attack it. The T-Rex wouldn't attack a skeleton or wight though.
The reason you need a second trick is that the creatures wouldn't normally attack such creatures. If you buy a combat trained or fighting animal, they only have the single attack trick and would require a Handle Animal check to attack undead.
Tieflings are outsiders, not humanoid.
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Tieflings are outsiders, not humanoid.
Outsider (native) to be exact.
What I'm not getting is this whole topic. Summon creatures are just that Summoned and under the control of the Summoner. They do not behave like an Animal companion would.
Animal companions will not attack certain creatures without a special trick attack all. this counts as 2 tricks under the attack option.
Even with the 2 point trick attack to attack creatures with unnatural auras you will need a much higher DC to handle them. Mounted combatants can take Valiant Steed and get bonuses to pushing your animal companion to get near a creature with an unnatural aura.
But for anything summoned it does not require any further handle animal skills...you completely control it and its willing to do things normal animals won't do.
You don't completely control it, though, unless you share a language.
The debate on this topic is how far a Celestial Wolf, for instance, will go to 'attack your foes to the best of its ability', since it doesn't speak any languages and is nominally an animal.
What I'm not getting is this whole topic. Summon creatures are just that Summoned and under the control of the Summoner. They do not behave like an Animal companion would.
Animal companions will not attack certain creatures without a special trick attack all. this counts as 2 tricks under the attack option.
Even with the 2 point trick attack to attack creatures with unnatural auras you will need a much higher DC to handle them. Mounted combatants can take Valiant Steed and get bonuses to pushing your animal companion to get near a creature with an unnatural aura.
But for anything summoned it does not require any further handle animal skills...you completely control it and its willing to do things normal animals won't do.
The rules for Handle Animal aren't exclusive to animal companions. If you buy an attack dog or a mule, you will want Handle Animal skill to control it. Fortunately it is only DC 10 for the creature to do a trick it knows so taking 10 most anyone shouldn't have a problem.
Summoned creatures attack to the best of their ability. They are normal creatures of the type summoned, which means even a fighting dog wouldn't have the attack trick twice.
So, does attacking to the 'best of its ability' include being able to attack something the animal would not normally attack? My reading of the Handle Animal skill makes me believe that a normal wolf pack would not attack undead.
What I'm not getting is this whole topic. Summon creatures are just that Summoned and under the control of the Summoner. They do not behave like an Animal companion would.
Animal companions will not attack certain creatures without a special trick attack all. this counts as 2 tricks under the attack option.
Even with the 2 point trick attack to attack creatures with unnatural auras you will need a much higher DC to handle them. Mounted combatants can take Valiant Steed and get bonuses to pushing your animal companion to get near a creature with an unnatural aura.
But for anything summoned it does not require any further handle animal skills...you completely control it and its willing to do things normal animals won't do.
The rules for Handle Animal aren't exclusive to animal companions. If you buy an attack dog or a mule, you will want Handle Animal skill to control it. Fortunately it is only DC 10 for the creature to do a trick it knows so taking 10 most anyone shouldn't have a problem.
Summoned creatures attack to the best of their ability. They are normal creatures of the type summoned, which means even a fighting dog wouldn't have the attack trick twice.
So, does attacking to the 'best of its ability' include being able to attack something the animal would not normally attack? My reading of the Handle Animal skill makes me believe that a normal wolf pack would not attack undead.
Normal wolf packs don't appear out of thin air when someone waves their arms and bellows funny words, nor do they come equipped with the celestial or fiendish template.
The rules are clear. They attack your enemies. If you want them to do anything besides that, either break out the handle animal rolls or summon something that can speak a language you can.
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What I'm not getting is this whole topic. Summon creatures are just that Summoned and under the control of the Summoner. They do not behave like an Animal companion would.
Animal companions will not attack certain creatures without a special trick attack all. this counts as 2 tricks under the attack option.
Even with the 2 point trick attack to attack creatures with unnatural auras you will need a much higher DC to handle them. Mounted combatants can take Valiant Steed and get bonuses to pushing your animal companion to get near a creature with an unnatural aura.
But for anything summoned it does not require any further handle animal skills...you completely control it and its willing to do things normal animals won't do.
The rules for Handle Animal aren't exclusive to animal companions. If you buy an attack dog or a mule, you will want Handle Animal skill to control it. Fortunately it is only DC 10 for the creature to do a trick it knows so taking 10 most anyone shouldn't have a problem.
Summoned creatures attack to the best of their ability. They are normal creatures of the type summoned, which means even a fighting dog wouldn't have the attack trick twice.
So, does attacking to the 'best of its ability' include being able to attack something the animal would not normally attack? My reading of the Handle Animal skill makes me believe that a normal wolf pack would not attack undead.
You're stretching Handle Animal rules beyond their scope.
The only thing the HA rules tell you is what you can make an animal do using HA. It doesn't say anything about what you can make an animal do by using Feral Speech, Dominate Animal or any number of other things.
Summon X says "attacks your enemies to the best of its abilities". Not "attacks some of your enemies using only some of its abilities".
Oh well. My interpretation of "to the best of their abilities" includes the caveat if they can identify those enemies. They don't have supernatural terminator vision with HUD identifiers pointing out threat vs ally.
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Oh well. My interpretation of "to the best of their abilities" includes the caveat if they can identify those enemies. They don't have supernatural terminator vision with HUD identifiers pointing out threat vs ally.
Yeah, are we supposed to believe these are some kind of magic animals? Just appearing out of nowhere and helping us for no reason? That seems highly unrealistic.
The spell could select enemies from those the caster considers enemies. Just sayin'.
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I suppose. At this point it's rather moot. He decided instead to make an admixture blaster so he would have less prep work, because while I will listen to arguments about the interpretation of summon spells, I was not budging on the prep work for having all summons pre-statted with all templates and modifiers and SLA etc before the game begins.
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The spell could select enemies from those the caster considers enemies. Just sayin'.
That's how I run it. These aren't natural creatures; they are magically summoned/conjured creatures. They are created for the sole purpose of attacking the summoner's enemies. (Hence the "attack to the best of their abilities" clause.) You can't communicate with them, unless they have a form of speech and you have that language, but can be "nudged" via Handle Animal to attack someone other than the closest enemy, move into a flanking position, or take non combat actions.
I was not budging on the prep work for having all summons pre-statted with all templates and modifiers and SLA etc before the game begins.
Nor should you in my opinion.
No, you shouldn't. Those damn templates... It is horrendous masses of work to do. Unless you have it all prepared, it takes hours in game to deal with.
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The spell could select enemies from those the caster considers enemies. Just sayin'.That's how I run it. These aren't natural creatures; they are magically summoned/conjured creatures. They are created for the sole purpose of attacking the summoner's enemies. (Hence the "attack to the best of their abilities" clause.) You can't communicate with them, unless they have a form of speech and you have that language, but can be "nudged" via Handle Animal to attack someone other than the closest enemy, move into a flanking position, or take non combat actions.
Right on.
And anyone who isn't willing to put in the prep work shouldn't be clogging up game time. It doesn't take very long and there are some inexpensive notecards available with the stats preprinted.
It took me maybe an hour or so to set that up for my master summoner, along with making sure the tallies for the earth and water elementals were correct. I even put up a table tent that said, "power attack is always ON unless otherwise declared.". That stopped the silly "gotcha!" games my GM was always playing where I'd always roll my attack with the lower modifier and then wouldn't get the extra damage since I didn't declare it first.
I hear people say the player should be prepared, so he doesn't slow things down. This is good and true. But that has a flip side. Forcing the summoner to do a handle animal check for for an attack trick, which they shouldn't need to do by the intent of the spell also slows things down. Don't slow things down.
If you don't want your players playing summoners, then just tell them up front and have them play something else. Don't be so passive aggressive about it.
Forcing the summoner to do a handle animal check for for an attack trick, which they shouldn't need to do by the intent of the spell also slows things down.
I took the discussion of if a handle animal skill check is appropriate to a thread in the rules section of the boards.
I'm still undecided about what the correct answer is there. It is clear that (as an example) a Celestial Eagle wouldn't normally attack a skeleton. The question remains if the spell can cause the creatures to do something they normally wouldn't or if that is outside the 'best of their abilities' clause.
I saw a lot of opinions, but nothing brought up in the rules that would clearly indicate how it was supposed to work.
I hear people say the player should be prepared, so he doesn't slow things down. This is good and true. But that has a flip side. Forcing the summoner to do a handle animal check for for an attack trick, which they shouldn't need to do by the intent of the spell also slows things down. Don't slow things down.
If you don't want your players playing summoners, then just tell them up front and have them play something else. Don't be so passive aggressive about it.
Right on. The spell description's clear. They do X. If you want them to d something besides X, have a way to make it happen.
That's one of the reasons my summoner maxed his language and handle animal skills and largely stuck to elementals.
I took the discussion of if a handle animal skill check is appropriate to a thread in the rules section of the boards.
I'm still undecided about what the correct answer is there. It is clear that (as an example) a Celestial Eagle wouldn't normally attack a skeleton. The question remains if the spell can cause the creatures to do something they normally wouldn't or if that is outside the 'best of their abilities' clause.
I saw a lot of opinions, but nothing brought up in the rules that would clearly indicate how it was supposed to work.
It's not really a "correct answer" situation. Various GMs and players have a variety of ideas about what, exactly, you are summoning. If you hold that these are creatures that are natural in their own realm that suddenly get pulled here, you can go with "they wouldn't normally attack that." If, as I run it, you feel they are created by the spell for the purpose of attacking your foes, then they use any and all abilities to inflict harm, harry, and/or harass your foes. They don't act like "real" (i.e., natural) creatures. They're magic, and do as the spell designates. Controlling them beyond that requires investment in languages and or other skills.
For those of you who GM, how do you keep combat flowing when you have summonings going on?
Several posters have suggested adding more mooks to the enemy side. A good idea, but it slows down combat even further.
AND: How do you keep the other players interested/involved?
In my RotRL AP I'm running, the Master Summoner (who agreed to limit his SLA summoning to 1 active) has been using the lower level summon monster to get 1d3+1 creatures. At 3rd lvl, he had Summon Good Creature (which gave them Diehard) and Augmented Summoning (which boosts their STR and CON). I saw how summoning can trivialize encounters when he did his SLA summons and the other players stopped paying attention to what was happening on the board. One was inputting another payer's character into Hero Lab while the other was flipping through her cell phone, checking messages. Granted, they were being attacked by goblins, but there was literally nothing for them to do once he had summoned his minions.
I've asked them to roll for the extra summoned creatures, and they let me know that doesn't interest them. There's no choices for them to make; they're just rolling die. Hardly engaging.
I know others out there must have a way to keep combat meaningful and engaging while summonings are going on, but I can't see what that is. I came to this thread looking for ways to both manage the combats as well as keep my other players involved. (I have 5 players, btw, one of whom is a Master Summoner. Adding more mooks on my side just becomes a bit much to track and run simply to compensate for summoned creatures.)
Same tricks as always.
Same tricks as always.
The summoning player has to be quick and decisive. They should already know what they are going to do when their turn comes up.
I assume the summoning player already has all the creature statistics ready with the Augment figured in.
Roll all attacks and damage at the same time. If his summons has three attacks, have three different colored sets of dice to indicate which attack and damage roll go together.
Goblins are horrible, they don't do enough damage to kill off the summoned creatures. This is made even worse because of the Die Hard that his summons do. It would be a lot better without the Die Hard.
Check, and check. He has all the stats; and is rolling all the attacks (though for 1 creature at a time - 3 eagles would be 9 attack rolls!).
I can't help the gobos. They're the main foes in the AP at this point.
I've come to my player so often, now, trying to "fix" the issues summoning causes that he has offered to roll up a new character. Which doesn't solve the problem, really. A summoning focused wizard, or sorcerer, or even a druid, could cause the same issues. Hence why I am seeking out advice on these boards! I want to improve my GM skills to handle these type of characters.
And I agree about Diehard. It turns his 7 hp eagles into like 20 hp eagles, though it only gets 3 attacks while at 7 hp until 0, at which point it becomes staggered.
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Keep in mind with the eagles they don't have perfect flight and therefore have to make flight checks to remain stable. Its not much, and its an easy check, but this is important to remember.
Also, blocking the summoner's line of sight denudes him of his ability to issue cogent orders besides 'attack that guy.' If he can't speak eagle, and say a lot of smoke cuts his vision off, they'll attack that one guy and then stand around until they get additional orders.
As I stated earlier, it comes down to encounter design. AP encounter design doesn't account for the types of shennigans a "well designed" summoner, or any optimized character for that matter, can get up to.
Your issue is not the summoner though.
Your issue is that your other players don't feel engaged.
They likely don't feel engaged because the combat encounters are monster closets. You go into room, goblins appear, you beat goblins into the ground. They don't get to feel cool, there's nothing else for them to do.
Maybe a goblin is going to pull a lever filling the room with boiling oil. Maybe they have to rescue someone?
At the risk of spoilers there's a bit in Runelords with goblins and a guy who's going to be encased in glass. Imagine the party having to deal with multiple aspects of an encounter. Make things occur in a time based situation. Throw curve balls. Change up the situation.
Ok, I kinda late to this thread so I will break this into sections.
Tactics for GM to use:
Most of the good ones have already been mentioned. But I would like to re-emphasize a few of them.
* Hit and run tactics. Especially when applicable to the particular opponent. It is quite reasonable for something like goblins or kobolds to throw a flight of javelins and alchemist fire, then run away. Again, and again, and again, …
It also makes sense for a bunch of clever fast lightly armed opponents like mounted archers.
* Intelligent enemies behaving intelligently. What would PC’s do if the opposition suddenly included 3 earth elementals. “Gah! One of them is summoning! Kill it first!” Then they would focus effort on one they could see or hear casting summoning spells. If they couldn't tell which, anything that looked like a caster would get hammered. Why should an intelligent bad guy not be just smart.
Non-singleton bad guys.
* Changing terrain and environmental conditions. Sometimes in a cramped twisty tunnel through sometimes out in the open.
Rules
* Enforce the rules that are there, but I see no real need to make them worse. So fly, climb, and swim checks when appropriate. I have never made them use handle animal checks to attack strange opponents, but I can see the reasoning for that ruling. That is a GM call for each group.
* I always allow summoned creatures to tell friend from foe. UNLESS the bad guys use some thing after they have been summoned. One time the bad guys were shape changers (weak version of doppelganger) that all changed to look like the party melee guy after the summoned creatures attacked. In that case I felt it was completely reasonable for the summoned snakes to not know which was who.
* A summoned creatures (unless intelligent) will attack the closest enemy, but won’t use complex tactics like flanking or tripping. UNLESS that is normal for them. Natural wolves really do surround and trip prey. So I would allow summoned wolves to do the same. But I wouldn’t allow that for summoned rhinoes.
Efficiency
* First and Foremost – Summoner must be prepared. Needs to have a card or print-out of each thing he can summon with the augmented statistics. He must have already looked up the special abilities and spell so he knows how they work. If he doesn’t have things ready, the fight goes on without him while his PC tries to remember how to use his magic. Yes, I cut some slack if something weird comes up. Adventuring in the desert but suddenly they are fighting in an underground river. I agree he may not have the augmented squid prepared.
* Second – Gentleman’s agreement to not be a jerk. I have played some summoning characters before. I normally only summon a single creature. In certain specialized situations I have summoned multiples of lower level creatures. Like 3 small earth elementals to search the area for underground passages. Or when requested by the rest of the group to get a specific capability for specific opponents.
* Third – Planning by GM ahead of time. I have say 3+ general tactics planned out for the bad guys ahead of time. Depending upon what the party does, I’m already ready with all the bad guys actions (even if that is run away). That way I don’t slow things down trying to figure out what to do next. Doesn’t always work. Sometimes the party will do something so bizarre that I have to take a moment to think about it. But not usually.
* Fourth - Simplify the opposition. It may not be as realistic, but I don’t usually make a whole bunch of individual opponents. I used to do that. So an enemy party might have 6 wildly different NPC’s. But then I had a whole pile of different potential actions, buffs, debuffs, etc… to keep track of. It was just too much stuff for me to keep things moving quickly. So now it might be a 7th level cleric and 4 identical antipaladins of level 5 (who will just coincidentally do the same thing each round if possible).
* Fifth - Draft help (especially if the players are very experienced they should definitely be able to help out). Make one of the players keep track of initiative, have another keep track of the durations of buffs and debuffs, yet another can track the damage (apparently) done to the various opponents, and if the summoner is slow (or another PC is really easy) maybe that player can run a summoned creature.
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Keep in mind with the eagles they don't have perfect flight and therefore have to make flight checks to remain stable. Its not much, and its an easy check, but this is important to remember.
The eagle only needs to remain flying if landing in the square and making full attacks isn't an option. It might matter in rooms where you have an eagle hovering over a pit to provide flanking, but it's a bit of a niche case.
Also, blocking the summoner's line of sight denudes him of his ability to issue cogent orders besides 'attack that guy.' If he can't speak eagle, and say a lot of smoke cuts his vision off, they'll attack that one guy and then stand around until they get additional orders.
They'll move on to the next enemy. Summons attack your enemies. It's reasonable to assume they start with the nearest one, then move on to the rest.
As I stated earlier, it comes down to encounter design. AP encounter design doesn't account for the types of shennigans a "well designed" summoner, or any optimized character for that matter, can get up to.
Your issue is not the summoner though.
Your issue is that your other players don't feel engaged.
They likely don't feel engaged because the combat encounters are monster closets. You go into room, goblins appear, you beat goblins into the ground. They don't get to feel cool, there's nothing else for them to do.
Maybe a goblin is going to pull a lever filling the room with boiling oil. Maybe they have to rescue someone?
At the risk of spoilers there's a bit in Runelords with goblins and a guy who's going to be encased in glass. Imagine the party having to deal with multiple aspects of an encounter. Make things occur in a time based situation. Throw curve balls. Change up the situation.
These are very good points. More unusual combats will make it much more important that early-game summons can only do simple attack stuff, while PCs can actually do smart stuff like save hostages.
I swear I made this post on this thread, but it must have been another one.
-Don't let the goblins stand right next to the Eagle. Goblins have one attack, eagles have 3. If you force the eagle to move then they're getting at best 2 (1 from AoO, one from standard attack).
-Have the Goblin use Acrobatics when moving away from the Eagle to avoid AoOs. They have a +2 to the Augmented Eagle's 13 CMD, that's a 50% chance of success. Success means they're on even fighting grounds, each gets one attack. Or no attacks if they're staggered from being below 0 HP.
-Enforce the flying rules. Hover and 90 degree turns aren't automatic for Eagles. Failing these could provoke AoOs from the goblin.
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-Enforce the flying rules. Hover and 90 degree turns aren't automatic for Eagles. Failing these could provoke AoOs from the goblin.
That is not actually a rule.
That said, your advice about acrobatics is sound. Even if they don't succeed at the acrobatics check, 1 AoO and 1 normal attack is still better than a full 3-attack.
I swear I made this post on this thread, but it must have been another one.
-Don't let the goblins stand right next to the Eagle. Goblins have one attack, eagles have 3. If you force the eagle to move then they're getting at best 2 (1 from AoO, one from standard attack).
-Have the Goblin use Acrobatics when moving away from the Eagle to avoid AoOs. They have a +2 to the Augmented Eagle's 13 CMD, that's a 50% chance of success. Success means they're on even fighting grounds, each gets one attack. Or no attacks if they're staggered from being below 0 HP.
-Enforce the flying rules. Hover and 90 degree turns aren't automatic for Eagles. Failing these could provoke AoOs from the goblin.
Similar thread that I had started before I ran RotRL with a Master Summoner in the party.
Now I see that it is summonings in general that are more the issue than the Summoner. So the tactics to use against them are all well and good. But I am now running into the other players at the table losing interest because the summoned minions are doing all the dangerous (and therefore fun!) stuff.
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That is not actually a rule.
-Enforce the flying rules. Hover and 90 degree turns aren't automatic for Eagles. Failing these could provoke AoOs from the goblin.
Failing the fly check by 5 or more causes you to fall, which provokes if you pass out of threatened squares.
I've come to my player so often, now, trying to "fix" the issues summoning causes that he has offered to roll up a new character. Which doesn't solve the problem, really. A summoning focused wizard, or sorcerer, or even a druid, could cause the same issues. Hence why I am seeking out advice on these boards! I want to improve my GM skills to handle these type of characters.
And I agree about Diehard. It turns his 7 hp eagles into like 20 hp eagles, though it only gets 3 attacks while at 7 hp until 0, at which point it becomes staggered.
Actually, I think a Master Summoner is much worse than a summons focused Wizard, Druid, or to a lesser extent Sorcerer. The standard action summons is very powerful.
As for Diehard, aren't they staggered and bleeding? Still doesn't help much. I much prefer summons to go away at 0.
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Failing the fly check by 5 or more causes you to fall, which provokes if you pass out of threatened squares.That is not actually a rule.
-Enforce the flying rules. Hover and 90 degree turns aren't automatic for Eagles. Failing these could provoke AoOs from the goblin.
Also given the level of engagement it means that you'd basically end up falling prone too since at best you're engaging from about 10 feet up.
Aww man, I love talking about the Flight rules. I had to brush up on them because of Dragons.
Hovering, which is what they need to do if they want to full attack (otherwise you need to move at least half their fly speed, and that means no full attack), has a DC of 15. Our Celestial Eagle buddy has a +8 fly skill (his maneuverability class basically defines his fly ranks). Its unlikely that will fail, but they might, at which point even if they don't go five below, they still need to choose between 1.) Moving 40ft (and provoking if they attacked) or 2.) Landing if they want to stay there. So that's a 35% percent chance that attempting to hover above full attack, doesn't work as intended. One in three.
Fortunately, unless they're fighting in a hurricane (50mph winds), the eagles don't need to worry about wind speeds affecting their flight too much. If they are being used in 50mph winds (which I hope are vanishingly rare or your world has horrific meteorological issues), they need to make a DC 20 check just to go anywhere and good luck with that.
For basic maneuvering? A 90 degree turn, as opposed to a bank? DC 15. So they need to wheel a bit or else they have to regularly roll over a 7 (there's that 35% chance of failure again).
Want to five foot step? DC 10 flight check and maybe a hover check if you want to stop in the next square. So again, don't roll a 1, but the eagle can still fail it.
Also a DC 10 check is needed whenever they get hit or they lose 10 feet of altitude. So the goblins can bring them down to earth (assuming the eagle is unlucky and rolls a 2) and then you have to provoke to fly away. I've always thought it should be 10+damage received like a concentration check, but that's not the rule. Paizo probably didn't want dragons getting blown out of the air by 'piddly' fireballs or bows.
Now onto the mechanics thing.
I'm kind of curious how the celestial eagles are a game breaker now that I look at their stats. +3 to attack? And he's summoning 1d3+1 of them? That means he's using a summon monster III. If he's pulling in 1d2+1 that's a little more reasonable, but that's still a third level caster. +3 shouldn't be that reliable except on the chumps. Which is what your average goblin is.
Still, average goblin AC is 16. And that's the scrub, sub CR1 one. The eagles need to hit a 13 to hit them, and while a full attack would help there, that can be mitigated by keeping the gobbos on the move or by enforcing the fly rules (rough 35% chance to not be able to hover in place, remember).
Against guys in heavier armor, those eagles are meaningless. Standard bestiary Gobbos have armor giving them a +2, give them armor a little better and the eagles have an even tougher time hitting them.
And if the party is engaging four normal goblins at level 3, they should rip through them like sheet paper.
Heroes are supposed to do stuff that makes their players feel awesome. Your solution also might just be to add more goblins.
Spook205: "Heroes are supposed to do stuff that makes their players feel awesome. Your solution also might just be to add more goblins."
Did that. Upped their AC by +1, max hp, gave them some means to deal with the eagles (nets & short bows), but my main concern now is the # of summoned minions leaving the other players with nothing to do.
The Summoner feels special. The other players feel disinterested. And I'm trying to keep it interesting. And he's not being a dick! He's playing the class the way it is meant to be played, using summoning the way summoning is supposed to be used: "Here! Let my meat-shields bear the brunt of the danger!"
...
Actually, I think a Master Summoner is much worse than a summons focused Wizard, Druid, or to a lesser extent Sorcerer. The standard action summons is very powerful. ...
Six of one, half dozen of the other.
Standard action summons is quite powerful and useful.
However, the sorc/druid/wizard/cleric can get many more in a day if he really wants to and is still a full caster on top of that. I almost never do anything like it, but one time the party asked me to (and the GM was ok with it) so I summoned a near army as a diversion. I used all my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th level spells and had literally dozens of summoned creatures rushing the gates of the keep. Even a master summoner couldn’t have put that many in the field even if he had learned the SM’s as his normal spells. They just don’t get as many spells in a day.
Is as powerful as standard action summons? Maybe. It kinda depends on your group play style.
One of the groups I used to play with was the exact opposite of the 5 min adventuring day. Everyone tried to be very frugal and careful with their daily uses of everything and they would also keep going until almost everyone was out of almost everything (yes, I know it is risky). In that group, more each day was much more important than how fast you could bring them out.
Does your group carefully scout and investigate? You might be able to have plenty of time to get out the best creature for each situation, so maybe the std action isn’t that important.
I swear I made this post on this thread, but it must have been another one.
-Don't let the goblins stand right next to the Eagle. Goblins have one attack, eagles have 3. If you force the eagle to move then they're getting at best 2 (1 from AoO, one from standard attack).
-Have the Goblin use Acrobatics when moving away from the Eagle to avoid AoOs. They have a +2 to the Augmented Eagle's 13 CMD, that's a 50% chance of success. Success means they're on even fighting grounds, each gets one attack. Or no attacks if they're staggered from being below 0 HP.
-Enforce the flying rules. Hover and 90 degree turns aren't automatic for Eagles. Failing these could provoke AoOs from the goblin.
Similar thread that I had started before I ran RotRL with a Master Summoner in the party.
Now I see that it is summonings in general that are more the issue than the Summoner. So the tactics to use against them are all well and good. But I am now running into the other players at the table losing interest because the summoned minions are doing all the dangerous (and therefore fun!) stuff.
Ah, okay! I thought this sounded reallllly similar.
I don't know how much wiggle room you've got between random encounters and what the encounters as written present (I haven't read or played RotRL so I'm shooting in the dark).
-Skeletons have DR 5/Bludgeoning which should ignore most of the damage from the talon attacks of the augmented eagles.
-Focus on the summoner. BUT USE YOUR OWN DISCRETION. Knock him out and his summons go poof. Goblins have bows and a decent to-hit for their CR.
EDIT: Bolding these as they seem to address most of your concerns about a large number of summons doing very specific stuff.
-On the point that they're doing on the dangerous and fun stuff, are you enforcing the Handle Animal aspect of summons? I think this was covered last thread, but I just want to be sure. Basically they're under your control and he has to use Handle Animal to have them do something else.
-Pushing an animal like this is a full-round action from him. So he can only do this on one eagle per round.
Huh and another thing I just remembered. There was a debate a while back whether summons through the summoner's Summon Monster ability qualified for the Augment Summon's feat.
Was that ever resolved?
Personally I'd think they do work together, but it may be something I'm wrong about.
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Spook205: "Heroes are supposed to do stuff that makes their players feel awesome. Your solution also might just be to add more goblins."
Did that. Upped their AC by +1, max hp, gave them some means to deal with the eagles (nets & short bows), but my main concern now is the # of summoned minions leaving the other players with nothing to do.
** spoiler omitted **
The Summoner feels special. The other players feel disinterested. And I'm trying to keep it interesting. And he's not being a dick! He's playing the class the way it is meant to be played, using summoning the way summoning is supposed to be used: "Here! Let my meat-shields bear the brunt of the danger!"
Hrm, the guy is a master summoner then?
That's the only way he can conclusively glut the battlefield with eagles. Otherwise he gets like 3-5 tops (maybe 4-6 with appropriate feats).
If he's doing that, he's burning through Summon Monsters per day, so attrition works for that. 3+cha mod means he's got like, seven of these (assuming an 18 cha). Which means if he does the swarm o'eagles thing, that's probably like 2 summons per encounter, meaning you just need to up the number of encounters to make him treat it as the resource it is. APs, in my opinion, are bad at this pacing.
And of course he's not being a dick. :) He wants to play a summoner, but you need to make sure he's doing it by the rules.
I've got a bog standard summoner in my game, his earth elementals and bralani give me hives (thanks in part to the bard synergizing with them and boosting their to hit to PC tier (+6 hit/+6 damage, hrrrg), but I deal with it by increasing the size and complexity of the battle environment (pools of water, teleporters, smoke, tiny corridors, wide corridors, burrowing enemies, invisible enemies, odd shaped rooms, etc), making tactics that involve different mobility options or complexities, and throwing more then one problem at the party at a time (and not always a combat problem). Summoners though need to be reminded of how their powers and shennigans work by the rules (a summoner player who gets angry at eidolon audits for example doesn't realize the favor the DM's doing him.)
What I wonder about is how this guy is overshadowing the party with celestial eagles. I suspect the rest of the party are squishy spellcaster types?
The eagles've got a lot of attacks for reasonable damage, but their to-hit is abysmal and he gets a small handful of the things (unless he's a master). Also Diehard or no, they only have about 7 hp or so before they become staggered and their much vaunted full attack goes bye-bye. They can still make a single bite or claw attack at the cost of a hit point.
When your hit point total is below 0, but you are not dead, you automatically stabilize. You do not need to make a Constitution check each round to avoid losing additional hit points. You may choose to act as if you were disabled, rather than dying. You must make this decision as soon as you are reduced to negative hit points (even if it isn't your turn). If you do not choose to act as if you were disabled, you immediately fall unconscious.
When using this feat, you are staggered. You can take a move action without further injuring yourself, but if you perform any standard action (or any other action deemed as strenuous, including some swift actions, such as casting a quickened spell) you take 1 point of damage after completing the act. If your negative hit points are equal to or greater than your Constitution score, you immediately die
The encounters likely just need a little extra complexity, and a bit of Aquaman plotting where the encounters are redesigned slightly to give a bit more oopmh to the other party members might help.
We haven't talked much about them. What's the rest of the party?
Huh and another thing I just remembered. There was a debate a while back whether summons through the summoner's Summon Monster ability qualified for the Augment Summon's feat.
** spoiler omitted **
Was that ever resolved?
Personally I'd think they do work together, but it may be something I'm wrong about.
http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9rbq
Augment Summoning: Does this feat apply to monsters summoned with summon monster or summon nature's ally spell-like abilities?
Yes.
posted November 2013 | back to top
Spook205:"What I wonder about is how this guy is overshadowing the party with celestial eagles. I suspect the rest of the party are squishy spellcaster types?"
No. They are: Hedge Witch; Ranger; Slayer; and Rogue.
They get overshadowed only due to the (sensible) tactic of: why risk myself/use resources when there are expendable minions to do it for me?
If it was a single summoned creature, and only 1 at a time, it would be a non-issue. But when you get 3, 4, up to 8 in two rounds? I wind up with players who: check email; surf the Net; make phone calls; etc., because there's nothing for them to do. They aren't in any danger. There are no decisions to make (even if they take over rolling for some of the minions).
Can't be fun for them. Can't be fun for him to have to hold back what his character can do. Not fun for me.
And, as I said, I recognize that this isn't the Summoner, but summoning, that I have to learn to work with. To keep encounters meaningful and not trivialized.
And I obviously don't want to have to say: Look, guys - I'm clearly not a GM who can run with summoning! So I have to ban it from any of my games.
Instead, I seek advice and try to learn to up my game.