Hungry Ghost Monk and Summon Minor Monster or Mount...other suggestions?

[Skarm]

Hi all,
I was wondering:

If I had a Hungry Ghost Monk and used a Summon Minor Monster wand to summon 1d3 lizards...would I be able to order to attack me and kill them to refuel my ki pool?

Or would the duration be too limited?

( I mean, the 1 round would last until the beginning of my round making me unable to attack them? )

An alternative option would be a Mount wand...summoning a pony and order it to attack me, since the 2 hour of duration would allow me to perform all my attacks...

Would this be an easy and portable option?

Any other idea of "portable-to-kill" creatures for quick refuelling? XD
Skarm

[Dave Justus]

It would have to be an enemy. I don't think that anything that you summoned and was under your control would count as that even if you ordered it to attack you.

That being said, the duration on summon minor monster might be sufficient since they are tiny and so would have to enter your square to attack, provoking an AoO.

[merpius]

I was unable to find any indication that this would not work (other than the duration problem) RAW.

I would bet that pretty much any/every GM would nix it, however. Perhaps, however, since you only get 1 ki per mount, and that casting translates to either gold or a party wizard's spells, I guess a case could be made for it being balanced. Communal mount has a better cost-benefit ration; you can get up to 6 points of ki per casting of that, and it is only a 2nd level spell.

Thematically summoned creatures don't die and their souls are not present, therefore you shouldn't be able to steal thier soul to feed your greedy ki abilities. But that is pure fluff; I don't see any RAW mechanic that backs that up for this particular ability.

[merpius]

Good catch about it having to be an enemy. However, enemy is pretty poorly defined, I believe. I think you can designate anyone you wish as being your enemy; thus a creature your summoned, you could declare it to be an enemy (and yourself to be its enemy, I guess), and thus utilize this.

You may even be able to declare yourself as an enemy, sing a late 90's song, and have the summoned creature automatically try to attack you without you even having to order it to do so.

[blahpers]

If you're going to cheese it up, why not just buy a bag of rats?

[merpius]

True; put a bunch of rats in a bag and there will be no question of whether they are your enemy. They will want you dead with every fiber of their being!

[maouse33]

#1 summoned monsters don't grant XP (well, PFS they don't grant anything). So by that theory, #2 summoned monsters can't be used as sacrifice to gain Ki.

You can house rule it differently, but if you get no experience from summoning fake monsters from nowhere, why would you get Ki?

Pipes of the Sewers is the fastest way to level a character in home games if the GM allows it. They are not summoned, they are called/attracted. They are real rats. They really don't like you. Lure them into a pit and nuke them with aoe spells/oil. Did the math on this. With max summoning rates you can be 11th level in 14 days. 20th level in 333.3 days. You will have no gold, as they don't carry any. But you can level up really quick this way.

ps. we also did the math for breeding your own rats. you can breed 1.8 million rats in a year from a base pair... pretty F-in scary if you think about it. But in game terms, it means that if you keep a pair and breed them as you kill them the GM can't say "this city ran dry"... because you know, after 2 weeks and level 11 they will want to stop your progression... lol.

[Skarm]

maouse33 wrote:

#1 summoned monsters don't grant XP (well, PFS they don't grant anything). So by that theory, #2 summoned monsters can't be used as sacrifice to gain Ki.

You can house rule it differently, but if you get no experience from summoning fake monsters from nowhere, why would you get Ki?

Pipes of the Sewers is the fastest way to level a character in home games if the GM allows it. They are not summoned, they are called/attracted. They are real rats. They really don't like you. Lure them into a pit and nuke them with aoe spells/oil. Did the math on this. With max summoning rates you can be 11th level in 14 days. 20th level in 333.3 days. You will have no gold, as they don't carry any. But you can level up really quick this way.

ps. we also did the math for breeding your own rats. you can breed 1.8 million rats in a year from a base pair... pretty F-in scary if you think about it. But in game terms, it means that if you keep a pair and breed them as you kill them the GM can't say "this city ran dry"... because you know, after 2 weeks and level 11 they will want to stop your progression... lol.

Well...ki is gained from living creatures in this case.

However, I was wondering:

How many rats there are in a swarm?
If I kill the whole swarm, I get 1 ki point per rat?
Skarm

[VoodistMonk]

This is so freaking munchkin.

Just like the Whirlwind/Improved Cleaving Finish/Bag of Rats crap.

My opinion doesn't matter in a rules discussion, but I would put the squash on this so hard.

Pretty sure swarms would come and go as an individual entity... thus giving you one Ki point per swarm, not per rat in the swarm.

Creatures summoned by summoning spells grant no XP, and thus no Ki, to my understanding of how this all works. So the summon mount is a no go for replenishing your Ki.

Or... boost your wisdom, take the Extra Ki feat, get a ring of Ki mastery. Lots and lots of people get by just fine without needing nonsense loophole tricks to make up for poor resource management.

If I had to guess, this is probably an effort to spam Qinggong Scortching Ray/Dragons Breath/Ki Shouts.

[merpius]

Worth noting: I did say in the first post I made that any GM would nix this. But, rules forum, discussing RAW is the focus. I still stand by that, though; any GM is going to put a big nope on this whole thing. Most likely they'll use the proviso from the Twilight Sage Arcanist archetype that things need to be the higher of 2HD or your character level in HD (or whatever it is), or do somethign similar. I simply cannot see anyone being willing to let you harvest Ki from weak creatures, or, for that matter, summoned creatures.

Now, back to the discussion;
Yep, swarms are treated as a single creature, so you need to be fighting individual rats, not rat swarms.
Hmm, I guess they took out the too-low CR doesn't generate XP proviso that was in D&D 3.5 in the transition to Pathfinder. That's too bad; it actually served a very good purpose; preventing the pouring molten lead (or gold in 2nd edition, since you got extra XP for sacrificing gold) into anthills approach to leveling.

As for RAW; the Hungry Ghost Ki thing is the onyl way (that I know of) from extracting Ki from a creature, and it makes no special exception regarding if the creature is summoned. Summoned creatures grant no XP because the XPO they woudl grant is factored into the XP you get from defeating their summoner; it isn't even fluffed as being because you're not killing them or anything like that; you can get XP without killing something. So, by pure RAW, you almost certainly CAN get ki from summoned creatures.

And, you're right that this is very likely an effort to find an exploit that they can get an endless supply of Ki. But, as indicated; in a real game the GM will simply nix it. This forum is a rules forum, not a "hand wave the loophole" forum; the GM can do that and usually doesn't need a forum to accomplish it.

[VoodistMonk]

Hungry Ghost doesn't have the same stipulation as Grit and Panache that the creature slain must be at least half the HD to get anything from. Interesting.

After a certain level, the creature slain doesn't even have to be living.

Yeah, by RAW, this is a viable tactic, I suppose.

Still so much munchkin madness it's disgusting.