Hi everyone,
The discussion about hazards made me think of that: How viable would be summoning as an exploration activity?
Summonings last for 10 rounds, with one being the summoning one. As you walk at half speed during exploration, you can travel on 270 feet during the course of the summon's life. So, inside a dungeon, it's quite a bunch of rooms.
Summons detect traps (the hard way), ambushes (many summons have scent and there are very few ways to protect against it) and if a fight breaks up, they are already there to take a hit or two.
Obviously, you would just use low level spells, as you would need to cast a few of them during a dungeon exploration. But, unless you face a really big dungeon, you should be able to maintain this exploration activity through it with a low resource expenditure (half a dozen of your lower level spells).
What are your thoughts about it?
Unseen Servant have a 10 minute duration and is a lvl 1 spell, use them to trigger traps.
Phantom Steed have 8 hours of duration, could be used as well.
Bind Undead lasts 24 hours. 2 birds.
Unseen Servant have a 10 minute duration and is a lvl 1 spell, use them to trigger traps.
Phantom Steed have 8 hours of duration, could be used as well.
Nice ones, but I don't know what is their weight. Unseen servant especially seems really weak, with it's -4 in Strength, so I'm not sure it'll trigger all pressure plates and similar traps.
Phantom Steed looks nice. The only drawback is the 10 minutes of casting time. I think it's a winner!Bind Undead lasts 24 hours. 2 birds.
This one will cause issues inside most parties, unfortunately. I've once been in such situation, but the party asked me to release the undeads as soon as the fight was over as they didn't want undeads to wander freely, even under my control.