the summoning limit: how exactly does it work?

[subtledoctor]

My recollection is that, without applying a ToBEx tweak, you can only summon 5 monsters at a time. So, how does the Wish effect ("summon a horde to overrun my enemies") square with that? Is the summoned horde blue-circle? Does the summoning limit not apply to blue-circle creatures?

 

I'm making a version of the Meistersinger kit, and I'd like to give it a Pied Piper ability, to summon a bunch of rats or rabbits or something. Like, 3+1/level. My thought was, if I can make 20 rats appear via an innate ability, and then give the kit's bard song a Charm Animal ability, it will equate to summoning a swarm, without disturbing the summoning limit for the rest of the game (that's a player choice I want to respect).

 

(I'd actually like to have the song do the summoning, but that would be harder. Theoretically, if the song summons 1 rat each round with a blue circle, and then charms the rat, it could work. To avoid crazy .CRE-spamming and crashes, you could give each summon a duration of 1 round/level... that way the max # in existence would be equal to the bard's level. And, the second he stops singing they would go back to blue-circle. But this is definitely more ambitious and theoretical than an innate.)

[Mike1072]

The summoning limit is enforced for creatures that have a gender of SUMMONED. If you don't want your creatures to be affected by the summoning limit, you can give them a different gender.

[subtledoctor]

Good to know - thanks!

[Jarno Mikkola]

If you don't want your creatures to be affected by the summoning limit, you can give them a different gender.

Also this gender .ids -thing is effecting spells like Death Spell and the cloud spell that unsummons all the summoned creatures, the generally accepted solution is to allow the Death Spell and the other to also target the new gender... I would remember that the classic example of this is in the Ding0's Tweak Pack. So I would use the same code...

[subtledoctor]

Well, it's supposed to represent actual creatures - rats & squirrels & rabbits - coming from nearby to help. Not an actual magical conjuration. So it's really okay if they're not banished. This is not a powerful ability, it's purely for rp flavor.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Well, it's supposed to represent actual creatures - rats & squirrels & rabbits - coming from nearby to help. Not an actual magical conjuration. So it's really okay if they're not banished. This is not a powerful ability, it's purely for rp flavor.

Hmm, but in that case, wouldn't you charm every one of the creatures, and not actually summon them, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin*... and besides, if the creatures are not magical conjuration then have to die to the Death Spell and the other... there's nothing to it, you have to make it happen. It has nothing to do with the power of the original spell, but the fact that it can be used to unsummon a mass of them.

 

*the point being that if you summon a bunch of them like any normal spell, you couldn't do it again(for say 8 hours) in the same area.

Hmm... but if you like the song thing, it could work too. Hmm, the charming could happen at the start of the round without delay, while the summoning of the rat would only happen say with a 3 second delayed time. This would make it so that the song would need to be sang for a round(6 seconds) before it actually does much. Unless there's already a suitable target to charm.