Summoning Spells for V4

[Jarno Mikkola]

K, it's legit. Thac0, saves are vanilla values, the Near Infinity hit points don't have the CON bonus, so 162 is 198 actual HPs, and 2 attacks -cause the third comes from the weapon being hasted.

Hmm: @Demi, shouldn't the Planetars have Weapon Proficiencies instead of "# attacks" = 2 ?

The max HPs the above that the SCS would/should give be around: 106 + the bonuses. It totals to be 142 hit points. Although in a legit game, there's no 18/18 Fighter/Clerics.

[Demivrgvs]

Monster Summoning II

I've been using AS I-III and MS I-III as well (my IWDEE all-bards party just hit level 7) and they are great. One possible issue: I conjured some Green Slimes to use against Bombardier Beetles... the beetles have a small AoE acid explosion attack and it kills the Slimes... given that the Slines are acidic and do acid damage themselves (I think), shouldn't they have some acid damage resistance? Like 40-50%?

PnP Green Slimes don't have it, but it makes much more sense than the current immunity to electrical dmg imo. Considering there are so many different types of oozes within PnP sources, I'm all for reducing or removing electrical res and giving them acid res instead.

On a side note, shouldn't these slimes be immune to disease effects (e.g. Stinking Cloud)?

Fiends and Celestials

I'm all for nerfing planetars a bit, I think they are super cheesy. (I also think they are inappropriate for a wizard summon, but we've already discussed that elsewhere.)

And Pit Fiends should indeed be more powerful, roughly as powerful as a planetar. Actually, since you've eliminated a demonic summoning spell and some of us don't like to see it go, here's a proposed solution: take the old 7th-level fiend summons and move it to 8th level, adjusting the power of the summon as needed. Then move the old 8th level fiend summons to 9th level, again adjusting as needed. Finally, move Gate to HLA land, and give pit fiends planetar-level power.

Pit Fiends already have planetar-lvl power within SR. Switching around creatures for these fiend-related spells is a bit problematic because of aTweak fiends and to a lesser extent SCS as well (the Death Knight was an exception because SCS specifically took it into account). I don't know if I can do much about it other than nerfing them a little bit.

 

I agree Devas/Planetars seem more "divine" than arcane but I think my hands are tied on this matter. Otoh, I'm tempted to very slighty alter Fallen Devas/Planetars a little bit. Lore wise something like Cambions and Erinyes make much more sense imo and in terms of implementation they already are extremely similar to what we have within SR.

Devas and Planetars are very powerful. We are playing with a mod that converts them to once-per-day abilities rather than memorizable spells, however, and this does reduce the craziness to a somewhat reasonable degree. They still perform better than any of the other summons we have used, except perhaps the elemental princes. They lay waste to all manner of foes with very little that can compete. We are currently in the final areas of SoA, so maybe they will be more evenly matched with the enemies in ToB? We are not using fiends, so I cannot offer a comparison of power with the Devas and Planetars.

Part of the problem is that Devas/Planetars and HLAs in general weren't balanced for SoA, but ToB. KR will partially fix this (e.g. clerics get both deva and planetar, but the latter will be available only at 25th lvl, 1/day max), but I'll do my best within SR to rebalance the cre files a little bit (e.g. I already said like 100 times I agree V3's 3E-like hit points are overboard - I can make mistakes you know ).

Mordenkainen's Sword

Mordenkainen's Sword is still functionally immune to physical attacks. My friend and I do not have it, but my dual wielding Wizard Slayer generally only gets the added elemental damage from his weapon applied to enemy swords. It is usually better to kite them around until they are unsummoned as opposed to trying to fence with them. Their offensive output is decent but not incredible, so they can safely be ignored by most high-level fighter types in my experience. Priests and rogues have a tougher time and usually must flee or use Sanctuary or the like.

Wait a sec: "...elemental damage from weapon applied to enemy swords"? Mordy is immune to that. o.O

 

Should I lower the sword's physical res from 95% to 90%? Would it matter? I'm just trying to make it less exploitable against AI groups with no hard counter.

 

Conjure Elementals vs Animal Summoning

Elemental summoning spells are solid in general. In Watcher's Keep (SCS and BP-Ascension installed, no other tactics mods) we are able to tank just about all of the physical attackers with 1-3 elemental summons. IMO, they eclipse the animal summoning spells of similar level. I suppose you could use Polar Bears with Ice Storm, but skeletons seem better for this (see below). The earth elemental is my favorite as my friend and I use it along with MS VI (Wyverns) to surround enemies and then Earthquake them into oblivion as these summons are immune to Earthquake.

The global rebalance of HPs values should hit elementals more than animals, and in theory we also planned to make the 6th lvl variant not summon Greater Elementals (the 16 HD variant).

 

Have you tried buffing animals with the new Magic Fang and Animal Growth? I do need feedback on them, especially the latter.

 

Should mid-low lvl AS spells summon 1 more animal at higher lvls? I noticed that MSII-IV summons up to 4 creatures, whereas ASII-IV cap at 3.

 

Animate Dead

By far the most useful summoning spell in our hands has been Animate Dead (and later Animate Skeleton Warrior). Skeletons are arguably too useful for the following reasons:
-- 8 hour duration
-- Immune to mind flayer brain eating
-- Immune to beholder rays
-- Immune to level drain
-- Animate Dead scales favorably in power with caster level.
-- Immune to cold (wall enemies off and ice storm them to death -- early game version of Earthquake strategy mentioned above).

...and army of skeletons guided by an invisible caster can storm groups of vampires, mind flayers, and beholders and trivialize the encounters when these are usually some of the most difficult battles in the game. Without our skeletons, mind flayers and beholders at least would be much scarier fights indeed. Very occasionally there is an enemy that can turn or control the skeletons, but this happens quite infrequently.

I don't understand this: "Immune to beholder rays". They are not supposed to be immune to all rays and I haven't specifically coded them to be (aka I didn't added any protection effect, they just happen to be immune). I'll look into it, because I don't want summons to be able to trivialize an entire area, not to mention a supposedly hard one like beholder's lair.

 

When it comes to vampires and mind flayers I fear my hands are tied instead. They should probably have more tools at their disposal if they cannot even handle some skeletons. Leaving aside their immunities/resistances, SR's skeletons (both lesser and greater ones) are just mediocre melee opponents. Illithids should have thralls, and vampires should be tough opponents even without their lvl drain imo.

 

I already nerfed skellies A LOT by moving the uber powerful Skeletal Warrior from 3rd/5th lvl to 6th (spamming it should be much less viable), I'm not sure what else I can do.

 

Summoning Cap

We are playing with no summoning cap.

This changes things a bit, but it should not be a huge problem unless you seriously exploit it. Once again, the "rest everywhere" removal would keep this too in check imo.

Obscuring Mist

So, is the point of Obscuring Mist that it impairs all ranged combat and makes melee better? I'm trying to figure out a reason to cast it... is it basically designed for use against skeleton archers and bandits?

In theory the role of OM should be to impair ranged combat (reduced LoS lowers spellcasting range too). Archers are the most affected, but the cloud needs to be combo-ed with other spells to really be effective. For example druid's bats or mage's oozes are not affected by it, True Seeing can make the caster immune to it, etc.

[Jarno Mikkola]

On a side note, shouldn't these slimes be immune to disease effects (e.g. Stinking Cloud)?

This is a bit depending on the scale, I would definitely see most slimes to be immune to stinking cloud not being air breather, and even get regeneration from the Grease spells effects , and some of them could have wide variety of resistances, as long as there's no best of all of them, so none of them should have more than ~300-400% resistance amount, when the creatures resistances are all calculated together(there being 7 damage sources, as magic is the sum of all the other elemental forms).

But I also would say that not all slimes are immune to diseases, poisons etc. Aka it should depend on the species.

 

I already nerfed skellies A LOT by moving the uber powerful Skeletal Warrior from 3rd/5th lvl to 6th (spamming it should be much less viable), I'm not sure what else I can do.

I see that you might need to do some balancing with the how many and at what levels they are summoned. The spell and all summons spells should get +1-2 HD per caster level, not a whole 9HD creature, so the Animate Dead at caster level 18 should give two skeleton warriors(9HD), nothing else.

The lower level casters can get one 9HD, one 5HD and (x-14)/2 amount of the 2HD ones. If they are at level 14...

The beholders do magic damage, and magic attacks, so even 50% immunity to either cuts the damage output a lots, 90% with 108 hit point... it takes roughly about 1080 damage points to kill one warrior. The skeletons having Fighters Hit Dice as the base doesn't shine them in good either. A monsters at level 5 has 40(=5*8) hit points at most, not 60(Greater Skeleton).

Sorry, that's part of the old ... anyways. And no, I am using the old creature reference, not the current beta. So add that amount of salt.

 

 

Fiends and Celestials

The wolves and the sheep and lamas. Aka call them what you like, it is best to consider the reference and then set the stats as they come. Be they fighters, clerics, fighter/mage, the like.

 

I would personally see the wolves (aka demons) to be pure evil fighters with a poison or what ever small ability mix and evil weapons.

Devils more of casters, perhaps even mixture of cleric/mage.. with bad thac0 even.

Sheep(aka deva) as fighter/clerics.

Lamas (aka planetar) as fighter/mage.

And the two lasts fallen could be the same, but with different spell selections.

[Demivrgvs]

I want to finish working on the global rebalance of all summons today but I'd like to hear your opinions and I may also need your help.

Rebalanced hit points
I follow the following formula now:
- up to 10 HD most monsters get 8 hp per lvl plus CON (*)
- from then on they get +x per lvl depending on "class type" (generally this means halved hps compared to V3 where they got full dice as per 3rd edition)
- I still use max hp per dice

 

(*) exceptions do exist (e.g. bats D4, wolves D6, undead D12 but no CON bonus, etc.)

Example:

Elementals
- Lesser Air Elemental hp reduced from 84 to 80
- Lesser Earth Elemental hp reduced from 104 to 96
- Lesser Fire Elemental hp reduced from 84 to 80
- Air Elemental hp reduced from 126 to 116
- Earth Elemental hp reduced from 146 to 126
- Fire Elemental hp reduced from 126 to 116
- Greater Air Elemental hp reduced from 168 to 138
- Greater Earth Elemental hp reduced from 188 to 152
- Greater Fire Elemental hp reduced from 168 to 138
- Shambler hp reduced from 146 to 124

 

 

Summons with high HDs are the most affected by this, for example the 18 HD planetar went from 198 hp to 148 (already including the +36 from having 18 CON - btw, do multi fighter/cleric get CON bonus for their 10th lvl or not?).

 

What do you think?

 

Rebalanced offensive power

This is mostly only limited to high end summons such as fiends and celestials (e.g. Planetar's vorpal swords still had -6 save penalty), but I'm curious to know if anyone can point me any other summon which seems to provide too much offensive power. For example within MS spells I think Ogres are bit too good...

 

Or vice-versa, please point me out if a summoning spell seems to be really underwhelming.

 

Fiends and Celestials

I'm not nerfing them to the ground on purpose. Without considering other stuff they will still be slighty too good but I want to do several things to rebalance them. For example, as I already mentioned, within KR Devas will "replace" Planetars as the standard HLA, and Planetars will only be available at 25th lvl. As per SCS, HLAs will be turned into "innates" and you willnot be able to spam them via Project Image or Simulacrum.

 

When it comes to fiends, a small "tweak" that I'd like to propose is to make them very hard to get. What if the scroll of Summon Death Knight could only be found defeating the Death Knights themselves in the underdark? Summon Fiend could be turned into a reward or loot for the last few lvls of WK, and Gate could even be limited to ToB. Stupid idea?

 

Random stuff

- we planned to move Greater Elementals to higher lvl, do you think they are too powerful for 6th lvl?

- do you like the idea of having Dryads (I need them to balance CWB at low lvls) use short bows? I don't know yet if the sirine animation can use them, but if it doesn't look odd I could use a recolored female elf, no?

- how do you think I can handle the whole "Skeleton Warrior & Mordy vs Mind Flayers & Beholders" problem? I can imagine a few things without altering the areas such as making Beholder's Telekinesis bypass mr and dealcrushing dmg but overall it looks like something which cannot be done within SR.

[Jarno Mikkola]

It will be likely harder to implement the fiends you think in a large modification... but you sure can try to set them to give their own summon scrolls as a reward from killing them.
You do know that the Tales of the Sword Coast (add on chapter of BG1) has plenty of demons.

The BG1EE sirene characters, that use the animation - 8192, use short bows:

 

Couldn't quote...

[Demivrgvs]

You do know that the Tales of the Sword Coast (add on chapter of BG1) has plenty of demons.

Unless you are suggesting to add even more summon fiend spells, the lowest lvl one is a 7th lvl spell, not really suited to BG1.

 

The BG1EE sirene characters, that use the animation - 8192, use short bows:

Incredible, for once I'm lucky.

[kreso]

- how do you think I can handle the whole "Skeleton Warrior & Mordy vs Mind Flayers & Beholders" problem? I can imagine a few things without altering the areas such as making Beholder's Telekinesis bypass mr and dealcrushing dmg but overall it looks like something which cannot be done within SR.

Flayers kill Skeletons (at least on SCS installs) with some crushing damage ranged attacks; no attack roll required. Haven't really tried Mordy vs them, but they probably ignore them and simply teleport around.

As per Beholders, we can do that I think. I'm not sure how SCS handles beholder rays - if it's by patching stuff onto them; it's an easy tweak to do. The main question is if this should be done in the first place. And I don't think Telekinesis is used vs skeletons anyway...

[Jarno Mikkola]

And I don't think Telekinesis is used vs skeletons anyway...

The Beholders don't actually have Telekinetic ability, the only reason they have this feature is that there's an god item they can't go around the user of(well they "can fly", but that's a subject of it's own), so the ability is there to use against the Shield of Balduran, to get it off.. Were the item actually the kind it's reputed, well it would also reflect the telekinetic pull too, and thus rip the beholder to pieces without it being unequipped.. .. just so you know.

[Demivrgvs]

And I don't think Telekinesis is used vs skeletons anyway...

The Beholders don't actually have Telekinetic ability, the only reason they have this feature is that there's an god item they can't go around the user of(well they "can fly", but that's a subject of it's own), so the ability is there to use against the Shield of Balduran, to get it off.. Were the item actually the kind it's reputed, well it would also reflect the telekinetic pull too, and thus rip the beholder to pieces without it being unequipped.. .. just so you know.

Mind you, PnP Beholders have Telekinetic Ray since AD&D, in every single edition. Whatd DavidW did with it is clever, but he didn't "invented" it.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Mind you, PnP Beholders have Telekinetic Ray since AD&D, in every single edition. Whatd DavidW did with it is clever, but he didn't "invented" it.

Yeah, let's remember that in those games, the chance is ~10%, of which the target needs to be outside the primary eyes antimagic cone effect that disables all magic, ouh yeah and the beholders primary attack is actually a bite (attack). And it does 2d4 piercing damage, 1/per round.

The PnP is so nice. I would like to see you adding the last... even in a non-magical area. And it's usually 2 ray attacks that the smaller eye stalks get, so...

 

Yeah, bite attacks, in PnP games, that's what kills the players, not the wound rays, cause the antimagic ray itself makes the character immune to all magic, including the beholders other ray attacks.

[Demivrgvs]

Mind you, PnP Beholders have Telekinetic Ray since AD&D, in every single edition. Whatd DavidW did with it is clever, but he didn't "invented" it.

Yeah, let's remember that in those games, the chance is ~10%, of which the target needs to be outside the primary eyes antimagic cone effect that disables all magic, ouh yeah and the beholders primary attack is actually a bite (attack).

The PnP is so nice. I would like to see you adding the last... even in a non-magical area. And it's usually 2 ray attacks that the smaller eye stalks get, so...

 

Yeah, bite attack, cause the antimagic ray itself makes the character immune to all magic, including the beholders other ray attacks.

Sometimes I wonder why I waste my time answering to you when you enter "imp-mode", anyway:

- my post was just correcting your wrong statement about beholder's lack of Telekinesis, but you took it personal and brought up your crusade against PnP

- it's not 10% because beholders can fire from 3 to 10 rays per round

- anti-magic eye within BG is OP as fuck yes, but even within PnP the beholder can suppress it whenever he wants to shoot his rays

- bite attack isn't the "primary attack" just a last resort (btw, it could still help our case LOL)

 

Now please, I wanted to get some help shaping summons here, can we get back on that?

[Demivrgvs]

Just so you know I'm not dead and the next build is near.

For the few ones who want in-depth details of the upcoming global rebalance of summons, here's what I did for now:

Animal Summoning
- ASII summons up to 4 war dogs instead of 3
- ASIII summons up to 4 wolves instead of 3
- Cave Bears hp reduced from 90 to 78
- Polar Bears hp reduced from 120 to 104

Elementals
- Lesser Air Elemental hp reduced from 84 to 80
- Lesser Earth Elemental hp reduced from 104 to 96
- Lesser Fire Elemental hp reduced from 84 to 80
- Air Elemental hp reduced from 126 to 116
- Earth Elemental hp reduced from 146 to 126
- Fire Elemental hp reduced from 126 to 116
- Greater Air Elemental hp reduced from 168 to 138
- Greater Earth Elemental hp reduced from 188 to 152
- Greater Fire Elemental hp reduced from 168 to 138
- Shambler hp reduced from 146 to 124

Elemental Princes
- physical resistances of all princes lowered by 20%
- Chan hp reduced from 180 to 160
- Sunnis hp reduced from 230 to 190
- Zaaman Rul hp reduced from 200 to 170

Monster Summoning
- MSIII summons up to 3 archers + 1 shaman at lvl 9 instead of 4 + 1 at lvl 12
- Green Slime pseudopod's range increased from 2 to 5, added acid res 50%
- Ogre Berserker hp reduced from 62 to 60
- Ogre Mage hp reduced from 76 (should have been 56) to 54, thac0 and CON reduced by 1

Aerial Servant
- HD lowered from 16 to 13
- hp reduced from 148 to 122
- thac0 lowered from 2 to 5
- saves lowered by 1

Summon Nishruu
- Feeblemind effect duration changed from "permanent" to 3 rounds
- attack enchantment lvl changed from +0 to +3

Death Knight
- HD lowered from 14 to 13
- hp reduced from 168 to 112
- thac0 reduced from -1 to 1
- dmg per hit reduced by 1
- saves changed from 4/4/4/8/4 to 5/7/5/9/7
- electrical resistance from 100% to 0% (only 3E version had it)
- physical resistance from 0% to 20%
- removed redundant Demon Fear (it already has an Aura of Fear with a less annoying smaller AoE)
- various AI script improvements

Glabrezu
- HD lowered from 17 to 15
- STR lowered from 23 to 20
- hp reduced from 190 to 160
- thac0 lowered from -3 to 1
- saves changed from 5/5/5/9/5 to 6/8/6/10/8
- various AI script improvements

Pit Fiend
- HD lowered from 24 to 20
- DEX lowered from 18 to 16, CON increased from 18 to 19
- hp reduced from 230 to 170
- AC lowered from -10 to -8 (because of DEX change)
- thac0 lowered from -10 to -7
- saves changed from 3/3/3/8/3 to 4/6/4/8/6
- acid resistance from 50% to 0%
- various AI script improvements

Deva/Fallen Deva
- hp reduced from 162 to 136
- thac0 reduced from 1 to 4

Planetar/Fallen Planetar
- hp reduced from 198 to 152
- thac0 reduced from -3 to 1
- vorpal hit chance from 5% to 15%, save penalty reduced from -6 to -2

 

 

Also, a few new entries will be part of Beta13.

 

Call Woodland Being
7th : 1 hamadryad (4 HD -> almost identical to aTweak one but I've given it a short bow )
9th : 2 hamadryads
11th+ : 2 hamadryads, 1 nymph

Phantasmal Force & Shades
Yay, finally some illusion-based summons.

[Jarno Mikkola]

- anti-magic eye within BG is OP ... but even within PnP the beholder can suppress it whenever he wants to shoot his rays

Still, that doesn't mean that they can suppress the effect the second they want, it will take it's effects time ... and thus make the other eye rays useless until the effect wears off, the end of the turn/whatever. If it's any consolation, the Anti-M eyes effect also needs to cancel all healing effects too. And why the PnP -reference agai ? This is a computer game man.

 

Good thing the Ogre Mage has less hitpoints than his brothers, but set it to 49, see it's dividable with 7(*7) which is the fighter/mage default hit points. And because the Ogre Berserker can be considered a Barbarian, it's level is that of 5(*12).

 

Now, still tooo many hitpoints... on some of those. Yes, the original games elementals princes were a huge mess. But they were rare... one could actually up the chance per level on the summon Greater Elemental spell, if it's balanced correctly. So on level 18 it's 5% and 28 it could be 55%...

In my opinion all the elementals should have the same build base, based on it's classification/class(lesser, normal, greater, prince).

So the Air Elementals would have as many HPs as the Earth and Fire, just different attacks, resistances and abilities, like. Haste, Fireshield Red and Mini Earth Quake. The Earth Elemental doesn't need more hitpoints, if it has physical damage resistance instead of fire and cold/lightning resistances, like the associated elementals need to have.

 

And you might want to up the level of whole Summon Monsters kind of spells by 1, so you get Summon Monsters 1 only at mage level 3, 2 at level 5 and so forth up to SM8. The reason is that there isn't too many monsters a caster should be able to cast at level 1, while the druid can cast rats with 1 hit point, gibberlings are a lot tougher.

 

EDIT: I was thinking that if might be better to remove the Elemental princes from the summon greater elemental spells and one could add a HLA spell to do just this effect, while the 9th level spell would work without it.

[Salk]

Perhaps the average HP count could have been reduced further like Jarno said but l think Demi's revision goes the right way and all we need now is a field test.

 

Demi... have you fixed the Inquisitor's True Sight headers for levels 1 to 5? I know you have revised it within KR but this is a fix to a spell and belongs to SR.