Monster Summoning Questions

LookToWindward

Hi,

I'm a bit confused about Monster Summoning, I have a Wand of Monster Summoning which says:

"This wand will summon 12 HD of Monsters"

I also have a spell "Monster Summoning II" - Level 4 - which says:

".......... this spell summons 4-HD monsters. There is a 60% chance of receiving one monster and 40% chance of receiving two monsters"

So, my questions:

1. What does it mean when is says "12 HD of Monsters", I took it to mean between 1 and 12 monsters summoned, but this is obviously not right?

2. I actually have 2 Wands of Monsters summoning and they both seem to creature different monsters and a different number of monsters? Not sure if this is just randomness, but it seems to be dependant of who uses the wand? (I have Xan and Neera as well as my main character which is a Level 8 Dragon Disciple.

3. The Spell "Monster Summoning II" creates one or two monsters as it says, so where does the 4-HD come into it?

4. What is the total number of monsters that can be summoned by the entire party?

Is there a place that explains all this?

Thanks a lot
Dave

Mivsan

The X-HD refer to the monsters' Hit Dice. It's basically used to tell you how good/tough the monsters will be and should be generally used as a guideline to how powerful monsters you're going to get. It's a part of the D&D system, but some things work a bit different in Baldur's Gate (check spoiler section if interested).

For a bit more in-depth: Monsters roll a d8 hit die, so a 4-HD means 4d8 hit points. It's used in some spell descriptions to determine if/how it's going to work.

1. The "12 HD of monsters" means you're going to get monsters that will in total have 12 HD. For instance, you can get 3 Hobgoblin Elites, each a 4-HD creature.

2. It doesn't matter who uses the wand, provided they meet the requirements to use it in the first place, of course (9 Intelligence, sometimes class restrictions). The game randomly chooses from a couple of sets of monsters.

3. It means you're going to get 1 or 2 monsters from the 4-HD group.

4. The limit in the Enhanced Editions of BG is 5. In the original Baldur's Gate there was no limit, BG2 introduced the 5 summon limit, which is used in EE.

Now, all of that being said, I'm not sure about the consistency of some stuff in BG. In BG2EE, judging by the spell Monster Summoning II (that summons 4-HD creatures), Hobgoblin Elite, Gnoll Elite and Dire Wolf are treated as 4-HD creatures. But from Wand of Monster Summoning, you can get either 5 Gnoll Elites, 4 Dire Wolves or 3 Hobgoblin Elites.

I think it all has something to do with the implementation of D&D rules into the game, as according to Near Infinity monsters have static hit points (Hobgoblin Elite 30, Dire Wolf 33, Gnoll Elite 65) and the 4-HD would be more similar to their level (which is also how the X-HD can be treated in general, http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Hit_Dice), but after examining Hobgoblin Elite and Dire Wolf (both have lvl 4), Gnoll Elite is lvl 10 .

By the way, if you'd like some more information about monsters, check this:
http://www.dotd.com/mm/MM00000.htm

Most of the monsters implemented in BG are pretty consistant with the manual above. For example, Dire Wolf's 4+4 HD (meaning 8-36 hitpoints) is well represented by its 33 (good rolls, wolf!) hit points in the game and it also has thac0 of 15.