Instead of "Improve summoning", why not D&D - pnp summoning or at least IWD:EE summon?
SorcererV1ct0r
Member Posts: 2,176
In trello there are a card ~improve summoning~
https://trello.com/c/HP3BRN2O
But IMHO this isn't enough to make a conjurer or a minion necromancer competitive. A Wizard that specializes on Conjuration have Transmutation as opposite school. That means that a "Conjurer" will unable to use Knock, Haste, Greater stoneskin, Tenser's transformation and Time Stop. They are argue the best spells to deal with someone with very high SR and since the conjurer can only have one summon, he can`t compete with other specialized wizards.
The suggestion of feats improving the "summon cap" is good, but still not good enough to make possible to make a necromancer closer to pnp. In DnD, a lv 20 wizard can control hundreds of undeads. I understand that by performance limitations, if you have 30 necromancers in a server, everyone controlling a small undead army, the game performance can be terrible, but why not allow PC`s to have the same limit as IWD:EE? In IWD:EE you can create an "squad" goblin like monsters with a tier 3 spell. And they are pretty useful soloing at hardest difficulty
source > http://www.gamebanshee.com/icewinddale/spells/magelevelthree.php
EDIT : Summoning should be like the 3.0 SRD
source http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/3e_SRD:Summon_Monster_IX
https://trello.com/c/HP3BRN2O
But IMHO this isn't enough to make a conjurer or a minion necromancer competitive. A Wizard that specializes on Conjuration have Transmutation as opposite school. That means that a "Conjurer" will unable to use Knock, Haste, Greater stoneskin, Tenser's transformation and Time Stop. They are argue the best spells to deal with someone with very high SR and since the conjurer can only have one summon, he can`t compete with other specialized wizards.
The suggestion of feats improving the "summon cap" is good, but still not good enough to make possible to make a necromancer closer to pnp. In DnD, a lv 20 wizard can control hundreds of undeads. I understand that by performance limitations, if you have 30 necromancers in a server, everyone controlling a small undead army, the game performance can be terrible, but why not allow PC`s to have the same limit as IWD:EE? In IWD:EE you can create an "squad" goblin like monsters with a tier 3 spell. And they are pretty useful soloing at hardest difficulty
source > http://www.gamebanshee.com/icewinddale/spells/magelevelthree.php
EDIT : Summoning should be like the 3.0 SRD
source http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/3e_SRD:Summon_Monster_IX
Post edited by SorcererV1ct0r on
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It is very fun to play a Dread Necromancer with an army of skeletons murdering everything in the OC. Right up until you realise you're hardly earning any experience.
It just always felt a bit naff when I wanted to play a badass necromaner or conjurer and then all I could summon was 1 thing (which especially at higher levels is pretty useless). Personally I always found that a little underwhelming.
And I know there's mods that remove the summoning limit, but it tedious to summon skeleton after skeleton, and it just didn't have the same immersive feel I was after. I always preferred the idea of summoning the cannon fodder and then stand behind melting someones face with a fireball
But even modifying the outcome of spells by alignment, which is already part of the game, does allow some variation. Then this could be taken further by having a greater variety of spells that use it but either summon one or multiple creatures. So for example as well as having planar binding, (which would act similarly to before, summoning one planar creature) there would be another spell of the same level, or close to it, which would bind multiple less powerful creatures instead, and then the same for spells which summon undead etc as well. This gives the player more choice and versatility while utilising a game mechanic which is already in place.
Then as SorcererV1ct0r said the power/amount of creatures summoned would be limited by the HD of your character, which is also a current game mechanic (eg. if you cast animate dead and either summon a zombie or skeleton champion)
Then what would be awesome is if further customisation could be achieved by adding new prestige classes (or improving pre-existing ones) which primarily focus on certain types of conjuration or necromancy. Eg. I always thought pale master was a bit naff but if you could animate multiple undead, and different kinds of them too, I think it would be much more enjoyable to play. Then a similar class could be created for planar summoning, which would be frickin awesome. I think it could be achievable and really add a new dimension to gameplay.
No multiply that exponentially if you and 3 of your fiends are playing palemasters/necromancers.
Also, a single fireball or any AoE spell can be deadly to an low level ~army~
I admit I don't have the technical know-how about this kind of thing, so I don't entirely know the limits of whats possible to do but I think it's a cool idea that with some fine tuning could be really fun, if its possible to implement.
But as I said in my first post, this is just my opinion, and it might not even be possible, and other people might not want it and that's totally cool but I think it would be a really awesome experiential addition to the updated version of the a well loved game. I personally have played and played it and it would be nice to play it again with some cool new changes, and this was just one of the things
Whether this will be a problem now when they are updating the engine, I do not know. But there will still be resource limits as to what can go into a the game. Going from 16bit to 32bit increases the amount of the available memory, as would going from 32bit to 64bit. There still would be the amount of memory that the operating system would take up as well as the basic game, (for single player, co-op, mult-player and having a dm client).
There has to be give and take. If you were to have this unlimited summoning what would you be willing to give up for it? I am not against having more creatures being summoned, but what would we have to lose? My choice would most likely not be your choice.
This is just something to keep in mind when wanting more.
NWN is not limited to 1 to 6 players. You can have upwards to (we will say) 40 players.
40 times 6 is 240 extra npcs slots that have to be accounted for.
It may not happen that a pw will be full of summoning classes. But the programmers have to program it that way, otherwise someone may be slighted.
Then there is the UI. Where are they going to display all of these summoned npcs. Oh and not to forget familiars and/or pets. Then we have the monsters who can summon also. They will get their six summons, pets and/or familiars.
As I said before, I am not against more summoned creatures. I am just pointing out, the coding, memory resources that it will take up that can be allocated for other things.
I suggest that if a character specializes in summoning they get 2 summoned creatures otherwise the only get one.
PS : Check the PRC servers. They don't have any problem with Dread Necromancers.
Two summoned creatures are far bellow what a conjurer/necromancer can do in PNP, in nwn1, in nwn2 and be forced to "specialize" will simple make the class non viable.
That said it's already possible to change the limitations on the spell alongside the NPC/s that's summoned (one could even go so far to setup a conversation menu easy enough that a player can choose from a list what will be summoned if they so desired) and if one truly wishes to change it the number of NPC's brought forth from one casting as well.
From a server point of view, every additional NPC in a party = more lag related overhead (npc path finding, the AI itself all the additional combat info being streamed to the parties combat log and whatever else) and a headache with the way it changes the balance of things they may have already planned around. From a single player module view, either the module creator can change the way such works in their module or the one downloading such could do such, I'm not really for this change and I'm a fan of mages in particular.
I'd much rather see them add more spells for each of the different schools of magic to be honest, both offensive and defensive in nature to move away from summon one creature and then have the exact same loadout of defensive and offensive spells as everyone else uses.
No, as i've said, if you are a conjurer, transmutation is your opposite school. That means that a "Conjurer" will unable to use Knock, Haste, Greater stoneskin, Tenser's transformation and Time Stop. They are argue the best spells to deal with someone with very high SR and since the conjurer can only have one summon, he can't relay on his summons to kill enemies.
And again, using your logic, Time Stop should be removed from the game, instead of limited in some MP servers because time stop is like a "9 seconds artificial lag" and any sorc can cast 6 times per rest.
About balance "but BioWare has declared that the game is not, has never been, and never will be balanced for PvP. Thus, multiplayer servers that encourage PvP typically employ customizations to provide PvP balance." http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/PvP
And again, other games who doesn't have limited summons don't have performance problems and PRC servers don't have performance problems. If summons are that bad, why not simple remove instead of putting something that is soo terrible that is completely useless(mainly in high level) compared to PnP and IWD? Nobody is forcing you to play with multiple summons or to all servers to not limit summons. We only want that a D&D game make pnp classes viable. I played a lot of PRC servers and never experienced LAG. IF summons are badly for server performance, they will be limited in MP games, as time stop is limited in many servers. But if i want in my game control an undead army like i can do in pnp, what is the problem? Even Diablo 2 don't have problems with Necromancers with an army of skeletons, resurrected enemies and etc
What a wondrously pointless post, one doesn't need to choose a specialization to really play a conjuration focused wizard in NWN (Specialization even in PnP doesn't generally grant you much more the a few spell slots, you can be focused in a school enough with spell focus more often then not to say you're a conjurer), but even missing out on your couple of spells, knock is hardly needed with a high INT you've more then enough skill points to spare on open lock, Haste can be acquired via the use of the vastly superior mass haste spell due to a bioware mixed up, greater stone skin is outclassed by premonition anyway, Tenser's Transformation is the worst polymorph in the game and Time Stop is overrated.
I didn't mention anything about PvP Balance, so GG on going on a rather strange tangent with that random bioware quote from what 2003/4 ?, a server and even just a single player modules can be balanced around the what is already present and easily accomplished for PvE challenges for level ranges so that challenges can be challenging.
Thankyou for yet again mentioning the PRC though, it sort of proves my point that it is already easily accomplished and not really needed for Beamdog to add to the game when the community already has ways of adding such. If you wish to play the game with an undead army, good for you, you can already do just that and it's not that difficult, if you dislike the PRC there are likely other options on the vault you can find that'll help you accomplish such in your single player games (or the server you host yourself) or you could look into writing your own and creating your own NPC's (hell the community is made up of that many helpful individuals if you ask in the right place they'd even give you advice on how you could accomplish what you're after).
Regardless of your experience on a handful of PRC servers (I've never seen one with more then 8 people connected at a time, was there ever a point where 20+ players were connected the majority of the day?) there is overhead involved with the path finding for NPCs, the combat info that gets streamed to players in party with such alongside their AI. Diablo 2 and IWD have really nothing to do with any of this, they're on different engines with different styles of gameplay and often played host to less people on a server.
I'm not completely against the idea, but I don't really like it as time could be spent on better things considering this is already a possibility and it'd just be yet another buff to casters, I'd want either the NPC's summoned nerfed or the duration made to match the PnP duration in such a case.
Summon Creatures at a low level are basically the same as having another free party member along getting attacks per round and absorbing damage. At a high level (I'm talking 15-18) with a full alotment of buffs they become a slightly weaker then a comparable leveled fighter in games that have moderate strength magical items for which you can stand behind and cast spells at (Fire/Water elementals getting bombed with fireballs, confusion, stinking clouds and whatever else is significantly more powerful then an equal level fighter all by himself. If you're looking into high epic level play, even having multiple short duration summons out isn't really going to make them useful as they'll just be so far out classed they die effortlessly regardless if the encounter was made to be challenging to a high level epic character.
2 - You are comparing lv 3 spells with lv 6 and lv 6 with lv 8... The fact that a Wiz can spend a lower level spell and have almost the same effect while a conjurer need to wait high level and spend high level spells... And timestop is not overrated. Without timestop, kill Mephistopheles in hotu will be impossible.
3 - No, this is not truth. You can't play any module that you want with PRC. Few modules are PRC compatible. And the community found ways to add this BECAUSE is a demand for players. If Bioware puts conjuration/necromancy like PnP, i will be able to play Ravenloft, EoB and a lot of modules with multiple summons.
4 - Casters aren't buffed in NWN. A lot of spells that ignore SR in PnP don't ignore in NWN. Put casters = PnP is not a buff, is simple a un-nerf.
5 - This isn't truth in IWD. In nwn i agree that summons are useless in high level, but in IWD, see how easy my Earth elementals and Shades destroyed 2 Iron Golems in about 15 seconds(0:30 to 0:45).
What you're asking for in this thread is the opposite of pnp summons, you're asking for regular spells and spell like abilities that summon creatures that exceed pnp limits and scale up to epic levels for free.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't request these things but pnp is not a justification for the request and even undermines it.
Okay, so ... maybe switch to 3.5? Sure, then iron golem is slightly weaker too but it still beats earth elemental which is also weaker than in 3.0 and also it still only lasts for 6 seconds per level.
The fact is that NWN already has boosted summons, you're really just asking for them to be boosted even more. Keep that in mind when you're trying to make your case.
PS : No, NWN din't boosted summons. Nerfed in number and in strength. Summon monster IX can summon a celestial roc and a lot of other powerful creatures http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Summon_Monster
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/3e_SRD:Summon_Monster_IX
Edit: If you want to use the 3.5 rule for summoning. It says it only summons 1 creature with the spell. Not a bunch of creatures.
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Summon_Monster_I