danr wrote:Are they popular i.e. do they get a lot of play?
On a related note, why does Vehumet give you summoning books after giving conjurations? I'd sooner just have guaranteed access to every conjuration spell. Sif Muna is for having access to a "diversified portfolio".
Tengus have great melee skills, so weaker creatures should be vanquished by hand-to-hand, missile, or conjurations (esp. electrical) before relying on Summoning. There is a danger of draining out the MP and being unable to Summon anything in time, so alternative forms of attack and defense--or escape--must be acquired in order for a Summoner to prevail in the worst situations. Monsters in the latest release always prefer to attack the player rather than the summoned creatures, so a bit of planning and foresight is necessary in order to interpose the summoned creatures between you and the monsters, although this is not always possible. Some creatures can smite, abjure, torment, cast bolts or clouds of draining, fire, cold, electricity, and other things that defeat the careful plans of a Summoner. Many Summoners do die.
I never did understand why Vehumet gifts Summoning books, since Summoning causes indirect slaughter of monsters, similar to Charms/Hexes. I also feel like Vehumet far overpowers Sif Muna, and that Sif Muna only represents a decent choice for Drow Elves or Demonspawn, if any, although I think I'd prefer Vehumet for any caster that intends to cast Conjurations as a primary part of his attack. Vehumet has so many obvious nice features. Sif Muna allows forgetting a spell, which is no big deal with so many amnesia scrolls around nowadays, and the Invocation that lets one recover MP starts out weak and stays weak until Invocation skill increases (at a cost of other skills' development), and it costs a turn to use anyway.
The best Summoning spell of all is Shadow Creatures, which seems overpowered compared to its fifth and sixth level competitors. I think that's about the highest level spell a Summoner needs to know before breaking into a different school of magic. Summoning Demons can be a risky affair.