The Tavern

It's too good as it is. A ranged beam (penetrating) attack using an element rarely resisted by monsters with possible double hit, when used effectively can clean up packs of monsters even in Vaults. The drawbacks, as I understand, are losing some XP and requiring dual schools to put XP into, however Air will be trained at least a bit by most characters for Repel/Deflect Missiles and Swiftness anyway and Summoning isn't entirely useless either because of Aura of Abjuration. Also, unlike other summons, lightning spire will not move, making its placement and effectiveness entirely reliant on the player. Mephitic Cloud has an entire 27-part long sarcasting entry in learndb, but if you ask me, Summon Lightning Spire is more of a no-brainer.

Alternatively from moving it up to level 5, you could make it do less damage, shoot less often or expire faster, you could also change the element of the attack or make the attack stop at the first target hit. Since I'm one of those people who don't like drastic changes, I proposed a simple solution of moving it up a level, but I guess level 5 is already quite packed, so maybe a bigger rearrangement would be necessary. Still, lightning spire in its current form is too good for level 4, plz fix.

I once killed Mara with a single Lightning Spire cast. Didn't expect too, just popped it to distract him and other monsters. Whoops.

I disagree that lighting spire is a no-brainer, if anything, its one of the few summoning spells that requires the player to put some thought before casting. I agree that spire is overpowered and you should have also mentioned how easily it can be used as a meat shield since it does/cannot be moved, does not have evasion which makes it perfect to block projectiles, resists everything and, unlike other summons, you can choose where to place it.

It feels like its noise is really low as well.

Its because summons dont make noise, you as a caster makes noise when you cast the spell and thats it. Take for example dragon's call, when you cast it you make a ton of noise, but afterwards your dragons start appearing like ninjas on your enemy's back.

gosh, that's not at all weird or unintuitive

Well, monsters can't stealth themselves, can they?

(Actually, I think I remember monsters being better or worse at stealth. When would that matter? Being detected when invisible?)

It's exactly that, yes. Though I think that either got removed, or is in the works to be removed.

Most of this is pretty wrong. Lightning spire makes noise every time it casts electrical bolt, but only at the location of the spire, and only noise 5. Lighting bolt makes a quite loud (25) noise at the location of the cast, and also has an effect noise of 5. The end result is that lightning bolt is a lot louder than the spire's actions, but the spire isn't silent.

Summons definitely make noise every time they cast spells/use breath and do melee. This is the same type of noise the player can make, so it's often quite substantial. You'll see this when a big group of your allies are in a fight, lots of monsters will start showing up. All that noise is made at the location where the summons are fighting, of course.

The statement about Dragon's Call is completely wrong, since that spell makes an noise of 15 at the player's location when cast and makes that exact same level of noise at the player's position (not at the location of the summon) every time a dragon is made.

How is it good? Wiki only says it does 3d6 damage, which is 10.5 on average. Also, it is extremely fragile.

Also, it can't move and hence can't respond to enemies coming from certain angles if a wall or whatever is in the way.

Also, you can't swap places with it to create escape space.

Also, it has a summoning cap of one, as compared to say, summon ice beast, which you can spam a lot of.

Also, unlike lightning bolt, and some of the other stuff it's being compared to, lightning spire steals a lot of your XP.

Also, it's a dual spell school, and although air magic has many other good spells... so do a lot of other schools. That's just the nature of dual school spells yo.

you could try using it

Does it actually only do 3d6 damage? Once, on my SpEn, I had good enough skills to cast it, but was scared away by the low damage.

FWIW lightning bolts ignore some AC. Also keep in mind it is a ranged summon(rare!), with shots that both pierce and bounce.

Personally, I feel like it's fairly powerful, but not overpowered.

It's probably one of the better level 4 spells, but it'd be one of the least powerful level 5 spells, so I don't feel like it needs to move. (Unless you think air magic is generally overpowered and needs a nerf, which I don't)

In terms of summon spells, it's definitely better than call canine familiar, definitely worse than shadow creatures/summon forest/summon mana viper, and around on par with summon ice beast (Depending on what you're talking about dealing with, summmon ice beast might be slightly better or worse than lightning spire)

Varies by spellpower. At max power (100), it does 3d13 damage per shot. 3d6 is its damage at 30 power.