Summoning proposal

[Strongpoint]

I played 4 dedicated summoners in a raw (Naga\Kenku\Demigod\Deep elf) and I really dislike that 1) I don't care if allies die 2) I don't care if they level up.

And I got an idea how to make summonings more interesting. And it's pretty simple:

1) every time summoned ally dies in combat, casters get permanent penalty to spell power and\or success for the spell used to summon it. So if you use small mammals as meatshield, sooner or later you will not summon a lot

2) every time when summon returns home after it become more experienced, casters get permanent bonus to spell power and\or success for the spell used to summon it. It would make xp\2 less painfull


Logic behind this - summoned creatures is not happy to go in place where they likely die, so they'll resist the caster. And allies want to learn and come home stronger

[acvar]

This is a bad idea. Victory dance up a bunch of critters outside of combat. Wait for them to time out. Raise your spell power. Way to easy to break this.

[Strongpoint]

Avcar, they need to level up, not merely return home alive. That annoying message: your XXX looks stronger

[szanth]

Not bad. They have something like this in Powder, where your 'familiar' dies and you go into some kind of shock and lose a chunk of HP or something, I forget exactly.

[szanth]

Also, before anyone points out that you could grind them up by letting them kill weak monsters, remember that summoners only get half the XP from allied kills.

Which is still the reason why I don't play summoners. =D

[dpeg]

Permanent rewards/penalties for in-game actions would be a complete departure from the rest of the game. With permanent rewards, I am highly afraid of abuse.

So people hate the xp/2 mechanic, but it wasn't discussed here, so I'll quickly mention why it is good design (it is ancient, by the way): First, a summoner can make allies die (or at least take the pain) for himself. This is worth a lot and makes life a lot easier. That's one major reason for xp/2. Suppose for a moment that ally kills gave full xp. That would mean that if possible, you'd enrich whatever you do with allies. (By the way, there is also a thematic backing for the xp/2: the ally gets its share, as does its master. But flavour is really in the backseat here.)

I understand that the OP's proposal is about removing the meatshield aspect.

I disagree with issue 1) of the OP, by the way. That boils down to how you interpret your summoners, I think: they could be of the compassionate type, and then I can understand the sentiment. But to me, summoners treat their summons as cheap and expendable tools. And that's why I have no qualms with this part of the status quo.

The two most pressing issues I see with summons are balance (they're just too strong) and kill-stealing (trying to get in the last kill, so as to get xp over xp/2). Players I take very serious told me that summon play would be a lot more fun if kill-stealing was not possible (i.e. remove the temptation, not necessarily the xp/2). Having been a player once in a distant past, I understand that. See [url]https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:magic:summoning:feedback&s[]=summon#dpeg[/url] for my point of view, and the whole wiki page for other aspects.

[mageykun]

We already have play-styles that care about allies. Worship Beogh, Fed, or Oka. They're the guys who expect you to keep allies alive and train them up, and who will give you arbitrary punishments for mistreating your creatures.

Summons though... as they are now, you're magically wresting beings from other planes of existence or shaping them yourself from the firmament of the world, and binding them to your will. They can't chose to resist the calling, or being created (if the spell fails, that's you're incompetence), but they can resist your will (hostile summons). Summons are not currently creatures you form contracts with and summon / banish again and again a la Tales of Phantasia or Final Fantasy.

We could change this, but it doesn't seem flavorful it me. I mean, if wer're forming contracts, you really need sidequests where you meet / prove yourself to the creature to earn it's support- calling them up out of the blue using a spellbook doesn't sound right anymore (you'd need a hall of summons branch? Contract portal vaults? Dunno). Also- what about the necro/summoner overlap? It really doesn't make sense for anything necromantic to care about preserving, caring for, or using your allies as anything but disposable unnatural ammunition.

Also- it seems to me it would make summoners harder, not better- you lose the ability to use disposable meatshileds as an escape option, and you run into the HOPr problem where if you lose a heavily invested high end ally in the late game, you're doomed. This would also discourage other classes from picking up low level summons to use as escape spells, since they'd become useless fairly quickly (I know there's talk of nerfing butterflies, but this seems a little extreme to me). The only real advantage I see is if this system were imposed on monster summons as well- it could be used to nerf summon spam and chain summoning.

That's my two cents for the status quo!

Edit: dang, ninja-ed by dpeg.

[Strongpoint]

Permanent rewards/penalties for in-game actions would be a complete departure from the rest of the game. With permanent rewards, I am highly afraid of abuse.

Isn't gaining XP permanent bonus? Isn't draining permanent pemalty? ) It's just another way to use XP, IMO.
Isn't enchanting weapon permanent bonus?
And so on, there are many permanent effects

I disagree with issue 1) of the OP, by the way. That boils down to how you interpret your summoners, I think: they could be of the compassionate type, and then I can understand the sentiment. But to me, summoners treat their summons as cheap and expendable tools. And that's why I have no qualms with this part of the status qu

Meatshields is only part of the problem, what I dislike more that player has no motivation to save higher level summons used for actual combat. You don't want to heal your summons, you don't want to attack monsters that threatens to kill it. It's easier and cheaper just summon new, mana usually is not a big problem and if it is a problem, then you run away, and don't even think about saving the ally. It's total nobrainer. I want more tactical and strategical decisions

Also i dislike the fact that you must find a way to kill popcorn monsters without summons, because it's a clear waste of xp
Conjurer can kill anything with conjurations, fighter can kill anything with weapons, but for summoners killing non dangerous monsters with summons is highly suboptimal

Also- what about the necro/summoner overlap? It really doesn't make sense for anything necromantic to care about preserving, caring for, or using your allies as anything but disposable unnatural ammunition.

Necromances have limited supply of corpses, you do care about you 9headed Hydra zombie, because you can't make new. and I would love to see more difference between necromancers and summoners.