Summoning needs a major major fix

Both the Summon spell and it's reverse spell Banish are so incredibly worthless that they are not worth taking. They need to be revamped or have altered mana costs.

SUMMON
Level four spells should be encounter solving spells. Look at Fireball or Heal, they either kill all the enemies or give you so much life you WILL win.

Summoning doesn't work for several reasons:
* the summoned monster you have will screw you over and be a gimmick monster that may somehow kill you.
*the summoned monster may be something stupidly weak
* the summoned monster isn't an encounter

Summoning horror stories:
* summoning a blue mote and being blasted with ice
* fighting a gargoyle across an acid lake and summoning a black mote then getting dragged into acid
* summoning useless random movement monsters
* summoning somehting that gets one hitted and can't even trade with a single creature for 10 mana, enough to kill perhaps 5-10 enemies. Instead of being encounter solving, this spell often isn't even single enemy solution like mana of the lower level spells or even the bolt. The 2 mana bolt is a better spell than summon.
* finally summoning something decent (an eye) and being like "oh great, that is the first good one. at least I can control crowds now)

Fixing it:
* half the mana cost. 5 mana is still a lot for something that is a dubious benefit but it is much more fair and much more reasonable to play around with
* consider always allying summoned creatures with the player. no other spell betrays people quite the way Summon does.
* Raise Dead isn't a crappy spell because the player gets a CHOICE on monster allies so he can avoid ones that aren't completely retarded.
* consider dropping summoning (somehow) down to only a level 3 spell.

BANISH
When I tried it I was like "Alright! At least I get an instant death spell capable of dealing with anything!' How wrong I was. So banish just sends a single creature away for a few rounds instead of killing them? Why would I ever want to do this instead of paying 2-3 mana to kill it?

OTHER THINGS THAT WOULD HELP PETS

* Make Armor a targetable spell. Seriously. My minion would be a lot better off if I could spend a little bit more mana to buff him and he could live through a single trade with an enemy.

* Add a feat that grants Toughness for minions and perhaps also gives them a +1 attack bonus.

Sorry I missed this during the beta phase. I've been paying Mage Guild at a fairly infrequent pace lately but I think this is a pretty big balance issue.

err, I jumped around a lot while typing that

I meant to say that summon isn't an encounter solving spell and that when I finally summoned a good monster it wasn't on my side.

Eh...I certainly didn't expect to find everything in the beta, no worries there.

I had to chuckle at a couple of those summoning stories, but you're right, a 10-mana spell should probably not drop you into acid very often, if at all.

As to Summon...I like the idea of making it create friendly critters 100% of the time. Let me posit a couple of other alternative solutions, and see what you (and any other forumites) think. For starters, the power of the critter that is summoned is based on your level; however, what if it was adjusted such that the creature that gets summoned is 2-3 levels deeper than what is being summoned now? The other idea I've got is to tailor the pool of critters that summon can fetch. As you said, it's a rare day when you'd actually want a black mote. I could see this going one of two ways; either trim certain things (like motes and oozes) from the list of things that are valid to be summoned, or to build a pool of critters to summon from that don't necessarily naturally appear in the dungeon.

Banish is a bit trickier. Would increasing the number of turns that the target spends banished help? How about changing the base effect into some other shape, like a ball or cone?

Armor can certainly be made into a targetable effect; it kinda surprises me, honestly, that I never considered doing that. An edge that boosts minions is a neat idea, too. However, I'm not sure if it might not be a bit much, stacked up against the other edges, when you consider the balance of not just Summon, but the other various methods of getting pets.

What do you (and the other denizens) think?

thoughts on banish:

I guess it is mostly dissapointing to me because I thought it actually killed like final fantasy X-fer until I read the description (you have to have more than one spell to see descriptions.) Then I got mauled to death by the same dire wolves and hydrowurms when I returned to that part of the dungeon and I was like "WTF" and realized that my 10 mana investment against quite a few targets was worthless.

I guess a good way of improving this spell is area of effect. The only time I use it is when I am surprised by something behind a doorway or unwillingly deposited into a dangerous location. Much like a potion of death. Thus, I would suggest a radius-1 aura effect to solve immediately dangerous situations.

Even then it is questionable whether it is worth 10 mana. maybe 8? I don't know how I would feel about longer durations. Having a really long duration is equivalent to killing the monster and I have a feeling that is not what you are trying to do here.

I would also like to see this spell be Overcharged with a radius 2 aura simply because the red token isnt very useful without elementalism (unless you have really altered other schools, I havent tried it yet) I would like to see this have a broader application.

Much like teleport, or create boulder this spell is a life-saving solution that does not offer a long term solution like killing monsters

(although I am unsure what the exact spawn rate of the game is so I do not know how well it stacks up against monster killing spells except at least those give me items and cost less mana)

just some thoughts. I will write more on summoning later when I have the time.

Also, I really don't see a problem with pet boosting feats because they require an edge investment and I fail to see how this is different then any other "fighting style" in the game like armor/melee-wizard, bolt wizard, or blaster wizard.

Consider that it is much harder to manage minions then it is to press charge -> direction and count hits/turns to learn how to fight monsters and I think you will see why I think minions might need a significant power boost regardless of their origin.

Currently there is no viable way to fight with pets which is why the feat I suggested was so strong and offered both life and an attack bonus

the other factor in Banish being overly weak is that it is an Inverse spell and often requires a turn of preparation before use.

I've noticed that most other inverse spells are significantly stronger thatn their regular counterparts to deal with the extra resource cost.

As far as summoning goes, I think the player should use a trimmed list of monsters available in the dungeon level. I like the idea of fighting what you are fighting against with the same or similar monsters.

100% friendly monsters is a good start and is really important.

A trimmed list without 1) random movement monsters and 2) motes would be nice. I can still think of getting screwed by, say, a black unicorn. but much less often.

I'm not a huge fan of having unique monsters for the player to summon. I think a better way of doing that would be to actually add more monsters that would potentially be good summonable monsters to the normal game.

I think this would preserve the symmetry between the player and the environment better which I feel is an important characteristic you were going for with this spell.

Perhaps one or two new monsters per 3-level level range. It would improve the overall quality of the game even more and it would prevent the list of monsters available from growing stale if the useless minions are cut from the list.

Good points across the board. Looks like the various topics hit in this thread will definitely be on the chopping block for 1.1.

I made good use of summoning in my last win. The power of the summon spell isn't in solving an encounter so much as it is in preparing for an encounter. Given time and a fountain or two you can build up a sizeable force that can take enough attention off of you to prevent an otherwise deadly situation, and deal good amount of damage while they're at it.

I like the chance of a summoned monster turning traitor, because it forces the player to have a plan b just in case, which, in my opinion, is what this game is all about.

A summoner's abilities alone won't be able to handle everything you encounter in the dungeon, but you get a second spell school and a selection of edges for when those situations come up.

I'm not saying it doesn't need tweaking, and I haven't experimented with it excessively, but it's far from useless.

Banish I haven't played with, so I won't give any opinions on that.

Ok. I'm currently leaning toward trimming out the less interesting summon choices (motes, oozes, etc), slightly boosting the depth of summoned critters, removing the chance the thing you summon will be neutral, and reducing the odds that you'll get something that wants to tear your face off. Summoning neutral critters isn't helpful (generally), and isn't very interesting; given that every other method of pet attainment in the game carries some level of risk (especially so in the case of Raise Dead), I'll leave some chance of that happening, but reduce the odds.

This stuff should go in at 1.1; hopefully, that'll address Summon sufficiently. If not, more/less/different changes can certainly be imposed.

I'll look into a pet-related edge or edges as well; I do like the idea of a primarily pet-based character, be it with Raise Dead or with Summon. Not sure if that'll show up in 1.1 or not, we'll see.