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Dungeons and Dragons Megathread

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HoratioVonBecker said:
Yeah, but I'm pretty sure 'a lot' means 'about half', and also that most classes have two or three they use in combat. The whole list is probably too much, is what I am saying.
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By my count all of them except Survival can be used in combat with minimal levels of feast investment:
  • Athletics has Trip, Grapple, Reposition and Shove, along with the possibility of needing to Climb, Swim or Jump
  • Arcana, Crafting, Nature, Lore, Occultism and Society can all be used to Recall Knowledge on enemies, with Religion and Occultism having some neat feat options at Master.
  • Acrobatics and Stealth have the traditional options of tumbling through and hiding
  • Intimidation has Demoralise and Deception has Feint as combat actions
  • Performance can pick up Fascinating Performance, Diplomacy can get Bon Mot and Thievery can now get Dirty Trick with a level 1 feat
  • Medicine can stabilise by default and can pick up Battle Medicine as a feat, with a lot of upgrades if you want to invest
  • Thievery and Religion are often useful against traps and haunts, with other skills being relevant depending on what the trap or haunt is.
And that's just the standard options. I'm pretty sure you could swing Survival against an invisible foe if you were in the right environment too, even if invisibility isn't as common as some game options suggest.
 
HoratioVonBecker said:
think AD&D classes only go to like Level 10-14
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For 1st edition:

Hit point progression tails off after XL 9-11 (fixed gain per level by class, no further HP from Con)

Fighters, rangers, and paladins get their first attack rate upgrade at XL 7 and their second at XL 13. To-hit progression continues to XL 20.

Paladins start getting spells at XL 9 and their spells/day chart runs up to at least XL 20.

Druids are capped at 14 (PHB) or 15/23 (UA).

Assassins are capped in the low teens.

Monks are capped at 18 (level title "Grand Master of Flowers").

The goofy-ass 1e bard is capped at something like 23.

Magic-users get 9th level spells at XL 18 (iff they have 18+ intelligence), and the Magic-User Spells Per Day chart goes to something like XL 29.

Etc.
 
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The Narrator said:
Okay, I just looked at every spell with the Summon trait and every single one has a duration of "sustained, up to 1 minute" and Summoned creatures gain the Minion trait so they take two actions whenever you sustain the spell. Where are you getting 1 Action from?
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It wasn't 1 Action so much as "until your next turn" iirc, and it was for the 9th and 10th level summons, I was exaggerating because I feel horrible right now and am upset in general at the complete lack of non-combat Summons and ability to bring anything other than a Minion from other planes.
 
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SinisterPorpoise said:
It wasn't 1 Action so much as "until your next turn" iirc, and it was for the 9th and 10th level summons, I was exaggerating because I feel horrible right now and am upset in general at the complete lack of non-combat Summons and ability to bring anything other than a Minion from other planes.
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what do you want the spell to do? what would you like in place of a "minion"
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
what do you want the spell to do? what would you like in place of a "minion"
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A bodyguard? Something that can reliably defend the summoner from things that have a good chance of being able to kill him? A valet/butler? Something that can go run errands and undertake tasks otherwise requiring the summoner's direct presence, without need of the summoner having to maintain the spell or having further costs beyond the actual gaining of service

If this is a thing for use in combat, the summoned creature should be a threat to things that are a threat to the summoner.

If it's meant for non-combat, it should have a list of skills and/or non-combat spells that rivals or exceeds an average PC since NPCs are worthless garbage now,

In neither case should it require maintaining, concentration, or any action beyond basic "help me/hurt them" in combat to be effective
 
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SinisterPorpoise said:
It wasn't 1 Action so much as "until your next turn" iirc, and it was for the 9th and 10th level summons, I was exaggerating because I feel horrible right now and am upset in general at the complete lack of non-combat Summons and ability to bring anything other than a Minion from other planes.
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Oh, I see. You didn't actually familiarize yourself with how the rules work, rather you just looked at what you assumed would be the most powerful summons, and judged by those.

You see, PF2E does let you do stuff like summon a Kaiju, or an Army of Dragons. But rather than putting those onto the board as creatures with HP and their own actions, it just represents the effects that momentarily calling upon such power has via "Incarnate" spells. The creature (or creatures, if the spell represents multiple) does one thing when called upon, then on it's next turn it moves, and then it departs which does another thing.
So if you summon Agyra, the Forever Storm, you do summon a gigantic, two-headed pterosaur-kaiju, which immediately shoots out two beams of electricity for a fair amount of damage, which also slow down whatever they hit. Then it swiftly flies to a new location, and unleases a 100-foot sonic wave for even more damage that knocks it's targets prone.
Which, y'know, is pretty cool and more balanced than "I summon several hundred HPs worth of ablative meat".

As for "out of combat summons" - yes, summons generally only last a minute.
But you can very much still do the thing where you summon a creature for it's spells, or other abilities. Summon a strong animal to clear a rockfall. Or summon a Monadic Deva to get Heal, Remove Curse and Remove Disease.

And if you want longer-lasting services out of combat, that exists too.
Heck, you can even get a same-level summon of your level that'll fight with you in combat without counting as a minion or using any of your actions that way. But I guess that's not strong enough because it'll take a day to cast the ritual and the creature will actually demand payment for that, rather than taking 6 seconds and a spellslot to break the action economy.
 
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FaeGlade Plural said:
Oh, I see. You didn't actually familiarize yourself with how the rules work, rather you just looked at what you assumed would be the most powerful summons, and judged by those.

You see, PF2E does let you do stuff like summon a Kaiju, or an Army of Dragons. But rather than putting those onto the board as creatures with HP and their own actions, it just represents the effects that momentarily calling upon such power has via "Incarnate" spells. The creature (or creatures, if the spell represents multiple) does one thing when called upon, then on it's next turn it moves, and then it departs which does another thing.
So if you summon Agyra, the Forever Storm, you do summon a gigantic, two-headed pterosaur-kaiju, which immediately shoots out two beams of electricity for a fair amount of damage, which also slow down whatever they hit. Then it swiftly flies to a new location, and unleases a 100-foot sonic wave for even more damage that knocks it's targets prone.
Which, y'know, is pretty cool and more balanced than "I summon several hundred HPs worth of ablative meat".

As for "out of combat summons" - yes, summons generally only last a minute.
But you can very much still do the thing where you summon a creature for it's spells, or other abilities. Summon a strong animal to clear a rockfall. Or summon a Monadic Deva to get Heal, Remove Curse and Remove Disease.

And if you want longer-lasting services out of combat, that exists too.
Heck, you can even get a same-level summon of your level that'll fight with you in combat without counting as a minion or using any of your actions that way. But I guess that's not strong enough because it'll take a day to cast the ritual and the creature will actually demand payment for that, rather than taking 6 seconds and a spellslot to break the action economy.
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Yeah, but if I summon a Kaiju, I wanna be able ride it into battle. Otherwise what's the point:
 
Having recently finished Worm, the idea of David/Eidolon as a DND wizard who accidentally summoned three (later I think five) Kaiju out of a subconscious desire to be a hero is kind of a funny image. It feels like something that'd happen in an old DND module, where the epic-level wizard fucks up and now the players have to deal with it.

Spoilers for Worm, specifically Eidolon's whole deal.
 
SinisterPorpoise said:
I think that Sorcerer or Wilder would fit that much better, due to the subconscious aspect.
Also it's twenty, but only six total ever became active.
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I wish I knew more about 5E, because I assume you're right on this one. I just know 3.5E, and even then the 3.5E sorceror might have something to do with the subconscious that I've just never heard about.

And yeah, I haven't looked into the Word of Gods, and I forgot about Bohu.
 
SinisterPorpoise said:
It wasn't 1 Action so much as "until your next turn" iirc, and it was for the 9th and 10th level summons, I was exaggerating because I feel horrible right now and am upset in general at the complete lack of non-combat Summons and ability to bring anything other than a Minion from other planes.
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Are you confusing the Minion trait in PF2 with minions from 4E? Any time that a PC has control of another creature, like an animal companion or the Inventor's construct ally, it has the Minion trait. All that means is that you spend one action to control it and it takes two actions, like I explained before. It doesn't mean that it's a one-hit kill or whatever it is you seem to think it means.

I also don't know where you're getting "until your next turn" from. I just explained that the duration of all the Summon spells is "sustained, up to 1 minute." The action to sustain it is also the action to control it. Do you mean if you don't sustain it? Because yes, if you don't sustain a sustained spell, it ends. That's how sustained spells work.

I also don't know where you got "imp" from. An imp is a 1st level creature, so you would summon it with a 2nd level summon spell. A 9th or 10th level Summon Fiend spell would get you a glabrezu or nalfeshnee (or whatever non-OGL equivalents they've created for the remaster).



Arawn_Emrys said:
If this is a thing for use in combat, the summoned creature should be a threat to things that are a threat to the summoner.
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Okay, so you just haven't bothered to read the PF2 summoning spell rules at all, then.

A 9th level summon spell gets you a 13th level creature, which means that you can summon an Iron Golem. That Stone Golem that you were so enthused about summoning with the AD&D version could be summoned with an 8th level spell.

As for non-combat uses of summoning, magic that can't be done in combat falls under Rituals, so as not to consume valuable combat resources with utility powers. There are several that involve calling up an extraplanar creature to do tasks for you.

Plenty of the things that you can summon or call with a ritual you could potentially ride on.
 
The Narrator said:
Are you confusing the Minion trait in PF2 with minions from 4E? Any time that a PC has control of another creature, like an animal companion or the Inventor's construct ally, it has the Minion trait. All that means is that you spend one action to control it and it takes two actions, like I explained before. It doesn't mean that it's a one-hit kill or whatever it is you seem to think it means.

I also don't know where you're getting "until your next turn" from. I just explained that the duration of all the Summon spells is "sustained, up to 1 minute." The action to sustain it is also the action to control it. Do you mean if you don't sustain it? Because yes, if you don't sustain a sustained spell, it ends. That's how sustained spells work.

I also don't know where you got "imp" from. An imp is a 1st level creature, so you would summon it with a 2nd level summon spell. A 9th or 10th level Summon Fiend spell would get you a glabrezu or nalfeshnee (or whatever non-OGL equivalents they've created for the remaster).
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The "Minion" thing isn't related to rules or official designations, I guess a more accurate description of what I was thinking of when I wrote that would be "like the Pet of an MMO Pet-Keeper Class".

I was still talking about the Incarnate spells there, but yes I do in fact like the type of summoning where you actually summon something and then it just exists there as an npc instead of being nothing more than a fancier version of something like Flaming sphere.

Imp was because Imps are the fiendish equivalent of whipping boys.
 
Using the action economy to limit the ability to cheese things with summons might not be the perfect solution, but it achieves the goal.

Also a Rqnger with the Beastmaster archetype hits the feel of an MMO pet class pretty spot on. It even has that thing in MMOs were you only have one pet active and you switch between them.
 
Queshire said:
Using the action economy to limit the ability to cheese things with summons might not be the perfect solution, but it achieves the goal.

Also a Rqnger with the Beastmaster archetype hits the feel of an MMO pet class pretty spot on. It even has that thing in MMOs were you only have one pet active and you switch between them.
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That does beg a question, though: is "how it feels in a video game" really what we want to aim for? For you, clearly the answer is yes. I disagree; I'd rather prioritize fidelity to a actual speculative world one would theoretically live in.
 
Pteryx said:
That does beg a question, though: is "how it feels in a video game" really what we want to aim for? For you, clearly the answer is yes. I disagree; I'd rather prioritize fidelity to a actual speculative world one would theoretically live in.
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Should I have not responded in video games terms to someone who specifically said they wanted something like the Pet of a Pet-keeping MMO class?
 
Queshire said:
Should I have not responded in video games terms to someone who specifically said they wanted something like the Pet of a Pet-keeping MMO class?
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Are you referring to this?
SinisterPorpoise said:
The "Minion" thing isn't related to rules or official designations, I guess a more accurate description of what I was thinking of when I wrote that would be "like the Pet of an MMO Pet-Keeper Class".
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Because that's specifically a complaint about how the only summons available feel like Pets.
 
Animal Companions in 2e are great, idk what people are on about. Sure they fall behind a bit around level 17 or 18, but that's a small amount of the game.

The action economy of a companion is good, the mounts work amazingly, the support actions and advanced maneuvers give a good amount of variety between different animals and the advancement gives you a good amount of customisation.

The two biggest flaws of them are that Ranger's animal companion feats lag behind druid and the animal companion archetypes for no good reason and that the advanced companions form Howl of the Wild overvalue fly and climb speeds and most people don't want to replace their pet with a 'better' one.
 
SinisterPorpoise said:
I was still talking about the Incarnate spells there, but yes I do in fact like the type of summoning where you actually summon something and then it just exists there as an npc instead of being nothing more than a fancier version of something like Flaming sphere.
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That's not how summoning worked in 3E, either. The duration on summoning spells was 1 round/level, and they just did what the caster told them to do. That's basically the same as in PF2. If you wanted to bring an extraplanar creature to our world long term, you didn't use a summon spell, you used other spells which have equivalents in PF2 as Rituals like demon pact and binding circle.

Is your complaint that summoning is no longer OP? Because letting you get a whole other creature's worth of actions for free would have completely broken the game's Action Economy, fucked the game balance and ruined the game for everyone else. That's not going to happen and it shouldn't. Caster supremacy needs to die and stay dead. The game needs to be fun for everyone and not just the wizards.

As for Incarnate spells, they're a new thing from the latest sourcebook that I'd never heard of before. But it's pretty clear that the whole reason that they're not "summon" spells is because they're not: they're a two-stage attack spell that has the descriptive flavor of calling something into existence and having it attack, then vanish. You know what that is? That's a Final Fantasy summon! That's exactly how summons work in FF! Why shouldn't the game have options to do different approaches to the concept? If you don't like the spell, don't take the spell. As attack spells, they seem pretty decently strong, tho. And the flavor sounds cool as fuck!
 
The Narrator said:
That's not how summoning worked in 3E, either. The duration on summoning spells was 1 round/level, and they just did what the caster told them to do. That's basically the same as in PF2. If you wanted to bring an extraplanar creature to our world long term, you didn't use a summon spell, you used other spells which have equivalents in PF2 as Rituals like demon pact and binding circle.

Is your complaint that summoning is no longer OP?
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That is specifically how the Summon Monster spells worked, which were not the sum total of all summoning capability.
For the sake of clarification I'm not talking about the Summoning keyword, I'm talking about the verb "summon".

I don't care about something being "Op" or not, unless something is absurdly overpowered compared to other available options.
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Also Demonic Pact in particular is a bad example for this since- "Primary Check Religion (expert; you must be a demon)" -that.
 
Pteryx said:
  • 3.x's magic item creation system, while not perfect by any stretch, is at least functional enough that you can make interesting, useful, and creative things given IC time and resources (especially if you mix in the aforementioned metamagic). Later editions seemed to react to its balance issues by deciding that no, actually, custom magic items are Just Bad and Wrong (instead of, y'know, trying to actually balance it in any useful manner while leaving creative freedom open). Even PF2's mundane item creation strikes me as an extreme overreaction to 3.x's magical item creation...
  • 3.x, more broadly, actually wants you to have magic items, not to mention allow you to hire NPC spellcasters. 5e essentially mocks both of these things. I like Eberron and other magic-heavy worlds, thanks
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This I absolutely agree with. I didn't learn until years of plaing it that encounter design did not account for magic items - a statement which is fucking insane for a high fantasy game. And yeah, 5e's lack of magic item creation rules honks ass.

I love giving out cool little trinkets to my players and fun magic items. As a player I've been very frustrated by the almost complete lack of them.
 
SinisterPorpoise said:
Also Demonic Pact in particular is a bad example for this since- "Primary Check Religion (expert; you must be a demon)" -that.
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Okay, I didn't read that carefully enough. I guess Demonic Pact is only for that thing where demons would summon more demons. That explains why it's so low level.

However, did you read Binding Circle? It calls forth an extraplanar creature which you can then bargain with to perform a service for you, much like the planar binding spells from 3E/PF1, and while they can go back to their own plane when the task is done, they're not required to. So it does allow an extraplanar creature to remain indefinitely. Isn't that the exact thing that you were complaining that you wanted to do?
 
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