Topic: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

I've been reading through the spell descriptions, and I love the concept of the Summon spell.  I love everything about it -- the chance of failure, the extreme alien-ness of what gets summoned, and I can't read the descriptions of the Special Forms without cackling like a maniac and capering around the room for a few minutes at the thought of the PCs summoning such things. 

But to an extent the mechanical end of the charts isn't quite clicking for me.  For instance, I'm just not quite getting how one determines how many appendages a summoned entity has.  Maybe I'm just not unhinged enough at the nihilistic face of the universe. 

Can someone walk me through a sample summoning and give me a better idea of how to use these glorious, glorious charts?

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

Took me a half-dozen or so read-throughs of the full spell description to get it. I'll do a minimalistic example (meaning, you'll need to look at the book to follow along). I'll use a 3rd level Magic User for the example.

1. Determine whether or not you're preparing ahead of time, or combat-casting (heh, good luck). Thaumaturgic circles and sacrifices are not an on-the-fly type of situation; minimizing the chaos requires planning! Figure out these two bonuses ahead of time. For this example, I'll use a +2 thaumaturgic circle (1000sp cost), and no sacrifices.

2. Choose how many hit dice you want to summon. I'll go for 5.

3. Save vs magic: 3rd level MU save is 14, I rolled 18, demon apocalypse can wait!

4. Creature arrives, determine form/appendages/powers.
4a. Because I made the save, I start with a d12 on the left column of pg 146: I rolled 11, and thus we have a slime, a snake, or a squid. The d3 tells me it's a slime.
4b. Appendages: go back to pg 144 and find your chosen Hit Dice, and roll the selected die (5 HD = d8). I rolled a 6. This roll is your Base Number. Find which die type corresponds to that base number on the table on pg 144, and roll that die (6 is a d8 again). I rolled a 4, which is the new Base Number. This is lower than 6, and so I roll an appendage. I roll 3d6 on the right column of pg 146 (6, 5, 3) and so the appendage is Throbbing Teeth. The new base number is 4, so according to the table on pg 144, I now roll a d6. I rolled a 5, which is higher than 4, so no new appendage, and we're done with appendages.
4c. Powers: Same procedure as appendages, so I start with a d8: oh mama, I rolled an 8, could be fun. Now I roll a d10, and if I get less than 8, my Denture Slime gets a new power. Rolled a 4, time to power up! Roll d% on pgs 147-148 and there's your new power: rolled 79, and thus my Denture Slime has the power to cast Stone Shape at will. Fun. New base number check! 4 means roll a d6: rolled a 3, another power! This time the d% gives me a 22, which is Detect Invisibility (always on). Let's keep the Base Number checks rolling, 3 is another d6: rolled a 1, so yippee, more power! We have a 21 this time: Darkness (at will, one at a time). Now the table on pg 144 says a base number of 1 should roll a d4, but because I made the save in Step 3, it's impossible to roll LESS THAN 1, and thus we can't get more powers.
4d. Summary of critter: At this point, a 5 HD slime with 1 appendage (Throbbing Teeth), and 3 powers (Stone Shape at will, Detect Invisibility always on, and Darkness at will) has glorped out of a crack in reality.

5. Dominate Check (or, Where It All Went Wrong):
5a. add up your bonuses: Caster Level (3) + Thaumaturgic Circle (2) + d20
5b. add up critter bonuses: Hit Dice (5) + Number of Powers (3) + d20
5c. Roll for your life: I rolled 11, critter rolled 7. This means I have a total of 16, and the critter has a total of 15 on the Dominate Check. VERY close call, glad I dropped the silvers on that thaumaturgic circle, or I'd likely be stuck in a very dark, very small stone box with it! I'm told it's really hard to grapple a slime. I beat it by 1, and thus I get to roll 1d10 for the number of rounds I control it: balls, I rolled a 3.

6. Because I failed to achieve a Great Margin victory, I now spend 3 rounds doing NOTHING ELSE but keep this critter in check, and the rest of the party stops aiming all their weapons at me, which they seem to do EVERY TIME I cast this spell.

This Denture Slime would make a fun guard dog, if you managed a Great Margin!

Last edited by Yuritau (2012-06-01 13:18:58)

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

Improving the presentation and clarity of this spell is on the list for the hardcover layout.

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

Yuritau -- thanks! That helped tremendously.

JimLotFP -- Awesome.  I'm looking forward to seeing the new book.

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

I have a question of my own though.. Are thaumaturgic circles one-use only? Or could a Magic User/Elf with a high interest in summoning spend 20,000sp on a permanent circle in/near his laboratory and get a +40 circle bonus on all Dominate checks when using that circle?

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

Good question...personally, in my games I'd say no, unless the magic-user was intending to summon the same entity repeatedly.  I picture summoning circles as being at least semi-personalized, at least to the number of HD the caster is intending to summon, so summoning an 8HD entity with the same likelihood of control as a 5HD entity requires a different (more elaborate, and consequently more expensive) summoning circle. 

And if you're trying to summon the same horror over and over again, it will be more and more enraged each time, so that +40 to dominate is gonna come in handy...

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

This is why I'm asking for a clarification.. because the way Thaumaturgic Circles are described in the spell description, they are generic and not at all specific to the creature summoned, rather they are just a cheap way to buy better numbers. There is nothing that says you can't just make a permanent one and never spend coin on a Circle again, but that also feels too easy, heh.

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

Do you find that rolling up the summoned entity slows down the flow of the game?

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

It's actually not come up in play yet, as my players are fearful of the possibility of creating something terribly nasty and failing to control it. But I just rolled up another sample (10 HD, 3 appendages, 3 powers) and it only took 4 minutes. Work through it a couple times and you'll have a pretty good handle on  what to do and in what order and it'll go fairly quick.

Can also make use of the tables to roll up a Strange Critter encounter basically on the fly if you need to. Though for that you might want to actually hand pick the powers, cause some of them can make REALLY nasty combinations, hehe.

Last edited by Yuritau (2012-06-04 06:11:10)

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

You could also just roll up 20 such creatures before hand and then pick from those during play? (And once you've used one you could re-roll another one to fill in the empty slot.)

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

Or make 2-4 at each HD (cause the caster chooses HD at time of casting).

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

What happens if the Domination rolls tie? I couldn't find this in the book.

Perhaps the creature and Magic User are locked in a domination struggle for X rounds where neither can take any action other
than continue the domination attempts. After X rounds the summoned creature returns to it's place of origin?

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

On a tie I would probably rule that both the creature and the magic user remain locked in the contest of wills and must roll again. If cast during combat, neither can take any actions next round, not even moving, if they want to make the roll.

I might even decide that since the initial roll was a tie, the next roll be made without modifiers. Just a d20 vs a d20.

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

Newbie here. So, if you make the magic save you summon a creature of the desired HD, but if you fail it is of a higher power. Does this mean more HD, or just the potential for extreme horrors on the form table (d20 vs d12)? Other than the potential for increased HD on the domination chart, are there other potentials for increased HD on a fail?

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

dwhiteplume wrote:

Newbie here. So, if you make the magic save you summon a creature of the desired HD, but if you fail it is of a higher power. Does this mean more HD, or just the potential for extreme horrors on the form table (d20 vs d12)? Other than the potential for increased HD on the domination chart, are there other potentials for increased HD on a fail?

Page 146, paragraph 2: Failing the original save increases the chances for more powers for the creature, thus increasing the creature's Domination roll).

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

I wanted a guide to streamline the process of casting the Summon spell. In the middle of rearranging the text from the LOTFP rulebook in to the order I'd want it when my character was going to use the spell, I decided to take a crack at creating a spreadsheet that would automate the process. I got permission from James before posting what is essentially his work just reordered. The below link contains a zipped file with a PDF of the reordered Summoning Spell (stripped of much of the nicely written but nonessential flavor text), listed in the order I found useful for myself, 2 identical Spreadsheets (one Excel Format the other in Open Office Format), and a Readme where I discuss how terrible I am at Excel and what changes/omissions I've made as well as the password to unlock the spreadsheet.

Edited Out Spreadsheet. New Improved Version Soon.

James do you have an opinion on what the outcome should be if the Caster and the Summoned Creature tie on their Domination Rolls? I made something up for the Spreadsheet, but that's easily changed.

Last edited by Glipkerio (2012-07-20 09:46:29)

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

I have been making my own list of the process, noting that number of powers must be determined prior to the Domination check and noting that caster desired HD are the HD of the creature summoned (unless otherwise indicated by failure). That is for a random creature, as a known creature would have its powers detailed. More of a bulleted list than a paragraph write-up.

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

First draft of a flow chart I did. I like programming game mechanics, and this seems like a natural. Rough, but I think accurate. No lists from the books included. Based on Grindhouse edition. http://adventuresinnerdliness.net/lotfp/SummonFlow.pdf

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

Between the flow chart and the spreadsheet, I can probably make a web application that spits out a summoned monster.

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

funkaoshi wrote:

Between the flow chart and the spreadsheet, I can probably make a web application that spits out a summoned monster.

I'd wait for the revised version to come in a few months.

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

Are the actual rules going to change a lot (and the lists of powers, forms, etc)? It still might be a fun little project. That spell is intense. Probably the best part of the spell section.

"Well shit, you've summoned suicidal thoughts."
"OK—wait, what?"

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

funkaoshi wrote:

Are the actual rules going to change a lot (and the lists of powers, forms, etc)? It still might be a fun little project. That spell is intense. Probably the best part of the spell section.

I might make some additions, especially to the Special Forms, just because I can, but everything that's there should still be there.

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

I worked on this a little bit last night. I have something that looks like this right now: http://cl.ly/IBBu. I need to add all the rules for domination next, and double check to see if I missed anything else. And then figure out how to host it somewhere. It shouldn't be tough to update things if you add new powers / forms.

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

This web application should correctly cast the summon spell.

Is making something like this cool? I probably should have asked first. Next time!

Re: Can Someone Walk Me Through Rolling Up a Summoned Entity?

Very nice, funkaoshi.

You can summon a 0 HD monster, which just gets base stats. The lowest the program seems to allow is a 1HD monster

Also on the popup for the Bonuses you spell Sacrificing "scarificing"