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Change the summoning limit to 2 PER character?


relight
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It's wierd that once my mage has 2 summons my priest cannot summon anything at all. They were my mage's summons, why should be priest be affected? I don't get it at all.

 

Is there any way to change the limit by script editing? X per character would be nice. (Makes more sense than X per party)

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The limit is hard coded into the game so scripting can't change it.

 

Jeff put the limit into the game after he started getting curious during beta testing on how people were playing the major fights. When he found out that the Master of the Pit fight in Soultaker's Pit were all being done by summoning lots of creations, he changed it.

 

I doubt he will change it to summons per character since some people run parties where all the characters would be able to do summons. He might increase the total number per party. We'll see in a few months.

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That seems like a bad idea, though. The parties most in need of summoning are the parties short on characters, particularly meat shields. Maybe it would balance to have a total number of party members and summonings capped at six, so a full four-member party could have the usual two and a singleton could add up to five minions.

 

—Alorael, who will add that summon limits have nothing to do with realism (even fantasy realism) and everything to do with balance. Summoned hordes break the game and therefore must be permitted, and even four minions is getting close to horde material.

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Jeff griped about instant armies where the party size could triple from 4 to 12 in a few rounds. Hasted summons are great. smile

 

The older games had more mage summoned creatures appearing if they were weaker for each casting. But that really fills up the area with meatshields.

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Uh... I guess I'll have to leave that. I probably met prevented, or possibly prohibited, but we'll never know.

 

—Alorael, who is impressed by his own boundless linguistic ingenuity. Also possibly brain rot, as he has had to scour his posts for rather worrisomely bad mistakes. Like parties, not party's. He may, in fact, be turning into an AIMspeeker years after it was "acceptable" to be one.

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Originally Posted By: Randomizer
The limit is hard coded into the game so scripting can't change it.

Jeff put the limit into the game after he started getting curious during beta testing on how people were playing the major fights. When he found out that the Master of the Pit fight in Soultaker's Pit were all being done by summoning lots of creations, he changed it.

I doubt he will change it to summons per character since some people run parties where all the characters would be able to do summons. He might increase the total number per party. We'll see in a few months.


I see, thanks, but I still think it'd be a lot more fun to have a lot of pets(I run a mage party). If summons are overpowered perhaps it can be belanced by lowering summon's hp (so they can die a lot easier), or reducing buff durations? Anyway there is no way to change it now, hope Jeff will change this in A6.
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Originally Posted By: relight
I see, thanks, but I still think it'd be a lot more fun to have a lot of pets(I run a mage party). If summons are overpowered perhaps it can be belanced by lowering summon's hp (so they can die a lot easier), or reducing buff durations?


Part of the problem is that summoning creates extra targets for monsters to attack instead of you, so unlimited summoning would allow you to create a big ol' wall of summons that monsters can't get through to reach you. It doesn't matter if they die in one hit if you can summon enough of them.
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Welcome to the forums.

You just recall me about the topic i created one month ago named as "two summon cap and beastmaster trait"if you have played earlier parts,this topic was really logical but it is highly unlikely that jeff is going to change his mind even after taxing xp penalty.frown

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I strongly disagree that singletons "need" to be able to summon more creatures. That totally defeats the purpose of playing as a singleton and reduces game strategy to "cast summon a lot." Again, I don't see the problem in limiting it to 1 per caster.

 

At least we're past the days of summoning vampires, who summon more vampires, who summon...

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This has gone sort of off-topic lol, anyway 2 per caster would be nice IMO, or create some anti-summoning spells that deals a lot of damges to summons so even if you summon a lot, they die very quickly(warcraft3 have this kind of spell/items to destroy necromancer armies that summon a LOT of skeletons).

 

There are ways to balance things out instead of limiting them. Take the old westwood game Nox for example, summons are limited in slot, you can have at most 4 summons per Conjurer, but summons that take 1 slot are weak. So you can choose to have 2 weak summons+1 medium summon, or one big summon that take all 4 slots.

 

PS. I'm just giving out ideas. It's ok if it's hard-coded in A5, it's still a great game.

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Originally Posted By: relight
This has gone sort of off-topic lol, anyway 2 per caster would be nice IMO, or create some anti-summoning spells that deals a lot of damges to summons so even if you summon a lot, they die very quickly(warcraft3 have this kind of spell/items to destroy necromancer armies that summon a LOT of skeletons).


Why would having an unlimited number of summons that die at the drop of a hat be more fun than having a limited number of summons that don't?
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  • 1 month later...

Because some people prefer the game that way. I personally think that the limited summons is better because not all monsters are going to have that spell and the ones that do will be constantly trying to either blast them all or out-summon you or it will die in seconds. I mean turns. Either ways, if there are infinite summons the best way to use that would be to have a mage and a priest and a summoner. The summoner would summon constantly. The priest would bless and the mage would haste. With a strong-type summon and lots of energy potions in a few turns you have an army capable of killing almost any enemy except for certain rare monsters that cannot be killed the normal way, or the ones that have a 'kill all summons' spell. There might be at most 10 different such enemies. Maybe a geneforge-esque setup would do, such as you don't get your mp back? Or a new idea, and that is that having summons forces you to control them, forcing you to use ap to control them. Perhaps the higher your level is the more shared ap you and your summons use. That would make sense as that would mean a level 2 could manage 2 while a level 10 maybe 6 and a level 50 uses 10. A logarithmic scale. Except for the level 1 which only gets 1. That should be practical. The exact formula I used to come up with that is-

maxsummons=logab(level/2,5)*4+2;

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Complicated, and I'm not clear on how balancing that ends up significantly better than the current system for a game that isn't, in the end, built around summoning. The point of enemies is that you're not supposed to get through them unharmed by sending in your armies. Thus, the cap.

 

—Alorael, who would like to point out that A1-A3, at least, have infinite summons and no real balance problems from them. A5 really becomes most difficult with summons because there are monsters that are best fought with distraction, which didn't come up in the earlier and less enemy-specific battles.

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  • 2 weeks later...

In Blades of Avernum, my high level party's mage finds Simulacrum invaluable. Being able to make copies of the Demon Lord attacking you is pretty sweet. Especially when the Priest and Warrior are generally being more effective in this particular scenario.

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