Summon Adjustments

[Jencent]

No, undead and conduit needs to be pushed down a bit.

Undead are meant to be slightly above the summoning average. In exchange for this boost the PC in question is exiled from half the server (surface areas) and killed on sight when found, generally. It's a trade off.

As an aside, I do find it mildly aggravating how a WM with LM dip can toss out a Mords and WoF, followed by summoning a Dev, before Criting my caster into the ground as they stand there in shock saying "lol what?"

Also summons in pvp mostly point less, coz 99% of fight starts with mord and wof. Even if you face a mundie. Thx lormagedone.

[Kalthariam]

All summons just immediately get no save dismissed by WoF. which is easily accessible to anyone whom actually cares. So yeah. Summons in PvP is pointless to bring up.

The only people whose summons matter in PvP are the warlocks that get the special ability to ignore the rules everyone else is stuck with.

[-XXX-]

Undead summons are in a much cleaner state than the rest of the summons right now.
UCL makes their power level progression more seamless and level-range appropriate during leveling and their final versions really aren't overpowered.

By comparison Conjuration summons are a mess:
Summon creature line of spells has awful baseline stats to compensate for:

• SFB
• conju SF bumping the summons one tier higher and ECB in case of SC IX / Ele Swarm

This makes them kinda bad for ...pretty much anything right now TBH

Planar summons get ECB but there are only 3 versions of Planar Binding, so the power level progression is pretty far from seamless here. It would be also worth noting that Greater Planar Binding is a spell characters get around lvl 15, so it kinda leaps ahead of the curve where character leveling is concerned.

Planar Conduit is still the outlier here - it starts at higher baseline stats compared to MDust and gets both SFB and ECB. This puts it above the rest of the summons by no small margin and the 1x use/rest deal doesn't really address any PvE concerns as the overwhelming majority of the PvE content doesn't use WoF to counter summons (yet).

---

Possible solution:

1) divorce any and all summons other than the summon creature line of spells from ECB
2) overhaul Planar Binding spells to use the undead summoning template - 7 outsider tiers, have them use "UCL" (PCL?/OCL?) and have Conduit work like MDust in the sense that it unlocks T6 and T7 summons - make these key off Conju SFB
3) tweak the stats of summon creature spells - divorce from Conju SFB but keep ECB, lower the spellcraft requirement for Elemental Meteor to reign it in line with Conduit and MDust.

[Gibbaddy]

Really hoping we can get some Dev input on this eventually. I know their waiting for the initial pushback to die down, but hopefully they have something in the works to repair this obvious overstep.

[Jencent]

Really hoping we can get some Dev input on this eventually. I know their waiting for the initial pushback to die down, but hopefully they have something in the works to repair this obvious overstep.

Im fine till i can summon vamps via wands to kill almost any epic boss. https://youtu.be/4lTVsxqylMQ

Biteback damage meatwall from wand? Gimme that!

[AnselHoenheim]

Really hoping we can get some Dev input on this eventually. I know their waiting for the initial pushback to die down, but hopefully they have something in the works to repair this obvious overstep.

Im fine till i can summon vamps via wands to kill almost any epic boss. https://youtu.be/4lTVsxqylMQ

Biteback damage meatwall from wand? Gimme that!

Wait, you can do that with just a wand and necro focuses? This seems absurdly OP, an oversight from the dev team and I hope it's fixed soon.

[-XXX-]

Mummy Dust is needed to get a T6 vamp off the Animate Dead spell

• the vid says more about biteback than it does about the summon and its stats
• most Arelith live bosses have regen, which the PGCC prismatic dragon doesn't have (so the biteback damage sticks)

[Mamma ama Warlock]

Really hoping we can get some Dev input on this eventually. I know their waiting for the initial pushback to die down, but hopefully they have something in the works to repair this obvious overstep.

Im fine till i can summon vamps via wands to kill almost any epic boss. https://youtu.be/4lTVsxqylMQ

Biteback damage meatwall from wand? Gimme that!

Wait what. That's so silly. I wonder if that's gonna get cut by taking away the biteback, or by banning the spell from wands. My necro build is hitting the Craft Wand soon, and I wonder if that'll work xD

Mummy Dust is needed to get a T6 vamp off the Animate Dead spell

• the vid says more about biteback than it does about the summon and its stats
• most Arelith live bosses have regen, which the PGCC prismatic dragon doesn't have (so the biteback damage sticks)

Considering we can only do so much now to buff the summons, getting an unlimited undead meatbag generator (the limit is wands, but that's not expensive in the grand scheme of things) is a nice emergency tool to have.

[Jencent]

Really hoping we can get some Dev input on this eventually. I know their waiting for the initial pushback to die down, but hopefully they have something in the works to repair this obvious overstep.

Im fine till i can summon vamps via wands to kill almost any epic boss. https://youtu.be/4lTVsxqylMQ

Biteback damage meatwall from wand? Gimme that!

Wait, you can do that with just a wand and necro focuses? This seems absurdly OP, an oversight from the dev team and I hope it's fixed soon.

Yeah. Somehow vamps get T6 unit from wand, but animate dead supposed to be A TIER LOWER. So its imposible to have bloodknight from wand. But by some reason we have it.

Mummy Dust is needed to get a T6 vamp off the Animate Dead spell

• the vid says more about biteback than it does about the summon and its stats
• most Arelith live bosses have regen, which the PGCC prismatic dragon doesn't have (so the biteback damage sticks)

On the vid i even didnt Dbuff or do something by myself. Coz MOST bosses do not protected from 0 circle spell spam. So i just throw new and new Knight with spamming 20₂₅ damage spell x2 turn.

Really hoping we can get some Dev input on this eventually. I know their waiting for the initial pushback to die down, but hopefully they have something in the works to repair this obvious overstep.

Im fine till i can summon vamps via wands to kill almost any epic boss. https://youtu.be/4lTVsxqylMQ

Biteback damage meatwall from wand? Gimme that!

Wait what. That's so silly. I wonder if that's gonna get cut by taking away the biteback, or by banning the spell from wands. My necro build is hitting the Craft Wand soon, and I wonder if that'll work xD

Mummy Dust is needed to get a T6 vamp off the Animate Dead spell

• the vid says more about biteback than it does about the summon and its stats
• most Arelith live bosses have regen, which the PGCC prismatic dragon doesn't have (so the biteback damage sticks)

Considering we can only do so much now to buff the summons, getting an unlimited undead meatbag generator (the limit is wands, but that's not expensive in the grand scheme of things) is a nice emergency tool to have.

You have to be 15+ PM for that. Without EMD you cant summon bloodknight from wand. And yes, its works good as hell on live. Epic bosses is like a snak for me, coz of meatshield of UD.

And yes. By some reason PPL thing wand-undead is useless. But... Somehow it works in PVE and PVP. You just spit unlimited summons and its all. You FORCED to kill it to not eat 4+ APR per round with 5% of each to hit you (1d8+5NEG+4d12+17 phisical damage per attack.). And you will lose 2 ac coz of flanking. And also you can have archer or BITEBACK summon. So any melee without 200+WOF are cursed with dealing something against that salty summons.

Even more. You can just slap Inflict wounds spell on wands and keep healing your UD and his biteback will keep damaging boss withotu a risk to be attacked while you are re-summon something new.

Also for PVP i have some dirty tricks. Like cheap damage or fishing for Stat/LVL drain on nat hit. yeah. We have an undead summons WITH STAT/LVLdrain at the same time. A bit dirty, because you have unlimited amount of summons from wands.

And YES. As far as i know, Spellcraft do not work on that stat/Lvl drain, because it onjit effect, not a real spell.

I used that strat on a long run for huge amount of time. And it works... But you are a EVIL PM, you have to spend around 3₄ feats on that and you have to spend 15+lvls in PM lvls. So its a huge chunk of lvls, feats and money, just to be that dirty tricky.

[Mamma ama Warlock]

I used that strat on a long run for huge amount of time. And it works... But you are a EVIL PM, you have to spend around 3₄ feats on that and you have to spend 15+lvls in PM lvls. So its a huge chunk of lvls, feats and money, just to be that dirty tricky.

Dirgesingers also get the Mummy Dust specials, right?

[-XXX-]

The PGCC Prismatic Dragon is super NOT representative of Arelith Live engame bosses - sure, it has 70 AC, but has only 700hp and lacks a lot of common immunities.

It'd be also good not to get hung up on how low lvl the Animate Dead spell is - to get T6 undead summons out of it, a character needs to have the MDust feat (21 caster or 13 PM or 10 dirgesinger). So the spell merely scales with character power - by the time a character can do this, they can do a lot more.
The actual resource at play here are summon slots - one of which gets locked by using this method (we're getting one T6 summon where we could be getting two).

Finally, why even use craft wand here? Animate Dead scrolls are pretty common loot.

[Jencent]

I used that strat on a long run for huge amount of time. And it works... But you are a EVIL PM, you have to spend around 3₄ feats on that and you have to spend 15+lvls in PM lvls. So its a huge chunk of lvls, feats and money, just to be that dirty tricky.

Dirgesingers also get the Mummy Dust specials, right?

Not sure. You must have HIGHEST UCL for that wandspikymeatshield thing.

[Jencent]

The PGCC Prismatic Dragon is super NOT representative of Arelith Live engame bosses - sure, it has 70 AC, but has only 700hp and lacks a lot of common immunities.

It'd be also good not to get hung up on how low lvl the Animate Dead spell is - to get T6 undead summons out of it, a character needs to have the MDust feat (21 caster or 13 PM or 10 dirgesinger). So the spell merely scales with character power - by the time a character can do this, they can do a lot more.
The actual resource at play here are summon slots - one of which gets locked by using this method (we're getting one T6 summon where we could be getting two).

Finally, why even use craft wand here? Animate Dead scrolls are pretty common loot.

It works on live too. I already grinding some mid-lvl epic dungs with undeads. But in a bit other way. WoF make zero sense to me, coz i just eat it with my unlimited summons.

Okay. You unsummon one pack, what next? I have 5+ wands with 40 charges on it.

Also scrolls from loot table is not that useful, coz you cant grind that much for low price. I use CREATE UNDEAD and GCU from scroll what i loot just to make my enemy angry. Coz i start to rotate Summons and who know what next will be? Buch of skely with archers? Ghouls with stat drain? Or just trashy vamps or SOME mums with fear aure. (Or just use drowned for really cheap cold damage aura)

I do love to juggle with summons, scrolls and wands.

And also.. Even if epic boss have 2k HP... No matter till he is not immune to neg.damage. Coz here is not that much diff to spit a bit more vamps from wands. Which you can create at the battlefield (Yes, i have x4 animate dead spells on belst just in the case of wanding in the middle of battle.)

[-XXX-]

WoF make zero sense to me, coz i just eat it with my unlimited summons.

ATM WoF exists mainly for saveless blindness and to answer Planar Conduit - which still threatens Player Character builds more than MDust summons.
Furthermore, there are additional non-WoF answers to undead summons (turn/halt undead, undead warding).
TBH I'm not that impressed by the proposed solution of using wands to keep throwing one vamp at a time at someone - the only aspect in which this wouldn't be straight up worse than using Gate (stronger, has SR) is gp cost efficiency. Then again, assume unlimited funds where PvP balance is concerned.

[Jencent]

WoF make zero sense to me, coz i just eat it with my unlimited summons.

ATM WoF exists mainly for saveless blindness and to answer Planar Conduit - which still threatens Player Character builds more than MDust summons.
Furthermore, there are additional non-WoF answers to undead summons (turn/halt undead, undead warding).
TBH I'm not that impressed by the proposed solution of using wands to keep throwing one vamp at a time at someone - the only aspect in which this wouldn't be straight up worse than using Gate (stronger, has SR) is gp cost efficiency. Then again, assume unlimited funds where PvP balance is concerned.

Vamps have around 26sr?.. Not sure. But again. Any reason to hold more than 1 wand of haltud?

Just in the case of ppl like me? Who carry 10 wands of ud?

[-XXX-]

Vamps have around 26sr?

Not generally - functional SR on Undead summons requires specific build choices:

• Pale Master: Undead summoned by a Pale Master have scaling spell resistance equal to 6 + Pale Master level.
• Undying Pact Warlock: Undead Summons get bonus SR equal to 6 + 1/2 Warlock levels. Stacks with Palemaster.
• Necromancy Specialist Wizard: Summons gain 15 + (Wizard Level/2) Spell Resistance

Even then one T6 undead is going to be weaker than a Gate summon.

[Biolab00]

Simple solution.
Force Animate Dead to only summon Tier 1 to 5 Undead only regardless of Dust or not, like how Eldritch summon 1-4 works.

[Jencent]

Simple solution.
Force Animate Dead to only summon Tier 1 to 5 Undead only regardless of Dust or not, like how Eldritch summon 1-4 works.

Probably this things already fixed, as far as i know.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

we'll be fixing UCL for items.

[MartialHag]

Yeah. Somehow vamps get T6 unit from wand, but animate dead supposed to be A TIER LOWER. So its imposible to have bloodknight from wand. But by some reason we have it.

Clarification here, the 1 Tier lower ONLY applies to Streams that usually only summon one Undead (Abomination and Revenants). Every other Stream merely gets two less Summons to a minimum of one. As Vamps usually get two Summons they do not get their Tier decreased but numbers lowered to one Summon at UCL Tier.

[Jencent]

we'll be fixing UCL for items.

Like how?

[In Sorrow We Trust]

we'll be fixing UCL for items.

Like how?

items have a caster level attached to them, and you can see them by examining the item.

that UCL exceeds the caster level given by the item is full stop a bug that was just never fixed

[Jencent]

we'll be fixing UCL for items.

Like how?

items have a caster level attached to them, and you can see them by examining the item.

that UCL exceeds the caster level given by the item is full stop a bug that was just never fixed

Damn... Same with scrolls? Coz now all beside caster book will be trash as hell. As far as i can understand.

Now i can say goodbye to my perfect fit conception of undead commander with tons of undead from the pocket.

[-XXX-]

So a Create Greater Undead scroll would produce T4 undead?
If the idea is to force necromancers to resort to Gate and Greater Planar Binding scrolls instead of staying on theme, then this sure would be one way to go about it...

[Biolab00]

Glad that the UCL on consumables for undead summoning will be fixed.
There is no reason that the scroll should have higher UCL, even if it's used by an epic palemaster or anyone with epic mummy dust feat.
The higher UCL should be solely reserved from inherent caster level and hence, only from the spellbooks.