The summon nerf was badly needed. Any summoner's leveling experience was basically a breeze compared to the other classes, but I fear the nerf might be more of a band-aid fix than a proper solution to that problem.
The summons themselves, I believe, are suffering from two main issues that make them so damn powerful:
- They are far too reliable.
- They are far too easy to obtain.
Both of these issues can be fixed, but that is far from easy. Since it was the non-epic summons that mostly got hit by this, I'll focus on those.
- The first problem is about their reliability. Normal classes have to be wary of many dangers that the summons simply don't care about. Mundies have to be wary of enemy casters that have crowd control spells - fail the save against Hold Person, and you can say goodbye to your godsave (or your life). Mundies can suddenly get reduced to minced meat via a few bad rolls. After all, we've all had times when we were slowly chipping away at a boss only for the thing to roll two crits in a row and suddenly turn the battle into a chase, as you madly try to get away to heal up.
Elementals are death magic-immune, mind-immune, crit-immune, stat reduction-immune... basically immune to anything interesting. Yeah, they can be dismissed, banished, and wofed, but if you compare the amount of PvE mobs capable of casting those spells to the everpresent amount of mages that can absolutely ruin an average WM's day, then the danger becomes laughable in comparison. There is scarcely anything that can give you that sudden "oh crap" feeling when playing a summoner.
Even if the summon does end up screwing up, it is (with the exception of the above spells) never instantaneous. Summons die slowly due to their crit-immunity and DR. A summoner can clearly tell that they are losing the fight, and just send the summon away from themselves, dragging whatever monstrosity was that pummeling it with it, while the summoner retreats to safety.
And before anyone complains that such a thing basically ends their dungeon run, as they cannot get a second summon up, please consider that if a mundie gets similarly overwhelmed, they don't get to retreat. They just die.
The fix here would be to essentially remake the higher Summon Creature spells and get rid of elementals completely.
The whole line of those spells begins very nicely with various creatures with unique abilities, some even tailored specifically to Underdark characters, only to suddenly get replaced with a boring elemental that just gets progressively bigger.
It's almost like NWN devs gave up halfway through developing those. Arelith devs got us some really fancy creatures all across the board, maybe they should continue the trend and replace the elementals as well? Instead of upgrading a dire tiger into an elemental, a wizard could instead upgrade it into a yeti or a displacer beast. A cool and powerful creature, but just as vulnerable to the many dangers one encounters while adventuring as any other.
- The second problem is how easy it is to get those summons going.
You hit level 13 on a wizard, and BAM! Here you go, have a level 13 appropriate summon that will tear through content with little effort. Congratulations, you've truly earned it.
You hit level 13 on a WM? Oh boy, you better have a greensteel scimitar, a set of mithril armor, two sets of enchanted equipment, a steady supply of wards, enough money to fund your healing potion addiction, and a three-story house in Miami, or you are going to SUFFER.
Yeah, you could get this stuff by joining a faction, but even that requires at least some effort.
A summoner just gets their stuff because they killed enough goblins, and requires basically no effort to be functional.
This one has no easy fix - the sequencers were a good attempt, but in the end, they made it even easier to be a summoner. I distinctly remember playing a spontaneous caster that would normally have to buy wards or sacrifice valuable spell slots to get my summon to full power, but the implementation of the sequencers allowed me to just ressumon whenever I wanted, and have the thing fully warded in a matter of seconds.
Here, something would have to be done to make the summoners more reliant on their inventory, rather than base their summon's power purely on their character sheet.
All the summons should be nerfed even harder. With no investment on the summoner's part, they should be as strong as a wet noodle - just as any other class is in similar conditions.
On the other hand, I'd propose adding something like Assembly Templates, except for summoners, to allow them a fighting chance. You'd cast the summoning spell on the thing, and it would conjure forth a buffed creature. Name it an Arcane Conduit or something, and create different tiers made of increasingly rare materials that confer increasingly bigger bonuses on the creatures. Perhaps add some slots on those to allow granting the summons customized buffs ('add-ons', that would also be craftable, similar to temporary essences), so the summons wouldn't just be always the same thing everywhere. A warlock could make summons that make for more effective meat shields, with add-ons that increased AC and DR, as they blast their enemies, while a cleric would use those with stronger offense while providing their summon with healing.
You could even make a special add-on that would take up all of the slots, and even decrease the summon's stats a bit, but offered them a chance to save against WoF much like the Eldritch Summon does. That would allow summoners other than warlock to partake in PVP without being laughably inefficient.
Generally speaking, playing a summoner is extremely boring at the moment. All the summons are basically the same no matter what character you pick, the gameplay style doesn't require you to do much planning, and obtaining cool items, whether it be through loot, crafting, or trade, brings you no real satisfaction, as you don't really need them.
I do realize that the implementation of the "Summoner Assembly Template" is more like a faraway dream, due to the workload required. Still, I do think that something should be done to get a summoner's progression through the early levels back in line with everyone else, to force them to put more effort into being functional, but reward it with more power and customization options. Besides, adding some flair and variance to the summoned creatures themselves wouldn't hurt, so you don't encounter literally the same exact thing whenever you happen to meet a wizard.
