Summon Buff Changes

[-XXX-]

Basically, you can no longer buff your summons with single target spells. Instead you can craft one of 6 craftables that can enhance your summons with a preset combination of buffs. You can read more details here : viewtopic.php?p=299945#p299945


I've been using Conduit summons with orb cradle + mass bull's str + mass bear's endurance, then mass haste + standard bearer's spear + scabbard of blessing for boss fights and they've been doing just fine.

[I will never sleep]

Not a fan of this change. It creates another consumable mini-game (with runic materials no less), has no relation to anything resembling DnD mechanics, and makes summons-dependent casters even less intuitive.

I've so far been able to avoid mechanics I don't like and still get massive enjoyment from the game, but this puts a worrisome amount of content on the wrong side of the caution tape.

Haven't read the whole thread but basically this. I've stopped paying attention to mechanics almost entirely outside of some Sail Meta stuff (and that's just stacking a skill) but this feels like changing something fundamental about the game.

Nerf to summons are welcome but please don't give me more things to carry. Our inventories are full enough as it is.

[TurningLeaf]

Interesting way to tackle the issue, seems like adding new required components for the actual summoning spells might have been a more traditional way to achieve very similar results

[Kilnasaggart]

I've been using Conduit summons with orb cradle + mass bull's str + mass bear's endurance, then mass haste + standard bearer's spear + scabbard of blessing for boss fights and they've been doing just fine.

Thanks to Olivia as always, my fountain of knowledge. So just a few quick and probably useless (but free and honest) feedbacks :
- I came back to playing NWN on Arelith after 15 years as the summoning system was looking good enough. Played maxed out specialist summoners (h/t Persis), or epic summon/epic transmuter (stupid Marcus). It was funny, but this looks now just no fun to me, to be honest. 27 years of marriage, four boys, job, and now I have to run after a reboot to get the chest in Shadow Cordor Crypt or Avernus ? Pass ! (and I'll lose, always). And I truly dislike the simple notion of "templates" and fixed spell lists.
- summons were truly Oped as we all know, I could prance to Titan's peak through Pandemonium without even slinging a spell apart to buff my summons (h/t Olivia, again). Is this reasonable ? Of course not. "Conduit" had to be nerfed, but not "summons". Good intentions, but what does a 3rd lvl do now ? Sling a 2d4+2 MM ? That makes no sense.
- Going from +44 ab to +40 ? Okay. From 630 hp to 555 ? Doable, and I'm so surprised you haven't nerfed the 15/+7 and rege 10, these are the true imbalances. Buuuut ? Going from 63 AC (okay, short-lived) to 45 ? That one is a game breaker.
- I always avoided going through the tons of Arelith pages of new classes with new feats with new... everything. Yes, I know the NWN Wiki by heart, but I'm not to swallow the "whole" Arelith wiki just to eventually play a lazy mage. I just had a "headache" reading your new things. You created a totally new game, and I truly respect that. It's just not something I feel I can decently play.
- I now understand why a few weeks back a kobold in the Hub was looking for mass endurance, mass strength, mass whatever. I've been playing 4 or 5 30th-lvl wizards, they never even knew such spells existed. I mean, even at the Arcane Tower during the yearly exchange of scrolls, Gimdar never proposed it to me. Never trust a gnome, the kobold was right ! (and to XXX, what the heck is "standard bearer's spear" ! - no, I don't ask ). I take the bet those mass-whatnots will be the hype of the next months. Yes, to play the game as it used to. Which again, makes no sense, and as the staff will feel compelled to ban these again. Or roll back, whatever, it's just not stable.
- if you look at it, there are not so many pure wizards, truth be told. And yes, I still include those stinky mage/ranger builds there ( ). All you'll get now are, what, spellswords, paladins, priests, shadowdancer builds ? (not a single class I would personally play though). Myon's dark-leathered violent people
- if I had knew about it all, I would never have thrown Marcus where he stands now RP-wise. Just now has a 100% chance to fail at what he was doing. Let's consider the bloke died wherever as his toads mysteriously failed him, I hope Bendir will shed a tear still (erm, it's not a question, though).

All in all, a very good opportunity to take some healthy break of a game where we collectively spend too much time anyway (I'll check it all back near year-end, I can't see how it can stay as is). Just told the story to wifey who's answer was "thank them all for me, I like them so much for it". Again, Irongron and the DM staff you collectively do a truly wondrous job, no pun nor brown-nosing there. It's just an excellent place.

Special hugs to Persis (yes, I know it's forbidden, still), Olivia (the reference, even if Mirabilis my 1st character got heart-broken), and the whole Bendirian crew (Ex, Z...), and Mia, Marcus NEVER thought a single word of it all, even IRL I feel so sorry. May Tymora bless you all.

Still, where the heck is Sal ??

[-XXX-]

what the heck is "standard bearer's spear"

These can be found in weapon racks. They give access to short duration aura of vitality.

[Kalthariam]

Basically, you can no longer buff your summons with single target spells. Instead you can craft one of 6 craftables that can enhance your summons with a preset combination of buffs. You can read more details here : viewtopic.php?p=299945#p299945


I've been using Conduit summons with orb cradle + mass bull's str + mass bear's endurance, then mass haste + standard bearer's spear + scabbard of blessing for boss fights and they've been doing just fine.

Well, that's nice. I'm glad you're still enjoying yourself.

I think I get to cast Good Hope, Bless, Circle of Protection from Alignment, and Prayer on my summons.

I can't even cast regenerate on them anymore despite it being a heal spell not a buff spell, so one of my core class features "Overheal" is basically impossible to keep up on any summon anymore.

The buff items do not remotely make up even half of what my summons lost. So I'm effectively a level 30 Healer Cleric, that is now dead in the water, because Conjuration is literally the only thing I can do, because I had to give up everything else to be a healer cleric.

[-XXX-]

I think I get to cast Good Hope, Bless, Circle of Protection from Alignment, and Prayer on my summons.

Do that and use the druidic sequencer and you should be fine (just make sure to use the sequencer first as they strip all previously applied buffs from summons)

[Kalthariam]

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree.

5 Str
5 Dex
5 AC
And some DR that gets chewed through in 12 seconds is not going to salvage my summons.

[Halibutthead]

i've gotta say: my only regret about the new system is that my wizard wasn't 1 level higher so i could have a chance at getting my minor award back when i roll her.
because now she'll never make it. gg wp, devs. i think i'll play something else

[Guerra]

Could clerics get another round of domain change tokens? I think some of us will want to adjust our characters due to this change.

[xf1313]

Basically, you can no longer buff your summons with single target spells. Instead you can craft one of 6 craftables that can enhance your summons with a preset combination of buffs. You can read more details here : viewtopic.php?p=299945#p299945


I've been using Conduit summons with orb cradle + mass bull's str + mass bear's endurance, then mass haste + standard bearer's spear + scabbard of blessing for boss fights and they've been doing just fine.

For wizards, yeah, I tried with a Druid and partied a wizard, the summons are doing ok with mass zoo. But not so much without them.

There’ll be a surge of demand for wizards, lore skill, and mass zoo spell scrolls. The team did not stop summon buffing, they made it more expensive.

[-XXX-]

The druidic sequencers confer maximized bull's str and cat's grace, so mass zoo spells aren't a necessity. Barkskin too makes these fairly viable IMO.

I think that the actual complaint here might be that people also want/are used to have concealment on their summons, which is hard to pull off without the access to mass zoo spells now. I tried addressing that here : viewtopic.php?p=300311#p300311

[Arjay670]

I love that one of the stated reasons for this was to free up spell slots, but now I'm going to have to use all my 6th level spells on buffs instead of second level and first.

[Ping14]

So I delevelled my Shaman to see the changes of runic sequencers in terms of EPIC CONTENT.
Build is Shaman/Barb/Ranger 23/3/4 split on final form
Tribal Barbarian / Archer Path
GSF Transmutation (Currently no Mass Zoo) (EDIT: I'm stupid, Shamans doesn't get Mass Zoo. Just tested in PGCC)

I've only tried the Lesser Runic Sequencers and here's my take:

Name: Orb Cradle
Casts:
* Mage Armor
* Shield
* Improved Invisibility
* Ultravision

Experience: This is best placed on Fire/Water Elementals, why? When you're summoning those streams, you're mostly interested in the damage output of the fire elemental or the Regen aura of the water elemental. It gives them the much needed survivability because of +7AC (+4 def, +1 dodge, +1 nat, +1 armor) and 50% concealment. These streams area also the streams you want when you want to do a darkness tactic. This runic sequencer is also the choice when you want your planar conduit to tank more. In dungeons with invisibility purge, might aswell forget using this, because, that +7 AC will not carry you, but if you want ultravision that hard for Darkness dankness, then give it a go.

Name: Natural Reagents
Casts:
* Barkskin
* Stoneskin
* Bull's Strength
* Cat's Grace

Experience: Auto-maximized, which is great! This is the best all rounder out of all the three. It gives your summons +7AC, and +2AB/Dmg, DR is mostly just for show since its expected to just slough off anyway. Its best for your Air Elemental, which already has a 50% inherent concealment. Its mostly used in dungeons with invisibility purge mobs.

Name: Protective Thurible
Casts:
* Negative Energy Protection
* Death Ward
* Protection from Alignment
* Aid

Experience: Its BAD. Really really bad, and should be called Protective "Terrible." The only time this is useful is when you want to protect an animal companion from death magic. True, there's NEB casting mobs and onhit level drain, but with the loss of AC and Kill pressure. The +1 AB of Aid doesn't cut it, especially when the buff of aid is removed when the temp hitpoints are gone (Im not sure if this is fixed already, hence could be wrong). It gives +1AB 2AC, 2Uni, 4will, +1fear and some situational immunities, but what is the point when your summon cannot provide kill pressure and proper protection? You're much better using other sequencers and then resummoning them + sequencer again when they die of NEB/drain/Death

Mostly Suggestions:

1. Orb Cradle - No complains, it does its job good enough, and the 50% concealment carries it.

2. Natural Reagents - The single most "must have" sequencer out of all the three. It provides AC and AB which is what you really want in a summon. Hence if you're a summoner with druid/ranger dip, its best that you take atleast 1 herbalism and craft it at 4x slower speed than a dedicated herbalist. That said, it might be better if the ranger/druid restriction is removed. I can imagine lowbies wanting this and having a hard time looking for a ranger/druid with herbalism.

3. Protective "Terrible" - I hate it, I hate it so bad. One way to salvage this is: Remove NEP and Death Ward, you don't see much of them until late game anyway. Maybe even remove PFA, since you'd rather just cast Magic Circle to gain it (scrolls are widely available and lasts an approx 90mins RL maybe even more, there's even the mundane horn - which I suggest to be craftable too, and be made 2x a day). Give it Shield of Faith, Aid, Freedom of Movement, See Invisibility, why? Because with that combination, a Druid can now do his Stonehold shenanigans while still retaining some AC and kill pressure. See invis is good for the invisible casters scattered around the server. Can also combo it with Grease and Web. Why early FoM? Because once you get Elementals, you don't need FOM that much aside from the on hit on spiders.

Mostly Theorycrafting (No experience YET)

1. Name: Arcane Amplifier
Casts:
* Same as Lesser, Arcane.
* Premonition
* Spell Mantle

Thoughts: Spell mantle now as a turn/level, this will be a great choice for PVP since it outright absorbs WoF (I think? Could be wrong). There are dungeons with dismissal and banishment too, which both checks SR, which means it can be absorbed. This makes Summons more threatening than before when you see them with that glowing spell mantle!

Name: Petrified Bluewood
Casts:
* Same as Lesser, Druidic.
** Stoneskin upgraded to Greater variant.
* Energy Buffer
* Freedom of Movement

Thoughts: The all around Epic Content sequencer. But with the suggestion placed above, it might be better to remove FoM from this one and instead place Monstrous regeneration or Regenerate. It fits the theme of being an all-rounder. I don't mind this being gate locked by Druids/Ranger carpenters. But it maybe wanted so bad by others that the thought of not getting it might just give frustration.

Name: Reliquary Codex
Casts:
* Same as Lesser, Divine.
* True Seeing
* Spell Resistance

Thoughts: The slightly better Protective "Terrible", which is only carried by the 42SR. This is a BIG deal! You won't need to worry about FOM/Banishment/Dismissal while its up (and not breached). In PVP, it loses a whole round of hasted tempo, breach, breach, FoM/Banish/Dismiss, atleast when faced with conduit. My suggestion, remove SR and TS. Give it NEP and Death Ward instead, and upgrade See invisibility with True sight. Why remove SR? Greater Arcane Sequencer already has that function in PVP, and is much easier to remove with less tempo needed, they can opt not to breach it and instead use persistent AoE to drain spell absorption.

Final thoughts and suggestions:

Arcane Runic Sequencer
Casts:
Lesser -
* Mage Armor
* Shield
* Improved Invisibility
* Ultravision
Greater -
* Premonition
* Spell Mantle

Nature Runic Sequencer (Consider removing druid/ranger gate lock, atleast for lesser, greater is debatable)
Casts:
Lesser -
* Barkskin
* Stoneskin
* Bull's Strength
* Cat's Grace
Greater -
* Monstrous Regeneration / Regenerate
* Greater variant of Stoneskin
* Energy Buffer

Divine Runic Sequencer
Casts:
Lesser -
* Aid
* Shield of Faith
* Freedom of Movement
* See Invisibility
Greater -
* Negative Energy Protection
* Death Ward
* See Invisibility Upgraded to True Sight

As for the argument of freeing up spell slots: For Shaman, it did free up some spell slots on 2nd and 3rd circle. Which means I can just burn 2nd level circle slots on myself and my henchmen/companions, then leave up the 3rd spell slot for more Spike Growth / Hold Undead. It does require that I have atleast 1 mass zoo (which is Mass Bear's Constitution), it competes with Stonehold, which means I have 1 or 2 less Stonehold, you can opt to extend Stonehold anyway, but it competes with Mass Haste. (EDIT: Yep, I'm stupid, Shaman doesn't get Mass Zoo)

Disclaimer:
This is mostly EPIC content experience. For the lowbies' experience, I still have to create a new character for that. Or someone can just post their own experiences from a freshly new made character.

[Aren]

Shelgarns Persistent Blade and Mordekainens Sword can no longer be buffed by flame weapon.
This makes them very close to useless at the moment.

I would suggest letting these two summons targetable by weapon buffs to at least keep their usefulness.

[Paint]

Hi. Started making a weird shaman on Skal because I have a shaman addiction problem and there are a thousand different ways to play this class. Take a few things here with a grain of salt and understanding:

-This character is not a summon build. I am not getting any of the conjuration foci. This will affect my experience.
-My summons are therefore meant to be supplementary damage and a distraction to mitigate attention rather than the focus of my power.

I'll continue to write as I go along, but I'm already finding myself in a position where I wish I had easy access to the other runic sequencers because my summons just do not have enough AC for the content I feel comfortable doing. As soon as the stoneskin gets gnawed through -- which happens fast -- my summons tend to have their HP deplete quickly. This means I'm spending more time either babysitting them by burning healing consumables and spells on them, or resummoning them. Meaning that more of my spellslots are being dedicated to shoring up my summons defenses than before. This seems counter to one of the intended goals of the runic sequencer update.

It is really nice that when I click the thing and then click my summon that they're instantly buffed. This has actually come in handy when my summon has perished in the middle of a fight. I've resummoned them, then used the sequencer on them in a fairly short amount of time, allowing them to be back in the fight in full strength much more quickly than if a summon had perished before this update.

I worry about caster builds that aren't summon-centric that might be late-bloomers. I think they might struggle a lot more than I have. It also helps that I have enough experience with the game mechanics to know where to acquire good consumables cheaply and know what sort of content my character can tackle. After all, I did the orc harbage at level 9 on a hexblade solo once, and when I did it, I was pretty confident about whether or not I'd make it out alive. There are some builds I've played where I feel apprehensive about going to the harbage alone at level 15.

My character is going to have to rely on their summons less and less as the build develops, and it is important to keep that in mind, but having these struggles this early on isn't the best sign for builds that might struggle to cope with that, or for players who might otherwise be put off by a challenge they don't understand how to prepare for.

I think an AC bump of 1 or 2 and a CON bump of 2 or 4 for most lower level summons could be appropriate.

Edit:
I forgot to mention but to the above, it seems like a wizard's struggles would be exacerbated, since they have no way to get around having to dedicate more slots to summon replacements unless they like to play fast and loose, but I am not playing a wizard. I am playing a shaman.

[cornelius_4]

The comparision between the lore change and this is interesting since I do think there are notable differences .

When I first saw the lore change, I thought "well this is significant" and went to the wiki to read it.

I thought it was interesting, since it made sense to me OOC, IC and as a new thing, allowed pretty much all of my characters to use level 1-2 scrolls very early, since having ~10 lore means you don't have to click to identify every item, so I usually had that, even as a new player.

"How come the priest and wizard can use magic and the fighter can't?" The priest has a strong connection to a greater being. It is the gods that share their power. The wizard has devoted their life to understanding a specific part of the world they live in - it's possible to understand how to do it and that's what they do. The fighter can't because they don't have as strong a connection to the gods and they haven't studied the inner workings of the universe.

It's easy enough to explain both IC and OOC.

Now try this: "How come many single target spells work on humans, elves and dwarves, but not animals, outsiders, elementals and the undead?". It's an odd distinction that will go against what will commonly be expected OOC for new players and IC is probably better left unmentioned.

I also agree on the points mentioned that the time spent crafting can be a problem, but one that might reach a good spot with tuning of charges, recipies and possibly how it all works (could be a way to restore charges, without making a new one).

I think keeping things as they were for level 1-6 spell summons should be considered as someone mentioned. Coming in to Arelith and learning all the things can be overwhelming.
When I got here, I had played nwn a bit. There were some new things here, but most of the things were roughly as I thought they would be. I think I went through a couple of characters before I looked at the crafting system and even then, I didn't really look into it until I had to use spell components.

There also was a moment, early on, where I considered if I really wanted to bother learning it all. I did start as a wizard, had I right away found out I couldn't use several of my spells on my summons and found I had to spend a good while learning this system, having no clue where any of the stuff was located, before I could even really get to do much, I don't know if I would even be here.

If people have to learn it by the time they can cast level 7 spells, several weeks or even months have probably passed. Fun has probably been had and one will be more ready to absorb new systems from there. I also assume the problem the sequencers aim to solve is mostly observed at the upper end, not the lower end of levels.

[Nurel]

The comparision between the lore change and this is interesting since I do think there are notable differences .

When I first saw the lore change, I thought "well this is significant" and went to the wiki to read it.

I thought it was interesting, since it made sense to me OOC, IC and as a new thing, allowed pretty much all of my characters to use level 1-2 scrolls very early, since having ~10 lore means you don't have to click to identify every item, so I usually had that, even as a new player.

"How come the priest and wizard can use magic and the fighter can't?" The priest has a strong connection to a greater being. It is the gods that share their power. The wizard has devoted their life to understanding a specific part of the world they live in - it's possible to understand how to do it and that's what they do. The fighter can't because they don't have as strong a connection to the gods and they haven't studied the inner workings of the universe.

It's easy enough to explain both IC and OOC.

Now try this: "How come many single target spells work on humans, elves and dwarves, but not animals, outsiders, elementals and the undead?". It's an odd distinction that will go against what will commonly be expected OOC for new players and IC is probably better left unmentioned.

Yes, thank you for this post. I also was thinking of this change as somewhat comparable with the Loremageddon change. In my mind, these two changes are polarised and represent two completely opposite sides of what a change can be, no matter how big or small (the summoning buff update and the loremageddon update were both HUGE changes). Here is my point in a concise fashion:

1) Loremageddon gave power to the players to do more

2) Summons Buff Change removed power from the players so they can do less

In my opinion changes similar to paradigm 1) are good, while changes similar to 2) are bad.

[Ork]

Loremaggedon sucked, but we're all still here. If you think it didn't suck, you're living in some weird fantasy land.

[98lbs of sad carryweight]

This seems to affect Shadowdancers Shadow too. Is that intentional?

If so - why?

[ChevroletElvis]

Now try this: "How come many single target spells work on humans, elves and dwarves, but not animals, outsiders, elementals and the undead?". It's an odd distinction that will go against what will commonly be expected OOC for new players and IC is probably better left unmentioned.

Before a change comes in, the most important part is this. Was this question asked before implementation? If not, then that's a problem. Role-play is not an afterthought here. It is THE thought... or at least I thought it was...

Casting spells on "animals, outsiders, elementals and the undead" is something that is so much a part of the Forgotten Realms culture and lore, you would be hard pressed to find a novel that did not contain an instance of this. Now it's gone from Arelith.

And replaced by something that doesn't make sense.

[Skibbles]

Is it possible that some kind of timer can begin on log out that keeps summons active and resummoned back on log in? Just for like 5 minutes or so?

I must have crashed and/or had to relog half a dozen times today while going between servers or just merely transitioning.

If this is possible it might be an extreme relief to many in order to preserve their charges and sanity.

[Itikar]

In general, I find the decision to let some aoe buffs that are the same as single target work, but block single target ones, is inconsistent. I am referring specifically to the mass zoo buffs, if they are allowed then it makes little sense that the single target zoo spells are blocked. The result is essentially the same with much more issues for the player.

[Aradin]

In general, I find the decision to let some aoe buffs that are the same as single target work, but block single target ones, is inconsistent. I am referring specifically to the mass zoo buffs, if they are allowed then it makes little sense that the single target zoo spells are blocked. The result is essentially the same with much more issues for the player.

I agree. It makes no sense from a roleplay perspective, and from a mechanical perspective all it means is that casters are using higher level spell slots to cast mass zoo buffs instead of using lower level ones to cast single target zoo buffs. In the same way, it feels inconsistent that single-target buffs can be cast on henchmen, dominated creatures, etc. I feel like the devs need to decide whether to go all-in and completely disallow buff casting on non-PCs, or...I'm not sure, really. But this halfway wishy-washy middle point where you can cast some buffs on some allies doesn't feel right to me. Frankly it's confusing.

[Morgy]

In general, I find the decision to let some aoe buffs that are the same as single target work, but block single target ones, is inconsistent. I am referring specifically to the mass zoo buffs, if they are allowed then it makes little sense that the single target zoo spells are blocked. The result is essentially the same with much more issues for the player.

This is a great point. How does this improve balance? It doesn't, it just reduces QOL for players.