Summons that cast spells

[Dreams]

Summons that cast spells suck because they bug often, the spells are rarely helpful (and are now mostly unnecessary due to the sequencers). They'd be great if they worked, or they'd be great if they just cast the spell once, or they'd be great if they had those spells cast on them automatically when summoned. However as it currently stands, it's been this way for a while now, summons are often just standing still or stuttering in between trying to cast spells and cancelling their own actions.

I don't know how to fix this, I only know how incredibly frustrating it is to have this happen over and over when you need the summon to be doing anything other than being useless.

[The Vandals of Rome]

I have also had the same experiences. I'd prefer they had no spells, personally.

[Hazard]

Same. The AI is too stupid to be trusted with spells.

[HeyLadyOfDecay]

+999

[AstralUniverse]

While there are some summons which are outright bugged and/or cast really useless spells, I actually love caster summons in general. I think they have a much more interesting game-play than summons who have no spells. One example is the lantern archon which has some CD based spells and one spell that it spams infinitely. Another would be the Menaeroth or whatever it's called (the NE summon for greater binding) that casts phantasmal and some cone aoe cc spell on CD. Love both of these. Not saying caster summons are without flaws and bugs but I still like them and would like to see more of them.

[-XXX-]

Astral Deva and Celestial Avenger are very interesting.

[Dreams]

While there are some summons which are outright bugged and/or cast really useless spells, I actually love caster summons in general. I think they have a much more interesting game-play than summons who have no spells. One example is the lantern archon which has some CD based spells and one spell that it spams infinitely. Another would be the Menaeroth or whatever it's called (the NE summon for greater binding) that casts phantasmal and some cone aoe cc spell on CD. Love both of these. Not saying caster summons are without flaws and bugs but I still like them and would like to see more of them.

I agree, but only if they work.

[Waldo52]

While there are some summons which are outright bugged and/or cast really useless spells, I actually love caster summons in general. I think they have a much more interesting game-play than summons who have no spells. One example is the lantern archon which has some CD based spells and one spell that it spams infinitely. Another would be the Menaeroth or whatever it's called (the NE summon for greater binding) that casts phantasmal and some cone aoe cc spell on CD. Love both of these. Not saying caster summons are without flaws and bugs but I still like them and would like to see more of them.

I agree, but only if they work.

This.

I would actually like to see more caster sunmons, as the whole wall of meat thing can get boring. But we need some useful spells.

Can't see get something with infinite fireballs, eldritch blasts or heals? The AI is pretty basic: target thing, cast spell on thing.

[Slapstick]

The problem is not the spells themselves but that the AI is too stupid to use them effectively.

The Lunar Ravager casts Faery Fire on anything at cooldown. If he only did it when the enemy was had concealment it would be awesome instead of annoying. Additionally this leads to it being on cooldown when it occasionally would be useful. The Verdant Prince casts Nature’s Balance when there’s nothing to breach. If he only did it when damage shields where present it’d be much better.

Now if we look at Frostwind Virago all her spells are passively useful. If we can’t decide when the summons casts spells and they don’t have the brains to do it themselves, they should (only) be given spells which are not a waste of time.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

No mention of the spellcaster undead here. Does auto quicken help them get their AI sorted out quicker?

[God_In_Action]

Maybe it would be more useful if caster summons could cast summon-only spells designed from the ground up to be useful regardless of the bad AI.

Something like a damaging spell that does magical damage somewhere in between magic missile and ILMS.

Or a spell that does a fort save, will save and reflex save for 3 separate but low duration effects like paralysis/stun/confusion.

Or low duration mass haste.

With custom spells they could be tailored to summons without being useless or overpowered if puy into a player's hands.

[Yvesza]

Hasted summons tend to cast spells just fine, the issue is that a lot of early level summons (I'm looking at the hellhound specifically) consistently waste entire turns doing 2-4 fire damage instead of biting two or three times for 20~ damage.

[ElvenEdibles]

Same. The AI is too stupid to be trusted with spells.

I trust them with word of faith and thats it

[Ithalan]

I think the minimal solution would be to make sure that summons that are normally melee fighters only cast spells with a range of self or that targets itself or the ground beneath, because the AI has a hard time actually recognising when it has the necessary line-of-sight to its target, and once its spell is off cooldown, it will almost always refuse to do anything else until it has cast the spell. This can quickly lead to multiple rounds where it just stares dumbly between failed attempts.

If the spells are only ever centered on the caster, or targeting itself, then it won't fail due to line-of-sight at least, allowing the summon to get on with things in the next round.

[Aren]

No mention of the spellcaster undead here. Does auto quicken help them get their AI sorted out quicker?

Not entirely, but somewhat.

[Scylon]

Thought occurs,

In the back end NWN runs like DnD should, but it is a bit loose because it is live action based also.

There is a stat that is highly unused called Initiative. For 99% of occasions in NWN, it is a junk stat. on table top, highly important. This stat which is also used in NWN determines who attacks 1st in a round. As in NWN everyone attacks at the same time almost, you don't see it.

HOWEVER

When you start combat and see your NPCs or you just standing there like na idiot for a bit. That is the roll in play (I think). My suggestion is dump more of that stat on the caster summons and see what it does. My hope is if the engine sees them on top of the list the spell casting will happen when it should.

[Ithalan]

Initiative in NWN has no impact on spellcasting. It's only used to resolve the order that attacks happen in between two characters that are both able to see and attack each other, and usually stop having any meaningful role after the first round of combat.

https://nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Initiative

[-XXX-]

Problem is with summons that cast spells that are less efficient when compared to their melee attacks:

Some of them are OK, especially when the spells would've been good enough on their own for a PC to use directly themselves. Proxy casting them through these summons can then yield some tempo advantage despite the AI's awkward control:
Astral Deva: Word of Faith
Balor: Greater Spell Breach
Celestial Avenger: Word of Faith
Epic Dragon Knight: Greater Spell Breach
Pit Fiend: Greater Spell Breach


Here are some examples of summon spellcasting abilities that I've found to be inefficient and wishing that the summon would just go melee Instead:
Balor: Destruction
Dread Mummy: Mummy Sunburst*
Gear Golem: Flesh to Stone**
Gelugon: Cone of Cold
Hezrou: Destruction
Ultroloth: Daze Gaze
Ultroloth: Finger of Death
Vampire Bloodknight: Domination Gaze
Vampire Matriarch: Harm (self)***
White Slaad: Chaos Spittle
White Slaad: Hammer of Gods
White Slaad Lord: Slow
Word Archon: Heal***

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*Dread Mummy had WoF removed with the advent of Necromancer Specialist. I imagine that giving it any spellcasting abilities now would result in the same issues that lead to the previous WoF removal in the first place.
**Gear Golem is the worst Gate summon and it's not even close - it could probably use some general rebalancing (even its wiki entry contains a lot of "??" and omits the Flesh to Stone spellcasting ability)
***OK, these aren't ~that~ bad, but mostly come into play during PvE in situations where the summon line is already falling apart anyway and the heals usually make little difference (they only disrupt any remaining kill pressure instead).

[Opustus]

Caster summons are awesome conceptually! Here are some tried and proved ways of improving summons with heavy focus on casting abilities:
-Add dialog options to change their combat behaviour, i.e. make them not cast.
-Add dialog options for buffing outside combat and turn off buff spells in combat scenarios, with options to buff only you, summon and you, or whole party in a radius.
-Limit all offensive spells to actually useful spells that don't harm team mates. Alternatively, switch out of problematic spells when another PC joins party.
-Limit persistent AoE casts to once per combat.
-Give them Monster Uncanny Dodge, normie Uncanny, or high AC of a type that isn't removed when flatfooted. Caster AI gets messy and they get flatfooted more than usual.
-Optional summon command tool that doesn't override their behaviour completely, but just allows you to move them around retaining all basic AI scripts they would otherwise be running.
-Autoquicken!
-Add delays to behaviour scripts called onheartbeat so they stick more to preferred behaviour; usually AI saying that target switch is a good idea leads to cancelling an already ongoing cast.
-Prioritising higher HP targets so they don't waste spells on dead/dying targets, with a switch for noncast combat behaviour.