Steve Jackson Games Forums - Summoning undead

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Re: Summoning undead

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shostak (Post 2155625)

Those would be great spells! I just think they should be separate from Summon Wolf, Summon Bear, etc.

I agree; these are the pig spells I use:

IQ 9 SUMMON WARTHOG (C) This spell brings a warthog (ST 9 DX 12 IQ 6; moves 10, no armor, tusks do 1 die damage) to obey the caster. Warthogs fight without DX penalty for injury or lost ST, and are affected by "Control Animal." Cost 2 ST to summon and 1 ST each turn it remains

IQ 11 SUMMON WILD BOAR (C) Brings a huge wild boar (ST 14 DX 12 IQ 6, MA 10, hide stops 1 hit, damage 1+1, 1+3 on a charge attack) to obey summoner. Wild boars fight without DX penalty for injury or lost ST, are affected by "Control Animal" and cost 3 ST to summon and 1 ST each turn it remains.

Re: Summoning undead

Quote:

Originally Posted by JLV (Post 2155907)

That's not really what I said. If I went the way some other folks have, I'd say it was a wilful misinterpretation of what I said, but I assume that's not the case here and you just didn't get what I was about.

Again, you seem to be attributing an opinion to me which I never expressed or even thought.

Indeed they may. I, for example, followed the guidelines on XP awards in ITL very religiously -- which meant my players got XP for a lot of different things, precisely as outlined in ITL on page 10. There are five different categories for which players may be rewarded with XP, all of which I used. The result is that my players didn't solely gain experience for killing things (which also creates a murder hobo game by definition), but instead got them for lots of things, including clever play, luck, time spent in play, combat, and casting spells, all just as described in the rules.

I didn't answer to you or someone else in particular. Just my thoughts after reading here and there about the topic.

Apologies if my poor English may lead to misinterpretations

Re: Summoning undead

Quote:

Originally Posted by ecz (Post 2156148)

I didn't answer to you or someone else in particular. Just my thoughts after reading here and there about the topic.

Apologies if my poor English may lead to misinterpretations

Ah, understood.

Re: Summoning undead

My personal preference would be to split the difference, have something like a "Summon Undead" spell for a category of creatures, not all creatures. The spell would include all the undead the OP posted. Each undead creature would then have an IQ preq, but not cost an actual IQ point/slot to know.

Then you could also have "Summon Animal" (Wolf, Bear, Warthog) , "Summon Humaniod" (Myrmidon, Gargoyle, Giant), "Summon Elemental", "Summon Dragon", etc.

What I'd really like to see is can you reverse engineer the existing summoning spells? Say by comparing the attribute point total, defenses and special abilities of the creature to the spell's IQ requirement and ST point costs. From there, it'd be easier to create new spells for summoning other creatures, assigning them to the proper IQ level and appropriate ST costs, even if they didn't use the broader categories I suggested.

I'd suggest a point system like so:

Attribute Total + ARMOR + (MA-10) + Special Abilities

Special abilities would include:

Flight (adjusted for MA)
2+Hex size (assumes 1-hex PCs)
Additional Attack
Attack that does more than normal ST damage (i.e., dragon breath)
Regeneration
Poison
Spell Caster
etc.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to come up with point values for these ;)

So a wolf (ST 10, DX 14, IQ 6, MA 12, Armor: 1 ) would be worth 33 points in this system, for the IQ 9 Summon Wolf spell.

A bear (ST 30, DX 11, IQ 6, MA 8, Armor: 2) would be worth 47 points, for the IQ 11 Summon Bear spell.

A small dragon (ST 30, DX 13, IQ 16, MA 6, Armor: 3) would have a starting value of 58, but would then need additional points assigned for size, flight, additional attack and fire breathing.

As I mentioned in another thread, these point totals could also be used to represent the XP value of a creature, to be divided among a group of characters after combat, as a simpler version of the current individual system of points for damage, final blows and ST spent on spells.