Summoning undead
 

An additional set of summonings and the appropriate control spell

IQ 10 SUMMON SKELETON (C) Brings animated humanoid skeleton (ST 10 DX 12 IQ 6, MA 10; does 1 die damage with whatever weapon it appears with, carries a small shield which stops 1 hit per attack) to obey the summoner. They fight without DX penalty from injury until ST is zero Skeletons are affected by "Control Undead," they are unaffected by "Confusion" and "Sleep," and are unaffected by shadows or cold. Cost: 2 ST to cast and 1 per turn it remains.

IQ 11 SUMMON ZOMBIE (C) Brings a zombie (ST 14 DX 12 IQ 8, MA 6,
damage 1+2 with bare hands or whatever object they fight with. Zombies are immune to speed or slow movement, clumsiness and confusion spells. All damage done to zombies is reduced by half (round down). They suffer no DX penalty for damage suffered (no brain, no pain...) It costs 2 ST to summon a zombie and 1 each turn it remains. Zombies are affected by "Control Undead." Although their DX is 12, zombies strike LAST in each combat round.

IQ 12 SUMMON GHOUL (C) Brings a ghoul (ST 14 DX 13 IQ 9, MA 10, damage 1+1, 1+3 in HTH) Ghouls are immune to "Curse" and "Sleep" and are unaffected by shadows. They are affected by "Control Undead." Ghouls cost 2 ST to summon, and 1 per turn to keep.

IQ 13 SUMMON LURKER (C) Brings a "Lurker in Shadow" (ST 12 DX 12 IQ 10 MA 10, damage 1 die with tooth and claw, 1+2 in HTH) to obey caster. Lurkers generate a shadow hex around themselves and are thus usually -4 to be hit; having a form of mage sight they suffer no penalty for shadows or invisibility. They are immune to "Sleep" and "Curse;' "Dazzle" affects them for 6 rounds instead of 3. It costs 3 ST to summon a Lurker, and 1 per turn it remains. Lurkers are affected by "Control Undead" and cannot be duplicated by image or illusion (a simple shadow results instead).

IQ 14 SUMMON WIGHT (C) Brings a wight (ST 14 DX 12 IQ 12 MA 10; damage is only 1 die but armor and the armor flesh type spells stop no hits; damage is in the form of a life energy drain; each hit of damage done regenerates 1 point of damage for the wight). Wights are immune to Curse and Sleep and are unaffected by shadows or cold. Illusions of wights can drain ST as if they were real, but a wight touching an illusion will dispel it. Cost 3 ST to summon, one per turn it remains, affected by "Control Undead."

IQ 15 SUMMON MUMMY (C) Brings a mummy (ST 18 DX 12 MA 8, damage 1+1 with armor stopping no hits but armor flesh spells protecting normally; any attack that causes damage reduces the target's DX by 3 for the next 12 turns; this effect is cumulative.) Mummies are affected by "Control Undead" and are immune to Curse, Slow and Clumsiness, and unaffected by shadows and cold. Cost 4 ST to cast and 1 per turn it remains.

IQ 16 SUMMON GHOST (C) Brings a ghost to obey the summoner. A ghost has no ST or DX, its IQ is 13. Ghosts are Insubstantial, Unnoticeable and Invisible, per the spells. Outside of a host they have MA 6 and can only be affected by thrown spells. Ghosts attack by moving onto an adjacent figure at the end of the action phase. When this happens, the victim gets an immediate 4 die vs IQ roll to avoid possession, a successful roll repelling the ghost to its prior hex. A possessed figure is under the complete control of the ghost's summoner, with use of that figure's abilities and spells. The only way to "kill" a ghost is to kill the figure it possesses, but a ghost is unlikely to be used to maintain control of a trapped or disabled figure. Ghosts cannot be duplicated by image or illusion, and images and illusions are dispelled by possession attempts. Cost 4 ST to summon and 1 per turn to continue.
And--
IQ 14 CONTROL UNDEAD (T) Places any one summoned undead creature under the caster's control. This spell will dispel the image or illusion of a creature it could control. ST cost to cast and maintain control are the same as the summoning spell for that undead type.

Re: Summoning undead
 

I like these. I always wanted to make more use of summoning spells but their continuing cost made them poor value in most situations compared to an image/illusion or a lightning bolt.

Re: Summoning undead
 

Same here, and I grew tired of opponents always and only summoning wolves.

Re: Summoning undead
 

I like these, but I'm wondering if something like SUMMON 1-HEX CREATURE might not be a better solution to the endless waves of summoned wolves than a load of creature-specific spells.

The casting player simply picks a 1-hex creature to summon. If you feel the need to differentiate between "normal" wizards and "necromantic" ones, you could have two versions of the 1-hex spell -- SUMMON 1-HEX CREATURE, and SUMMON 1-HEX UNDEAD CREATURE.

(The next spell in line would obviously be SUMMON 2-HEX CREATURE, followed by 3-hex, 4-hex, etc.)

Re: Summoning undead
 

There can be a big difference in power between 1-hex creatures, so I don't think that's a solution.

Re: Summoning undead
 

then maybe do it by attributes -- SUMMON 32 POINT FIGURE, SUMMON 36 POINT FIGURE, SUMMON 40 POINT FIGURE, etc.

Re: Summoning undead
 

That might work, although special abilities might skew it. Instead of Wolves, everyone will now be summoning 28 point Basilisks, or something like that.

Re: Summoning undead
 

Reptile Man with a Pike Axe!

Re: Summoning undead
 

I'd prefer for each spell to summon a particular creature. Guidelines for inventing new spells balanced against the TFT grimoire would be a wonderful addition to the boxed set.

Re: Summoning undead
 

I'm thinking of the enormous increase in IQ necessary to have even a remotely useful collection of such summoning spells. Now we're once again confronted with the need for a 40IQ Wizard; thus increasing the "need" for enormous attribute bloat in order to get even close to the kind of wizards we see in the fiction all the time. Seems to me like this merely exacerbates an already large issue...

Re: Summoning undead
 

Having to be selective with which spells to learn is not a bad thing; it encourages focused characters. Even just a few spells, used shrewdly, can be enormously useful.

Re: Summoning undead
 

That's the theory -- unfortunately the unintended side effect is more encouragement for attribute bloat.

Re: Summoning undead
 

Dealing with the fundamental problem of outrageous attributes would be preferable to creating another problem, such as spells becoming too flexible.

Re: Summoning undead
 

"...too flexible"?!?! ;-)

Re: Summoning undead
 

I don't think anyone would want to be able to summon all the possible creatures, but it would be nice to have more to choose from. They can be balanced regarding cost and effectiveness. It also lets my dwarf summon wild boars instead of wolves, and where would the wicked witch of the west be without her flying monkeys?

Re: Summoning undead
 

Say instead, too easily abused, like lizardmen with naginatas.

Re: Summoning undead
 

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

Re: Summoning undead
 

I like the possibility of different Wizards having different signature summoning spells.

Re: Summoning undead
 

I'm also to keep separate each summon spell.

More spells are fine and add variety, but I do not see the reason to make them generic and/or flexible to reduce the IQ needed to learn them all.

The way I see wizards in TFT, even the most powerful, is compatible with t a low number of spells available in their grimories. The great wizards (at least the way I see them) have IQ 20-22, DX 15-16 a few magic items and/or a small team of assistants with aid spell for ST.

the idea super heroes/wizards in TFT must have everything available in the rules (hence the need for IQ 40+) is something I have never found in the rules and never experienced at my table .

My players never gained too many points and, if memory serves, the best hero reached 44 or 45 points in total during my CGs. Also I do not know how long they should have played and survived to gain that level of experience (1000 ex pts per attribute point) !
But I understand other groups may have different approaches and styles.

Re: Summoning undead
 

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.

Re: Summoning undead
 

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
 

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
 

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.