The Modular Design of Starfinder's Summon Creature Spell

The Modular Design of Starfinder's Summon Creature Spell

Summoning pets is one of my favorite things, whether as a GM or as a player. As a player, you get a chance to play with all kinds of toys from the monster manual that would normally never be on your side of a conflict. As a GM, it gives me a reason to have monsters appear from unexpected places to alter the dynamic on the battlefield. In both cases, they can act as force multipliers that enhance the effects of many abilities.

Note: when I say "summoner" I mean any character focused on summoning, not any specific class or build.

I've played a lot of RPGs, and, in my opinion, the two best versions of summoning spells are 5th edition's and Starfinder's, for very different reasons. Like everything in the 5th edition, their summon spells are easy to use and straightforward. You pick one of the options from the book, look it up and use it as is, no templates needed.

Starfinder's is more elegant, in my opinion, but overall more complex. You take the base elemental stat blocks and apply the appropriate summon "graft" (template by another name) to that stat block, which turns it into the monster you want to summon. The base stat block for each level of the summon spell is the same; the only thing that changes is which summon graft you apply to the stat block.

The thing I love about that design is that Starfinder reuses the concept in several other places. Rather than trying to design thousands of new animals for every world you might visit, they came up with a set of "herd animal" stat blocks, and a set of "Predator animal" stat blocks. You merely need to apply an "environment" graft to the stat block, and suddenly, you have a brand new animal for that new world you just discovered. Give it a description unique to itself, and you are ready to rock out with a new animal.

What does that have to do with the summon creature spell? Well, the intrepid homebrewer has the opportunity to re-flavor a summoner by switching out the elemental stat blocks they were using for their summon spells, and replace them with the herd or predator animal stat blocks. The CR of each level of the spell is relatively close, but not exact, but it still works out pretty well, especially if you are more interested in new flavors than you are in more power.

Let's compare the CR levels between each set of blocks: 

Summon Creature Spell Level	Elemental CRs (size)	Herd Animal CRs (size)	Predator Animal CRs (size)
1	1/3 (tiny)	1/3 (small)	1/3 (small)
2	1 (small)	1/2 (medium)	1 (medium)
3	3 (medium)	2 (large)	2 swarm
4	5 (large)	4 (Huge)	4 (large)
5	7 (huge)	6 (Gargantuan)	7 (huge)
6	11 (huge)	8 (Colossal	10 (gargantuan)

As you can see, the herd and predator animals may get larger sizes faster, or in once case, even get swarms, but they are universally at lower CRs. To help make up for this, you would still add the environmental graft, then also add the summoning graft for the type of monster you want to those stat blocks. And possibly, add a simple alignment graft on top of that.

Why would you do this? It creates the opportunity to make summoners flavored to summon creatures from their homeworlds. Imagine a summoner summoning a "large inevitable wildebeest" with an arc cannon on it's back! Or another summoner is pulling out the glowing shadow jaguar that haunts the jungles of his home. Or simply to flavor a summoner in a way that fits them just right, like a Dromada "Herd" summoner who only summoned herd animals. 

It adds a ton of flavor you as the GM, or your players can use to flesh out their summoners. And the best part is, the last component of Starfinder's summon creature spell is that you pick four creatures from each spell level to summon, so you don't need to worry about option overload in your summoner's at the table, in-game. The player makes these choices before you get to the game!

If you really want to mix things up, you could go so far as to let a player use the CR appropriate stat-line of the NPC maker, and have them apply a whole different set of grafts to them as their summons. You could help a player build an Eoxian necromancer, by letting them use appropriate undead grafts in place of normal summons. You could let a player summon dragons by letting them apply the various dragon grafts to the appropriate stat block instead of a summon graft. Or Mephits, or…  well, I think you get the picture.

All of that leads me to the next interesting thing you can do: use specific summoning combinations as rewards. If you have a summoner in your party, you can have them find the journal of a long-dead conjurer, who discovered a method to summon the "strange beasts of the plains of the world of  Egilothorian." If they read it, they could add the specific combination of stat block and graft(s) that you have put together to their list of known summons. For the summoning enthusiast, this could be just the thing to excite them. (As a side note, you can also use this idea with Polymorph forms as rewards)

Now, some links before I move on, to help you all look into this yourselves and decide if you want it in your universe:

• Summon Creature 
• Elemental Stat Blocks 
• Herd Beast Stat Blocks
• Predator Animal Stat Blocks
• Summon, Environment, Simple Grafts, and Other types
• Elemental Grafts if you summon the actual elementals

Some Further Advice on Summoners

So that's all fine and dandy, but I feel like I'd be doing a disservice if I didn't include some advice for avoiding the bog-down that summoners can bring to a game. It's one of the most common complaints against summoners and has gotten them banned from many a game. Since it's one of my favorite things to play with, I'd like to offer some advice to help players avoid the pitfalls. I've come up with a series of rules that, if followed, should keep your table happy with you!

1        Use lots of dice, and color code them to different purposes.

This one comes from my experience in large scale tabletop wargaming. When you have 100 models on the table that you need to move and fight with, you find ways to optimize the process to take as little time as possible. One of the most important things you can do is roll as many of the dice as possible at the same time. Until you go through it, you may not believe how much time this can save you.

Have one dice set for yourself, and have another dice set for every monster you have on the field. Roll the d20s to attack and other dice for damage, for yourself, and all your summons at the same time. Since they are different sets for different creatures, you already know which damage dice applies to which d20 roll.

Fortunately, as a gamer, you were already working on a dice addiction, now you have the justification you need to indulge it!

2        During everyone else's turn, prepare for your next one. Never spend any time during your own turn trying to decide what to do.

Seriously, you have 5+ monsters on the field; you need to find and pick up all the dice you are going to roll for them and decide what each of their targets are. As people take their turns and the battlefield adjusts, adjust your plans. Know which enemy is each of your monster's target, or which ally each will support. The more you plan during their turns, the less time your own will take.

3        Your summoned creatures are disposable. Treat them like they are.

Seriously, if they die, you can just summon more until you run out of spells, summon grenades, spell gems, and spell chips. Your creatures can eat up enemy attacks of opportunities freeing your companions to out-maneuver the enemy safely. They can move into dangerous flanking positions helping your allies land blows without putting themselves in excessive danger. They can tank overwatch attacks since you don't need to heal them. They can scout possibly trapped areas. Think of them as independent pools of HP that can soak up the enemy's attempts to hurt you and your friends' pools of HP.

4        Be able to communicate with anything you can summon.

If you don't know it's language, all your summon can do is attack the closest enemy. If you do know it's language, it can do pretty much anything you tell it to do. That makes even your first level summons useful well into the later levels. After all, you can summon a low-level robot to reload your allies' weapons or inject their serums into them, so they don't have to spend actions doing it themselves.

5        Use your summons to support your party, not to flood the battlefield with bodies.

Have you ever watched a trained tactical squad moving through a warzone taking out their enemy? Your summons should be part of that tactical squad, not competing with it. I'll mention again eating enemy attacks of opportunity, and moving into dangerous flanking positions. Those are both things you can do to support your party while still being committed to an all-out attack. You don't even need to choose between both support and offense. Do both. 

If you DO ever have to choose, choose support every time. The reason is, the summons you can get will always be inferior, offensively, to any of your party members. So if you choose offense over support, you are deciding to try for an inferior attack, at the expense of a superior one. But if you do things to boost the likelihood of your companions succeeding in their attack, you are maximizing the damage output of the party. I can't stress this enough.

The other thing it does is alleviate a lot of the annoyance that may build up over the longer turns you have due to the extra creatures under your control. No one ever hates support. Your party will know that their turn will be more successful because of the extra time you took and that always feels good. It's a form of passive diplomacy. Still, try to minimize the time you spend on your turn.

6        Prioritize speed over perfection. Your turns don't have to be perfect. You have more bodies to throw at the problem, so your margin of error is larger.

You want to play with your friends. To do that, they have to feel like everything is fair. For everything to be fair, you can't have most of the time spend centered on you. Do you best to make sure you don't take up more time than you have to, because it is easy to fall into the trap of taking up ALL the time, and that will kill your game.

If you can follow these rules, you should be able to play a summoner without tripping into any of the pitfalls. If you can't, consider carefully if playing a summoner is really the right fit for you. Especially you perfectionists who take a long time to decide what to do on your turns.

That's it for now. I hope it's useful and entertaining for all of you.

By the way, if you want to read more random things on the subject of summoning, check out these other authors: 

Owen KC Stephen's take on summoning in the GammaFinder and FreedomFinder settings for Starfinder.

One of Owen's homebrew relics, focused on summoning in Pathfinder 1st Edition.

An adventure idea of Owen's where the PCs are the summoned creatures.

Take a glimpse into the imagination of Clinton Boomer as he presents a summoning feat for the dark and dangerous world of Bloodlines and Black Magic for Pathfinder 1st Edition..

Neil Litherland discusses the strategic use of Summon Monster in Pathfinder.

and more that will be added later. 

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