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.
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.
Neil Litherland discusses the strategic use of Summon Monster in Pathfinder.
and more that will be added later.
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and more that will be added later.
This blog uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Paizo Inc., which are used under Paizo's Community Use Policy. We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content. This blog is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Paizo Inc. For more information about Paizo's Community Use Policy, please visit paizo.com/communityuse. For more information about Paizo Inc. and Paizo products, please visit paizo.com.
