Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Extra requirments to cast Summons?

I don't know if this is a good idea or a bad one, or just unworkable.

Having an extra unit on the battlefield is pretty powerful, they attract a lot of enemy attention, making the battles easier. But what if they were harder to summon?

Specifically, Elementals. What if you needed to have a surface of that element on the battlefield to summon the elemental on? You need to have a fire surface to summon a fire elemental, electrified for air, water or ice for the Ice elemental, and poison for the Earth elementals? That would limit spamming of elementals, wouldn't it?

Thoughts?

That's actually a pretty good idea and I can't imagine it would be that hard to implement. I do think a lot of the problems could be solved just with a bit of balancing, like reducing the health of summons and giving them the "Stench" talent so they're not all so tanky, but this is another interesting idea. It means you have to set up a summon instead of just being able to summon any of them at any time, and your positioning of them would be limited to the surface. You could have to summon a skeleton from blood, also. Multi-elements like electrocuted water of frozen blood could have either elemental type summoned on them. Not sure if the spider should not require a surface; could be a unique trait to it (but make it a little weaker than the others to compensate.)

Also would give you more incentive to disperse surfaces around enemy summoners.

Only downside I can see is that it would make it a little harder to summon earth elementals for their perception, but I don't think that's a big deal.

Another random idea is that you could "charge" a summoning scroll with the appropriate essence (e.g., fire essence for fire elemental) to make it so you could summon that elemental anywhere.

Well for the roleplay-aspect that fits well. It's actually the same way the "the dark eye" ruleset handles it, and I generally like it.

But right now in DOS..? Definately: No. Reason: Gameplay.

In the beginning summons are really useful, maybe even a bit too strong. In the end of cyseal (lvl 8-9) they feel adequate. But afterwards they start to seriously lack. (except some cases with elementals receiving "their" damage type) In most cases later the time to summon only prolongs combat with almost no benefit.

The only question is... are summons to weak or some other skills far too strong...

I also hope they revise the way physical damage is reduced.
2 effects (armor + resistance) affecting it as well as fewer skills to negate these it nets problems later on.

@Seelenernter: i used my summons even in the last fight. Maybee they are weak but they are very cheap to cast (and has nearly no cool-down). Every char in my group was able to cast a summon (either pet, spell or scroll).

Having up to 4 additional chars on the battlefield simply outnumbers the enemy in most situations plus you can summon them anywhere you want. Thats a very effective crowd-control. Additionally all elementals left a "elemental" area effect while dying, whats pushes the cc-effect even more.

I found summons just as useful in the late game as early on, if only to tank a few hits. They aren't so bad when there's just one, but when three or four of your characters, or even just two, can summon with barely any cooldown, they make fights a lot easier without any effort. Enemies love targeting summons especially since you can plop them down right in front of them. Even if a summon eats only two highly damaging hits, that's a lot of damage your characters aren't taking.

My solutions would be:

Give summons much longer cooldowns so that even with high int, it takes 5 or 6 turns to summon one again.

You need the proper elemental surface to summon. Perhaps the surface is consumed when you summon from it.

Summons have less health and the Stench talent so enemies target them less. Enemies should no longer target elementals that they heal with their attacks.

Summons get two or three utility spells. Maybe stuff like cleansing water, cleansing fire, feather fall, perhaps even something like battering ram for an earth elemental.

More enemies (but not too many) get the dispel summon spell, and also charm.


The Source Difficulty mod did a lot of this already and from what I've seen with that mod they worked pretty well. These changes might sound harsh, but summons are pretty absurd at this point. Requiring an elemental surface would in particular address a party having up to four summons, because it would be difficult to get enough elemental surfaces to get four summons unless each party member had different elementals at their disposal and they spent time setting up the battlefield. But if someone wants to play like that, be my guest. A summoner party shouldn't be invalid, it just shouldn't be quite as effective or as easy to pull off.

Especially all summons should share the same cooldown. My mage was "focused" on mage-talents only, what ends in witchcraft, fire and earth high enough to spell summons. Even with 6 rounds cooldown this mage would be able to cast a summon per round (3 witchcrafts, 3 earth summons, 1 fire summon, 1 pet summon)

At least the cooldown should be shared within the discipline ...

Most of that these changes would kill even the rest of their usefulness...
The only good thing would be the "utility" abilities, that could give them some tactical use.
The cooldown could be ok, but is quite troublesome with the way intelligence works right now.
Or phrased differently: 5 rounds recharge at int...?
With low int it would be useless with high int it would still cause no cooldown.

And I'm very much aware of all the "upsides" mentioned here. Sadly these change almost nothing.
A lvl 22 elemental summon deals roughly 150 dmg max (with all debuffs possible critting for maybe 300-400). At that point a good craftable melee weapon has up to 700 damage, and not only that, damage increases come from a variety of sources: the weapon talent up to +70%~+80% commonly, rage +50%, oath +50% (not stackable anymore), bully +50% and finally direct skills that double the BASEVALUE.
At said level thats roughly 4k-6k dmg per single crit. More than any summon can deal in its whole lifetime (assuming it ONLY crits!).
But ok... lets say their offense is subpar. They still have their defense.
As most here should know in the later encounters elementals are most commonly instantkills with their 1k life and their almost non existant resists/armor. (except "their" element)
So thats 1 hit they can provide shelter for.
Ya know what my warrior says to that? ... "BLOCK" - Cost: 0 AP
But lets assume there's no shield warrior around only standard mages.
Ya know what my mages says? ... "fire/water/earth/air shield" - Cost 5 AP
These more than double the current life as shield-HP. A normal mage at that point has roughly 1k-2k HP, and roughly 100-200 armor with probably maxed resists (80%) from proper gear. So he takes never more than half damage (ca 100 amor provide 50% physical attack damage reduction)
So the mage itself can stand more than (at least!) 3x more damage with less AP and no way to bypass the "tank".

Edit:
Only decapitators last a bit longer with their 1800 HP and armor. So these CAN tank a bit. Nonetheless solely exploiting the AI feels a bit cheesy.

This said... They lack, they seriously lack.
But don't get me wrong, I really LOVE summoning. Having a ranger like Bairdottr summon a wolf or my witch summon a spider feels great. I do that myself just for the fluff. But thats it basically. Sadly.

I love the summons !!
And many times a summon is a life saver just because it gives a good "distraction" too ;-)

I'm saying a summon should have probably a cool down of 12-15 rounds with low int, and maybe 5 or 6 round cooldowns with high int (18-20ish). And the summons should probably all have their cooldowns tied together.

I never even remotely approached dealing 4-6k damage in a single crit, though yes I'll agree that summonns are fairly subpar when it comes to offense (though the skeleton summon can do some decent damage early on) o.O Admittedly, I didn't try all too hard to min-max damage (I didn't buy the stat bonuses multiple times, for example, and most of my characters were multiclassed so they didn't necessarily do the most damage with single attacks as they could). I do think some of your impressions of summons being weak is a matter of other skills being ridiculous or straight up broken. I hadn't realized the elemental shields straight up double your health until I used one in a mod. That just seems to be not functioning as intended and does make elementals seems kind of pointless as tanks for casters. My mages were also both GC (which is of course OP in its own right) so they only had 300ish health (playing on hard). I also agree that getting 50% block with a shield is pretty absurd. Lots of thing in D:OS are unbalanced, not just summons. And yes, they tend to be more useful in the beginning than in late game. But summons are kind of ridiculous, in my eyes.

One big way that summons are good "tanks" is that often enemies will go out of their way to attack them. So not only are enemies wasting AP on attacking them, melee characters have to run up to them, and if you position the elemental right, enemies can spend a lot of AP running to the summon, killing it, and then running to you. And you're right, exploiting the AI is kind of cheesy, hence enemies shouldn't be inclined to attack them unless they pose a threat. It certainly isn't easy to figure out what kind of situations enemies should attack summons and when they should attack the summoner, but I think Larian could figure something out to make improve AI behavior in this regard.

How about making a consequence for slain summons?
e.g. apply status effect to summoner that prolongs the summon cooldown, or summons progressively weaker summons (strong ones won't answer your call!), or summon has a chance of turning on you.
The purpose is to encourage keeping the summon alive via healing or buffing.

Summons having all their cooldowns tied together does make sense.



I'm not sure that's a terribly useful idea. It doesn't seem to address, say four characters, with one summon each, tanking all the enemy hits. Applying a penalty for a summon dying, given the existence of Destroy Summon, which can't be defended against at all, has the ring of unfairness.

I would agree that summons are overpowered and too useful and need to be toned down. This seems like a pretty good solution, both flavor and gameplay wise.

If a summon took 2 hits before it died, that was worth it IMO. By then, it's my turn again and I should be starting to lock down, charm, or outright kill at least half of the enemies. I really like the idea of giving summons the Stench ability.

"too useful"... "overpowered"... "2 hits"... good one ^^
Erm, well... I at least hope you were kidding...

Or are you seriously claiming 2 taken hits are on par with already killing the first enemy before he can act or severely damaging a group for the same amount of AP?

@Baardvark

Yes, I concur. As I said, it's the ratio. Compared to what you can do with the AP summoning is right now just not worth it, when most melee skills or offense spell spamm can downright execute most enemies.



Right! And thats exactly why they should have statistics so they can pose a threat! (by improving them or nerfing other things remains undecided)

To justify considerable powers there could be a system similar to the Astralenergybond in TheDarkEye for created entities. Just instead of the Astralenergy (the "Mana" of the TDE ruleset) upkeep it could be action points.

Statuseffect "exhaustion":
"Keeping a creature under control needs concentration. As long as it is active you loose X AP each round."

Well, I suppose we had different experiences. I've heard a lot more people say summons are too strong than they're too weak. I guess what I'm trying to say is that summons aren't great at either offense or defense alone, but they offer both for a relatively low commitment. Compared to shields (both the spell and items) and the ultimate spells, summons aren't ridiculous. But those things are kind of broken also, so summons shouldn't be compared to them.

Ya, seems like different experiences.

But without a quite miss-skilled character, so the summons look stronger in comparison, I can't imagine how one can overlook their insufficiency.

Well the main problem/reason however is, in my opinion, that you cannot influence them. (no way you stats or equipment can improve them, while it affects direct character stats) Such differences lead to deficiencies eventually.

I think Stabbey's original idea of limiting elemental summoning to their respective terrain would fit the game perfectly, given that it's already very strong in the terrain interaction department.

On the other hand I do see Seelenernter's point. At the very beginning summons seem strong and you can cheese some fights with them as long as they have to hold off their own element. Like you can block a passage with a fire elemental against fire creatures. Later on however, in fights not bound to a certain element, you often have better things to do with 6-7 action points. A buff or a debuff will last 3 turns but your summon most assuredly won't. Besides, its elemental attacks won't be of much use against late game enemies.

Maybe summons could scale with level or intelligence to become more potent?