Summoning Additions

[Knight Of Pentacles]

I find summoners to be fairly under powered currently with summons (with exception of powerful themes) being hard to utilize because of AI and limited control options.  I propose that it be easier to switch inbetween the less powerful themes to allow specialized summoners (those with GSF Conjuration) to summon beings they've access to in certain orders so as to make use of  synergistic combinations. 

Categorize summoning themes into two categories: Ordinary & Extraordinary

Ordinary themes are those that summon things which are relatively ordinary and are relatively weak individually

• Fire Elementals
• Water Elementals
• Earth Elementals
• Air Elementals
• Beings of Law
• Illusions
• Rats
• Dogs
• Furniture
• Ooze

Extraordinary themes are those that summon things that are out of the ordinary and are generally more powerful.

• Celestials
• Devils
• Demons
• Aberrations
• Eyeballs
• Spirits
• Slaadi

Add a command which allows you to assign an ordinary theme to a macro.  Ex:  /c toggle_theme Water, /c toggle_theme Dog

[Frank]

I play a summoner with GSF, and I'd actually say the Celestial theme would probably be classified as extraordinary and fairly strong, though I've never used any of the ones you have in that category. Maybe they're wildly better, but as much as I want to be some kind of pokemon master and have all the themes collected, I won't be able to test the extraordinary ones because they're just too darn evil. :(

I really like the idea of being able to swap the summons out like you suggested, since you'll either have to type the command out or use up valuable hotbar space to get the macro. Both can be punishing in their own way, compared to burning an action to select a new tome, so it's still pretty balanced. Keeping the existing method and adding your suggested option would be nice, so there's flexibility. Thinking about it from a scripting angle, the game would have to know which themes you have access to, so maybe making something like a 'keyring' you can tie your books to would allow that rather than having to check your full inventory.

For the AI, I definitely feel some of the restrictions. The biggest one is having no control over the special abilities of your summons. If you use the Control Companion tool to select a summon, then use it to select an enemy, the summon will always just try to run up and punch it. When you're trying to summon ranged minions to strategically attack a specific threat, it means having to instead move them somewhere they *might* see the foe and waiting for them to decide to use their powers. I've been very nervous about getting someone else killed because I couldn't direct things clearly.

I'd heard that some of the summons were being used to unlock doors previously when they shouldn't be able to (much as I'd love to see something like the wererat having that ability), so I kind of figured the dumbed-down AI it was either an engine limitation or a conscious effort to keep summons from being overpowered and exploitable. It'd be great, however, to at least have a 'ranged attack' command for summons who are able to do them. Maybe if they lack ranged, that command would instead get them to cast one of their buffs. That would be the best addition I can think of.