Gate Spell

[thaelis]

These spells dont need to be longer then round per lvl....why does the summon or gated creature need to last longer then that?

For one sometimes being on your own is unavoidable, and a buffed summons (like the Planar bindings, but even the highest one dies extremely quickly in level 20 areas) is the only feasible way you can run around on your own. I'd like to note though that even with Shapechange or Gate I think its virtually impossible to solo the Whurest end battle!

Same goes for a small party (2-3 players), the smartest thing a wizard can do is use a long-term summon and go invisible or polymorph/shapechange himself and fight.

Even in a large party, running around in Whurest or Mossdale with AC 30 and <100hp is not wise. Long term summons and shapechange are the bread and butter of the class really. All those firey destruction spells are just for flavour.

[sonuvalich]

All those firey destruction spells are just for flavour.

They are remarkably limited by rest rules. So I can put out 120 dmg in missile swarms...but only 3-4 times in a dungeon. Most of the time in the group my contribution is the buffs I give at the start and burst damage in big fights, the rest of my time is spent praying I don't draw aggro. A long-term summon is great for continued contribution from a caster, as much as we love being your buff-bots and then walking around admiring the architecture while you hack everything within 100 miles to death.

I love the duration/power of the undead spells, I just wish we could get variants of that duration/power in non-undead forms (people get so cranky when you make their grandmother's corpse serve you for eternity). A prolonged gate spell, while still suffering from that drawback of telling everyone "I'm evil, just look at my summon!" is only phase 1. Phase 2 will be continuing my campaign to allow us 1 degree of variation in our summons so evil folks can pretend to be neutral and thus get along in mixed-alignment groups. Phase 3 is, as always, profit.

[Kitsunestume]

I'm a proponent for the other use of the spell, the cost-free version. For when your characters just need an excuse to stop existing on this plane temporarily.

[sonuvalich]

Gate's other purpose?

[Fuzziebunny]

Wait... What? Is the Gate spell usable for Good Clerics as well? Are there other things to summon then a flaming demon from the lower planes in desperate need of moisturizer? Have I been grind solo the hard way all this time?

[Valhalla]

... Yes. The spell doesn't last super long and the summons aren't super durable, but they all hit quite hard and cast Word of Faith, which is quite useful. It costs 500 gp to cast, too, but that's fairly trivial all things considered.

Good summon Planetars, neutral summon Concordant Killers, and evil summon Balors. They're all roughly equivalent in terms of power.

[Cornuto]

They're all roughly equivalent in terms of power.

Nearly identical, actually.

[Valhalla]

Yeah as far as I can tell the only difference is the Good/Evil summons have more damage vs. the opposite, while the Neutral has less damage against both.

[Fuzziebunny]

.... See.. These are the things you miss when we don't try to dominate the forces of evil. I looked at that spell and thought.. Huh.. This one might not work out well for me...

"Hey look it is Kindra and um... ".

I mean, it might have got me killed one less time if it was team evil and all. But, team good is not so understand about soul sucking magic.

Anyway! This is good to know and I will look into this. Thank you so much for letting me know

[Valhalla]

A fellow and I played PokeMon in the Hellstrom testing grounds awhile ago and sure enough, the Concordant Killer pretty much curbstomped the Death Knight. So the summons definitely pack more umph than the DK, just with a vastly shorter duration.

[sonuvalich]

.... See.. These are the things you miss when we don't try to dominate the forces of evil. I looked at that spell and thought.. Huh.. This one might not work out well for me...

"Hey look it is Kindra and um... ".

I mean, it might have got me killed one less time if it was team evil and all. But, team good is not so understand about soul sucking magic.

Anyway! This is good to know and I will look into this. Thank you so much for letting me know

There is absolutely nothing evil about gate, unless you use it to summon evil outsiders. You could use it to summon celestials to be your bff's. You could summon a dozen lantern archons to be the world's most OP light spell. The original spell from NWN2 only summoned a devil if memory served, which would give the spell an evil rep. Cornuto did his awesome thing and fixed it so it at least has three flavors to it.

My suggestion with casters is to try and cast all your summons and see what you get before shelving a spell. The devs did a lot of good stuff by making summons vary with alignment, so anything that isn't create dead will likely give you a non-evil buddy. Sadly, these summons are all still weak and short-lived compared to the undead spells, plus the undead summons are immune to crits. So for something like the Colibrite vampire quest you would actually get better results with the death knight than the balor from Gate, because the balor can get 200+ crit-to-his-face from that nasty scythe.

[Fuzziebunny]

I am pretty sure when I looked at the spell it said balor. I might be wrong but I was sure I remembered that. Not that I think my toon couldn't have gotten a good deal from a balor. I mean there could have been beer, hot bodies in skimpy clothes, hell maybe even dancing.

But .... I was in a church. And while I am not at all certain things would have gone badly. Maybe Luther would have just chilled and watched the boys take it off with my toon. I really don't know. What I do know is I am totally going to try every spell in my spell book now, just to make certain it is not cool before I write it off.

[OnyxTigress]

The spell description has not been updated to reflect the changes, if I remember right. But it indeed has a good guy summon for those who don't wish to cause shenanigans with a balor.

[sonuvalich]

I swear to God I'm going to pistol whip the next person to say shenanigans!

Kidding aside, Onyx/Ruby is right about the description. This may seem blasphemy, but I would try to find some time on server to be OOC and experiment with your spells. Find somewhere remote, take yourself off search, and just see what happens with certain things. Some of my best times on Sundren have been essentially Enclave stoner nights, experimenting with spells with other wizards in the opium den and giggling when hilarity ensued (i.e. Sandro getting murdered by NPCs for accidentally damaging them.) It's good to know what they can and can't do, and a number of spell descriptions are not wholly accurate, so finding those discrepancies can't hurt.

[[DM] Grinning Death]