Is it time to upgrade Summon Monster?

[Tezzmeister]

Hello all.

I believe that Summon Monster and Summon Nature's Ally are in need of a buff.

Summon Monster should scale with player level similar to the Artificer Homunculus + the player's conjuration ability: https://ddowiki.com/page/Homunculus

The summon should also last until it dies and then have a recharge timer of 5-10 minutes.

Animal Growth should further enhance this, but if this is too powerful it should be placed on a timer of 5 minutes and be reserved for boss fights/difficult dungeons.

The Summon Monster spell should also create a summon bar similar to the hireling to be able to control what the summon does and have it be used as a helpful tool during quests.

Going into a quest as a high level caster and only being able to summon a creature with a low level CR when the quest is Elite or Reaper means that the summon does not last long. Considering the classes which are able to use summons without much difficulty, this change would be a great help for Sorc, Bard, Wiz, FvS, Cleric and Wlk.

Thank you for reading.

[droid327]

Its time for a comprehensive NPC Helpers overhaul, which includes Summons, Hirelings, and Class Pets, and needs to include at minimum both proper statistical scaling and an AI/UI overhaul to make them useful and reliable and better integrated into the flow of combat

That's a major undertaking, but it would do no good to do it piecemeal, it all needs to happen together or summons still wont be worthwhile.