AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

Okay... so dragons exist on the material plane... so when using conjuration to bind a dragon (i.e Dragon Knight)... are we tapping into the material plane? Are we dragging a dragon out from some other plane?

Ugg... actually, instead of retyping that, I'm gonna leave it and ask another question that may be the same question.. I dunno...

How does dragon summoning work? I just can't figure it out, lore wise, weave wise, planar wise... I mean how does a character gain the power to instantly teleport a dragon to their side and command it to do their bidding?

Same as any other summon? They just happen to be powerful and sentient. Where does a badger or dire tiger get summoned from? If you can answer that, you can answer the dragon. To me, it's not so much a "how do you do it", but rather a "how do good and neutral characters justify doing it ethically".

It could arguably be done, as a point of view by having worked out a pre-existing pact with the Dragon. Though, that's more a roleplay standpoint.

Admittedly, I can see where that would walk into the conundrum of "Well, why doesn't the spell require a roleplayed pact first?". Admittedly if going by the standpoint and view I put above, it should.

This is, in part also why the Dragon Knight on Amia's based on Alignment or why any reskin requests require that the alignment of the Dragon be compatible with the Caster, to my knowledge.

I don't know why the alignment would matter. Alignment based summons is an NWN thing. An evil fellow would have zero qualms (And in fact, might find the irony appealing) to summon a celestial. There's literally no reason why he couldn't, as long as the bindings are correct.

It becomes more dangerous to summon outside of your alignment. That Celestial might do all within its power to act against your wishes. But if you have summoned it and enslaved it temporarily to your will-- and done so properly, there is little it can do.

Likewise, a good guy can summon a devil. However, the nature of the act is inherently wicked, and will begin to corrupt the good guy for using forsaken power. But the Evil fellow won't suddenly get good points for enslaving a celestial!

Summoning is more controversial than most people would think to believe.

"Never summon what you cannot control or are not ready to subdue."

Some wisdom I heard once that best explains this point. Yes, you CAN summon Devils / Angels that're opposite to your alignment, but it's generally NOT a good idea unless you've got your bindings solid and are ready to work out a deal.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/summonMonsterI.htm

Here's the core of the base summons.

This is a much simpler summoning, then spells such as the Planar Binding, or Gate spells.

Gate however is a Calling which is slightly different, since the being called doesn't HAVE to answer.

Grymia wrote:

"Never summon what you cannot control or are not ready to subdue."

I think this is where I am having the issue.... anyone here manage to enchant a dragon with their PC? anyone?

I suppose a mortal could get some kind of upper hand on a dragon somewhere somehow... something the dragon wants or needs... and the dragon offers their service to the mortal in order to gain that thing...

.... And persuade check??? That's the only thing I can think of. A single spell that instantly teleports a freakin DRAGON that is under the control of the caster is... outta my league, lore wise, because I don't know how to subdue a dragon... that is without mega pursuadage... maybe animal handling?

Didn't the EDK get changed to an adolescent or something, so that your not actually summoning a fully grown freakin' dragon anymore?

This is also true.

O'Raghailligh wrote:

Didn't the EDK get changed to an adolescent or something, so that your not actually summoning a fully grown freakin' dragon anymore?

That helps. Thanks!

Shurely making it adolscent would make it harder to control?

"You're not my real Dad! I hate you! No-one understands the pain in my life. I tried to cut myself and put pictures of it on Ye Instawoodcarving, but my wrists are all scaly and it didn't work."

I've always taken Dragon Knight spell as calling or summoning a real dragon. It is your own how you desire to represent it, to actually summor or having done a pact that allows you to call it. As well you could possibly bride the dragon to do your bidding when working through calling conjuration. If you would do properly to imitate having a pact with a dragon, it would done via DM. Then again, you would need to keep check that the dragon doesn't die under your service, bad rep really.

However, summoning allows the summoned creature to return to their original place, even though beaten, not dead. Here the problem is that the sentient creature migth desire vengeance towards the summoner who bound it and forced to fight till death. I prefer the summoning option, it would explain better why the dragons actually would submit to do all the stupid things their summoners want them to.

And as Hudson stated, alignment based summoning is NWN thing. If your powerful enough summoner, you can summon whatever you want and force it to do your bidding. The good guys simply ask the celestial assistance in the matter, which more often desire to help those of good alignment. After all, they often pursue same things, opposing evil.

And you don't necessarily need persuade check. Arcane is a mighty thing, to give you a hint, there are binding rituals that can bind mighty beings to servitude, not all of them are evil binding rituals. You could learn more by finding out IG and IC, it would be very interesting roleplay having some teach your mage these things.

Magiros wrote:

And you don't necessarily need persuade check. Arcane is a mighty thing, to give you a hint, there are binding rituals that can bind mighty beings to servitude, not all of them are evil binding rituals. You could learn more by finding out IG and IC, it would be very interesting roleplay having some teach your mage these things.

well... I'm going the divine route, but thank you! this gave me some good ideas.

The divine route has just as many strategies as arcane bindings. They're often rather similar, even. But the divine route tends to be more strict on the consequences of summoning outside your alignment. So it's not that you couldn't, as much as you might be punished for it afterwards.

Mr. Hackums wrote:

The divine route has just as many strategies as arcane bindings. They're often rather similar, even. But the divine route tends to be more strict on the consequences of summoning outside your alignment. So it's not that you couldn't, as much as you might be punished for it afterwards.

If that's true, it's unique to Amia. In PnP, a divinely-cast summon spell takes on the alignment descriptor of the summoned creature, and clerics can't cast spells in direct opposition to their or their deities' alignments.

I would sill argue that even clerics can't simply have the information of summoning a dragon knight implanted into their brains. They must learn it someway and not magically have the knowledge "appear" to their minds as they 'level up'.

Perhaps far more complicated prayer, perhaps a recognition from the deity for long and outstanding service. Still, dragons do not simply appear to any summoner, it is a lengthy process.

Edit: Still my argument stands, it could have been very interesting role play possibilities had you taken to learn this IC and IG.

Magiros wrote:

Edit: Still my argument stands, it could have been very interesting role play possibilities had you taken to learn this IC and IG.

/agree

Magiros wrote:

Edit: Still my argument stands, it could have been very interesting role play possibilities had you taken to learn this IC and IG.

I feel like I should clarify, I didn't mean to declare categorically that cross-alignment summoning should never ever happen for clerics. Just that it's a bigger deal than merely fretting in solitude about the moral consequences. A cleric would need to have some pretty amazing circumstances to even have been granted the spell in the first place, is all I'm saying. It feels to me like that sort of thing would require the special attention and dispensation of the deity in question (i.e., the DM overseeing).

To Liz,

I was not against your post as I do agree that I do not see why a Deity would grant certain spells to be used in the first place. I am not that familiar how divine magic works as I never play those classes. My perspective is strictly to do with arcane as it is the one I understand to some degree.

My mage figured out how to summon a dragon but then pretty much didn't dare to summon one because dragons were dangerous and he wasn't looking forwards to an angry dragon looking for revenge on him.

In the end he summoned the dragon once in a fight against another, much larger, dragon and after that got a lot of gifts made for the dragon he summoned and plans to visit said dragons to apologize for summoning it and maybe work out something between himself and the dragon to summon it again.

For his dungeon runs he uses a summon that's way too dim to even realise what a summoning is.

I guess that shows my view on EDK.

I have had an idea of the lore behind the spell, but the one thing I cant understand, is where do all these dragons come from? I have found, 3? Dragons in Amia, a Blue one in the abyss, a Negative Dragon in the Darkhold place, and the Prismatic dragon on B in the mountains. >.> So who is making all these little ones?

EDK can summon a dragon from elsewhere then the little island called Amia. Faeruin is a vast place.

The Darkhold dragon is not a real dragon, btw. Just something taking on the guise of a dragon.

Yossarin wrote:

The Darkhold dragon is not a real dragon, btw. Just something taking on the guise of a dragon.

SPOILER ALERT! lol

Plus it is not like each mages uses custom tailored dragon for them. Some dragons might be summoned more then once even. Like any summoning spell, they simply summon the creature from somewhere. From other planes or this plane. This would be some sweet conjuration roleplay to find out. Have to advertise.

Mr. Hackums wrote:

However, the nature of the act is inherently wicked, and will begin to corrupt the good guy for using forsaken power. But the Evil fellow won't suddenly get good points for enslaving a celestial!

Not to open this discussion any further than this, but the above comment needs to be made note of and taken with a grain of salt. You just identified the core problem of any mechanistic view of "alignment of magical tool -> alignment of the act of using it". You chose to handwave it away ("it only works the other way around"), but the solution is by no means obvious. If using an evil spell is evil in itself (at least in some miniscule way, contributing to the overall sum alignment of the action), then you need some pretty strong arguments to avoid applying that to the other three alignments. Just saying so doesn't quite cut it, IMO.

Re: OP, the planes are full of dragons. I don't see why you couldn't suppose it's a fairly generic dragon from Dragon Eyrie or, in the case of clerics, a planar servant of your god. That is, if you don't want it to be a Prime Material dragon, anyway. Certainly makes a lot more sense than assuming Amians are summoning half the world's dragon population on a regular basis.

Quote:

Re: OP, the planes are full of dragons. I don't see why you couldn't suppose it's a fairly generic dragon from Dragon Eyrie or, in the case of clerics, a planar servant of your god. That is, if you don't want it to be a Prime Material dragon, anyway. Certainly makes a lot more sense than assuming Amians are summoning half the world's dragon population on a regular basis.

Dragon Eyrie! Thank you. Another piece of the puzzle for my fun little story.

Dragon Knight...Lore?

Who is online