Cooper's Corrected Summon Monster I-III (2010)

One of the great things about role-playing games is how they create a commonality of experiences among gamers. Even between role-players who have only just met, it is easy to talk about what your respective paladins were like, or how you suffered through the Dungeon of Double Doom. It is that sense of camaraderie that makes RPGs so great for those who play them. Of course, these shared experiences are not always happy ones. Case in point, whether you were the Game Master or another player, it is likely that you let out a groan whenever someone said that they were casting a Summon Monster spell. Instantly, things ground to a halt as the proper stats were looked up, the appropriate Celestial or Fiendish template applied with all its various changes, and the creature’s hit points and placement were tracked along with everyone else’s. And that is assuming just one of it was summoned! And if the PC took the Augment Summoning feat as well, introducing more changes to the summoned monster’s stats, well... at least it made a good opportunity to go get some more snacks. Ideally, this sort of situation could be avoided because- whether player or GM- the person whose character would be most likely to cast one of these spells would come to the table with the appropriate stats created beforehand, ready to be pulled out as needed. Unfortunately, it rarely works like that, as players tend to have little idea of what situations their characters will be facing until they actually happen, and GMs can only hazard a guess as to what their PCs will do in response to the threats they face. Really, the only possible way to be prepared ahead of time would be if you wrote out the stats for all possible summoned creatures, with their Augmented and non-Augmented incarnations, before you sat down. But really, who would go to all that trouble just to be prepared? John Cooper, that’s who.