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I love the concept of summoning, no matter what game I play, my characters can always summon minions. Weather they are evil demons that are forced to be under your control, or a loving companion such as guenhwyvar

I think that the conjuration skill could use an overhaul. I would love to have quests revolved around conjuration, even if it means having a ritual at a pentagram possibly dooming tamriel. I would also like new animations. A creature just forming from mid-air is not that interesting. Aaaannnnddd make some of them dangerous! Let's say a guy summons a demonic creature with a very low conjuration skill level. Have that demon attack the player rather than aid them.

before the magic schools were revealed, i had the idea that conjuration and necromancy should be separate schools. conjuration would summon from oblivion, and necromancy would summon undead. separating the schools would add to the role playing experience, since, imho, summoning from different places would involve different skills. unfortunately, beth decided to decrease the number of skills, but i won't judge until i see how they balance it out. perhaps perks will help balance out the roleplaying (i.e. perhaps a perk must be taken to summon undead, a different perk for daedra summoning).

furthermore, i agree that animations should be overhauled. summoning an ogrim from malacath's plane should involve it appearing from a portal of billowing smoke, for instance.

Cygnus wrote:before the magic schools were revealed, i had the idea that conjuration and necromancy should be separate schools. conjuration would summon from oblivion, and necromancy would summon undead. separating the schools would add to the role playing experience, since, imho, summoning from different places would involve different skills. unfortunately, beth decided to decrease the number of skills, but i won't judge until i see how they balance it out. perhaps perks will help balance out the roleplaying (i.e. perhaps a perk must be taken to summon undead, a different perk for daedra summoning).

furthermore, i agree that animations should be overhauled. summoning an ogrim from malacath's plane should involve it appearing from a portal of billowing smoke, for instance.

I added a story to my oblivion character. He became addicted to necromancy due to the effects of an ancient artifact. He is not a bad guy, he is just consumed by the artifacts power.

Now - because he is a necromancer, and there is no necromancy skill in oblivion, does that mean I still can't play one? The game does not tell you how to roleplay, you are open to do whatever you want. If you want summoning and necromancy to be separate, just summon undead. Download a mod or make one.

Be cool if Necromany was a sepeart skill, I always found the undead better than the deadra. My headless zombie beat the s*** out of a spriggin once, when it took 3 spider deadroths. New animations, yes. And like to summon undead, you need somthing like mort flesh in your invintory. And to summond daedra, you need to get permission from their deadric prince; Beacuse I always thought that the princes would get angry at you for using thier daedra without permission

Blackfire wrote:I love the concept of summoning, no matter what game I play, they can always summon minions. Weather they are evil demons that are forced to be under your control, or a loving companion such as guenhwyvar

Pardon me, but isn't Queen Guenivere already sleeping with somebody else?

I've said this once before in another thread, but I'd think it neat if you made Necromancy a school of magic that depended on the potent energies of a being's soul as a power source. You see something like that already in the power of Soul Gems, but the most powerful Necromancers don't need such gems— they manipulate soul energies directly. Trade it off that Soul Energy is more potent than Magicka, but with the obvious cost that you must harvest it from living beings rather than gathering it through one's own willpower.

The end result is that mage needs to kill in order to cast their best Necromantic spells, which is far different from other schools who rely on magicka alone. It's akin to blood magic— it's just that the caster can never use themselves as a power source, so they always use someone else.

Dark Spark wrote:

Blackfire wrote:I love the concept of summoning, no matter what game I play, they can always summon minions. Weather they are evil demons that are forced to be under your control, or a loving companion such as guenhwyvar

Pardon me, but isn't Queen Guenivere already sleeping with somebody else?

Guenhwyvar as in the black panther from r.a. Salvatore's "legend of drizzt"

I have to admit, these are some really cool, great ideas, which I'm equally afraid Beth would never consider. Makes far too much sense, obviously. I was already p/o'ed at them for nerfing Conjuration from what it was in Morrowind being able to summon hordes of creatures if you had the magicka, to just being able to conjure and summon one at a time in Oblivion. I'm scared to death of what they're going to do to one of my favorite schools of magic in Skyrim.

Blackfire wrote:

Dark Spark wrote:

Blackfire wrote:I love the concept of summoning, no matter what game I play, they can always summon minions. Weather they are evil demons that are forced to be under your control, or a loving companion such as guenhwyvar

Pardon me, but isn't Queen Guenivere already sleeping with somebody else?

Guenhwyvar as in the black panther from r.a. Salvatore's "legend of drizzt"

Odd. If that's not the Brythonic spelling for Guinevere, it's pretty close.

Maybe (if there be different rewards for higher skill levels) you could choose between Necromancy, Daedra summoning, and summoning other crap (bound weapons/armor, maybe soul trap now that mysticism is gone [or would that now be an enchanting spell? Who knows]) at Journeyman level.

Dark Spark wrote:

Blackfire wrote:

Dark Spark wrote:Pardon me, but isn't Queen Guenivere already sleeping with somebody else?

Guenhwyvar as in the black panther from r.a. Salvatore's "legend of drizzt"

Odd. If that's not the Brythonic spelling for Guinevere, it's pretty close.

Yeah, there are more similarities - Drizzt stole Guen from her original keeper, for instance.

Anyway, back on topic - Summoning definintely needs an overhaul. I like the idea of summoning components, and different specialisations of summoning, and even the 'certain skill level control' concept mentioned.

Putting it all together, imagine if basic 'no perk' conjuration could only summon natural creatures, whereas summoning oblivion inhabitants required a perk, as would necromantic summoning.

Controlling your summoned creatures could be a percentage chance, with the stronger the creature and/or the lower your skill making it less likely to be controlled. Additional perks could be used to increase the chance of control.

Using components (like Mort flesh, or bear claw, or something) could be negated by yet more perks.

I also hope some high end summons scale better too. I didn't like how summoning past level 20 in oblivion was useless because all of the scaled monsters were better than the not scaled summons. Word.

Ethelred wrote:Using components (like Mort flesh, or bear claw, or something) could be negated by yet more perks.

or ... using components like mort flesh for zombies, ectoplasm for ghosts, bonemeal for skeletons, daedra heart for daedra could increase your chance to successfully control, or allow you to conjure more powerful summons, etc. Rare components could be needed for unique master level summons (and this from the guy who hates the rank system of Oblivion. novice, apprentice, journeyman, etc.). Basically, treat components like a "perk" that would add some benefit, but wasn't actually necessary, at least not until higher level, but have basic conjuring and summoning at a basic level of a basic creature type depending on your school / specialization without the need of any such restrictions.

Syn wrote:

Ethelred wrote:Using components (like Mort flesh, or bear claw, or something) could be negated by yet more perks.

or ... using components like mort flesh for zombies, ectoplasm for ghosts, bonemeal for skeletons, daedra heart for daedra could increase your chance to successfully control, or allow you to conjure more powerful summons, etc. Rare components could be needed for unique master level summons (and this from the guy who hates the rank system of Oblivion. novice, apprentice, journeyman, etc.). Basically, treat components like a "perk" that would add some benefit, but wasn't actually necessary, at least not until higher level, but have basic conjuring and summoning at a basic level of a basic creature type depending on your school / specialization without the need of any such restrictions.

Meh... Maybe if your conjuring a creature that isnt already alive. Like how the gatekeeper was made. If you summon a demon from the planes of oblivion, it exists, you dont need components, you just need to haveit under your control.

There was one thing that i couldn't get in Oblivion. Correct me if i'm wrong (as i've mentioned before - i'm not too familiar with TES), but Necromancy was kind of taboo, wasn't it? And still You could summon zombies and noone gave a damn about it. Wouldn't it be fair to have this Necromancy skill separated so that You could only bring zombies out of actual dead bodies. And if there would be witnesses that would see You creating or controling zombies, You'd be reported to the guards. And i would love that these zombies would be quite long-lasting (months? until their flesh would totally rot).
So this would be a very powerful tool to create Your own zombie army (maybe their quantity would be limited, but at least You'd be able to have a few at once), that would be long lasting. But the risk would be very high.

Let's say You'd have some shack at the edge of some town. At nights You'd lure unsuspicious victims to Your place, kill them and turn in to zombies. You'd have a basement where You'd keep these creatures untill the moment You'd need them.

yep, Traven in Oblivion banned all necromancy probably cos he didnt like necromancers much (rather than because its evil)

summoning in TES has always been about temporary allies. It would be highly cool to be able to permanently summon things (and to summon many monsters), tho i think if you do have an army you would need to spend a lot of energy keeping them under control.

summoning has loads of potential, it really opens up possibilities about how mages manipulate realities and travel/communicate between realms. I would like conjuration to have more consequences, so you can summon something way out of your league (if you found the spell) but it might turn on you and your allies
Another way to update summoning would be for you as a conjuror to seek out creatures to make bargains with, and in turn for your favour they agree to be summoned. For instance a Dremora prince might demand continued human sacrifices to grant you his services, or meeting the Duke of Frost Atronarchs and finishing a quest for him might grant you the ability to summon ice sprites as an ally of Ice monsters

Sorry for the necro-post, I but I still love summoning to death.

When I start modding, I WILL make a conjuration overhaul <3

mars wrote:I'm a big fan of magic and I'm always a bit dissapointed by ES handling magic as simple button pressing. You don't even need to gain knowledge all you need is money to buy or make your spells other than that it's just button mashing and drinking potions. That's why I'm worried about the meager 85 spells gameinformer mentioned. Now on Conjuring. I think it was fine the way it was in Oblivion apart from what I mentioned above and the fact that you just made the creatures appear out of your fist. Oh and about the necromany/conjuration thing you guys are discussing above. I think that necromancy hasn't got much to do with conjuration. It's more of a mysticism originating branch in my view and doesn't have to do much with summoning. I mean necromancy means creating undead not summoning them. The undead that are summoned if they aren't already present still have to be created. Zombies don't just appear on their own. The only undead that actually require summoning are ghosts and wraiths. The fact that you could summon undead just like that was sort of far fetched and unexplained. All books on conjuration speak of daedra not undead. I could go on and on about this but I think I've made my point. Feel free to discuss it with me I'd love to talk more about it and magic in general

As has been said, the 85 spells likely means 85 spell effects.

I think having a creature that you conjured turn against you would take away from the whole concept of summoning creatures...

NDirishKC wrote:I think having a creature that you conjured turn against you would take away from the whole concept of summoning creatures...

How so?

I demand to summon a Leilah for cooking ^_^, and summon a Dean for blade training

I think that it would be cool if you could do quests or create the special ssummoning spells.

A way to seperate necromancy from conjuration could be having necromancy requiring a dead body in order to summon a minon (Diablo 2 style) and conjuration staying the same as it is.

Also having extra animations for summons would be very cool.

If you read the books and see how necromancers act in gave (not the NPCs, but what you hear about) necromancy seems more akin to alchemy in that it seems to require certain methods and rites, not simple casting. I'd prefer necromancy be a method instead of a skill. Gather body parts, bind them physically so they stay together, treat with herbs or something, say some chants, summon a deadric spirit or something as possession, then poof.. zombie/skeleton/whatever. I never liked the idea of necromancy simply being to snap one's fingers and there's a skeleton standing there suddenly which is why I've never really touched the skill or played a necromancer.

I like your ideas cactus, you take many informations from the necromancer books but if summon undead would work like that then, a undead being must be more like a companion and must be very strong.Almost nobody would play a necromancer if you had to run around days on graveyards and battlefields to gather bones and flesh to sew together a skeleton or a zombie and then the first enemy destroys your work with a few hits/spells. If the really implement necromancy like it must work lorewise its not really a summoning ability , its more like "constructing" a powerful companion for your aid. It could be a nice addition to the game but I think its hard to balance it,rather its not to weak or to strong.