>"You say that reducing the effectiveness of summon is a
>drawback. To who?"
>
>To all of the summoning classes, for starters. One of the
>main strengths of the Paladin, Shaman, AP, and Necro is the
>ability to summon. Shaman have it earliest, but require
>empowerent. AP's and Necros get it considerably later, and
>must work harder to reach the point where 'summon' is
>effective and practical for them. It is not an ability that
>is attained easily from a design standpoint.
>

Well, in my experience summon is such a useful spell that even given its cost it quickly rises to high levels of practice. At lower levels, people don't tend to gear for saves as much, so fewer summons are needed (it seems to me). At higher level, you have around 1000 mana and 50 mana per attempted summoning is very little when you won't be needing your mana to kill the summoned people (your group will do that for you).

>If the effectiveness of 'summon' is eroded, the appeal of
>these classes is likewise reduced. This change would also
>impact the conjurer class. They will be less feared in
>groups, and conjurers will be less potent.
>

I'm not convinced. The use of deny summoning immediately prevents you teleporting, wording, tesseracting. That's a pretty big handicap. I know I've killed people who used it to stop me summoning them before.

> Remember, there are already existing drawbacks to summon:
>
>Some Drawbacks of 'Summon':
>Failure Chance

Drawback, but of minimal risk to someone in a group. My own experience is that, on average, one in three summonings will succeed, but then I also improve upon that by picking on the people that have the worst saves first, once I build up a picture of that.

>Delay (lag)

1 round is of little risk much of the time. In four rounds, someone is unlikely to reach where I am on eastern, or in mountains, or in any area where rooms have similar names, such as desert, oceans (yes, submerging is an option for some, but not others).

>High mana cost

When you summon into a group, you don't need much mana for the actual fight because your group is there to rip them up with numbers.

>Requires empowerment OR significant investment of time to
>attain

No less than other skills obtained at the same level.

>Can be negated by Conjurers

With great drawbacks.

>Can be negated by other preventative measures taken by the
>target(avoidance/combat/saves/etc)

Most of which are not practical in many summoning situations. Combat, you need a mob near enough to use it. That's not the case in raids, with the result that the current summoning situation prevents defenses where people are heavily outnumbered (except in the village). It's not like in a raid you can start hitting your inner. Would it be such a bad thing to enable outnumbered people to make stands at their inner (similar to the village)?

>Does not work in nosummon areas, of which there are many
>

You take your group into one, and you can expect to get raided, obliging you to come out for rp reasons.

>"Why is it every time someone suggests a change everyone
>assumes it is complaining?"
>
>I don't think you're complaining and I think you have
>interesting points. Any change will impact someone who plays
>the game, so virtually every idea will face some kind of
>resistance or scrutiny before undergoing more serious
>consideration.

I understand that. However, as someone who plays a lot of summoners, I too will summon people into my groups. Contrary to what Graatch says, this does not mean that I consider being able to do that as good for the mud. However, I'm not about to tell groupmates that I won't do it when I have no rp reason to refuse. I just don't feel that the reduction in summon in this situation would spoil my fun, because I don't get that much enjoyment out of killing someone 3 or 4 on 1. On the other side, I'm sure it would increase the fun of the person who would have come to me if I went to them instead and they could at least have a chance to survive and/or kill me and/or flee. I just don't see summonings into large groups as adding anything to the mud. Summonings into smaller groups, sure. Summon into larger group, if nothing else, at least might force the summoner to use some preps in case they find themselves deposited by their intended victim, under what I've proposed.