>I was thinking about conjurers, and one glaring problem became
>evident in regards to ones who use demons and devils: the
>hitpoint dilemma. Anyone who has played a conjurer knows that
>they have absolute ASS for hp (I recall having just over 300
>natural hp at level 35 with my first).

Well, they've got "mage hp", yeah. Same as the other mages, con for con.

>Now this is a pain in
>the ass to begin with, but when you consider that your demon
>or devil will jump you if you become too injured, it means
>that your max "workable" hp is actually less...so at best you
>have 200hp to work with at level 35 before you have a chance
>of your servitor deciding to eat your face. Even with every
>protection I can think of, that blows.

I think your assumptions are semi-outdated here.

Some (not all) devils can potentially jump you if you're very wounded and they're somewhat unhappy. I haven't actually seen this happen in a very long time.

As far as I know, only one kind of demon will jump on you for being beat up. Its jumping tendencies now (as of the start of this thread or thereabouts) are reduced/eliminated by its happiness. So basically you'd have to either not use that kind of demon or be careful around it if you can't make it happy.

>So, how could this be fixed? How about making a class-wide
>variable prime stat for conjurers? It makes sense that good
>conjurers would want to be charismatic, because they don't
>want to truly exert their will over angels and archons
> although this is debatable when you really think about what
>"lightbind" does). When it comes to someone who is working
>with demons and devils, I really don't see why they'd want to
>be charismatic; they would want to completely dominate their
>servitors. Also, the rigors of this particular school of
>magic, such as the constant risk of getting your ass beaten,
>training with axes, use of shields, etc., seem to indicate
>that conjurers should be tough son's of bitches, as mages go,
>and should have more hp than other mages...maybe more along
>the lines of shamans. The class-wide variable stat would work
>as follows: Good conjurers would have a choice between
>charisma or intelligence as the prime stat, evil conjurers
>would choose between intelligence and constitution, and
>neutral conjurers could choose any of the three. Furthermore,
>charisma would no longer be a factor in dealing with evil
>servitors, or at least less of one. Again, conjurers, on the
>whole, should receive greater hp gains...most dramatically
>towards evil conjurers who choose constitution as their prime
>stat.

My thoughts amount to: Even if I considered allowing conjurers pick their prime stat, I wouldn't be willing to devalue charisma. Otherwise, you're just letting evil conjurers gear for one less stat and giving them more hit points, and I honestly don't think they need it.

>Now, to reduce some of the fatal uncertainty that this class
>currently has, I want to toss out an idea to alter lightbind,
>darkbind, and bind elemental. How about making a "most
>successful" level of casting for this spell? What I mean is
>that if you hit this "sweet spot" when attempting a binding,
>the chance of your servitor turning on you (for ANY reason) is
>removed. The rationale is that the spell was successful enough
>that the conjurer managed to exert total control over the
>servitor in question. Now, when this happens a special message
>would be added to the spell's normal echo:

Without going to the step of making a game balance judgement here, stylistically I don't like this. If you want to play a character with 'dumb' mobs who do what you say, there's necromancer, druid, Tribunal, mercenaries, etc. The intelligence and degree of free will inherent in conjurers is much of what makes the class unique, and it's both one of the strongest benefits and one of the greatest weaknesses of the class. When a pair of axe warriors and a pebble-happy invoker tool up on your archon-binding conjurer and start lagging him like crazy, you're pretty glad that it can make up its own mind to heal you without needing orders or you to not be permalagged to be useful. It's pretty nice that your demon will jump on that paladin and start bashing him while you're blind and deafened. With that strength of smart mobs comes its downsides.