Demonic Control (750)

Post by Nilven on 6 March 2004

Demon Summoning is supposed to be the crowning glory of the Sorcerer profession.  It is something that we have waited on since the beginning of GemStone.  A few years ago parts of the foundation for the spell were being worked on by GM Banthis, but the status of demons/demon summoning and his work is unknown.

Luckily, Virilneus and Gahread (under the Coming Up Link) have some notes from past information.  What I have is below.

Sorcerers: Primary controllers/summoners (demons) / banishers

Wizards: Secondary controllers / summoners (elementals)

Clerics: Secondary banishers

The above was based from the sorcerer/demon viewpoint.  I took it to mean that sorcerers are primary in all aspects of demons and secondary in elementals, wizards are primary in elementals and secondary in demons.  Clerics are secondary in both.

Therefore, sorcerers are primary summoners/controllers/banishers for demons, wizards are primary summoners/controllers/banishers for elementals.  Sorcerers are secondary controllers/banishers for elementals and wizards are secondary controllers/banishers for demons while clerics are secondary banishers for both.

However...

The following was taken from Banthis' outline for the Demonology Seminar at SimuCon '98:

• Sorcerers – Primary summoning class, primary controlling class, primary banishing class

• Clerics – Secondary summoning class, secondary banishing class

• Wizards – Secondary controlling class

As you can see, according to Banthis, Clerics may be able to summon demons.

I certainly hope not.

(6 March 2004)

For the record, I doubt you'll need to be 2x in Demonology lore to effectively summon a Major Demon. In all likelihood your ability to construct proper summoning circles via MIU, Arcane Symbols and the like will be the biggest determinant of your success with summoning Major Demons.

On the other hand, your ability to keep your demon from killing you will probably in large part depend on your demonology ranks and whether or not you can defend yourself against the demon ;)

Also, access to having the demon carry out certain commands and cooperative summoning will probably be heavily influenced by demonology ranks. Getting your demon to walk a face paces north would likely not be all that objectionable to the demon so it'll obey you even if you are not all that powerful or skilled in demonology. Getting the demon to destroy a city would probably require much more skill.

Additionally, it has been a long term goal of mine to make our magic system much more robust than it currently is. At some point I'd like to see at the least one other spell circle of spells that are only available through magic items like wands and scrolls which will require hefty amounts of MIU and/or scroll reading to activate. Many of these spells, in my vision (which may or may not be compatible with the vision of my superiors), should tailor to masters in various lore skills and be ineffective for those that are not 1.5x-2x trained.

Nilven