Summon Dragon
 Summon Dragon
| |
|---|---|
| Level | 9 |
| School1 | Summoning |
| Source(s) | |
| Casting noise | 7 |
| Spell noise | 0 |
| This spell summons and binds a powerful dragon to perform the caster's bidding. |
Summon Dragon is a level 9 Summonings spell which summons one or (rarely) two dragons to fight for you. Possible summons include:
D Dragon
D Ice dragon
D Storm dragon
D Shadow dragon
D Iron dragon
D Quicksilver dragon
D Golden dragon
Strategy
At first glance, this spell doesn't seem very useful. By the time you can cast it reliably, most dragons are not a serious threat to you. However, it has several strong points. While the earlier dragons you can acquire aren't terribly impressive, the iron, quicksilver, and golden dragons you receive at high spell power are quite powerful, and even fire and ice dragons can be useful when you summon two at once. The spell's summoning duration is very long, even without full power, so you can summon an army and channel back the MP before a fight instead of wasting time or being at less than full power during the fight.
While you aren't sure exactly what you're going to get out of the spell, dragons are not without their strengths. They are durable enough to soak hellfire and other late game threats, and come with innate resistances. They have ranged breath weapons, trample in melee, and are (mostly) flying and mobile enough to keep up with you.
As a Summonings spell, followers of Vehumet will be able to cast it at lower skill levels than you'd expect for a level 9 spell, and it's significantly safer than several other powerful Summonings (Haunt, Summon Horrible Things, Summon Greater Demon): it causes no side effects (sickness, stat drain), it doesn't upset the good gods (neither chaotic nor demonic), the dragons are never hostile and will not turn on you, and it's relatively easy to find.
On the downside, the spell only summons one or two dragons at a time and it does not use smite targeting. This can make it hard to set up a meat shield on demand. Also, a group of 6 large abominations can likely dish out more raw melee damage per turn than one dragon.
