Summonings

Version 0.16: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Summonings is a magical skill that governs your ability at bringing forth monsters and other entities to fight for you (though they may arrive hostile when called into existence by unskilled practitioners). These summoned monsters function much like real monsters, with the following exceptions:

• They are worth no experience or piety, and leave nothing behind when slain. They cannot be targeted by Vampiric Draining or Inner Flame.
• They have difficulty attacking targets with warding in melee. Spells and ranged attacks are unaffected.
• They eventually "time out" regardless of their HP, poofing out out of existence in a cloud of smoke. The spells Abjuration and Aura of Abjuration greatly shorten the time they have remaining, often causing them to cease to exist immediately. Summoned monsters will be immediately unsummoned on the death of the summoner.
• They will not follow you up or down stairs. This allows you to flee hostile summoned units and return after sufficient time has passed. Your own summoned allies will disappear immediately when you change floors.
• They will not attack monsters outside of the player's line of sight.

Note that there is one spell in this school of magic that does not create summoned monsters: eldritch tentacles, which can be created with the Malign Gateway spell, cannot be abjured and will fight outside of the player's line of sight.

List of Summonings Spells

Lvl 1
	Summon Butterflies	Summonings
	Summon Small Mammal	Summonings
Lvl 2
	Call Imp	Summonings
Lvl 3
	Abjuration	Summonings
	Call Canine Familiar	Summonings
	Recall	Summonings/Translocations
Lvl 4
	Summon Guardian Golem	Summonings/Hexes
	Summon Ice Beast	Summonings/Ice Magic
	Summon Lightning Spire	Summonings/Air Magic
Lvl 5
	Shadow Creatures	Summonings
	Summon Demon	Summonings
	Summon Forest	Summonings/Translocations
	Summon Mana Viper	Summonings/Hexes
Lvl 6
	Aura of Abjuration	Summonings
	Monstrous Menagerie	Summonings
Lvl 7
	Haunt	Summonings/Necromancy
	Malign Gateway	Summonings/Translocations
	Spellforged Servitor	Summonings/Conjurations
	Summon Greater Demon	Summonings
	Summon Hydra	Summonings
Lvl 8
	Summon Horrible Things	Summonings
Lvl 9
	Dragon's Call	Summonings

Sources of Summonings Spells

Main Texts

Book of Beasts (Summon Butterflies, Call Canine Familiar, Summon Ice Beast, Summon Mana Viper, Monstrous Menagerie, Summon Hydra)

Book of Callings (Summon Small Mammals, Call Imp, Call Canine Familiar, Summon Guardian Golem, Summon Lightning Spire, Summon Ice Beast)

Book of Summonings (Abjuration, Recall, Summon Elemental, Shadow Creatures, Summon Demon, Monstrous Menagerie)

Grand Grimoire (Aura of Abjuration Summon Greater Demon, Malign Gateway, Summon Horrible Things)

Other Texts

Akashic Record (Malign Gateway)

Book of Cantrips (Summon Small Mammals)

Book of Dreams (Shadow Creatures)

Book of Frost (Summon Ice Beast)

Book of Minor Magic (Call Imp)

Book of Party Tricks (Summon Butterflies)

Book of the Dragon (Dragon's Call)

Book of the Warp (Summon Forest)

Book of Unlife (Recall)

Fen Folio (Summon Forest, Summon Hydra)

Necronomicon (Haunt)

Summoning Limits

Summoned monsters are generated with a duration between 1 and 6. This value roughly corresponds to the following amount in turns:

1. 90 aut (arbitrary units of time; 10 aut = 1 "turn")
2. 180 aut
3. 270 aut
4. 360 aut
5. 810 aut
6. 1710 aut

Some Summonings spells have a fixed duration. The other spells will increase monster duration with spell power. Most Summonings spells also have a fixed cap on how many monsters of that type you can sustain at any one time. Exceeding that cap by casting the spell too often will cause the oldest monsters to time out almost immediately.

Spell	Level	Duration Type	Duration	Summoning Cap
Summon Butterflies	1	Fixed	3	8
Summon Small Mammal	1	Fixed	3	3
Call Imp	2	Spellpower Dependent	2-6	3
Sticks to Snakes*	2	Spellpower Dependent	3-5	No Limit
Call Canine Familiar	3	Spellpower Dependent	2-6	1
Summon Elemental	4	Spellpower Dependent	2-6	3
Summon Ice Beast	4	Spellpower Dependent	2-6	3
Summon Demon	5	Fixed	5	3
Shadow Creatures	5	Monster's HD Dependent	1-4	5
Tukima's Dance*	5	Spellpower Dependent	2-6	No Limit
Death Channel*	6	Fixed	6	No Limit
Demonic Horde	6	Fixed	2-6	8
Simulacrum*	6	Fixed	6	No Limit
Summon Hydra	7	Fixed	1	3
Summon Greater Demon	7	Fixed	5	3
Haunt	7	Fixed	3	Special
Malign Gateway	7	Spellpower Dependent	-	1
Summon Horrible Things	8	Fixed	6	8
Summon Dragon	9	Fixed	6	2

* - Not a Summonings spell, but operates similarly.

Non-standard summoning

These non-standard methods for summoning allies have no cap on the number of units you can have out at once, but their costs are often prohibitive:

Source : Duration

Herd card : 4

Brothers in Arms : 2-6

Summon Divine Warrior : 2-6

Summon Swarm : 2-6

Scroll of summoning : Monster's HD dependent, but better than the spell

Lesser servant of Makhleb: 2-6

Greater servant of Makhleb: 2-6

Summonings Aptitudes

From Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.13 in-game documentation:

At	Ba	Co	DE	Dg	Ds	Dj	Dr	Fe	Fo	Gr	Gh	Gn	Hu	Ko	Mf	Mi	MD	Mu	Na	Op	On	Sp	Te	Tr	Vp	VS
-2	2	0	1	-1	0	11	0	0	0	-1	-1	6	0	0	0	-3	0	-2	0	0	-1	-2	2	-3	0	0

The average summoning aptitude of whole species, excluding coloured draconian, is -0.654.

See Also

Durable summon

History

Prior to 0.14, summoned creatures could exist even after their summoner was defeated, leading to much more cautious behavior around certain enemy summoners. Many enemy summoners were also much more fragile. 0.14 also massively overhauled the Summonings spell list; Summon Lightning Spire, Summon Guardian Golem, Summon Forest, Summon Mana Viper, Monstrous Menagerie, Aura of Abjuration, Forceful Dismissal, and Spellforged Servitor were all added, replacing Summon Scorpions, Summon Ugly Thing, Mass Abjuration, Demonic Horde, and Summon Dragon.

Prior to 0.13, Summonings spells had no limit on how many monsters you could summon at a time, barring MP restrictions. This led to players summoning hordes of monsters at all times, rendering them nearly untouchable by most monsters and leading to extremely dull optimal gameplay.

Prior to 0.12 summoned monsters could attack monsters outside of the player's line of sight, and you could not recall flying monsters over lava or deep water.