Researching summoning.

[Murdock328]

So flash back a few eras to the start of the war of the magi.
Summoning didn't exist. At least, not in any real capacity. I have a character for a homebrewed DND campaign that is a crazed nymian scholar who became obsessed with the primals.
He spent 40 years of his life studying and now he has found his first success. That's his backstory.
For the actual campaign if I want to create new summoning techniques (Trances, demi-egis, etc...) I have to explain, aetherically, how that would work to the DM. I'm not finding a lot of resources that break things down to the most fundamental aetherical level on how summoning truly works, but I'm sure she'll meet me half way if I can at least make a convincing story.

 

So I guess my questions are:
How does summoning work as a whole?
How do trances work and is it even possible to have a non-dreadwyrm trance? (currently its impossible to even have dreadwyrm trance)
Are there work-arounds for certain things?
Should I just call down Dalamud and beat Bahamut up for his lunch money then call it a day/apocalypse?

[Sounsyy]

I'm about to link an absolutely massive post about the Allagan Empire, but there is a Summoning section in here that (I'm pretty sure) has just about everything we know currently about Summoning, Primals (with a link to additional primal and tempering lore), egis, and Trance. CTRL+f "summoners" will be your friend, fair warning! But I hope this helps answer some questions!

 

Allagan Empire Lore (+Summoning Lore)

Edited April 30, 2018 by Sounsyy

[Murdock328]

This is actually quite helpful, but at the same time not what I truly am looking for. The bits about tempering seem to be promising, though.

 

But to summarize my problem again: I'm trying to theorize new techniques for a dnd campaign with FF classes/jobs in a time period where there are no soulstones of summoners lying around nor teachers for the art. The character is self taught entirely. The DM let me get away with some shenanigans for the first egi, but everything else I need to explain aetherically. It's easy for spells, but when it comes to primals we get into this awful problem...

"The allagans did it, so it works. trust me." and things are rarely explained beyond that.
I understand summoning is a bit of a mess when it comes to aetherology mechanics and a lot of it falls into mysticism and 'strength of belief' malarky..
So lets move on to a bombardment of more questions, for now.

So knowing that egis are essentially half of your own aether merged with the taint of a primal and following your will...

...and that you can't add much more aether to empower it or you'll simply die..

 

What if you gained the aether from another source? From a magnitude of crystals, sacrifices, or if you could somehow draw directly from the lifestream?

If given an unlimited supply of aether would an egi become a proper primal or a supercharged egi? Would it simply explode / pop harmlessly like an overfull balloon?

 

What truly drives your control over an egi? Is it your will alone? Is it your aether and the fact that the egi is a part of you? Would adding more aether from an outside source cause you to lose control?

Edited May 2, 2018 by Murdock328

[Teadrinker]

Your question is a little confusing. What we can do here is provide you with a comprehensive explanation of the FFXIV Summoner Lore. However you wish to take it and adapt it for your DnD campaign is up to you.

SE tends to treat Aether like a very very vague tropish power source that flows in everything. If you're looking for booklike math standards to help you apply it to DnD dice then you're going to find this lore wanting unless you and your DM devise the parameters and limitations yourselves. A lot of the questions you are asking have no standards or precedents set in the lore so the best lore knowledgeable people here are going to be able to do is speculate until SE Word of God's some of them.

[Murdock328]

2 hours ago, Teadrinker said:

Your question is a little confusing. What we can do here is provide you with a comprehensive explanation of the FFXIV Summoner Lore. However you wish to take it and adapt it for your DnD campaign is up to you.

SE tends to treat Aether like a very very vague tropish power source that flows in everything. If you're looking for booklike math standards to help you apply it to DnD dice then you're going to find this lore wanting unless you and your DM devise the parameters and limitations yourselves. A lot of the questions your are asking have no standards or precedents set in the lore so the best lore knowledgeable people here are going to be able to do is speculate until SE Word of God's some of them.

I tried telling her that too ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

I'm honestly in vain hope that there's some way to do this with hard formulae since that seems to be what she wants.

But, at the very least I need a deep enough understanding of it that I can confidently tell her "this is how it is"
.. which.. at this point I just might, but still I've got nothing better to do than keep looking and bothering various lore fans and forums so here I am.

Edited May 2, 2018 by Murdock328
grammatical error

[Teadrinker]

At that point the best thing I can suggest is set reasonable standards within your campaign for your character's power levels and what drawbacks they'd have for using this power. It sounds like you'd have to devise them and come to her for approval for them.

"My character rolls X and Y to do Z but then I have to roll 123 to see how much damage I take for doing so."  Something to this effect would probably go over well. At this point, FFXIV's standards don't matter because you are now inside a DnD campaign with totally different power levels and spells and whatnot. Do what is fun for you.

[Murdock328]

We'll see. Can't say the research on the subject wasn't fun, though.
Learned a lot of interesting things. Thank you all!

[Tregarde]

Since you're adapting this to D&D rules, it may help to research various magics that already are in D&D. There have been many, many sourcebooks over the years, and even ones from an older edition can still be helpful for giving you some ideas and baselines to work out the mechanics for your game. Or even go outside D&D and FF and look at how other RPGs have handled magic.

[Gegenji]

10 hours ago, Murdock328 said:

But to summarize my problem again: I'm trying to theorize new techniques for a dnd campaign with FF classes/jobs in a time period where there are no soulstones of summoners lying around nor teachers for the art. The character is self taught entirely. The DM let me get away with some shenanigans for the first egi, but everything else I need to explain aetherically. It's easy for spells, but when it comes to primals we get into this awful problem...

"The allagans did it, so it works. trust me." and things are rarely explained beyond that.
I understand summoning is a bit of a mess when it comes to aetherology mechanics and a lot of it falls into mysticism and 'strength of belief' malarky..
So lets move on to a bombardment of more questions, for now.

So knowing that egis are essentially half of your own aether merged with the taint of a primal and following your will...

...and that you can't add much more aether to empower it or you'll simply die..

 

What if you gained the aether from another source? From a magnitude of crystals, sacrifices, or if you could somehow draw directly from the lifestream?

If given an unlimited supply of aether would an egi become a proper primal or a supercharged egi? Would it simply explode / pop harmlessly like an overfull balloon?

 

What truly drives your control over an egi? Is it your will alone? Is it your aether and the fact that the egi is a part of you? Would adding more aether from an outside source cause you to lose control?

 

As has been stated, a lot of this stuff is delving into things that the lore just hasn't provided yet - plus the added difficulties of converting it to a different system with potential different rules. So all you really can do is take what is there (both in FFXIV lore and DnD mechanics) and try to come to some reasonable conclusions.

 

Attaining additional egis seems to be the easy part given what you have so far. The DM gave you a bit of an "out" for summoning for first egi, and all the others are going to be extensions of that. Attempting the technique with a essence of another Primal you've encountered should provide that egi. However, it is easy enough to have a situation where the Primal you are seeking to summon the Egi of be too powerful to summon and maintain.

 

What happens if you can't summon and maintain the Egi for an indefinite period? Perhaps see if you can simply summon it for a short period - or at least tap into its power briefly with yourself as the conduit if even that isn't possible. The latter is effectively Trancing, and could be determined through enough study - and the SB SMN technique that lets you briefly summon the Bahamut-Egi is effectively the former. Perhaps, like spells have Spell Levels, Egis have Summon Levels (which is actually a thing in older FF games!). And the demi-summoning and Trancing are effectively techniques to briefly reach and attempt to access the power (in a reduced fashion) of a Summon above your Summon Level.

 

Then it's not simply a matter of not having enough aether - just like a level 1 Wizard can't just CAST Fireball. The concept is either too advanced for them or they wouldn't be able to control it due to lack of personal power, skill, and experience. So adding an outside aetheric source isn't going to help you summon/demi-summon/trance anything beyond what you currently can. Can't Trance Bahamut yet? Get a few more levels in and increase your Summon Level.

 

Now, as for adding in additional aether? I don't think that could cause a full Primal - your egi is an echo, a copy... and even with more aether it is still going to be just that. I would figure that adding additional aether (either summoning a low-level egi with extra personal aether or from an external source) would be akin to the Metamagic feats of DnD. If you know how to do it, you can make your egi bigger or faster or hit harder - depending on how you weave that additional aether into your summon. So, yes, you would supercharge it and any additional aether would just continue to add onto that until DM fiat decides it has too much (if it's an external source, can you control this souped-up egi you couldn't possibly cast normally!?) and it could either go berserk or explode.

 

That's how I would work it, anyway. Maybe some of that would be useful for you in your FF/DnD game.

[Warren Castille]

On 4/30/2018 at 2:27 PM, Murdock328 said:

So flash back a few eras to the start of the war of the magi.
Summoning didn't exist. At least, not in any real capacity. I have a character for a homebrewed DND campaign that is a crazed nymian scholar who became obsessed with the primals.

 

I'm curious how one becomes obsessed with primals when summoning doesn't exist yet. Are you homebrewing primals, or primal-equivalents? The answer's really easy if so: You have the DM throw some boss fights at you and you absorb their powers Mega Man style.

 

There are hideously overpowered beings floating around in the old eras but I'm not sure they'd be considered a special class that people would be trying to utilize. Crystal Tower shows an example of it, but considering it's Cloud of Deathness, that's not really... the norm.

 

Really, I'm just interested in the campaign fluff.