Communicating with Summoned Creatures

[slaughterj]

I just asked Steve about Summoning and Communicating with Summoned Creatures, and here was his response:

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10488

 

How are people handling this? For "druid" types, do they have an "animal tongue"? For regular mages, how do you handle talking to summoned rat? Just hand-wave it? Assume the rat / other creature has intelligence / training and can understand basic commands? Include a telepathic component to the summon? Include a linked "language" to the spell?

[Bartman]

Well it depends on the summon I suppose. I would say that 1-way communication is part and parcel of the summon spell. The summoned being will auto-magically understand any commands issued by the summoner. However if the summoner cannot normally speak to the class of summoned beings he would not be able to understand anything what he summoned says back.

 

In your rat example. I would say that the spell that calls and controls the rats allows the rats to understand what the PC says. But he couldn't tell them to spy on something and report back unless he had some sort of Telepathy, Language Skill or Universal Translator. In addition if the PC had bought the spell at less than the +1 completely loyal advantage, negotiating with the rats would be difficult at best. He would have to make sure that his starting offer and request is something the rats would accept.

[Monolith]

I would not allow the summoned creature to communicate with the mage for free. I would allow the summoned creature to be able to understand 1 command the mage gives it for each point of INT it has. So an 8 INT rat would be able to understand 8 commands given by the mage.

[Markdoc]

I would go with the Steve on this one. Summoning something does not give you any linguistic powers, it just means you can summon something.

 

If you want to converse with the ghosts of long dead mages, a spot of research into ancient tongues is probably required. If you want to summon rats then animal telepathy or something might be needed.

 

OTOH, if you summon 1200 rats, you may not need any other instructions: just letting them loose would provide a fair degree of ratty mayhem.

 

Universal translator might allow you to get some basic concepts across like: Go over there or Kill that thing, but I wouldn't allow anything to fancy.

 

cheers, Mark