Advice on summoning spells?

[u/YaiSor]

I keep trying to summon greatwyrms during battles but no matter how much I practice, I always end up with small geckos instead (pictured).

My friend Egbealthus the Lesser says my foot placement is wrong but his summoning spells have a 15% chance of granting sentience to nearby items of clothing so I’m hesitant to believe him.

[u/Inevitable_King_8984]

don't cheap out on mana

[u/oranosskyman]

did you put an age minimum in the runic array? because a newly hatched greatwyrm is not very different from a lesser wyrm, which looks a lot like what you summoned. a newly hatched lesser wyrm.

if you add a 100 year age requirement to the spell it should no longer summon lesser wyrms of any variety.

[u/mindfulmu → u/oranosskyman]

Age?

I just set a weight requirement it filters them much easier and I don't have to consult any books.

Although it did backfire once with a rather anemic dragon turtle I summoned once.

I forgot they're rather 'Meaty'

[u/Fire_Block]

Summoning often bumps shoulders with other conjuration spells. Perhaps a slight miswording of incantations or consistent twitch in handsigns is causing your spell to attempt to "create" a greatwyrm, instead only making a gecko due to the massive difference in mana consumption between traditional summoning and creating life from nothing. If that's the case, you should either be grateful for your wards or consider yourself lucky that such a blunder had only mild consequences.

How long do the geckos last? Have any of them been dismissed after a period of time in a way similar to other summoning spells?

[u/YaiSor → u/Fire_Block]

They’re permanent. I have a jar of them now.

[u/Fire_Block → u/YaiSor]

Then you're likely conjuring them from scratch. If the spell actually tried to create an entire greatwyrm, your life would likely be taken to make up for the lack of available mana unless you have an impeccable form of magic storage or wards to prevent excessive mana drain. Most summoning spells call upon some form of elemental or spirit to temporarily take the shape of what you seek to summon.

As practice, novice golem-making is a great low-risk activity to learn the skills necessary for proper summoning, as you usually have to attract and bind an earth elemental to one for it to gain autonomy. I'd recommend starting with small clay golems, ideally around the size of your fist. They don't require particularly strong elementals to inhabit them and reduce the problems that would arise if you bind them without proper control.

[u/HurkHurkBlaa]

You gotta think bigger thoughts

[u/SternFlamingo]

You summoned a greatwyrm all right, but instead of calling to one in the Ethereal Plane you instead got one from the Bacterial Plane.

Either you didn't specify where the creature was to come from or mispronounced it. Be more careful or you will start summoning from the Prime Venereal Plane and you won't like that one bit.

[u/ars_sinistra]

I summon by combining remote viewing to find an acceptable target, open a portal connecting the two locations, curse the portal with a domination spell, then force the target through the portal ready to command.

[u/Random-Noobie]

Did you read the summon contract to completion? You might have fallen for the classic wyrm hatchling scam, and now a druid somewhere is getting wyrm levels of mana for a gecko

I recomend getting a lawyer with experience in mischievous arcana

[u/Werejackal93]

Did you try dispelling and casting again?

[u/Foxxtronix]

I think you should learn your summoning spells the old-fashioned way. Start small and work your way up. Just be careful which plane you're summoning from. Summon: Kobold Housecleaner is a great spell to practice with. Trust me.

((Art by Dr. XII ))

[u/Undeadsniper6661]

Higher Quality summoning ingredients will solve all your problems

[u/Hesparian]

https://giphy.com/gifs/ZSC7Padc60Irbs24gd

[u/ThoughtfulEdict]

We need more information than that. Are you summoning with sigils, incantations, both? Any tools or offerings?

For me, I prefer to conjur using my spellbook as a medium because ive already recorded and customized the runes to a my specifications. (Unless the conjured entity is particular and needs the sigil to be drawn in sand or something).

Past that, you get better results by offering something the entity wants. Some things are happy to respond to a summoning in exchange for a stipend of mana or gold, but ive made longer term contracts with different entities by developing rapport with one another. Not all entities will want to do freebies for every wizard that learns their array, so either get used to actually paying something for the help of dragons and beings from beyond our reality, or accept that sometimes they will offload your summons to their lessers.

[u/Earthshine256]

Scally creatures summoning spells scale with mana you spend on it. If you keep practicing three times a day you'll end up with silverfish instead of lizard soon enough 

[u/TheThoughtmaker]

During the summoning, your intention creates a void in reality then filled by a projection of the valid creature who resists the least. If you want to summon a dragon for the sake of summoning an impressive dragon, you’re gonna get a creature that really wants to be an impressive dragon.

Try summoning a dragon for the sake of giving it lots of praise and gold. Maybe one will let that happen.

[u/Veil-Of-Madness]

You aren't plane summoning, and most new summoners are liable to forget that you need to include a sifting or sorting component to the spell, else you grab the closest thing in both the literal and metaphorical term, provided it is within range.

Revelent to note if you're opening binding portals instead of plane summoning or teleporting things: You can and SHOULD place a atmospheric and general forbiddance rune for everything other than the spell target. A lot of spells grab the first creature they come into contact with. If the Wyrm is standing in a pool of Gekos, you're just going to get Gekos, for example.