Editing Conjurer (section)

==4e's Drastic Changes==
When [[Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition]] did its drastic reinventions of classes to put an end to the problem of [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards]], naturally, the Conjurer was near the top of their list of potential problems to iron out. Their solution was to break the old Conjuration school into two keywords; Conjuration and Summoning.

''Conjuration'' is summoning of the [[Final Fantasy]] style; it summons a creature (or an [[elemental]] effect) as part of an attack; the conjured critter lasts for a short while, typically either until the end of your next turn or so long as you sustain it with a minor action, and then fades away. Whilst it lasts, it typically creates a passive effect, and sometimes uses other user actions to repeat its initial attack. The conjuration has no hit points and no statistics; it does what it does, and is then gone.

''Summoning'', on the other hand, is closer to old school D&D conjuration; it summons a creature that fights for you as an extra player on the battlefield. Summoned creatures have defenses equal to the summoner's, hit points equal to their bloodied value, drain a [[Healing Surge]] with them if killed (or HP equivalent to half the summoner's bloodied value, if they have no surges left), have no innate healing surges (but can spend their summoners), and use the summoner's action points for their own. This prevents summons from increasing the amount of time that a summoner needs to do things on their turn, and discourages the "use summons as meat shields" angle of old, so a summoner in no way renders the [[fighter]] obsolete. Most Summoning spells are Attacks, but some are Utilities.

It took WotC a while to come up with this idea. Originally, only the Conjuration keyword existed, and all Conjuration spells from the [[Player's Handbook]] were daily. It wasn't until the Arcane Power [[splatbook]] that [[wizard]]s were furnished with both Encounter Conjurations and Summons. However, all Summons are daily powers, which further prevents the "flood the battlefield with expendable bodies" tactic that so aggravated DMs in editions past.

By 4th edition's end, only one other class using the [[AEDU System]] had access to Summons; the [[Druid]], who gained them (plus a Summoner Druid "archetype") in Primal Power. Druidic summons came with a new trait; Instinctive Effects. These gave each Summon a specific behavior that it would undertake if the player didn't assign any specific actions to their Summon on their turn. This made them less of an action drain whilst still not drastically lengthening the player's turn.

==Third Edition
{{D&D3e-Variant Classes}}