Summon Epic Hero and Summon Legendary Hero Spells

So I was waiting fup or my daughter to come home last night and found myself watching Escape from LA last night.  That reminded me of a thread from Koewn (I think) about the Summon Beserker spell.  I decided to make some more summon spells to bring some heros into ACKS:

 

Summon Epic Hero                                 Range: 10’        Arcane: 3              Duration: I day*

(Summon 1 creature – 65pts - specific creature type (.7) - creature passively hostile (.8) – up to 8 HD(.7) – duration 1 day (1.25)) = 31 (minor breakthrough)

With this spell, the caster summons an epic hero from another plane of existence (a character with 130,000 XP).  The summoned epic hero will not attack and is not hostile to the caster, but is not blindly loyal.  The caster will have to convince the hero to co-operate by threats, gifts, promises, etc.  At the time of casting the caster must give the epic hero an appropriate task to complete (e.g. steal the imperial payroll, defeat a troll, travel into the depths of the underworld to complete a quest, etc.).  The epic hero remains until dispelled, the task is completed, or 1 day has passed.

Roll on the chart below to determine who appears

  1. Fafhrd – Lvl 7 Barbarian
  2. Grey Mouser – Lvl 8 Thief
  3. Ash – Lvl 8 Fighter
  4. Vor Daj (from Barsoom) 1-3 as a hormad 4-6 as a red martian
  5. Jack Burton – Lvl 8 fighter
  6. Cugel the Clever – Lvl 8 – lvl 7 custom class (lvl 1 arcane, lvl 3 thief)
  7. Jason DinAult (from deathworld) – Lvl 8 custom class (Fight 2, 1 hd, 1 thief)
  8. Gordon Freeman (?)
  9. PC from another campaign

Other options: 

James T. Kirk, Obi-wan Kenobi, Red Sonja, Cerberus the Aardvark, Bilbo Baggins, Ripley, Flash Gordon, Sinbad, Arya Stark, Buffy, Inigo Montoya, Sarah Conner, Sinbad etc.

 

Summon Legendary Hero                                   Range: 10’              Arcane: 5          Duration: I day*

(Summon 1 creature – 65pts - specific creature type (.7) - creature passively hostile (.8) – up to 14 HD(.8) – duration 1 day (1.25), can only cast 1x week (.8), casting time 1 turn (.8), up to 2 special powers (1.66)) = 48 points

With this spell, the caster summons a legendary hero from another plane of existence (a 13th or 14th level character).  The summoned hero will not attack and is not hostile to the caster but is not blindly loyal.  The caster will have to convince the hero to co-operate by threats, gifts, promises, etc.  At the time of casting the caster must give the epic hero an appropriate task to complete (e.g. steal the imperial payroll, defeat a troll, travel into the depths of the underworld to complete a quest, etc.).  The epic hero remains until dispelled, the task is completed, or 1 day has passed.

The hero will be equipped as appropriate for a character of their level.

Roll on the chart below to determine who appears:

  1. John Carter, Warlord of Barsoom, Lvl 14 fighter
  2. Slippery James Di Griz, Lvl 14 thief
  3. John Wick, Lvl 13 Assassin
  4. Gandalf the Gray, Lvl 13 Wizard
  5. Snake Pliskin, Lvl 13 fighter or Assassin
  6. Achilles – Lvl 12 fighter (with magical properties)
  7. Merlin – Lvl 14 Wizard
  8. Elric – Lvl 10 Spellsword or Lvl 12 Ruinguard
  9. Conan – Lvl 13 Barbarian

Some others:  Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser (later in life), the Bride (from Kill Bill), Jason Bourne, Darth Vader (reformed), etc.  

Any help to populate the list would be grreatly appreciated, especially the legendary heros.  

Given that these are specific named heroes, do they get removed from the list of possible summonable heroes if they die?

Obviously Snake Plissken would remain summonable even if thought to be dead - though perhaps not as tall as you remember him being.

[quote="GMJoe"]

Given that these are specific named heroes, do they get removed from the list of possible summonable heroes if they die?

[/quote]

The easy answer is that the nature of the spell forces the return of the hero right before the moment of death. 

The 'why' would depend on the spell signature for the individual caster, but the default ruling would be that the summoned creature is placed in the astral plane and the version summoned is similiar to an astral projection from the days of 1E.  Once the hero is killed, the 'spirit' of the hero is returned to their body, and theor body returned back to their home from the astral plane.

Now if the spell was cast by an illusionist, the 'hero' might be an elaborate programmed illusion, a necromancer might require a recently deceased meat puppet which the spriit inhabits, an elementalist might form it out of the earth, etc.  

I would still rule that the any hero on the list taht is summoned should be replaced with a new one, say, William Wallace, Maverick, or the the guy from 'Payback' from the Mel Gibson collection of Epic Heros.  

 

[quote="tire_ak"]

Obviously Snake Plissken would remain summonable even if thought to be dead - though perhaps not as tall as you remember him being.

[/quote]

Yeah and I heard things got real bad for him in Cleveland too.  

Put these where you wish:

Dread Pirate Roberts (would likely vary, but Some kind of Swashbuckler)
Indiana Jones (Explorer)
Connor McCloud (Fighter, and really hard to actually kill)
Garrett (Master Thief)
Arthur Pendragon (Fighter or Paladin)
Willow Ufgood (Halfling Wizard)
Madmartigan (Fighter)
Etienne Navarre (Fighter)
Phillipe the Mouse (Thief)
Prince Colwyn (Explorer)

Plenty more im sure I could dig up