#murderous crow

[glmtwnbrtz]

Hey @amurderofcrowsinatrenchcoat @chaotic-bean-of-smolness @incorrect-jatp-quotes when’s family game night

[wearesorcerer]

Spell: Murderous Crow

Inner Sea Races, pg. 221

Conjuration (summoning) [alignment]; Antipaladin 1, Arcanist/Sorcerer/Wizard 1, Cleric/Oracle/Warpriest 1, Paladin 1, Summoner 1, Witch 1; Orc only

As summon monster I, but Medium range and Focus is a crow feather.

Summon a corvid with your choice of alignment template, Improved Steal as a bonus feat, and an eye rake attack (both claws hit: foe must Reflex save [DC 13] or be blinded for 1d4 days [or until healed]).

I cite summon monster I for comparison because that’s the standard summoning spell, but you’d use summon minor monster to summon an aligned corvid. Instead of giving you 1d3 ravens (which would be more combat effective), you get a single one with appropriately themed bonus abilities. Ordinarily, a crow couldn’t take Improved Steal (prerequisites: Int 13, Combat Expertise), though the eye rake thing seems like the sort of thing crows should get ordinarily. Okay on thematics, no?

But there are Problems™ with this summon:

Why is this Orc only? This is the second racial spell I’ve examined where I’ve not seen a good reason for it to be race-specific. If it should be race specific, you’d think it’d be Tengu, not Orc.

Ravens don’t have claw attacks. You’d have to get your DM to make this a rider for its “bite” (peck) attack.

While a raven couldn’t ordinarily take Improved Steal (prerequisites: Int 13, Combat Expertise), it’d only get +2 to the check anyway (entirely from the feat) and would need Agile Maneuvers to make more use of it. Like anyone else who wants to use this worthless feat. It really shouldn’t be a combat maneuver (Fighter/Monk mechanic) by default. It should be a function of Sleight of Hand (Rogue/sneaky familiar stat), like it already was in 3.5, but Paizo (in their infinite wisdom) decided to change it, thereby making it less functional, instead of making a feat to allow people to use CMB for Sleight of Hand checks in combat.

In other words, this summon is barely functional as is. You’ll get much more mileage out of summon minor monster (or summon swarm) if you really want to summon crows. Or just reflavor any eagles you summon with summon monster I; say they’re ginormous crows.

F

Right now, I’m just clearing out old tabs of spells I thought (on seeing them listed) would be cool. Feel free to ask me about other ones (especially 5e ones), though please let me know where they’re printed.