Summon spell

The Summon spell (LotFP) is simply great. It's a powerful, dangerous tool potentially available for any level-1 Magic User. It's bound to cause confusion and disaster, or save the day when everything seems to be lost. It might unleash a powerful entity that will serve the Magic User character (or at least, cause enough distraction or destruction to allow the Magic User and their companions to escape, or go unnoticed, or steal the treasure, or do whatever they were here to do...), or it might summon a pitiful creature. It might even end the world.
Yes, it is available to level-1 characters, and as Ramanan puts it: "Who thought letting first level characters cast this spell was a good idea?" James, of course, did.
The spell actually tells us also something about the world of LotFP: this is a world where a powerful entity might be evoked by a careless and clueless Magic User or cultist, and escape their control. So for any nightmarish creature that you encounter, the answer to the question:
"Where the fu** does this come from?"
is probably: "A Summon spell gone wrong."


The only thing about the spell is that it's quite long (several pages) and it involves a complex procedure to generate the summoned entity and verify if it's under control, etc.
So, if you are online, use the Summon online tool by Ramanan.

Summon
by Ramanan Sivaranjan
For use in the summoning of demon and hell spawn in the role playing game Lamentations of the Flame Princess. You can use this page to go through the motions of casting the first level Magic-User's spell Summon, as outlined on page 142 of the Rules and Magic book of the role-playing game Lamentations of the Flame Princess. [...]
http://summon.totalpartykill.ca/

There is also an excel version of the tool mentioned, but I didn't find it.
If anyone has a link to share, for the excel, please do (convenient if you have no connectivity).


In my attempt to work on a new magic system, which has all spells potentially available at level one, I did a rewriting of the Summon spell, as in the image below.
It loses a lot of the most weird combinations but makes the process much faster. The spell should be usable even without the rest of the draft of the magic system; just consider that a caster has a number of "levels" to spend on the spell which are equal to their actual level. And in the spell itself, everything is done by "spending" levels.
In other words, a level 2 Magic User could spend 2 levels, in this spell, for example to select the following effects:
- 1 level for an HD 3 demon,
- 1 level to get a +1 to the domination roll.
A level 3 Magic user could spend all 3 levels to evoke up to an HD 5 demon.
(in the draft, not presented here, here are an additional 2 pages to summon more powerful demons)

While as I said the spell loses some of its charm (and its potential to destroy the planet), it provides a nice, two pages and fast procedure to replace the more complex original Summon.
(and it gives a simple and nice overview of the "spend-levels" magic system)


In a similar way (but way before I did, in 2012), Mike Evans also wrote a shorter, faster version of the Summon spell. Go to the linked page and you will also find a version of this spell in PDF to download.

The Summoning Spell From Lamentations of the Flame Princess Vornheim Style
By Mike Evans
[...] One of my favorite parts LotFP is (and I’ve seen much praise for this) the Summon spell.  It is an interesting, dark, and unique take on what has normally been a “poof here is a griffon, eagle, blink dog, etc fighting for you” kind of spell.
The one criticism of it is that it weighs in at 6 pages (or 10 pages if you count the special summoned beings).  That is a hefty thing to sift through when you’re trying to keep the action on the game table.
I’ve seen people ask for or about a more simplified version of it out there.  Zak threw out a comment about doing in in the same vein as Vornheim.  I pondered this for a bit and was thinking of doing a die drop chart (since I love those things so fucking much), but in the end I thought, for this particular situation, it would become too convoluted…  However I did decide to still use one aspect of the die drop chart.  Roll a d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and a d20 and consult the table and you now have you Summons.
I tried to keep this extremely simple, but still offer a wide variety of “what the fuck is that?!” type creatures and abilities.  Obviously the spell itself is inspired and hacked from LotFP.  Many of the powers are listed in the book itself, some are just my own grab from any old D&D style OSR book or my own idea. [...]
https://wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/the-summoning-spell-from-lamentations-of-the-flame-princess-vornheim-style/


Curious about yet another take on the Summon spell? What if a caster at 9th level, with enough sacrifice and money and power could control in part of the spell, to determine the sort of creature to evoke?

Advanced Summon Spell for LotFP
by Justin Stewart
Arguably, one of the most popular and beloved aspects of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess Rules & Magic book is the Summon spell. I mean, come on, you've got to love a first-level spell that lets you summon a randomized monster, often vastly overpowered, that can either eat you, serve you, or straight up end the world if you screw up badly enough.
However, sometimes you want to summon something a little more specific. Sometimes, you don't just want any demon, but specifically Headsosoth the Headsucking Monstrosity from Mars. Sometimes you want to summon a demon that can possess a pet bird and use its body to spy on the local mayor, as was the case in our game last Saturday.
Here's my house rule for handling that situation.
"Advanced Summon" is not technically a separate spell. When a Magic-User reaches a high enough experience level to cast ninth-level spells, the Magic-User can choose to memorize Summon as a ninth-level spell instead of a first-level spell. This version of the spell is considered Advanced Summon. [...]
http://dragonsgonnadrag.blogspot.com/2016/04/advanced-summon-spell-for-lotfp.html