Need help choosing party at house

Agreed - I like to spend points when I can but am often left wondering 'should I …' based on not knowing what comes next.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
I have a summon wolf spell (A Helpful Paw?) at the moment…how many others are there?

Wolf? I got a rat. And a wild boar later on. I should probably try what it's actually doing at the moment .

Yeah, I got a boar after pumping it up a bit, so it obviously changes. It doesn't say anything about that in-game (that I can see), so I have to trust / hope that additional spent points are worthwhile.

I also got a rat, but a wild boar is showing on the little icon. Now I feel jealous of your wolf. Ah, well.
A slightly irritating feature is that I cannot have my Elf's rat and my Elementalists' fire elemental at the same time. Well, the rat is a cute diversion for weaker enemies, anyway.

the helpful paw spell summons an animal (what animal depends on the modifier I think). The other 3 summoning spells summon an undead, a genie and a fire elemental.

The wild boar comes after the wolf and is better… so don't feel too jealous

I just tried the spell again and got a bear .

Originally Posted by RivianWitch
I also got a rat, but a wild boar is showing on the little icon. Now I feel jealous of your wolf. Ah, well.
A slightly irritating feature is that I cannot have my Elf's rat and my Elementalists' fire elemental at the same time. Well, the rat is a cute diversion for weaker enemies, anyway.

This really annoyed me. I didn't realise that there was a limit of ONE summons per party and bought different summoning spells for all my casters. I was not impressed when my second caster's spell caused the first summon to die!! Is this part of the ruleset, or just a 'feature' of this game?

It's a limitation of the game. Nothing to do with the p&p rules.

Its clearly a limitation to fit the right icons bar. It's still fun to change of summon and I also buy and train more than one despite I already quote the limitation.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
For example, how many spells are there? Without a list, it's hard to know if buying a particular spell is useful or whether I would rather wait to get something else.

Okay, that's understandable. I had a similar problem with Baldur's Gate, because there was no list in the manual either, if I remember that correctly.

The spells within the game are only a fraction of the available P&P spells, of which some cannot be implemented in a game due to their "meta" characteristic.

On the other hand, the number of experience points increases within the course of the game so that you'll have a relatively good amount to spend later on.
The only problem are imho spells found only or almost only in areas you can't visit later - which are, due to the design decisions, quite a lot.

As a general rule, I rather "bought" spells which would support survival of the group/party, in any way, including weakening the enemies. With focus on offensive & defensive spells. In my opinion, these are point well spent.

About the "helpful paw": A (rather small) group of people in the officioal forums complained that the animal is lying as if being killed, rather than just disappear. This distracted these people (including me, which was the reason why I never used that spell).

I'm not 100% sure but I remember BG1 had the spells list and description in the paper manual.

About Drakensang, are you sure that there are some spells that you won't see later after an area is closed? I think you get all of them through the two towns that stay open.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
About the "helpful paw": A (rather small) group of people in the officioal forums complained that the animal is lying as if being killed, rather than just disappear. This distracted these people (including me, which was the reason why I never used that spell).

Totally agree with this complain, even if it's a minor point. I used it quite a lot anyway.

Originally Posted by Dasale
I'm not 100% sure but I remember BG1 had the spells list and description in the paper manual.

I'm not sure anymore, but what I heard is that this list was cut from the translation.

The manual is somewhere deep within my big "manual box", which I don't want to open now. (I collect all game manuals I have there.)

Originally Posted by vanedor
The wild boar comes after the wolf and is better… so don't feel too jealous

I suppose it's humor but it's a good idea that the game you you control yourself which summon you use by changing the bonus +/-. For animals summon I didn't see any reason to do so but for skeletons summon the summon level 11 is a very good fighter when 12 to 16 are a mage which is just weaker.