Summons

Many characters in DDO can conjure an ally to help them in their endeavors. A summoned creature appears where you designate and acts immediately, and it attacks your opponents to the best of its ability. You can only have 1 summoned creature of any type serving you at a time. Summoning a new creature of any type will return the previous one to its home plane.

The summoned creature cannot be given orders nor use ladders, climb walls, or jump off platforms, but will generally follow you and even teleport if you move far enough away. It can be affected by beneficial and detrimental spells much like any Hireling or party member. It's often more efficient spell-points wise to summon a new creature than to heal an existing one.

Duration
There is no spell timer shown on screen, so you have to figure out yourself how much summoning time remains. Most summoning spells have a maximum duration of 10 minutes (exceptions noted below). Summoned creatures vanish if you die or leave the instance. Summoned creatures don't disappear when you rest. (Tip: cast a Summons just before you rest; since the creature remains, you won't need to use any of your restored points to Summon him). You cannot dismiss a creature.

Targeting
The targeting of the summons spells and effects is a little buggy at the time of writing.

Since summons doesn't target an object or creature or ally if you have anything selected in the target orb the summons should appear right on top of your character. This works. If you don't have anything targeted in the targeting orb, the summons should appear where you are facing, which is to say, at the position where your missile fire target / mouselook target icon would appear, were it visible. It doesn't need to be visible when you cast the spell, but to check you are facing the correct place, click and hold your right mouse button and drag the mouse around until the little white circle above your head, lies over the target position. This is just the same way you can target any positional spell or missile fire. But currently it is buggy for summons.

The bug is that sometimes (almost always) when you cast a summons spell it acts as if you were targeting something even when the targeting orb is empty. To workaround this bug, select something (e.g. yourself) and then deselect it using the escape key, then cast the summons spell. If you are facing a point that is out of range you will get an error message.

Summons vs. hirelings / companions / ...
The following creatures count as summoned and are subject to the restriction of a single summoned creature simultaneously:
 * Creature summoned via spell / effect
 * An Artificer Flame Turret
 * Undead created via Create Undead

In addition to the above summons, you can have all of the following:
 * an Artificer Iron Defender pet OR a Druid Wolf pet OR a Pale Master skeleton pet
 * a Favored Soul Archon
 * a Friend of Nature - Primal Avatar minor pet
 * one or more charmed creatures
 * one or more Hirelings
 * one summoned creature per hireling
 * a cosmetic creature companion

Improving summons
All of your personally summoned / charmed creatures and hirelings can be enhanced by the following effects:

Feats

 * Augment Summoning: Your summoned creatures, charmed minions, and hirelings have +4 to all ability scores, increased health (toughness feat), and increased fortification (50%).
 * Improved Augment Summoning: Your summoned creatures, charmed minions, pets, and hirelings have +8 to all ability scores, +10% Dodge, and +100 Maximum Hitpoints.
 * Scion of Elysium: Summoned creatures gain +25 PRR and MRR, +20 MP, RP, and USP, +100% Fortification and gain a 5% chance to ignore incoming damage entirely.
 * Past Life: Druid: Your summoned creatures, charmed minions, and hirelings gain [+2/+4/+6] to all ability scores

Enhancements

 * Harper Agent
 * Harper Leadership: Your hirelings, summoned, and charmed creatures gain [+2/+3/+4] to all ability scores.
 * Enlightened Spirit enhancements
 * Fortify Summons: Your summoned creatures, hirelings, and pets get 25%/50%/100% fortification, +5/+10/+20 PRR, and +5/+10/+20 MRR.
 * Imbue Summons: Your summoned creatures/hirelings/pets gain +10/+20/+30 Melee, Ranged, and Universal Spell Power.
 * Displace Summons: Your summoned creatures/hirelings/pets gain a permanent 25% Concealment, as per the item effect "Lesser Displacement", and 10% Dodge.

Epic Destinies

 * Primal Avatar
 * Shared Mantle: While within your Primal Avatar Destiny Mantle you gain +3 Imbue dice. Your summons and hirelings now also benefit from your Primal Avatar Destiny Mantle, and they gain your current Spell Power Values.
 * Natural Shielding: Your summons, pets and hirelings gain 60% of your Max Hit Points and 30 Magical Resistance Rating instead. Summoned minions also gain +4 Reflex Saves and Evasion.
 * Magus of the Eclipse can extend its epic mantle to summoned creatures.
 * Grand Summoner: Your summons, pets, and hirelings gain +4 to all ability scores, increased health, 100% Fortification, and a 40% increase to movement speed. Stack with augment summoning and similar effects.
 * Share the Light: While your Frostlight Mantle is active, your summons now also benefit from it. For the purpose of this skill, these summons have your Cold and Negative Spell Power.

Misc

 * Buffs from Guild Airships
 * Sellswords' Tavern: +[4/8/12] to PRR and MRR of hirelings, pets, and summoned/charmed creatures.
 * Wild Grove: +[1/2/3] to all ability scores for hirelings, pets, and summoned/charmed creatures.

Buffs
Summons benefit from buff spells / abilities, just like any party member. Some buffs exclusively affect your summoned / charmed / hired helpers:
 * Pack Presence: Forms a link between a leader and his or her pack. The caster chooses to reduce or increase his or her minions' hate generation by 75%. The spell affects all of the target's hirelings, pets, summoned creatures, and charmed creatures.
 * Harrowing Pack: Grants the caster and all of his or her hirelings, pets, summoned creatures, and charmed creatures a +2 enhancement bonus to flanking attacks, and granting them a knockdown effect when they roll a 20 on attack rolls.
 * Pack Aptitude: Granting all of the target's hirelings, pets, summoned creatures, and charmed creatures a circumstance bonus to an ability score. It grants a +2 bonus per 3 caster levels, with a maximum of +6.
 * Tenacious Pack: Granting all of the target's hirelings, pets, summoned creatures, and charmed creatures +30 enhancement bonus to fortification and +60 positive healing amplification (enhancement bonus).

Passive

 * Epic Summons Each epic level grants your summons, pets and hirelings: +5 Melee and Ranged Power, +10 Universal Spell Power, +5 PRR and +5 MRR. This does not appear on the character sheet, but does show on the summoned creature's inspection panel as Epic Summons.

Items

 * Cry of battle
 * 2 Pieces: Your minions gain +4 to all ability scores and +20 Melee Power, PRR and MRR.
 * 3 Pieces: Your minions gain (an additional) +4 to all ability scores and +20 Melee Power, PRR and MRR.

Summoning spells

 * Summon Monster I to IX: Clerics, Favored Souls, Sorcerers, Wizards, Bards (I-VI)
 * Summon Nature's Ally I to IX: Druids, Rangers (I-IV)
 * Flame Turret: Artificers - 1 minute duration instead of the usual 10 minute of most summons
 * Create Undead: Clerics, Favored Souls

Clickies

 * - Summon Monster II
 * - Summon Monster III
 * - Summon Monster III
 * - Summon Monster III
 * - Summon Monster III
 * - Summon Monster IV
 * - Summon Monster IX
 * - Summon Monster IX
 * - Summon Unknown Monster - random from a list of 4 monsters, CR1-6
 * - Summon Unknown Monster II - random from a list of 4 monsters, CR10-16
 * - Summon Xoriat Horror - random from a list of 4 monsters, CR13-16 - 5 minute duration instead of the usual 10 minute of most summons
 * - Epic Thaarak Hound, CR35 - 5 minute duration instead of the usual 10 minute of most summons
 * Tier 2 Green Steel - Dense Stone Earth Elemental, CR12 - 5 minute duration instead of the usual 10 minute of most summons

Consumables

 * Scrolls:
 * Summon Monster I to VII can be purchased from vendors or found in chests; VIII and IX can only be found in chests
 * Summon Nature's Ally I to IX do not exist as scrolls
 * Flame Turret can only be found in chests
 * Create Undead can only be found in chests
 * Elemental Gem (Earth) - Medium Earth Elemental (Summon Monster V)
 * - Summon Monster VII
 * Gem of Freezing Tides - Greater Ice Mephit (Summon Monster IV)
 * Gem of Ocean's Winds - Air Mephit (Summon Monster III)
 * Greater Gem of Freezing Tides - Large Water Elemental (Summon Monster VI)
 * Greater Gem of Ocean's Winds - Greater Air Elemental (Summon Monster VIII)

Epic Destinies

 * Primal Avatar
 * Primal Ally:
 * Heart: Heart Flame Dryad: Creates an elder dryad that casts fire and healing spells. She remains rooted to her summoning point.
 * Sky: Storm Guard : Creates a greater storm spirit to blast your foes with lightning and cold. Remains bound to their summoning spot.
 * Thorn: Briar Patch: Creates a greater thorn spirit which launches attacks of poison and acid at nearby enemies.
 * Magus of the Eclipse
 * Call Upon:
 * Animated Armor - reasonable health and damage, pretty similar to a Skeletal Knight.
 * Dream Reaver - high magic resistance, so good against casters.
 * Gargoyle - similar to the animated armour, but slower. Can regenerate some health on its own.
 * Golem — can be an iron, flesh, stone or clay golem; this is randomly selected each time. High hit points and good elemental resistance, but has trouble dealing damage.
 * Lich — hate magnet, can be healed by PM auras, randomly casts Disintegrate/Fireball/Fear/Magic Missile.
 * Living Meteor Swarm — high AoE damage, but low hit points. Runs out of spell points quickly, so needs to be frequently resummoned.
 * Succubus - uses Charm spells. Useful for crowd control, but has low hit points and not much help against bosses.