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Enemy Summoner

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When in doubt, call your friends!

An enemy who casts spells or sounds an alarm which bring additional enemies into combat, while causing some damage itself. Sometimes the summoned enemies are just Mooks; in other cases, they are as powerful enemies as the summoner. Can get very dangerous for the player if those enemies are summoners themselves. Might be an enemy version of The Beastmaster or The Minion Master or Necromancer, depending on who or what is being brought out.

See also the Mook Maker, who doesn't do anything to hurt the player except churn out an endless series of Mooks, and the Flunky Boss, who may summon weaker allies as part of a Boss Battle, and Patrolling Mook, which does the same thing only if it spots the player. Some Enemy Summoners go as far as to summon Mook Makers. They may also be able to make those mooks more organized and powerful.

The ability to create large amounts of enemies can make them Demonic Spiders or Goddamned Bats. They are a common candidate to be Metal Slime, since you have to kill them fast or the sheer amount of summoned opponents will overwhelm you, so you don't have many opportunities to steal.

If what they summon are flying turrets, this is Attack Drone and the summoners are Drone Deployers. If what they summon to fight are their own offspring, then you have Weaponized Offspring.


Examples:

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     Action-Adventure 
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum features several boss encounters (in particular, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and the Joker) in which your foe unleashes a gang of enemies into the fray.
  • Ghostlore: Mogui Summoners are among the strongest enemies in the game, capable of taking plenty of hits, and made even more complicated by their ability to periodically teleport lesser mooks around them besides occasionally throwing projectiles.
  • The Haunted Mansion: The gargoyles summon smaller, faster enemies, which is one of the qualities that makes them Demonic Spiders.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
  • LEGO Star Wars features the Battle Droid Commander (the yellow one) from The Phantom Menace, who is a normal battle droid, but with increased health, and the ability to call other battle droids into the fight that follow it around. When the player gains control of it in Free Play, it has the standard four hearts of health, but still retains this ability. The Imperial Spy from A New Hope similarly calls other Stormtroopers to fight the party for him in Mos Eisley, but he only attacks you with punches if you get too close.
  • Luigi's Mansion: Vincent Van Gore. According to Dr. E. Gadd, he is the source of all the ghosts you have been fighting. He will force you to fight several rounds of identical ghosts, which he summons from his paintings. Eventually you will be allowed to ghostbuster on him.
  • Sundered: The boss Dominion can conjure up Monster Portals that, if not destroyed by the player, will continuously spawn Crawler Minions to chase after you. When Dominion’s health gets sufficiently low he’ll start conjuring a dozen of these portals at once, and if left unchecked the resulting tide of monsters can quickly overwhelm the player.

     Beat 'em Ups 
  • Dawn of the Monsters:
    • Sortugor are humanoid Nephilim that can summon other enemies to fight the player.
    • The Nests and Monarchs can summon lesser Nephilim to provide reenforcement... as well as heal the player.
  • Executioners: The third level boss Blobba The Butt can spit out two Fat Snakes to help him out against you. The fourth level boss Mega-Midget(s) can cry out "Midgets, attack!" and bring in four or six Midget-Men to help him out.
  • The Legend of Tian-ding has a Flunky Boss, Ding-Peng, who carries a bell that summons extra enemies into the area. He literally doesn't have a second attack besides "ringing bell to fetch backup".

     Card Games 
  • Many units in Eternal Card Game will make more creatures, though the Grenadin are the kings of this.
  • Hearthstone has countless minions and spells that summon token minions or pull them from your hand or deck. It has a few bosses in the solo adventures based on this as well. There are even two classes who use this as their Hero Power — Paladins summon 1/1 Silver Hand Recruits, while Shamans summon one of four random totems.
  • There are loads of Magic: The Gathering cards that make token creatures when they come into play, create token creatures when you want them to, or let you look through your library for more creature cards.
  • The Pokémon TCG has some cards with a "look for friends" move, allowing the player to search their deck for (varying from card to card) look for more Pokémon of the same species, elemental type or some other descriptor.

     First-Person Shooters 
  • The Battlefield series has Awesome Personnel Carrier vehicles that fill this role (though whether it's enemies or friendlies being summoned depends on which side you're on). Even moreso than the Real Life example below, because empty seats in friendly vehicles are valid locations for respawning players.
  • Doom:
    • In Doom II, Pain Elementals are the more aggravating bigger brothers to the Cacodemon in that they spit Lost Souls, the often aggressive flying skull enemies from the first game. Archviles, on the other hand, can not only resurrect anything except bosses, Lost Souls, Pain Elementals and their own kind, but have a flame attack that can do you ugly.
    • In Doom³, although the Archvile doesn't resurrect monsters (since they don't leave corpses), it can summon indeterminate numbers of mooks, including Boss in Mook Clothing enemies such as Hell Knights.
    • The Icon of Sin from Doom Eternal is a far cry from his previous Doom II incarnation. Not only can he summon nearly every enemy in the game aside from the boss-level monsters, but his own attacks hit hard.
  • F.E.A.R. 3 brings us the Phase Caster, an Armacham soldier in Powered Armor wielding an arc beam gun who has the ability to teleport soldiers into battle.
  • In Half-Life, Nihilanth occasionally fires green energy balls at you, which usually teleport you to another area of Xen. However, these balls will sometimes summon an alien slave to assist the boss in combat.
  • The first Antlion Guard encountered in Half-Life 2 periodically summons three or four regular Antlions from the sand to attack the player while attacking itself. Mercifully, as they are goddamned hard to kill even alone, it is the only Guard to do so, as the regular antlions become your allies afterwards.
  • The Heresiarch boss from Hexen summons Dark Bishops to aid him in battle when his health is low.
  • D'Sparil, the Final Boss of Heretic, in addition to blasting you with his staff in the second phase of the final battle with him, will summon his Disciples against you two at a time.
  • In the Left 4 Dead series, the "Boomer" Special Infected can puke or explode near the Survivors, spraying them with bile that obscures their vision and quickly summons a horde.
  • Quake II: Ground Zero has the Medic Commanders, an Elite Mook version of the Medic capable of periodically summoning additional Strogg, while also retaining the vanilla version's Mook Medic abilities. Made worse by the fact it can summon, among other things, standard Medics as well.
  • Quake IV has the Teleport Dropper, a bulldog-like creature who fires beacons that teleport enemies. The Makron and the Strogg Nexus can also summon enemies in the final battle among which are Heavy Hovertanks.
  • In Perfect Dark's Chicago mission, the FBI agents will summon Elite Mooks with .357 magnums if you don't quickly kill them.
  • The first boss in Red Steel 2, Paine, would occasionally summon a pair of machine-gun wielding mooks to chip away at your backside. Made worse because he usually does it when he's just knocked you down so you have to watch him do it while unable to move.
  • Giant Gasbag in Unreal, which belches out fireballs and smaller Gasbags.
  • Certain Elite Guards in Wolfenstein (2009) are capable of resurrecting dead Mooks. The resulting Despoiled are far more powerful adversaries than the infantry they were originally.
  • Wolfenstein: The New Order has the Nazi commanders, who will periodically call for reinforcements as long as they're alive and aware that B.J. is nearby. They're fairly easy to kill and only wield a pistol, but if you don't deal with them first you can quickly get overwhelmed.
  • The Screamer in World War Z (2019) summons zombies by screaming into a megaphone and the horde won't stop coming until he is killed.
  • Command & Conquer: Renegade has Nod Officers who can call for reinforcements. Killing them can be a top priority to prevent you from getting clogged down by enemy soldiers.

     Hack & Slash 
  • Devil May Cry 5: If left unchecked for a while, a Hell Judecca will carve the ground with its scythes to summon new Hell Cainas and/or Hell Antenoras on the field. The first Hell Judecca encountered even demonstrates this during its Mook Debut Cutscene.
  • Sand Maggots in Diablo II which spit poison and lay eggs.
    • Vile Mothers in Act 4 can create an unlimited (Sand Maggots at least can only lay a limited amount of eggs) amount of Vile Childs apart from hitting you with their claws. Besides, they have cold resistance, so you can't use cold attacks to stop them from moving. On top of that, in the River of Flame you may be attacked by BOTH Sand Maggots and Vile Mothers. Expect VERY long fights.
    • Diablo II is full of a variant of enemies like this, where they start with a full complement of units and resurrect them whenever you kill one. Unless you raise it as a skeleton, make the corpse explode, or freeze it and smash the remains or in some way make it Deader than Dead.
    • Nihlathak in the expansion pack who would summon monsters, then corpse explode them if you killed them.
  • Diablo III introduces the Wretched Mothers in Act I. They vomit on the ground, causing a Risen to spawn.
  • Cerebuses in the first God of War would occasionally spit out Cerebus Puppies, which in time could grow into full grown Cerebuses. One of the harder portions of the game was a battle against three of them where the whole point was to kill them all before you got overwhelmed through sheer numbers.
  • Titan Quest: Some undead enemies summon other undead minions, and some insectoid enemies hatch babies to fight alongside them.

     MMORPG 
  • Some City of Heroes examples: Banished Pantheon Death Shamans, Rikti Communications Officers, Malta Operation Engineers, and Carnival of Shadows Master Illusionists.
  • In Dungeon Fighter Online, there is an entire dungeon made of enemy summoners. Even the boss. Add to the fact that the 'highest' level of summoner in the dungeon can summon more summoners, which summon more summoners... So... Yeah.
  • Guild Wars has varying forms of this. In the most basic forms, Necromancer and Ritualist enemies can summon hordes of enemies using the same skills available to the player.
  • Heavily twisted with the Chrome Dragons in Phantasy Star Online 2, who are capable of calling Falspawn to the field with a roar... only to promptly eat them whole and gain powers and extra body parts upon doing so.
  • RuneScape has several of these:
    • Astea Frostweb summons ice spiders to assist her.
    • Her husband Lexicus Runewright will summon flying books to harass players using all combat styles.
    • The Necrolords periodically summon skeletons to attack their enemies.
    • Mercenary leaders call in their subordinates to deal with intruders.
    • Bork summons Ork Legions to help him.
    • Summoner is among the horde of trolls trying to invade a human town; he summons some of the things that players can summon. Another kind of troll that appears in the same fight is the troll father, which summons three troll runts.
    • Nechryael summon flying death spawns to harass their foes.
    • Strongbones is an undead goblin priest who summons multiple skoblins to fight the player who disturbs his rest.
    • The Queen Black Dragon has two kinds of enemies she can summon. She occasionally summons a group of tortured souls which all fire powerful chaotic clouds at you. If they are not killed quickly enough, she will absorb them to heal herself, and occasionally one of them will teleport the edge of the arena and cast a time stopping spell if you don't kill them immediately. And whenever her health bar is depleted, she will start spitting up grotworms until you activate the artifact to start the next phase of the fight or finish her.
    • Flesh-spoiler Haasghenakh produces a large number of flesh-spoiler spawn when he starts the second phase of the fight by shedding his outer skin.
    • Both of the two fights against Zemoregal has in summon large numbers of undead minions. The fight in The World Wakes has him summoning armored zombies, ghostly wraiths, and skeleton bone throwers. The fight in Dimension of Disaster has him summoning exploding zombie cows.
    • Dawn summons skeletons during the fight against her.
    • Yelps summons bodyguards during the boss fight against him.
    • TzTok-Jad summons four Yt-HurKot when he gets down to half health, and if you fail to stop them before they heal him back to full heath he can summon them again.
    • Glacors summon three Glacytes when they get to half health and can't be damaged until they are all dead. Each Glacyte has a different ability and the Glacor gains a new ability depending on which of the three is killed last.
  • A huge number of the bosses from World of Warcraft in a variety of ways, ranging from simple summoning to calling for help to splitting themselves into smaller pieces to creating dozens of illusions of themselves, to taking control of some players' bodies and making them help. In addition, many basic mobs will, after being reduced to low health, either shout for nearby mobs to assist, or run and look for them. Regular mobs also sometimes summon aid, normally in the form of demons or undead. Given that the expansions packs have focused on these (BC and Wrath respectively) they're found in a few instances. They are generally the cause of wipes to groups not aware of them.

     Platformers 
  • Afterimage: Sporeling Nests, as their name implies, can create several Sporelings to attack you.
  • A flying boss in Dynamite Headdy summons little choppers, the choppers drop bombs, and the bombs explode into bullets. Whew.
  • Kid Icarus (1986): The Grim Reaper. Don't let him spot you, or he'll summon a wave of Goddamned Bats upon you.
  • In general, all the bosses from the Kirby series summon something that attacks you; this is to give you some ammunition against them to keep the fight from being unwinnable.
  • There is an enemy jester in Taito's The NewZealand Story who continuously summons random enemies. He doesn't attack or harm directly the player, however.
  • A variant in Sly Cooper. In the second game, some enemies wield megaphones, and will use them to alert (and call to the developing melee) enemies in a wide radius around them if they spot the player.
  • Super Mario World:
    • Some of the Chargin' Chucks can inexplicably summon Super Koopas to bedevil you. In a slight variation, there's a type of underwater Chuck that will wake up EVERY Rip Van Fish in a stage. They wake up based on your proximity anyway, and chase you around, but this enemy prevents any possibility of sneaking by as they nap.
    • Magikoopas can fire blasts of hero-damaging magic that can also transform ordinary blocks into minor enemies on contact. A Magikoopa also appears as a boss in Super Mario RPG. This one can summon one of several powerful creatures to hide behind, and you have to beat them in order to attack the Magikoopa himself. Fortunately, this Magikoopa won't attack you while one of his monsters is in play.

     Puzzle Games 
  • Insaniquarium's final boss is this. He summons all of the other monsters, one or two at a time. Some can be killed with one shot, making them Mooks, but others are very hard to kill. He is, however, not dangerous in his own right.

     Real-Time Strategy 
  • Empire Earth's expansion adds Paratroopers as a civ power, giving the ability to train Radio Men who can summon 10 footsoldiers up to three times for free (though they still take up pop cap).
  • League of Legends: This is what Yorick is going to be when he is on the enemy team, as all of his abilities summon ghouls that will relentlessly chase the nearest enemy player. Well, except his ultimate ability, which creates a clone of one of his allies that said ally can control for 10 seconds if they die.
  • The Queen in Starcraft has the ability to kill any organic enemy unit by spitting eggs into them. The eggs hatch into 2 Broodlings, killing the unit in the process. Able to kill Goliaths (mecha-units) and tanks through the explanation that the pilots are organic. Doesn't explain why the mecha explodes...
  • Necromancers from War Craft III, which can summon lots of skeletons from nearby corpses if they're allowed to survive for too long, apart from also contributing their own (fairly weak) ranged attacks, and casting powerful buffs or debuffs on friendly and enemy units respectively. Fortunately, the Necromancers themselves are pretty frail, easily taken out by ranged units, siege units and anti-casters, and the skeletons are pretty easy to dispel (and there's a hidden limit of 25, older skeletons dying and being replaced by the newer ones). This can get hilariously out of control in mods where skeletons can summon skeletons or where skeletons leave corpses (or both).

     Roguelikes 
  • ADOM features many summoners.
    • The monster levelling system (amount of [monster] killed determines strength of new [monster]) means that once you've cleared out two or three packs of the same summon, any further summons will become stronger. Much stronger. This is supposed to be Anti-Grinding, but instead upgrades summoners from 'annoying' to 'kill on sight'/'avoid'.
    • Werecreatures can generally summon ordinary creature of their type. Werewolf lords can summon werewolves, which are also summoners. A large room can be filled in 3-5 turns. Werewolf kings, though rare, can summon said werewolf lords.
    • Blink Dogs are notable as they summon more blink dogs and can teleport at will.
    • Spellcasters can often summon: black wizards summon random creatures, necromancers summon undead, liches summon either depending on type, drow wizards and priestesses summon spiders, Chaos-aligned wizards summon Chaos creatures.
    • Merchants can summon additional muscle (thugs or in one case muscular dwarves) if the player is foolish/unlucky/overpowered enough to cross them.
    • Several bosses also do it, most obviously Yulgash the Master Summoner.
    • There are also breeders, which reproduce quickly — especially when a gremlin is hit by a water trap.
  • Angband:
    • The game has many, many different types of hostile summoners. They include the quylthulgs, which are invisible, cold-blooded (so they aren't visible with infravision) fleshmounds that every turn either summon one or more monsters or teleport themselves around. A character who cannot see invisible things will have quite a problem stopping new monsters from appearing seemingly out of the blue.
    • There are also many types of monsters that can chain-summon. For example, greater demons summon other greater demons of any type, including more powerful types that summon even more. Battles involving multiple demons tend to get epic. There is also the demonic quylthulg that summons exclusively greater demons.
    • Breeders are a related concept. These monsters do not use summon magic but rather reproduce themselves extremely quickly. Things like white lice can easily take over the level if they are not stopped before the numbers reach a point where more new lice are born each turn than the player can potentially kill in the same span of time.
  • Some of the bosses in Backpack Hero are capable of summoning enemies to help them fight you, and their summons will run away on their next turn if their boss is defeated. Certain weapons gain boosts upon defeating enemies, but they won't gain them from defeating summons.
  • Necromancers in Dwarf Fortress can raise any corpses and parts of corpses left lying around... and currectly, they can re-raise them any time the player succeeds in putting them down. Very little short of Boatmurdered-style doomsday weapons will permanently get rid of them unless you kill the necromancer.
  • Firework Artisans in Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja will sometimes create Bombs to back them up. The Bombs are very easy to bring down, but one hit will cause them to explode, dealing heavy damage to Izuna if she's within the blast radius.
  • NetHack:}
    • The monster spell Summon Nasties; the bane of every game (Archons, Archons, and more Archons on the Elemental Plane Of Air). And any minor-level demon encounter has the potential to end with the player suddenly fighting Demogorgon.
    • Demons in general can sometimes gate in a co-aligned demon every time they attempt an attack, which in turn can gate in more. Special mention goes to vrocks, who has six attacks per turn (so it has a larger chance to gate in things) and is sufficiently low levelled that they mostly only gate in more vrocks, who in turn can gate in more vrocks, and so on and so forth.
  • In the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series, any Pokemon with the Illuminate ability will cause an enemy Pokemon to appear somewhere on the floor whenever it's damaged by an attack. This includes Pokemon on your side, which makes bringing them along a good or bad thing depending on whether or not you feel like potentially having to fight hordes of enemies.

     Role-Playing Games 
  • Bloodborne: The Chime Maidens are Pthumeruian women who summon various enemies brought from the ancient Pthumeru. Be it hunters, brick trolls, Pthumerian Watchers, or the worst case, Nightmare Apostles, the literal Demonic Spiders.
  • Brave Hero Yuusha: Racket Cactuses, which can "sound the alarm" repeatedly, but only works to draw in a Duneworm per battle, and can also can attack.
  • Breath of Fire IV has a sequence where you must defeat a guard before he calls for backup.
  • Dragon Quest:
    • The bell-like Dead Ringers of Dragon Quest VIII, who can summon up to eight of themselves.
    • Dragon Quest III had the Goopi, who could (and did) call for more and more of themselves as you killed them. It made them great for Level Grinding, except when they randomly called out a much-tougher Granite Titan.
    • And starting from Dragon Quest IV on, the player can run into groups of seemingly ordinary slimes during the mid-game... that can call in their friends. Lots of friends. And then they can fuse into a King Slime...
    • Dragon Quest VIII seems to have a lot of enemies who can summon more of their kin (including the Dead Ringers' earlier variant, Magic Dumbells, who can even level themselves up) or revive monsters that you've already killed in the current battle (either by casting Zing/Kazing to resurrect one, or sacrificing themselves with Kerplunk to revive every other monster in the battle).
  • The Swamp Witches from Dungeon Siege, infamous for summoning Swamp Creatures with 1000 HP, sometimes several at a time!
  • There were a lot of them in EarthBound (1994). Special mention must be made of the Loaded Dice, who only could summon other monsters — they had no other abilities.
  • The Elder Scrolls
    • This is a common trait of necromancers and enemy conjurers throughout the series. Though they themselves tend to be quite squishy, they'll start combat by summoning a lesser Daedra or some form of The Undead. Later games also give necromancers the ability to resurrect any dead bodies on the battlefield.
    • Dremora, an intelligent race of lesser Daedra, are known to summon other lesser Daedra to aid them in battle. Most commonly they summon Scamps, but they've been known to summon Atronachs, Clannfear, Daedroths, and Spider Daedra as well. Dremora themselves are typically capable melee opponents as well, making them all the more dangerous.
    • Spider Daedra, as their name might imply, are a Spider People form of lesser Daedra. Already powerful Magic Knights on their own, they can also summon weaker Spiderlings to aid them in battle.
    • Xivilai, a massive and powerful form of lesser Daedra, have the ability to summon Clannfear to aid them in battle.
    • In Oblivion, this is a trait of Skeleton Champions, which carry high-end claymores, and summon (and re-summon) a lower-tier skeleton. Skeleton Champions are Made of Iron, and their pet skeletons are dangerous in their own right, and easy to confuse for the Champion in the heat of battle meaning you could inflict the killing blow; and rather than taste victory, another skeleton is instantly spawned and the battle carries on.
    • In Skyrim's Dragonborn DLC, Seekers are a Cthulhumanoid form of lesser Daedra in service to Hermaeus Mora, the Daedric Prince of Knowledge. Seekers can summon a weaker clone of themselves to aid them in battle, and the clone will disintegrate if the Seeker is killed first.
  • In a relatively rare sci-fi example, Fallout 2, the Military Base features entirely optional boss Melchior. He summons monsters of diminishing strength before joining battle himself. A determined and confident player often lets him, as he eventually runs out, meaning you get experience for all the monsters killed. The Master in Fallout does the same with his Nightkin Hallucinations.
  • Final Fantasy IV has a class of enemies including the Summoner and Marionetteer which will repeatedly call in another monster when they're alone. Since they never run out of MP, they can be useful for grinding (and in the case of a Summoner summoning Goblins, farming for Rydia's Goblin summon orb).
  • Final Fantasy XI has a lot of these, but a special mention has to go out to those enemies of the Summoner job class. The basic cannon fodder can only summon elementals, but the Elite Mooks can summon the elemental Avatars, and have access to the 2-Hour Astral Flow, which has that Avatar deal enough damage to One-Hit Kill anyone even remotely close to that Avatar. Thankfully, they can be slept beforehand, but they still can cause wipes in Dynamis, that's for sure.
  • Some of the level III Yarhi in Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings have the ability to do this, as well as The Judge of Wings/Mydia. However, when you've got those particular Yarhi on your side, the ability vanishes.
  • Ginormo Sword has the Necromancer boss, who summons various enemies previously seen in the area he's the boss for.
  • Quite a few enemies in Golden Sun will "look for allies".
  • In Grandia there are many different types of slime, all of which can split themselves into multiple slimes which can then multiply. Unless you use a critical hit on the slimes attempting this then having an unending supply of slimes to kill can be extremely irritating or even fatal.
  • The Heliga in Haven (2020) is fought alongside a Toriko and Babulido, and can repeatedly summon more of these two creatures whenever one gets pacified.
  • The Crescendo Heartless in the Kingdom Hearts series can call in reinforcements if it's left alone long enough. This coupled with its ability to completely heal its allies makes it a top priority target.
  • Some enemies in The Last Remnant have the tendency to call for Reinforcements.
  • In Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis, several student enemies can summon their manas to fight alongside them, most notably Renee, but they can only summon once.
  • Mega Man X: Command Mission, the only game to operate from a purely turn-based interface, has several enemies with summon abilities. For instance Bee Bladers can summon Deerballs, while the Gold Bladers can summon Gold or Silver Mettaurs, turning the fight into a mad scramble to wipe them out before they all flee. Many smaller or weaker enemies also have the SOS ability, which summons another enemy of like type when used. Most worryingly, Optional Boss Fivetails has this ability. This means the clones of him just keep coming and it is almost mandatory to contrive of a way to kill all of them simultaneously, as any clone can use the Annihilator Hadoken. Worst of all, A Fivetails clone can choose to simply Self Destruct to instantly wipe out one of you party members, then have one of the remaining Fivetails summon a fresh clone at full health to take the place of the fallen one.
  • Monster Hunter 3 (Tri): The Qurupeco has this ability, by imitating the calls of other monsters. It usually calls groups of small monsters, but push it enough, and there's a good chance it'll decide to call in something much worse than it is. It'll also make it a note to call any other large monsters that are already present on the map over to its location, which can make dealing with it a serious pain. There is also one creature known as a Deviljho that naturally preys on the Qurupeco. Sometimes the Qurupeco will summon one of these to deal with you, only for the Deviljho to turn right around and slaughter it.
  • Overland: Siren bugs don’t directly attack the group, but instead run around the map, producing signals that summon other bugs every turn. They generally need to be killed quickly to keep the group from being overrun. (Thankfully, they’re also the only enemy that doesn’t produce noise when killed.)
  • Several enemies in Persona 4. One minor boss has no special abilities other than summoning copies of itself.
  • Some enemies in Phantasy Star IV, like the Tower series, could call in satellite enemies into battle. Then there was the Infantworm, which if a single one was left alive out of the group, would run away and summon Mom.
  • All Trial Totem Pokemon and almost all wild Pokemon in Pokémon Sun and Moon can call for help at the start of their turn, summoning another Pokemon to aid it in battle if successful. Sometimes, the "help" will turn on it. Note that this is the only way to get certain Pokemon to appear.
  • Radiant Historia has several of them, ranging from soldiers to mushrooms.
  • Shaman-type enemies in Shadowrun Returns all carry fetishes that lets them summon spirits to aid them in combat (much like a Player Character Shaman can). They are a rare but repeatedly encountered enemy in all three campaigns of the game.
  • Several types of demons encountered in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne will summon allies of the same type, if the enemy party has slots open for them. Or even if it doesn't.
  • Some enemies is Skies of Arcadia summon more of themselves. The Gamecube version which has bonus content has a load of tough optional bosses, two of which use this trick.
  • Soaring Machinariae:
    • The giant plants in the Chanting Woods can summon bees to attack. However, the bees disappear after flying offscreen.
    • The giant knights in the Tower of Desire can summon sword enemies, which also remove themselves from the field like the bees.
    • The mirror enemies in the Tower of Desire can summon weak copies of Iris as enemies. However, if the mirror is killed before the clones, the clones will still remain on the field as regular enemies.
  • Exile:
    • The series has the ability to nest summons many times over. The mooks pop through the various Summon Monster spells (or even snazzier Soul Crystal Simulacrums) are quite likely to take the tactic and run with it. Summon a Demon, and you'll soon have it summon an Imp, which in turn summons a rat. The map can quickly get extremely cluttered as both sides form solid barriers of mooks between their respective casters, which only judicious (and satisfying!) use of area of effect spells can hope to resolve.
    • The first three games of the Avernum remake series have a similar problem. The Arcane Summon spell will summon a handful of high-level monsters to fight for you. One of the possible results is the Vampire Lord monster, who could cast Arcane Summon. In the last three games, you have a limit on your summons (a maximum of two in Avernum 6). The enemy doesn't. Any battle with an enemy mage quickly turns into a long and tiring one (especially if your warriors need to be next to the mage to do any real damage).
  • The Geneforge series' summoners can, unlike the players, shape their creations during combat.
  • The Shadow Guards from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed periodically summon squads of cloaked Shadowtroopers in mid-battle.
  • The jellyfish noise in The World Ends with You have an annoying habit of replicating themselves. There's a 50% percent chance the one they spawn won't be able to divide and they're weak but it's still pretty easy to get bogged down in the things.
  • Enemies in the Trails Series in general just love summoning other enemies to mess with you. It's not unusual for many random enemies you encounter in the field to do this and even boss class monsters can sometimes summon other bosses.

     Shoot 'em Ups 
  • Escape Velocity features ships that can carry smaller fighters, many of which are decent threats by themselves. Game by game breakdown  Carried ships can also be retrieved and redeployed fully healed immediately, even if they are disabled in battle. With plugins, it is possible to give a ship a fighter bay that deploys that same type of ship, often leading to a chaotic battle where only the engine limitations keep things under control.
  • Hellsinker:
    • The secret form of Rusted dragon and Perpetual Calendar does this.
    • Technically, a large majority of enemies in the game do this. The bullets — particularly, the ones that can be slowed down and nullified with your Battle Aura — are actually microscopic spirits known as "Faint Ones". The Executors use these as well.

     Survival Horror 
  • In Ultimate Custom Night, a spinoff of the Five Nights at Freddy's games, Dee Dee's role is basically to summon an animatronic that wasn't selected at a random difficulty (and possibly isn't even on the selectable roster) to make the night harder to survive. Then there's XOR, a demonic Palette Swap of Dee Dee, who only appears in 50/20 mode and summons multiple characters.

     Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons has quite a few monsters which can summon allies to their side:
    • In general, a summoned creature can't themselves summon other creatures, preventing a potential infinite loop. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition also had the Deepspawn — a rubbery ball of tentacles, mouths, and eyestalks that can make a physical duplicate (though without the special abilities) of anything it's ever eaten. These duplicates could use weapons and armor to fight whatever threatened the Deepspawn.
    • Ravenloft: A cursed villain from the supplement Carnival is afflicted with this trope. He's not so lucky as to summon the freakish little Mooks he calls upon; rather, they bud off his flesh as corporeal manifestations of his evil thoughts and emotions.
  • Magic: The Gathering: Several cards have card abilities that summon more creatures (usually token creatures) if you fulfil its condition. An example towards the Logical Extreme is Polyraptor, which creates a copy of itself whenever it takes damage. These copies can also create copies of themselves. Alternately, there are other creatures that let you search creature cards out of your deck.
  • Warhammer:
    • Karanak is the alpha leader of Khorne's Flesh Hounds. When he has the scent of his prey, Karanak unleashes a daemonic howl that echoes across all the realms, calling his fellow hunting beasts so that they can join the pursuit. While this is part of his background material in all his incarnations, only the Warhammer: Age of Sigmar version of the three-headed hound represents this in game with the Call of the Hunt ability that allows it to summon new units of Flesh Hounds to the battlefield
    • Warhammer 40,000:
      • Necron Canoptek Spyders are able to manufacture swarms of robotic insects known as Canoptek Scarabs during a battle but have a 1 in 6 chance of damaging themselves if they do so.
      • Tyranid Tervigons are living incubators able to spawn new broods of Termagaunts to fight alongside the monstrous creature. On the downside, should the Tervigon be slain, all nearby Termagaunts suffer hits from the synaptic backlash.
      • The Malefic Daemonology psychic discipline allows almost any psyker to try this, at the cost of an extremely high risk of Perils of the Warp Oddly enough, the best force at doing this is not the Daemon psykers themselves, but the expendable psychic choirs of the Imperium, who hate daemons, but have the good sense to blow the psyker's head off before the daemons do it themselves, and have plenty of spares. An army properly set up for this can pull in versatile reserves onto anywhere from the battlefield, and some of those daemons can do MORE SUMMONING. In a standard six-turn game this isn't too big a deal, because at some point you need to stop summoning more psykers who are using all their power for recursive Daemons and actually kill the enemy, but in a big Apocalypse game or screened by some large blobs of Cultists or Conscripts then there can be three or four Greater Daemons with their own supporting buffers and infantry screens set up before you've managed to take down even the first few mages.

     Turn-Based Strategy 
  • Fire Emblem:
    • Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn: Later chapters have the enemies abusing their uber Warp staff to summon in reinforcements. Even without magic staff, Fire Emblem bosses have a habit of bringing out reinforcements from no where.
    • Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia: There is an enemy class called Cantor whose main purpose is that they are one of the few classes who can summon more units. Some healers in the game can also do so. Also, one map on Celica's route in Gaiden/Echoes contains nothing but a Cantor. The map is there to introduce you to them.
  • Sunrider has PACT Carriers and PACT Assault Carriers, each of which will spawn a new Ryder every turn until destroyed. Assault Carriers are the more dangerous of the two, as while normal Carriers can only spawn PACT Mooks and PACT Bombers, Assault Carriers can spawn PACT Elites and PACT Supports. They’re also more heavily-armed and will try to engage the player’s forces directly, while normal Carriers will hang back at the rear of their formations.

     Real Life 
  • Some species of ant are attracted by the chemicals that their species releases into the air upon death. Bees and wasps act the same way.
  • Some extremely unpleasant species of tropical South American wasps will squirt their venom onto large animals (including humans), partly to harm said intruders, and partly to summon reinforcements (who are drawn by the scent of attack pheromones in the venom). These same wasps can also whip their sisters into an attacking frenzy simply by drumming their abdomens on the walls of their own nests.
  • Though they haven't usually been attacked in modern warfare, AWACS (with the big spinning radar) planes are generally this. Due to their value, they are relatively high priority targets for opposing fighters but they have the advantage that they can easily call friendly fighters to them as they control the overall air war.
  • An Infantry Fighting Vehicle, such as the M1127 Stryker and the BTR-90, qualifies, as any troops inside can dismount to attack the enemy.

     Non-game examples 


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Leafbug Archer

Leafbug Archers can summon more of them when alone.

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