Have they ever given us a lore based reason as to why you cannot summon more than one creature at a time? I always figured it was so that you wouldn't overload the 'x many characters on the screen at once' limit, Any other reasons?

Takes some good concentration to keep that skelly or daedra in line from what I gather. There have been quests that deal with those who were new to summoning, and the summoned creature would give the summoner the finger and proceed to wreck everything near it.

But why can you only summon one creature i always figured that when you became master of conjuration you could summon 2 or 3 creatures BUT YOU CANT WHY

Lore reason: Summoning too much at one time would strain the caster's ability to keep their summons in check.

Game reasons:
1. Gamebryo is poorly optimized, and can't really handle too many units at one time.
2. It would be unbalancing if you could summon a whole army, especially since many encounters aren't with large numbers of enemies at a single time, but closer to a 1( two, or three), to one ratio of opponents to you.

well, a few mods allow one to summon multiple summons, so I don't think it's entirely point 1.

But to further add, the reason why you are a master summoner, is because you are able to take the mental strain of summoning beings of higher power and/or thought, as they will try to break free of your control.

From my experience, the limit is close to around >30 depending on quality of computer, and then gamebryo starts to stop processing the AI for some of the npcs, resulting in npcs that are just retards standing around. Not a problem when dungeon raiding, but it is a problem in some city enviroments and major battles, like Kvatch or Bruma.

But I imagine the main reason is number 2, simply because a lot of battles tend to be one to one --->3 to one encounters.

is Gamebryo the engine???

Because i heard they where making a new engine for TES V.

Yes, Gamebryo is the engine. It's been in use since morrowind (at least) and is the engine that the new fallout 3 and NV were built with.

As for a new engine, gamesas apparently retools Gamebryo as part of their development cycle, but I'd put my money on the conservative bet that new engine means heavily modified latest version of gamebryo.

As I recall, http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tribunal:Gavis_Velas summoned multiple minions at once. Although he was a pretty powerful wizard.

i think in a quest in Cheydinhal a Dark elf (cant remember her name) summons two rats

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On a similar note, Doors of Oblivion mentions that conjuring up Daedric critters and the like creates a telepathic link of sorts between the conjurer and the conjured; such a thing is fine for dealing with just one summon, maybe two if they're of considerably different natures or extremily easy to control, but any more than that and I imagine it's either a problem of keeping orders and communication with each one untangled from the others or just the sheer bombardment of feedback from each one (imagine having a gang of 5-10 scamps running around at a time, each one of which is probably phoning in "KILL!" or "FOR 'DA MASTER!" or something similar every several seconds).

In Morrowind you could summon multiple creatures, and several books mention vast armies of summoned creatures. For instance the Camoran Usurper used armies of Daedra and Undead.

story-wise yes.


She didn't summon two rats, they came out of a hole in the wall.

He also had plenty of time to prepare for your arrival and could've taken the proper steps he needed to bind multiple creatures. He didn't need to summon them all impromptu.