# WoTC Rodney: Economy of actions



## Frostmarrow (Mar 25, 2008)

Economy of actions

I find this subject intriguing. Actions are so powerful in the game that _Haste_ needed to be nerfed. Looks like the same problem arises with followers and summoned critters. (Never thought of that).

Is it okay to limit actions to one share per player (rather than one share per character)?


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## Jack99 (Mar 25, 2008)

Frostmarrow said:
			
		

> Is it okay to limit actions to one share per player (rather than one share per character)?




I think it at least a good idea to look at the number of extra actions one can gain. Maybe you don't need to limit it to one share per player, as long as you make sure that extra actions that one is able to gain, aren't too powerful.

I think summoned monsters should replace your actions, if not all, then at least some of them. For example: If Skamos the Wizard summons a small elemental, his choices are as follows:
-use his minor action to sustain the elemental
-use his minor action to sustain the elemental and his standard action to make it move and/or attack.

Companions and familiars should be very weak in combat, like minions.

A spell like haste should be single target and perhaps higher level than it was in 2e and 3e.


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 25, 2008)

Very good post. 

The economy of actions is at the heart of why Solo BBEG's have such trouble with the party of do-gooders.

My own "Solo Template" gives a Solo creature 1 action point per PC. The Solo can spend its action points, no more than one per PC turn, to take an "immediate standard action."


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## dangerous jack (Mar 25, 2008)

Tough one.  I think he has a very good point, but I'd dislike followers / familiars / companions / summoned creatures feeling mechanically like equipment or a spell.

Of the top of my head, I could compromise with something like:
* give followers 1 action / turn (and allow a double-move as a single action so they could keep up)
* limit special actions (Encounter & Daily powers) to 1 character or follower / player / turn


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Mar 25, 2008)

Depends - from a pure gameplay perspective, that's basically what you have to do to maintain game balance. And not only from a pure "power" perspective - if player 1 can do more stuff each round then player 2, this can feel very unfair.

But from a "realismn"/"simulationist" perspective, this totally doesn't work in all cases. I can see it for undeads or summoned monsters - you need to order them to have them do anything, or at least concentrate on the spell controlling them. But why do I need to do the same effort for a sentient follower?

I suppose there is no perfect solution. For me, I really have trouble accepting non-magically (or technologically) controlled costing me actions. It just doesn't feel right.

I might be more willing to accept this idea if D&D wasn't focussed on playing individuals in a party. If we were controlling multiple characters all the time, and the group controlled by the character had to share their actions, it might work. (Wouldn't that get us closer to the "Wargaming" roots?) It is a very strong shift in your mental model of the game.

From a pure power balance point of view, I suppose that Followers or Cohorts should be somehow cost you some XP. Maybe one approach would be to reduce the XP from a combat encounter by the XP the Follower/Cohort would give you if he was an enemy - or he just got his share like everyone else. But this doesn't solve the problem of different player participation, and it also makes Cohorts and Followers look like something "power-neutral". Sure, you can add more guys to the party, but you will get less XP, so in the long run, you get no real benefit form it. But maybe that's okay...


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## Frostmarrow (Mar 25, 2008)

Jack99 said:
			
		

> I think it at least a good idea to look at the number of extra actions one can gain. Maybe you don't need to limit it to one share per player, as long as you make sure that extra actions that one is able to gain, aren't too powerful.
> 
> I think summoned monsters should replace your actions, if not all, then at least some of them. For example: If Skamos the Wizard summons a small elemental, his choices are as follows:
> -use his minor action to sustain the elemental
> ...




I'm inclined to agree with you on all accounts. Perhaps it should be possible to bolster a follower/familiar to heroic levels by investing PC actions in the NPC?


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## kodyboy (Mar 25, 2008)

I think that summoned creatures should maintained by concentration: i.e. the summoner must take a standard action to keep the creature around and controlled.  Another twist on this that sounds fun to me is if the summoner's concentration is broken the monster is uncrontrolled until the spell duration ends  This may or may not matter depending on what was summoned; but it could be fun! This limits his actions to a minor and move which is fine.  If this is done however the summoned monsters need to be considerably tougher than the old 3.5 lists as this concept severely limits what the caster can do.  Without seeing all the rules and such it is hard to judge but how about summon monster 1-30 with each level summoning a level 1-30 monster?  If it works out it is simple enough.


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## Nahat Anoj (Mar 25, 2008)

I agree that the extra actions given is problematic.  IMO, the best way to handle this is to regard companion-type characters (animal companions, followers, henchman, summoned creatures, etc.) as being essentially powers or feats that give bonuses in certain situations.  For example, with a follower, it might be easier for your PC or another PC to gain combat advantage.  With an animal companion like a wolf, maybe the PC gets a bonus to tracking.  And so on.

Essentially what the companion becomes is an in game justification for the PC to buy a suite of abilities and bonuses rather than a distinct entity in its own right.


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## KarinsDad (Mar 25, 2008)

I think this is a case where common sense should trump game balance.

By that I mean that if the PCs have a lot of summoning spells and/or followers, throw more or slightly tougher bad guys at them.

One cannot model a world completely where it feels comfortable to everyone, but if spell casters have to burn actions to control their summoned creatures or undead, then why would they bother to even have them?

And, it makes even less sense to have game mechanics to do this for followers or familiars/companions.


The other aspect of this with respect to followers and companions is that they are more fragile then PCs. The DM needs to threaten them every once in a while so that a player does not over use them. By that, I mean that followers and companions should not be in the middle of the fight too often and if they are, the chances of them dying are significantly greater (by definition).

I understand from a game mechanics POV that number of actions per round per side influences balance. But, there are other game mechanics (such as weaker allies) which can be used to counter balance and it does not mean that for a game to be balanced, both sides need to have a similar number of actions per round. Other factors can be used and it does not need to be a game mechanic which controls this. The DM can control it.


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## lvl20dm (Mar 25, 2008)

This was a good post, and it does show why we won't be seeing animal companions and such in the initial PHB release for 4e. I think it's easier to balance when it is a core class feature - like the Ranger's animal companion in 3e - than when it is something like the Summon Monster line of spells. That said, I never really felt like the animal companions in 3e were particularly balanced. They could make a class, like a Necromancer, that is themed around his undead minion(s) - most of this class' abilities could be themed around improving that companion and most of the "actions" that really mattered for combat would spring off the minion.


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## smathis (Mar 25, 2008)

You could do what HeroQuest does with followers. And that is, give the PC a +2 to attack if his follower is helping out -- the equivalent of the follower always being an "Aid Another". 

Having the follower do anything on his own, would require the PC to spend an action.

Moreover, you could use followers to "replace" the magic items. Such that followers give you advancing bonuses as you increase in level.

The trade-off would be that a follower is a minion and could be killed -- much like a magic sword could be lost or stolen.

I'm sure that the minion rules for monsters will give us more ideas on this too. At worst, the DM could just control the follower and require a PC to spend an action to "force" the follower to do something that the PC wanted him to do (especially if that action put the follower in harm's way).

EDIT: Continuing the HeroQuest train of thought... When you take a follower, you could define three things that the follower "does" like "Helps with Rituals", "Reads Obscure Languages", "Keen Insight" and then assign 5 points among them with none of them being lower than one. (i.e. "Helps with Rituals +3", "Reads Obscure Languages +1", "Keen Insight +1"

These points would represent the bonus (like a miscellaneous magic item) the PC would receive whenever the follower's ability comes into play. The same concept could be used to represent groups of followers, a familiar or a single follower.


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## Lackhand (Mar 25, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> I think this is a case where common sense should trump game balance.
> 
> By that I mean that if the PCs have a lot of summoning spells and/or followers, throw more or slightly tougher bad guys at them.
> 
> ...



It's unclear to me whether you read the article. Your disagreement seems to center more on how to fix the power imbalance in game, meaning how to prevent the side with more dudes on it from winning.
The article, however, presents two problems with extra actions: One is that it makes the possessor of the action more potent, and the other is that they make players with fewer actions sit on their thumbs.

Do you have any reaction to the second part of this? Because it seems like your advice to the first part makes the problem of the second part even worse.

I need to stop reading contracts.


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## Wormwood (Mar 25, 2008)

lvl20dm said:
			
		

> I think it's easier to balance when it is a core class feature - like the Ranger's animal companion in 3e - than when it is something like the Summon Monster line of spells. That said, I never really felt like the animal companions in 3e were particularly balanced.



As long as I _never _ have to deal with a druid taking three (or more) *complete* turns for every one of mine, I'll be happy.


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## heirodule (Mar 25, 2008)

Why couldn't they do it where

You get increasing actions as you level to particular places.

Or, when you get there, you can decide to spend the free "extra action feat" on leadership and take a follower.


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## KarinsDad (Mar 25, 2008)

Lackhand said:
			
		

> It's unclear to me whether you read the article. Your disagreement seems to center more on how to fix the power imbalance in game, meaning how to prevent the side with more dudes on it from winning.
> The article, however, presents two problems with extra actions: One is that it makes the possessor of the action more potent, and the other is that they make players with fewer actions sit on their thumbs.
> 
> Do you have any reaction to the second part of this? Because it seems like your advice to the first part makes the problem of the second part even worse.




From a player's perspective, the extra actions can be more problematic for other players if the player controls the NPC follower. If the DM controls the NPC followers, then each player gets the same number of actions and their shouldn't be an issue.

However, some players enjoy controlling their PC's NPC followers when appropriate. So, either the other players should not have an issue with it, or the other players too should try to acquire followers, or if a player really has a problem "sitting on his hands" while another player runs his PC's NPC follower, the DM should control the NPC followers.

But, the recommendation of the author to have each player have a set number of actions to be used by both the PC and the PC's followers is totally artificial. I think most people would have a problem doing that in game, just to resolve the two potential issues you mentioned (the first of which is real with regard to balance and the second of which is totally perception based). In our 3E games, we have had a lot of different cohorts, companions, familiars, etc. and not once has a single player mentioned not liking to wait for another player to play his PC's NPC. So, I suspect that this problem is not really an issue for most players, just a comment to support the author's contentions.


The author also makes the assumption that there will be X NPC enemies for X PC allies and hence, his solution of y actions per round per player (regardless of number of NPC allies) would work. This assumption is also totally artificial in an FRPG.

The author's solutions make the problems worse instead of better. That's bad game design IMO. Fine for a board game, totally awful for an FRPG.


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## Thornir Alekeg (Mar 25, 2008)

I don't like the idea that a follower just provides a bonus.  It just feels too...mechanical...to me. "Oop, drat!  Jess was just killed by an arrow to the brain.  There goes my +2 follower bonus."

Giving up actions for followers makes a little more sense.  It could be justified as the PC keeping an eye on the followers and directing their actions.


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## Kobold Avenger (Mar 25, 2008)

I always felt that if a PC had many followers, than the followers actions should be divided between all the players to make gameplay go faster.


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## Thornir Alekeg (Mar 25, 2008)

heirodule said:
			
		

> Why couldn't they do it where
> 
> You get increasing actions as you level to particular places.
> 
> Or, when you get there, you can decide to spend the free "extra action feat" on leadership and take a follower.



 This isn't a bad idea except for the DM who would have to deal with the PCs taking more actions per turn.  Opponents at higher level would have to be beefed up to compensate, especially solo monsters who might get pounded by a ridiculous number of actions before they ever get to take one.  The other option would be to reduce the power of higher level PC actions.  They get more lower power actions rather than a single higher power action.  

The other problem again becomes sitting around waiting for the other four players and the DM to complete all their actions.  

I don't think there is any way to handle followers, companions and summoned creeatures without causing some kind of problem, either in balance, flow or just believability of the narrative.


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## Wormwood (Mar 25, 2008)

Kobold Avenger said:
			
		

> I always felt that if a PC had many followers, than the followers actions should be divided between all the players to make gameplay go faster.



Yes, but what if I don't want to play a stupid summoned badger? I should just sit patiently while everyone else has twice the game that I do?

And as for the DM running the druid's menagerie, why would I want to watch the DM play _both _ sides of a combat by himself? And as a DM myself, I have no desire to take *even more* time away from the players so I can resolve one PC's Pokédeck.


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## Saishu_Heiki (Mar 25, 2008)

Wormwood said:
			
		

> Yes, but what if I don't want to play a stupid summoned badger? I should just sit patiently while everyone else has twice the game that I do?
> 
> And as for the DM running the druid's menagerie, I think I'll pass. Why would I want to watch the DM play both sides of a combat by himself? As a DM myself, I have no desire to take *even more* time away from the players so I can resolve one PC's Pokédeck.



Exactly.

The problem is not a "realism" issue, it is a fun issue. If one of my players is taking 75% of hte actions is a given round and making everyone else wait and deprive them of their fun, I am more than willing to ignore any "realism" issues that arise when the problem is fixed.

As a player, I have more fun playing *my character*, not watching the druid perform an intricate interpretive dance with her summons and companions and cohorts. As a GM, I can watch people losing interest as the time between their actions grows longer.

Taking away options is not a good solution in my mind, so summons and animal companions have a place in the game. However, making sure that the player has to decide on their character's "action budget" keeps the game moving for everyone... a good solution for me.


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## Andur (Mar 25, 2008)

Pet classes are almost always more powerful than non-pet classes.  

Ranger + companion can make over 10 attacks per round in 3e.

Hunter in WoW is still needs to be nerfed.

I like the idea of pets (whatever their form) getting one action per round, no daily powers.  Summoned are easiest in my head, they get to stick around until they are either killed/dismissed or they take an encounter action.  Followers and other persistent pets would have to not get encounter powers either.


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## TerraDave (Mar 25, 2008)

In True 20 (and I think Mutants and Masterminds) it takes a move action to commands allies and followers (ie to get them to do stuff). Seems like a decent compromise. Especially if it is one command per follower. (exception might a swarm or mob that acts as one unit).


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## KarinsDad (Mar 25, 2008)

Saishu_Heiki said:
			
		

> The problem is not a "realism" issue, it is a fun issue. If one of my players is taking 75% of hte actions is a given round and making everyone else wait and deprive them of their fun, I am more than willing to ignore any "realism" issues that arise when the problem is fixed.




Be honest. Has this really happened in your games? Has one player monopolized the time to such a great extent?


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## Plane Sailing (Mar 25, 2008)

smathis said:
			
		

> EDIT: Continuing the HeroQuest train of thought... When you take a follower, you could define three things that the follower "does" like "Helps with Rituals", "Reads Obscure Languages", "Keen Insight" and then assign 5 points among them with none of them being lower than one. (i.e. "Helps with Rituals +3", "Reads Obscure Languages +1", "Keen Insight +1"
> 
> These points would represent the bonus (like a miscellaneous magic item) the PC would receive whenever the follower's ability comes into play. The same concept could be used to represent groups of followers, a familiar or a single follower.




I really like this concept. I've not played Heroquest, but I quite like a lot of the (non-magic) ideas in the game.


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## Dragonblade (Mar 25, 2008)

For a single henchman/follower, I'll generally let the PC play them. Any more than one and I play them as DM. To make things easier on myself, I usually just have them stay out of the fight.

However, I don't normally have to deal with followers since I tell my players up front that if the NPC significantly contributes to a fight, then they are included in the XP calculation and they will demand treasure rights.

Usually, at least half the players will balk and be like, "No way does the NPC get any of our stuff, he can sit out the battle, or gets treasure and XP from *your* share!" and they all glare accusingly at the player who wants to bring in the NPCs. Peer pressure is usually enough.   

If the PCs order the NPCs to do something in the fight, like tend to a fallen comrade, I'll have them do that, but it potentially makes them a target for monsters depending on the situation. I won't deliberately target them, but if it would be logical for a monster to attack one, it will do so. They have lost followers that way.


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## malraux (Mar 25, 2008)

I hope summon monster type spells are either completely gone, or require the caster to give up his actions to allow the summonee to fight.

Similarly with animal companions, I hope those aren't another PC who just can't speak.  As an idea though, a ranger might be able to use his animal companion for bonuses like combat advantage only, or the animal companion might have actions that trigger on a successful hit by the ranger.  For example, the ranger directs his hawk to fly in the face of the orc, temporarily distracting him and giving the ranger combat advantage (but not requiring an attack by the hawk).  Then, if the ranger hits with his attack, the hawk could have a once per day power to blind the foe.  Wolf companions might have a once per encounter trip power, etc.  That seems to balance the number of actions (the ranger still has the normal attack, move, quick) but gets have something thematic.


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## Dragonblade (Mar 25, 2008)

smathis said:
			
		

> You could do what HeroQuest does with followers. And that is, give the PC a +2 to attack if his follower is helping out -- the equivalent of the follower always being an "Aid Another".
> 
> Having the follower do anything on his own, would require the PC to spend an action.
> 
> ...




I like this a lot.


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## Dragonblade (Mar 25, 2008)

Saishu_Heiki said:
			
		

> The problem is not a "realism" issue, it is a fun issue. If one of my players is taking 75% of hte actions is a given round and making everyone else wait and deprive them of their fun, I am more than willing to ignore any "realism" issues that arise when the problem is fixed.
> 
> As a player, I have more fun playing *my character*, not watching the druid perform an intricate interpretive dance with her summons and companions and cohorts. As a GM, I can watch people losing interest as the time between their actions grows longer.
> 
> Taking away options is not a good solution in my mind, so summons and animal companions have a place in the game. However, making sure that the player has to decide on their character's "action budget" keeps the game moving for everyone... a good solution for me.




I agree with this too.


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## WyzardWhately (Mar 25, 2008)

To me, it would make the most sense for singular companions/familiars/whatever to just count as an extra member of the party.  If they're going to be there, you add so much to your XP budget for the encounter.  There.  Now there's more bad guys, so the action economy stays relatively balanced.


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## Enkhidu (Mar 25, 2008)

Saishu_Heiki said:
			
		

> Exactly.
> 
> The problem is not a "realism" issue, it is a fun issue. If one of my players is taking 75% of hte actions is a given round and making everyone else wait and deprive them of their fun, I am more than willing to ignore any "realism" issues that arise when the problem is fixed.
> 
> ...




You do realize that the easiest fix for this is to let _other players_ control summoned monsters/companions/cohorts, right? The summoner tells the creature what to do (attack that wizard!, grab that McGuffin!, Heal me!) and the controlling player takes care of the specifics. Throw in taking turns on this with every combat, and no one gets left out.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

Jack99 said:
			
		

> I think summoned monsters should replace your actions, if not all, then at least some of them. For example: If Skamos the Wizard summons a small elemental, his choices are as follows:
> -use his minor action to sustain the elemental
> -use his minor action to sustain the elemental and his standard action to make it move and/or attack.




Ouch.

If you do that with D&D, then that elemental better be really powerful. Powerful enough that Skamos the Wizard would say "Well, I could cook those orcs with an At-Will fireball spell, or I could move my elemental over there and let the elemental cook them. Eh, it's sixes. I'll get about the same benefit either way".

If the elemental's attack is weaker than its controller's at-will combat abilities, then it would be a tactically unwise decision to downgrade from one's own at-will actions to substitute a weaker elemental attack.

Arguably, you gain a little benefit from the fact that the elemental is risking its own HP instead of yours, so that advantage can allow the elemental to be a little weaker than your own at-will abilities. But not much, or it becomes ill-advised to use the elemental at all.



			
				Jack99 said:
			
		

> Companions and familiars should be very weak in combat, like minions.




Aren't minions pretty much one-hit-dead guys? Or is that only applicable to kobold minions since kobolds are really weak to begin with?

Because, as a wizard, I would really hate my familiar to be killed by taking any damage of any kind. I would probably just never get a fimiliar if that were the case, especially if there were penalties for the death of the familiar, and/or 1-year waiting periods to get a new one.

As for the companions combat contributions, their strength/weakness in combat should be appropriate for their purpose for which they were hired. 

Hire a porter to carry your stuff - don't expect him to slaughter the dragon along side the heroes. Hire a guide to track the kidnappers - he might very well be weak in combat and prefer not to engage the scary monsters. 

But hire a mercenary to stand beside you in combat - he better be able to face challenges of the same level you can face, or your money was wasted.



			
				Jack99 said:
			
		

> A spell like haste should be single target and perhaps higher level than it was in 2e and 3e.




Which then doesn't address the issue with Economy of Actions.

Letting a level 30 wizard haste himself and get to cast extra level 30 powers every round is no more or no less ideal than letting a level 10 wizard do that. In theory, regardless of the level of the haste spell, the person casting it gains extra actions, breaking the Economy of Actions, and he can use those actions to use extra abilities of his level (which are very likely to be abilities of a level appropriate to deal with the encounter in which he cast the haste to begin with).


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## Majoru Oakheart (Mar 25, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> From a player's perspective, the extra actions can be more problematic for other players if the player controls the NPC follower. If the DM controls the NPC followers, then each player gets the same number of actions and their shouldn't be an issue.



Instead it creates HUGE amounts of work for the DM who not only has to run the turns of all the followers but running all the extra monsters to make up the balance for the fact that the PCs all have followers.

The DM is a player just like all the rest and HE shouldn't be taking that much more time than everyone else either.  Thus why there are simpler monsters in 4e.



			
				KarinsDad said:
			
		

> However, some players enjoy controlling their PC's NPC followers when appropriate. So, either the other players should not have an issue with it, or the other players too should try to acquire followers, or if a player really has a problem "sitting on his hands" while another player runs his PC's NPC follower, the DM should control the NPC followers.



So you are telling my my only choices are "Shut up and stop whining" or "Play the game the same way we are whether you like it or not."  I'll take option 3 where I only want to play one character and I don't want to wait for 10 minutes for another player to finish running the end of his 10 turns.



			
				KarinsDad said:
			
		

> The author's solutions make the problems worse instead of better. That's bad game design IMO. Fine for a board game, totally awful for an FRPG.



Everything in a FRPG is artificial.  It's all made up.  As I've pointed out in other threads, in the end we are all sitting around a table for a couple of hours because we plan on having more fun playing D&D than we would watching TV, playing a computer game, playing baseball, or watching paint dry.

Making an artificial distinction between "board game" and "roleplaying game" is rather silly.  If a mechanic works fine for one then why not consider it for the other?

Some people REALLY need simulation in their roleplaying.  To them the fun is in knowing that they are playing in a realistic world that works in 90% of all ways like the real world does.  D&D has never been that game.  It won't be in the future.  I'm not even sure it SHOULD be a design goal.  The more simulation you add to the game the more likely I'm going to be forced to spend 8 hours rolling each hammer hit against the anvil to simulate my day job as a blacksmith since ancient caves filled with treasure haven't been spotted in centuries.


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## Saishu_Heiki (Mar 25, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> Be honest. Has this really happened in your games? Has one player monopolized the time to such a great extent?



Yes, but it is a corner case caused by an explosive mixture of class abilities and the Leadership feat.

However, the more common scenario is that almost everyone has followers/pets/summons and while no one person is taking 75% of the round by himself, the time between a given player's chance to act grows to ludicrous lengths.


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## Wormwood (Mar 25, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> Be honest. Has this really happened in your games? Has one player monopolized the time to such a great extent?



*raises hand*

Twice with druids and once with a ranger. The druids were far worse (thanks, 3.5!) 

I wouldn't have bitched about about it for as long as I have if it hadn't been so _amazingly _ annoying.


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## ruleslawyer (Mar 25, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> Be honest. Has this really happened in your games? Has one player monopolized the time to such a great extent?



It has in mine. Maybe not 75%, but certainly to the extent that the druid has the overwhelming plurality of actions.

In any event, I'm not even worried about "fairness," TBH; I'm worried about speed of gameplay. The moment that I started using some shortcuts for handling allies, companions, etc in combat, things started moving a lot faster. 

In particular, I am especially unhappy with the way in which 3e handles summoned and called monsters.  I have yet to read a fantasy book in which the wizard summons a bunch of allies and then fights alongside them; or worse still, one in which the druid summons a bunch of allies, then fights with them AND his menagerie AND shapeshifts into some nasty animal. It just doesn't emulate the fantasy that *I* like well enough in addition to creating a situation in which one player monopolizes the action AND slows down combat. 

In short, I think that:

a) Most allies/followers/companions should be run using some kind of shortcut, whether it be automatic aid another, roll to get combat advantage, some easy-to-run at-will power, etc.;

b) Having summoned/called allies with more significant contributions to combat should require the use of actions to direct them; and

c) The druid's menagerie, if and when that class is published, should be pared down to one significant animal companion.


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## Dragonblade (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> Ouch.
> 
> If you do that with D&D, then that elemental better be really powerful. Powerful enough that Skamos the Wizard would say "Well, I could cook those orcs with an At-Will fireball spell, or I could move my elemental over there and let the elemental cook them. Eh, it's sixes. I'll get about the same benefit either way".
> 
> ...




One of the things that I never liked about prior editions of D&D is that summoned creatures were generally inferior to the PCs. This is the opposite of most fantasy literature where summoned creatures are really tough, usually able to go to toe to toe with the toughest party members, if not the whole party at once.

So I would be all for a system where the summoner basically gives up all their actions to control their summoned creature if it results in much tougher summoned creatures.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 25, 2008)

Idea:
All players get more actions, both from weak, low-level "hirelings," and from near-peer "followers."

For Instance:
At the time that the wizard is summoning elementals and pit fiends,
the Fighter is training his legionaires and recruits a veteran,
the Cleric is surrounded by acolytes and associated with a prophet,
and the Rogue is protected by mooks and has his bodyguard,
and the Druid has their little swarm and their dire bear.

The first are not very useful in direct combat -- more in the "ritual" sense of things that help you run errands and look cool. They are, effectively, PC-use minions: if the villain fights them, they fall quickly.

The second are useful in direct combat, and act as a second set of actions for the PC.

If EVERYONE gets these actions, then no one is especially ousted.

Except that this makes the PC group very powerful, right? But it should be easy/possible/simple to up the quantity of monsters to match (effectively, if the party size gets doubled, the challenges they can take on get doubled, too! Any system that can scale by party size should be able to scale like this).

Second Idea:
Combos. This is kind of what I do for FFZ (though FFZ also has all character gaining more turns in a round). 

Generally, the ally just "ties up" other enemies. They can intercept, distract, and generally annoy an opponent. They do this automatically, and a quick level check decides who wins and by what margin (weighted in favor of the high-levels). At the end of a round, these "non-PC turns" are resolved quickly and abstractly

When the PC and the ally want to combine forces, they have some sort of special leader-like boost that they can gain by teaming up, such as using a Limit earlier, or combining the damage from their effects. Of course, in this case, the enemies that the DM added to the encounter aren't being 'tied up' and are more free to cause havoc in your party.

So basically:
The solution is to give EVERYONE more actions if you give ANYONE more actions
AND/OR
The solution is to handle allies in the background abstractly unless they choose to combine with the PC's actions at the same time, which doesn't give the PC more actions, but does vastly increase their effectiveness.

Both require adding more/more powerful monsters to the mix, but a sufficiently flat math curve should be able to handle that easily.


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## Wormwood (Mar 25, 2008)

Dragonblade said:
			
		

> One of the things that I never liked about prior editions of D&D is that summoned creatures were generally inferior to the PCs.



Actually, I would *love* it if 4e gave us something where you could summon a real badass which shows up, smites your enemies, then goes away until the next day. 

Effectively, I'd like to summining as pure special effects.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> From a pure power balance point of view, I suppose that Followers or Cohorts should be somehow cost you some XP. Maybe one approach would be to reduce the XP from a combat encounter by the XP the Follower/Cohort would give you if he was an enemy - or he just got his share like everyone else. But this doesn't solve the problem of different player participation, and it also makes Cohorts and Followers look like something "power-neutral". Sure, you can add more guys to the party, but you will get less XP, so in the long run, you get no real benefit form it. But maybe that's okay...




Now this is the model that D&D has always used.

If you have a party of 4 people and they get 1000 XP, then each one gets 250. If you brought along a mercenary, a hireling, a henchman, whatever, then you really have 5 people to split that 1000 XP so you each get 200.

You "pay for" the extra actions by a reduction in the XP reward. And, most likely, that extra guy wants a share of the loot, too.

There is the balance of the Economy of Actions - more actions means less reward.

What is out of balance is the combat itself - your "payment" of XP/Loot doesn't change the fact that your party of heroes has more actions than the bad guys. So the battle is imbalanced in your favor, but the rewards are compensated to penalize you for that imbalance.

This has always been acceptible to me, both as a DM and as a player.


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## Dragonblade (Mar 25, 2008)

Wormwood said:
			
		

> Actually, I would *love* it if 3e gave us something where you could summon a real badass which shows up, smites your enemies, then goes away until the next day.
> 
> Effectively, I'd like to summining as pure special effects.




So Final Fantasy style summons. The summoning is really just a special effect for an attack that does huge amounts of damage.


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## Nytmare (Mar 25, 2008)

I don't know, from the 4th I've played so far, I'd say that an extra handful of actions on the player's turns wouldn't really slow things down too much.  If summoning was relegated to something that lived with the rituals instead of an in-combat ability, it could have a component cost to limit it, and then all you'd have to do is adjust whatever the party level is called nowadays to compensate.  Summoning a celestial badger or two could be handled the same way that buying a pair of hunting dogs or hiring Bobby-Joe Barbarian to show you how to get to the forgotten ruins would be handled.


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Mar 25, 2008)

I'm willing to see Cohorts fall by the wayside.  I've long said that higher-level D&D comes down to a few simple concepts.

First To Act Wins
Save or Lose
and 
Action Advantage

It isn't any mystery why my cleric racks his 1st level slots with a spell that adds to Initative checks, puts the rest of his spells in immunities, and took a cohort that folds into a Tiny pocket-sized arcane missile-launcher.  Additionally I keep a lot of Immediate Action Spells on hand (wonderful things) and the entire party bought every Belt of Battle (or whatever the Magic Item Compendium item is that grants extra actions per day was) and I purchased a headband that Quickens three levels of spells per day (another Magic Item Compendium gem, IIRC).  

At 20th level there are no characters in the party that get 1x Immediate Action, 1x Swift Action, 1x Move Action, and 1x Standard Action.  Everyone has a cohort, a Belt of Battle, a bunch of summoned creatures, feats that grant extra attacks, etc etc.

In D&D3.5 my major concerns were:  Act Early, Become Immune To Status Effects, and Get More Actions.  

Though, to be honest, it looks like in 4.0 it will be:  Modify Saves (Increases and/or Save Out Of Turn), More Hit Points (everything goes to HP now), and Reduction/Immunity To Movement Effects (since most of the powers we've seen cause some sort of involuntary movement or limit movement).

--fje


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## Wormwood (Mar 25, 2008)

Dragonblade said:
			
		

> So Final Fantasy style summons. The summoning is really just a special effect for an attack that does huge amounts of damage.



That'd be my ideal, yeah.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 25, 2008)

For D&D, I'm not a fan of the "one big special effect summon," and even the FF games have been kind of inching away from that (the more recent games either have permenant cohorts or things that appear for a few rounds before vanishing) because it's really not a whole lot different than most other magical combat effects.

It lacks it's own character, IMO.



			
				DM Blake said:
			
		

> Now this is the model that D&D has always used...more actions means less reward.




It's kind of just semantics, but I prefer to think of it as "more actions means the challenge will be greater."  Same reward -- lots more beasties.

Though pure XP cost still doesn't really address the problem of people sitting on their thumbs while the druid finishes his three turns...


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## ShadowX (Mar 25, 2008)

Wasn't there a Final Fantasy game where the summons actually took your place in battle?  That seems more fitting.  The wizard spends his actions controlling a summons with an appropriate buff to summons for monopolizing the wizard's actions.  However, animal companions and followers shouldn't follow the same rule.  At most a minor or move action to give them a new target or specific order.

I know as a player and a DM that I avoid or discourage, respectively, the accumulation of followers or an emphasis on summons.  Yes, I know it excises a very fine character concept, but it's just not worth the effort of running or keeping track of the stats.


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## Keenath (Mar 25, 2008)

Jonathan Moyer said:
			
		

> I agree that the extra actions given is problematic.  IMO, the best way to handle this is to regard companion-type characters (animal companions, followers, henchman, summoned creatures, etc.) as being essentially powers or feats that give bonuses in certain situations...
> Essentially what the companion becomes is an in game justification for the PC to buy a suite of abilities and bonuses rather than a distinct entity in its own right.



I agree totally with this.  The Raven Knight PRC presented in "Expedition to Castle Ravenloft" does this with its raven companion -- the companion can take one of several actions each turn that inflict specified debuffs on the enemy you selected, but it doesn't act like a character.  It doesn't provoke AOOs, and while it can take damage, you can call up a new one in the morning if it gets destroyed.

Other than those elements, it acts essentially like a raven familiar -- but you don't get an XP punishment for losing one, and it's actually useful in combat.


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## senna (Mar 25, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> Be honest. Has this really happened in your games? Has one player monopolized the time to such a great extent?




OK, corner case i now, a DM friend of mine ask me to help him once to do a massive battle set up and make stats for some npcs and monsters, my friend is a good storyteller but a lousy min/maxer an was dm´ing for a group of powerplayers.

The setup was a bunch of midlevel monsters, the group was almost epic, a barbarian, forsaker, frenzied berzeker with an ability to creat an antimagic field and a freaking RED GREAT WIRM. He had planed a diplomatic solution at first, but maked all the stats because he knew his players, and they would try to hack the dragon.

In game after some messages they arranged a metting in a neutral ground. One of the characters where a wizard with a thing for summoning and calling, with some days in advance he prepared a couple of spells and hoardied some scrolls for the battle. Once everybody arived at the destination, the said wizard casted time stop, afecting his imp familiar too and summoned a barrage of monster to deal with the mid level threats and two gates, with his familiar using use magical device to do the same. His turn lasted almoust an hour, with him managing that massive numbers of monsters. The fight lasted two rounds, including surprise, it was one of the most dissapointing fights i´ve ever seen, only because everybody just didin´t  act.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

Frostmarrow said:
			
		

> I'm inclined to agree with you on all accounts. Perhaps it should be possible to bolster a follower/familiar to heroic levels by investing PC actions in the NPC?




So, just to be clear. 

Your point is that if my wizard goes to town and hires Boris, the town tough guy, to come along on our adventures, then when I get into combat, Boris just stands there when I cast a spell, and I just stand there when Boris bashes an orc with his big hammer?

"Hey, Boris, it's our turn. I want to cast a spell, so you just stand there and look dumb. No, no, I promise, next time it's our turn I will let you bash something. Really. So just hold still this turn, OK? Yeah, I know that big orc is going to gut you if you don't bash him. So what? I need to cast this spell, so you gotta just stand there and get gutted."

Really, if that's how it will work, then why bring Boris along in the first place. Which leads to more interesting RP:

"No, Boris, you can't come with me. I know you're good with your big old hammer, but with you running around bashing all the orcs, I would never be able to cast any spells. I know, I know, you think you can keep the orcs away from me, but strange forces of the universe will bind my arms and keep me from casting my spells. I'd love to hire you, Boris, but I just can't turn myself into a spectator like that, so you have to stay in town."


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## drothgery (Mar 25, 2008)

Dragonblade said:
			
		

> So Final Fantasy style summons. The summoning is really just a special effect for an attack that does huge amounts of damage.




Well, that was FF IV, VI, VII, VIII, and IX - style summons (where a summon was usually just a themed attack spell). With FFX and XII-style summons, you summoned a big guy that essentially replaced you in combat.


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## Haffrung Helleyes (Mar 25, 2008)

I agree that the Druid Menagerie needs to go, but I think that the best way to make followers fair is to handle it at a metagame level, rather than having the fighter suddenly get fewer actions because he has a henchman.

In my game, I ban Druids and the Leadership feat.  That said, I currently have a Dread Necromancer in the party, which is almost as bad.

I would handle it in 4E by making use of the paradigm that the PCs are special.  Followers never get action points, and the PC must use his own action points -- basically a metagame resource -- to acquire and keep personal followers.   These followers should be less powerful than the followers available in 3.5;  I would suggest half the level of the PC as a cap.

For NPCs, I would try to make it the case that the NPC attaches itself to a group, not an individual PC, and let the players take turns running it.

Ken


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 25, 2008)

> Wasn't there a Final Fantasy game where the summons actually took your place in battle? That seems more fitting.




Well, in the early games they were basically "really powerful attack spells." They just dealt damage with a cool animation. In the more recent games, they're more like "really powerful attack spells that last a few rounds and replace the other members of your party." They deal damage over time, usually with the capability to do the really powerful attack spell at the end. 

I believe the advocacy is more for the "Summons = Powerful (or not?) spells" angle. So if I summon a Pit Fiend, he deals a bunch of fire damage, and then goes away. If I summon an elemental, he beats up some guys and goes home. The summons don't stick around, and so are really just spells with cool fluff. 

I agree with you that allies who actually take place in battle would be more fitting, but FF isn't necessarily a good model to use, because in those games you basically have control of your entire party, so you get as many actions as you have party members. So the balancing methods that FF uses (getting rid of party members, having MP costs that are so high you can't do anything else all day, etc.) aren't really appropriate for a game where you just control one character at a time.

I have thought too much about this issue.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

kodyboy said:
			
		

> I think that summoned creatures should maintained by concentration: i.e. the summoner must take a standard action to keep the creature around and controlled.  Another twist on this that sounds fun to me is if the summoner's concentration is broken the monster is uncrontrolled until the spell duration ends  This may or may not matter depending on what was summoned; but it could be fun! This limits his actions to a minor and move which is fine.  If this is done however the summoned monsters need to be considerably tougher than the old 3.5 lists as this concept severely limits what the caster can do.  Without seeing all the rules and such it is hard to judge but how about summon monster 1-30 with each level summoning a level 1-30 monster?  If it works out it is simple enough.




Giving up an action to replace that action with the action of a summoned creature means the summoned creature must be as effective with that action as you could have been with one of your own.

If the summoned creature is going to make an attack roll, with a 50/50 chance of hit/miss, that does 1d10+5 damage, but I could simply magic missile for 1d10+5 with no chance of missing, then I would never give up an action to let my summoned creature MAYBE do the same damage, or maybe do nothing.

I would never summon it in the first place.

Furthermore, even if I can summon a creature that is as effective in combat as I am, the mere thought that a single arrow from an orc might distract me so my summoned monster eats my paladin rather than simply doing nothing, means I wouldn't risk summoning.

In fact, the more powerful the summoned creature is, the greater the risk to me and my party if my concentration is disrupted.

Which means I would never use a summon ability ever - either it would be too weak to justify standing on the sidelines letting my weak minion make weak attacks, or it would be strong enough to justify being on the sidelines but then too dangerous to risk having my concentration disrupted.

A rule like this would break summoning and make it worthless.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 25, 2008)

DM Blake said:
			
		

> Giving up an action to replace that action with the action of a summoned creature means the summoned creature must be as effective with that action as you could have been with one of your own.




I don't think it's a bad recipie for summons, because if you're using a spell, that creature can be a little more powerful than you for a turn or two before he has to go back to the planes. Though I agree with you that "accidentally out-of-control" summons are bad news like a Frenzied Berserker is bad news.

I do think it's a bad recipie for hiring Boris, the town tough, though. Losing your turn to give someone else a turn is bad news if it doesn't _make sense to do so_.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

Jonathan Moyer said:
			
		

> I agree that the extra actions given is problematic.  IMO, the best way to handle this is to regard companion-type characters (animal companions, followers, henchman, summoned creatures, etc.) as being essentially powers or feats that give bonuses in certain situations.  For example, with a follower, it might be easier for your PC or another PC to gain combat advantage.  With an animal companion like a wolf, maybe the PC gets a bonus to tracking.  And so on.




So, you propose that my summoner should whip up a balor from the pits of hell so it can stand behind the encounter and say "Boo" to give my fighter friend combat advantage?

My balor won't attack, won't engage. He just maneuvers to get behind our enemy?

This kind of "Combat Advangage" is simply an effect to be applied to a weak spell. Like an Unseen Servant that lurks behind the enemy, distracting it to give your allies combat advantage.

I cannot imagine a justification for hiring a mercenary in the town to come along with our adventuring group, but his only function is to neak around behind our enemies and distract them but never attack them himself. Unless we're hiring a weak kid who wants a chance to rub elbows with big tough adventurers.

And I cannot imagine a "Summon Monster" spell that summons a monster that never attacks, just distracts enemies. That isn't the purpose of a Summon Monster spell - that is the purpose of an illusion spell.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 25, 2008)

> I cannot imagine a justification for hiring a mercenary in the town to come along with our adventuring group, but his only function is to neak around behind our enemies and distract them but never attack them himself. Unless we're hiring a weak kid who wants a chance to rub elbows with big tough adventurers




I agree with you here, too. I think that the idea of abstracting NPC combat to something like "He can occupy one enemy that then will only bother attacking him," and then using level checks (or something) to abstract their combat in the background, might be an OK fix. If you combine it witih their ability to "team up" with the PC, then you preserve that feeling of "control of new abilities" that is so exciting for an ally.


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## Saishu_Heiki (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> So, just to be clear.
> 
> You're point is that if my wizard goes to town and hires Boris, the town tough guy, to come along on our adventures, then when I get into combat, Boris just stands there when I cast a spell, and I just stand there when Boris bashes an orc with his big hammer?
> 
> ...



You are correct. This is more what I want.

The other 4 people at the table should not be penalized because they don't want to micromanage a platoon of troops or summons. If the wizard wants a cool summon, that comes out of his action budget.

Fluff-wise, you can make it work. Summon: you are binding another creature's free will. That takes a tremendous effort, depriving you of your standard action. Hireling: you need to ensure that the new guy is working with the tactics of the group. Combat is a frenzy of action happening very quickly. If you don't tell him what to do, he will not be able to react. If you do tell him what to do, you can't manage to do as much as everyone else because your attention is split between yourself and your hireling.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

Lackhand said:
			
		

> It's unclear to me whether you read the article. Your disagreement seems to center more on how to fix the power imbalance in game, meaning how to prevent the side with more dudes on it from winning.
> The article, however, presents two problems with extra actions: One is that it makes the possessor of the action more potent, and the other is that they make players with fewer actions sit on their thumbs.
> 
> Do you have any reaction to the second part of this? Because it seems like your advice to the first part makes the problem of the second part even worse.




As a DM, I have used many different methods for this.

I often let the player with the simplest combat options control the NPCs. For example, the wizard's player has many decisions to make, spells to select, effects to consider. His turn can sometimes take quite a bit longer than the fighter, ranger, rogue, etc. - those guys just move and whack, usually. So I let those guys handle the NPCs. Sometimes I rotate it among the players. Whoever seems the most bored.

As for summoned creatures, I run them, not the summoner. The summoner tells me what he wants them to do, then I do it simultaneously while the summoner is taking his own actions.

I've never really seen it cause any complaints.


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## Nytmare (Mar 25, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> Be honest. Has this really happened in your games? Has one player monopolized the time to such a great extent?



The best and worst D&D campaign I have ever lived through was a Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign where we decided to all play specialist wizards with cohorts.

When we hit combat we'd spend one full day of gaming watching the diviner scrye and map out where everything was.  The next time we'd play we'd teleport in or climb out of our rope trick and the summoner/grapplemancer with the druid/grapplemancer cohort would spend the day Greco-Roman murdering everything he could get his hands on.  An average turn took somewhere in the range of 45 minutes to an hour once things ramped up.


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## Stalker0 (Mar 25, 2008)

I think with the 4e power system, summons can work pretty well.

Summon UltraBeast (standard, encounter)

You summon an ultrabeast within 5 squares. It acts immediately and lasts for 1 round.

Sustain Standard


For a mage, its a pretty good deal to have an encounter power that can last multiple rounds, even if you have to give up your main actions to get them.


As for animal companions, that's a far trickier thing. I have seen a companion player dominate the table with actions, so I can understand the problem.


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## Wolfwood2 (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> I cannot imagine a justification for hiring a mercenary in the town to come along with our adventuring group, but his only function is to neak around behind our enemies and distract them but never attack them himself. Unless we're hiring a weak kid who wants a chance to rub elbows with big tough adventurers.




Well I think the idea is that he is attacking enemies, but the results of his attack are averaged out to some effect that isn't resolved with the roll of dice.  Like you just assume that his attacking resulted in a +2 bonus to attack a single opponent's AC for everyone else and 3 HP of damage to that opponent.  Every round, note the effect, on to what the PCs are doing.

Hardly a perfect solution.  I can see why this issue is such a struggle for the game designers.  It seems like there are three categories of potential allies (more or less) that have to accounted for.

1. Allies acquired through roleplay/gameplay.  If you convince the town bully to redeem himself by helping you...  If one of the bad guy's minions turns on him because you've exposed his evil... If you offer a share of the loot if the eagle eye archer will accompany you...  you've acquired help through gameplay.

These allies are usually more or less temporary and can probably be run by the DM as regular characters.  Importantly, it's easier to introduce plot twists that remove them from the scene if they become annoying.  Arguably a DM is perfectly within his rights to declare that such an NPC got critted and dies next time he's swung at, if such an extreme is necessary.

2. Longterm allies acquired as part of class abilities.  Animal companions, paladin mounts, familiars, and cohorts (permanent sidekicks to your character).  These are probably the trickiest category.  From any kind of in-game perspective, it only makes sense that they can take their own independent actions.  Yet for all the reasons discussed in this thread, they're very troublesome.

Because they're always around, even having the DM run them can be frustrating.  Something that hasn't really been touched on in this thread is that for some DMs, it can be unfun to be 'playing against yourself'.  That is having the DM control monsters to attack and then control a different set of creatures to fight back.  While this is something most DMs will have to manage on occasion, it's not satisfying (IMO) to have to constantly double-think yourself.

Giving control of them to the player drops right back into the, "You're playing two characters," problem as well as not solving the action economy.  I don't have a solution.

3. The third category is Summons.  I think we're on the right track in making these powerful per-day type abilities.  I think both approaches discussed are rreasonable.  Either you have to devote all your actions to puppeting the creature (certainly something we've seen from many characters in fiction) or it's basically a special effect which continues to do do damage each round until your opponent makes his saving throw (in this case represented in-game by finally managing to land a solid hit sufficient to make the creature go poof).

For 'all actions are spent puppeting creature' I think it could result in some very interesting effects where by varying your choice of creatures, you can fill different combat roles on an as-needed basis.  However, I would expect most of this sort of summoning to be reserved for a dedicated summoning class, with a wizard only maybe getting a taste as an optional per-day ability.



			
				DM_Blake said:
			
		

> Furthermore, even if I can summon a creature that is as effective in combat as I am, the mere thought that a single arrow from an orc might distract me so my summoned monster eats my paladin rather than simply doing nothing, means I wouldn't risk summoning.




I don't see why being 'distracted' should make you/your summons lose your actions, unless it's already some effect that would make you lose your actions.


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## KarinsDad (Mar 25, 2008)

Dragonblade said:
			
		

> However, I don't normally have to deal with followers since I tell my players up front that if the NPC significantly contributes to a fight, then they are included in the XP calculation and they will demand treasure rights.
> 
> Usually, at least half the players will balk and be like, "No way does the NPC get any of our stuff, he can sit out the battle, or gets treasure and XP from *your* share!" and they all glare accusingly at the player who wants to bring in the NPCs. Peer pressure is usually enough.




"*your* share!"?

Wow. I've never seen this happen in actual game play. Our players could care less if another player brought in an NPC follower. They happily divvy up treasure amongst whomever is in the party at the time as long as every character contributes (note: we still follow the cohorts get a half share rule). As DM, I've even had other NPCs join the group at times and they've always been given a fair share. There's never been any "PCs vs NPCs" treasure issues in our games.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

Wormwood said:
			
		

> Yes, but what if I don't want to play a stupid summoned badger? I should just sit patiently while everyone else has twice the game that I do?
> 
> And as for the DM running the druid's menagerie, why would I want to watch the DM play _both _ sides of a combat by himself? And as a DM myself, I have no desire to take *even more* time away from the players so I can resolve one PC's Pokédeck.




So your solution so this is to let the druid decide between calling lightning on the bad guy, or having his badger go bite the bad guy for 3 points of damage (but it will probably miss anyway)?

The druid will never say "OK, my badger attacks for a possible 3 HP because I don't want to actually use an effective at-will power this round".

Which means the druid will never summon a badger.

Which means summoning spells should just be removed from the game because nobody will ever want to use them in place of their much more effective at-will powers.

Which means we've just taken another interesting tool out of our fantasy tool box, just because we don't want one player to do two things in a round?

I don't see how a game like D&D can benefit by stripping it down to its Least Common Denominator. I would much, much rather keep as many options as possible - it makes the game more interesting.


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## Warbringer (Mar 25, 2008)

Wormwood said:
			
		

> *raises hand*
> 
> Twice with druids and once with a ranger. The druids were far worse (thanks, 3.5!)
> 
> I wouldn't have bitched about about it for as long as I have if it hadn't been so _amazingly _ annoying.




Try a vampire cleric of the undeath/necromancy god ... never again I tell you.


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## Stalker0 (Mar 25, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> "*your* share!"?
> 
> Wow. I've never seen this happen in actual game play. Our players could care less if another player brought in an NPC follower. They happily divvy up treasure amongst whomever is in the party at the time as long as every character contributes (note: we still follow the cohorts get a half share rule). As DM, I've even had other NPCs join the group at times and they've always been given a fair share. There's never been any "PCs vs NPCs" treasure issues in our games.




Comments like these do not further the discussion in the slightest. We all appreciate the fact that your game doesn't suffer some of the problems that other people experience, but the fact that those problems are voiced means that the problem does exist. Since the game rules cater to everyone, its hopeful that they fix the problem for everyone.

For example, I have no problems finding 5-6 players for my games. So to me, a system that is designed to accommodate only 3 players is a waste of time. Yet there are many people here that can only find 3 players if that, and so its good that the system can handle both groups.


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## Wolfwood2 (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> So your solution so this is to let the druid decide between calling lightning on the bad guy, or having his badger go bite the bad guy for 3 points of damage (but it will probably miss anyway)?
> 
> The druid will never say "OK, my badger attacks for a possible 3 HP because I don't want to actually use an effective at-will power this round".
> 
> Which means the druid will never summon a badger.




The only reason that 'badger' is a summoning option is because the spell list needed a weak enough creature that a first level druid could summon it and continue to cast other spells while it attacks.

If directing the creature means the druid can't do other things, then it's not a badger.  It's a big wolf with slavering fangs that is as effective as what the druid could do if he weren't controlling it (more or less and within the limits of the game's ability to balance such things).


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

malraux said:
			
		

> I hope summon monster type spells are either completely gone, or require the caster to give up his actions to allow the summonee to fight.




Fantasy themes are filled with examples of summoned creatures. True, usually it's bad guys summoning demons or hordes of undead to attack the heroes. 

But it raises the question from the PCs "If the bad guy can summon demons, why can't we?"

It's all or nothing. If the bad guys can do it, then the PCs will find a way to do it.

And removing this archetypal theme that is so common and so fun in the fantasy genre is truly sad. We might as well remove dragons, or treasure hordes, or burly sword-swinging heroes. Where do we draw the line? How much fantasy must we strip away?



			
				malraux said:
			
		

> Similarly with animal companions, I hope those aren't another PC who just can't speak.  As an idea though, a ranger might be able to use his animal companion for bonuses like combat advantage only, or the animal companion might have actions that trigger on a successful hit by the ranger.  For example, the ranger directs his hawk to fly in the face of the orc, temporarily distracting him and giving the ranger combat advantage (but not requiring an attack by the hawk).  Then, if the ranger hits with his attack, the hawk could have a once per day power to blind the foe.  Wolf companions might have a once per encounter trip power, etc.  That seems to balance the number of actions (the ranger still has the normal attack, move, quick) but gets have something thematic.




This is fair. Nobody expects a ferret or hawk to be a dragon-slayer. Nobody expects them to bring down the BBEG.

But this kind of thing won't work for summoning monsters, or hiring henchmen/hirelings in town.


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## Wormwood (Mar 25, 2008)

Warbringer said:
			
		

> Try a vampire cleric of the undeath/necromancy god ... never again I tell you.



Ugh. No thanks.


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## Warbringer (Mar 25, 2008)

I'm thinking off something really simple for my new game...

Creature adds +1/2 level to what ever you are trying... It gains a further +2 if the action is a core role for it: warrior, spellcaster, rogue. The caster then marks a character that the summoned creature aids.

So Jaxis the warlock summons an 8th level demon (warrior) to aid him fighting.. on his turn the demon adds +6 (+4,+2) to combat rolls (hit, damage and in my campaign AC)...

Later he summons the a shade (rogue) to aid the rogue... the shadowy apparition can aid the rogue in his roguish activities (skill checks, flanking)...

And so on. Yeah, it feels like buffs, but I think it speeds up play


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## malraux (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> So your solution so this is to let the druid decide between calling lightning on the bad guy, or having his badger go bite the bad guy for 3 points of damage (but it will probably miss anyway)?
> 
> The druid will never say "OK, my badger attacks for a possible 3 HP because I don't want to actually use an effective at-will power this round".
> 
> ...



Yes, if summoning sucks, it won't be used.  The trick is to have summoning that doesn't suck.  Instead of summoning a stupid badger, the druid summons an aspect of Zamnait, the badger god.  Then his attack actions are subsumed by controlling this power of nature.  To control for the issue raised earlier, summoning only requires as much concentration/distractibility as other normal standard actions. Simple and thematic.  And pretty cool.


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## Wormwood (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> So your solution so this is to let the druid decide between calling lightning on the bad guy, or having his badger go bite the bad guy for 3 points of damage (but it will probably miss anyway)?
> 
> The druid will never say "OK, my badger attacks for a possible 3 HP because I don't want to actually use an effective at-will power this round".
> 
> Which means the druid will never summon a badger.



See, I wouldn't call slowing down the game for a slight chance to do negligible damage a particularly _interesting _ choice.


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## malraux (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> Fantasy themes are filled with examples of summoned creatures. True, usually it's bad guys summoning demons or hordes of undead to attack the heroes.



Point of order: I cannot think of a single example from fantasy wherein the summoned creature is a lowly badger.  Sure there's summoning either powerful demons or hoards of undead, but that's exactly the point.  Summoning of creature in literature is almost always of a creature more powerful than the caster, and requires much work the keep the monster under control.  For the hoard of nastiness, I'd hope that the rules turn it into a single swarm/hoard abstraction if that is how 4e wants to go.


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## Wormwood (Mar 25, 2008)

Stalker0 said:
			
		

> Since the game rules cater to everyone, its hopeful that they fix the problem for everyone.



Thank you. Kinda tired of being told that my problems with 3e didn't really happen.

The fact that 4e is adressing _so many _ of the problems that I've personally faced at the gaming table indicates that my gripes about 3.5 were not idiosyncratic.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

ShadowX said:
			
		

> Wasn't there a Final Fantasy game where the summons actually took your place in battle?  That seems more fitting.  The wizard spends his actions controlling a summons with an appropriate buff to summons for monopolizing the wizard's actions.




That's a great idea.

I'm all for it.

But - the big caveat is that the summoned creature needs to adequately replace the summoner.

If the summoner can do 25 HP of damage every round, consistently, using at-will powers, then the summoned creature needs to be able to do 25 HP of damage every round, consistently.

If that is not the case, then the summoner has replaced his useful actions with his creature's weak actions. 

Nobody will do that.

But given that summoning provides an adequate substitution for the summoner, then this is a great way to handle it.


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## Stalker0 (Mar 25, 2008)

Actually I just thought of an idea for animal companion.

Normally your animal companion only takes basic actions, like defends you if something attacks you. Else it doesn't leave your side. Then you can use powers to give it commands to do more things, like actually run out and attack something.

Example:

Wolf Companion
Initiative: Special. The wolf moves along with its master, and only takes other actions unless given commands.
HP: 30
Healing Surge Heals: 7
AC: 15
Fort: 16
Ref: 16
Will: 11
Guardian Bite: (immediate reaction, when its master is attacked in melee). Bite +5 (1d6+4) plus followup.
Followup: Trip Attack +5 vs Fort or target is knocked prone.
Companion: Wolf grants its master an effective use of the track feat.
Guardian Nature: The wolf will always remain adjacent to its master unless commanded to do otherwise. Once a command is performed, the wolf will return to a square adjacent to its master unless given another command.


Feral Attack
Druid Attack 1 (at-will, standard)
You command your animal companion to target a foe within 5 squares of you. The animal immediately moves to the creature and attacks.

Feral Healing
Druid Utility 1 (at will, standard)
Special: No more than twice per encounter.
Range: 5 squares
Through your natural connection with your companion, you can give up a small amount of your spiritual energy to help your friend.

Benefit: You give up one of your own healing surges. Your companion heals as if he just used a healing surge.


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## KarinsDad (Mar 25, 2008)

Saishu_Heiki said:
			
		

> However, the more common scenario is that almost everyone has followers/pets/summons and while no one person is taking 75% of the round by himself, the time between a given player's chance to act grows to ludicrous lengths.




Have each player roll initiative for each NPC follower, that way, all of the actions are not bunched up on a single player's initiative. On average, they are spread out across inits. Not much different than the DM having a bunch of different NPCs with different inits (for DMs who do that).

This does not follow the init rules for summoned creatures, but if the problem is bad enough, it could be done (and an incentive to not summon in too many creatures).


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## Thyrwyn (Mar 25, 2008)

In my opinion, there are two classes of allies being discussed, and they should be treated differently because of their potential impact on the DM's ability to prepare appropriate encounters.

The cohort, hireling, or permanent ally: Should be allowed to participate fully in any fight and share in the xp/treasure after the fight.  Player action opportunity can be maintained by placing a limit of one such ally per player.  This type of ally can be planned for and encounters can be balanced accordingly: there is an extra 1st lvl cohort along?  add another 100xp worth of monsters to the opposing side.  Not ideal, but this is a failry common staple of the genre.  Certain archetypes (eg "the BeastMaster") with multitudes of diverse, minor allies (ferrets, hawks, parrots, etc. . . ) can be represented through a selection of per day abilities.

The summoned/called ally: These types of allies are especially problematic because their mere potential places too much emphasis on the summoning character: when summoned, they throw off the economy of actions both in terms of party vs encounter *and* in terms of summoner vs other players.  This kind of ally can not be adequately prepared for.  What happens when the DM makes an encounter tougher, expecting the wizard to prepare his 'typical battery of summonings', and then the wizard prepares some other powers instead?  I would solve this by making the power a "per day" power and having them impose an action penalty on the summoner.  

They do not have to be more powerful. They only have to be *as* powerful. This solves both the encounter prep and balance issues.  The DM preps some the same number of xp worth of bad guys - if the Wizard prepares something else, no biggie; if the Wizard summons something, again, no biggie.  The summoned creatures should be different, more specialized than the summoner.  Maybe the Wizard summons a Troll to get close and smash the enemy, or a Fire Elemental to fight some enemies with Vulnerability Fire.  Basically, the summoner would give up their actions in order to play a different role for a fight, or the same role in a different way.  The summoner's player still gets to play and be effective without overshadowing any of the other players or monopolizing the action pool.  The balance of the encounter is not thrown off, though it may be changed - but players find ways to do that to DMs all the time 

I would apply this same philosophy to the polymorph/shapechange type of effect, for the same reasons.


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## Stalker0 (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> If the summoner can do 25 HP of damage every round, consistently, using at-will powers, then the summoned creature needs to be able to do 25 HP of damage every round, consistently.
> 
> If that is not the case, then the summoner has replaced his useful actions with his creature's weak actions.




Not necessarily. Keep in mind summons aren't just about offense, they are about defense. If my summoned creature can absorb hits, that's an advantage.

Furthermore, lets say I summon a creature, and in true FF style my character goes off scene. In dnd terms, I might become the summoned creature for one round. That means any damage my summon takes doesn't hurt me. Any effects the summon takes goes away when I turn back. That's a huge advantage right there, and such a summon does not need to do as much damage as a regular power to be useful.


----------



## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

Saishu_Heiki said:
			
		

> You are correct. This is more what I want.
> 
> The other 4 people at the table should not be penalized because they don't want to micromanage a platoon of troops or summons. If the wizard wants a cool summon, that comes out of his action budget.
> 
> Fluff-wise, you can make it work. Summon: you are binding another creature's free will. That takes a tremendous effort, depriving you of your standard action. Hireling: you need to ensure that the new guy is working with the tactics of the group. Combat is a frenzy of action happening very quickly. If you don't tell him what to do, he will not be able to react. If you do tell him what to do, you can't manage to do as much as everyone else because your attention is split between yourself and your hireling.




Yes, but we're talking a role-playing game here. This isn't checkers.

The other 4 people are not penalized. They should be glad that their chances of survival just increased. The fighter looks at the pit fiend standing next to him, bashing away at the army of evil dragons, and should be thinking "Wow, glad he's on my side" not "Wow, I sure am penalized."

I feel sorry for players at a role-playing game who see that kind of thing as a penalty.

At my gaming table, the group contributes suggestions about how the summoned or NPC allies spend their turns. Sure, the wizard or druid with the army of summoned followers has a longer turn. But during his turn, the other players are saying "hey, move your bears over here so I can have flanking" or "hey, put that elemental in front of the cleric - he got nailed last round and needs some interference to protect him." 

The players are contributing to the action, they are involved in what's going on. They are invested in the combat and its outcome.

They are not just "sitting on their thumbs" as some people in this thread have said.

If they are, then I feel sorry for them, too, and try to offer suggestions, or even directly put them in control of some NPCs, to draw them into the action. "Hey, Fred, it seems that Joe is pretty busy running all these monsters he summoned. I need you to help him out by running the dire bear and the giant owl. When it's your turn, you just tell me what these critters are gong to do and you roll their attacks."

That even serves to split up the animal horde's actions onto different initiatives, so there aren't 12 critters all goin on the druid's initiative. It gets spread around.

As for the fluff, I have already said I like the idea of the summoner losing actions to control his big powerful summoned creature - but this fails miserably if he is giving up actions to summon his little weak summoned creature.

And fluff or no fluff, I am not hiring a henchman from the Henchmen-R-Us guild in town if he is half my combat strength or if he is going to make bad decisions that require me to give up my turns to micromanage him. That henchman is not worth the time or trouble unless he can get up on his own back legs and contribute on his own.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> "*your* share!"?
> 
> Wow. I've never seen this happen in actual game play. Our players could care less if another player brought in an NPC follower. They happily divvy up treasure amongst whomever is in the party at the time as long as every character contributes (note: we still follow the cohorts get a half share rule). As DM, I've even had other NPCs join the group at times and they've always been given a fair share. There's never been any "PCs vs NPCs" treasure issues in our games.




Agreed.

I tell players right up front when they first bring it up in the discussion: "You're all people. Just because that one guy is played by the DM and the rest are played by you players, doesn't mean that any of your characters see yourselves or your companions as more or less real, more or less worthy, or more or less useful. There is no distinction between PC and NPC in the game, and your characters cannot act like there is."

Now, if a group of level 10 characters is hiring a level 6 ranger, they can easily tell that guy he only gets a half-share, or less, because he is much weaker and cannot contribute as much. This often applies to "cohorts" since the Leadership feat already accounts for cohorts being weaker than the PC with the feat.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

Stalker0 said:
			
		

> KarinsDad said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Why doesn't this further the discussion?

To me, those comments serve to show that some players are all right with the current 3.5 implementation of cohorts (etc.).

It seems perfectly germaine to this discussion to bring up this fact.

Maybe it's just different strokes for different folks - maybe those players are OK with it because their own attitudes about D&D are different than the attitudes of players who are not OK with it.

Or, maybe it's a different DM style that makes them OK with it - maybe this DM gets the other players involved more in the cohorts, or offers suggestions to the player monopolizing too much time about how he can speed up his actions. Or whatever.

But, for one reason or another, this group of players doesn't have a problem with cohorts, and it might be important to the discussion to find out why.

Squelching other contributors to the discussion by telling them their comments don't further the discussion just because their experience differs from your own is much less likely to further the discussion. In other words, _your comments like these do not further the discussion in the slightest_.


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## KarinsDad (Mar 25, 2008)

Stalker0 said:
			
		

> Comments like these do not further the discussion in the slightest. We all appreciate the fact that your game doesn't suffer some of the problems that other people experience, but the fact that those problems are voiced means that the problem does exist. Since the game rules cater to everyone, its hopeful that they fix the problem for everyone.
> 
> For example, I have no problems finding 5-6 players for my games. So to me, a system that is designed to accommodate only 3 players is a waste of time. Yet there are many people here that can only find 3 players if that, and so its good that the system can handle both groups.




That comment had nothing to do with speed of play.

It had to do with players roleplaying their PCs with metagaming player knowledge.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

Wolfwood2 said:
			
		

> The only reason that 'badger' is a summoning option is because the spell list needed a weak enough creature that a first level druid could summon it and continue to cast other spells while it attacks.
> 
> If directing the creature means the druid can't do other things, then it's not a badger.  It's a big wolf with slavering fangs that is as effective as what the druid could do if he weren't controlling it (more or less and within the limits of the game's ability to balance such things).




In that case, we agree. This would be a great application for summon spells.


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## Dragonblade (Mar 25, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> "*your* share!"?
> 
> Wow. I've never seen this happen in actual game play. Our players could care less if another player brought in an NPC follower. They happily divvy up treasure amongst whomever is in the party at the time as long as every character contributes (note: we still follow the cohorts get a half share rule). As DM, I've even had other NPCs join the group at times and they've always been given a fair share. There's never been any "PCs vs NPCs" treasure issues in our games.




In all honesty, the issue hasn't come up for me in a long time because I gave up DMing 3e a long time ago, with one exception. I starting DMing the first Pathfinder last year when the first book came out. But it hasn't come up in my Pathfinder game yet.

But when I used to DM more frequently, the people I used to play with tended to play very mercenary characters and people would get upset if they thought another player's cohort was somehow costing them their share of the XP and the loot. It was a very Hackmaster atmosphere. It was fun back then, but I don't think I care to return to that playstyle.

Still it served its purpose back then in helping to keep follower actions from getting out of hand.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

Wormwood said:
			
		

> See, I wouldn't call slowing down the game for a slight chance to do negligible damage a particularly _interesting _ choice.




But it is interesting.

A fun movie, The Beastmaster, came out in 1982: http://imdb.com/title/tt0083630/

A TV series of the same name, BeastMaster, shares a similar concept and produced 66 episodes beginning in 1999: http://imdb.com/title/tt0215392/

Apparently, some people like the concept and find it interesting.

And, I can move a badger, roll a d20 and a d4 simultaneously, add +3 to the d20 roll, tell the DM what AC I hit and my damage (the DM can decide if it hit or not), all in about 10 seconds or less. It goes like "Move here, hit 17 for 3 damage." 

I really doubt that's slowing down the game enough to really care.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

Thyrwyn said:
			
		

> The cohort, hireling, or permanent ally: Should be allowed to participate fully in any fight and share in the xp/treasure after the fight.  Player action opportunity can be maintained by placing a limit of one such ally per player.  This type of ally can be planned for and encounters can be balanced accordingly: there is an extra 1st lvl cohort along?  add another 100xp worth of monsters to the opposing side.  Not ideal, but this is a failry common staple of the genre.  Certain archetypes (eg "the BeastMaster") with multitudes of diverse, minor allies (ferrets, hawks, parrots, etc. . . ) can be represented through a selection of per day abilities.




Since it can be planned for, and encounters balanced for it, why limit it to 1.

"Hear me o citizens of FantasyTown. A small army of trolls is approaching. We probably need about 50 men to hold the bridge against this army, but there are only 5 of us, so we can only take 5 of you. The bridge will surely fall and we will all die or be forced to retreat, and then your farms homes will be pillaged by marauding trolls. But, fair is fair, and we can only take 5 men. So who is with us?"

What if King Leonides was limited to only taking one cohort to fight the persians?

As for the beastmaster with his ferrets, let them be distractions, aid-another type abilities, fetch the key from the sleeping jailor, etc. The ferret isn't really going to melee a troll to death.



			
				Thyrwyn said:
			
		

> The summoned/called ally: These types of allies are especially problematic because their mere potential places too much emphasis on the summoning character: when summoned, they throw off the economy of actions both in terms of party vs encounter *and* in terms of summoner vs other players.  This kind of ally can not be adequately prepared for.  What happens when the DM makes an encounter tougher, expecting the wizard to prepare his 'typical battery of summonings', and then the wizard prepares some other powers instead?  I would solve this by making the power a "per day" power and having them impose an action penalty on the summoner.




What happens when the DM makes an encounter tougher and the wizard (who has no summoning spells at all) chooses to magic missile one enemy at a time instead of killing them in groups with his fireballs? (yes, this happened to me in a game where I am playing a rogue and the guy playing the wizard is not a tactical player - our poor DM had to come up with all kinds of silly stuff just to prevent a TPK. He told me after the session that he set up this encounter with way too many goblins, but deliberately bottlenecked them, because he wanted to present the wizard with a perfect situation to shine and be the savior and it backfired horribly).

What it boils down to is this. If you design a character with some good abilities and some mediocre ones, your DM will expect you to use the good ones whenever you can. If you don't, you're causing problems by making weak decisions. This is true whether your abilities include summons or not.

Your solution of making the summons a daily power makes it much harder to prepare for. As a DM, if you know a player has a per-encounter ability to summon an ogre, you expect to deal with an ogre in every encounter. If that ability is a daily power, then you cannot plan ahead and know which encounter will have to face the ogre.

And the action penalty, again, is a great idea, as long as the summoned creatures actions are a good substitution for the actions the summoner won't be using.



			
				Thyrwyn said:
			
		

> They do not have to be more powerful. They only have to be *as* powerful. This solves both the encounter prep and balance issues.  The DM preps some the same number of xp worth of bad guys - if the Wizard prepares something else, no biggie; if the Wizard summons something, again, no biggie.  The summoned creatures should be different, more specialized than the summoner.  Maybe the Wizard summons a Troll to get close and smash the enemy, or a Fire Elemental to fight some enemies with Vulnerability Fire.  Basically, the summoner would give up their actions in order to play a different role for a fight, or the same role in a different way.  The summoner's player still gets to play and be effective without overshadowing any of the other players or monopolizing the action pool.  The balance of the encounter is not thrown off, though it may be changed - but players find ways to do that to DMs all the time




This is perfect. This is how I would design it - tactical options for the summoner to choose the right creature for the right encounter.



			
				Thyrwyn said:
			
		

> I would apply this same philosophy to the polymorph/shapechange type of effect, for the same reasons.




This is inherent - shapechanging into something else doesn't change the Economy of Actions. As a druid, you get to move and cast a spell - 2 actions. Shapechange into a dire bear, and you get to move and bite - 2 actions.


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## Wormwood (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> In that case, we agree. This would be a great application for summon spells.



Seconded. Or thirded. Or whatever the hell it is 

Just saying that on this point I agree with y'all.


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## Hella_Tellah (Mar 25, 2008)

We don't necessarily need a one-size-fits-all rule that covers hirelings, summoned creatures, and animal companions at once.  Here are just a few of the alternate methods I've been thinking of that could work:

*Warlocks*: Summon a hellspawned/faerie creature that is about as powerful as you are.  The Warlock herself is sent to that other plane to take its place.    The planes demand a certain amount of symmetry in their composition, and its an awful lot easier to cast a spell that maintains balance than one that upsets it.  Daily power, probably.
*Wizards*: Much as others have suggested, summon a creature that requires a Standard action to control, and is roughly as powerful as the Wizard.  Another Daily, I should think.
*Cleric*: The "Final Fantasy" method.  Summon a powerful outsider that causes an instantaneous effect as well as an ongoing effect.  Save ends.  I'd make it a Daily, maybe an Encounter power at higher levels.
*Rogue*: You have shady contacts and allies everywhere.  Wherever possible, you arrange to have one of your Thieves' Guild allies meet you just when the going gets tough, and he comes and provides you Combat Advantage plus ongoing damage against a foe, which you can change each round as a minor action.  This one has to be a Daily.
*Warlord*: Assume that, as a background element, Warlord accrue a battalion that stays mostly in the background, and doesn't generally enter dungeons right alongside him.  He can, however, blow on his bugle/Horn of Gondor to call on aid for various effects.  Some of these abilities could be like the Cleric's summon, and he calls in a volley of arrows from his archers (Encounter, outdoors only).  Others could be more like the Rogue's, in which he calls on one of his best men to stay beside him in battle and boost his AC/provide Combat Advantage/run around patching people up and letting them use their Healing Surges (Daily, probably).

And I think you could use these frameworks to allow for temporary assistance of many kinds from a number of flavors of allies.  For hirelings, I'd just keep them as they have been before: taking a share of treasure and experience.


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## malraux (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> The other 4 people are not penalized. They should be glad that their chances of survival just increased. The fighter looks at the pit fiend standing next to him, bashing away at the army of evil dragons, and should be thinking "Wow, glad he's on my side" not "Wow, I sure am penalized."



Yeah, that's what the fighter thinks.  The fighter's player though, wonders if he'll have a chance to go out and grab a smoke in the time it'll take the menagerie character to figure out what creature he's gonna summon this round, take all the actions for his other summonees, animal companion, etc.  Then when the fighter gets his turn, he rolls two attacks and damage and then goes back outside for another 45 minutes.  The number of minutes each player gets to spend doing stuff per hour is a zero sum game.  Every minute another player takes doing stuff is a minute less that everyone else can't spend playing.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

Stalker0 said:
			
		

> Not necessarily. Keep in mind summons aren't just about offense, they are about defense. If my summoned creature can absorb hits, that's an advantage.




Yes. Sometimes.

But defense won't win the battle. Summoning a wall to stand there and take all your actions while the wall gets beat down only means that once that wall is breached, the enemy will be in your face again and nothing will have changed.

If the creature cannot take actions to win the battle, then you will have to take actions to win the battle - which you cannot do if your summoned creature is taking your actions.

A perfect example is Bigby's Interposing Hand. It can push a monster, and keep it away from you. Which gives you time to get away, or to cast spells to kill the monster, or maybe you will kill the monster's allies while it is busy with your hand. When the duration of the hand expires, hopefully the situation on the battlefield will have improved so you are able to fight that monster now. But, if all you have done is stand there, giving your actions to the Hand, when the spell expires, nothing on the battlefield will have changed - all you've done is delay the inevitable.

Now, a summoned creature that can absorb hits while you still take actions - that's an advantage.



			
				Stalker0 said:
			
		

> Furthermore, lets say I summon a creature, and in true FF style my character goes off scene. In dnd terms, I might become the summoned creature for one round. That means any damage my summon takes doesn't hurt me. Any effects the summon takes goes away when I turn back. That's a huge advantage right there, and such a summon does not need to do as much damage as a regular power to be useful.




Becoming a summoned creature is a polymorph/shapechange - not a summons.

So, following the logic of this paragraph. You would be OK with, for example, a spell (call it a summon or not) that turns you into an ogre for one round so you can bash the enemy for 25 HP. And you would be OK with this spell even though you have another spell that could crush the ogre for 50 HP. Your spell doesn't "do as much damage as a regular power" but you would still find it useful?

Or are you saying that you remain an ogre until your next round, so anything your enemy does to you in that round disappears when you return to your normal form? Damage, illness, level drain, even death can be ignored when you turn back into yourself? In that case, it might be a useful spell. 

But then it is still a polymorph spell, not a summon spell - but yes, this would be a great addition to a spell list.


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## Thyrwyn (Mar 25, 2008)

DM Blake said:
			
		

> Since it can be planned for, and encounters balanced for it, why limit it to 1.



You limit it to one to preserve the economy of actions among the players - so one player does not have 50 cohorts tagging along, bloating combats, slowing down the game.


			
				DM Blake said:
			
		

> "Hear me o citizens of FantasyTown. A small army of trolls is approaching. We probably need about 50 men to hold the bridge against this army, but there are only 5 of us, so we can only take 5 of you. The bridge will surely fall and we will all die or be forced to retreat, and then your farms homes will be pillaged by marauding trolls. But, fair is fair, and we can only take 5 men. So who is with us?"



 That is not a 'typical encounter' - if it is you should drag out the Warhammer fantasy Battle Miniatures rules and go to town.



			
				DM Blake said:
			
		

> What happens when the DM makes an encounter tougher and the wizard (who has no summoning spells at all) chooses to magic missile one enemy at a time instead of killing them in groups with his fireballs?



We are discussing summoning and allies and their effect on encounter balance.  But this does speak to the fact that balancing encounters based on expected player tactics is fraught with peril, as evidenced by. . . 


			
				DM Blake said:
			
		

> (yes, this happened to me in a game where I am playing a rogue and the guy playing the wizard is not a tactical player - our poor DM had to come up with all kinds of silly stuff just to prevent a TPK. He told me after the session that he set up this encounter with way too many goblins, but deliberately bottlenecked them, because he wanted to present the wizard with a perfect situation to shine and be the savior and it backfired horribly).



Never rely on player's doing anything.  Hopefully, the changes in 4e will 
1) extend the number of rounds in a typical fight to the point where the party will have time to realize they are in over their heads and bug out.
2) allow or more coherent balancing.  The 3.x CR system was too problematic.



			
				DM Blake said:
			
		

> This is inherent - shapechanging into something else doesn't change the Economy of Actions.



 Agreed - but it can cause balance issues.  The 'inherent' aspect escaped the 3.x designers to the extent that these spells/abilities/effects were as notoriously problematic as summonings (and for the same reasons).  Even trying to read through the Errata'd rules for these abilities (conveniently spread between the PHB and MM books & Errata for each) can give one a headache.


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## Hella_Tellah (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> But then it is still a polymorph spell, not a summon spell - but yes, this would be a great addition to a spell list.




That's just semantics, man.  If everyone at the table describes the spell as a summoning, then it's a summoning.  In my D&D game based on Shinto, every divine spell is described in terms of summoning--"I summon Ebisu, kami of fishermen, to provide me water breathing."  "I call on the spirit of the stone wall to move for me as I cast _shape stone_."  A summoning spell doesn't have to add an additional figure on the battlemat unless you want it to.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 25, 2008)

> And I think you could use these frameworks to allow for temporary assistance of many kinds from a number of flavors of allies. For hirelings, I'd just keep them as they have been before: taking a share of treasure and experience.




Good ideas, HT!

None of those give the PC any extra actions, though. They're all basically "spell effects with different fluff."

That's one way to do it, but it seems a bit weaksauce to me, and the less fantastic they are, the more weaksauce they seem. The idea that one of my best compatriots, as a Warlord, will stand beside me and increase my AC, but won't whack that goblin that keeps poking me in the ribs, is a bit problematic.

It gets less problematic the less you are concerned with a believable context, because from a mechanics standpoint, it works. It'd definately work well enough for a videogame, or a purely gamist approach similar to that, but to steal a line from another thread, in D&D, I can target the floor.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

malraux said:
			
		

> Yeah, that's what the fighter thinks.  The fighter's player though, wonders if he'll have a chance to go out and grab a smoke in the time it'll take the menagerie character to figure out what creature he's gonna summon this round, take all the actions for his other summonees, animal companion, etc.  Then when the fighter gets his turn, he rolls two attacks and damage and then goes back outside for another 45 minutes.  The number of minutes each player gets to spend doing stuff per hour is a zero sum game.  Every minute another player takes doing stuff is a minute less that everyone else can't spend playing.




Why isn't this player more engaged in the game? Why is he only engaged when he is rolling dice for his own character? Can he not find enjoyment by observing the actions of his fellow players, sharing his observations and suggestions, maybe even offering to handle part of that menagerie so the "menagerie character" doesn't have such a workload?

Is his only option to go outside until it's his turn?

Isn't that kind of self-centered? "Oh, golly, it's not my turn, so now I'm bored and it's time for me to take my marbles and go home."

Yes, I see your point about mintes being a zero-sum game. But that's only true if each player sees them as "my minutes are cool, your minutes are wasting my time".

As for me, when other players are taking their turn, I'm offering suggestions "hey, why don't you pull a Legolas and go jump on the troll's back?" Maybe it's to be comical, maybe it's to make a real suggestion in case that player hadn't thought of it. Maybe my comments contribute to the specific encounter, or to the game, and maybe it's just goofing around. But regardless, my involvement is contributing to my fun all the time. And the other players in my group do the same thing. We're all having fun, even if it's currently some other player's minutes that are taking away from my own minutes.

In this case, it's not a zero-sum game. It's a 60-sum game: Every hour has 60 minutes of fun, and every player is enjoying all 60 them.

I hate to say it, but if any player's personal world view is that "when my friend is having fun, but I am not rolling dice at this exact moment, then he is stealing my fun", then that player might want to adjust that world view.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 25, 2008)

> I hate to say it, but if your personal world view is that "when my friend is having fun, but I am not rolling dice at this exact moment, then he is stealing my fun", then you might want to adjust that world view.




Any tabletop RPG would be better recieved, I think, in helping people have fun within their pre-existing worldview. Leave the life lessons for the sermons, the philosophers, and the family elders. D&D just needs to worry about amusing me. 

Yeah, I guess that's self-centered. But the point of the game is to have fun, and if I'm not having fun, for whatever reason, then I won't be playing the game. 

It's a player psychology issue. It's the same issue that plagues clerics throughout earlier editions. D&D won't change your psychology, so it's better off working within it.

It's pretty safe to say that I'd rather be making decisions, rather than armchair quarterbacking on other peoples' choices.


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## Dausuul (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> Yes. Sometimes.
> 
> But defense won't win the battle. Summoning a wall to stand there and take all your actions while the wall gets beat down only means that once that wall is breached, the enemy will be in your face again and nothing will have changed.




This is why you have fellow party members.  To quote LogicNinja, "When a good mage wants something damaged, he tells the fighter to go hit it. If it's hard to hurt, he buffs the fighter first."  (Granted, direct damage will hopefully not be teh suck anymore in 4E, but you get the point.)



			
				Thyrwyn said:
			
		

> Agreed - but it can cause balance issues. The 'inherent' aspect escaped the 3.x designers to the extent that these spells/abilities/effects were as notoriously problematic as summonings (and for the same reasons). Even trying to read through the Errata'd rules for these abilities (conveniently spread between the PHB and MM books & Errata for each) can give one a headache.




Actually, the balance issues of shapechanging were different from the problems of most summons.  With the exception of _gate_ and the _planar binding_ line, the trouble with summon spells usually stemmed from economy-of-actions issues and slowing down the game.  Shapechanging spells had problems because they were "encyclopedia" spells--when you cast one, you get to pull out your whole encyclopedia of sourcebooks and go looking for the one creature that's utterly broken when you _polymorph_ into it.



			
				DM_Blake said:
			
		

> Why isn't this player more engaged in the game? Why is he only engaged when he is rolling dice for his own character? Can he not find enjoyment by observing the actions of his fellow players, sharing his observations and suggestions, maybe even offering to handle part of that menagerie so the "menagerie character" doesn't have such a workload?
> 
> Is his only option to go outside until it's his turn?
> 
> ...




I'm engaged during other people's turns... up to a point.  But ultimately there's only so much interest I have in helping to play someone else's character.  I want to play _my_ character too.

The one solution I've found workable in 3.X is to let other players control some of your critters.  My group did this once when I was playing a dread necromancer and had a menagerie of skeletons and zombies; I made up stat sheets for each undead and handed them around to other players to control on their turns.  Since the whole group was built around a "captains of the undead horde" theme, it worked out fairly well.  But if I'd insisted on controlling all of them, round after round, I think the other players would have hung me out to dry, and I wouldn't blame them one bit for doing so.


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## Lonely Tylenol (Mar 25, 2008)

Saishu_Heiki said:
			
		

> Exactly.
> 
> The problem is not a "realism" issue, it is a fun issue. If one of my players is taking 75% of hte actions is a given round and making everyone else wait and deprive them of their fun, I am more than willing to ignore any "realism" issues that arise when the problem is fixed.
> 
> ...



I've always been of the opinion that people make a bigger deal out of this than is actually warranted.  How long, exactly, does it take to tell your bear to maul the bad guys, and resolve that action?  No more than a minute, I wager.  And if you're doing more than that, because your cohort has complicated actions, you should be simplifying the cohort.

Now, if people were really serious about this, they should be up in arms about the standard number of monsters per encounter going from 1 to 4 or 5.  Obviously the DM is sucking up everyone's fun by taking more than one turn each round, and so 4E is destroying everything, hell on earth, sky falling, dragon spellcasting, etc.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 25, 2008)

I think you've got a point. In 4e, with everything going so swift, a few extra actions here or there might be easier to take. 

Part of the problem of cohorts and the like in 3e could have been the time it sometimes took to resolve unorthodox methods in 3e.


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## Hella_Tellah (Mar 25, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> It gets less problematic the less you are concerned with a believable context, because from a mechanics standpoint, it works. It'd definately work well enough for a videogame, or a purely gamist approach similar to that, but to steal a line from another thread, in D&D, I can target the floor.




I'm done with Simulationist play forever and ever, so that's fine by me, but just because the ability's description doesn't explicitly allow something doesn't mean my group can't ad-lib a ruling that lets us do what we want.  I mean, I'm a "say yes" kind of DM, so if the Rogue wants to use his Daily power to have an ally show up and help him open a lock or disarm a trap, I'll just say yes.  If his idea makes the game lamer for everyone, I'll say no, but I can count on one hand the number of times one of my players has had an idea so lame that I've flat out denied it.

To more formally address that idea of allowing some flexibility with these ally summoning powers, the rulebook that introduces them ought to have some text that advises the DM on how to allow it.  "Players whose characters have powers that call in allies or summon help may come up with new, creative ways to put those allies to work.  If the idea is fun and about as useful as the normal ability, let them do it.  If the idea would make the power a great deal more useful, allow the idea's basic concept, but curtail its effects such that the ability doesn't outshine other players at the table.  If at all possible, avoid situations where, as a result of allies, one player has more time in the spotlight or influence over the game's proceedings.  Summoning spells and allies should be a fun thing for everyone at the table, not just the player controlling the effect."


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## malraux (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> Why isn't this player more engaged in the game? Why is he only engaged when he is rolling dice for his own character? Can he not find enjoyment by observing the actions of his fellow players, sharing his observations and suggestions, maybe even offering to handle part of that menagerie so the "menagerie character" doesn't have such a workload?
> 
> Is his only option to go outside until it's his turn?
> 
> ...



I'll agree that it would great if that could work.  Unfortunately, it often doesn't.  If the menagerie character is well prepared and has all his creatures' stats ready with all relevant templates applied, and reasonably familiar with all relevant rules and strategies, then his turn won't take long and can be interesting.  But if a creature isn't prepped and has to be stated on the fly, or the player takes a while to decide, etc. his turn drags on.  And sure I can help out by offering commentary or advice or general humor, but that can often turn to a side conversation, delaying the game even more.  If there were no other option, then that would be acceptable, but clearly there are other ways of doing it.


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## Wormwood (Mar 25, 2008)

Dr. Awkward said:
			
		

> I've always been of the opinion that people make a bigger deal out of this than is actually warranted.



I'm sure we do.

Waiting for the druid's bear and his woodland friends to wander about and attack isn't the end of the world.

But it's one more minute in a combat system already full of speedbumps. It's one more annyoing thing in a game full of little annoying things to keep track of. 

You don't mind it? Mazeltov.

I do mind, and it looks like I won't have to deal with it until PHB2. Yay me.


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## Lenaianel (Mar 25, 2008)

IMO the game has to be centered on the PCs not their magic gear or their followers.

The folllowers, cohorts, animal companions etc... forest is as bad as the Xmas magic tree


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 25, 2008)

> I'm done with Simulationist play forever and ever, so that's fine by me, but just because the ability's description doesn't explicitly allow something doesn't mean my group can't ad-lib a ruling that lets us do what we want. I mean, I'm a "say yes" kind of DM, so if the Rogue wants to use his Daily power to have an ally show up and help him open a lock or disarm a trap, I'll just say yes. If his idea makes the game lamer for everyone, I'll say no, but I can count on one hand the number of times one of my players has had an idea so lame that I've flat out denied it.




Sweet for your game, I'd do almost the same thing, but I'd hate to see that in a rulebook.



> To more formally address that idea of allowing some flexibility with these ally summoning powers, the rulebook that introduces them ought to have some text that advises the DM on how to allow it. "Players whose characters have powers that call in allies or summon help may come up with new, creative ways to put those allies to work. If the idea is fun and about as useful as the normal ability, let them do it. If the idea would make the power a great deal more useful, allow the idea's basic concept, but curtail its effects such that the ability doesn't outshine other players at the table. If at all possible, avoid situations where, as a result of allies, one player has more time in the spotlight or influence over the game's proceedings. Summoning spells and allies should be a fun thing for everyone at the table, not just the player controlling the effect."




It always grinds my muffins something fierce whenever a rulebook tells me to Make Stuff Up.

Make Stuff Up sucks as a rule. I don't need a book to tell me to have fun. I need rules to help me have fun.

"Do whatever you want," means, for me, "Play another game, because obviously you don't need this one when you have your imagination!"

So, yeah, in summation, to the hypothetical rulebook that gave me advice like that: Not Good Enough, Try Harder, Don't Tell Me What I Already Know, Have A Nice Day.


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## Hella_Tellah (Mar 25, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Make Stuff Up sucks as a rule. I don't need a book to tell me to have fun. I need rules to help me have fun.




I'm of the opposite opinion.  My default is "Make Stuff Up," and the game should only have rules for things that need hard rules to be fun and balanced.  I say, don't use dice at all unless there's some question of whether the action should occur or not--in a combat situation, under tense circumstances, or an instance where there's some question that the character could reasonably succeed.

If the idea is fun, then don't even reach for the books.  Do not so much as cast a sidelong glance at the books.  Just let it happen and play the game.


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## Nahat Anoj (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> So, you propose that my summoner should whip up a balor from the pits of hell so it can stand behind the encounter and say "Boo" to give my fighter friend combat advantage?
> 
> My balor won't attack, won't engage. He just maneuvers to get behind our enemy?



I have a very abstract view of what a PC is, so not necessarily.  In this case, the PC that the player plays is not just the thing you made at character creation - it's the composite entity composed of the thing you made at character creation *and* the balor.  Thus, the fight could be narrated as the balor doing most of the damage while the character flanks it.  Or maybe the damage could be narrated as balor and character working in concert.



> I cannot imagine a justification for hiring a mercenary in the town to come along with our adventuring group, but his only function is to neak around behind our enemies and distract them but never attack them himself. Unless we're hiring a weak kid who wants a chance to rub elbows with big tough adventurers.



Well, the mercenary may be able to give combat advantage.  But the mercenary is not limited to that function from a game mechanics perspective.  He may give the PC who "bought" him extra hitpoints (to represent him soaking up some blows), extra damage (to represent the mercenary dealing out damage on his own), or any number or other fiddly bits.  But the way I see it, the bottom line is that the mercenary is an extension of the PC, that thing you made at character creation.    



> And I cannot imagine a "Summon Monster" spell that summons a monster that never attacks, just distracts enemies. That isn't the purpose of a Summon Monster spell - that is the purpose of an illusion spell.



But the summoned monster *is* fighting enemies.  Depending on the narration, it may even do damage to them.  It's just that the combined efforts of the character and summoned monster *also* puts their mutual enemy at a disadvantage.  This lets the player roll his dice with a bonus.

In any case, as a power that isn't "always on", I agree that the game effects of a Summon Monster spell should be greater than an "always on" thing like a Feat.  But it would be more a difference of degree of damage than a difference of kind of damage.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 25, 2008)

> I'm of the opposite opinion. My default is "Make Stuff Up," and the game should only have rules for things that need hard rules to be fun and balanced. I say, don't use dice at all unless there's some question of whether the action should occur or not--in a combat situation, under tense circumstances, or an instance where there's some question that the character could reasonably succeed.




You're slightly conflating two different things. I'm with you when you say don't use dice unless there's a question. I like how 3e supported that with Take 10 and Take 20 options.

But when a system tells me to "Make Stuff Up," that's different from, say, 3e giving me solid guidelines on what someone with a Climb bonus of +5 can do when he's not in a rush. 

"Make Stuff Up" tells me to do 'whatever makes sense.'

That level of subjectivity is obnoxious to me as a DM. In a game that relies on 5 different people all sharing a vision, what makes sense to one or two of us might not make sense to everyone, and I loose time and steam and creative juju if I have to stop and re-explain every little logical step I've taken to come at what makes sense, for me.

And then if it doesn't make sense to someone else at the table, STILL, I feel like they're removed from the context of the game. They break the 4th wall too hard, and that weakens the experience for everyone.

So rather than have a game experience that is subjective and open to interpretation, which allows for misunderstandings and differences of opinion on what is 'sensible,' I'd prefer a game system which tells me what it assumes, and allows me to depart from it. 

Controlling the mood is perhaps one of the most important metagame responsibilities of the DM, and whenever a rulebook tells me to Make Stuff Up, it's introducing something that could easily break the mood. 

Which means that instead of that game, I'm going to go play something else with my friends that isn't so fragile and dependant on one person's whims. 

Something like a videogame, where a computer rigidly enforces the rules of it's domain. Not quite as satisfying as a monumental adventure with friends, but at least if I'm playing Smash Brothers in a room full of pals, it's tougher for one person's eccentricity to ruin it for everyone.



> If the idea is fun, then don't even reach for the books. Do not so much as cast a sidelong glance at the books. Just let it happen and play the game.




If I don't need the books to tell me how to play the game, then why am I playing D&D and not doing improv on the stage?

I play D&D for a specific kind of experience, just like I do anything amusing for a specific kind of experience. If the game leaves it so broadly open that my experience is "Whatever you want!", then I will want to do something that can directly tell me what experience I will have with it, instead. 

Any cohort rules that I'm willing to pay for in order to add to my D&D game will actually tell me what they expect, and not just tell me to make stuff up.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

Hella_Tellah said:
			
		

> I'm of the opposite opinion.  My default is "Make Stuff Up," and the game should only have rules for things that need hard rules to be fun and balanced.  I say, don't use dice at all unless there's some question of whether the action should occur or not--in a combat situation, under tense circumstances, or an instance where there's some question that the character could reasonably succeed.
> 
> If the idea is fun, then don't even reach for the books.  Do not so much as cast a sidelong glance at the books.  Just let it happen and play the game.




That's a great idea.

But from a game mechanics standpoint, it is self defeating.

If you won't use the book, won't even glance sidelong at the book, then why did you buy the book?

If the book itself tells you to not use the book, then why did the writer write the book, why was it published, distributed, and sold?

If the entire intention of the book is to not use the book, then the book shouldn't exist.

Which is fine if that's how you like to play. Amber was a fun diceless game, I enjoyed it a lot. The book was very small, and there weren't many splat books - none that I recall.

But, from the POV of the guys making the game, and selling the game, writing book after book full of "Don't use the book" won't generate a lot of sales.

So we should expect WotC to produce rules that explain what to do. We probably should not expect these rules to say "don't use the book".

Given that, it would be nice if the rules provided a fun and yet simple way, preferably without strange RP issues, to handle summoning critters and hiring henchmen.


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## Saishu_Heiki (Mar 25, 2008)

malraux said:
			
		

> I'll agree that it would great if that could work.  Unfortunately, it often doesn't.  If the menagerie character is well prepared and has all his creatures' stats ready with all relevant templates applied, and reasonably familiar with all relevant rules and strategies, then his turn won't take long and can be interesting.  But if a creature isn't prepped and has to be stated on the fly, or the player takes a while to decide, etc. his turn drags on.  And sure I can help out by offering commentary or advice or general humor, but that can often turn to a side conversation, delaying the game even more.  If there were no other option, then that would be acceptable, but clearly there are other ways of doing it.



Ding!

Summoner: "Okay, I'm going to cast.... Gate. That means I bring in a... hold on, let me check the Spells chapter of the PHB. Oh, no... that won't help. Maybe this? Sure!"

Rest of Group: "..."

Summoner: "I Gate in a Pit Fiend! Let me look for the mini, I know I have one here somewhere..."

Rest of Group: "..."

Summoner: "Cool! He can attack now. Let me look him up in the MM. Which one was it? Oh, I  didn't bring that one, can I borrow yours?" Please? I just need it for a moment. Wow, he has some sweet powers... I need to read this first."

Rest of Group: "GET ON WITH IT!"

In a perfect world where every player has all the rules memorized, has the books tabbed to the pages that he may need, and has prepared all possible variants of the pages, stats, and sheets that he may need then the turns would fly by. In the real world, people look things up and have to make constant revisions (or wholesale creation at the table). 3.5 has so much of this that the game slows down proportional to the character level for most character classes.

Even basic class abilities can take far too long. Don't believe me? Ask your cleric to detail the rules for turning undead without consulting the book.


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## Hella_Tellah (Mar 25, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> So rather than have a game experience that is subjective and open to interpretation, which allows for misunderstandings and differences of opinion on what is 'sensible,' I'd prefer a game system which tells me what it assumes, and allows me to depart from it.




What can I say, I prefer I rules-light game.  Everyone has their preferred level of number-crunching and rulebook use, and that's why RPGs range from FATAL to Risus and everywhere in between.  Right now, I'm happy with something on the level of Mage: the Awakening, with robust rules for the way the game expects you to act and very general, empowering guidelines for going beyond it.  3rd Edition had, for my standards, way too many rules for things I don't care about, and really lame guidelines for going beyond the rules.


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## Mercule (Mar 25, 2008)

Hella_Tellah said:
			
		

> A summoning spell doesn't have to add an additional figure on the battlemat unless you want it to.



It helps to use existing game terminology, though.  D&D summoning spells have always been about adding another figure.  I'm not saying that it isn't legitimate to call a polymorph/animistic channeling a "summoning", just that the "add a figure" use of summoning is also legitimate and has 30+ years of D&D inertia behind it.

We've heard that the 4e druid is going to be more oriented around _wild shape_ than the 3e version.  I think that ties in very, very well with the channeling-summoning and love the flavor -- especially since druids IMC are animists.

I don't want to see the "add a figure" version of summoning disappear, though.  It's got a strong tradition in the genre and I think it is imperative for a game that does genre simulation to actual simulate the genre, rather than just implementing an arbitrary rule set and seeing what can be crammed into it.  Genre begets rules.  Do *not* get those reversed.

I think the very idea of all extra bodies either substituting for the "owner's" action or being abstracted to a simple +x to task y is ludicrous.  It stretches suspension of disbelief so far beyond the breaking that I wouldn't have believed anyone would seriously consider it in an RPG, if I hadn't seen the blog and this thread.

I don't see an issue with limiting summoned bodies' actions.  I wouldn't support the trade of a standard action, but "sustain: move" seems a reasonable trade-off -- both from a believability and gamist standpoint.  The move action can be described as giving commands, maintaining the conduit, or a half-dozen other options without locking the caster into just a different "character" for a few rounds.  The cost is enough (especially as movement is supposed to be so much more important in 4e) to be impactful, but not so much as to negate much of the benefit of using an ability.

Cohorts, etc. are a different matter, and more difficult.  I think a major factor has to be that actions are not the only measure of effectiveness.  Some hirelings (1st level men-at-arms) are likely to be balanced by either the scarcity of resources to hire them at lower levels or by the actual lack of effectiveness at higher levels.  Many "NPC classed" hirelings would continue to have their effectiveness limited by PC funds, or the PCs are going to have their effectiveness limited by a reasonable amount.

Cohorts and animal companions do actually fall into a different category than "hirelings", though.  They are assumed both to be more competent and and to share a closer, more significant/unique bond with the PC.  I see no reason why this shouldn't be born out with mechanics.  3e had just the Leadership feat, which, apparently, wasn't enough to offset the value of the cohort.  In 4e, we know NPCs don't always obey the same advancement rules as PCs -- which doesn't necessarily stretch belief, if implemented well.  A new Leadership feat could be added in 4e that provides a cohort of PC level/2 (some scalability, but decreasing returns), with an additional feat that adds a +1 level to the cohort each time it's taken.  (This seems like a very, very good time to point out that I'm not saying I have THE ANSWER.  I'm just musing.)  

Another mechanic would be to have things like honest-to-goodness cohorts/companions be a class feature that costs the PC effectiveness in other areas -- like the rogue choosing a combat style and certain powers granting additional bonuses for certain builds.  Or, making the companion more effective would generally require the expenditure of power slots ("once per encounter as a standard action, you may direct your companion to make an attack that bypasses damage reduction").  I see that as being most applicable to things like animal companion, but I definitely see something like a warlord Paragon Path ("Leader of Men"?, "Cult of Personality"?, "Great General"?) for cohorts, as a legendary sidekick definitely seems above the Heroic level, anyway.  In the case of the Paragon Path, the character is trading quite a bit, but is pretty well making leadership a defining trait of the character.  And I think a dedicated cohort (or troop of notably skilled followers) certainly seems like something that should be a defining trait.

The band of soldiers guarding the bridge (or whatever) that is quickly organized does not strike me as something that needs to be regulated by strict rules.  They are part of the scenario for a specific encounter and aren't really under the control of a specific player.  Even if one PC did the recruiting, there is no reason that player should run them all -- split them between the other players and/or the DM.

And.... familiars are a horse of a completely different color.  The genre conventions don't mark familiars as battle companions (otherwise, see "animal companions", above).  Some vague, esoteric bond between a wizard and his familiar actually does provide some sort of boost to the wizard that could be represented by a skill bonus, or substituted for the use of an implement, or a few dozen other variations on that basic idea.  Familiars really should be a discussion of their own.


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## KidSnide (Mar 25, 2008)

I think rules for summoned/companion creatures needs to consider what the creature is used for.  In general, we don't want fully autonomous creatures that are always around like most current animal companions.  Because they are in every fight (because they are always there), they need to be weak enough that their masters can keep their full actions without breaking game balance.  This is the worst of both worlds: not only do they take up an action every turn, but they are also either mostly irrelevant or totally dominating.

I'm not sure I have a problem with a Warlock summoning an independent and worthwhile demon, but I want that to be a daily ability or a ritual with significant cost.  Similarly, I'm not sure I have a problem with a druid with a guard wolf, but I want that wolf to be a creature that always sticks by the druid and only gets involved in the fight when someone tries to melee the druid.

Traditional cohorts are more of a challenge, since they tend to have capabilities that are close to a full PC.  It seems to me that the right solution there is to eliminate the Leadership ability that gives a PC the "right" to have one of those characters around and simply let the GM decide whether or not such a character is disruptive.  Based on that decision, a GM can decide when such an NPC would be willing to join the party (or ask for treasure).  (Certainly, many of my D&D games have included a party NPC that rounds out the party's abilities and serves as an extra character when a guest wants to join the game for a night.)

The last type of NPCs are hirelings or other mercenaries that the PCs hire.  I ran a game where the PCs went around with about 200 troops (for about a year or two of real-time and at least a dozen fights), and I found that these worked pretty well if you treat them as a "unit" where each figure moves independently, but you don't bother really keeping track of which soldier gets hit and you let the PCs roll the attacks when necessary.  It seems like treating these characters as allied minions would be quite effective.  From a combat perspective, allied soldiers essentially serve as friendly terrain, because a wall of soldiers provides valuable cover for vulnerable members of the party while the fighters engage the real threats.


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## Cadfan (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> Yes, I see your point about mintes being a zero-sum game. But that's only true if each player sees them as "my minutes are cool, your minutes are wasting my time".



My minute is cool.  Your minute is cool.  Your next minute is cool too.  Your next minute after that is a little less cool.  Your minute beyond that one is kind of ok.  Your minute after that is pretty blah.  And it just goes downhill from there.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 25, 2008)

Hella_Tellah said:
			
		

> I'm done with Simulationist play forever and ever, so that's fine by me




LOL, I don't even know how to talk to you.

I don't mean that as an insult. You have your way and I have mine. I am not saying either way is better or worse. All I am saying is that your way and my way are so different that we don't share a common point of reference.

For me, if I want to throw simulationist play out the window, I will drop all the rulebooks, get some friends together and sit in a relatively dark relaxing room and do some stream of consciousness roleplaying. No dice. No rules. We will collaboratively build a story together.

But that's not D&D.

Nor is D&D having Captain Caveman pull a T-Rex out of his beard to bite the enemy for a round then jump back in the beard. 

Nor is it a warlod having a half dozen cartoon warriors, all standing in a line behind him, wobbling up and down, until he calls on one of them to jump into battle (probably shouting something like "Whirling Fluffbubble Acid Tempest of Doom") for a round while the warlord and all the rest of the minions watch from the sidelines. 

Nor is it hiring a skilled guide from the scout's guild, only to have him lurk about the battlefield adding +2 to a few of the PCs attack rolls each round.

It's not Buggs Bunny, it's not The Simpsons, and it's not National Lampoon.

No, for me, D&D is trying to apply some semblance of the real world into a fantasy story. Sure, there are mythical things like unicorns and magic swords and fireballs and dragons, etc., but for the most part those mythical things, and the mundane things too, all behave in ways similar to how comparable (or as close to comparable as we can get) things in the real world behave.

Within my context, hiring a NPC to join the group means that NPC will use his skills and abilities the same way a PC would (you wouldn't bring a new player to a game and tell him "Well, we already have 4 players, so your guy gets no loot, no XP, and all you can do is sneak behind the enemy so that we can get +2 on our attacks against that enemy.").

Within my context, summoning a monster into a battle means the monster moves around, attacks, defends, and uses its abilities to the best of its, well, ability. It isn't just a flavor text saying that now I can do more damage with my crossbow.

Yes, I know that this kind of thing can potentially slow down the turn of the player controlling the additional fighting resources.

I just don't see that it slows it down so much that it causes problems - on the rare occasions that it does, it's not hard to talk to the group, or the one player, and find a solution.

What I have never needed is for the game's designers to come in and take away the ability to summon monsters, or turn it into some unrealistic flavor modifier, or limit its use in any way. Let the DM do that at his table, but don't break the game for it.

A hammer isn't always the right tool for every job, but don't take it out of the toolbox - let the carpenter figure out when to use the hammer and when not to.


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## Hypersmurf (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> Now this is the model that D&D has always used.
> 
> If you have a party of 4 people and they get 1000 XP, then each one gets 250. If you brought along a mercenary, a hireling, a henchman, whatever, then you really have 5 people to split that 1000 XP so you each get 200.
> 
> ...




That's not how Cohorts earn XP in 3.5, though.

Let's say you have your party of 4 7th level characters, and one of them has a 5th level cohort.

The party earns 1000XP; each PC gets 250.  The cohort then gets XP that are not derived from the pool of 1000; he gets the same as his master, at a 5/7 ratio.  So the cohort gets 178XP, and the total number of XP actually earned from the encounter is 1178.

The PCs earn the same XP - 250 each - regardless of the cohort's presence.

So "Cohort reduces XP for everyone" isn't the model D&D has _always_ used - certainly not for the past few years!

-Hyp.


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## Hella_Tellah (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> That's a great idea.
> 
> But from a game mechanics standpoint, it is self defeating.
> 
> ...




The kind of language I'm using to describe DM flexibility is the same language White Wolf uses in their Storyteller system, and they produce gobs of successful splat books and core rule books.  It's not that there are no rules, or that they shouldn't be followed; the idea is that if, in the course of playing the game, you have a better idea than what the designer wrote, or if the designer didn't touch on that point, don't go flipping through 300 pages of rulebook for an answer.  Just do it.

To be more precise, there should be rules for doing a finite number of things, the expected, usual behavior that the game is geared toward.  D&D needs a set of rules for fighting monsters and using magic, Call of Cthulu needs rules for investigating paranormal events, and Nobilis needs rules for dreaming up miraculous events on the fly.  For everything else, the game should have a simple, easy-to-remember, flexible mechanic.  In D&D, you have ability checks; in WoD, you combine a couple of Traits and make a dice pool.

Really, I'm just saying you should use the simple, flexible mechanic more often, and rely less on having a specific rule for every corner case you can dream up.  But some people want a rules-heavier game, and they should play a game that supports that.  3.5 is really good for that; there's a rule for just about everything.  What the 4e designers seem to be promising--what I'm salivating for--is a game that's more focused on a core gameplay, with a simple, flexible system for improvization (e.g.: "Want to kick over the table and knock the guys on top over?  Strength vs. Reflex).


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 25, 2008)

> What can I say, I prefer I rules-light game.




Fair enough. For me, too few rules and I feel like I'm not even playing a game, I'm just making stuff up.

I do think I'd wager on 4e being rules-heavy, but having simpler rules than 3e, which might be a good middle ground for both of us.



			
				Mercule said:
			
		

> Genre begets rules. Do not get those reversed.
> 
> I think the very idea of all extra bodies either substituting for the "owner's" action or being abstracted to a simple +x to task y is ludicrous. It stretches suspension of disbelief so far beyond the breaking that I wouldn't have believed anyone would seriously consider it in an RPG, if I hadn't seen the blog and this thread.




Well, 4e has been surprising a lot of people like that.  Myself included, sometimes.



> new Leadership feat could be added in 4e that provides a cohort of PC level/2 (some scalability, but decreasing returns), with an additional feat that adds a +1 level to the cohort each time it's taken. (This seems like a very, very good time to point out that I'm not saying I have THE ANSWER. I'm just musing.)




The BIGGEST problem with cohorts/hirelings is that they take game time away from the PC's. Their actions are also pretty potent, but the power thing is on a scale. The "sit on my hands while the druid resolves his pets" thing is a bit more dangerous.


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## Harshax (Mar 25, 2008)

I just read Rodney's blog, and I don't like where he's going. (Or at least I don't understand it)

I'd hate to see a follower system that consumes the player's actions. There's very little to justify this approach, except in a board game.  I think a cleaner solution (pardon me, if someone said this already, I'm layed up today with the flu), is to thematically eliminate them from campaign design. Obviously 1st level characters are bad mofo's, and henchman and hirelings will drop like flies around them as they face challenges. Since most of the world is NOT filled with folks of the Player Character's Caliber, it stands to reason that most folks wouldn't dream of joining up with the party. 

 To me, followers only seem to come into play, when there isn't enough players and multiple characters need to be run by those at the table. YMMV


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## Vael (Mar 25, 2008)

I'm finding this discussion fascinating, because I would love to play a Conjurer in 4e that plays like a Pokemon trainer, and without bogging down the game. I've played Druids, and I've always found that it's twice the work for me to run my animal companions, and it can bog down my fun too. (Plus I got annoyed both in and out of character that my party members treated my beloved animal companion as a disposable meat shield).

It seems to me that summons, animal companions and familiars are a separate boat from allies/hirelings/followers. A hired NPC or follower should probably be treated as a full character in his own right, but familiars and other companions shouldn't receive a full suite of actions, and have a vastly simplified menu of available abilities.

Actually, that seems to me to be a good distinction. *Followers* are more party-level resources, whether it's the hired guard or monster. *Companions* are creatures like familiars, and are bound to a specific character and hence are considered a part of their PC and do not have a full budget of actions.


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## Hella_Tellah (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> Nor is D&D having Captain Caveman pull a T-Rex out of his beard to bite the enemy for a round then jump back in the beard.
> 
> Nor is it a warlod having a half dozen cartoon warriors, all standing in a line behind him, wobbling up and down, until he calls on one of them to jump into battle (probably shouting something like "Whirling Fluffbubble Acid Tempest of Doom") for a round while the warlord and all the rest of the minions watch from the sidelines.
> 
> ...




You seem to find my suggestions upsetting enough to convert them into ludicrous straw men.  Do you find them upsetting enough to offer better suggestions?


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## Harshax (Mar 25, 2008)

*~*



			
				Vael said:
			
		

> Actually, that seems to me to be a good distinction. *Followers* are more party-level resources, whether it's the hired guard or monster. *Companions* are creatures like familiars, and are bound to a specific character and hence are considered a part of their PC and do not have a full budget of actions.




That's the ticket!

Savage Worlds has an awesome mechanic. If the party has mooks, then those mooks get distributed equally to all players (if they want). The mooks move on the controlling character's turn.  That's it, no diluting their effectiveness, no destabilizing the Action Economy.

Sidekicks, and personal companions are an entirely different story, and have only really allowed them when there wasn't enough characters to play a game.


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## ThirdWizard (Mar 25, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> The other 4 people are not penalized. They should be glad that their chances of survival just increased. The fighter looks at the pit fiend standing next to him, bashing away at the army of evil dragons, and should be thinking "Wow, glad he's on my side" not "Wow, I sure am penalized."




The choice between play or die and watch or live should be an easy one. Or at least it is for me: play and die. D&D is not a spectator sport. Winning isn't everything, and its not even my main goal!


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## RodneyThompson (Mar 25, 2008)

Wow, good discussion on this. Glad to see that my thoughts mirror many of those you guys have been discussing.

When talking about summoned monsters, cohorts, hirelings, animal companions, etc.  a lot of people have posited several ideas for how to "balance" the extra actions the extra creature brings to the table. Among them are:
Share of the treasure/share of the XP
The casting time of bringing in a summoned creature
The gold cost to hire a hireling
The feat/talent/power/whatever character mechanic cost of getting the cohort or companion in the first place
Now, those are certainly valid ideas, but in the end you can't legitimately call any of those equivalent to extra actions. To continue the economy analogy, what is the exchange rate between a standard action and the share of the treasure for an encounter? How do you balance a full round's worth of attacks against the gold cost of getting a hireling? There's no clear conversion rate, so any talk of balance is actually more guesswork than not. 

For hirelings, I think the best tack is just to treat them like an NPC that comes along and fights. As someone else pointed out, 4E is going to make it pretty easy to adjust encounters given that you can just add so much XP worth of monsters to the encounter to balance that NPC's presence. But that doesn't do you a ton of good if you play 3.5 or Star Wars Saga Edition, and while you can (and probably should) adjust the encounter it's far less of an exact science. Since you're not investing feats, talents, whatever in this hireling, it's OK to adjust the encounters since that hireling can die, leave, or otherwise vanish from the scene with no appreciable penalty to the player characters. They're limited-time effects that require no permanent investment on the behalf of the PCs.

In my thoughts, if you expend a permanent character resource--feat, talent, class feature, power, whatever--to acquire a cohort, animal companion, familiar, or something else that adds to the economy of actions, you should be in control of it. You are the one expending resources, so there's no reason not to allow you to be in charge of it. This is where the crux of my thoughts of the economy of actions comes in. Altering that economy has two clearly stated effects: it requires the Gamemaster to adjust the challenges to place the same value's worth of actions on the enemy's side of things in order to create a balanced encounter, and it also tips the value of an individual player's action resources in that player's favor, thus giving him an advantage over his comrades in the economy of actions.

Traditionally, d20 games have tackled the former effect (Gamemasters balancing the encounters against an increased number of player actions) primarily by weakening the source of those extra actions: cohorts are lower level than you, summoned creatures aren't your equal, animal companions and familiars are significantly weaker. Likewise, they've pretty much ignored the latter effect (the balance in the economy of actions between players). What I've been wondering is whether or not it's a better solution to balance the economy of actions first (I lose an action, but my cohort takes an action) and then go from there. That effectively solves the latter effect, and if you make the cohort's action at least equal to actions you could potentially take then you've made it worthwhile. If it's a limited effect, like a summoned creature that only lasts a few rounds, you can actually make the summoned creature's options BETTER than the ones you'd be taking, since it's of limited duration. This doesn't mean that a cohort is just standing there like an idiot when you share actions; it can mean that you're working together in concert to achieve a goal, especially if there's some kind of added benefit. And, of course, you have to tailor things to the flavor as well. The example of the pit fiend that just sits there and flanks is a poor one, because you'd never design a summon that just does that. Now, you might design a summon that just flanks as a low-level ability, since just being able to flank is a low-level effect, but the effect would have to be tailored for that. If you design a pit fiend summoning spell, you probably want him to be able to do pit fiendy things, but that does not mean that you have to disrupt the economy of actions to do so.

The real value of a follower, cohort, animal companion, familiar, or summoned creature should not be in the number of actions it can take in a given round. Rather, its value should be in the number of options having that item provides. Someone earlier mentioned that a summoner wizard's versatility is the advantage; he's a controller who can bring into play aspects of any of the roles, should the need arise. There's value in versatility, and I think that's more interesting than just another turn's worth of actions. 

Obviously, I'm just theorizing here, and I am really more thinking about it in Star Wars terms, but I think the economy of actions is a universal concept.


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## Scrollreader (Mar 25, 2008)

I brought this up in a similar thread overon RPGnet in response to this blog entry.  I think we can already see a sort of preview of the way 4e wil treat summons in some of the tail end 3.5 books.  (sort like how the Warlock and ToB were previews of other 4e mechanics).  Specifically, Summon Elemental Monolith, and the various calling spells that replaced the cleric with a celestial/fiend and moved the caster to that realm.  As for my table, we vastly preferred them for actual combat.  An elemental monolth is /awesome/.  And actually relevant to combat, unlike the poor bastards on the Summon Monster IX list, who are barely speedbumps at 17th level play.  I think something along these lines for summons is almost inevitable.

This does not, of course, solve the familiar/animal companion issue, though in general, the source material supports those as either additional PCs (Mercedes Lackey's Tarma and Kethry stories, for example, have the Kyree, but he's essentially a DMNPC) or as minor combat adds, from time to time.

Hirelings are likely minions, and anything they conribute to the economy of actions is going to end when a level appropriate badly curses loudly.  

The cohort issue is the real stickler here, I suspect for people who like 'realism'.  And is also probably the least likely to actually cause economy of actions problems.  At least in my games, either I disallow the Leadershp feat, or else I make it avaliable to all PCs (usually for free).  This way, everybody gets two actions, if the cohorts are along, etc.

As for he rare few NPCs that are heroic enough to keep pace with a PC, and not anybody's cohort?  They should be run by the DM.  But they probably are also not terribly common, in a Points of Light, or even just a Heroic World (like Eberron currently is)


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## Wolfwood2 (Mar 25, 2008)

KidSnide said:
			
		

> Traditional cohorts are more of a challenge, since they tend to have capabilities that are close to a full PC.  It seems to me that the right solution there is to eliminate the Leadership ability that gives a PC the "right" to have one of those characters around and simply let the GM decide whether or not such a character is disruptive.  Based on that decision, a GM can decide when such an NPC would be willing to join the party (or ask for treasure).  (Certainly, many of my D&D games have included a party NPC that rounds out the party's abilities and serves as an extra character when a guest wants to join the game for a night.)




I'm right with you there.  I think that third edition made a serious mistake in making Leadership a feat.  Now don't get me wrong, I like a lot of the mechanics and advice on balance.  It was an excellent choice to have a section in the DMG talking about what to do if a PC and/or the party want to bring a sidekick with them along on adventures.  But it shouldn't have been a feat.  Players shouldn't have been able to say, "I'm 9th level.  I'll take my cohort now."

If attempting some mechanical balance to pay for having a second character, then a single feat is not enough.  If, as many DMs here have said, a cohort is an independent NPC run entirely by the DM, then there is no need to pay a feat for it.  The shadowy area between the two is problematic.

I think all of the Leadership stuff should have been treated the same way as DMG sections on how to populate a town, what to do if the PCs want to build a keep, and other events that might reasonably come up in gameplay.  Not as a feat.


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## BryonD (Mar 25, 2008)

Saishu_Heiki said:
			
		

> In a perfect world ...



I'm glad to know I have been experiencing a world much closer to perfect than you have.

I agree with some of the concepts expressed in this thread.  But some seem way over the top from any concern I've ever experienced.  And some of the "solutions" that boil down to denying options to other players just seem horrid.


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## Harshax (Mar 25, 2008)

I could see animal companions and familiars as changes to existing powers.  Say you have a touch spell, your familiar can deliver it for you, so in essence, you've bought a feat that changes the spell's description from touch to ranged. The fluff 'Shocking Grasp is delivered at a distance by my frog familiar' is not particularly relevant, unless the familiar can be destroyed. We might see familiars as sharing the HP pool of the caster. As for actions, I doubt a familiar will have actions significant for combat.  In my years at the table, I've only see a familiar ordered into combat in a moment of desperation for the wizard or party.

Animals Companions could also be treated this way. If you spend a feat to have a wardog, maybe it adds a bonus to damage, or allows you to flank, but it doesn't really do anything on its own. Maybe the 'Mark' ability can be used this way. The fighter with the war dog marks a target, who takes damage every round from the dog if it doesn't attack it. When the fighter attacks the marked target, he gets a damage bonus. If the dog dies, the fighter can't use those abilities until he's trained a new one. This is no different than not being able to throw a fireball until you've bought a new scroll.


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## RigaMortus2 (Mar 25, 2008)

First, ask yourself, what is the purpose of a hireling, or an animal companion, or a summoned creature as it relates to combat?  It's purpose is to fight against the PC's enemies.

One thing that I have used in the past, a 'technique' I used so I didn't have to worry about controlling NPC vs. NPC (where one group of NPCs were helping the PCs), is to basically have them running in the background.  They would "tie up" other NPCs until the PCs could get to them.

So I would not roll every action.  The NPCs basically acted like a mez or a stun in that it took the focus off the PCs from the opposing NPCs.  Then when the PCs decided to engage, the NPC focused their attention on them.  Once the PCs engaged, the ally NPCs, having been locked in combat, fell back out of the combat to recover.

You could incorporate something like this, perhaps with a d20 roll involved.  Check the XP level of the ally NPC vs. the XP level of enemy NPC and apply a modifier to the d20 roll.  This would determine if the ally NPC flees, continues to fight (no change) or maybe even wins the combat.  It may determine if the enemy NPC gets around the ally NPC and engage the party, or if they make a pot-shot, or some other action.

Again, all this is going on in the background.  So you could run large combats by doing this as well.  Just assume ally NPCs are attacking/defending the un-engaged enemy NPCs.

I think this would work well given the example of the Skill challenge in Escape from Sembia.

Anyway, just my thoughts.


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## xechnao (Mar 25, 2008)

Moridin said:
			
		

> What I've been wondering is whether or not it's a better solution to balance the economy of actions




Why don't you give each companion a random chart of actions.

For example roll 1d6:

If not engaged 
1 charge nearest enemy
2 ...
3

If engaged
1...
2
etch

If bloodied 
1 ...etch


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 25, 2008)

> For hirelings, I think the best tack is just to treat them like an NPC that comes along and fights.
> ...
> In my thoughts, if you expend a permanent character resource--feat, talent, class feature, power, whatever--to acquire a cohort, animal companion, familiar, or something else that adds to the economy of actions, you should be in control of it.




Pretty much yes on all these.



> Altering that economy has two clearly stated effects: it requires the Gamemaster to adjust the challenges to place the same value's worth of actions on the enemy's side of things in order to create a balanced encounter, and it also tips the value of an individual player's action resources in that player's favor, thus giving him an advantage over his comrades in the economy of actions.




(a) is solved by the "Less XP or More Enemies" idea, and 4e's scale should be nice (and in 3.5 or SAGA, you can do what you always have to do in an encounter anyway and eyeball it).

(b) can be solved, in my mind, by making it something that everyone *just gets* (thus making sure that no one person gets the larger suite of actions), or by resolving those actions abstractly (so the player maybe gets to roll an extra d20 at the end of his turn, to see how his friend does, not the whole suite of actions).

I think the second solution might be the best, but you have to walk a fine line with regards to believability here. If the player gets a suite of "commands" he can issue a given "pet", and then rolls a dice to resolve the entire rounds' worth of actions, I'd say it's probably believable. This goes to 3e's Handle Animal skill in some ways. But you'd have to ensure that friendly wizard sidekicks could still be wizardy, and that friendly dire bear companions can still give a big ol' maulin'.

I'm also kind of a fan of "combos," but FFZ already has room for those, and they'd be wierder to add to most d20 games.



> What I've been wondering is whether or not it's a better solution to balance the economy of actions first (I lose an action, but my cohort takes an action) and then go from there.




That only works with certain effects.

I can believe that it takes me a minor action (or even maybe a move action!) to issue a new command, but it shouldn't take me any actions to keep directing my friend Ed to swing his sword. Talking is a free action, right? I can believe that giving a direct order takes a bit more, but not much more...

I can entirely believe that it takes my whole turn to give orders to the avatar of Orcus I just called out of the Abyss, every round I want to keep him here instead of sending him back from whence he came. 

When we're dealing with blantantly magical effects, some sort of concentration or "action loaning" makes sense. 

When we're dealing with blatantly mundane effects, it doesn't really pass the believability barrier to do that. 

There's a continuum there, but different people will hit it at different points, and you're going to need _something else_ to handle the blantantly mundane effects.



> This doesn't mean that a cohort is just standing there like an idiot when you share actions; it can mean that you're working together in concert to achieve a goal, especially if there's some kind of added benefit.




Combos, man. The idea in FFZ is that you pool your actions to get a greater effect: you get to use two powers at once, or change how your powers work, or get to use a more limited power earlier (a limit break or something). 

Think in terms of teamwork benefits or sharing spells -- less actions, but actions that carry almost twice the punch and have double the versatility. 

Also, think in terms of the powers that leaders (like warlords) give. Having a cohort *makes you a leader*. When you act, they act in concert, doing things like moving or attacking.



> The real value of a follower, cohort, animal companion, familiar, or summoned creature should not be in the number of actions it can take in a given round. Rather, its value should be in the number of options having that item provides. Someone earlier mentioned that a summoner wizard's versatility is the advantage; he's a controller who can bring into play aspects of any of the roles, should the need arise. There's value in versatility, and I think that's more interesting than just another turn's worth of actions.




That's a good point, and a cool idea, but I could see it stepping on toes unless we fall back into 3e's model of cohorts/companions/summons being weaker. If the conjurer can summon a fell beast who is a better striker than the rogue (even if only for a little while), who needs the rogue?

Versatility is fine, but there needs to be potency in it, too, or else you wind up with the 3e Bard: "I suck equally at everything!"



> Obviously, I'm just theorizing here, and I am really more thinking about it in Star Wars terms, but I think the economy of actions is a universal concept.




I've been wrestlin' with it in FFZ, too, though my problems have been more in translating a "you have an entire party's worth of actions" into "you have one person's." Things like "Save or Suck" have a history in the FF series, and they're fine when you only loose one suite of options for a round or two, but if it's a character's entire suite? And that's the only character they play?

Really starting to puzzle out the fine line between running a "unit" and running a "character."


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## RodneyThompson (Mar 25, 2008)

xechnao said:
			
		

> Why don't you give each companion a random chart of actions.




You *could* do that, and it's certainly a legitimate design. I, personally, would not design a system like that because 1) I want the player who invests the resources in getting the follower to be able to control the follower, since it was their resources invested; 2) it does nothing to solve the issue of the allies still getting more actions than they normally would, though admittedly this can be dealt with in encounter design; 3) it requires players and Gamemasters to reference their books during play, which can slow things down; 4) bad luck can cause the resource of a follower to be nearly useless, while good luck can cause it to become overpowering; and 5) it makes it more difficult to replicate any kind of intelligence on behalf of the follower, whether that intelligence is provided by a player or the DM.


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## xechnao (Mar 25, 2008)

Moridin said:
			
		

> You *could* do that, and it's certainly a legitimate design. I, personally, would not design a system like that because 1) I want the player who invests the resources in getting the follower to be able to control the follower, since it was their resources invested; 2) it does nothing to solve the issue of the allies still getting more actions than they normally would, though admittedly this can be dealt with in encounter design; 3) it requires players and Gamemasters to reference their books during play, which can slow things down; 4) bad luck can cause the resource of a follower to be nearly useless, while good luck can cause it to become overpowering; and 5) it makes it more difficult to replicate any kind of intelligence on behalf of the follower, whether that intelligence is provided by a player or the DM.




I do not know if you are familiar with Baldur's Gate video games. Those were lots of fun (IMO) and the system was like you could "issue" your companions in different modes for example aggressive, defensive, cautious, reckless etch. On tabletop each mode could come with a reference card or sheet so no need to hunt rules during play.


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## The_Gneech (Mar 25, 2008)

One way that earlier editions handled the issue was by letting every player have "cohorts/companions" in the form of followers, hirelings, and henchmen. Aside from the snarky answer of "because the books have gone to the printers already" why not just do the same now? What are warlords without followers? Fighters get squires or at least valets. Rogues get henchmen. Anybody who doesn't have a companion as a class feature, gets a "nonheroic" NPC (to use the _SWSE_ parlance, since it was _SWSE_ that prompted it) to handle on off turns, thus giving everybody multiple chances to play.

Certainly a better solution than having a Free-Floating Rule Effect named Rover.

"What's your wolf's Str bonus?"

"+2 flanking bonus"

"Um."

-The Gneech


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## Hella_Tellah (Mar 25, 2008)

The_Gneech said:
			
		

> Certainly a better solution than having a Free-Floating Rule Effect named Rover.
> 
> "What's your wolf's Str bonus?"
> 
> ...




I guess you _could_ think of it that way.  I'd say that the wolf is really only trained for flanking, and you could use him for other purposes, but you'd be winging it.


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## KarinsDad (Mar 25, 2008)

RigaMortus2 said:
			
		

> One thing that I have used in the past, a 'technique' I used so I didn't have to worry about controlling NPC vs. NPC (where one group of NPCs were helping the PCs), is to basically have them running in the background.  They would "tie up" other NPCs until the PCs could get to them.
> 
> So I would not roll every action.  The NPCs basically acted like a mez or a stun in that it took the focus off the PCs from the opposing NPCs.  Then when the PCs decided to engage, the NPC focused their attention on them.  Once the PCs engaged, the ally NPCs, having been locked in combat, fell back out of the combat to recover.
> 
> ...




The issue I have with this type of approach is that it is so bla.

What did the hireling do last battle. Hold off an enemy. The battle before that. Hold off an enemy etc., etc., etc. Not only is there no flavor there, there is very little in the way of results (outside of hireling falls, hireling flees, or NPC falls, or NPC flees, or a tie). There's no reason for the players to cheer the hireling ever.

The reason to have additional allies like hirelings and such is to add to the overall game, not to run a bunch of stuff off stage. Players acquire them to be part of the group. At least IMO.

I tend to not run large scale battles for the same reason. Once in a blue moon when the situation dictates it, but not often. Who cares about a bunch of NPCs fighting off stage? One might as well not even have the NPC in the group if there is no chance for the entire table to cheer when the NPC hireling gets lucky and chops off the head off his enemy once in a while.


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## Harshax (Mar 25, 2008)

double post due to lag


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## Harshax (Mar 25, 2008)

The_Gneech said:
			
		

> "What's your wolf's Str bonus?"
> 
> "+2 flanking bonus"
> 
> ...




My guess is you'll be able to get that information from the Monster Manual.


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## Crazy Jerome (Mar 25, 2008)

Everyone has been poking around the edges, but I don't think I saw my exact take yet:  The key to this is to be *brutal* about separating the player versus character linkage.  

As was already stated, from the player perspective the important thing is that all the players be engaged in the action.  You can do that several ways, but the most obvious is to make sure:

1. That a player doesn't have to wait too long to make a decision.
2. That what other players do is interesting (as roleplaying, or tactics, or even mechanically) to the other players.

Note that while gamism, simulationism, simply paying attention, group needs, etc. all enter into that, none of them are as decisive as the players' preferences.  (If I think I have to wait "too long" to make a decision, I think that, independent of what others may have achieved in their group or the particular form of the gaming.)  However, you can please everyone (on this point).  Or at least almost everyone.

From the character perspective, you want the rules to make some kind of sense.  Could be a gamist sense.  Could be narrative sense.  Could be something else. Again, it depends on the players, but here you can't please everyone. For example, it may very well be that the druid has a summoned bear, the ranger has a wolf companion, and the whole party hired three mercenaries.  If you go the "one action per player" route, you'll satisfy one crowd (sort of), and not the rest.  If you say, "play it out, the same way you always did", then ditto. Likewise, "Make followers incompetent or fluff".  They only work for some people, because those are kludges.

So back to that brutal divide.  There are two kinds of groups, with two different answers to the divide:

1. Groups that have decided that sticking with their character perspective is more important than other considerations are free to use those kludges, same as they always have.  It should be acceptable, since the main thing is focusing on their PC.  They categorically reject the brutal divide, but that's OK.  We don't need any special rules for them.

2. Groups that have decided they want multiple characters controlled by players have already accepted the divide.  So give them tools to embrace it.  For example, specifically reject the idea that a cohort bought by a feat is controlled by the player of the character that spent the feat.  You buy a cohort for your character, which any warm body at the table can then play (including you), as necessary.  Same with summoned creatures, hirelings, whatever. Heck, it need not even be the same player handling them from one scene to the next.  While you are at it, throw a few neutral NPCs or even foes into the players' laps.  After all, the point is to keep the _players_ engaged.   

Economy of actions has (of course) repercussions for the characters, but it only truly matters for the players. Don't try to solve a player issue with a character mechanism.

If I went long with this, it may only be because of some homebrew design work that goes fairly far afield handling the second option.


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## Stalker0 (Mar 25, 2008)

Definitely a lot of good discussion going on. One point some have made is that if 4e's resolution system is in fact a lot more streamlined than 3.5s, then having an extra character won't be as big a drain on the players fun. This is definitely a possibility.

Further, I wonder if its time to look to the astral construct version of summoning. Besides the fun of customizing your constructs, its a lot easier to take a base model and make a few adjustments, they having to look up a big list of creatures to summon. Or...summons may work like certain polymorph spells did at the end of 3.5, they only provided a single creature to use.


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## Terramotus (Mar 25, 2008)

Background: I'm a DM who's run games with characters who could summon, and I currently am playing in a game as a druid.

I think that most of the commonly suggested solutions to the summoner problem are a cure far worse than the disease.  I also think that many people here are poisoned by the idea of CoDzilla, even if they've never experienced it.  I personally think Druids are only uber in core-only games or when some of the extreme options are allowed (Greenbound Summoning, Aberration Wild Shape, Assume Supernatural Ability, or some planes for the Planar Shepherd).  

Druids are powerful because of the aggregate of their abilities.  They've got wild shape, spontaneous summoning, the fact that they can cherry-pick which forms to be and what to summon, and the feats that boost summoning.  Take any one of those away and they become somewhat lame from a powergaming standpoint.  Heck, the errata to Wild Shape almost did that (and totally FUBARed things with types not changing).  But they're nothing compared to many of the options out there.  It's more that they're survivable than anything else, IMO.

Summoning also gets increasingly expensive as levels raise in 3E.  First you have to deal with getting through DR, then it's flying, ethereal, invisible, etc.  And while you can get around those things easily with items, summons don't have that option.  To make matters worse, SNA gets worse relative to the CR of what you're facing.  So you're spending actions and casting spells to make them even effective, buffing them...  If it weren't for Rapid Casting and the Summoner's Totem it would hardly be a viable option up into high levels.


Let's look at some of the solutions, now:
Share of the treasure/share of the XP - This should never be used.  First, it causes ill will in the party, and second, it doesn't really penalize the party, it just jacks with the advancement rate.  If the DM wants to change the advancement rate, he should be trusted to do that, not have umpteen systems interfering with his ability to do so.

DM controlling the summoned critters/hirelings - If I have to do this, I ban summoners from my games, flat out.  I've got better things to do than to fight for the players.

Summoned monsters acting with caster's actions - Uh, no.  In a well-balanced summoner class, the summoner is ideally not a melee powerhouse as well.  He's giving up personal ability for what essentially amounts to a combination Damage Over Time and defensive mechanism.  But the creatures have to move instead of auto-hitting in an area, and have hit points.  Plus, the summoner is liable to getting killed if the enemies get past his critters.  

Flat out, if summons feed off of the summoner's actions, why would I ever play a summoner at all when I could just play a class that's personally powerful without the hassle?

Casting time - At higher levels, summoning would be practically useless in 3E without Rapid Casting.  Besides, as has been covered, it sucks to sit there and do nothing.

Feats/cost of gaining the power - Pointless if the power is too good.  People will beeline for it anyway.

Critters only provide small bonuses - Those looks like benefits that would come from a feat or two or maybe a paragon path.  They're too small otherwise to base a summoning class around.

I personally would balance a druid summoner against the wizard as a controller in 4E, and throw in powers like Entangle and Eye of the Hurricane.  Consider the summons to be like an area effect spell.  The nature of encounter based powers makes it very easy to balance anyway.  Making the summons encounter-based powers ensures that they can't be abused to get too many actions in combat anyway.


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## Majoru Oakheart (Mar 25, 2008)

The_Gneech said:
			
		

> One way that earlier editions handled the issue was by letting every player have "cohorts/companions" in the form of followers, hirelings, and henchmen. Aside from the snarky answer of "because the books have gone to the printers already" why not just do the same now? What are warlords without followers? Fighters get squires or at least valets. Rogues get henchmen. Anybody who doesn't have a companion as a class feature, gets a "nonheroic" NPC (to use the _SWSE_ parlance, since it was _SWSE_ that prompted it) to handle on off turns, thus giving everybody multiple chances to play.



That's not a better solution.  I don't want to make 30 rolls for my followers each round of combat.  Heck, I don't even want followers.  I want to play a cool character who kicks butt.

Now, if I want to be able to play ONE character and you want to play 30, what benefit do I get in order to make up for your 30 attacks per round and the time that I have to sit around watching you make those attacks?

Plus, how do you write a system that accurately measures how difficult an encounter will be when a party might have anywhere between 4 attacks per round and 180 attacks per round if all 6 players decide to bring along an army of soldiers or followers with them?  Even if the followers are so useless that only 5% of them hit and they are much weaker than an actual PC, you still have a solid benefit from them that another group might not have.  If it's minor enough, it might not even be a problem since balance isn't significantly affected.  Then you only have the second problem: that your number of actions is now taking "stage time" away from the other players making the game more "about you" than anyone else.  And purely for a minor benefit.

If the actions are worthwhile, mind you, then you need to balance that by trading off the power of your actual character to maintain balance.  The idea is that if the game lets you have a cohort or followers then you should be just as powerful as any player who chose NOT to have them.  If I choose Fireball and you choose Gain a Cohort(or summon a monster) then I should get just as much benefit from fireball as you do from the cohort.  If you can cast lightning bolt doing 25 damage, I do the same with my fireball and then your cohort attacks for 25 damage, you are now more powerful than me purely because you get more actions.  They are just split amongst the TWO characters you control.

Even if you are only able to do 15 damage and your cohort does 10, doing the same damage as me total, you are still more versatile as you can set up your own flanking, protect yourself from damage, open a door with your cohorts action so that you can move into the room and attack with your action and so on.

The only real way to do it and keep balance is to sacrifice your own actions for theirs.


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## KarinsDad (Mar 25, 2008)

Majoru Oakheart said:
			
		

> The only real way to do it and keep balance is to sacrifice your own actions for theirs.




Only? So 1E through 3.5 were not balanced with regard to any type of followers or hirelings?


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## Dragonblade (Mar 25, 2008)

I REALLY like the idea of the summoner being able to effectively perform different party roles based on the creature they summon. Or alternatively, if we want to talk wildshaping druids, the druid themselves can effectively take on party roles through the creatures they turn into.

The key is to make the summons/wildshaped form tough enough that the summoner/druid character can effectively perform those roles for the party, but yet not so tough that they overshadow another PC in those roles. Its a fine line to walk. The summon creature lists in 3.5 are WAY too weak for the level those creatures are summoned at.

I also agree with Moridin that if you spend a resource such as a feat to gain a follower, or an animal companion, then that player should get to control that follower. Not the DM, and not another player.

As to whether followers should simply provide mechanical bonuses like a constant Aid Another, or whether they should have stats and actions of their own is a tricky one. There are certainly pros and cons to each side. Its certainly more believeable and realistic to have followers as individuals, but from a game play and fun perspective (for the other players especially) its much easier to have followers that are essentially fluff that provides a mechanical bonus to a player.

I don't know what the right answer is. Perhaps there isn't one. But I'm certainly enjoying this discussion.


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## malraux (Mar 25, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> Only? So 1E through 3.5 were not balanced with regard to any type of followers or hirelings?



WRT both types of balancing, that sounds reasonable.


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## Falling Icicle (Mar 26, 2008)

I don't think you can't simplify combat in this game to merely being an economy of actions. It is much more complex than that. This is thinking of combat in D&D as more of a boardgame, where everyone's turns should be perfectly fair and balanced, rather than a roleplaying game, where there are many other factors to consider. It's not just an economy of actions, it's an economy where actions are only one of many commodities. Encounter and daily powers are also very important commodities in 4th edition. An ability which grants a player extra actions isn't necessarily unbalanced if he had to pay a daily power to get it, for example. There's also exp and monetary costs, ritual costs, etc. 

And I think the most important thing to consider is the roleplaying "cost." People in real life can raise armies, build-up nations, or lead masses into religious observance. Why shouldn't an epic fantasy hero be able to do such things? Certainly it shouldn't be easy, and alot of it depends on the style of game you're running. But hey, if your player manages to convince someone to follow you through roleplaying, or manages to tame and train a dire bear, why should you be no better off for it? Why should that henchmen or pet not be able to fight for you?

I think a large part of the problem with minions in 3rd edition was that it was tied to class abilities (or the leadership feat). The two biggest problems with this is that only some people had access to minions and that they were guaranteed. If everyone has the opportunity to get minions, rather than just druids, rangers, wizards, etc, the so-called economy of actions remains intact. Fighters and Warlords can recruit cohorts, Clerics can call upon angels, Druids can get all their furry little friends, and Wizards can enslave elementals or demons to serve them. If everyone can get minions, then everyone is happy. There isn't a balance issue when everyone has the opportunity to get followers. But it should be just that, an opportunity, not a handout or class feature. If getting an animal companion is a class feature, than clearly all memebers of that class will have one. If they don't, they're gimping themselves. 

I think companions should be mostly a roleplaying thing. If you want a dire bear, go out and find one, tame it and spend the time to train it. If you want cohorts, go do what is necessary in roleplaying to obtain them. These things should never, IMO, be tied to a feat or class feature. If a player spends a feat on leadership, he then has good reason to feel entitled to those servants. They are, effectively, part of his character. Likewise with an animal companion, familiar, etc. And then we often hand-wave away the roleplaying aspect. Those followers just appear out of thin air, or you can just pray for a new animal companion if it dies, rather than having to go to the work to get a new one. Having companions as a class feature makes them an entitlement, rather than something you have to work for. And doing that removes what is perhaps the best way to balance them.

I don't think having minions should be a default assumption. They can and should have drawbacks. Pets have to be cared for, and especially large and powerful ones, like bears, aren't always able to accompany their masters. They may not fit in the narrow hallway or be able to cross the rickety bridge. My group came across these situations quite often. With followers, there are logistic and morale concerns. How do you feed your army? How do you keep them loyal? How do you get them to accompany you on hellish adventures? Even the most disciplined fighting fource will be reluctant to follow a hero into one of the nine hells on some suicidal quest. And summoned creatures, which would be the most powerful minions, could carry other risks, such as breaking free of the summoner's control. Just as obtaining minions should be, IMO, a roleplaying concern, maintaining them is also something that should require effort. Not to the point that they aren't worth having, but enough that they aren't taken for granted.

I am against minions simply giving bonuses to their master. This is just too unbelievable for my tastes. A necromancer raises the dead to fight for him, not give him a +X bonus to his own attacks. That said, a necromancer class could still be balanced, especially if his own spells were weaker then Wizard spells. Perhaps the zombies he calls to crawl up out of the ground follow the minion rules, and die in one hit. I would prefer this to apply to temporary zombies created by an encounter/daily power, rather than those created by rituals, however. Ritually animated dead should be alot tougher, but this can be balanced by the cost of the ritual to create them.

I'm not necessarily against the idea of concentration being required to control summoned minions. However, I think that this should only apply to creatures summoned with an encounter/daily power, rather than long-term summons conjured by a ritual. I could certainly envision a daily power that allows a Wizard to summon an elemental for an encounter, but he has to spend his standard action to sustain it. Such an elemental should be quite powerful, though. If he has to give up his own actions, and a daily power, the minion should be quite impressive. 

Ritual minions shouldn't require any action on the part of the master to control, save perhaps a minor action to direct them in combat. This could be balanced because you have to pay for this in the cost of the ritual, take the risk that the creature may break free and eat you if you don't overcome its will during the summoning process, and also the fact that the creature won't likely be too happy to be enslaved by magic, and may later seek vengeance. Sure, go ahead and summon that Pit Fiend. Just be prepared for the terrible revenge it will certainly seek after its term of service is up, and that's if you manage to subjugate it in the first place.


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## small pumpkin man (Mar 26, 2008)

Falling Icicle said:
			
		

> I don't think you can't simplify combat in this game to merely being an economy of actions. It is much more complex than that. This is thinking of combat in D&D as more of a boardgame, where everyone's turns should be perfectly fair and balanced, rather than a roleplaying game, where there are many other factors to consider. It's not just an economy of actions, it's an economy where actions are only one of many commodities. Encounter and daily powers are also very important commodities in 4th edition. An ability which grants a player extra actions isn't necessarily unbalanced if he had to pay a daily power to get it, for example. There's also exp and monetary costs, ritual costs, etc.
> 
> And I think the most important thing to consider is the roleplaying "cost." People in real life can raise armies, build-up nations, or lead masses into religious observance. Why shouldn't an epic fantasy hero be able to do such things? Certainly it shouldn't be easy, and alot of it depends on the style of game you're running. But hey, if your player manages to convince someone to follow you through roleplaying, or manages to tame and train a dire bear, why should you be no better off for it? Why should that henchmen or pet not be able to fight for you?
> 
> ...



Quick points.

1)Roleplaying penalties shouldn't be used by game designers to restrict combat bonuses, this restricts what can be done with the system.
2)Different classes should not get substantially different bonuses from cash, as this restricts what can be done with the system.
3)Minions which aren't class abilities aren't minions, they're NPCs. The suggestions apply to characters who gain minions as class abilities, not necessarily to horses, or allies you gain through the plot. (although requiring a minor action to control an animal doesn't seem to crazy)
4)A large part of the problem is that animal companions slow down play, giving them to everyone would make this much, much worse.
5)A large part of the problem with summoning in 3.x is that while it is often strong, not only is it clunky, but the summoned creatures rarely have interesting abilities, they're often just there to add more bodies. Requiring the caster to spend their actions to give the creature actions will allow the creature to have actually interesting things to do, while keeping fiddlyness down to minimum.


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## WhatGravitas (Mar 26, 2008)

Majoru Oakheart said:
			
		

> The only real way to do it and keep balance is to sacrifice your own actions for theirs.



True, but that can cause annoyances - flavour-wise - for some people, if it's done on a regular basis. I think a workable solution would be:

Take the average number of rounds of an encounter for the level the summon is usually used.

 Then make the summoning process half that long - on average, you should come out even with the total actions (but leave a move action to move around).

This solution has the benefit, that it packages it possibly a bit neater (flavour-wise), rewards tactics (if you can stall the encounter, you get a net plus of actions), but also makes it risky, since you pre-pay the actions. The drawback is: The player twiddles his fingers while he summons.

This is, of course, only useful for in-combat summons. Long-term summons and hirelings work best as NPC, I think. The only thing is: Animal companions and familars. :/

Cheers, LT.


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## KidSnide (Mar 26, 2008)

I suspect a key aspect of this is to balance the action economy with the feel that the summoned creature is really an independent creature.

For example, you could have a Guardian Hound, that is either a summoned spirit hound on an actual animal companion.  Presumably, this would either require a ritual (with a costly material component) or a feat (which requires finding an actual dog to train).  The Hound will follow you around, taking up a space on the board, but requires no action.  

Whenever the master is attacked with melee the hound will automatically attack the entity threatening its master on the master's turn.  Sure, this is an extra action, but it is really no different in spirit from a warding spell or an aura ability that damages enemies when they approach.  (Alternatively, this could take a minor action.)  With a standard action, the master can point out an enemy and say "sick em", at which point the Hound charges the target and continues to attack until the enemy dies.  This is not really all that different than an attack with continuing damage, except that the enemy can get rid of it by killing the hound instead of making a save.  (Plus it forfeits your "aura" defense.)

Such a rule takes the action economy into account, but doesn't completely give up on the idea that this hound is an actual creature in the world, as opposed to simply some sort of aura.

Alternatively, you could imagine a Sha'ir class (genie summoner) whose principal class ability is to summon a genie of appropriate power.  Sure, such a character could send the genie off to fight while using his pitiful remaining skills, but the real power of the Sha'ir is to use his standard (and, I suppose, minor) actions to make the genie do all sorts of cool things, like fight stronger or cast special genie spells.  (Presumably, such a class would have a potentially expensive ritual way of replacing a dead genie between encounters, but if you kill a sha'ir's genie, you've nuked much of his power at least for that battle.)

Of course, you could also go all the way with an Elemental Summoner who has a selection of lesser wizard-type attack spells, but where a portion of the character's daily and encounter abilities come from summoning a particularly powerful entity, the control of which requires all of the Elemental Summoner's standard actions.  An Elemental Summoner's enemies would naturally have the choice between trying to defeat the summoned creature or ignoring him to go after the relatively vulnerable Summoner himself.  Aside from this last bit (where the summoner stays on the board), this kind of summoning isn't all that different from the Druid that transforms herself into the a creature with a different set of stats.

I certainly agree with the original point that the action economy is a critical consideration with "extra action" powers.  However, the point of these examples is to show that you can have the game-feel of summoned creatures (with their own stats and spot on the board), AND an intelligent consideration of the action economy.  There are a lot of ways to give the "right level" of master action dependency without forcing every summoned creature into either a character-replacement (like the elemental summoner) or a pure mechanical effect (the summoned creature that gives you a +2 flanking bonus, but never ever takes an independent action).


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## RodneyThompson (Mar 26, 2008)

KidSnide said:
			
		

> I certainly agree with the original point that the action economy is a critical consideration with "extra action" powers.  However, the point of these examples is to show that you can have the game-feel of summoned creatures (with their own stats and spot on the board), AND an intelligent consideration of the action economy.  There are a lot of ways to give the "right level" of master action dependency without forcing every summoned creature into either a character-replacement (like the elemental summoner) or a pure mechanical effect (the summoned creature that gives you a +2 flanking bonus, but never ever takes an independent action).




And I think this is absolutely right. There's a wide, wide array of ways this can be done. I hope people will note that the economy of actions is just one facet of a game system, whether it be D&D or a board game or a TCG or whatever, and by no means should the discussion exclude other considerations. 

I do think the economy of actions is far more important than the consideration it usually gets, however. Your examples are some good ways to be mindful of the economy of actions while at the same time getting the effect you want. And by no means would I advocate treating followers as just a floating bonus (unless I had a damn good reason to do so), and I think there's definitely room for creating a real, fully-statted summoned creature that also keeps with the balance on the economy of actions. 

The whole purpose of the original blog post was merely to highlight my thoughts on the value of actions across all games. 



			
				Falling Icicle said:
			
		

> I don't think you can't simplify combat in this game to merely being an economy of actions. It is much more complex than that. This is thinking of combat in D&D as more of a boardgame, where everyone's turns should be perfectly fair and balanced, rather than a roleplaying game, where there are many other factors to consider. It's not just an economy of actions, it's an economy where actions are only one of many commodities. Encounter and daily powers are also very important commodities in 4th edition. An ability which grants a player extra actions isn't necessarily unbalanced if he had to pay a daily power to get it, for example. There's also exp and monetary costs, ritual costs, etc.




Yes, I agree with almost every statement you make in there (with one exception). Nowhere in this discussion did I intent to give the impression that the economy of actions trumps all. However, I do disagree that we shouldn't try and make everyone's turn balanced against everyone else's. Balanced doesn't always mean equal, but if you throw action balance to the wind then it gets out of hand in a hurry. It doesn't make it a boardgame to try and balance people's actions against one another, it makes it a roleplaying game that has some sense of balance in the action economy.


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## Graf (Mar 26, 2008)

Saishu_Heiki said:
			
		

> ..., not watching the druid perform an intricate interpretive dance with her summons and companions and cohorts.



Hehe. Too funny.
Now for the badger's solo interpretive rendition of swan lake...
(_animal growth_ed badger minces around the clearing)


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## TwinBahamut (Mar 26, 2008)

Well, I had something of an epiphany regarding how I would like the summoned monster/hireling/familiar problem to be solved. This might take a while and end up as a wall of text, so bear with me.

First, I think there should be an absolute and clear separation of every kind ally creature into a limited set of distinct categories. A summoned genie is not the same thing as a hired torch-bearer or the Fighter's riding gryphon, so they should not be covered by the same rules. I think there should be four categories: Cohorts, Mounts, Companions, and Summoned Creatures, each of which is handled differently by the rules.

Cohorts are all of the PCs' NPC allies, hired muscle, and other independent beings. Frankly, I don't think these kind of characters should be tied to PC character creation at all, and I think things like the Leadership Feat in 3E were a serious mistake. These kinds of characters should exist only as NPCs controlled by the DM, run using the same rules as other NPCs and monsters. A PC might hire a guy to carry a torch into battle, but once there the torch-bearer is just another character being run by the DM. The only issue here is making sure that such characters are easy for the DM to run (which 4E seems to be addressing quite well).

Mounts are, well, mounts, creatures that the PCs and NPCs use to move around. As a whole, I think the actual "actions" of a mount should be abstracted away. Just to keep things simple, I think it is best if the game just assumes that the mount's movement capability replaces the PC's, and in doing so it treats the mount like a piece of equipment. If a mount has abilities _other_ than a movement capability, it should be treated like a combination mount/companion, and follow the rules of both. I think the ability to ride a mount should be linked to character creation, but not mounts themselves.

Companions are a mix of animal companions (including loyal pets), familiars, and various other creatures that add to a PC's combat options. I think they should obey the following rules: 1) Companions are _always_ assumed to be in the PC's square in combat. 2) Companions offer some passive benefit (like a bonus to certain kinds of skills) while they are with their PC. 3) By using a minor action, a PC can direct his Companion to use one of its Powers to help the master. 4) Companions are acquired through feats/class abilities, and can't be obtained by just buying one. 5) A character can only have one Companion.

A few examples of a companion and its powers may be as follows:

*Wolf Companion* (Heroic)
Grants a +5 bonus to your passive perception score.
Allows you to track as if you had the scent ability.

Attack: +7

Wolf's Leg Bite (Encounter * Minor * Companion * Melee)
Your Wolf Companion bites at the leg of an enemy, attempting to throw him off balance.
Wolf's Attack vs. AC, melee range
Hit: You gain Combat Advantage against the target.

Wolf's Fang Rush (Enounter * Minor * Companion * Melee)
Your Wolf Companion dashes at a foe and strikes with its teeth and claws before returning to your side.
Wolf's Attack vs. AC, range 3 squares
Hit: Deal 2d6 + 6 damage to target.


*Fairy Familiar* (Paragon, Familiar)
Adds +10 healing to your Healing Surges

Attack: +12

Fairy's Aura (Encounter * Minor * Companion * Utility)
Your Fairy Familiar creates an aura of protective magic around you.
Effect: You gain +4 on all defenses against Force effects.

Deliver Touch Spell (At Will * Minor * Companion * Utility)
Your Fairy Familiar carries one of your touch spells to an ally or an enemy. Can only be used if you have a touch spell ready.
Fairy's Attack vs. Reflex, range 4 squares
Hit: Your touch spell is activated against the target.


I hope those examples get the idea across... I still am not sure how HP and defenses would work for mounts and companions (though I would prefer it if they just assumed all attacks were directed against the PC and his defenses and AC, just to keep it simple), but I think the idea is sound.

Finally, Summoned Monsters. Overall, I think that summoned creatures should require the PC to sustain the summoning with Standard actions, but should be accordingly powerful. Beyond that, they should be fully-fleshed out monsters that are controlled by the PC. I don't think they need any more or less complexity than that.

I think that covers it all...


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## KidSnide (Mar 26, 2008)

Moridin said:
			
		

> I do think the economy of actions is far more important than the consideration it usually gets, however.



Well, I certainly agree that the economy of actions is critical.  It is difficult to overstate impact that 3.5E made by changing the Haste effect, at least in my campaigns.  An extra action was so powerful that the most important question in a 3.0E fight became which side could dispel the other side's Haste effect first.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 26, 2008)

MO said:
			
		

> I don't want to make 30 rolls for my followers each round of combat.




What makes you think that people with mooks won't be able to make use of mook-rules (or to use 4e terms, that people with minions won't be able to make use of minion rules) for resolving these quickly?

Abstracting the character's action (while still giving them an impact) is pretty useful.



			
				Twin Bahamut said:
			
		

> Cohorts are all of the PCs' NPC allies, hired muscle, and other independent beings. Frankly, I don't think these kind of characters should be tied to PC character creation at all, and I think things like the Leadership Feat in 3E were a serious mistake.




I disagree, mostly because the idea of having an effective sidekick who can hold his own is a really cool idea. As a DM, it allows me to add a lot of richness to the world, to give the party a "near-premenant" NPC, and it allows the PC who has such a guy along to add dimension to his character's relationship to the world (are they a hired mercenary? are they your backup singer? are they your lover?).



> 1) Companions are always assumed to be in the PC's square in combat. 2) Companions offer some passive benefit (like a bonus to certain kinds of skills) while they are with their PC. 3) By using a minor action, a PC can direct his Companion to use one of its Powers to help the master. 4) Companions are acquired through feats/class abilities, and can't be obtained by just buying one. 5) A character can only have one Companion.




Not bad, though I think the "use a minor action to use a power" means that, again, a character with a companion will have more actions per round than a character without one, since they're basically spending a minor action to gain a "standard" action from a limited selection. And this doesn't really solve the problem of cohorts ("getting rid of them" isn't an ideal option for me).


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## Harshax (Mar 26, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Not bad, though I think the "use a minor action to use a power" means that, again, a character with a companion will have more actions per round than a character without one, since they're basically spending a minor action to gain a "standard" action from a limited selection. And this doesn't really solve the problem of cohorts ("getting rid of them" isn't an ideal option for me).




Tell me, if you tell the player across the table to 'Use this power on that guy', did you just gain a standard action by using a free action?  If you can make that argument viable, then maybe I'll agree that minions or cohorts unbalance the action economy.

I think the action economy is something that is going to have to be balanced by those that have a stake in it: the DM & players, and not by rules that enforce a false economy.

If a player has two cohorts, and the other player has none, he should be encouraged to let the other player control him in combat. This encourages teamwork and gameplay.  If, on the otherhand, you have confrontational/bickering players, you as DM should enforce silly rules that ensure everyone gets equal time behind the d20.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 26, 2008)

> Tell me, if you tell the player across the table to 'Use this power on that guy', did you just gain a standard action by using a free action? If you can make that argument viable, then maybe I'll agree that minions or cohorts unbalance the action economy.




That's not really a valid comparison, because giving the player accross the table some advice doesn't increase the number of things you can do (because it doesn't give them any extra actions), whereas having a wolf follow you around who attacks on a minor action lets you turn a minor action into a standard action, giving you, say, two attacks in a round, ramping up your damage (even if it's "really" the wolf doing it, there's not much meta-level distinction). 



> If a player has two cohorts, and the other player has none, he should be encouraged to let the other player control him in combat.




I kind of disagree because of what Moridin said above:



			
				Moridin said:
			
		

> In my thoughts, if you expend a permanent character resource--feat, talent, class feature, power, whatever--to acquire a cohort, animal companion, familiar, or something else that adds to the economy of actions, you should be in control of it.




It's also usually a better idea to work with a player's psychology than to try and change their mind, and when I take a power, I don't expect it to benefit Paul at the table more than it benefits Me at the table, or I'd ask Paul to take it.


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## Harshax (Mar 26, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> That's not really a valid comparison, because giving the player accross the table some advice doesn't increase the number of things you can do (because it doesn't give them any extra actions), whereas having a wolf follow you around who attacks on a minor action lets you turn a minor action into a standard action, giving you, say, two attacks in a round, ramping up your damage (even if it's "really" the wolf doing it, there's not much meta-level distinction).




I think it is a very valid comparison. Tactical and Charismatic players tend to dominate a combat, where other player's actions revolve around the  [oldschool_cred]Party Caller[/oldschool_cred]. I've done it, and I've seen it in game.

Getting a cohort, or mercenary, or hireling shouldn't default to the expenditure of some commodity like feats, or abilities (like in 3E). It should be driven by roleplay.

My suggestion is very elegant - On the one hand, it alleviates the absurdity of character & cohort operating in perfect synchronicity all the time, while at the same time helping promote the NPC as a unique individual. If each player gets a turn to run an extra, with a little guideline from the extra's master, then everyone gets a share in the surplus actions.

Still, this doesn't address summons or trained animals, but I don't think there is or should be a single solution for all types of extras.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 26, 2008)

> Getting a cohort, or mercenary, or hireling shouldn't default to the expenditure of some commodity like feats, or abilities (like in 3E). It should be driven by roleplay.




That's kind of a big can of worms. To limit it, from my perspective, any increase in character power should be able to be tracked mechanically, and should not be the province of a particular player personality.

Having a reliable sidekick or adventuring trainee or something by your side is a cool idea, and I'd like to see the mechanics support and embrace the idea rather than telling me to make stuff up through roleplaying. As a player, I want that to be part of my power. As a DM, I don't want to be forced to make up a sidekick for a character who wants one. 



> On the one hand, it alleviates the absurdity of character & cohort operating in perfect synchronicity all the time, while at the same time helping promote the NPC as a unique individual. If each player gets a turn to run an extra, with a little guideline from the extra's master, then everyone gets a share in the surplus actions.




If a PC druid is followed around by a pack of 10 wolves, I don't want to spend twice the amount of time rolling for her wolves than I do for my character.

It's a good fix for the problem, and I agree that letting each player run an extra means that no one is left out, but each player running an extra has it's own problems. For instance:

1: It doubles the size and nearly doubles the power of the party.
2: Who those NPC's "belong" to might lead to me playing other people's companions more than my own characters.
3: It can still bog down play with the number of extra dice rolls, slowing the game significantly with all those extra actions to resolve.
4: The whole player psychology bugaboo of wanting a second character as a part of the first character's power.

I think there are ways to avoid the problem that don't lead to these secondary problems, and that "spreading around who controls the NPC" is a good fix, but not something that I'd use from the get-go because of these secondary problems.


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## Harshax (Mar 26, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> 1: It doubles the size and nearly doubles the power of the party.
> 2: Who those NPC's "belong" to might lead to me playing other people's companions more than my own characters.
> 3: It can still bog down play with the number of extra dice rolls, slowing the game significantly with all those extra actions to resolve.
> 4: The whole player psychology bugaboo of wanting a second character as a part of the first character's power.




[don't interpret my brevity as confrontational - posting just before I leave for work. I'm enjoying this conversation immensely]

1 - More rope if you ask me. The players seek power in response to threat, and the DM responds to increases in power with greater threat. That's D&D, and isn't a problem inherent in the cohort system, but the game overall.

2 - That's ok. I for one enjoy a change of pace now and them, and have swapped characters for the fun of it. I've also allowed players to control NPCs so they get a taste of other styles of play. I don't see the problem there either. Autonomous extras (retainers, hirelings, henchman, cohorts), like PCs, do not always perform optimally in every situation. Roleplay may be enhanced using this method.  Say the wizard's sidekick suffers a grievous wound while played by another player. 'My mind tells me it isn't Redgar's fault that Mialee died, but my heart holds a grudge against him for commanding her to engage with a touch spell'

3 - This type of gameplay is influenced by the desire of the DM and the theme of hir setting. If you don't want the players in control of loads of extras, tailor the game so that players aren't always on the look out for meat shields and enhancements to abilities they lack. This often occurs in solo or small party play, where the DM ensures the characters have a ready supply of healing potions is one example.

4 - That is a problem, I agree. I don't particularly like greedy players who want to hoard the spotlight, but pointing to the RAW isn't necessarily the best method for controlling this type of bad behavior.  Your better off pointing to a House Rule, if you find yourself in circumstances where you feel like you have to play with players not fully compatible with your style.


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## Wolfwood2 (Mar 26, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> That's kind of a big can of worms. To limit it, from my perspective, any increase in character power should be able to be tracked mechanically, and should not be the province of a particular player personality.
> 
> Having a reliable sidekick or adventuring trainee or something by your side is a cool idea, and I'd like to see the mechanics support and embrace the idea rather than telling me to make stuff up through roleplaying. As a player, I want that to be part of my power. As a DM, I don't want to be forced to make up a sidekick for a character who wants one.




I think there's a difference between having the mechanics support a cohort and having cohorts be a "character power".  I think it should be done in a similiar manner to the guidelines for magical items.  The rules should tell you about what power level a cohort should be to contribute to the group without overshadowing a PC.  The rules should tell the DM how adding a cohort will effect his game and advise on ways to handle it smoothly.

That's a separate matter from, "take a feat, get a cohort".  For one thing, I've noticed Leadership oftentimes discourages a particular NPC tfrom being adopted by the group as a whole.  It's too self-conscious that the NPC "belongs" to a particular player.  As has been pointed out, there is a long-standing tradition of the DM adding an NPC cleric to parties that don't have one.  Though that may vanish in 4E, I think the principle that an NPC can travel with the party without increasing the power of a particular character is a good one.

In short, guidelines good.  Hard rules of, "Add charisma bonus plus level + factors = number of followers per this table" bad.

I do make exceptions for things like mounts and familiars, which aren't expected to act independently most of the time.


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## Benimoto (Mar 26, 2008)

I think the blog post is a pretty interesting and thoughtful exploration of the problems inherent in the action economy, even if I don't agree with all of Rodney's conclusions.

I've definitely had a problem with players having so many cohorts, animal companions, etc that the game bogged down.  In fact, in my home group, we have a house rule that one particular player is never allowed more than one follower of any type, because otherwise he has a whole menagerie.  It's kind of problem, since in Robin Laws's terms, he's definitely a specialist, where in every game in every campaign he wants to play a popular leader-type with a dozen lackeys to do the dirty work for him.  Maybe the warlord in 4e will satisfy him.

I like the vast bulk of the article, talking about various complex boardgames and how the number of players affected how the game played.  I can see how D&D 4 is trying to manage this by explicitly balancing their combat system for party vs. group instead of party vs. single monster.

Some of the friction about cohorts and other followers comes about from how they're presented.  It wouldn't really be acceptable to give a player a feat that gives them an extra standard action each turn, much less a whole turn.  Even if we allowed that, would we say that because that player's contributing that much more in combat that he should have a greater share of the treasure and XP?

As 3rd evolved, we saw big changes in how the "follower herder" class, the Druid, changed.  IIRC, the initial rule was that the Druid could have up to twice her hit dice in animal followers.  Then, Masters of the Wild introduced errata that said the Druid should limit herself to one or two animals.  Finally, we saw the 3.5 system of a single animal companion.  I wouldn't be surprised if the system continued to evolve in 4th edition.

I don't really like the artificiality of the rules Rodney's proposing either.  Still, I see the game mechanical sense behind them.  I hope they come up with something that reconciles those two concerns.


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## Stalker0 (Mar 26, 2008)

One I had is that might do away with combat nature of animal companions and relegate them to a non-combat role, perhaps involving rituals.

For example, the druid might have a ritual that lets them see through the eyes of all the wolves in the forest, or one that has a bear bring her a meal for the day, etc.


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## Gentlegamer (Mar 26, 2008)

Stalker0 said:
			
		

> One I had is that might do away with combat nature of animal companions and relegate them to a non-combat role, perhaps involving rituals.
> 
> For example, the druid might have a ritual that lets them see through the eyes of all the wolves in the forest, or one that has a bear bring her a meal for the day, etc.



I like how you think!


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## Wolfwood2 (Mar 26, 2008)

Benimoto said:
			
		

> As 3rd evolved, we saw big changes in how the "follower herder" class, the Druid, changed.  IIRC, the initial rule was that the Druid could have up to twice her hit dice in animal followers.  Then, Masters of the Wild introduced errata that said the Druid should limit herself to one or two animals.  Finally, we saw the 3.5 system of a single animal companion.  I wouldn't be surprised if the system continued to evolve in 4th edition.




Actually, I'd say "finally" for the druid in third edition was the PHBII option for druids.  The animal companion option was dropped entirely and shapeshifting altered to give some very specific bonuses rather than 'anything with the animal type'.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 26, 2008)

Crazy Jerome said:
			
		

> 2. Groups that have decided they want multiple characters controlled by players have already accepted the divide.  So give them tools to embrace it.  For example, specifically reject the idea that a cohort bought by a feat is controlled by the player of the character that spent the feat.  You buy a cohort for your character, which any warm body at the table can then play (including you), as necessary.  Same with summoned creatures, hirelings, whatever. Heck, it need not even be the same player handling them from one scene to the next.  *While you are at it, throw a few neutral NPCs or even foes into the players' laps.*  After all, the point is to keep the _players_ engaged.




Something you said here is an idea I have toyed with, and so far all my players think it's really fun.

*While you are at it, throw a few neutral NPCs or even foes into the players' laps.*

I have had fights where my 4 or 5 players encounterd 3 dozen orcs (for example). Rather than have all my players sit there and watch me move orcs around the battlmat and wait for me to roll dozens and dozens of dice (attacks, damages, spot checks, etc.), I have assigned certain individual orcs or small groups of orcs to each player.

Usually, I make sure the assignments, at least initially, are set up so that the player handling the orcs is not expected to attack himself - if he is on the right side of the party formation, I let him handle a few orcs on the left side.

On the orcs turn, I tell the players to simultaneously move their orcs and make attack rolls. I usually don't tell them the attack modifiers - it's not hard for me to know the orc is +2, so when a player says this orc rolled a 15 against Joe, and Joe says his AC is 18, I can say the orc missed.

I trust the players to make smart decisions for their orcs. They don't deliberately move to provoke AoOs unless there is a good reason to do so.

I lay out ground rules at the start of the encounter: "Joe, your orcs have bows and are instructed to snipe spellcasters first, or anyone sneaking around trying to outflank the orcs in the melee second" and "Fred, your orcs are the brute squad. Their mission is to find the toughest looking foe and engage him and take him out, without sacrificing themselves to do it. These two have polearms and will use them to trip, these two have 2h axes and will use them to hack".

I've never had anyone take advantage of it by setting up their orcs to die horribly. I've never had any problems with it at all.

The players have lots of fun trying to wipe out their buddies. It's bragging rites. "Ha ha, Joe, my orc wasted you!". Lots of fun for everyone. After the fight, everyone has laughs about the funny things they did to each other.

And no, it's not always just orcs.

From the sound of it, with 4e having many more monsters per encounter, this might be possible to do more often.

I bring this up because while it doesn't address the econoby of actions issue where one side of the battle has more actions than another side, it definitely makes sure the players number of actions is quite high. A guy moving a druid and 2 animals has 3x the actions of someone moving a fighter. But they both have 4 orcs, then the difference is 7 to 5. Not even 2x the actions anymore.


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## RigaMortus2 (Mar 26, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> The issue I have with this type of approach is that it is so bla.




Depends on how you DM it.  When I did this, I still had them in init (at the end of init by default) so after the PCs went, I described what happened with each side skirmish.  It was all flavor text, but we did't just "by pass" them.



			
				KarinsDad said:
			
		

> What did the hireling do last battle. Hold off an enemy. The battle before that. Hold off an enemy etc., etc., etc.




But that is basically what they do anyway.  Sure, they can stand next to you and someone can make attacks rolls and such, but when it comes down to it, they are "holding off the enemy".  Actually, they can be whatever you want.  They can be pushing the enemy back, they can be expending the enemies resources, hiting the enemy, making the enemy withdraw, they could fall in battle themselves.  Does it really matter if there is a d20 roll before you describe the flavor text and end result?



			
				KarinsDad said:
			
		

> Not only is there no flavor there, there is very little in the way of results (outside of hireling falls, hireling flees, or NPC falls, or NPC flees, or a tie). There's no reason for the players to cheer the hireling ever.




Again, flavor is up to how the DM describes what the NPCs are doing in their little side skirmish.  If an NPC falls, the PCs can move over to them and heal him and get them back up and into combat.  If you made rolls individually for the NPCs, just how it is now in 3E, you have the same "fall or flee" result, except you make a die roll before hand (and actually, I am still suggesting there is some sort of die roll, just not the traditional attack roll).



			
				KarinsDad said:
			
		

> The reason to have additional allies like hirelings and such is to add to the overall game, not to run a bunch of stuff off stage. Players acquire them to be part of the group. At least IMO.
> 
> I tend to not run large scale battles for the same reason.




If you had the choice between (a) not running large scale battles because it is too time consuming to make individual rolls for each NPC and (b) running large scale battles w/o having to make all those roles, why wouldn't you pick b?



			
				KarinsDad said:
			
		

> Once in a blue moon when the situation dictates it, but not often. Who cares about a bunch of NPCs fighting off stage? One might as well not even have the NPC in the group if there is no chance for the entire table to cheer when the NPC hireling gets lucky and chops off the head off his enemy once in a while.




I'm not saying the NPC can't lop someone's head off on occassion.  There would have to be some sort of rules for it, but something quicker than attack roll vs defense.  This would fall under the "npc falls" option you echoed above.


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## TwinBahamut (Mar 26, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> I disagree, mostly because the idea of having an effective sidekick who can hold his own is a really cool idea. As a DM, it allows me to add a lot of richness to the world, to give the party a "near-premenant" NPC, and it allows the PC who has such a guy along to add dimension to his character's relationship to the world (are they a hired mercenary? are they your backup singer? are they your lover?).



Well, I like having such characters, too. However, I just don't think such characters should be tied to player mechanics, or should be controlled by the players. I like the "revolving door of NPCs" approach, in which the PCs may always have NPCs following them around, but with a different set of NPCs for each adventure. Also, I think linking NPCs to feats and class abilities can be more restrictive than helpful. However, I can see why you might disagree.




> Not bad, though I think the "use a minor action to use a power" means that, again, a character with a companion will have more actions per round than a character without one, since they're basically spending a minor action to gain a "standard" action from a limited selection. And this doesn't really solve the problem of cohorts ("getting rid of them" isn't an ideal option for me).



I don't see how this is true... As I intended it, a character will use a minor action to get a minor action level of effect. It should have the same opportunity cost as any other minor action. The person with a Companion should simply have more options than one without (which I think is appropriate).

Also, getting rid of Cohorts _is_ a solution to the problem, it just isn't one you like. I like it, but I don't think I can convince you to agree with me, so I will let it drop.


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## pemerton (Mar 27, 2008)

Falling Icicle said:
			
		

> Ritual minions shouldn't require any action on the part of the master to control, save perhaps a minor action to direct them in combat. This could be balanced because you have to pay for this in the cost of the ritual, take the risk that the creature may break free and eat you if you don't overcome its will during the summoning process, and also the fact that the creature won't likely be too happy to be enslaved by magic, and may later seek vengeance. Sure, go ahead and summon that Pit Fiend. Just be prepared for the terrible revenge it will certainly seek after its term of service is up, and that's if you manage to subjugate it in the first place.



This approach is not free of potential problems. For example, in my experience when the Demon turns it is often closer to the front line Fighters than it is to its Summoner, which can result in them being cut down as they try to protect the Summoner from (what has now become) one of the more dangerous foes on the battlefield.

I don't necessarily subscribe to the general proposition that "mechanical benefits" cannot be balance with "roleplaying penalties", in part because the division between "mechanics" and "roleplaying" is often not all that clear. But in this particular case I think there is a danger that the costs of the mechanical benefits may be displaced onto other player's characters.

They also run the risk of disrupting the campaign in general, which is also highly undesirable in most cases.


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## Kaisoku (Mar 27, 2008)

Number of Actions in combat is something that I've been thinking over since Mutants and Masterminds d20, where a lot of combat effects (stuns, poisons, etc) were riders on attack actions and had stacking levels of effect.

Iterative attacks would ruin such a system because you could then break balance by getting full effects that weren't normally intended to be felt until up to 3 rounds later sometimes.

The fix to this (multiple attacks per round in a single attack action system), was to make the extra attacks do "more damage" on that one attack roll, with no added rider effects.


This brings us closer to the pre-3e combat concept where attacks in a round of combat were less about a single swing that either hits or misses, and more like a general melee with many swipes and swings (or possibilities of them) and the damage done is your total threat to the targets life.
This also went hand in hand with how hitpoints were supposed to be more abstract.


So TWF would give extra damage dice, but still only one attack roll. Having a cohort would give extra damage dice, with your one attack roll.
There were rules for "area attacks" as well, splitting damage dice around to the number of targets you were attacking basically... but all based on one attack roll still, just against multiple target Defenses in this case.
It's much easier to roll an extra 1d6 (or in some cases just adding +X typed damage) along with your damage dice than to have to roll extra attack rolls. And since you aren't rolling extra attack rolls for the NPC, the damage can be left lower.. it's sort of a mix between average damage (a lower level cohort would miss more and thus get less damage over time), and combat coordination (he uses your attacks to line up his, so misses will still happen if you miss). Yes it's a bit gamist, but it doesn't hurt my simulationist side too much (no more than making hitpoints abstract).

This doesn't help with mixed combat styles though. As in, a Wizard casting a spell while his summoned creatures do their thing. It doesn't make as much sense to "just add damage", especially if the caster isn't even doing a damage spell or anything that requires an attack roll. Then again, if the wizard didn't do an attack roll, then it's not adding much to add it back in (economy of time, still only one roll based on attack per round).

The other thing to consider is that when you start getting into large groups of creatures (like a druid's menagerie), it'd be near impossible to direct them all for different tasks in a 6 second round of time AND do something yourself to boot.
In these situations, it almost makes more sense to treat them as one entity. Like a giant swarm that covers an area... hell, you could almost make them "area effects". They either try attacking everyone around them, or one target simultaneously, but ultimately act like "added damage" to whatever actions the character is attempting this round.

As long as other characters are using up their Feats, Encounter and Daily choices for things that also add more damage (or the equivalent), then the person with more creatures isn't skyrocketing ahead.


The fact that all these things also add extra hitpoint pools (and thus added defense in a way), makes balance a bit tougher. Overall, a full blown NPC can be a VERY powerful addition to a class. It's like getting extra damage, defense, and utility all in one shot. The cohort can do damage, provide combat options (give up that extra damage to block or do some kind of combat action like a trip, still based on your attack roll of course), and soak up damage and get in the way (in the case of a disposable summons or a defender style mercenary/cohort).

For this complete package of benefits, it's definately more than just a single feat (TWF for added damage), or even at the cost of using a daily power. I'd have to know more about the progression of gaining abilities (at-will, encounter, daily, feats, etc) and what can be gained from them to fully figure out an adequate cost for these things.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Mar 27, 2008)

To keep the action economy intact, we could steal something from WoW. At least I think it is in WoW (Boring Story Short: Tried the game, didn't like the repetitiveness, stopped before anything interesting  could get me sucked in, just as I hoped  )
As far as I have heard, at a certain level, since a certain supplement/patch/update/expansion, characters get access to mounts. 

So, maybe there should just be a "Followers, Organizations and Nations" sourcebook by WotC that contains material for adding cohorts/followers to characters. 

It would be a group decision then to add cohorts to the game. And if they are added, everyone gets them, so there is no problem on the player vs player action economy issue, and the DM can adjust his adventures accordingly. 

(From the title of the book: Obviously, I would expect more then just a few rules for cohorts in such a book. I would like a book on building or becoming part of organisations, cults and nations for a game. I liked the general idea of affiliations as presented in the PHB II, but they came a little "to olate" and weren't really utilized much in the adventures...)


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## Fenes (Mar 27, 2008)

I handle the followers, summoned creatures etc. like this:

The GM runs them. Period. The PC can give orders (which costs actions past "attack" and such), but the GM handles them.

To lighten the load, followers often deal with minions in my battles, or are otherwise occupied (guarding/unlocking a door, etc.) while the PCs act against the main threats.


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## Wolfwood2 (Mar 27, 2008)

Fenes said:
			
		

> I handle the followers, summoned creatures etc. like this:
> 
> The GM runs them. Period. The PC can give orders (which costs actions past "attack" and such), but the GM handles them.




Isn't that kind of like playing poker with yourself?  I guess opinions differ, but I find running both sides of a battle to be kind of boring.


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## Wormwood (Mar 27, 2008)

Wolfwood2 said:
			
		

> Isn't that kind of like playing poker with yourself?  I guess opinions differ, but I find running both sides of a battle to be kind of boring.



If you think running both sides is boring, wait until you try _watching _ someone run both sides.


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## KarinsDad (Mar 27, 2008)

I think the author and many of the posters here are blowing the "actions per side per round" and "actions per player" way out of proportions here.

In 3E, what happens if the NPC Wizard casts Sleep on the PCs? He decreases their actions per round.

What happens if he casts Slow or Haste or Confusion?

What happens when a PC goes unconscious?

There are a lot of spells and activities outside of summoning spells which either increase or decrease the number of PCs or NPCs actions per round in 3E.

Do we want to get rid of all of these spells in 4E as well and just play a shoot them until they drop game? Do we want auto-Second Winds while unconscious, just so that the PC can get back up again and the player's turn does not get skipped? Do we want to take this "actions per round per side" issue to that level? Do we want to be playing Monopoly here so that every player gets his turn and each turn lasts about the same amount of time?

Personally, I think it is ok for each player to have one or two cohorts or companions and still be able to summon in a creature or two. I can see real issues if it gets to be more than this, but I think each DM can handle that by talking with his menagerie players and putting limits on it if it becomes a problem.


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## AllisterH (Mar 27, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> I think the author and many of the posters here are blowing the "actions per side per round" and "actions per player" way out of proportions here.
> 
> In 3E, what happens if the NPC Wizard casts Sleep on the PCs? He decreases their actions per round.
> 
> ...




?????

You honestly cant see the difference between the monster casting Sleep on the party and the situation where one guy plays a fighter and is adventuring with a druid, ranger and a wizard with their menagerie?

Come on Karnsdad, trying to belittle us with comments like this serves no purpose.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Mar 27, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> I think the author and many of the posters here are blowing the "actions per side per round" and "actions per player" way out of proportions here.
> 
> In 3E, what happens if the NPC Wizard casts Sleep on the PCs? He decreases their actions per round.
> 
> ...



Keep in mind that "Action-Denying" abilities are less prevalent in 4E, exactly because the designers identified them as a potential problem. 
Look at the conditions we know so far - very few of them make it impossible for a character to act, they typically just restrict the type of actions you can do. 
(From a player participation point of view: Even if your character actually is totally unable to act, you at least get to roll a save every round. Only if you are really dead it's over.)

You can still see it as over-blown (and maybe you're right), but it was one aspect that was identified as "unfun" in 3E. 



> There are a lot of spells and activities outside of summoning spells which either increase or decrease the number of PCs or NPCs actions per round in 3E.
> 
> Do we want to get rid of all of these spells in 4E as well and just play a shoot them until they drop game? Do we want auto-Second Winds while unconscious, just so that the PC can get back up again and the player's turn does not get skipped? Do we want to take this "actions per round per side" issue to that level? Do we want to be playing Monopoly here so that every player gets his turn and each turn lasts about the same amount of time?
> 
> Personally, I think it is ok for each player to have one or two cohorts or companions and still be able to summon in a creature or two. I can see real issues if it gets to be more than this, but I think each DM can handle that by talking with his menagerie players and putting limits on it if it becomes a problem.



The goal is not to remove such spells, but to find ways to create them without "breaking" the action economy in favor of the PCs?
How do you deal with it without one PC taking more spotlight then the rest? How do you handle it to ensure that the workload on the PC doesn't get too high? (Both are also concerns for the "special" player, the Dungeon Master.)


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## Fenes (Mar 27, 2008)

Wormwood said:
			
		

> If you think running both sides is boring, wait until you try _watching _ someone run both sides.




You don't watch it, that's the point: 

"While you go for the high priest and his bodyguard, the militia that followed you battle with his acolytes".

(combat scene between PCs and NPCs)

"As you stand over the bloody corpse of the evil high priest, the milita deals with the rest of the acolytes, most of which are dead or fleeing".

The focus in my game is on PC action, not NPC action. Mounts, cohorts, NPC followers, NPC allies and all take a backseat to PC actions. I want people to roleplay their individual player characters, not to run a bunch of chess pieces over a battlemat as an armchair general. If someone wants to control a direboar in a fight, then he can either directly control it with orders (thereby sacrifcing his own actions), or play a druid and wildshape into one. But everything that's not a PC is run by the GM in my game.


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## Steely Dan (Mar 27, 2008)

Does this have anything do with Frank Gambale's economy of movement technique?


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## Wormwood (Mar 27, 2008)

Fenes said:
			
		

> The focus in my game is on PC action, not NPC action. Mounts, cohorts, NPC followers, NPC allies and all take a backseat to PC actions. I want people to roleplay their individual player characters, not to run a bunch of chess pieces over a battlemat as an armchair general. If someone wants to control a direboar in a fight, then he can either directly control it with orders (thereby sacrifcing his own actions), or play a druid and wildshape into one. But everything that's not a PC is run by the GM in my game.



Wisdom there, and absolute agreement on my part. 

I misunderstood your original post, however. And I really have seen DMs roll dice for two sides of a combat before.


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## Fenes (Mar 27, 2008)

Wormwood said:
			
		

> Wisdom there, and absolute agreement on my part.
> 
> I misunderstood your original post, however. And I really have seen DMs roll dice for two sides of a combat before.




Oh, yes, I saw that too. Nothing like watching the DM roll, comment and detail the actions of 7 Dwarves in a fight against 30 Orcs.

Although I'd roll for NPCs if it became crucial or important - if the whole party is  unconscious or otherwise unable to take action and was sending a henchman to balance over a spiked ledge to drop the McGuffin into the lava, for example. Although I might just have a player make the roll at that point.

In a slightly less orthodox campaign however, where we rotate DM duties, often several times during a session, we have had good expereinces by having players whose characters are not involved in a scene take control of an NPC - especially if it is an NPC they created as DM themselves. It had the interesting effect that one NPC acting as an agent for one player character ended up, controlled by the same player, bailing on the PC when the NPC discovered a lot of treasure - as the player said (paraphrasing) "even if it hurts my PC, taking the treasure and running for it is what this NPC would do".


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## Gentlegamer (Mar 27, 2008)

Fenes said:
			
		

> You don't watch it, that's the point:
> 
> "While you go for the high priest and his bodyguard, the militia that followed you battle with his acolytes".
> 
> ...



A sensible way to handle the matter.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 27, 2008)

> "While you go for the high priest and his bodyguard, the militia that followed you battle with his acolytes".
> 
> (combat scene between PCs and NPCs)
> 
> "As you stand over the bloody corpse of the evil high priest, the milita deals with the rest of the acolytes, most of which are dead or fleeing".




The thing is, if I've spent some sort of resource to get the followers as part of my character concept, that isn't very satisfying for me. I want the followers to concretely add to my power, not just be background fluff.



> It would be a group decision then to add cohorts to the game. And if they are added, everyone gets them, so there is no problem on the player vs player action economy issue, and the DM can adjust his adventures accordingly.




This would preserve the action economy, and even give a bit of an older-edition feel to it.

Of course, it might give cohorts to people who don't want them, it might undermine the idea that the PC's are the main characters, it might bog down the game in "extra turns" (and thus extra choices and extra die rolls)...


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## Fenes (Mar 27, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> The thing is, if I've spent some sort of resource to get the followers as part of my character concept, that isn't very satisfying for me. I want the followers to concretely add to my power, not just be background fluff.




Well, usually, you don't spend a feat on followers in my games, they are acquired through actions in game. And, of course, they do add to a character's power - although mainly in a less detailed way, by taking care of minions, and by providing (usually lots) influence and power outside combat.
If someone takes a leadership feat, then we handle it by letting the player create the cohort, and by considering the cohort as loyal (to the death and such, unless specified otherwise). That's quite a difference from the rest of the "followers".
For summonned creatures, well - same as fireball, best used to take out a bunch of weak foes, just over time rather than instant.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 27, 2008)

> Well, usually, you don't spend a feat on followers in my games, they are acquired through actions in game.




Which means they are not the player's option, they are the DM's option.

Which, still, isn't very satisfying for me as a player OR a DM.


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## Stalker0 (Mar 27, 2008)

Fenes said:
			
		

> If someone takes a leadership feat, then we handle it by letting the player create the cohort, and by considering the cohort as loyal (to the death and such, unless specified otherwise). That's quite a difference from the rest of the "followers".




True, but the problem with that cohort still remains. I'll take one of worst case scenarios, you have a druid with leadership and a young druid acolyte (your cohort). So now you have 2 druids and 2 animal companions to dictate moves to each round. Further, the animals often have multiple attacks. So now you are figuring out spells to cast while rolling lots of attack rolls, and calculating all the damage. This can take a large amount of time, far more than other players.

Now in 4e, actions do seem quicker, so that would help somewhat. But there's still an underlying problem that with your feat not only have you acquired more power, but you have acquired more spotlight time.

The design question becomes, can we:

1) Provide a companion that has an insignificant amount of time dedicated to running its actions, so it does not greatly affect the economy of actions.
2) Provide a companion that provides a reasonable benefit, one that makes the companion worthwhile.
3) Within the system make the companions limitations believable enough, as supposed to just some mechanical handwave.

As this thread has indicated, from a design perspective this is VERY HARD thing to do.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 27, 2008)

Wormwood said:
			
		

> Wisdom there, and absolute agreement on my part.
> 
> I misunderstood your original post, however. And I really have seen DMs roll dice for two sides of a combat before.




Those are DMs who don't understand the difference between their "Story teller role" and "Story teller roll".

Hopefully the DMG will clarify this and help fledgling DMs understand this better.


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## Crazy Jerome (Mar 27, 2008)

> I bring this up because while it doesn't address the econoby of actions issue where one side of the battle has more actions than another side, it definitely makes sure the players number of actions is quite high. A guy moving a druid and 2 animals has 3x the actions of someone moving a fighter. But they both have 4 orcs, then the difference is 7 to 5. Not even 2x the actions anymore.




Yep, that is more or less the way we play, all the time.  Plus, with a group that has been together for awhile, you can tweak it even more. Druid always has a lot to do?  Don't give him as many orcs, or at least give him minions instead of brutes. One player really enjoys this, but another is overwhelmed or simply wants to focus on her character? Give the first extra and/or more complicated, and the second less orcs.

And again, if the players aren't willing to play multiple characters because they all want to focus on their PCs, then it doesn't help matters to have the extra characters and shuck them off on the DM or such.  About all you can do is have the DM make ad hoc, quick rulings on what the extra characters are doing and have accomplished. The DM making tons of rolls takes away focus from the PCs, same as if they players do extra.  To keep the players engaged, give them something to be engaged about.


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## Fenes (Mar 27, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Which means they are not the player's option, they are the DM's option.
> 
> Which, still, isn't very satisfying for me as a player OR a DM.




That's not true in my games - if a Player wants a cohort there are lots of options to get them in game. If a player has a problem with having to acquire followers by recruiting mercenaries, or impressing a noble so his heir will become a squire, instead of picking a feat, well, then my game will probably not suit him anyway.


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## Crazy Jerome (Mar 27, 2008)

> The design question becomes, can we:
> 
> 1) Provide a companion that has an insignificant amount of time dedicated to running its actions, so it does not greatly affect the economy of actions.
> 2) Provide a companion that provides a reasonable benefit, one that makes the companion worthwhile.
> ...




From a design perspective it is easy, especially once you lay out the problem clearly.  The hard part is facing up to the necessary design, and convincing people that it is the necessary design.


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## Fenes (Mar 27, 2008)

Stalker0 said:
			
		

> True, but the problem with that cohort still remains. I'll take one of worst case scenarios, you have a druid with leadership and a young druid acolyte (your cohort). So now you have 2 druids and 2 animal companions to dictate moves to each round. Further, the animals often have multiple attacks. So now you are figuring out spells to cast while rolling lots of attack rolls, and calculating all the damage. This can take a large amount of time, far more than other players.




That's why I don't roll attacks for all those animals and the druid. They get foes assigned, and the outcome of their fight comes down to the outcome of the PC's fight. Or I simply eyeball it, or reduce it to a single roll.


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## Wolfwood2 (Mar 27, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Which means they are not the player's option, they are the DM's option.
> 
> Which, still, isn't very satisfying for me as a player OR a DM.




Why?  Again I'll draw the comparison to magical items, which are the DM's option in pretty much the exact same way (for non-spellcasters).  A DM can choose to include a magical item in a particular adventure if he wants to have it.  Or a player can decide he wants a particular magic item and do what is necessary in the game world to get it.  In 3.5 this often is simply accumulating enough gold to buy the item or pay to have it made, but it's still the DM's option to make the item available.

I think a suitable compromise is to make followers a DM option, but provide some clear guidelines for how followers will impact a game and when/how PCs might reasonably gain them.


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## Wolfwood2 (Mar 27, 2008)

Fenes said:
			
		

> That's why I don't roll attacks for all those animals and the druid. They get foes assigned, and the outcome of their fight comes down to the outcome of the PC's fight. Or I simply eyeball it, or reduce it to a single roll.




Does this actaully come up a lot, or do the you and the players usually find reasons not to have companions/cohorts there at all?

After all, if these NPCs are essentially more part of the roleplay side than the tactical combat side, it seems reasonable to leave them out of the tactical combat side as much as possible.  Sometimes the storyline may demand they be there, but it's not exactly unreasonable to not drag your apprentice itno combat.


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## Harshax (Mar 27, 2008)

So far, I can see these rules:

Cohorts/Sidekicks - limit 1 per player, available at Paragon Tier. Has its own actions. Encouragement to share running the NPC among players (but not required). No actual XP tracking, but slower advancement than PCs, maybe 1 NPC level for every 2 PC levels. Acquired through roleplay, and not permanent expenditure of character assets.

Hirelings/Mooks - No limit per player. Shared equally among all players during combats. No XP advancement. Acquired through roleplay (and cash), and not permanent expenditure of character assets.

Summons - Generic stat blocks w/ special abilities ordered carte blanche, requires two minor actions: 1 to maintain and 1 to direct. Only Encounter or Daily power, not at will. Summoner may lose control if knocked unconscious. Weaker summons disapate/flee, more powerful become uncontrolled.

Animals/Swarms - Generic stat blocks, enhancements to character abilities (marks, flanks, etc). Requires standard actions to direct but then are persistent.

Mounts - Replaces character movement. Requires minor action to control. Swap Riding Skill for Attack Rolls when attacking from horseback (whichever is lower).

Familiars - Shared HP pool. Enhancements to character abilities (spell casting rolls, marks, modifies powers). Most useful in non-combat.

Can't think of any other type of hanger-on that typically travels with the party, but if things are handled this way, I think I'll be pretty happy overall.


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## Fenes (Mar 27, 2008)

Wolfwood2 said:
			
		

> Does this actaully come up a lot, or do the you and the players usually find reasons not to have companions/cohorts there at all?
> 
> After all, if these NPCs are essentially more part of the roleplay side than the tactical combat side, it seems reasonable to leave them out of the tactical combat side as much as possible.  Sometimes the storyline may demand they be there, but it's not exactly unreasonable to not drag your apprentice itno combat.




Well, the typical party in my main campaign includes, apart from the three PCs, usually 7+ NPCs that would qualify as cohorts, not counting the "a dozen or two of guards" they often travel with. So, there are reasons for them to be present.


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## dangerous jack (Mar 27, 2008)

As long as followers can move on their own, I think I'll be happy with even the most complicated character that I want to play: Odin in an epic Ragnarok campaign.

Odin:
* has a mount: Sleipnir the eight-legged horse
* has two familiars: Huginn & Muninn the ravens
* has two animal companions: Geri & Freki the wolves
* can summon: the Valkyries

I'll stat up the mount with:
Journey to Valhalla: Daily, Standard - Sleipnir and all allies within 2 squares plane shift
Eight-legged trample: Encounter, Standard
Hoof stomp: At Will, Immediate Reaction (when an enemy falls prone in an adjacent square)

The familiars get:
Detect Thoughts or Modify Memory, etc.: Encounter, Standard
Distraction: At Will, Minor - save ends

The wolves get stuff like:
Trip: Encounter, Standard - target is tripped + either the wolf or Odin can make a followup basic attack
Bite & Tear Apart: Encounter, Standard - the wolves must be flanking an opponent, and this causes big damage


So one round of Odin vs. a Giant could be:
Move: Odin rides Sleipnir adjacent to the giant, wolves & ravens also get to move adjacent
Minor: familiars distract the giant
Standard: wolf uses Trip, Odin gets a followup attack
Immediate: Sleipnir gets a Hoof Stomp because the giant becomes prone

On the next round, Odin's actions are:
Minor: the ravens go to distract another enemy
Move: everyone shifts to flank the giant
Standard: wolves use Bite & Tear Apart, which is as powerful as any of Odin's other encounter attacks.  We can say that Odin was attacking the giant too (or another one that approached), but it was the wolves that did the real damage this turn.


So I managed to convince myself that giving up actions to followers probably could work (with the notable caveat of free follower movement).  And if this seems like a fun combat to me after a few hours of thinking about it, then I imagine the designers could come up with a whole bunch more that I like.  Of course, I haven't figured out how to run the Valkyries that Odin summons on his next turn...


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## Storminator (Mar 27, 2008)

Fenes said:
			
		

> You don't watch it, that's the point:
> 
> "While you go for the high priest and his bodyguard, the militia that followed you battle with his acolytes".
> 
> ...




KarinsDad pointed this out explicitly as a _bad thing._ But now you know you've been playing wrong!   

PS


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## Ridley's Cohort (Mar 27, 2008)

TerraDave said:
			
		

> In True 20 (and I think Mutants and Masterminds) it takes a move action to commands allies and followers (ie to get them to do stuff). Seems like a decent compromise. Especially if it is one command per follower. (exception might a swarm or mob that acts as one unit).




I propose that we can have the best of both worlds, in terms of suggested solutions.

The PC gets a dumb +_n_ bonus to certain actions when the companion is running on autopilot in the background, but it costs some kind of action for the companion to do the impressive stuff.  

Very advanced (costly?) companions could have the ability to act "for free" once per day, once per encounter, etc.


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## JohnSnow (Mar 27, 2008)

dangerous jack said:
			
		

> So I managed to convince myself that giving up actions to followers probably could work (with the notable caveat of free follower movement).  And if this seems like a fun combat to me after a few hours of thinking about it, then I imagine the designers could come up with a whole bunch more that I like.  Of course, I haven't figured out how to run the Valkyries that Odin summons on his next turn...




I think it's relatively easy to convince yourself that animal followers need direction to do more than just "follow their instincts." The same should be true of "mindless" undead, like zombies and skeletons.

One thought would be that you direct your followers as a standard action, meaning that you lose your attack action, but not your movement. The followers of course, still get to move.

The trick is that multiple followers (if you have them) should act in consistent ways. Freke and Gere (or any other set of animals or undead) behaving as a group and working together is totally believable. As a group, they get 1 action. Yes, you'd need to have stats for how the attack resolves when you have one wolf versus two wolves vs. three or more. But that's merely a matter of scaling powers.

Valkyries should be treated as Odin's allies. In other words, if Odin summons Valkyries to his aid, you should get XP for those Valkyries. Alternatively, if it's a daily power (for a PC), it's not that much of a headache.

Personally, I'd rather see followers and companions that actually help out rather than hordes of useless minions.

Minor thought: as minions, summons are pretty easy to adjudicate. You call them up and send them against an opponent. If it takes one action per summon, you'd be limited in how many would enter a fight. For example:

Summoning: As a standard action, you may summon 1 creature, mob or swarm. A creature, mob or swarm you summon is considered "controlled" by you. 

Controlled Creatures: As a standard action, you may order a controlled creature to perform an action. Changing the action requires you to expend a standard action. You may have controlled creatures due to summoning, enchantment, or various other methods.


The theory is that if it takes a round to acquire the extra action, then a round to give them direction, you are essentially sacrificing two attacks to get your follower. Many players might do that once per encounter, but they'd be unlikely to do it constantly. Only a dedicated summoner would do so.

That's the general idea, any way. Balancing it would take time.


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## KarinsDad (Mar 27, 2008)

AllisterH said:
			
		

> You honestly cant see the difference between the monster casting Sleep on the party and the situation where one guy plays a fighter and is adventuring with a druid, ranger and a wizard with their menagerie?
> 
> Come on Karnsdad, trying to belittle us with comments like this serves no purpose.




That was not my intent. My intent was to show that there are a lot of ways to decrease or increase actions per side. Additional creatures is just one aspect of that issue.

It's reasonable for a DM to put limits on cohorts, followers, summoned creatures, etc.

I do not consider it reasonable for WotC to yank these game elements out of the game or to make the game mechanics for them game mechanics only and non-believable (e.g. "What does you cohort do? "He gives me Combat Advantage, but he cannot be attacked.").

My point is that these game elements have been in the game for 30+ years and are only a problem if seriously abused. It's totally fine for a DM to say "No cohorts in my game". It's totally unreasonable for WotC to say "Because of actions per side, there are no cohorts in the game system". IMO.

Yes, some people have had problems at their table. They can fix that for their table. I have never seen major problems, probably because my players limit themselves to a single companion or cohort and do not go overboard with it. Hence, I see no reason for WotC to "fix it". All that does is make the game less enjoyable for people who do like these game elements.

Fixing this is like fixing the fact that a PC can have 20 different magical swords in the game, one for each different situation. It's a player group fix, not a game system fix.


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## Gentlegamer (Mar 27, 2008)

Fenes said:
			
		

> That's not true in my games - if a Player wants a cohort there are lots of options to get them in game. If a player has a problem with having to acquire followers by recruiting mercenaries, or impressing a noble so his heir will become a squire, instead of picking a feat, well, then my game will probably not suit him anyway.



Another sensible answer.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 27, 2008)

Fenes said:
			
		

> That's not true in my games - if a Player wants a cohort there are lots of options to get them in game. If a player has a problem with having to acquire followers by recruiting mercenaries, or impressing a noble so his heir will become a squire, instead of picking a feat, well, then my game will probably not suit him anyway.




It becomes a DM Fiat thing, not part and parcel of my character's abilities. I don't have to jump through a DM's hoops to cast Fireball. As a DM, I don't have to give my players little side-missions to gain weapon specialization. I can always drape it in world-junk all I want, but it is part and parcel of the character's power whether I do so or not. 

A follower that I spend resources for is similar to Fireball and Weapon Specialization. Adding world detail to it is great, but it needs to be part of my character sheet, not a pure role-playing excercise in jumping through DM hoops. That's not very satisfying, because it feels more like it's the DM's power and the DM's permission than it feels like part of my own character's authority and might.

It's not an "instead of," the two are not at odds, but in the same way that you can add "you study under the ancient firemage Alcesistic" in order to have the PC learn Fireball, you could have "you impress the king's squire!" in order to have the PC gain a follower.



			
				Wolfwood2 said:
			
		

> Why? Again I'll draw the comparison to magical items, which are the DM's option in pretty much the exact same way (for non-spellcasters). A DM can choose to include a magical item in a particular adventure if he wants to have it. Or a player can decide he wants a particular magic item and do what is necessary in the game world to get it. In 3.5 this often is simply accumulating enough gold to buy the item or pay to have it made, but it's still the DM's option to make the item available.




The key is *spending resources*. In 3e, I'd expect to be able to get a magic item I wanted to get with enough gold, too, because they are part and parcel of a PC's power in 3e.

In 4e, I wouldn't expect that except for the basic two or three items. But a follower who is part and parcel of my PC's power, yeah, I'd expect to be able to get it in the same way that the fighter gets his whirlwind attack and the rogue gets his sneak attack. You can add some fluff around it, but you get it, even if you don't fluff it up



> I think a suitable compromise is to make followers a DM option, but provide some clear guidelines for how followers will impact a game and when/how PCs might reasonably gain them.




If some sort of companion is part of my character's power, in the same way that fireball is part of a wizard's power, having a DM control him in the background is not going to do it for me. 

I might be able to stomach abstraction, as long as it still felt like I was empowered by my ally.


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## Cadfan (Mar 27, 2008)

Ok, there's actually... three different situations here, I think.

1: Individual cohorts.  This is the Paladin with Leadership who brings along his acolyte shieldbearer Jort the Dullwitted.  This also includes single animal pets.

2: Allied hordes.  This is when the party recruits 10, or 100, or 10,000 guardsmen to help them storm the enemy's stronghold.

3: Summoned animals and monsters.

I think each of these is a bit different from the others.

For number 1, a quick fix is that players can only directly control the actions of their own character.  NPCs following the party may be given orders by the PCs, but are directly controlled by the DM.  If another character gives an order to your cohort, whether that bothers you and what you do about it are resolved in character.

For number 2, Fenes' fix works really well.  Its also what Heroes of Battle recommends.  Just eyeball the likely outcome of the horde's involvement, and decree it so.  This works best when there is an enemy horde as well, though, so that the two hordes can do battle while the PCs take the spotlight.  It falls down a bit when your horde is fighting a single large enemy, though, and you can't shuffle the horde off to the side of the stage.

For number 3, I think its fair that the PC control the creature directly.  As a player, I'd want to, and that seems to be the intent of 3e summoning spells.  One additional creature that is only present some of the time usually isn't a problem on its own.  The problems come in when the player summons multiple creatures, has to take time to pick which creature he wants out of many, has to look up their stats, and has to familiarize himself with their abilities.  One way 4e could deal with this is to restrict characters to only one summoned creature at a time, have each spell summon only one type of creature, and include the statblock in the spell description.  This would minimize the intrusion on the rest of the player's evening.

Summon Wolf
Druid, Daily
Duration- 5 minutes, until the end of the encounter, or until dismissed.
Effect: Summons one wolf.  You control the wolf's actions.  At the end of the spell's duration, it vanishes.  Remember, you may only have one summoned creature at a time.
Wolf
[insert statblock here, with adjustments built in for druid level]


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## Baka no Hentai (Mar 27, 2008)

Unless I've completely missed something, though, I dont believe that WOTC has definitively excluded there ever being cohorts and followers... however, none of the base classes will have them at release.

I think it is entirely reasonable that they will include them in future PHBs or DMGs if they can find a balanced way to do so in 4E.


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## Dausuul (Mar 27, 2008)

Cadfan said:
			
		

> Ok, there's actually... three different situations here, I think.
> 
> 1: Individual cohorts.  This is the Paladin with Leadership who brings along his acolyte shieldbearer Jort the Dullwitted.  This also includes single animal pets.
> 
> ...




I'd come up with a similar division, but I have a fourth category--Followers.  The classic example is the 3.X evil cleric who runs around with four times her level in Hit Dice of skeletons.  These are typically allies you've used "character power" (that is, your mechanical in-game abilities) to get, and they're either fairly durable or can be replaced quickly when they die, so you expect to keep them with you long-term.

*Individual Cohorts.*  IMO, the main challenge here is power level.  One cohort doesn't generally slow the game down badly enough to be a problem, but they usually add a _lot_ of power to their masters.  Leadership in 3.X was, for my money, the single most broken feat in the game (unless you count Epic Spellcasting).

I think I would address this by creating "cohort classes," kind of like NPC classes.  Cohort classes would be simplified, so they take less time to run and level up than a full PC.

Then say that when you would normally level up, you can instead declare that you're getting a cohort.  From that point on, you have a "level adjustment" of +1.  The cohort classes will be balanced so that at any given level X, the power of a level X player plus level X cohort is equivalent to the power of a level X+1 player.

*Allied Hordes.*  These are typically short-term and obtained through roleplaying; they can be dealt with cinematically.  Either have them square off with the bad guy's hordes, or just declare that they provide a flat circumstance bonus to the PCs and clutter up the battlefield but don't actually get any actions of their own.

*Summons.*  For summons, I favor the "spend your action to control your summons" approach.

*Followers.*  These are trickier, since there are both power and gameplay issues involved.  I guess I'd go with using the cohort system I outlined above, and treating all of your followers sort of like a single cohort.  They get one collective action per round, although that action's effect may be distributed--for instance, if your followers attack, then you declare which creatures are being attacked by which followers and make a single attack roll.  Any creature whose AC is low enough to be hit by that attack roll takes X damage for each follower that attacked it.

Or, just make it so the followers _can_ act, but their attacks are so weak that 99% of the time their best tactical option is to provide a circumstance bonus to the PCs.


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## dangerous jack (Mar 27, 2008)

When a player wants a cohort, is that player really wanting another PC (albeit of lower level)?  If not, what differentiates it?

Edit to add: And if so, can we remove cohorts from the solution?


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## Wolfwood2 (Mar 27, 2008)

Baka no Hentai said:
			
		

> Unless I've completely missed something, though, I dont believe that WOTC has definitively excluded there ever being cohorts and followers... however, none of the base classes will have them at release.
> 
> I think it is entirely reasonable that they will include them in future PHBs or DMGs if they can find a balanced way to do so in 4E.




Actually, there was mention of a higher level paladin having a mount during one of the playtest reports.


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## Baka no Hentai (Mar 27, 2008)

One thing to keep in mind for all those suggesting that Cohorts be balanced by XP or Level cost to the player that controls them: WOTC is designing fourth edition around _nothing_ costing experience. In fact, for balance purposes they even suggest that if a PC dies during an adventure or misses an adventure entirely, that they should be awarded the same XP as all the other party members so that all the PCs stay even with each other.

That said, it is highly doubtful that WOTC will ever re-implement a system that causes a player to trade XP for something... unless doing so causes a similar cost to the _entire party._


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## Wolfwood2 (Mar 27, 2008)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> It becomes a DM Fiat thing, not part and parcel of my character's abilities. I don't have to jump through a DM's hoops to cast Fireball. As a DM, I don't have to give my players little side-missions to gain weapon specialization. I can always drape it in world-junk all I want, but it is part and parcel of the character's power whether I do so or not.




I think it a fundmental mistake to make what is basically a free-willed NPC into part-and-parcel of a character's power.

Maybe I have a double standard, because I can sort of see it for things like animal companions and paladin mounts and such, but in my mind those thigns are fundamentally different.  They're not expected to be treated as 'people' within the context of the game world.

A squire or apprentice is not like knowing the fireball spell or having weapon specialization.  If such an NPC is a part of your character, then you're basically playing two PCs.  And if it's a game where players can have multiple PCs then that's fine, but let's not make folks expend a feat slot of the privilege.



> A follower that I spend resources for is similar to Fireball and Weapon Specialization. Adding world detail to it is great, but it needs to be part of my character sheet, not a pure role-playing excercise in jumping through DM hoops. That's not very satisfying, because it feels more like it's the DM's power and the DM's permission than it feels like part of my own character's authority and might.




That's because it is the DM's power and DM's permission and not part of your own character's authority and might.


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## Wolfwood2 (Mar 27, 2008)

dangerous jack said:
			
		

> When a player wants a cohort, is that player really wanting another PC (albeit of lower level)?  If not, what differentiates it?
> 
> Edit to add: And if so, can we remove cohorts from the solution?




I think that is the basic question that needs to be answered before we can say how/if such a thing should be represented by the rules.


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## Dausuul (Mar 27, 2008)

dangerous jack said:
			
		

> When a player wants a cohort, is that player really wanting another PC (albeit of lower level)?  If not, what differentiates it?




Sometimes, sometimes not.  Here are the reasons people usually seem to want cohorts, in my experience (defining "cohort" as "a single long-term companion of significant power"):

*#1: Character Accessory.*  Typical examples are a druid's animal companion or a paladin's mount.  The cohort is expected to be at least somewhat useful in battle, but its main purpose is to make the PC look/feel spiffy.

*#2: Role Filler.*  When there's a particular capability that the party needs, but nobody feels like playing a class that has that capability, someone picks up Leadership and gets a cohort to cover it.  The most common example is probably the heal-bot cleric or favored soul.  Less commonly, you might see a rogue cohort for lockpicking and trap-finding, or even a defense-heavy fighter cohort in a party that needs a tank.

*#3: Dramatic Foil.*  This is a lot like the "character accessory," but has more roleplaying involved.  The player is looking to add some depth to the main PC.  This can be anything from a little brother whom the PC can be protective of, to a long-suffering valet whom the PC can make ridiculous demands of.  I knew a guy who picked up a henchman (back in 2E) just so his pseudo-Russian nobleman character would have someone to bellow "Sergei!  My vodka!" at.

*#4: Backup Character.*  Some campaigns and parties can easily incorporate new PCs, but in a lot of cases it's disruptive to try to work in a random new PC when an old one dies.  In this case, the DM might encourage players to get cohorts that can step up if their masters are killed.

*#5: Secondary Character.*  The player wants to try out another class, race, et cetera, but doesn't want to give up his/her old character.

*#6: Source of Uberness.*  The player is trying to come up with a "killer combo" of some kind, needs another character to provide some crucial element, and doesn't want to depend on another PC for that element (or nobody else wants to build a PC who can provide it).  Alternatively, the player just wants the tremendous power boost that comes from getting that second action every round.

*#7: Combination.*  Some mix of the above.



			
				Baka no Hentai said:
			
		

> One thing to keep in mind for all those suggesting that Cohorts be balanced by XP or Level cost to the player that controls them: WOTC is designing fourth edition around _nothing_ costing experience. In fact, for balance purposes they even suggest that if a PC dies during an adventure or misses an adventure entirely, that they should be awarded the same XP as all the other party members so that all the PCs stay even with each other.
> 
> That said, it is highly doubtful that WOTC will ever re-implement a system that causes a player to trade XP for something... unless doing so causes a similar cost to the _entire party._




A level adjustment is a bit different from trading XP; essentially, you're taking a level in Cohort-Master.  The thing is, I really don't see any other way to make cohorts balanced.  That second action is so powerful that you _have_ to give up a substantial amount of personal power in order to balance it, and the only way I can think of to give up that much power is to skip a level or two.  Using up a feat won't cut it.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 27, 2008)

Ridley's Cohort said:
			
		

> I propose that we can have the best of both worlds, in terms of suggested solutions.
> 
> The PC gets a dumb +_n_ bonus to certain actions when the companion is running on autopilot in the background




So, I have a wizard with a fighter cohort. 

Most of the time, my wizard gets +2 on attack rolls while his cohort is running around on autopilot swinging his sword at my enemies - but the cohort never hits them himself; he just distracts them enough to give me my +2 to hit.



			
				Ridley's Cohort said:
			
		

> but it costs some kind of action for the companion to do the impressive stuff.




But, once in a while, my cohort shouts "Deadly Rainbow Toad Whirlwind" and uses his special combo to beat the snot out of my enemies. When he does this, I am so astonished that I cannot even think to cast a basic at-will spell.



			
				Ridley's Cohort said:
			
		

> Very advanced (costly?) companions could have the ability to act "for free" once per day, once per encounter, etc.




Although, once in a while, maybe even once in every battle, I get my wits together enough that I can cast a spell, even during my cohort's fancy combo attack.

Am I getting that right?

With respect to this idea, (not just your idea, Ridley's Cohort, but everyone else with ideas of giving up your actions to let your cohort act on your turn) -- am I the only one here who thinks this sounds more like a board game, or a video game, but sounds nothing at all like an RPG?

Are we so desperate to balance the fun and make everyone have equal face time that we don't care how unreal or unbelievable our RPG becomes?

----------

On a side note, Ridley's Cohort, did Ridley have to skip his turn when you wrote that post? (j/k - I find your name ironically interesting in this particular discussion thread).


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## Saishu_Heiki (Mar 27, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> Are we so desperate to balance the fun and make everyone have equal face time that we don't care how unreal or unbelievable our RPG becomes?



In a game that features time stopping magic, ancient dragons with unknowable wisdom, and people firing eldritch powers at their foes... the "reality" and "believability" becomes very subjective.

I am "desperate" to ensure that no one or two people monopolize the time allocated to gaming. I have a spouse, work, and an advanced degree to finish. So do many of my players. If four people are waiting on one person as a hard and fast fact of the game, I say it needs changed.


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## Dausuul (Mar 27, 2008)

Saishu_Heiki said:
			
		

> In a game that features time stopping magic, ancient dragons with unknowable wisdom, and people firing eldritch powers at their foes... the "reality" and "believability" becomes very subjective.




Replace "reality" and "believability" with "verisimilitude," then.  Or "internal consistency" if you like.  The fact that this is a fantasy setting is irrelevant; consistency is an issue in any setting.


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## Thyrwyn (Mar 27, 2008)

Fun is an issue in any setting, too.  That is why we are having such an interesting and varied discussion on the subject.  For some, consistency is fun; for others, getting to do stuff is fun.  Balancing the two is tricky. . .


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## Dausuul (Mar 27, 2008)

Thyrwyn said:
			
		

> Fun is an issue in any setting, too.  That is why we are having such an interesting and varied discussion on the subject.  For some, consistency is fun; for others, getting to do stuff is fun.  Balancing the two is tricky. . .




Oh, I agree.  And I actually think the idea of cohorts providing buffs instead of actions is a worthwhile one.  I just have a pet peeve about people dismissing concerns of "realism" or "believability" with "Well, in a world where [insert fantasy element here]..."

IMO, one good fix would be to have the cohort be able to take actions, but make it so that the cohort's best option by far is to provide a passive buff.  So, for instance, your cohort can either attack with a pathetic attack bonus for pathetic damage... or stand next to you and use his Bodyguard special ability, which takes a standard action and gives you +X to your defenses until the cohort's next turn.

That way, verisimilitude is preserved--your cohort _could_ go on the attack any time, it's just not what he's good at.  At the same time, the cohort doesn't slow down the game and doesn't upset the action economy.

Of course, this requires the existence of separate "cohort classes" for cohorts; they couldn't use the standard PC classes.  I'm okay with this, some people might not be.


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## Saishu_Heiki (Mar 27, 2008)

Thyrwyn said:
			
		

> Fun is an issue in any setting, too.  That is why we are having such an interesting and varied discussion on the subject.  For some, consistency is fun; for others, getting to do stuff is fun.  Balancing the two is tricky. . .



Great point.

For me and my players, getting to do stuff is fun. Therefore, I advocate on the side of a stricter action economy. If yours like to have a less abstract system in order to preserve a sense of reality (treating everything as a literal figure with mechanics), then you would want a less strict action economy.

Unfortunately, it seems like there would have to be a real paradigm shift in order for both sides to be completely satisfied (I am of the opinion that they are almost mutually exclusive, at least at that level of satisfaction). The more realistic approach is that both sides will have to give a little to be happy with rules that we get in June.


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## Harshax (Mar 27, 2008)

Dausuul said:
			
		

> Oh, I agree.  And I actually think the idea of cohorts providing buffs instead of actions is a worthwhile one.  I just have a pet peeve about people dismissing concerns of "realism" or "believability" with "Well, in a world where [insert fantasy element here]..."
> 
> IMO, one good fix would be to have the cohort be able to take actions, but make it so that the cohort's best option by far is to provide a passive buff.  So, for instance, your cohort can either attack with a pathetic attack bonus for pathetic damage... or stand next to you and use his Bodyguard special ability, which takes a standard action and gives you +X to your defenses until the cohort's next turn.




I'm totally on board (and even suggested) that cohorts provide buffs, but when I read something like this, I immediately want to change sides. I don't want rules that say - 'Here's your cohort, he sucks, because otherwise you'll get to many cool actions.'  There just isn't any motivation to get a cohort. Even moreso, cohort rules such as this will make your sidekick nothing more than a liability.

Players want cohorts for many reasons.  Outside of roleplay, those reasons usually revolve around bolstering a weakness.  If bolstering that weakness means the cohort is going to be exploited by every 2-bit kobold priest with charm person, or spring every trap, or fall in every pit, or get knocked unconscious every combat, then you've undermined a big reason to get one in the first place.

If the 'Action Economy' is so ding dang important, then the only reasonable solution to action inequality, is to give everyone an opportunity to share the surplus of an NPC being part of the party. I mean, the whole point of the blog was that the game needs to be absolutely Socialist in terms of spreading Actions fairly and evenly to all participants.

I'm no economist, but I'm pretty sure if you enforce false balance in the economy, you end up with a broken market. Either you end up with all your actions being outsourced to India, or a trade surplus with another economy that has no interest in your actions, or a glass ceiling on supply and demand where apparently powerful actions are purposely diminished so as not to *complete devalue* the existing surplus of weaker/minor actions, or an embargo from other economies who trade actions only with those who do not falsely influence the value of their own actions.

In other words, if an animal, mercenary, henchman, or sidekick is introduced to the party, its actions should not be any different than if you encountered said creature in an adventure. If it runs different than it would if ran by the DM, you have a false economy.

It's been a good conversation, but I'm pretty certain that regardless of what the designers presume to be the best implementation of the Action Economy, I for one will disregard it for a more favorable and reasonable system of spreading the wealth at my socialist table.

ymmv,

Harshax


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## Stogoe (Mar 27, 2008)

> If the 'Action Economy' is so ding dang important, then the only reasonable solution to action inequality, is to give everyone an opportunity to share the surplus of an NPC being part of the party. I mean, the whole point of the blog was that the game needs to be absolutely Socialist in terms of spreading Actions fairly and evenly to all participants.




But not all players want to deal with being forced to roll attacks for the druid's crummy weasels.  You can't just pawn followers off on an unwilling player.  And yet sitting around/playing DS/having a smoke while the druid rolls all the attacks for his own crummy weasels is untenable, too.

So the solution is to have summons and followers and woodland critters use from the same pool of actions as the druid itself.  Which also means that summons and followers and woodland critters can be invested with actual power instead of being so much rez-bait.


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## Harshax (Mar 28, 2008)

Stogoe said:
			
		

> But not all players want to deal with being forced to roll attacks for the druid's crummy weasels.  You can't just pawn followers off on an unwilling player.  And yet sitting around/playing DS/having a smoke while the druid rolls all the attacks for his own crummy weasels is untenable, too.
> 
> So the solution is to have summons and followers and woodland critters use from the same pool of actions as the druid itself.  Which also means that summons and followers and woodland critters can be invested with actual power instead of being so much rez-bait.




If someone doesn't want to roll for a druids crummy weasels (which is not going to be an issue, since we already know that they have weather magic and wildshape), then don't.  Only participate in the economy if it is of interest to you - but don't make everyone else, who are interested in having full representation and participation in the economy stop, just because you're a weasel hater. The purpose of the economy is equal representation for all players, if a player refuses that representation, that doesn't mean you have to shutdown the exchange.


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## Saishu_Heiki (Mar 28, 2008)

Harshax said:
			
		

> If someone doesn't want to roll for a druids crummy weasels (which is not going to be an issue, since we already know that they have weather magic and wildshape), then don't.  Only participate in the economy if it is of interest to you - but don't make everyone else, who are interested in having full representation and participation in the economy stop, just because you're a weasel hater. The purpose of the economy is equal representation for all players, if a player refuses that representation, that doesn't mean you have to shutdown the exchange.



So if I don't want to dual play my character and a summoned weasel, I am playing the game wrong and the others go along until I see the error of my ways? What if I have a group of seven players and the six that don't play a druid say "no dice" to playing his pets? Does that mean they are wrong and all have to wait for him again?

What you are proposing is, play the summoned critters and like it or sit on your hands. The status quo remains - it is a stick with no carrot.


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## Harshax (Mar 28, 2008)

Saishu_Heiki said:
			
		

> So if I don't want to dual play my character and a summoned weasel, I am playing the game wrong and the others go along until I see the error of my ways? What if I have a group of seven players and the six that don't play a druid say "no dice" to playing his pets? Does that mean they are wrong and all have to wait for him again?
> 
> What you are proposing is, play the summoned critters and like it or sit on your hands. The status quo remains - it is a stick with no carrot.




No, it's a carrot with no stick. I could equally argue that you want me to stop playing a druid with crummy weasels because you don't like little furry creatures with cute hands. If there are summoners akin to 2E Druids (which is unlikely), and the suggested gameplay is to share the responsibility of running the summons, you sitting on your hands is the equivalent of leaving the table to microwave a burrito during social encounters. You've chosen not to participate, even though we've decided on an economy in which you have an equal share.  

Banning weasels from the game because you don't like to co-play them isn't fair or fun. Inclusive gameplay through exclusive game rules is no solution at all.


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## hong (Mar 28, 2008)

If there are 6 people who don't want to handle a summoned monster and 1 that does, the 1 should suck it up.

If there are 6 people who are fine with handling a summoned monster and 1 who isn't, the 1 should suck it up.

This is an issue that should be left to each individual group to handle.


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## Saishu_Heiki (Mar 28, 2008)

The flaw in your argument is that I have nothing summons, animals, or even little furry creatures with cute hands specifically. They can, and probably should, stay in the game.

However, they need to have a mechanics change to prevent a problem from occurring where the balance of playtime is altered by one person. The druid still gets his pets, but the rest of the party does not have to decide between playing one or watching.

Imagine if I had a spell X that allowed me to cast another spell immediately after. I could use that spell to cast X, to cast X, ad infinitum. I am playing the game as written and the other players should respect that, right? No, I would quickly be told that I need to let others have a chance to play their character. Same deal with the pets, but less extreme.


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## Harshax (Mar 28, 2008)

That's a pretty flimsy argument. But to prove I'm just having fun, let's change the subjects slightly.

Those of us who played 1E, probably had to deal with dwarves, elves, and half-orcs in the same party, even though the racial affinity table implied that they either hated each other or had strong antipathies.  Now we have Tieflings and Dragonborn, and IIRC, one is responsible for the diminishment of the other's cultural influence in the default D&D world.  Groups see the same situation arise when thieves want to play in groups with paladins, or someone wants to be Lawful/Evil and another wants to be Chaotic/Good. To have an effective group, you have to have some level of agreement over what is appropriate for your table.

As hong suggested, this boils down to a group decision on desired gameplay. In other words, it should be addressed in the DMG as advice for running a successful game.

I total understand that weasels aren't metal enough. What if I had a spell that summoned 1 flaming deathklok skeleton per PC, and was controlled by each player in the party?

All I'm saying is, I don't want a game that is boiled down to its most unoffensive elements, or one that consciously avoids anything that might upset what it considers its most precious currency, if its method of avoision means leaning too far away from a shallow facsimile of reasonable actions in a supposedly freeform game world.

I think Robin Laws once wrote an article in IF that explained the difference between a toy and a game. With a toy, you had no rules or guidelines for success when playing with it. Kicking a ball around, throwing it, etc is all examples of using a toy. Deciding that you have to kick the ball through a net, or throw it into a hoop turns play with that toy into a game, because the definition of a game has inherent levels of success or failure.

Combat is definitely the 'game' aspect of D&D. However, D&D's primary strength is that it is primarily a toy and as such should have the freedom to break in an out of the structure of a game.

Introducing rules which force play to always behave as a game diminishes one of D&D's most important qualities.


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## Saishu_Heiki (Mar 28, 2008)

Unfortunately, it seems we are both too dedicated to our respective sides to be able to convert.

I respect your position, and I understand the merits of it. I have a different opinion and I hope you can understand my side. I am going to step back now and see what other people come up with because I fear that I am simply repeating my same points without adding anything new to the discussion.

I hope that we can find a system that we both like, and we will see in June if that bears any resemblance to the PHB.


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## Harshax (Mar 28, 2008)

Saishu_Heiki said:
			
		

> I respect your position, and I understand the merits of it. I have a different opinion and I hope you can understand my side. I am going to step back now and see what other people come up with because I fear that I am simply repeating my same points without adding anything new to the discussion.




If you were at my table, you're opinion wouldn't be swept under the rug just because you happened to be in the minority.  Neither would your fellow, should your's and the majority go against his.


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## Saishu_Heiki (Mar 28, 2008)

Harshax said:
			
		

> If you were at my table, you're opinion wouldn't be swept under the rug just because you happened to be in the minority.  Neither would your fellow, should your's and the majority go against his.



I completely understand and I try to ensure that I run my table the same way. I am just concerned that I am not truly furthering the conversation at this point. You have given me quite a bit to consider and I plan to think about it for a while.


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## Dausuul (Mar 28, 2008)

Harshax said:
			
		

> I'm totally on board (and even suggested) that cohorts provide buffs, but when I read something like this, I immediately want to change sides. I don't want rules that say - 'Here's your cohort, he sucks, because otherwise you'll get to many cool actions.'  There just isn't any motivation to get a cohort. Even moreso, cohort rules such as this will make your sidekick nothing more than a liability.
> 
> Players want cohorts for many reasons.  Outside of roleplay, those reasons usually revolve around bolstering a weakness.  If bolstering that weakness means the cohort is going to be exploited by every 2-bit kobold priest with charm person, or spring every trap, or fall in every pit, or get knocked unconscious every combat, then you've undermined a big reason to get one in the first place.




Huh?  I never said your cohort sucked.  I just said his attacks were pathetic.  In the example I picked, the cohort _is_ bolstering a weakness--presumably, the master's crappy defensive stats.  You want a cohort that boosts your total damage output, you should have picked a different cohort.

For an offensive cohort, maybe their special move is Double Strike.  The cohort takes a standard action to set this up; if you then make a melee attack before the cohort's next turn, the cohort also attacks, using the result of your attack roll.  Thus, if you hit, the cohort also hits for some amount of damage--effectively a damage bonus on your attack.

And cohorts should certainly have solid hit points and decent defenses.  Nothing sucks more than having to nursemaid an overly fragile cohort.



			
				Harshax said:
			
		

> In other words, if an animal, mercenary, henchman, or sidekick is introduced to the party, its actions should not be any different than if you encountered said creature in an adventure. If it runs different than it would if ran by the DM, you have a false economy.




In that case, I'd assume it's an RP ally, run by the DM or whichever player the DM gives it to for that session, and not expected to stick around for very long.  The system I was outlining was for long-term cohorts that you "buy" with a feat or class ability or some such.  True, it wouldn't be able to change "random NPC you know and like" into your cohort, but my experience is most people prefer to make up their own cohorts anyhow.


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## nittanytbone (Mar 28, 2008)

Here's some of the ways that 1E dealt with these issues:

COHORTS (XP AND WEALTH SPONGE):  For permanent, "enduring" NPC allies, the term "henchmen" was used.  Henchmen were expensive (they cost time and cash to recruit, and recruiting them was never easy -- selection was limited and they weren't guranteed to accept your offer), they required lots of gold as "upkeep" every month, they sucked magic items if you wanted their morale to be good, they sucked XP, and they usually demanded treasure shares (in addition to that salary!).  Also, they started out as weak 1st-3rd level characters, with only the most powerful PCs being able to rarely locate fellows of greater ilk than 1st level;  thus they required lots of careful development to be brought to a useful state.  Finally, they often began with poor morale.  Only with some careful roleplay and adventuring could their morale be brought to a decent level.  Finally, by the time you could be looking at having multiple henchmen, a PC often had significant interests around the realm (a stronghold, holdings, etc) that would require Responsible Supervision while the PC was off adventuring.  Having that henchmen be your castellan would get him off screen.

HIRELINGS (USELESS CRITTERS):  These fellows required cash and gear (and sometimes magic) and did not scale as well with level for individual single combat.  Furthermore, getting them killed meant finding more was often tough.  Thus, they tended to fade offscreen by the time 4th level-ish was reached, with the exception of a few bodyguards who would lurk in the wings, only present to watch the horses, carry loot, or augment watches at night.  To be useful in combat at higher levels, you needed a lot of them (an army to guard a stronghold, storm a castle, man a ship, etc), which then turned them into a money sink similar to henchmen (salaries, room & board, armorers/weaponsmiths, etc).

SUMMONS, VERSION A (USELESS CRITTERS):  The Monster Summoning spells was delayed by about two levels.  So, you'd get some goblins (no, really... goblins) as a level III spell.  Plus, they wouldn't show up right away.  So, these spells became more about utility than combat.  You'd use goblins to spring a trap, be a distraction, or do some other utility thingy more often than not.  Plus, the relatively high level spell slot meant using the spell was a significant expenditure of resources.

SUMMONS, VERSION B (USES CASTER'S ACTIONS):  The conjure elemental spell required full concentration to maintain.  It also had a long casting time.  Finally, the elemental would always turn on its caster eventually, making it necessary to pack a Protection from Evil and Dispel Magic.  This also made it more of a utility spell, or sometimes, a strategic combat spell (you'd pack Summon Elemental when planning on assaulting a castle gate, not "just in case").

SUMMONS, VERSION C (HAS ADVERSE CONSEQUENCES):  The cacodemon spell could bring in powerful outsiders, but they were difficult to control.  Demons and devils were not happy about being bound and you'd have to invest lots of other spells (and cash resources) into keeping them bound.  Players who messed with demons knew that they were getting in for some perverse DM enjoyment/revenge later, making summoning a short term gain for a long term price.  Another example would be Gate, which aged the caster, requiring a system shock roll to avoid instant death.

All of these things seem to make extra characters useless, but they remained quite popular in all of my 1E games.  I'd say that summons served more for (A) simple meatshields or (B) utility purposes than anything else.  Summon Monster I might not be as powerful as a Fireball, but it was versatile, which made it worthwhile.  Same for Summon Elemental -- a cone of cold was better in most fights, but Summon Elemental could sink a ship, destroy a castle, explore the highest level of the tallest tower, or incinerate a library in moments.

One thing I rarely see in my games -- with several different groups -- is handing off cohorts/summoned critters for others to run.  Usually, players that have little armies WANT to exult in the wargame and tend to be quite tactical in their actions.  They'e also invested significant character resources in these companions.  They do not want to see the henchmen that they have "groomed" for 10 sessions get thrown away and killed off by another player who is careless or see one of their more potent spells be wasted.

With those in mind, this is how I'd consider setting up 4E action-economies:

HENCHMEN/PERMANENT COMPANIONS:  These fellows should get their own mini and be statted out with the basics - move rate, basic attack, defenses.  They should conform more to the monstrous "roles" (artillery, brute, etc) than the PC roles (striker, leader, etc).  They should have no more than 1-2 "at will" abilities, basically being limited to their basic attack.  They should have only special abilities related to their race and maybe monstrous role.  Finally, they should require either (A) expenditure of resources such as cash, time, and XP shares to keep around, with the cost being ongoing, or (B) require "orders" from their liege to act aggressively, in the form of actions spent or action points spent (might be better for "entitlements," such as pets or special mounts).

SUMMONED CRITTERS:  Summoned critters should show up basically neutral or hostile to the caster instead of slavishly obedient.  Controlling them could then require (A) *expenditure of cash* to bribe the summoned creature and make it do your bidding ("Here's a gem, summoned dragon -- go BBQ them now!"), (B) *maintaining concentration * (aka spending your own actions or action points) to make it do your bidding, or (C) the creature just goes amok, under DM control or a random table (the confusion table could work quite well and do double duty here), and there are "*adverse consequences*."

I think spending Action Points can be a good way to "feed" henchmen/summons.  Remember, a character can use their AP to get an extra standard action.  So, you could cast a spell (with a standard), move (with your move), sustain a Conjured Big Bad Monster (with an action point), and sustain some other more minor effect (with your minor).


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## Storminator (Mar 28, 2008)

Harshax said:
			
		

> No, it's a carrot with no stick. I could equally argue that you want me to stop playing a druid with crummy weasels because you don't like little furry creatures with cute hands. If there are summoners akin to 2E Druids (which is unlikely), and the suggested gameplay is to share the responsibility of running the summons, you sitting on your hands is the equivalent of leaving the table to microwave a burrito during social encounters. You've chosen not to participate, even though we've decided on an economy in which you have an* equal share.*




Sorry to come late to the party...

I think the bolded is key here. You haven't given me an equal share. You've given me extra duties I don't want to perform, with no reward at all. Sure, now my turn takes as long to resolve as yours, but it's not nearly as fun to me as playing the character I chose to.

Even if it's deathklok skeletons.

PS


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## DM_Blake (Mar 28, 2008)

Dausuul said:
			
		

> IMO, one good fix would be to have the cohort be able to take actions, but make it so that the cohort's best option by far is to provide a passive buff.  So, for instance, your cohort can either attack with a pathetic attack bonus for pathetic damage... or stand next to you and use his Bodyguard special ability, which takes a standard action and gives you +X to your defenses until the cohort's next turn.




This works for me, sometimes, with some cohorts. A level 10 ranger with a wolf companion, for example - nobody expects that wolf to go toe to toe with a hill giant, and it really has no chance to trip the giant, so best bet is to give some flanking to the ranger - a static +2 to attack rolls.

But sometimes it makes no sense. If I am going to spend a feat for a cohort, and all he does is give me a static bonus (or has an option to do attack with a pathetic attack bonus for pathetic damage), then I might be better off to just take Weapon Focus or Iron Will or some other feat with a static bonus.

Relegating those types of character options down to a static bonus is only 1 small step away from removing them entirely, since very few people will ever take the static bonus. And masking this relegation by allowing pathetic options doesn't change the inevitable result that the option has been relegated down to a static bonus.


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## Gentlegamer (Mar 28, 2008)

nittanytbone said:
			
		

> Here's some of the ways that 1E dealt with these issues:



Great summary of the way AD&D handled this issue!


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## DM_Blake (Mar 28, 2008)

Harshax said:
			
		

> In other words, if an animal, mercenary, henchman, or sidekick is introduced to the party, its actions should not be any different than if you encountered said creature in an adventure.




There's an interesting thought.

Party encounters a few wolves in the wilderness. During the fight, those pesky wolves keep tripping the fighter, who spends half the battle on his back. 

Later, the party's ranger decides those wolves were cool, and goes out and gets a wolf animal companion.

The fighter tells him "Sweet, I sure am glad that wolf is on our side. I can't wait to see him tripping our enemies!"

The ranger answers, "Oh, he can't actually do that."

"Why not?" asks the fighter. "Those other wolves definitely knew how to trip me."

And the ranger replies, "Well, now that he's my companion, he is no longer able to bite legs or trip anything anymore. All he can do is give me +2 to hit my targets while he distracts them."

"Bah!" says the fighter, "You should have exchanged that class ability for the Iron Will feat. At least you wouldn't have to feed your Iron Will or leave it outside the city gates when we go to town. And you'd never have to worry about a griffon carrying your Iron Will off to feed it to its hatchlings."


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## TrogsTavern (Mar 28, 2008)

What if followers just added more reaction-type actions to the person they follow instead of acting on their own? That way using a follower would work more like a power. Take an attack at me and miss? My follower gets an immediate attack against you. By making their actions reactive instead of active it won't take up any more turns at the table but it will grant some sort of bonus. Or have a follower able to "take a bullet for you" by taking damage intended for you once you are bloodied. That type of thing.


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## KarinsDad (Mar 29, 2008)

TrogsTavern said:
			
		

> What if followers just added more reaction-type actions to the person they follow instead of acting on their own? That way using a follower would work more like a power. Take an attack at me and miss? My follower gets an immediate attack against you. By making their actions reactive instead of active it won't take up any more turns at the table but it will grant some sort of bonus. Or have a follower able to "take a bullet for you" by taking damage intended for you once you are bloodied. That type of thing.




This is interesting and thinking outside the box, but ... yuck. That's real mechanical and artificial sounding.

PC 1: "Here's my Robby the Robot cohort. He takes damage for me."
PC 2: "What's a robot?"


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## Sora Justice (Mar 29, 2008)

*Jus~ti~su~*

The economy of actions is such that, as some players have more and more turns associated with their character in each round, many other players have less and less fun. Period. There is literally no way around this and if you believe you have found a way around this, I am fully glad you are not on the 4e design team, because you are wrong.

On account of this, some sort of neutering of cohorts, summons, and other means of attaining multiple actions must be put in place in the rules as written now, with this fourth edition. Why, you ask? Because 4e D&D is about fun, and though they may not do it maliciously, the Dausuuls and KarinsDads of the world will point at the rules and exclaim that they are justified in taking two to four times as many turns as everyone else at the table, and the Wormwoods, Storminators, and Saishuu_Heikis will sigh, because that's what the book says, so even though it tramples on their fun, many of them will not realize how wrong it actually is, and let it keep happening to them for another eight to ten years.

For the rare few who don't find it unfun to wait for your fellow players to finish ordering their menagerie about, they can always house rule it back in in their private games. As a house rule that departs from an explicit guideline of the new edition, it should be generally rejected by all groups save for those that are absolutely certain that it is what they want. That way those few can have their fun, and everyone else can have twice to four times as much fun as they had in previous.


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## KarinsDad (Mar 29, 2008)

Sora Justice said:
			
		

> The economy of actions is such that, as some players have more and more turns associated with their character in each round, many other players have less and less fun. Period. There is literally no way around this and if you believe you have found a way around this, I am fully glad you are not on the 4e design team, because you are wrong.




I've seen a boatload of fun at a table when a cohort or companion does something above and beyond. How is that "less and less fun. Period"?

No exceptions?



			
				Sora Justice said:
			
		

> On account of this, some sort of neutering of cohorts, summons, and other means of attaining multiple actions must be put in place in the rules as written now, with this fourth edition. Why, you ask? Because 4e D&D is about fun, and though they may not do it maliciously, the Dausuuls and KarinsDads of the world will point at the rules and exclaim that they are justified in taking two to four times as many turns as everyone else at the table, and the Wormwoods, Storminators, and Saishuu_Heikis will sigh, because that's what the book says, so even though it tramples on their fun, many of them will not realize how wrong it actually is, and let it keep happening to them for another eight to ten years.




Ok. I vote for limiting number of cohorts or companions per player to one as the official form of neutering. If menageries are the problem, get rid of menageries. Limit numbers for each table to what is comfortable for that table. Don't change a cohort or companion (or even a summoned creature) to a static bonus as a form of neutering.

Roleplaying cohorts is fun. Turning them into a game mechanic is boring. Getting rid of cohorts, companions, and summoned creatures completely is not fun for some people and the game is about fun.



			
				Sora Justice said:
			
		

> For the rare few who don't find it unfun to wait for your fellow players to finish ordering their menagerie about, they can always house rule it back in in their private games.




For the rare few who find it unfun to wait for your fellow players to finish ordering a single measly cohort or companion about, they can always house (or even DMG optional) rule cohorts to be a static bonus, or to even have zero cohorts in their private games.


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## Wormwood (Mar 29, 2008)

TrogsTavern said:
			
		

> What if followers just added more reaction-type actions to the person they follow instead of acting on their own?



Very nice.

It adds a minor minion benefot, but without the slow tactical BS that I normally suffer through with Doolittles. 

Definitely food for thought.


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## KidSnide (Mar 29, 2008)

One thing that would certainly help this discussion is some good guidelines on creating NPCs.  For example, say that your 8th level party is light on defenders and wants to hire someone.  It would be nice to be able to create an NPC with 8th level attacks and defenses who will be much less complicated to run than a full fledged PC.  Whether the GM runs the character or a player is double-fisting, it is easier to run a simple character that can still (somewhat) fulfill the required role.  

You might imagine taking the fighter class, but losing the class abilities other than basic marking while taking half the feats and powers.  I hope to see something kind of like this, since it would be a useful way to create soldier “monsters” out of arbitrary races.  It’s sort of a 4E warrior class, but it might be built by taking the suggested 8th level soldier base stats and adding a small collection of appropriately leveled powers.

In any case, if you’re adding such a character to the PC party (instead of using it as something to kill), then we would need to know how to adjust the suggested encounter difficulty.  If you think (as I speculate) that a fully built out Nth level character with a PC class is probably an Elite Nth level challenge, then that 8th level “soldier” probably counts as 1/2 of a PC for purposes of party balance.  So, your Warlord/Rogue/Warlock/Wizard party can hire a pair of level-appropriate soldier-NPCs and be balanced as a 5-person party.

Such a calculation would also help cohort analysis.  As OP notes, simply having a cohort is an incredibly powerful character ability because of the action economy.  However, if we are looking at half-strength “NPC class” cohorts, it might be possible to generate a working balance.  A 4-level difference is a doubling of power in 4E.  So, if a standard NPC build is half the power of a PC, then such a build at party level - 4 would be 1/4 of the power of a normal PC.  Such a character would be theoretically balanced if you added him to a PC that is 2 levels below the rest of the party (at 3/4 normal power).

I don’t know if it would be satisfying to play a character that was 2 levels below the rest of the group along with a  4-level down gimped 2nd character.  In 3E, it would be terrible, but the level scale is supposed to be shallower in 4E.  I think similar 3E math would have you playing a character that was 1 level down from the rest of the group with an adept or warrior cohort that was 2 levels down from party average.  (YMMV, but that strikes me as fair, although probably not a character I would want to play.)


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## Hussar (Mar 29, 2008)

> I've seen a boatload of fun at a table when a cohort or companion does something above and beyond. How is that "less and less fun. Period"?




Really?  So, when the cohort offs the BBEG in a lucky shot, the rest of the party is really excited?  More excited, or at least equally as excited as when a PC does it?

How about the other 99% of the time when cohorts are just time sinks that turn player's turns into 30 minutes long?

To be honest though, it's not really that one cohort or NPC is a huge problem.  It shouldn't be soaking up large amounts of table time.  It's that certain classes can suddenly snowball their actions way beyond the norm.  A summoner gets 5 creatures and now his turn takes significantly longer.  He spends another round and now has 10 creatures.  Plus his cohort/animal companion.  Plus his own action.

That's the real problem.


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## WyzardWhately (Mar 29, 2008)

So, I guess the MOST FUN POSSIBLE would be to kick out the rest of the players, and have a solo adventure?


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## KarinsDad (Mar 29, 2008)

Hussar said:
			
		

> Really?  So, when the cohort offs the BBEG in a lucky shot, the rest of the party is really excited?  More excited, or at least equally as excited as when a PC does it?




Yup, pretty much. We have a pretty decent group at the moment. Team players who are more interested in achieving the goal than in personal glory. They get fairly excited when anyone offs the BBEG. Or, at least based on the amount of jokes, cheers, and laughter when it happens.



			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> How about the other 99% of the time when cohorts are just time sinks that turn player's turns into 30 minutes long?




I don't consider a single cohort or companion per player to be a time sink and my players have not mentioned it either.



			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> To be honest though, it's not really that one cohort or NPC is a huge problem.  It shouldn't be soaking up large amounts of table time.  It's that certain classes can suddenly snowball their actions way beyond the norm.  A summoner gets 5 creatures and now his turn takes significantly longer.  He spends another round and now has 10 creatures.  Plus his cohort/animal companion.  Plus his own action.
> 
> That's the real problem.




Agreed. Address the real problem.


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## small pumpkin man (Mar 29, 2008)

KidSnide said:
			
		

> One thing that would certainly help this discussion is some good guidelines on creating NPCs.  For example, say that your 8th level party is light on defenders and wants to hire someone.  It would be nice to be able to create an NPC with 8th level attacks and defenses who will be much less complicated to run than a full fledged PC.  Whether the GM runs the character or a player is double-fisting, it is easier to run a simple character that can still (somewhat) fulfill the required role.
> 
> You might imagine taking the fighter class, but losing the class abilities other than basic marking while taking half the feats and powers.  I hope to see something kind of like this, since it would be a useful way to create soldier “monsters” out of arbitrary races.  It’s sort of a 4E warrior class, but it might be built by taking the suggested 8th level soldier base stats and adding a small collection of appropriately leveled powers.



Like some sort of _Minion_, which only ever has one attack roll, doesn't have a great deal of in built options, has flat instead of rolled damage, and which has been specifically optimized to take as little time at the table as possible? 

Admittedly, the extremely low hp/damage thing might be a problem, but it shows they've been thinking about that kind of thing. I still think summoned creatures should relying on the casters actions is a good thing, (because it allows a summoner class to summon things that actually have options, notice that in the original post, Rodney was talking about how he though is was an option so that summoned monsters _didn't have to be nerfed_) but obviously summoned creatures aren't going to be the only types of "hangers on" around.


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## Kaisoku (Mar 29, 2008)

WyzardWhately said:
			
		

> So, I guess the MOST FUN POSSIBLE would be to kick out the rest of the players, and have a solo adventure?




Heh, touche. This is what happens when you take a viewpoint and go to the extreme... ridiculousness.

Economy of actions... other players rolling and taking up my time lowers my fun, therefore having other players roll more means less fun. Ultimately, no other players means the most fun for me (always rolling).

Silly isn't it?


A balance is probably the best way to go about it.

Having a single cohort or companion in some form or another is not going to ruin the economy of actions. So let these be statted out fully.
There are plenty of character concepts that allow for this kind of build to not need the cohorts being wussy little +2's or whatnot... so keeping full statted cohort characters isn't a big deal.
As long as it's built balanced, you're basically saying this player's "power" at the table is split between two "in-character" creatures.


Summons and a druid's menagerie can have alternate rules to stop the madness. Summons being glorified spell effects, or multiple creatures being treated as basically one swarm entity essentially (my idea of one attack roll for an area effect style action.. more summons = more damage dice, targets affected, etc).

Making a distinction between _combat oriented_ companions, and _utility oriented_ companions (especially for druids) will help as well. You don't need to fully stat a gecko or a newt companion, etc... stat out it's tricks, and maybe it's defenses (hp and defense stats, if you don't just use the owner's), and be done with it.
That would follow the new Monster creation rules the most, only stat up what you need and roll what's needed.


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## Hussar (Mar 29, 2008)

Whoa, I think we're reaching some sort of consensus here.  

Single NPC's don't break the system.  Sure, if I have a barbarian cohort, it might add a bit of time to my turn, but, not a huge amount (hopefully).  

Now, a spell casting cohort could be a bigger problem, but, I think in 4e context, perhaps not since the caster/non-caster divide has closed significantly.  Although, that does add in the problem that now every cohort sinks time.  

But, yeah, I'd agree that it's primarily summoning that becomes a major issue.  It can spin out of control way too quickly.


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## Sora Justice (Mar 29, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> I've seen a boatload of fun at a table when a cohort or companion does something above and beyond. How is that "less and less fun. Period"?
> 
> No exceptions?




For the players of whom I spoke, it would have been more fun, period, if it was a character doing something above and beyond rather than a character's goon stable. I'm sorry you couldn't read what I said and foolishly assumed that I implied cohorts could never contribute to fun. They can, but to those players, never in a way that is better than you doing it yourself.



> Ok. I vote for limiting number of cohorts or companions per player to one as the official form of neutering.




One doesn't sound like a big number. It's nice and small... one. Until, y'know, you realize that means your turn is twice what mine is. One warm body, one turn at the table. Unless you're the GM, that's only fair.



> Limit numbers for each table to what is comfortable for that table.




We're only printing one rulebook. That rulebook has to be what's comfortable for the most people, and "oh, well I'm oooooonly taking twice your turn" sure ain't comfortable. Too many people have believed that for far too long.



> Roleplaying cohorts is fun.




For you.



> Turning them into a game mechanic is boring. Getting rid of cohorts, companions, and summoned creatures completely is not fun for some people and the game is about fun.




It's about the most fun for the most people. If you're all weird like that and actually want to have cohorts, you can always houserule it back in. For the rest of us, and when you're in our games, we can point to how the design guideline actively says not to trample all over the economy of actions and tell you to shut up and play your character.


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## Sora Justice (Mar 29, 2008)

WyzardWhately said:
			
		

> So, I guess the MOST FUN POSSIBLE would be to kick out the rest of the players, and have a solo adventure?




One-on-one games with the DM are great fun. Have you really never met people who love those, or the lots-more-common people who only want a group of 3 or 4 players and one DM?

PRO TIP: There's a reason for this.


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## Harshax (Mar 29, 2008)

I see this discussion being bogged down with trying to slice the bread too thin.

I almost agree with a previous post that the RAW should prohibit one player getting extra actions from additional characters under his control. But then I think, are we playing D&D, the RPG, or D&D the miniatures game? We already have a mini's game, and the Action Economy has been strictly adhered to for that venue. This forum is about the Role Playing Game, and the interpretation of that Action Economy Philosophy should be slightly more liberal.

I wonder how long it will take after the game is released for someone to point out that the Action Economy is broken when it takes 2 minutes for a player to resolve his Daily action, and another player has nothing to do except his Magic Missile attack, which takes 15 seconds to resolve.

*Most* of the disagreement on how to implement the Action Economy is over what is *fun*. My question is, when has D&D ever been fun all the time for every player?  I made a funny tease at another poster in which I said not wanting to share playing a summons with everyone else is the equivalent of microwaving a burrito during social encounters.  The point was, there's always going to be some aspect of the game which isn't interesting to some players. Heck, even combat can be boring too.  So my question is, when did it become the duty of the game designer to make sure a game should rock for everyone all the time. What game designer is foolhardy enough to think that is even possible?

Every edition of D&D had rules which some people choose to ignore. A good game design should try to be modular enough that removing a section doesn't make the whole machine break down. We see some effort to modularize D&D already - we have Power Sources which can be removed completing if a DM wants to run a game where there is no magic, or too much magic. That was almost impossible in any other edition. Why shouldn't we have a modular design for cohorts and critters?

Having a game written *just* for you is certainly possible, if you're willing to pay exorbitant prices for an incredibly limited print run.

Yes, I know some of my sentences appear to be questions, but don't end in a question mark.  There's a reason for that.


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## Sora Justice (Mar 29, 2008)

Harshax said:
			
		

> *Most* of the disagreement on how to implement the Action Economy is over what is *fun*. My question is, when has D&D ever been fun all the time for every player?




Never. Thank God this Fourth Edition is trying to make changes.


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## Harshax (Mar 29, 2008)

I'm hoping this post on the Pit Fiend gives us an indication how they'll do summons for PC's.



			
				http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dramp/20080125&authentic=true said:
			
		

> Infernal Summons (standard; encounter) • Conjuration
> The pit fiend summons a group of devil allies. Summoned devils roll initiative to determine when they act in the initiative order and gain a +4 bonus to attack rolls as long as the pit fiend is alive. They remain until they are killed, dismissed by the pit fiend (free action), or the encounter ends. PCs do not earn experience points for killing these summoned creatures. The pit fiend chooses to summon one of the following groups of devils:
> 
> * 8 legion devil legionnaires (level 21), or
> ...


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## TrogsTavern (Mar 29, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> This is interesting and thinking outside the box, but ... yuck. That's real mechanical and artificial sounding.
> 
> PC 1: "Here's my Robby the Robot cohort. He takes damage for me."
> PC 2: "What's a robot?"



How so?

The Pit Fiend's ability to make minions "go and blow yourself up at that guy for me" is pretty much the same sort of thing except as an offensive power versus defensive. And the grell using a grabbed PC to take damage instead uses the same sort of mechanical effect.

Perhaps it is only a once per day ability that someone 10th level or above can use. Below that you might not inspire that kind of devotion from followers. As for a defending option please see below. An excerpt from WotC's new Dungeons of Dread mini. It uses exactly what I was referring to.

Iron Defender

This 3rd-level soldier protects by getting free attacks whenever the guarded creature is attacked. For the skirmish game, this is handled by the Defender ability. You may have already seen the Defender ability on previous creatures such as the Eternal Blade from the redesigned Desert of Desolation figures. If you haven't, here's how it works -- when someone attacks a different creature while adjacent to an Iron Defender, that Iron Defender can immediately attack. This encourages creatures to attack the Iron Defender before any others; a perfect example of how a soldier should work.


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## KarinsDad (Mar 30, 2008)

Sora Justice said:
			
		

> It's about the most fun for the most people.




Precisely.

I do not think your opinion represents the majority, otherwise, we would have been talking about this over and over again for decades instead of days.

I think you are in a tiny minority.


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## Stogoe (Mar 31, 2008)

Sora Justice said:
			
		

> Never. Thank God this Fourth Edition is trying to make changes.



I wish there was an emoticon for a slow, dramatic clap, because this was beautiful.  Really brought a tear to my eye.


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## small pumpkin man (Mar 31, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> Precisely.
> 
> I do not think your opinion represents the majority, otherwise, we would have been talking about this over and over again for decades instead of days.
> 
> I think you are in a tiny minority.



People have been complaining about the Druid's menagarie since 3e came out and Leadership gets banned extremely often, just because the term "action economy" wasn't used, doesn't mean it wasn't part of what the problem was. I realize you think Rodney and Sora Justice are exagerating the problem, and that's possible, but that doesn't mean the basic idea is flawed.


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## Hussar (Mar 31, 2008)

Was perusing my Tome of Magic and I noticed that this concept was touched on there.  In the PrC Fiendbinder, the character can summon a demon/devil to do his dirty work.  However, in order to give orders, the fiendbinder had to make a truenaming check as a standard action.  The fiend would then complete that task, but, if the fiendbinder wanted the fiend to move on to another target, say, then he would have to make another check as a standard action.

Seems like a way to possibly go.  You don't lose your actions all the time, but, when you want your pet/cohort/whatever to do something, you have to give the orders.  Depending on the what exactly your pet is, the pet could possibly disobey those orders or simply not act at all.

I kinda like that idea.


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## KarinsDad (Mar 31, 2008)

small pumpkin man said:
			
		

> People have been complaining about the Druid's menagarie since 3e came out and Leadership gets banned extremely often, just because the term "action economy" wasn't used, doesn't mean it wasn't part of what the problem was. I realize you think Rodney and Sora Justice are exagerating the problem, and that's possible, but that doesn't mean the basic idea is flawed.




One of the issues about 4E is that elements in previous game systems had to be flawed in order to buy into the concept that the new game system is bigger, better, badder.

And, no doubt about it. Earlier editions of DND had issues. So will 4E.

But, a single cohort per player was not one of them.

Is it too many actions in 3E for Claw/Claw/Bite for the monsters?

The DM can play many NPCs in a combat. Is the DM taking up too much time when he throws 4 monsters at the 4 PCs?

The one player called the DM can take over 50% of the time at the table. We should ban DMs from DND! 

I still think some people are over-exaggerating this issue. Sure, the Druid menagerie could get out of hand. But, not a single cohort or companion per player.


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## Hussar (Mar 31, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> One of the issues about 4E is that elements in previous game systems had to be flawed in order to buy into the concept that the new game system is bigger, better, badder.
> 
> And, no doubt about it. Earlier editions of DND had issues. So will 4E.
> 
> ...




I think we should distinguish between different cohorts or companions as well though.  A single Barbarian cohort likely isn't soaking a whole lot of time.  But, that cleric cohort (one of the most common IME) certainly can between buffs and debuffs.  That's not a cohort issue, but a caster issue, true.  But, adding in a caster cohort can make a huge difference in the time spent by one player doing his or her turn.


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## small pumpkin man (Mar 31, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> One of the issues about 4E is that elements in previous game systems had to be flawed in order to buy into the concept that the new game system is bigger, better, badder.
> 
> And, no doubt about it. Earlier editions of DND had issues. So will 4E.
> 
> ...



It's not like this is some kind of crazy new idea, it's just something from other games that previous editions didn't really look into. Can you make a good RPG without it? sure. But as D&D becomes more "engineered" the makers start to look more and more at this kind of thing, and go "how exactly does the affect how the game is played".

I think the most obvious place the actions economy has been used IS monsters, high level non-Elite monsters do have less options and actions, (specifically, there seems to be less "lets give this monster 3 natural attacks just because") and there are monsters specifically designed to be extremely quick at the table because sometimes running the twenty something monsters takes far more time than it's worth, and making it so that if a GM wants to run 4 or more monsters it _doesn't_ take longer than everyone else put together, conversly Solo's are designed in the other direction, for the purpose of balance and to make it that "stacks on" combats are more cinematic and flavourful. When from our position it looks like Rodney's thinking of taking something WotC have been doing to monsters and applying it to summoned creatures and "PC allies which are class abilties" and you turn around and laugh at the idea of applying it to the GM implies to me you're not really "getting it".

And for the Record? Leadership broke many a game, for reasons already explained.


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## KidSnide (Mar 31, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> And, no doubt about it. Earlier editions of DND had issues. So will 4E.
> 
> But, a single cohort per player was not one of them.
> 
> ...




This conversation may have lost track of the fact that economy of actions isn't just about player time.  It's also about player power.  A party level - 2 cohort doesn't just give one player extra time to resolve the actions of both characters, it also makes that player more powerful than the other players because a second full set of actions by a remotely interesting character is fantasticly more powerful than anything else you could get with a feat.  

Sure, the cohort's attacks will probably be weaker than the attacks of a full PC, but since they don't "use up" any of the master's actions, they are essentially free.  That makes the cohort extremely *powerful*, not just time consuming.

(KarinsDad is right, of course, that a GM can compensate for powerful PCs.  But that doesn't change the fact that a single feat will make you much more powerful than practically any other feat choice.)


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## KarinsDad (Mar 31, 2008)

KidSnide said:
			
		

> (KarinsDad is right, of course, that a GM can compensate for powerful PCs.  But that doesn't change the fact that a single feat will make you much more powerful than practically any other feat choice.)




One could consider that Leadership should have been a 3 level PrC instead of a Feat. Or if a feat, that the Feat should have had other downsides to it.

Balance is something that is not always obvious, but I think that is because WotC did not have metarules on how to design feats and PrCs in 3E (or if they did, the metarules were either poorly designed or violated a lot).

Hopefully, 4E does have metarules for feat/talent design. We do see some inklings of it, but at the same time, there also appears to be some fairly broad allowances within them (if they exist).


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## DM_Blake (Mar 31, 2008)

I think everyone here probably agrees that Leadership is broken. I never allowed the feat in my games. If a player asked me about it, I would tell him to take some other feat, then roleplay his character hiring or otherwise enticing NPCs to join the group. The benefit was that those NPCs could walk away or die at any time without leaving the player stranded with a wasted feat (Leadership with no cohorts isn't very useful).

The Leadership feat becomes really overpowered when someone munchkins it cleverly. For a party of 10th level characters to acquire a 6th level fighter cohort, that cohort will be fairly weak. He won't hit nearly as well, or for as high damage, as a 10th level PC fighter. But, get a 6th level cleric instead, and the party's overall healing and utility will skyrocket. Get 6th level wizard who mostly prepares utility spells, buffs, etc., and now the PC wizard can drop most of his utility and focus on death-dealing combat magic. That kind of use of Leadership made it extremely overpowered for just a feat.

If 4e includes a similarly silly Leadership feat, or any other non-feat version of it, I will probably replace it in the same way.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 31, 2008)

As for handling druids in 3.5, he basically has two choices for an animal companion:

1. Pick the biggest, nastiest, scariest, baddest animal he can find, but he only gets one. This animal is fairly tough in combat, and can make a difference in the outcome of a fight.

2. Pick an assortment of weaker, smaller critters so that their total HD adds up to the HD of one big, nasty, scary, bad animal - this can lead to having a menagerie that destroys the action economy and expands their turn to where it takes a half hour for a single round of all those actions, but these wimps will be ineffective in combat.

I've had several PC druids over the years, and some went for #1, some went for #2.

Invariably they druid player who chose a menagerie will try to have his weasels, hawks, toads, snakes, and owls charge into battle. They die fast. 

In fact, I will let them have a fight or two where they bog everything down and accomplish nothing. During these fights, it's not uncommon to hear "Oh, my ferret rolled a 20! He hit finally. Lemme roll damage... He bit the troll for 5 HP!" at which time the wizard pipes up and says "Big deal, even I can hit something with my staff and roll more damage than that..." 

Then I follow up with a fight where I add an extra monster or two for the sole purpose of splattering this menagerie around the battlefield. Don't want to do it with the actual encounter as written, or those big old trolls will lose valuable actions that could have pounded the fighter into a grease stain when instead they were doing that to otters and chipmunks and hawks. So, by the end of that combat, our menagerie is back to nothing.

I then offer advice to the druid player about how a dire grizzly bear, or something similarly powerful, would have avoided being splattered, and might have even beat the snot out of a troll.

By the next session, our menagerie druid has a single animal companion.

Menagerie solved.

As for druids with one animal companion, that one cohort has never been too big a problem. We put its stats on a 3x5 card and the druid adds an extra 20 or 30 seconds to some of his rounds. 

"Move here, bite, rolled a 7 +6 = 13, does 13 hit? No? OK, next player."  -- That doesn't take too much time. If it does hit, the player tells me the damage (I train my players to roll their attack and their damage at the same time, 1 roll of a d20 and a d8 (or whatever), tell me the attack roll, if it hits tell me the damage amount).

It's not like bears, or tigers, or dire lions, or whatever, have really all that much to do in combat. In 3e, it's move+1 attack or stand and roll 3 attacks. Maybe a rake or a bear hug or some such once in a while. Not a really big deal.

And it won't bother me at all to continue handling druids in this fashion.


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## DM_Blake (Mar 31, 2008)

As for handling 3.5e Summon spells, I've never found any player who got too gung-ho with these.

First, Mr. Summoner spends a whole round summoning. I ham up the visual, and describe it as standing there for a whole round, chanting and hand waving, and mystical ectoplamic fog swirls around the target space for the summon spell, and wisps of this fog trail from your hands to the main fog in the target space.

In effect, anyone who isn't blind can see that some mage is summoning something. Any bad guys with enough intelligence to put that logic together will immediately fear that some horrible fiend from the depths of the Abyss will pounce out of the fog at any second. You can bet the summoner draws a lot of focus fire for the round he is standing still and casting. No amount of Combat Casting or Casting Defensively prevents your enemies from attacking you on their own round.

Assuming Mr. Summoner makes it to the start of his next round, we place the critter on the battlemat. Maybe he summoned a lower level spell to get a small menagerie (d3 critters).

Now I ham it up a bit that Mr. Summoner uses quick hand gestures and shouted commands to maneuver his summoned creatures. Sure, in 3.5, these are free actions, and Mr. Summoner is free to fire off his own battery of spells, wands, or crossbow bolts as he sees fit, but he is still directing the actions of the stuff he summoned. Which means all the enemies on the battlefield see him doing this, and he is still a target. These enemies assume that eliminating the summoner will eliminate the summoned threats, too.

After all, wouldn't your players run past the orcs in the front line, even taking a few AoOs, to wipe out an orc shaman who is summoning something wicked, or is giving orders to something wicked he has already summoned?

Those enemies who are intelligent enough even shout commands to each other like "Kill that summoner first!" and such things.

After drawing all this attention, the end result is that Mr. Summoner did nothing for a whole round but summon (-1 action). On the next round, he gets his actions and the actions of the thing he summoned (+1 action, so the net benefit is 0). By the end of round 2, the economy of actions is perfectly balanced. Starting on round 3, the balance begins to tip in the favor of the summoner.

By way of comparison, after 3 rounds, Mr. Summoner has gained a whole +1 action. He could have cast 3 cool spells. Instead, he cast 2 cool spells and his summoned mook did 2 minimal actions - lets face it, even a fiendish dire wolf is less of a threat to the enemy than a well-placed fireball or lightning bolt. In fact, I figure every 2 actions by the summoned mook is about as effective as 1 cool spell by the summoner. So I figure that at the end of round 3, Mr. Summoner is about even as to how much impact he could have had on the fight, and how much impact he really had.

So, 3 rounds to break even on usefulness, while only tipping the economy of actions by 1 action in favor of the PCs. That's not that big a deal. 

Especially since it paints a big red bulls eye on his chest, far more so than most other spellcasting does.

It doesn't take long for players to figure out that they are not getting much bang for their summoning buck, and their willingness to prepare summing spells diminishes greatly, and then eventually vanishes all together.

If it doesn't, I've been known to have anti-summoning spells and areas. One or two times of having those summoned critters turn on the players usually is the final nail or two in the coffin.

I don't go out of my way to destroy these spells. I let players use them, and enjoy them. I just let them discover the consequences, and weigh the pros and cons. It doesn't take them long to find out that good opportunities for summon spells are rare, and they don't rely on them very much. 

Even druids with their spontaneous Summon Nature's Ally spells rarely go that route.


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## Wolfwood2 (Mar 31, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> After all, wouldn't your players run past the orcs in the front line, even taking a few AoOs, to wipe out an orc shaman who is summoning something wicked, or is giving orders to something wicked he has already summoned?




Kill the caster is pretty much SOP anyway, whatever he's casting.  If you're playing a wizard, summoning is actually one of the better attack options because you can do it without disrupting your invisibility.  (You are invisible or blurred or mirror imaged or something, aren't you?  If not, bad wizard.  Look to defense.)

If you're a druid, anybody running up to melee your wildshaped self is probably going to be sorry they did.

That said, when playing a druid I found it pretty effective to just hang back to the rear of the party.  Most opponents were much weaker on ranged attacks than melee, so the DM had the choice of targeting my summoner with weaker ranged or trying to take down the party members up in the monsters' face with good attacks.  And being wildshaped and Longstridered made me quick enough to get into the thick of things quickly.



> *(snip a lot of logic trying to prove summoning isn't a big deal, which fails in that people who are annoyed by it in game aren't going to stop being annoyed because you logically proved they shouldn't be)*
> 
> I don't go out of my way to destroy these spells. I let players use them, and enjoy them. I just let them discover the consequences, and weigh the pros and cons. It doesn't take them long to find out that good opportunities for summon spells are rare, and they don't rely on them very much.
> 
> Even druids with their spontaneous Summon Nature's Ally spells rarely go that route.




I find the summoning spells to be fun on occasion, but I wouldn't cry if they got rid of them.  As far as I'm concerned, the genre tropes of conjuring up powerful beings to fight for a caster can be adequately represented by Planar Binding rituals and the like.  I don't see that many fictional examples of being able to summon up beings with a snap of the fingers.  Such things can probably be best reserved for a dedicated summoning class.


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## KidSnide (Mar 31, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> I think everyone here probably agrees that Leadership is broken. I never allowed the feat in my games. If a player asked me about it, I would tell him to take some other feat, then roleplay his character hiring or otherwise enticing NPCs to join the group. The benefit was that those NPCs could walk away or die at any time without leaving the player stranded with a wasted feat (Leadership with no cohorts isn't very useful).




No doubt we all agree on Leadership in particular.  And, that is a perfectly reasonable way to handle the desire for a sidekick without resorting to the extremely unbalanced leadership mechanic.

But the OP's point extends beyond Leadership, which is just a partuclarly egregious example of the fact that extra actions are extremely powerful.  One of the things I hated the most about 3.X combat was the proliferation of pre-combat buff spells.  Even if you ignore the game-spotting effect of a 30-minute planning session to figure out who casts spells on whom, it is just really powerful to have all of these actions performed before the start of combat.  It may be an interesting question whether to cast Haste or Fireball, but if you cast Haste right before the teleport/ambush/opening-the-next-door, you get all the benefits of doing both.  The 3rd level spell resource is used, but you're effectively getting a free action by casting the buff before battle.

Similarly, pre-summoned creatures, animal companions and cohorts (through the leadership or not) are just powerful.  Even if the weak creature or level-4 fighter isn't going to be able to take out an enemy monster on its own, an ally can still hold an enemy off while the party proper concentrates fire on the primary target.  It's like a free action that combines immobilize with DoT.  This can be fun - I enjoy combats where the PCs have to balance fighting the most dangerous enemies with supporting their low-level allied troops that are protecting the flanks and rear.  

But, when balanced against other abilities, an ability that grants you free actions by summoning, recruiting or attracting an ally is either very powerful, or involves an ally that is so wussy that it hardly matters.  That's why Rodney was speculating about creating allied creatures that "use up" their master's actions in some way or otherwise manifest as bonuses instead of actions.


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## Hussar (Apr 1, 2008)

> First, Mr. Summoner spends a whole round summoning. I ham up the visual, and describe it as standing there for a whole round, chanting and hand waving, and mystical ectoplamic fog swirls around the target space for the summon spell, and wisps of this fog trail from your hands to the main fog in the target space.




So, the solution to the problem is to change the rules?  And, then to change the rules so that the action becomes substantially sub-par?  After all, if casting fireball doesn't draw aggro (to use the MMORPG term) but summon monster III does, well, it's not too tricky to figure out which one I'm going to cast.

In other words, if you are going to make it suicidal to cast certain spells, why not just remove those spells from play?


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## KarinsDad (Apr 1, 2008)

Hussar said:
			
		

> So, the solution to the problem is to change the rules?  And, then to change the rules so that the action becomes substantially sub-par?




How is this changing the rules?


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## Hussar (Apr 1, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> How is this changing the rules?




Where in RAW does it tell us that casting a summoning spell causes all sorts of special effects and basically places a giant neon sign above the caster saying "HEY KILL ME!"?

One thing about it, with those rules, I'd be taking silent and still spell feats ASAP.


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## med stud (Apr 1, 2008)

It seems like this debate is much about how much time the menagerie-guy takes with all his creatures. If you have a player that takes a long time thinking about the actions of each and every badger in his crew, that player becomes a pain. If you have a player that just moves all his creatures forward, rolls attack and damage dice at the same time and did his planning when it wasn't his turn, it's not much of a big deal.

Judging from some conversations on this forum and other forums, it seems like the slow-thinker is more common than I thought before I started going on RPG-forums.

Since you can make rules about managing action economy but you can't make rules making people think faster, I think cutting down on player controlled creatures is the way to go.


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## small pumpkin man (Apr 1, 2008)

med stud said:
			
		

> It seems like this debate is much about how much time the menagerie-guy takes with all his creatures. If you have a player that takes a long time thinking about the actions of each and every badger in his crew, that player becomes a pain. If you have a player that just moves all his creatures forward, rolls attack and damage dice at the same time and did his planning when it wasn't his turn, it's not much of a big deal.
> 
> Judging from some conversations on this forum and other forums, it seems like the slow-thinker is more common than I thought before I started going on RPG-forums.
> 
> Since you can make rules about managing action economy but you can't make rules making people think faster, I think cutting down on player controlled creatures is the way to go.



Actually, the only character we had which ever summoned things just used the creatures as essentially bags of hp to stand between him and monsters, he never did anything tricksy with them, but he still attacked with them and had to roll around 20 to hit rolls every turn. It took ages and it was a complete waste of everyone's time.


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## med stud (Apr 1, 2008)

small pumpkin man said:
			
		

> Actually, the only character we had which ever summoned things just used the creatures as essentially bags of hp to stand between him and monsters, he never did anything tricksy with them, but he still attacked with them and had to roll around 20 to hit rolls every turn. It took ages and it was a complete waste of everyone's time.



Yeah, it's a big problem with animals traditionally having lots of attacks in D&D (and other RPGs), especially in this context. Six cougars with six attacks would be one thing, six cougars with 18 attacks is an entirelly different thing.


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## KarinsDad (Apr 1, 2008)

Hussar said:
			
		

> Where in RAW does it tell us that casting a summoning spell causes all sorts of special effects and basically places a giant neon sign above the caster saying "HEY KILL ME!"?




Nearly all spells have giant neon signs. Casters have to have strong verbal components (i.e. they cannot whisper) and somatic components that other casters can view to the extent that they can use Spellcraft to discern which spell is being cast before it is even cast. Additionally, summoning spells last for an entire round.

So yes, summoning spells have always had giant neon signs involved and because of this, many groups have played for years that the summoner becomes a quick target.

His description was a bit much, but not way beyond what is reasonable to describe a spell.


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## med stud (Apr 1, 2008)

EDIT: Nevermind.


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## DM_Blake (Apr 1, 2008)

Hussar said:
			
		

> So, the solution to the problem is to change the rules?  And, then to change the rules so that the action becomes substantially sub-par?  After all, if casting fireball doesn't draw aggro (to use the MMORPG term) but summon monster III does, well, it's not too tricky to figure out which one I'm going to cast.
> 
> In other words, if you are going to make it suicidal to cast certain spells, why not just remove those spells from play?




I'm not really changing the rules. The components are already there. I'm making it more clear to all viewers that a summon is being cast, and everyone who can see it knows who is casting it.

That's no different than fireball, except fireball is a standard action, so nobody can interrupt it unless they have held an action to shoot the mage, or happen to be within reach for an AoO (stupid mage to allow that).

The downside to summons is that it takes a full round. So every enemy on the battlefield can act on their own rounds. No AoO necessary. No held action necessary.

Sure, I ham up the cause/effect visuals. This is to discourage summoning during combat.

Summoning before combat is still an alternative, but 1 round/level means you better know you're going into combat immediately or it's wasted.

Some times, summoning in combat works. Such as when you're fighting a zombie horde, and they are far enough away that they won't get AoOs - they're not smart enough to recognize the spell, spellcaster, or effects, and they won't deliberately interrupt - though they might happen to decide the summoner is yummy and try to eat him, if there's nobody else closer or yummier.

All I'm doing with this is making it easier to spot the summoner. I'm making sure nobody thinks it's a few whispered words and a quick hand gesture, then spend 6 seconds sitting around acting innocent until your summoned critter *poofs* onto the battlefield.


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## DM_Blake (Apr 1, 2008)

Hussar said:
			
		

> Where in RAW does it tell us that casting a summoning spell causes all sorts of special effects and basically places a giant neon sign above the caster saying "HEY KILL ME!"?
> 
> One thing about it, with those rules, I'd be taking silent and still spell feats ASAP.




Wouldn't help much.

Silent means you could whisper the verbal components, even if you're gagged. Still means your hand gestures are so minimal that they can easily escape notice, and you can even cast if you're bound.

However, neither metamagic feat hides the magical effects.

A silent, stilled Lightning Bolt still blasts out of your hand and strikes your target. Everyone watching knows you cast the spell, though they might be surprised since they didn't see or hear you casting it.

A silent, stilled Cone of Cold still blasts out of your hand and strikes your targets. Everyone watching knows you cast the spell, though they might be surprised since they didn't see or hear you casting it.

A silent, stilled Summon Monster still generates the effects in the target square and the wisps of summoning ectoplasm that stream out of your hand. Everyone watching knows you are casting the spell, though they might be surprised since they don't see or hear you casting it.

In other words, you can silence or still the act of casting, but you cannot silence or still the spell's effects.


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## ruleslawyer (Apr 1, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> I'm not really changing the rules. The components are already there. *I'm making it more clear to all viewers that a summon is being cast, and everyone who can see it knows who is casting it.*



That is a house rule. The RAW would allow a Spellcraft check to determine that it's a summoning spell; otherwise, it's just the caster performing somatic and verbal components.

I don't think most people would argue that summon monster X is broken, anyway; the issue is really over animal companions + summon nature's ally + charmed animals + wildshape, which combine to create a zoo's worth of combatants. Likewise Leadership, which has the tendency to add in too many cohorts and followers and break the power curve. Gate is of course the worst offender, since it can be used to call creatures substantially more powerful than the party fighter!


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## Dunamin (Apr 1, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> A silent, stilled Summon Monster still generates the effects in the target square and the wisps of summoning ectoplasm that stream out of your hand. Everyone watching knows you are casting the spell, though they might be surprised since they don't see or hear you casting it.



Wait, what?

A Summon Monster spell does not generate magic juju streaming out of your hand, at least per RAW.


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## Dausuul (Apr 1, 2008)

Sora Justice said:
			
		

> The economy of actions is such that, as some players have more and more turns associated with their character in each round, many other players have less and less fun. Period. There is literally no way around this and if you believe you have found a way around this, I am fully glad you are not on the 4e design team, because you are wrong.
> 
> On account of this, some sort of neutering of cohorts, summons, and other means of attaining multiple actions must be put in place in the rules as written now, with this fourth edition. Why, you ask? Because 4e D&D is about fun, and though they may not do it maliciously, the Dausuuls and KarinsDads of the world will point at the rules and exclaim that they are justified in taking two to four times as many turns as everyone else at the table, and the Wormwoods, Storminators, and Saishuu_Heikis will sigh, because that's what the book says, so even though it tramples on their fun, many of them will not realize how wrong it actually is, and let it keep happening to them for another eight to ten years.




Hmm... first, I'd like to point out that I'm not in favor of people taking a pile of actions on their turn.  I personally might enjoy playing a summoner or a necromancer, but you'll note that in the example of this I gave (the dread necro with a horde of undead), I was only playing that character by mutual agreement with the other players, and even then I handed out most of the undead for other people to control.  A summoner with five summoned creatures, who takes five times as long to resolve his/her turn as anyone else at the table, is a Bad Thing.

That said, I think there is such a thing as overcompensating in the name of absolute fairness.  A single cohort, using a specialized "cohort class," with simple maneuvers that don't take a lot of time or thought, and who acts on the master's initiative, need not be a substantial drag on play.  Particularly if the cohort frequently provides a bonus instead of taking an actual action.  (The power issue is another matter.)  Yes, there is a very minor loss to fun for the other players; but weigh that against the many reasons why people want cohorts, most of which are valid, and I think the balance of fun is in favor of some kind of cohort system.

After some thought, I do think specialized cohort classes are an absolute necessity, though.  Gameplay aside, the power differential is just too great otherwise.  Extrapolating from the monster XP values we've seen, a PC-classed cohort would require a huge "level adjustment" both for the cohort and for the master.  For instance, in a 10th-level party, if you wanted to have a 5th-level cohort, you'd need to give up three levels yourself in order to keep things balanced.


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## Hussar (Apr 1, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> I'm not really changing the rules. The components are already there. I'm making it more clear to all viewers that a summon is being cast, and everyone who can see it knows who is casting it.
> /snip
> 
> Sure, I ham up the cause/effect visuals. This is to discourage summoning during combat.
> ...




So, if I'm invisible, I still generate magic juju?  That's entirely a house rule.  Never mind the fact that it requires a Spellcraft check to know that I'm casting summoning spells.  Do you require your enemies to spend a round making a Spellcraft check as well?

What about other 1 round casting time spells like, say, Sleep?

In other words, as I said, you changed the rules to make summoning a sub par option.  That is certainly one way to go.  But, I'd much rather just remove the spell from play.  Why bother with pages of rules that aren't going to be used?


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## KarinsDad (Apr 1, 2008)

Dunamin said:
			
		

> Wait, what?
> 
> A Summon Monster spell does not generate magic juju streaming out of your hand, at least per RAW.




No, it doesn't. But, creatures still know that the caster is casting a spell per RAW. It still provokes Attacks of Opportunity.


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## ruleslawyer (Apr 1, 2008)

To be precise, opponents know that the caster is dropping his guard.


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## Crosswind (Apr 1, 2008)

To be precise...err, they don't.  Spellcraft to identify a spell being cast requires that it see or hear somatic/verbal components.  And people only get an AoO you're not casting defensively...so, no guard is being dropped.

If you defensively cast a silent, stilled spell, I'm not sure it's possible that the effect can be linked to you, unless the effect is "A ray shoots out of your hands", etc.

-Cross


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## ruleslawyer (Apr 1, 2008)

I was responding to KarinsDad. The fact that (non-defensively) casting a spell provokes AoOs by the RAW doesn't mean that your opponents know what kind of spell you're casting, or even if you're casting a spell at all.


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## Hussar (Apr 2, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> No, it doesn't. But, creatures still know that the caster is casting a spell per RAW. It still provokes Attacks of Opportunity.




I think there is something of a difference between drawing an AOO by casting a spell within the threatened reach of an opponent and changing the description of the action by painting a giant glowing crosshairs onto the wizard.  As has been noted, a concentration check negates the AOO, certain feats remove the visible and audible effects of casting and a simple invisibility spell, or heck, even a hide check could make the wizard immune to attack for casting a summoning spell.

As I said before, this is a viable option and it's something that is done in lots of RPG's.  Give the players the option, but, make the option so difficult to pull off, or only useful in limited circumstances that the issue goes away.  4e appears not to be taking this option.  Instead of making something is too difficult to use, they are just removing it from the game entirely.

I mentioned this in another thread, but I'll repeat it here.  It appears that they are removing effects from the game that caused large slowdowns.  AOO's, by and large didn't cause the game to come to a screeching halt.  Dispel Magic, OTOH, could take several minutes to adjudicate and then recalculate, so Dispel Magic gets seriously limited.  Summoning spells can cause the game to come to a screeching halt if the summoner is not prepared.  So, it appears that summoning is going to be seriously limited.

Whether this is a good thing or not depends on your point of view.  Me, I think it's great.  I'm tired of exciting combats being ground to a halt because Bob didn't write out the stats for his summonings and has to spend several minutes calculating their buffs and whatnot.


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## KarinsDad (Apr 2, 2008)

ruleslawyer said:
			
		

> I was responding to KarinsDad. The fact that (non-defensively) casting a spell provokes AoOs by the RAW doesn't mean that your opponents know what kind of spell you're casting, or even if you're casting a spell at all.




There are only two actions in DND that result in a lowering of the guard (i.e. resulting in a potential AoO) where the action might possibly not be known: spell casting and use spell-like ability. All of the rest of the actions in core are hard to argue as "potentially unknown actions".

So given this, when one lowers one's guard and it is not any other reason, it must be one of these two by definition of what provokes in the game system (shy of additional actions in splat books).

Additionally, spell casting and casting defensive both require concentration (the first without a roll as per the spell casting description, the second with a concentration skill roll). So minimally, one would see a creature concentrating, regardless of whether the caster is casting defensively or not, with or without spell components. Unless you are going to claim that concentrating is non-visible.

Because if concentration is non-visible, then there is no way to counterspell (with dispel magic) a cast defensive silent stilled spell (i.e. to know to be able to attempt it).


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## ruleslawyer (Apr 2, 2008)

Casting non-defensively only requires a Concentration check if you take damage.

The point is that all that game knowledge tells you is that the caster lowered his guard enough to draw an AoO. There's absolutely no indication of what the attacking creature really knows about what he's doing.

The Spellcraft argument is a different story. The fact that you can use Spellcraft to identify silent, stilled spells indicates that the spell itself must have some susceptibility to identification via a Spellcraft check that has nothing to do with visible gestures. Thus my earlier point that DM_Blake is house ruling; in truth, all of the signs of what exactly a mage is doing when he drops his guard should be left to determination via Spellcraft check, not via the descriptive mechanic he's using, which is an add-on rule.


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## hong (Apr 2, 2008)

Anyway, even assuming that the wiz casting a summon spell is immediately obvious to everyone, so what? What are the bad guys going to do about it? Presumably they're already engaged in combat, and the wiz isn't just standing around waiting for them to hit him. He's likely to have his own defenses up as well, if only because with d4 HD any smart wiz doesn't want to get hit at all, whether or not he's summoning stuff.


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## ruleslawyer (Apr 2, 2008)

In any event, I think this summoning stuff is pretty off-topic. As I said before, the real problem issues are the druid's menagerie, the Leadership feat, and the potential for really deadly called creatures. I'd like to see all of those options dealt with to the end of better gameplay in 4e.


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## Harshax (Apr 2, 2008)

What if they treated summons like an per encounter zone that could move? Like a swarm of skeletons or something?  (If that's come up before, I apologize)

As to Summoner's getting flagged . . .

That seems kinda silly now that every class has a big boom stick of a power.  What if the fighter lit up like a yule log every time he was about to do his daily, and thereby attract the attention of anyone that had an interrupt to throw?


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## KarinsDad (Apr 2, 2008)

ruleslawyer said:
			
		

> Casting non-defensively only requires a Concentration check if you take damage.




True. I did not say it required a Concentration check. I said it required concentration.



> Concentration
> You must concentrate to cast a spell. If you can’t concentrate you can’t cast a spell.




So again, is it your contention that concentrating on a spell is a non-visible action?


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## Cadfan (Apr 2, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> Because if concentration is non-visible, then there is no way to counterspell (with dispel magic) a cast defensive silent stilled spell (i.e. to know to be able to attempt it).



I've always assumed that was the case.  I'm pretty sure that a number of stealthy, social wizardish types in 3e are built around the premise that, if your spell is stilled and silent, you can cast it in the middle of a crowded room and have no one the wiser.


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## KarinsDad (Apr 2, 2008)

Cadfan said:
			
		

> I've always assumed that was the case.  I'm pretty sure that a number of stealthy, social wizardish types in 3e are built around the premise that, if your spell is stilled and silent, you can cast it in the middle of a crowded room and have no one the wiser.




I have no issue with this per se other than the fact that it is a spell with no visible knowledge by others. In other words, non-spell casters cannot even know it is occuring (spell dependent). They do not know to grapple the Wizard. Nothing in the spell rules indicate that Still + Silent (+ possibly cast defensively) = non-detectable. That seems as much a house rule as the opposite POV.


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## ruleslawyer (Apr 2, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> True. I did not say it required a Concentration check. I said it required concentration.
> 
> So again, is it your contention that concentrating on a spell is a non-visible action?



Do you really want to keep beating this to death?

It is unclear by the RAW whether concentrating on a spell is a non-visible action. ALL that is clear is that the caster is provoking an AoO (i.e. dropping his guard). It *is* clear that identifying a spell being cast requires a Spellcraft check. That's what I was referring to above.


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## Gentlegamer (Apr 2, 2008)

ruleslawyer said:
			
		

> It is unclear by the RAW . . .



This is where the DM makes a ruling based on the situation.


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## Cadfan (Apr 2, 2008)

Sage Advice Column said:
			
		

> Q: Dear Sage,
> If my character casts a silent and stilled spell of any sort that affects the target’s behavior (charm person, suggestion, etc.) and the target makes the saving throw, would they know they were being cast upon and who cast the spell? What would a typical NPC reaction be to this scenario?
> --JT
> 
> A: The target of a spell or effect is always aware that he’s rolled a saving throw, though the caster of the spell isn’t revealed.




http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ask/20070330a

Best I can come up with on the fly.  There are also a number of sneaky wizard and sneaky bard feats and abilities that seem premised on the assumption that a spell which involves no movement, no sounds, and no components is just an act of (functionally) undetectable mental exertion on the part of the caster.

I'm filing "the rules don't actually SAY that silent, stilled, component-less spells aren't visible anyways" with "the rules don't actually SAY that being dead stops you from moving around and doing things."  Both technically true statements, but neither helpful.


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## Victim (Apr 2, 2008)

The DMG guidelines for describing actions certainly suggest that still, silent spells and spell like abilities are noticeable.  "Without using words or gestures, she calls upon some power within herself..."  That would indicate that the concentration required to use abilities is recognizeable as such.  My 3.0 book has that on page 71, in Running the Game.  Naturally, something like isn't going to be the SRD.

Summon spells are best cast while invisible to avoid the whole 'pound the caster before he finishes' thing.


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## ruleslawyer (Apr 2, 2008)

Gentlegamer said:
			
		

> This is where the DM makes a ruling based on the situation.



Read my third sentence.


			
				me said:
			
		

> It *is* clear that identifying a spell being cast requires a Spellcraft check. That's what I was referring to above.


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## Dausuul (Apr 2, 2008)

Three things I'd like to point out here:

#1, all this talk about Stilled Silent summoning is ridiculous.  Still Spell and Silent Spell are for extraordinary situations like being grappled, targeted by a _silence_ spell, et cetera.  They're an emergency backup weapon or a stealth tactic, not something you do regularly in combat.  If your solution to "the enemy sees you casting a long spell and peppers you with arrows" is "I cast the spell Stilled and Silenced," you might as well give up being a summoner--your summon spells will all be two levels lower than they should be, effectively neutering them.

#2, assuming you're not Stilling and Silencing, the enemy can see you're casting a spell.  The party wizard is a prime target for intelligent bad guys to begin with; when you add in the chance to interrupt a spell, any sensible bad guy will seize that chance even without knowing what the spell does.

#3, can we get back to the economy of actions now?


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## DM_Blake (Apr 2, 2008)

Dausuul said:
			
		

> #1, all this talk about Stilled Silent summoning is ridiculous.  Still Spell and Silent Spell are for extraordinary situations like being grappled, targeted by a _silence_ spell, et cetera.  They're an emergency backup weapon or a stealth tactic, not something you do regularly in combat.  If your solution to "the enemy sees you casting a long spell and peppers you with arrows" is "I cast the spell Stilled and Silenced," you might as well give up being a summoner--your summon spells will all be two levels lower than they should be, effectively neutering them.




Quite true. Summoning is weak enough without wasting two feats to be able to summon much weaker creatures safely.



			
				Dausuul said:
			
		

> #2, assuming you're not Stilling and Silencing, the enemy can see you're casting a spell.  The party wizard is a prime target for intelligent bad guys to begin with; when you add in the chance to interrupt a spell, any sensible bad guy will seize that chance even without knowing what the spell does.




Yep.

Even more so when you consider they don't have to prepare their interrupts (no held actions required).

Even more so when you consider that fireballs are scary, but summoned demons are much more terrifying, so if an enemy has to decide between taking out a summoner and taking out a warmage, the summoner will probably be at the top of that list, just due to fear of the unknown more than anything.



			
				Dausuul said:
			
		

> #3, can we get back to the economy of actions now?




I thought summoning creatures that get extra actions was very germaine to the discussion of economy of actions.

Certainly when your mage conjures forth a d3 demons, or your druid whips up a d3 big old bears, you can bet the rest of his turns will consist of handling a lot more actions than everyone else.

My whole point, initially, was that in pointing out the risks of casting full round spells that terrify the enemy, many possible summon spells are avoided when the player decides to do something a little safer. And when they do summon stuff, having that stuff run around ineffectively until it dies (by this I mean relatively weak attacks for little or no damage because summoned stuff is pretty weak to begin with), wasting everyone's time for little measurable gain, and then showing the player than the time he wasted summoning his menagerie of ineffective minions could have been constructively used to kill the bad guys, even more possible summon spells are avoided.

Once a player sees that he puts himself at great risk, wasts his character's time and wastes all the players' time, and gets very little benefit in return, he is not likely to waste his time with summoning things, ever.

That said, there are some occasions where it is still fairly useful, particularly when the group is being overrun by swarms of weak opponents. Or summoned creatures might perform non-combat tasks, like delivering an item to someone, or scouting ahead, or even springing traps or ambushes. 

None of which really bogs down the speed of gameplay - I believe economy of actions is really only a concern during turn-based combat.


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## Dausuul (Apr 2, 2008)

DM_Blake said:
			
		

> I thought summoning creatures that get extra actions was very germaine to the discussion of economy of actions.




Summoning creatures is germane, of course.  I was objecting to the lengthy debate over whether you can tell that a wizard casting Silent Stilled _summon monster III_ is in fact casting a summon spell.



			
				DM_Blake said:
			
		

> My whole point, initially, was that in pointing out the risks of casting full round spells that terrify the enemy, many possible summon spells are avoided when the player decides to do something a little safer. And when they do summon stuff, having that stuff run around ineffectively until it dies (by this I mean relatively weak attacks for little or no damage because summoned stuff is pretty weak to begin with), wasting everyone's time for little measurable gain, and then showing the player than the time he wasted summoning his menagerie of ineffective minions could have been constructively used to kill the bad guys, even more possible summon spells are avoided.
> 
> Once a player sees that he puts himself at great risk, wasts his character's time and wastes all the players' time, and gets very little benefit in return, he is not likely to waste his time with summoning things, ever.




This is true, but it means that summon spells are A Trap!  If you build a summon specialist, you then get to suck in combat while annoying everyone at the table, until you realize the futility of being a summoner, and then you have to make a new character and/or persuade the DM to let you change the old one.  If that's how summons are going to be, then why let it even be possible to summon stuff in combat?


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## KarinsDad (Apr 3, 2008)

ruleslawyer said:
			
		

> It is unclear by the RAW whether concentrating on a spell is a non-visible action.




Precisely. Which means that it is unclear whether someone knows if a caster is casting a still silent cast defensive spell.

According to RAW, DM_Blake's adjudication that it is observable is just as valid as your adjudication that it is not.


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## Hussar (Apr 3, 2008)

KarinsDad said:
			
		

> Precisely. Which means that it is unclear whether someone knows if a caster is casting a still silent cast defensive spell.
> 
> According to RAW, DM_Blake's adjudication that it is observable is just as valid as your adjudication that it is not.




There is a difference though.  Observable to Rulelawyer means that you can use Spellcraft checks to know what's being cast.  Observable to DM Blake is such that everyone, without any training whatsoever, can always tell that someone is casting a spell, regardless of any precautions.


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