D&D 5E You and What Army?

One of the biggest problems I encountered in 3rd edition was the ability for characters to have not just one, but several pets, summoned monsters, animated dead, rebuked undead, crafted golems, charmed/dominated creatures, followers, etc.

The Summon Monster/Nature's Ally spells allowed you to summon 1d4 + 1 monsters with a single casting, and each one was its own creature with its own entire turn, attacks (often several attacks), spells, etc. And there was no restriction against casting the spell multiple times to gain more and more monsters under your command. Sorcerers and Druids in particular had a very easy time abusing this.

The Animate Dead spell was also problematic. While there was a limit on how many creatures you could control at a time, the limit was 4 times your caster level in HD. A 10th level caster, for example, could have 40 HD of undead animated and serving him at any given time. That could be four hill giant skeletons, for example! Clerics could take it even furhter, by adding their level in HD of commanded undead.

Summoned and animated dead were in addition to any golems the character crafted, animal companions, familiars, henchmen, outsiders from planar ally/binding spells and beings the character had dominated (which lasted for days, even weeks). Between all of these things, and others, characters could have a ridiculous number of creatures under their command. 4e had its action economy to solve this problem, but I think it may have gone a bit too far in the other direction (even rangers had to share actions with their animal companions, for example).

I hope something is done to reign this in in Next, without having to go to 4e's extreme of shared actions. For example, I think that summon monster spells should usually be limited to summoning a single monster and should require concentration, preventing you from stacking them. Dominate Person/Monster should also require concentration, preventing people from having dominated monsters + summoned monsters at the same time. Animate Dead should be limited to creating one minion at a time. These are all sensible restrictions IMO and would at least keep things relatively sane.

Was this a problem in old-school D&D with armies of hirelings and henchmen?

GX.Sigma said:

Was this a problem in old-school D&D with armies of hirelings and henchmen?

Click to expand...

I don't know. The oldest edition I've played is 2nd, and none of the people I played with ever had followers or other minions that I can recall.

What is the reason you object to these? That they consume too much time at the table? Or is it for social, in-game reasons? A lot of effort has been put into balancing all the types of minions a PC can get trough the rules:

Golems are hideously expensive

A familiar is cute and can act like a spy (especially a flying one that does not attract attention), but use it in combat and it will die.

Summons last 1 round/level (except for a Pathfinder summoner, where they last 1 minute/level). The Eidolon and animal companion is another matter, but that is also a core class feature.

Animated undead are not free and generally barely viable even as cannon fodder.

The Planar Ally spells provide somewhat reliable allies (at least if you are good), but also are expensive.

The Leadership feat gives a cohort, that is a viable support character - a cleric, wizard, or bard cohort can be a real asset. Likewise a caster can get a decent body guard this way. This is the one kind of follower I would consider truly tactically valuable. Leadership also provides followers, who are just barely capable of holding your horse or collecting taxes from peasants.

GX.Sigma said:

Was this a problem in old-school D&D with armies of hirelings and henchmen?

Click to expand...

This is hearsay, but I have friends who played in large campaigns (10-12 players at the table) where each player also had one or more henchmen. Seems everyone was enjoying that playstyle, even if it got to be pretty high-maintenance - leveling upand equipping yourself, 2-3 henchmen, a special mount and so was quite a lot of work. So, yes it happened, but no it was not a problem when it did. Remember this was back in 1E days when the game itself was simpler. Each character's action was faster and simpler to execute back then.

Hiya.

I'm gonna have to back Starfox up on that. In my 1e campaigns, it never bogged down play. IME, players were quite protective of their hirelings and henchmen. Hirelings were, simply put, very fragile. You hired them to look after camp, tend the animals, watch at night, cook and keep the fire going. Hirelings generally had between 2 and 6 hp...so you didn't *want* them anywhere near a dungeon or ruined castle.

Henchmen were expensive. But they were significantly more capable than the hirelings. As for summoned monsters and controlled undead...1e is a slick system; it easily allows the DM to "gloss over" combats between, say, 9 orcs against the wizards 6 zombies. That said, there were a couple of articles in Dragon magazine that had suggestions, rules and guidelines for dealing with 'large' mixed groups. In the above 9 orcs v. 6 zombies, after some quick look ups (AC vs. THAC0; dmg vs. hp), the DM could roll a single die for each 'side' and determine who came out ahead that round. Meanwhile, the PC's would be doing all their stuff fighting the main bad guy, or the big monster, or whatever. At the end of the fight the DM could just tell the PC's "The orcs are slain, and 2 of the zombies are down, the others wounded a bit".

With 5e, I'm hoping they have something similar as an option for DM's that like to have large groups fight on occasion...without having to resort to a "Battle-System/War-Machine" style mini-system.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Starfox said:

What is the reason you object to these? That they consume too much time at the table? Or is it for social, in-game reasons? A lot of effort has been put into balancing all the types of minions a PC can get trough the rules:

Golems are hideously expensive

A familiar is cute and can act like a spy (especially a flying one that does not attract attention), but use it in combat and it will die.

Summons last 1 round/level (except for a Pathfinder summoner, where they last 1 minute/level). The Eidolon and animal companion is another matter, but that is also a core class feature.

Animated undead are not free and generally barely viable even as cannon fodder.

The Planar Ally spells provide somewhat reliable allies (at least if you are good), but also are expensive.

The Leadership feat gives a cohort, that is a viable support character - a cleric, wizard, or bard cohort can be a real asset. Likewise a caster can get a decent body guard this way. This is the one kind of follower I would consider truly tactically valuable. Leadership also provides followers, who are just barely capable of holding your horse or collecting taxes from peasants.

Click to expand...

You underestimate the power of these creatures. Once, my party was having a very difficult time fighting a devil. My wizard summoned a celestial dire tiger, and it killed the devil in one round. Everyone at the table gasped at how easily it took that devil down. Another time, I animated a hill giant skeleton, and just for fun we had it duel our 10th level fighter. The skeleton won. When I created a stone golem, the party fighter really started to wonder what purpose he even served. You say a lot of balancing went into them, but I just don't see it. It would be one thing if the wizard were allowed to have just one of these pets. That would be powerful enough, as each one is as or more powerful than a player character. But as I said earlier, you can have many such creatures under your command.

I think there is a place for companions, hirelings, henchmen, animal companions, summons, constructions, familiars and any others I've forgotten. The key thing is making their power and abilities limited in scope such that they can't dominate a scenario, or replace an existing character. An obvious and quick rule is to limit how many such NPCs you can have under your command - linking it with your Charisma or spellcasting ability, or tying it into any magic item limitation method you are using, so that they take up a slot and thus weaken your own character in exchange.

There is also the way in which these NPCs interact with the world. Animal companions were completely obedient and always available - now whilst that makes sense for a small creature that contributes little in combat such as a familiar, even a tiger ought to think twice when confronted with a devil. One's use of animal companions should not be continual, but when needs be - I will say that the animal companion version of the 4E Ranger had a neat trick here, in that you could use its attack *or* your own, and with some powers let you combine your attacks. You ought to be giving something up to have your tiger follow you around all day and attack every round as you command - it's just not clear what that ought to be yet, certainly the action economy is a good start - I think it solves summons entirely, the spellcaster simply gives up their own actions to enable the different, hopefully more effective, actions of their summon.

Then we have the problem of fully autonomous beings, such as cohorts from 3E - they can clearly attack and make decisions without you needing to direct them, so how can be balance them? Well, in the old days they took a share of your experience points, and that's worth considering as their progression then feels more organic, but is it really a penalty, and can they still detract from other characters? That's unclear - I would like to see a loyalty subsystem to deal with this: a cohort is not a slave, and offering them rewards and making sure they aren't cannon fodder should play a role in their existence. This sort of system would also allow for games with a low number of players - who hasn't, at some point, wanted to play a CRPG-style game with just one player and NPCs fairly managed? In some ways cohorts and unusual NPCs such as golems are more rewards than character options, and as such come under the DM's purview anyway, as I understand rewards in DDN at the moment, but still, I would like to see something concrete and meaningful as a cost to obtain them. To construct a golem, for instance, you might have to permanently give up a high-level spell slot, and if you only get one 9th/8th/7th/6th slot, that might be a considerable price to pay. To have an unwaveringly loyal cohort, hm, maybe sacrificing your future ability increases - after all, you are focused on training them more than yourself from now on.

Falling Icicle said:

You underestimate the power of these creatures. [...] Another time, I animated a hill giant skeleton, and just for fun we had it duel our 10th level fighter. The skeleton won. When I created a stone golem, the party fighter really started to wonder what purpose he even served.

Click to expand...

Maybe you are too stingy with magic items... A fighter needs quite a lot of magic items to be competitive. Mainly proitective ones. A fighter lives and dies with his AC.

My 3rd ed campaign ground to halt at about 12th level because of the combined effects of monster summoning wizard and animal summoning druid. The problem was both at the table where it took ages for the casters rounds to resolve and in game with 3 or 4 summoned creatures. They were also useful with traps etc.

I agree that 4th eds approach was pretty severe with shared actions, but I quite like the idea of a healing surge or hp penalty. There should be some limit on what summoned creatures. I imposed that summoned creatures were dazed on the first turn of summoning in 3rd but this was not enough.

I never had the same problem with henchmen in 1st ed - precisely because there was a greater investment in them they had names and had the ability to say "no I will not fight those demons which are 15 feel taller than me".

Just spitballing: but one thought is that summoned monsters should have names and if they die, that type of monster can be used by the caster until they level up or such.