Is there a way to make Conjure Animals take less time?

[77IM]

Use average damage for the bites and punches. Now you only need to roll attacks.

 

[gyor]

Use average damage for the bites and punches. Now you only need to roll attacks.

Then roll all the attacks at once.

 

[GMMichael]

badger punches

Am I the only one who has a problem with this?

I'm not the DM, I'm another player, so i don't have the ability to make house rules.

Two approaches then. 1) politely tell the DM, in front of the group, that you think the badger-sequence takes a "little too long." 2) Coordinate with the non-rangers to all get up and take a "smoke break" every time your ranger Summons.

By the way, I think this guy captures what the badger swarm looks like and how they behave:
[video=youtube;PEvZAWrGlx8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEvZAWrGlx8[/video]

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Badger Swarm!

Nice!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIyixC9NsLI

 

[Quartz]

Badger Swarm!

You might add Vulnerability to area of effect effects.

 

[Blue]

I view this as an issue of spotlight balance which is, in part, on the player. In our group, it's bad form to hog the spotlight which should be shared more or less equally among all the participants over the course of a session. Conjure animals and other summoning spells (or, for example, animate dead) must therefore be used very judiciously. It's not clear to me from your post how often the ranger's player is busting out the badgers, but if it's more than once per 4-hours session, I would most certainly have a conversation with him or her as DM or as a player to say, "Hey, this spell is like casting slow game or steal spotlight. It takes X minutes more than everyone else to resolve their turns and this really adds up. Do you think we could come up with some other strategies and use this spell less often?"

Ultimately, just because something is rules legal or optimally effective doesn't mean it is automatically good for the play experience. And since we're all presumably there for the play experience, anything that impacts that negatively demands a good hard look in my view. Hopefully the player is self-aware enough to realize this is a problem for others and is amenable to solutions.

Timde to take a turn =/= spotlight. Otherwise every ill-prepared caster player who needs to look up three spells would be the "main spotlight character".

I am all for working out ways to support the player's concept of the character, such as a summoner, while keeping game-play fast. In earlier editions I've required characters to have cheat-sheets for summons so there wasn't looking up (and applying templates sometimes, like in 3.5).

But one player poo-pooing another's concept simply because the resolution takes time is no more fair then disallowing a social character because discussion takes time.

 

[iserith]

Timde to take a turn =/= spotlight. Otherwise every ill-prepared caster player who needs to look up three spells would be the "main spotlight character".

Spotlight time is any time in which you are the focus of the scene in my opinion which necessarily includes however long it takes to resolve your turn.

I am all for working out ways to support the player's concept of the character, such as a summoner, while keeping game-play fast. In earlier editions I've required characters to have cheat-sheets for summons so there wasn't looking up (and applying templates sometimes, like in 3.5).

But one player poo-pooing another's concept simply because the resolution takes time is no more fair then disallowing a social character because discussion takes time.

Players have a right to their particular concept within the bounds of agreed upon rules and genre in my view, but that right comes with a corresponding responsibility: Share the spotlight more or less equally with your fellow players over the course of the session. If someone isn't doing that, I would say it's perfectly reasonable for a fellow player or DM to say something about it and work toward a solution.

For example, my circle of the shepherd druid, Bo-Peep, has a conjure animals spell in her retinue which she uses to summon a flock of sheep (goats, reskinned). Rather than bust that out on regular, I do it only when it would be particularly useful or very cool in the scene. Because I know that it will take longer to resolve my turn than normal, I'm judicious in its use as I see it as my responsibility to share spotlight more or less equally. That's just being a conscientious player in my view, respectful of other people at the table.

 

[Blue]

Spotlight time is any time in which you are the focus of the scene in my opinion which necessarily includes however long it takes to resolve your turn.

Ah, a difference in definition. Spotlight time is times when you get to act cool and amazing, when you stand out - have the spotlight on you. If one character is the focus of the session with everything revolving around them, they had the spotlight. The fact that wall time was spent on other characters isn't really an issue.

Since we're talking about time in combat, let me give a combat focused example. Say a 11th level character with a party of 2nd levels went on a generic dungeon crawl. The 10th level pulled out spells, tanked bosses, and generally made themselves the star of the show. They will have taken the majority (if not all) of the spotlight, regardless if their turns took longer or shorter than any others.

But really, I don't think we need to agree on the definition of spotlight to move on.

Players have a right to their particular concept within the bounds of agreed upon rules and genre in my view, but that right comes with a corresponding responsibility: Share the spotlight more or less equally with your fellow players over the course of the session. If someone isn't doing that, I would say it's perfectly reasonable for a fellow player or DM to say something about it and work toward a solution.

For example, my circle of the shepherd druid, Bo-Peep, has a conjure animals spell in her retinue which she uses to summon a flock of sheep (goats, reskinned). Rather than bust that out on regular, I do it only when it would be particularly useful or very cool in the scene. Because I know that it will take longer to resolve my turn than normal, I'm judicious in its use as I see it as my responsibility to share spotlight more or less equally. That's just being a conscientious player in my view, respectful of other people at the table.

If I ignore the word "spotlight" and replace it with "time spent" I can see where you are coming from. You're talking courtesy to keep turn length down. I'm all for that. I would do everything I could to manage that - have things statted up, have enough d20s to roll them all at once, use average damage if allowed, etc.

On the other hand, just like a single attack will take less time then an area of effect, some things are in the realms of the overhead the rules put on us.

If the rules had, for example, an easy minion system that made running a bunch of lower CR summons very simple and quick, that would be a great thing. But 5e treats them as full combatants, which takes as much time to resolve both their turn, and also actions against them, as it would for any other being in a combat.

I don't think it's invalid to play a standard archetype, one supported by the system and even having some subclasses the specialize in it like the Sheppard druid. I expect the player to do everything they can to keep it moving as fast as they can, just as I'd expect any other player. (Casters: look up your dang spells BEFORE it is your action). I can't hold that the mechanics of the system being cumbersome against them though.

 

[Krachek]

Use fixed damage of 5 for all attacks.
Always roll both d20 at the same time.
Include some area effect once in a while to clean the battle field.

 

[iserith]

Ah, a difference in definition. Spotlight time is times when you get to act cool and amazing, when you stand out - have the spotlight on you. If one character is the focus of the session with everything revolving around them, they had the spotlight. The fact that wall time was spent on other characters isn't really an issue.

Since we're talking about time in combat, let me give a combat focused example. Say a 11th level character with a party of 2nd levels went on a generic dungeon crawl. The 10th level pulled out spells, tanked bosses, and generally made themselves the star of the show. They will have taken the majority (if not all) of the spotlight, regardless if their turns took longer or shorter than any others.

But really, I don't think we need to agree on the definition of spotlight to move on.

It is a difference in definition. I think from a play experience perspective, how much time a given player "takes up" matters more than the character's fictional spotlight time. The characters are all taking up, more or less, 6 seconds on a given turn. But a player taking more than his or her fair share of table time to resolve that 6 seconds really matters in my view. We may end up with a scenario wherein, given 4 hours to play, Player A takes up +50% more of the space than Players B through E which is not ideal to me.

If I ignore the word "spotlight" and replace it with "time spent" I can see where you are coming from. You're talking courtesy to keep turn length down. I'm all for that. I would do everything I could to manage that - have things statted up, have enough d20s to roll them all at once, use average damage if allowed, etc.

On the other hand, just like a single attack will take less time then an area of effect, some things are in the realms of the overhead the rules put on us.

If the rules had, for example, an easy minion system that made running a bunch of lower CR summons very simple and quick, that would be a great thing. But 5e treats them as full combatants, which takes as much time to resolve both their turn, and also actions against them, as it would for any other being in a combat.

I don't think it's invalid to play a standard archetype, one supported by the system and even having some subclasses the specialize in it like the Sheppard druid. I expect the player to do everything they can to keep it moving as fast as they can, just as I'd expect any other player. (Casters: look up your dang spells BEFORE it is your action). I can't hold that the mechanics of the system being cumbersome against them though.

I would say the additional time imposed by the rule is something that a conscientious player needs to take into account when choosing game elements and, if he or she does choose it, how often to use it knowing that it takes up more table time. It's not enough to say "well, it's rules legal, so I'm going to take as much time as I want." That's selfish in my opinion. As a personal example, I almost never take summon spells for this reason. Bo-Peep was the rare exception (possibly the one exception if memory serves) and I might not even use that spell every session and certainly never more than once. To give another one, a player wanted to play a necromancer in the last campaign and wanted to know how many undead was reasonable to create with animate dead. My response was "As many as you want until you start slowing down the game at which point that's too much." So he used his best judgment and settled on four undead minions because he understood that any more than that risks him eating into other people's table time. I'd say that's just good play.