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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Leatherhead" data-source="post: 9419611" data-attributes="member: 53176">"Just a bigger fireball" type summons are my least favorite kinds of summons to be fully honest. Even FFX had a more fun system where the summon effectively swapped out your current party for a monster in combat. Though that style of summon would be incredibly hard to sell for the rest of your group for most settings.The Essence20 system has a mechanic called Contacts that has this functionality. It creates an incredibly stripped down NPC (or even group of NPCS) with only 3 or 4 different actions that your party can call in to help with some encounters (at a cost). The NPCs don't stick around for the entire encounter, and often come with RP restrictions on what they are allowed to do.The e20 system also has no less than 3 different mechanics for having a more permanent character following your main character around.  Running that gamut from non-combatant helpers with half-stat blocks, full combat but still simplified helpers that essentially gives the player handling them two characters (A bold move to be sure, but it works better in practice than it sounds), and even replacement characters with jacked up stats for big encounters (Power Ranger Zords and Combiners)</blockquote>