Wormwood said:
I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I really hope to never see another summoner or animal companion again.
Twiddling my thumbs while the Druid takes THREE turns for each one of mine?
Yeah, not so much fun.
There are some people who *want* to play complicated characters that require a lot of bookkeeping, and some people who want to play simple characters. The game should support both types. Otherwise, you're just penalizing people who want to play complicated characters with lots of options, an option which exists in the existing rules from 1E to 3.X.
If I play a basic fighter in 3E, I know my turn will take less time and I basically have less choices than if I'm playing some complicated mage character who has 20 spells memorized, or some druid with a bunch of animal companions. That's a granted. Iron Heroes is a good book, it is good to give the fighters and rogues more stuff to do, but once you start taking AWAY the stuff that spellcasters can do--?? Oh no. No way.
If the idea is "everyone's turn must take the same amount of time", I'd rather have *everyone's* turn take forever, thanks. The idea of having all classes be of equal complexity, frankly, willfully ignores the fact that people play D&D in different ways and enjoy different types of characters.
To look at it another way... it's like if someone wants to talk to all the NPCs and spend a lot of time on it and the other players don't want to. The rules shouldn't actually state "YOU CANNOT TALK TO TOO MANY NPCS." This is something that the DM and party should adjudicate themselves (i.e. "The bartender doesn't want to talk to you anymore. He's busy dealing with other customers." or "Sorry, I will not allow you to get the Leadership feat, the group is too big already.") The option should be there.
Or, it's like how Gary Gygax, in the introduction to "Return to the Tomb of Horrors," mentioned that one of his 1e gaming groups beat the original Tomb by forcing a bunch of orc slaves to go through it ahead of them. I'm sure that the people who were controlling those orc slaves got a lot of time with the DM saying "Okay, the first squad of orcs goes through the doorway on the left... and then... and then..." But it was a legitimate strategy, and it worked, and Gary Gygax doesn't suddenly break character to say how bad it was that these people were controlling soooo many orcs. (Of course, mentioning Gary Gygax in any D&D-related conversation is a cheap shot, I suppose...)