WoTC Rodney: Economy of actions

[The_Gneech]

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

 

[Hella_Tellah]

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

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

"+2 flanking bonus"

"Um."

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.

 

[KarinsDad]

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.

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.

 

[Harshax]

double post due to lag

 

[Harshax]

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

"+2 flanking bonus"

"Um."

-The Gneech

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

 

[Crazy Jerome]

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.

 

[Stalker0]

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.

 

[Terramotus]

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.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

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.

 

[KarinsDad]

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?