WoTC Rodney: Economy of actions

[KarinsDad]

Comments like these do not further the discussion in the slightest. We all appreciate the fact that your game doesn't suffer some of the problems that other people experience, but the fact that those problems are voiced means that the problem does exist. Since the game rules cater to everyone, its hopeful that they fix the problem for everyone.

For example, I have no problems finding 5-6 players for my games. So to me, a system that is designed to accommodate only 3 players is a waste of time. Yet there are many people here that can only find 3 players if that, and so its good that the system can handle both groups.

That comment had nothing to do with speed of play.

It had to do with players roleplaying their PCs with metagaming player knowledge.

 

[DM_Blake]

The only reason that 'badger' is a summoning option is because the spell list needed a weak enough creature that a first level druid could summon it and continue to cast other spells while it attacks.

If directing the creature means the druid can't do other things, then it's not a badger. It's a big wolf with slavering fangs that is as effective as what the druid could do if he weren't controlling it (more or less and within the limits of the game's ability to balance such things).

In that case, we agree. This would be a great application for summon spells.

 

[Dragonblade]

"*your* share!"?

Wow. I've never seen this happen in actual game play. Our players could care less if another player brought in an NPC follower. They happily divvy up treasure amongst whomever is in the party at the time as long as every character contributes (note: we still follow the cohorts get a half share rule). As DM, I've even had other NPCs join the group at times and they've always been given a fair share. There's never been any "PCs vs NPCs" treasure issues in our games.

In all honesty, the issue hasn't come up for me in a long time because I gave up DMing 3e a long time ago, with one exception. I starting DMing the first Pathfinder last year when the first book came out. But it hasn't come up in my Pathfinder game yet.

But when I used to DM more frequently, the people I used to play with tended to play very mercenary characters and people would get upset if they thought another player's cohort was somehow costing them their share of the XP and the loot. It was a very Hackmaster atmosphere. It was fun back then, but I don't think I care to return to that playstyle.

Still it served its purpose back then in helping to keep follower actions from getting out of hand.

 

[DM_Blake]

See, I wouldn't call slowing down the game for a slight chance to do negligible damage a particularly interesting choice.

But it is interesting.

A fun movie, The Beastmaster, came out in 1982: http://imdb.com/title/tt0083630/

A TV series of the same name, BeastMaster, shares a similar concept and produced 66 episodes beginning in 1999: http://imdb.com/title/tt0215392/

Apparently, some people like the concept and find it interesting.

And, I can move a badger, roll a d20 and a d4 simultaneously, add +3 to the d20 roll, tell the DM what AC I hit and my damage (the DM can decide if it hit or not), all in about 10 seconds or less. It goes like "Move here, hit 17 for 3 damage."

I really doubt that's slowing down the game enough to really care.

 

[DM_Blake]

The cohort, hireling, or permanent ally: Should be allowed to participate fully in any fight and share in the xp/treasure after the fight. Player action opportunity can be maintained by placing a limit of one such ally per player. This type of ally can be planned for and encounters can be balanced accordingly: there is an extra 1st lvl cohort along? add another 100xp worth of monsters to the opposing side. Not ideal, but this is a failry common staple of the genre. Certain archetypes (eg "the BeastMaster") with multitudes of diverse, minor allies (ferrets, hawks, parrots, etc. . . ) can be represented through a selection of per day abilities.

Since it can be planned for, and encounters balanced for it, why limit it to 1.

"Hear me o citizens of FantasyTown. A small army of trolls is approaching. We probably need about 50 men to hold the bridge against this army, but there are only 5 of us, so we can only take 5 of you. The bridge will surely fall and we will all die or be forced to retreat, and then your farms homes will be pillaged by marauding trolls. But, fair is fair, and we can only take 5 men. So who is with us?"

What if King Leonides was limited to only taking one cohort to fight the persians?

As for the beastmaster with his ferrets, let them be distractions, aid-another type abilities, fetch the key from the sleeping jailor, etc. The ferret isn't really going to melee a troll to death.

The summoned/called ally: These types of allies are especially problematic because their mere potential places too much emphasis on the summoning character: when summoned, they throw off the economy of actions both in terms of party vs encounter and in terms of summoner vs other players. This kind of ally can not be adequately prepared for. What happens when the DM makes an encounter tougher, expecting the wizard to prepare his 'typical battery of summonings', and then the wizard prepares some other powers instead? I would solve this by making the power a "per day" power and having them impose an action penalty on the summoner.

What happens when the DM makes an encounter tougher and the wizard (who has no summoning spells at all) chooses to magic missile one enemy at a time instead of killing them in groups with his fireballs? (yes, this happened to me in a game where I am playing a rogue and the guy playing the wizard is not a tactical player - our poor DM had to come up with all kinds of silly stuff just to prevent a TPK. He told me after the session that he set up this encounter with way too many goblins, but deliberately bottlenecked them, because he wanted to present the wizard with a perfect situation to shine and be the savior and it backfired horribly).

What it boils down to is this. If you design a character with some good abilities and some mediocre ones, your DM will expect you to use the good ones whenever you can. If you don't, you're causing problems by making weak decisions. This is true whether your abilities include summons or not.

Your solution of making the summons a daily power makes it much harder to prepare for. As a DM, if you know a player has a per-encounter ability to summon an ogre, you expect to deal with an ogre in every encounter. If that ability is a daily power, then you cannot plan ahead and know which encounter will have to face the ogre.

And the action penalty, again, is a great idea, as long as the summoned creatures actions are a good substitution for the actions the summoner won't be using.

They do not have to be more powerful. They only have to be as powerful. This solves both the encounter prep and balance issues. The DM preps some the same number of xp worth of bad guys - if the Wizard prepares something else, no biggie; if the Wizard summons something, again, no biggie. The summoned creatures should be different, more specialized than the summoner. Maybe the Wizard summons a Troll to get close and smash the enemy, or a Fire Elemental to fight some enemies with Vulnerability Fire. Basically, the summoner would give up their actions in order to play a different role for a fight, or the same role in a different way. The summoner's player still gets to play and be effective without overshadowing any of the other players or monopolizing the action pool. The balance of the encounter is not thrown off, though it may be changed - but players find ways to do that to DMs all the time

This is perfect. This is how I would design it - tactical options for the summoner to choose the right creature for the right encounter.

I would apply this same philosophy to the polymorph/shapechange type of effect, for the same reasons.

This is inherent - shapechanging into something else doesn't change the Economy of Actions. As a druid, you get to move and cast a spell - 2 actions. Shapechange into a dire bear, and you get to move and bite - 2 actions.

 

[Wormwood]

In that case, we agree. This would be a great application for summon spells.

Seconded. Or thirded. Or whatever the hell it is

Just saying that on this point I agree with y'all.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

We don't necessarily need a one-size-fits-all rule that covers hirelings, summoned creatures, and animal companions at once. Here are just a few of the alternate methods I've been thinking of that could work:

Warlocks: Summon a hellspawned/faerie creature that is about as powerful as you are. The Warlock herself is sent to that other plane to take its place. The planes demand a certain amount of symmetry in their composition, and its an awful lot easier to cast a spell that maintains balance than one that upsets it. Daily power, probably.
Wizards: Much as others have suggested, summon a creature that requires a Standard action to control, and is roughly as powerful as the Wizard. Another Daily, I should think.
Cleric: The "Final Fantasy" method. Summon a powerful outsider that causes an instantaneous effect as well as an ongoing effect. Save ends. I'd make it a Daily, maybe an Encounter power at higher levels.
Rogue: You have shady contacts and allies everywhere. Wherever possible, you arrange to have one of your Thieves' Guild allies meet you just when the going gets tough, and he comes and provides you Combat Advantage plus ongoing damage against a foe, which you can change each round as a minor action. This one has to be a Daily.
Warlord: Assume that, as a background element, Warlord accrue a battalion that stays mostly in the background, and doesn't generally enter dungeons right alongside him. He can, however, blow on his bugle/Horn of Gondor to call on aid for various effects. Some of these abilities could be like the Cleric's summon, and he calls in a volley of arrows from his archers (Encounter, outdoors only). Others could be more like the Rogue's, in which he calls on one of his best men to stay beside him in battle and boost his AC/provide Combat Advantage/run around patching people up and letting them use their Healing Surges (Daily, probably).

And I think you could use these frameworks to allow for temporary assistance of many kinds from a number of flavors of allies. For hirelings, I'd just keep them as they have been before: taking a share of treasure and experience.

 

[malraux]

The other 4 people are not penalized. They should be glad that their chances of survival just increased. The fighter looks at the pit fiend standing next to him, bashing away at the army of evil dragons, and should be thinking "Wow, glad he's on my side" not "Wow, I sure am penalized."

Yeah, that's what the fighter thinks. The fighter's player though, wonders if he'll have a chance to go out and grab a smoke in the time it'll take the menagerie character to figure out what creature he's gonna summon this round, take all the actions for his other summonees, animal companion, etc. Then when the fighter gets his turn, he rolls two attacks and damage and then goes back outside for another 45 minutes. The number of minutes each player gets to spend doing stuff per hour is a zero sum game. Every minute another player takes doing stuff is a minute less that everyone else can't spend playing.

 

[DM_Blake]

Not necessarily. Keep in mind summons aren't just about offense, they are about defense. If my summoned creature can absorb hits, that's an advantage.

Yes. Sometimes.

But defense won't win the battle. Summoning a wall to stand there and take all your actions while the wall gets beat down only means that once that wall is breached, the enemy will be in your face again and nothing will have changed.

If the creature cannot take actions to win the battle, then you will have to take actions to win the battle - which you cannot do if your summoned creature is taking your actions.

A perfect example is Bigby's Interposing Hand. It can push a monster, and keep it away from you. Which gives you time to get away, or to cast spells to kill the monster, or maybe you will kill the monster's allies while it is busy with your hand. When the duration of the hand expires, hopefully the situation on the battlefield will have improved so you are able to fight that monster now. But, if all you have done is stand there, giving your actions to the Hand, when the spell expires, nothing on the battlefield will have changed - all you've done is delay the inevitable.

Now, a summoned creature that can absorb hits while you still take actions - that's an advantage.

Furthermore, lets say I summon a creature, and in true FF style my character goes off scene. In dnd terms, I might become the summoned creature for one round. That means any damage my summon takes doesn't hurt me. Any effects the summon takes goes away when I turn back. That's a huge advantage right there, and such a summon does not need to do as much damage as a regular power to be useful.

Becoming a summoned creature is a polymorph/shapechange - not a summons.

So, following the logic of this paragraph. You would be OK with, for example, a spell (call it a summon or not) that turns you into an ogre for one round so you can bash the enemy for 25 HP. And you would be OK with this spell even though you have another spell that could crush the ogre for 50 HP. Your spell doesn't "do as much damage as a regular power" but you would still find it useful?

Or are you saying that you remain an ogre until your next round, so anything your enemy does to you in that round disappears when you return to your normal form? Damage, illness, level drain, even death can be ignored when you turn back into yourself? In that case, it might be a useful spell.

But then it is still a polymorph spell, not a summon spell - but yes, this would be a great addition to a spell list.

 

[Thyrwyn]

Since it can be planned for, and encounters balanced for it, why limit it to 1.

You limit it to one to preserve the economy of actions among the players - so one player does not have 50 cohorts tagging along, bloating combats, slowing down the game.

"Hear me o citizens of FantasyTown. A small army of trolls is approaching. We probably need about 50 men to hold the bridge against this army, but there are only 5 of us, so we can only take 5 of you. The bridge will surely fall and we will all die or be forced to retreat, and then your farms homes will be pillaged by marauding trolls. But, fair is fair, and we can only take 5 men. So who is with us?"

That is not a 'typical encounter' - if it is you should drag out the Warhammer fantasy Battle Miniatures rules and go to town.

What happens when the DM makes an encounter tougher and the wizard (who has no summoning spells at all) chooses to magic missile one enemy at a time instead of killing them in groups with his fireballs?

We are discussing summoning and allies and their effect on encounter balance. But this does speak to the fact that balancing encounters based on expected player tactics is fraught with peril, as evidenced by. . .

(yes, this happened to me in a game where I am playing a rogue and the guy playing the wizard is not a tactical player - our poor DM had to come up with all kinds of silly stuff just to prevent a TPK. He told me after the session that he set up this encounter with way too many goblins, but deliberately bottlenecked them, because he wanted to present the wizard with a perfect situation to shine and be the savior and it backfired horribly).

Never rely on player's doing anything. Hopefully, the changes in 4e will
1) extend the number of rounds in a typical fight to the point where the party will have time to realize they are in over their heads and bug out.
2) allow or more coherent balancing. The 3.x CR system was too problematic.

This is inherent - shapechanging into something else doesn't change the Economy of Actions.

Agreed - but it can cause balance issues. The 'inherent' aspect escaped the 3.x designers to the extent that these spells/abilities/effects were as notoriously problematic as summonings (and for the same reasons). Even trying to read through the Errata'd rules for these abilities (conveniently spread between the PHB and MM books & Errata for each) can give one a headache.