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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RodneyThompson" data-source="post: 4127528" data-attributes="member: 3594">Wow, good discussion on this. Glad to see that my thoughts mirror many of those you guys have been discussing.When talking about summoned monsters, cohorts, hirelings, animal companions, etc.  a lot of people have posited several ideas for how to "balance" the extra actions the extra creature brings to the table. Among them are: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Share of the treasure/share of the XP</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The casting time of bringing in a summoned creature</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The gold cost to hire a hireling</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The feat/talent/power/whatever character mechanic cost of getting the cohort or companion in the first place</li> </ul>Now, those are certainly valid ideas, but in the end you can't legitimately call any of those equivalent to extra actions. To continue the economy analogy, what is the exchange rate between a standard action and the share of the treasure for an encounter? How do you balance a full round's worth of attacks against the gold cost of getting a hireling? There's no clear conversion rate, so any talk of balance is actually more guesswork than not. For hirelings, I think the best tack is just to treat them like an NPC that comes along and fights. As someone else pointed out, 4E is going to make it pretty easy to adjust encounters given that you can just add so much XP worth of monsters to the encounter to balance that NPC's presence. But that doesn't do you a ton of good if you play 3.5 or Star Wars Saga Edition, and while you can (and probably should) adjust the encounter it's far less of an exact science. Since you're not investing feats, talents, whatever in this hireling, it's OK to adjust the encounters since that hireling can die, leave, or otherwise vanish from the scene with no appreciable penalty to the player characters. They're limited-time effects that require no permanent investment on the behalf of the PCs.In my thoughts, if you expend a permanent character resource--feat, talent, class feature, power, whatever--to acquire a cohort, animal companion, familiar, or something else that adds to the economy of actions, you should be in control of it. You are the one expending resources, so there's no reason not to allow you to be in charge of it. This is where the crux of my thoughts of the economy of actions comes in. Altering that economy has two clearly stated effects: it requires the Gamemaster to adjust the challenges to place the same value's worth of actions on the enemy's side of things in order to create a balanced encounter, and it also tips the value of an individual player's action resources in that player's favor, thus giving him an advantage over his comrades in the economy of actions.Traditionally, d20 games have tackled the former effect (Gamemasters balancing the encounters against an increased number of player actions) primarily by weakening the source of those extra actions: cohorts are lower level than you, summoned creatures aren't your equal, animal companions and familiars are significantly weaker. Likewise, they've pretty much ignored the latter effect (the balance in the economy of actions between players). What I've been wondering is whether or not it's a better solution to balance the economy of actions first (I lose an action, but my cohort takes an action) and then go from there. That effectively solves the latter effect, and if you make the cohort's action at least equal to actions you could potentially take then you've made it worthwhile. If it's a limited effect, like a summoned creature that only lasts a few rounds, you can actually make the summoned creature's options BETTER than the ones you'd be taking, since it's of limited duration. This doesn't mean that a cohort is just standing there like an idiot when you share actions; it can mean that you're working together in concert to achieve a goal, especially if there's some kind of added benefit. And, of course, you have to tailor things to the flavor as well. The example of the pit fiend that just sits there and flanks is a poor one, because you'd never design a summon that just does that. Now, you might design a summon that just flanks as a low-level ability, since just being able to flank is a low-level effect, but the effect would have to be tailored for that. If you design a pit fiend summoning spell, you probably want him to be able to do pit fiendy things, but that does not mean that you have to disrupt the economy of actions to do so.The real value of a follower, cohort, animal companion, familiar, or summoned creature should not be in the number of actions it can take in a given round. Rather, its value should be in the number of options having that item provides. Someone earlier mentioned that a summoner wizard's versatility is the advantage; he's a controller who can bring into play aspects of any of the roles, should the need arise. There's value in versatility, and I think that's more interesting than just another turn's worth of actions. Obviously, I'm just theorizing here, and I am really more thinking about it in Star Wars terms, but I think the economy of actions is a universal concept.</blockquote>

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