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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scrollreader" data-source="post: 4127532" data-attributes="member: 62761">I brought this up in a similar thread overon RPGnet in response to this blog entry.  I think we can already see a sort of preview of the way 4e wil treat summons in some of the tail end 3.5 books.  (sort like how the Warlock and ToB were previews of other 4e mechanics).  Specifically, Summon Elemental Monolith, and the various calling spells that replaced the cleric with a celestial/fiend and moved the caster to that realm.  As for my table, we vastly preferred them for actual combat.  An elemental monolth is /awesome/.  And actually relevant to combat, unlike the poor bastards on the Summon Monster IX list, who are barely speedbumps at 17th level play.  I think something along these lines for summons is almost inevitable.This does not, of course, solve the familiar/animal companion issue, though in general, the source material supports those as either additional PCs (Mercedes Lackey's Tarma and Kethry stories, for example, have the Kyree, but he's essentially a DMNPC) or as minor combat adds, from time to time.Hirelings are likely minions, and anything they conribute to the economy of actions is going to end when a level appropriate badly curses loudly.  The cohort issue is the real stickler here, I suspect for people who like 'realism'.  And is also probably the least likely to actually cause economy of actions problems.  At least in my games, either I disallow the Leadershp feat, or else I make it avaliable to all PCs (usually for free).  This way, everybody gets two actions, if the cohorts are along, etc.As for he rare few NPCs that are heroic enough to keep pace with a PC, and not anybody's cohort?  They should be run by the DM.  But they probably are also not terribly common, in a Points of Light, or even just a Heroic World (like Eberron currently is)</blockquote>

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