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In the neverwinter games, characters could only carry one summoned entity around at a time. If you had an animal companion, then technically two. This was a major nerf and character immersion killer for summoning oriented mages. Sure, it made games run a little faster, but it was a big sacrifice in my opinion.
I hope there will be no major limits to how many summoned creatures you may have at a time. This way, necromancers can really move around with squads of corpses (true to animate dead) and conjurers can summon many beasties onto the battlefield.
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I kinda like the idea (much like in the tabletop rules) that you can summon as many as you can summon, but that may be more than you can actually control.
I would love to be able to make a necromancer that just keeps spamming animate dead to create a zombie horde. It should probably require me to save up a lot of resources in order to do however, so I'm not making a new horde every day. Then I'll just save it for special events, like holiday celebrations and weddings :)
Goblin Squad Member
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I hope no one can "summon" creatures, except for the limited summoning spells in PF. Necros, Artificers, Golem crafters, etc should craft their companions, leaders and rangers should have to "tame" their companions...either way, they should have to have them prepared before hand and they should exist in some form until destroyed (even if only several bones kept in inventory...I understand the devs are not happy about the idea of keeping these things always spawned, even though that is what is logical). As to your point, 100% agree, the limit to the number of companions should only be by some form of upkeep, even if as in the case of the leader (leadership feat), it is food or money. This allows unlimited companions, but each added increases upkeep.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm on the fence in it, all I can say is it absolutely needs a ballancing mechanic of some kind, whether it is high upkeep, limited quantity of them, split power or something else. The bottom line and general intention of what the devs have stated for PFO, involves the total power of a 4 year vet, and a 1 year player, being fairly small. Most skills balance that out by time, IE someone with 2.5 years in wizard and 2.5 years in rogue, can spend 2 seconds using sneak attack, or can spend 2 seconds casting a spell, that adds versatility and also grants an advantage with being able to both compeat against something that is strong against magic And something that is strong against physical attacks, and use whichever is best, but not massively increasing the total damage that character can do in that timeframe.
Now when you are mixing a wizards summon, + a druids animal companion + who knows what other pets into the mix, you are directly adding more total damage per second against everything, always. IMO things that are wholly passive, as in they add no delay or impact to your ability to do everything else, is a direct power increase, while things that go instead of something else are versatility increases.
How they write it in and how they ballance it can be done in a number of ways. It can be costly to keep the pet, it can be costly to get the pet in the first place and very expensive to replace it whenever it dies etc... Short term summons are pretty much ok because it takes time on/near the field of battle to get it, which could have been used to cast a fireball or position into combat etc... Cost/benefit, tactics etc... I am in favor of, direct I am better then you in every way because I have been playing longer, negates the entire value of having PVP in the game.
From a mechanics perspective, try to view summoned creature (that is under the summoner's control) as a spell effect causing Damage Over Time in a variable area that sometimes has secondary qualities such as damage mitigation (by taking agro that would otherwise have gone to a player) or buffs/debuffs/healing/enemy sensing...
I think one of the best examples of a short term summon for combat purposes is not even what most people consider a summon: Flaming Sphere. It is at it's base functionality the same thing that any summon monster spell is, just somewhat simplified and lacking the aspect of a creature (Ok, it's also immune to damage, but theoretically some critters could be as well. This actually makes it more threatening than summoning a creature that can be destroyed). It serves a purpose of showing how a summoned creature should affect the battlefield however, without getting into the intricacies of mistaking a summoned creature for a complete individual in its own right.
Typical summoned creatures should have simple default behaviors in combat, that can be modified by the summoner. Such control takes time however, improving precision at the cost of time spent casting other spells. Controlling advanced creatures may even require full concentration, inhibiting the summoner's ability to attack or defend himself, or interact in other ways (like clicking an objective).
Ultimately, summoned creatures should be balanced such that they are not particularly better or worse for general combat than other spells of similar power and difficulty. They should be better for some situations (dealing with a few enemies that are spread too thin to use a conventional AOE spell on, but too numerous to settle for taking out one at a time) and worse for others (individual enemies that hit very hard, or tightly packed large groups of fragile enemies). They should be good as tactical sacrifices as well, either to hold the attention of an enemy too tough to defeat while you escape, or perhaps to spring an obvious trap or ambush that you don't know another way to bypass.
Magic already tends to be high DPS, whether Burst or DOT, so summoned creatures adding significant DPS shouldn't be particularly unbalancing compared to fireballs and lightning bolts. How they're used will likely make much more difference than what they are.
On a different note, uncontrolled summons, like my army of spammed Animate Dead, should in theory be as much a danger to my own group as to an enemy (before taking into consideration that I will likely attempt to mitigate that through planning and preparation, like invisibility to Undead or something)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ultimately, summoned creatures should be balanced such that they are not particularly better or worse for general combat than other spells of similar power and difficulty. They should be better for some situations (dealing with a few enemies that are spread too thin to use a conventional AOE spell on, but too numerous to settle for taking out one at a time) and worse for others (individual enemies that hit very hard, or tightly packed large groups of fragile enemies). They should be good as tactical sacrifices as well, either to hold the attention of an enemy too tough to defeat while you escape, or perhaps to spring an obvious trap or...
Completely in agreement overall, the specific thing I am against is long durration creatures, IE multiple persistant pets along the lines of commanded undeads + druid animal companion etc... If it is taking time on the battle field that could have been used for a different attack, I have absolutely nothing against it. If it has a high cost to maintain and/or a high cost to get and can be lost.
Much like I have no problem with the potential that say a large chartered company of necromancers, may raise a huge undead army, (at a huge cost of time and resources to them, say it takes them several months to build up a fierce army), and then that army dominating for a month until it gets wiped out as others work to destroy it,
and yes if it takes channeling, focusing or any other drawback for a persistant pet that any other spell or attack would entail, I have nothing against that either. It is only an issue if the persistant pet costs little/nothing to have out, has little/no drawback, but absolutely is significantly better to have one, then not to have one.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Perhaps summoners and others who control pets could be forced to use whatever is used to power magic. For example, a mana bar, for each controlled creature, a potion of that bar is locked away from you, based on the overall power of the creature. So you can have one and still use your other abilities, or you can have a lot and be almost useless yourself. It would place a hard cap on how many you can have without being arbitrary, and a flexible soft cap depending on how gimped you want your personal character to be.
For non-magical classes, they should be affected similarly, but maybe term that "focus".
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think it depends on how the game otherwise treats pets, hirelings, and henchmen.
Undead or summoned underlings in PnP are cheap, fearless, and low maintenance troops. Non-summoners in lots of PnP games have the option of hiring lackeys; those require wages and upkeep. If the game limits mundane NPC helpers, it probably should limit magical ones, too.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Assuming we'll be able to hire NPCs to guard our settlements, which I think most would agree to be a very reasonable expectation, I see no reason a parallel cannot be created with similar costs for other approaches, at least for guarding one's settlement:
-necormancers creating undead minions to guard their settlements.
-druids using animals and plants to protect their regions.
-summoners summoning elementals and whatever else to protect their regions.
-crafters creating construct legions to patrol their regions.
Having hired NPCs, or summoned or created minions do tasks other than simply guarding might also have similar additional costs.
We really don't need to discuss it as a matter of "balancing" classes as Goblinworks is talking about a kingdom building game, which should by reason already envision many parallels to what is being suggested by DeathMetal4tw.
Man, I so want to zerg rush an enemy kingdom with skeletons and giant spiders and the like. T'is my dream.
Goblinworks Founder
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Hmm I just thought about this for crafting. Being able to summoning critters to help me speed up on crafting items, or other summons for their various abilities. Seems wrong to use them like that but it's a function that could be considered.
Like mentioned from others using the summons as guards as you gather materials if you can't find others to help you.
Fire Elemental - cooking, melting items
Water elemental - putting out fires (reduces destruction of some crafting items if fire is a possibility of a hazard), cooking, watering plants (my water elemental keeps my plants pretty, because i have no green thumb)
Imps - Send out to gather minor items like nuts/bolts, minor spell components and so on; depending on how many you can summon, how long the summons will last, and what you send them to get.
Earth Golem - Provides some raw materials, chance to find certain gems/ore for crafting purposes.
Someone with crafting dedication like me probably wouldn't be able to focus all his energies in summoning. So mine would probably be minor elementals, unless i found a wand to help out. Then it's just a limit of power level, feats/talents if they are in to improve this ability.
Summoning 5 minor elementals to work on watering my alchemy plants, but since I split them from 1 to 5 the spell only lasts a very short duration (modified by other things like feats/items).
Since I set them to water, they won't attack unless I put them on guard/attack mode but I left to do an adventure and they just did their job and fizzled away while a goblin ransacked my house.
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Perhaps summoners and others who control pets could be forced to use whatever is used to power magic. For example, a mana bar, for each controlled creature, a potion of that bar is locked away from you, based on the overall power of the creature. So you can have one and still use your other abilities, or you can have a lot and be almost useless yourself. It would place a hard cap on how many you can have without being arbitrary, and a flexible soft cap depending on how gimped you want your personal character to be.
The intriguing thing about this is that as minions fall, the minion-master, in theory, becomes stronger, as their 'focus' locked away in the maintenance of minions is freed up to power their personal abilities.
I kinda like that. It feels cinematic, where the evil sorcerer kind of stands around while the heroes battle through his horde, and only starts whipping out the black-lightning-o-death when his minions are cleared from the board.
(I used something similar in my Hollowfaust game. The low-level necromancer had her maximum control rating of skeletons out, as as the party tore through them, she had others 'on hold' waiting to arise, through a special procedure, that she could only call up now that she had 'freed up some control slots.')
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Goblin Squad Member
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Perhaps summoners and others who control pets could be forced to use whatever is used to power magic. For example, a mana bar, for each controlled creature, a potion of that bar is locked away from you, based on the overall power of the creature. So you can have one and still use your other abilities, or you can have a lot and be almost useless yourself. It would place a hard cap on how many you can have without being arbitrary, and a flexible soft cap depending on how gimped you want your personal character to be.The intriguing thing about this is that as minions fall, the minion-master, in theory, becomes stronger, as their 'focus' locked away in the maintenance of minions is freed up to power their personal abilities.
I kinda like that. It feels cinematic, where the evil sorcerer kind of stands around while the heroes battle through his horde, and only starts whipping out the black-lightning-o-death when his minions are cleared from the board.
(I used something similar in my Hollowfaust game. The low-level necromancer had her maximum control rating of skeletons out, as as the party tore through them, she had others 'on hold' waiting to arise, through a special procedure, that she could only call up now that she had 'freed up some control slots.')
I agree, I like this idea. It could use the same system as encumbrance, just treat running spells as if they have weight. To clarify, it would be two different systems using the same mechanics. I can only carry so much, but as I set things I am carrying down, my ability to carry more can be viewed as increasing. The same would go for magic, each spell which you have that continues to "run", uses some of your maximum store. As this running spells die or shut off, your ability to cast more can be seen as increasing. Would be cool to tie these into a stamina/mana pool respectively. Maybe as you are more heavily encumbered your stamina recharges slower, likewise with magic.
Especially concerning magic, I do not like this manner of capping as well as requiring an upkeep, but seeing as how much Ryan seemed to hate the idea of anything non-PC existing permanently (due to the resource requirements, see a previous discussion on mounts), I could see something like this working instead.
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If summoned creatures are anything like drones from Eve Online, if you have Drones rank 1 you can control 1 drone, if you have Drones rank 2 you can control 2 drones, and so on. You need other drones skills to control medium or large drones. Perhaps this will be the format for summoned monsters; you need the appropriate skills to summon more powerful or more numerous creatures at once.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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If summoned creatures are anything like drones from Eve Online, if you have Drones rank 1 you can control 1 drone, if you have Drones rank 2 you can control 2 drones, and so on. You need other drones skills to control medium or large drones. Perhaps this will be the format for summoned monsters; you need the appropriate skills to summon more powerful or more numerous creatures at once.
If "control undead 3" is the same total 'skill time' cost as "multitarget swing 2", or something similar, I think that is a fair way of handling it.
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Goblinworks Founder
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@Brady Blankemeyer, Mage Hand and Unseen Servant!
Unseen Servant of course would be the most used. That spell didn't even really cross my mind at the moment of writing; been so long since I've been able to play a PnP game.
Still the elementals would be handy for other things that an Unseen could not. But good duration on unseen and making it a permanent spell later on with the right amount of gold and spell caster.
Most summoning spells have caveats. Only for a certain time, only for one job, etc. Even the familiar spell states that if it dies, you lose hp and experience, ie it hurts you BAD to lose it.
If the game allows summoned pets to do your fighting, then killing them should have drawbacks, like used up spell components, 30 days game time before getting a new familar, etc. Otherwise, low level players could summon up hordes totally out of balance with what their actual power level should be.