A discussion in the PF2 General Discussion subforum, Avoiding slavery related terms with familiars? had an insightful revelation from graystone:
A familiar isn't an equal partner and is bound to the character that has them as a class feature. Unless you object to owning a pet or being a dog's master I don't see how a familiar, at least under default rules, is much different.It's a byproduct of the minion trait: Minion by common use is "a follower or underling of a powerful person, especially a servile or unimportant one." IE, A loyal servant of another, usually a more powerful being [master]. Master works just fine with a servant so there is no slave relationship required. For instance, you'll see Alfred will refer to Bruce Wayne as "Master Wayne" in the comics and movies with no connotation of slavery. It's just what a good traditional British servant [Butler, Housekeeper, Chef, ect] does.
The Minion trait leaves the minion without their own agency.
Minion
Trait
Source Core Rulebook pg. 634 4.0
Minions are creatures that directly serve another creature. A creature with this trait can use only 2 actions per turn, doesn't have reactions, and can't act when it's not your turn. Your minion acts on your turn in combat, once per turn, when you spend an action to issue it commands. For an animal companion, you Command an Animal; for a minion that's a spell or magic item effect, like a summoned minion, you Sustain a Spell or Sustain an Activation; if not otherwise specified, you issue a verbal command as a single action with the auditory and concentrate traits. If given no commands, minions use no actions except to defend themselves or to escape obvious harm. If left unattended for long enough, typically 1 minute, mindless minions usually don't act, animals follow their instincts, and sapient minions act how they please. A minion can't control other creatures.
Most abilities that put a creature in minion status add some NPC agency back again. For example, summoned creatures are minions, but the summoned trait states, "If you can communicate with it, you can attempt to command it, but the GM determines the degree to which it follows your commands." Animal companions and familiars lack such mitigation. This robs them of displaying any personality beyond loyalty.
My PF2 players have had no familiars, but three of the seven PCs have animal companions. The first was a goblin champion Tikti who joined the party at 3rd level with her velociraptor animal companion Liklik, gained through flexibility on the champion steed ally.
We soon discovered that the minion rules for Liklik did not feel right. They were fine for combat where Tikti would spend one Command action to give Liklik two actions for the combat, especially since Tikti was built for defense and Liklik was built for offense so they worked as a team. But sometimes Tikti teamed up to defend a party member, and then Liklik would freeze in place mindlessly. Or the party could advance to another room while still in encounter mode, and Liklik would not automatically follow like she did in exploration mode.
Liklik needed some natural actions of her own to feel like a velociraptor. Therefore, we created a houserule. If Tikti did not command Liklik, then the GM could direct Liklik for an action of her own. The player and I worked out which actions would fit Liklik and not unbalance the game. Liklik liked to stay near Tikti, so she could Stride to follow Tikti. Liklik liked to lick weird objects, so Liklik could Interact to lick something not dangerous. Liklik could Step away from danger. Liklik could perform other actions if both of us agreed that it fit her.
Later, the gnome stormborn druid Stormdancer acquired a fledgling roc animal companion named Roxie. The module had three hobgoblin rangers with fledgling roc animal companions the size of big hawks that acted like big hawks. I decided to make the fledgling rocs Large size and gave them an attack consisting of grabbing an enemy, flying up 20 feet, and dropping them. After the fight, in which two rangers died and one ranger fled with his bird, Stormdancer adopted the two orphaned rocs as pets. A few levels later at 8th level, Rocky had a new home and Roxie was Stormdancer's official animal companion. The player had studiously roleplayed Stormdancer caring for those birds.
The party had seven members by then, which meant that most travel magic could not handle the entire party. Instead, the sorcerer conjured Phantom Steeds for faster travel. except that by them Tikti could ride Liklik and the monk could Stride as fast as a horse. I worked out a variant on Stormwind Flight that let Stormdancer ride Roxie in flight for long-distance travel at speed 50 feet (same as Liklik's speed). Roxie was Stormdancer's dedicated mount and never fought in combat directly.
The Fly action has the clause, "If you’re airborne at the end of your turn and didn’t use a Fly action this round, you fall." When Stormdancer was riding Roxie, he would use his third action to command Roxie to Fly. But when Stormdancer was on foot, he would use his third action to Stride for himself. Stormdancer's player took Mature Animal Companion (Druid) as soon as possible, which gave Roxie an independent action on Stormdancer's turn, but only to Stride or Strike. By the Rules as Written, Roxie would fall to the ground at the end of Stormdancer's turn because she did not Fly. The alternative is that she would be on the ground all the time, leaving her vulnerable to enemy minions. My minion-trait houserule let Roxie take a Fly action every turn. (Of course, I could have instead houseruled Mature Animal Companion (Druid) to allowing Flying, but I already had the minion-trait houserule.)
When the party encountered a Jubjub Bird right before 16th level, the gnome rogue Binny said, "I want to tame it." Everyone was trained in Nature and she succeeded. For the next game session, Binny took Mammoth Lord archetype to claim Jubby as her animal companion, and Jubby had shrunk to Large size. Binny's combat style is to Hide and shoot arrows, so Jubby uses their independent action to Hide along with her rather than Stride or Strike.
I have been running this houserule informally, but I should formalize it for this post.
Minion (Alternative)
Trait
Based on Minion, Core Rulebook pg. 634 4.0
Minions are creatures devoted to following another creature. A creature with this trait can use at most 2 actions per turn, doesn't have reactions, and takes its actions during your turn. During encounter mode, you may Command a Minion as one action with the auditory and concentrate traits that grants your minion two actions to use immediately as you command. For a minion that's a spell or magic item effect, such as a summoned creature, you Command a Minion whenever you Sustain a Spell or Sustain an Activation for it. Instead of Commanding a Minion, you may grant it one action that fits a list of actions developed by you and the GM as natural actions for that minion, such as Stride to follow you or Interact to draw a weapon. A minion cannot Strike during this natural action. If the minion gains an ability to take an independent action without Command a Minion, then these natural actions are added to the list of actions granted by the ability, but it is still limited to 1 action per turn without a command. A minion cannot Command a Minion. During exploration and downtime mode, the minion acts like an NPC loyal to you.
At the very least, maybe a FAQ where they talk about the purpose of the rule being for game balance and about players not trying to game getting an abundance of controlled actions in an encounter and not about any limits to role playing the minion, whether it is a feature of the character build (like for companions and familiars) or a situation where the player's character might be in temporary command of another creature or unit of creatures. Beyond that, I don't really know that it needs much more player facing rules than to be more clear with the GM that the purpose of the rule is not to make minion creatures unthinking machines or slaves, but to create a balance of not having any one player taking advantage of the games action economy.
Being more explicit with GMs about treating the creatures that are minions with character and purpose beyond number machines and action economy boosters would take care of the issue from the GM side, and then it would remind both GMs and Players to talk to each other about it, rather than shake a rule book at each other.
Minions are not strong enough that having 3 actions breaks anything.
The impression I gained from reading PF1 forums is that an animal companion was a fairly powerful class feature. I presume that the 2-action limit on PF2 animal companions was to reduce the benefit of those companions without giving them terrible numbers.
However, I did not see animal companions in my PF1 campaigns. My experience in PF1 was that my players took Leadership to gain an NPC cohort two levels below their character rather than taking a feat for an animal companion or familiar. The cohort was half as strong as the player character, and few other feats were that strong.
Class feats in PF2 are never supposed to be as strong as Leadership. Let's say we are willing for a class feat to make a PC 33% stronger. An animal companion would need to be only 1/3 as powerful as the PC or it would need to weaken the PC. At 1/3 as powerful, a creature that would rate 3 levels below the PC. Due to the combat math, that would be "My bear Strode up to the enemy and missed twice." The PF2 solution is to cost the PC an action. If the PC loses 1/3 of their effectiveness, then the animal companion could be 2/3 as strong, i.e., one level lower than the PC, and would have reasonable results in combat.
The math is really not that 2 actions are 2/3 as strong as 3 actions, but it works as a rough approximation. Thus, an animal companion that has only 2 actions per turn could be built to the same level as the PC yet still count as 2/3 as strong. An animal companion that has only 1 action per turn would count as 1/3 as strong, so we would not need to weaken the PC by stealing an action.
To keep the animal companion excitingly powerful, the math balances at PC loses 1 action so that the animal companion gets 2, or that the animal companion gets only 1 action.
It also has the advantage of shortening the combined turn of the PC and their companion. I heard that combat with many companions and summons slows down drastically.
I don't know how to fit reactions into this equation.
As for the GM controlling the minion to weaken an uncommanded minion, that would make the GM look like a jerk.
Being more explicit with GMs about treating the creatures that are minions with character and purpose beyond number machines and action economy boosters would take care of the issue from the GM side, and then it would remind both GMs and Players to talk to each other about it, rather than shake a rule book at each other.
Rules design has to judge the minions as if they were number machines and action economy boosters to balance the game. The GM has very little say in the treatment of minions, since they are controlled by the players. The GM's main tool is letting NPCs react in character to the treatment of minions.
Familiar are already streamly weak, so they can keep their 3 actions.
Familiars are so terribly weak because their utility is not measured in a actions. Imagine a familiar with the familiar/master abilities Cantrip Connection which grants the PC an extra cantrip, Innate Surge which allows a second use of an ancestry spell, and Spell Battery which grants the PC a low-level spell slot. The familiar becomes a power boost without using any actions. Familiar Focus and Restorative Familiar require that the familiar spend two actions, but I suspect that in practice that it feels more like the PC using one action. Accompanyist would be most often used during downtime, so the number of familiar's actions per turn would not matter, so long as it can act.
A high number of familiar's actions would matter only if the familiar were delivering a spell or scouting. And I don't know whether the minion rules as written let the familiar out of sight of the PC in order to scout.
Thus, I don't know why a familiar has to be a minion. I have no real experience with PF2 familiars, because my players have not taken familiars for their characters. (I ran two familiars of NPCs, but the faerie dragon familiar was an independent character and the fungus familiar was sessile.) Could anyone tell me of their experiences with PF2 familiars? Please?
My PF1 experience with familiars was my GMPC Val Baine in my Iron Gods among Scientists campaign. Val was the ultimate sidekick, always mimicking her teammates so that she could assist them. When her friend Boffin took Leadership at 7th level to gain a robot cohort, I decided to give Val a mechanical buddy, too. I had recently read the PF1 Pathfinder Player Companion: Familiar Folio and learned that she could swap out her nearly useless 1st-level bloodrager bloodline power to get a familiar, so at 7th level she made the swap and took Enhanced Familiar to gain a clockwork familiar. This was not purely for roleplaying. I crunched the numbers to get good utility from her familiar Sparky as a crafting assistant. As I explained in PF1 Bloodrager Val Baine Converted to PF2, comment #4:
Recreating Val's clockwork familiar Sparky was the challenging homebrew. Val had adopted Sparky partly to match her friend Boffin gaining a robot cohort, but the other reason was that the PF1 Clockwork Familiar had "Advice (Ex) Clockwork familiars have an innate understanding of how things work, granting their masters a +2 bonus on all Craft and Use Magic Device checks." This was a rare PF1 boost to all Craft checks, not just the check in a single specialty, so it greatly aided Val in being good at seven crafting specialties. But PF2 no longer splits crafting into specialties, so it was not vital to PF2 Val. Worse, the PF2 Clockwork Familiar lacks any crafting bonus and gains some abilties that Sparky never used in the Iron Gods campaign.
Thus, Val's experience with familiars was spending a feat to gain a flavorful pet and a +2 bonus to crafting.
Thank you, Jacob Jett, for information on another version of a follower. I went and read the Intelligent Items section, pages 88 and 89 in the Gamemastery Guide.
I will say more tomorrow, but right now I am busy porting a Warmonger from PF1 to PF2. It might appear in my game this evening. The module Vault of the Onyx Citadel placed it as a guardian of the Onyx Citadel, but in discussing strategy with my wife (she has to put up with so many spoilers) the party could easily bypass it. Thus, I am considering repurposing it as a minion of the ancient magma dragon Irigibel. The module states,
When the PCs arrive, Irigibel is lamenting the loss of several of her brilliant underbelly crystals—stolen by the Ironfang Legion as she slept. She views the PCs as obnoxious children, annoying her in this hour of mourning, and is ready to respond with violence unless approached with utmost deference.
Ancient magma dragons are only 18th level, and the party is already 19th level due to extra quests, so I need to increase the challenge. I don't want to raise Irigibel's level, instead preferring the dragon as written. My thought is that after being violated by the Ironfang Legion, Irigibel purchased the Warmonger from the local genie city as an additional defense.
Ordinarily, I roleplay hirelings as fully independent NPCs, but making the Warmonger act like a minion will emphasize that the Warmonger is a recent acquisition by Irigibel and that it is a construct. Though the PF2-converted Warmonger will be 19th level, having only 2 actions per turn will reduce its effectiveness by roughly a factor of 2/3, so that would be more like 18th level. Two 18th-level creatures will be a 60-xp Low-threat encounter, better than the 30-xp Trivial threat of Irigibel alone.
Thus, I have a use for the minion trait here.
Friday's game session did not reach the Warmonger yet it had an interesting minion-relevant situation.
The sorcerer cast her new 10th-level spell Summon Kaiju. That spell summons a creature-like incarnation called a kaiju and speaks about it as if it were a creature. But this kaiju does not gain the summoned trait nor the minion trait. Instead, the spell has the Incarnate trait, which says, "A spell with the incarnate trait is similar in theme to spells that summon creatures, but it doesn't conjure a minion with the summoned trait. Instead, when summoned, the incarnate creature takes its Arrive action when you finish Casting the Spell. At the end of your next turn, the incarnate creature can either Step, Stride, or take the action for another movement type it has (such as Climb or Burrow), and then takes its Depart action. The spell then ends. The names of specific Arrive and Depart actions are listed in italics after the word “Arrive” or “Depart” respectively, along with any traits."
Thus, the summoned kaiju is like a summoned creature but it is definitely not a minion. The minion trait on a two-turn kaiju would have simply gotten in the way.
Also Friday, the party fought the hobgoblin cavalier General Kraelos. he has a yzobu animal companion Drakestomper as his mount. Porting them from the PF1 adventure path to PF2 rules was straightforward, though I leveled him up from 17th level (CR 16) to 20th level because the party was 3 levels higher than the module expected.
The module had Kraelos accompanied by a Ironfang Yzobu Rider Troop CR 18. I decided to port them as a pair of 18-level troops, rather than letting a troop unit overshadow Kraelos himself. But a troop is a group of characters that act as one creature, so their animal companions just merged into the troop as a whole, rather than having a hobgoblin troop riding a yzobu troop. Thus, the yzobu cavalry lost their animal companion feature despite the hobgoblins still riding yzobu mounts. Weird.
We have seen several ways that subordinate characters relate to main characters.
1. Animal companions, construct companions, controlled undead, etc.
2. Non-companion animals such as horses and hunting dogs.
3. Familiars.
4. Summoned creatures.
5. NPCs hired into the party as subordinates, such as a NPC cleric hired for healing.
6. Mixed troops (in theory mixed swarms, too, but in practice they don't exist)
7. Intelligent items.
The animal companions, familiars, and summon creatures gain the minion trait. Commanded animals are less efficient than minions, with just one action per command action. Summoned incarnations are not minions, because minion trait would interfere.
Hirelings are described on page 294 of the Core Rulebook under services, but that talks about downtime work, so hiring an NPC for exploration or combat is outside the rules. The GM roleplays the NPC and improvises their loyalty.
Troops are constructed as single creatures despite the number of individuals in the troop, so it follows single creature rules. Both the leaders and subordinates in the troop operate with one shared will. Ordinary, troops are NPCs, but in Assault on Longshadow during the big battle at Longshadow, I gave each player one troop unit to control in addition to their PC. In a vehicle-based battle, such as warships at sea, I could merge a PC and the vehicle's crew into one unit operating the vehicle.
Intelligent items, pointed out by Jacob Jett, are a case I had not considered before. Intelligent items are independent NPCs, but their actions are severely limited by their nature. Consider Martyr's Shield item 7. It gains a reaction every turn, and it can use that reaction to shield block for its wielder or an adjacent ally. The wielder does not get to decide. But since all it can do on its own is shield block, it cannot take charge of its own destiny. The shield's personality is supposed to want to protect allies, so it won't go on strike, but it could prefer to defend one particular ally over another.
My current viewpoint is that minion trait is one tool in a big toolbox, and we need to decide when it is the right tool for the job.
The minion trait gets complicated for GMs to use when planning encounters. As a GM, I do not find it a useful tool. The problem with it is that it interferes with encounter design as far figuring out how much XP to award players for defeating their enemies. A level 19 minion being used by a level 17 NPC for example creates a pretty big issue, at least for designing pre-written adventure modules, maybe not for individual GMs. A level 19 creature limited to 2 actions a turn is not really a level 19 threat is it? Not in the same way as a creature that is level 19 and free to use all their actions.
Now, I am all for GMs adjusting NPC tactics and motivations on the fly to make fun encounters, but trying to rules code how to do that with the minion trait feels like both a head ache and an opportunity to break the math. I don't think it is really a good idea to encourage new GMs to try to force NPCs to interact with other NPCs with the same rules as apply to PCs for having mounts or underlings. It is ok to say that those rules exist for PC game balance, not for in universe representations of how power works.
Like if you want to represent NPCs having a struggle to control a potentially dangerous creature for an added tactical and narrative element in the encounter, that is totally cool and can be a lot of fun, but it is a very different encounter than facing those two creatures together. And trying to balance NPC minions like PCs would require building them like PCs because you wouldn't want the minion's stats to throw off the balance of the encounter without having a sense of what you should do to compensate. It is much easier just to throw the two creatures together and figure out what difficulty the encounter now is, and then potentially have a way to scale it back (by having one of the creatures have to make checks to keep the creature in control) if it makes for too severe or extreme of an encounter for your PCs.
Now, I am all for GMs adjusting NPC tactics and motivations on the fly to make fun encounters, but trying to rules code how to do that with the minion trait feels like both a head ache and an opportunity to break the math. I don't think it is really a good idea to encourage new GMs to try to force NPCs to interact with other NPCs with the same rules as apply to PCs for having mounts or underlings. It is ok to say that those rules exist for PC game balance, not for in universe representations of how power works.
I am a mathematician, the spiritual descendant of people who decided to pretend that the square root of negative one is an actual number in order to apply this imaginary number i to the cubic formula. I don't simply break math, I carve it into Lego blocks and rebuild it.
Plus, Paizo has already done the groundwork. NPC spellcasters can summon creatures and those summoned creatures are minions. The formula for the level of summoning, as shown in Summon Animal is:
A 1st-level spellcaster can cast a 1st-level summon spell to gain a negative 1st-level minion.
A 3rd-level spellcaster can cast a 2nd-level summon spell to gain a 1st-level minion.
A 5th-level spellcaster can cast a 3rd-level summon spell to gain a 2nd-level minion.
A 7th-level spellcaster can cast a 4th-level summon spell to gain a 3rd-level minion.
A 9th-level spellcaster can cast a 5th-level summon spell to gain a 5th-level minion.
An 11th-level spellcaster can cast a 6th-level summon spell to gain a 7th-level minion.
A 13th-level spellcaster can cast a 7th-level summon spell to gain a 9th-level minion.
A 15th-level spellcaster can cast an 8th-level summon spell to gain an 11th-level minion.
A 17th-level spellcaster can cast a 9th-level summon spell to gain a 13th-level minion.
A 19th-level spellcaster can cast a 10th-level summon spell to gain a 15th-level minion.
Imagine an 11th-level spellcaster. a 80-xp Moderate Threat encounter for a 9th-level party, casts and sustains a spell for a 7th-level summoned creature. Ordinarily a 7th-level creature would be a 20-xp trivial threat against a 9th-level party, but given that the 11th-level spellcaster has to spend an action every turn to sustain the spell and the summoned creature has only two actions, the net effect is that the threat does not significantly increase.
If limiting a creature to 2 actions makes it only R% as effective as 3 actions, then the math is (R%)(80xp + 20 xp) = 80 xp, so R% = 80%. That is higher than my guess that R% = 67%, but it is in the same ballpark.
As for the actual encounter with a 18th-level ancient magma dragon Irigibel and a minionized 19th-level Warmonger, the party is 19th level with 7 members. Even an 18th-level creature and an unimpeded 19th-level creature would be (4/7)(30 xp + 40 xp) = 40 xp, a Trivial-Threat Encounter, so the party is in no danger from adding the Warmonger. If I downgrade the impeded Warmonger by 80%, that switches to (4/7)(30 xp + (80%)(40 xp)) = 35 xp. The gameplay significance that the dragon Irigibel is in charge rather than the stronger Warmonger will be worth making the challenge easier by 5 xp.
I think you are a completely experienced enough GM to make those calls for yourself Mathmuse, and am sure that your table will have a lot of fun with it.
I don’t think confusing newer GMs with rules designed to establish inter-player balance is a good way to help them design and run encounters though. The minion trait is about keeping a certain level character from functionally becoming a very different power level of character by massively exploiting the action economy. But in basic encounter design, mashing different creatures actions together quickly complicates what kind of threat level the encounter becomes. At best it is an advanced tool, but I don’t think it is a particularly useful one beyond trying to create the illusion that players and NPCs play by the same rules. I can see why that might feel valuable to some, but it still fundamentally feels like a deception to me.