Game runners, how do you deal with summoner-type characters, whether it be for NPCs or from your players?
Players, how do you like your summoners? Are they the Necromantic kind or some tree hugging barrel of monkeys type?
Do you even like summoning?
Comic is Seven to Eternity. It's incredible, and Veeky Forums fantasy as can be, but ayyy.
Summoning is great.
Large summoning rituals can be exciting dramatic events, it can provide a plethora of interesting and fun NPCs for the GM to use, and can introduce an entirely separate ecosystem of creatures
Also it can be useful as a stand-in for NPC helpers in certain situations. Meaning the players can explicitly determine what supporting cast members they wish to take, and take easily determinable and system-supported steps in order to acquire them, rather than expecting the GM to make them himself without knowledge of if the players want them or not.
Personally I prefer Mage the Awakening's rules on summoning, controlling, and binding ephemeral entities. Binding a slumbering Spirit of Wind into a Fetish to grant you its power. Summoning a Ghost of an ancient warlord from the Underworld for his wisdom or assitance. Or travelling to a Demesne or Hallow to reach into the Temenos realm of the Astral and call down a Goetia of a concept.
Man is it fun to watch the Concept of Anti-Authoriatrianism psychically annihilate another Mage's mass Mind-Control spell.
Ooh! I wrote an entire class for this. You summon unique otherworldly entities to help you, ranging from chisels to angels to unusual goats.
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca
>unusual goats.
Do go on.
Yeah, see, there's these things called "links". I posted two of them. If you click on them - using the left button on your mouse - you'll go to a different website, where you can read all about goats.
Because I'm not going to spoonfeed you. Youy want goats? Go find 'em. I've given you all the tools you need.
I'm reading them, I'm more curious about your design philosophy, and strange goats got me looking.
Faggot
Ah well why didn't you say that?
The goal is to make 99 long-duration "spells" (between 1 and 6hrs at level 1, between 4 and 24hrs at max power) that are
a) interesting
b) balanced against each other to the point where the are no obviously "must-have" Entities
c) are evocative enough to run quickly without to many rules
d) are the mirror half of Dungeon Challenges*
*A dungeon challenge is something like "there's a 10' glass sphere full of gems, acid-resistant snakes, and acid. How do you get to the gems?" You know, interesting questions with an obvious (dumb) solution and a lot of smart, not-obvious solutions.
Entities exist to answer questions I haven't asked yet.
Ok.
As a DM I hate (designing around) summoning. It can be used in ANY situation.
One of my players can summon 43 constructs per day.
Traps are difficult cause as soon as the players find a new room he scouts it out with a construct, and has it interact with anything I describe.
Riddles and puzzles are some of the only working traps because of all the creative uses he has for the constructs.
He even has a combo for one player to teleport wherever he wants, usable at super low levels.
And combat is difficult too cause he can swap to blaster at a moments notice.
Well, you're more or less stuck with it now. For whatever reason you're using a system that's given one player a huge toolbox.
Time to attack them from an unexpected vector. Morality. Love. Ennui. Corruption. Idealism. Something they can't just construct away.
Attack every party of the character sheet, not just the HP box. Not as punishment for being good - you let him be good, so you deal with the consequence - but say "Ok, you've clearly mastered X challenge. How about Q? How about negative Q?"
That sounds too good, nerf the power.
That's what you get for playing Pathfinder.
You'll learn.
>Players, how do you like your summoners
Intrinsically tied to the summon like a Jojo. Not posting a picture to avoid bitching and memes
Sure, but you can't just arbitrarily do that without breaking the game's social contract. You can't just arbitrarily declare someone dead (Black Leaf, nooooo!) without breaking the contract, and you definitely can't nerf a character.
So... talk it out. Go to your player and say, "Here are my concerns. How can we fix this to make the game more fun?" And maybe there's no way. Maybe they really enjoy overpowering every conventional challenge and unconventional challenges aren't appealing. In that case, it's break up time.
But if you can negotiate an "interesting" solution, do so.
I like summons, but they're so fucking annoying.
The only way to counter them is to make the game less "fun" for a player.
>I like summons, but they're so fucking annoying. The only way to counter them is to make the game less "fun" for a player.
Pro tip. If you can replace the core noun of your post with any other arbitrary noun, you're doing a bad job of making your point.
Examples.
>I like spells, but they're so fucking annoying. The only way to counter them is to make the game less "fun" for a player.
>I like martial classes, but they're so fucking annoying. The only way to counter them is to make the game less "fun" for a player.
>I like sighted characters, but they're so fucking annoying. The only way to counter them is to make the game less "fun" for a player.
>I like ranged weapons, but they're so fucking annoying. The only way to counter them is to make the game less "fun" for a player.
>>I like bipeds, but they're so fucking annoying. The only way to counter them is to make the game less "fun" for a player.
He is limited to his powers, only about 7 of them total, but he chose them carefully, powers that he can use in any situation.
Combat-wise, I think I still have a trump card. The player cant quite handle certain status effects. The BBEG is an optimized tripper, with a paralyzing attack. In a one-on-one sparring match, he couldn't last a single round, though the player's strategy was pretty damn clever.
Out of combat, he acts fairly normally, though he does prefer the "cool" route over the virtuous or profitable ones.
Nah, the thread gives plenty of context. If you don't see the problems inherent to summons, you're not one for this thread.
D&D 3.5, but close enough. And yeah... I get it.
I like pact-mages who call on powerful entities and the like, dealing and swindling to get their support, gradually making bigger and bigger debts of karma despite paying off each deal and entity to the letter of their agreement, inevitably building up a reputation and rap-sheet with numerous factions in the cosmos.
>Angels asking hundreds of questions to make sure the good deed actually helps.
>Demons and Devils begrudgingly acknowledging the deceptive nature of his work.
>Clockwork Order-aligned entities are favored repeat customers for reliably getting the deal done exactly as laid out; consequences be damned.
>Chaos entities thought impossible to get into an agreement show up occasionally, to everyone's horror and confusion.
>Terrors and Heroes from beyond the grave or the future ahead; makes for some odd situations of having pissed off assassins being sent after you for things you haven't done yet.
Sure you've got firepower when you need it but the plots can make themselves and the whole thing is a hilarious course of bad decisions spiraling out of control.
I feel like this is fine for creating an NPC with interesting goals and a wealth of plot hooks (or for writing an actual story), but adding all of that baggage to a PC just leads to them hijacking the narrative because so much of that has to happen on-screen and the consequences can be massive.
5e has a relatively tame way of handling it, but anything more in-depth than that is something I wouldn't want to dump onto a PC. Maybe as background or fluff, sure (he made a deal and is trying to save the world to win his soul back or whatever), but tread lightly if it's an ongoing thing and there be dragons if it's tied into the mechanics of their character.