10-13-2013, 05:49 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Germany
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Three questions about Summonable Allies
After having read Kromm's clarification regarding Allies with Summonable in the unofficial FAQ I have a few questions about the advantage (some of which predating and being my reason to look up the uFAQ and the thread the post in question was from).
1. PK once made a very useful article about summonable allies of the easily replacable kind and the ability to summon many different kinds of allies. |
10-14-2013, 04:58 PM | #2 | |||
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Three questions about Summonable Allies
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Last edited by sir_pudding; 10-15-2013 at 02:50 AM. |
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10-15-2013, 05:51 AM | #3 | |||||
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Germany
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Re: Three questions about Summonable Allies
Well, I was thinking that between the metatrait bellow and a different ally each time who is also a minion is sufficiently small (and technically, though not with the classical interpretation, the conjured servant is back much faster)
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First of all, the default assumption of ally seem to be to conjure them, ie. YOU are the one who makes the ally appear. Quote:
For example, there is the player in my own group who summons zombies by throwing bones (a bit inspired by the dragon tooth for skeleton warriors thing from myth) on the ground, mumbling, concentrating for a bit and powering it with FP (magical energy) to make them rise, which I modelled with a trigger, extra time and costs FP. Logically, they would then appear in the time it takes them to rise from the ground (a few seconds when judging by the fictional examples it is based on). If I had another player though who conjures his servants form a different plane, should I randomly make this take longer charging the same points and all just because one ingame explanation, a special effect, suits it better than the other? Can there not at least be a rule like: "it takes 3d6 +/-5 seconds till the ally arrives, the modifier reflecting the affinity of the time / location towrds the conjured being"? anything which quantifies it and thus allows to tailor it to the necessity would be helpful, because as is, it either means allies will only ever be summoned well before combat / a situation where time matters starts, or the rule being ignored. Quote:
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It is also apparent though that currently, the official stance which has not been disputed by any other part of the staff and thus can be fairly seen as an uncontested view is different. Personally, I think the issue is more the pricing of allies, than the pricing of summonable (summonable allies just tend to be what people are especially prone to use for combat machines) and I think rethinking the pricing of allies might be more sensible than the repricing of summonable, but that is my personal view. I want to ntoe though that +250% for what apparently most people thought they did get for +100% is prone to make people seek alternatives to summonable, like small allies hiding in a cosmic payload or people using a Jumper affliction to call allies from a different plane. Surely, this is what houserules are for in the end, but I personally think more than twice the price of the enhhancement is definitely too much. I'd rather get a 150% ally with minion than a 100% ally with summonable, for those extra points, I could after all (assuming a dungeon fantasy 250 points budget) get him insubstantiality with invisibility and make him hang around next to me on the astral plane instead of calling him up over and over. |
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10-16-2013, 06:23 AM | #4 | |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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Re: Three questions about Summonable Allies
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Second, if you get a minion with insubstantiality and invisibility that is either one or two special abilities which increases the cost right there. Putting a minion in a payload costs points. Third, I think you've missed an important part of an ally: they are NPCs and the GM creates them, not you. They player should negotiation with the GM, but the ally is a being with free will. All minion does is to force it to keep loyal to you even if you treat it like crap; it can still break down from such treatment. Allies are cheap. An ally of your power level (the most I'd allow anybody to take without a really good story) costs 5 CP. Minion is +50%, Summonable is +100%, the total is +150%, so the total CP for such an "ally" is only 12.5 rounded to 13 points. Even a +250% set of enhancements would cost only 18 points. I agree with you that summonable means that the ally appears close by and I assume fairly quickly. It's up to the GM to define the speed. That's what GMs are for.
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10-16-2013, 07:13 AM | #5 | |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Germany
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Re: Three questions about Summonable Allies
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Or to put it another way, the question is pretty much irrelevant to the discussion, there are plenty of concepts which need the 150% ally. say, building a Barthimaeus series style summoner (their entire power comes from controlling very strong demons). And, YES, that is the point, or to illustrate: A player wants an ally who is constantly available, but also able to vanish and not be a nuisance factor when, say, having a demon/angel/genie floating next to you. The concept does not work with either an ally who, after being dismissed, is unavailable for a day, nor one who can only stay for a minute and constantly needs to be resummoned, even if it will always succeed. 1. Solution: He takes a summonable ally with increased duration for 5 (ally is as strong as him) x 4 (summoning him always succeeds) +250% = 70 Character Points 2. Solution: He tells the GM that he wants to have a spirit ally who accompanies him on the astral plane and can materialize at will to aid him (a concept I think amply found in fictional examples too). Because this will make the ally more expensive, he opts for a 150% ally so his spirit can still be a strong partner in a fight and such. He pays 10 x 4 character points and, because always floating next to someone seems like something hard to put up with, adds minion for +50%, for a net 60 Character Points. While in some campaigns it would clearly be better to have an ally who is not only insubstantial and invisible when needed (other spirits might attack him in the astral plane, people with the right kind of see invisible can still perceive him), he can in return do quite a lot of useful work now, like spying on someone in another room, be a quite useful scout, quickly escape many dangerous situations on his own and more and has a better loyalty. This has nothing to do with "the GM builds the ally not the player", since a GM who does not at least honor his player's concept is seriously doing something wrong. Also, you completely forget any frequency of appearance modifiers, thus, your example seems a bit misleading, aside from the fact that you should compare the 5 +250% to the 10 +50%, thirdly, what you as a GM would allow is also not really helpful, after all, another GM migth alltogether say "no summonable allies" and yet another one might charge an unusual background, all of those are campaign specific additions, if we discuss such rules, we should discuss them based on the system as defined, unless a part of that system is inherently broken (like the famous 1 damage innate attack with tons of enhancement), thus, unless you think that having one 150% ally for the price of 2 100% allies is inherently broken, it should not matter here. Thirdly, yes, allies in payloads cost points (payloads cost points etc.), but when summonable becomes so unattractive, that players rather go for a pokemon like "ally can shrink, but only to enter a payload or other special containers + cosmic payload, possibly with gadget limitation" or similar than picking summonable, this might highlight that a +250% summonable (which you would need for the pokemon example) is rather expensive. Oh, I forgot the last point... ^^ ; Well, personally, I prefer it when the rules do define it as much as with other abilities, that makes it easier to differnciate between different kinds of abilities and give players an incentive not to press for a concept that seems to support effectiveness as much as possible (if it is up to the GM, it gives player no incentive to define their summoning as slow, they don't even get a proper point break for it when it is all up to GM...) Last edited by Yako; 10-16-2013 at 07:35 AM. |
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10-16-2013, 09:37 AM | #6 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Three questions about Summonable Allies
How much extra does the "spell like" variant cost, then? The utility of the ability will be different if the ally appears right away, versus possibly not getting there to help you till a fight is over, you've found another way to cross the chasm, etc.
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10-16-2013, 09:51 AM | #7 | |
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Plugerville
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Re: Three questions about Summonable Allies
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A fairly common usage would be for spells-as-powers characters that can summon allied animals(Ranger/Druid), elementals(Wizard), Angels(Cleric), etc. Appropriate time-frames for a ranger or druid to summon an animal that is many miles away would not be reasonable for a Cleric calling upon an avatar of their Diety to defend the high-temple against an attack by 'The Dark One' Because there is such variability, the GM should work with the player to determine an appropriate time-frame based on the power source and how it works. This is a Generic system, and the only way to keep summonable allies Generic is to rely on the good judgement of the GM to determine how long it should take that ally to become available in each situation. Would you really want a huge table that gives you an estimate of how long it takes to summon a SM+4, octopodal lime-gelatin elemental when visiting a slightly brackish oasis on the Siberian tundra 10-15 years after it was scoured clean by a Nazi Magi-nuke carpet-bombing in the late 1970's using moon-aspected magic when you are still 4 days short of a full moon? |
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10-16-2013, 10:00 AM | #8 | |
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Plugerville
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Re: Three questions about Summonable Allies
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10-16-2013, 11:37 AM | #9 |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Germany
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Re: Three questions about Summonable Allies
Frankly, what I would want is something like:
By default, a summonable ally appears on the turn after you summoned him, able to take action immediately, he will appear in the closest available space in a direction you specify. -x% your ally is treated as mentally stunned the turn he arrives. -x% your ally is not conjured but called, he arrives in a timeframe depending on the local affinity, which might make him appear at once (angel in a tempel of his god, fire elemental in a volcano, animals in a natural habitat), or take 3d6 seconds (neutral affinity) to 3d6 minutes (desecrated area for an angel, at sea for a fire elemental, inside a city or similar unnatural place for wild animals). If the ally cannot appear AT ALL outside of certain environments, take environmental instead. What constitutes affinity should be specified at character creation. -x% your ally always takes a certain time to arrive, the value of the limitation depends on how long. One could also say that one of those versions is the default, and that an ally who is ready to take action right away is an enhancement, one could also make calling an ally take longer, say 10 seconds like a physical transformation and call for reduced time or a custom enhancement for a quicker summon, or make enhancements so it can actually appear where you want, like, say, right behind your enemies. But it opens up much more different concepts if you can make that choice. Frankly, if you go with what you suggest, why should a player go for a concept that calls for anything but the genie in the bottle or a similar style? I generally don't like punishing a player for having a flavourful idea and I have the impression that neither does the system on a whole, usually, if you go with inherent complications, you get a price break. I think having one for allies would work quite well too. And also, I do like the idea of going with a default of 10 seconds, because, all things considered, the "battle form" you shapeshift into and the "battle ally" you call up are rather similar in man regards and giving both the same base time should give good results (especially, it makes takes extra time an appropriate limitation, while with one second, it would be pretty cheap). |
10-16-2013, 11:40 AM | #10 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Three questions about Summonable Allies
+0% as far as I can tell. You should probably read Kromm's posts about it. Personally I don't see the point and would probably never allow it.
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Tags |
allies, dungeon fantasy 9, summonable |
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