Three questions about Summonable Allies

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Yako

First, why should someone NOT want an ally stronger than oneself?
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).

I'll take this in two parts:

1. If the ally is stronger than the PC, then why isn't the story about the ally instead of the PC?

2. I have no idea who Barthimaeus is. Is this series written after the advent of DnD?

But back to #2. Most fiction about the summoning of very strong demons has long showy rituals. Not to mention that these demons are usually held against their will (a -50% limitation).

Just to let you know my mindset, I'm 55 years old, and have seen enough horror in the real world. When I was young I've ran enough games where the players were murder hobos; I got sick of it. Now if I go to the trouble of running a game, then I require the PCs to play heroes. And heroes don't keep slaves (unwilling allies) and they don't deal in demons (both of those can be mitigated with a good enough back-story - for instance, you could check out the book _Practical Demonkeeping_ by Christopher Moore).

I would require any PC who does this to use a varient of the Horror corruption rules and to negotiate with me how an unwilling "ally" can escape and what the consequences would be (I would give further limitations for this depending on how difficult it is to keep the demon in line).

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.

I'm sorry I forgot the Frequency of Appearance of x4 for constantly.

In the case of #2 I would require a good story as to why the character had a slave following him all the time. And I don't remember any pre-rpg fiction that had *allies* following them except occasionally ghosts. Usually they weren't helpful.

I would love to be corrected about the fiction; if I haven't read it I'd like to and if I have read it I might like to.

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.

Do you think that "minion" is a better loyalty? Allies are loyal to you unless you prove to be non-loyal to them. Minion just lets you treat them like crap and get away with it (though as stated under Ally, you might have other problems with your minion if you treat him like crap).

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.

In my opinion, the GM should negotiate with the player to find out what the player feels is important. And the GM gets to explain if there are any problems with that sort of ally. After the GM and player come to a general agreement, the GM tells the player how much the ally will cost and why. Maybe there is more negotiation. Eventually there comes an agreement.

...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.

Sorry, but you ask for opinions, you get opinions. If I think that somebody is trying to abuse the system, I let them know.

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.

And yes, I think the above is a classic case of abuse of the rules.

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...)

This is your one point that I agree with.

I think that there should be a timing limitation based on how long it takes for a summonable ally takes to arrive. I don't know why they didn't put it in the rules.

From a reading of the rules, I would have said that it arrives close in both space and time, unless you want a limitation that causes a delay. My reading of RAW would imply a delay of up to a minute, with rare times that are longer (perhaps up to an hour because your demon is busy). Again, that would be spelled out as much as possible in advance, though perhaps not in full detail because the PC might not know all the details until they happen.

I do think that when you want a summonable spirit, it should arrive fairly promptly under RAW unless you have a limitation for the delay. Just pulling this from the air:

• Less than 1 minute: -0%
• Less than 10 minutes: -10%
• Less than 1 hour: -20%
• Less than 1 day: -50%

Perhaps that is the time it takes for the ritual to summon the being; perhaps its how long it for it to stroll slowly down to you.

I also think that there should be limitations for costs of summoning. Perhaps summoning a powerful demon requires an unbaptised baby (-30%) or a virgin princess (-60%). An Angel might want you to have done a deed of pure valor first or to have purified yourself in the water of a sacred spring. I'm just pulling numbers out of the air here, I haven't thought about them much.

[Yako]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

I'll take this in two parts:

1. If the ally is stronger than the PC, then why isn't the story about the ally instead of the PC?

2. I have no idea who Barthimaeus is. Is this series written after the advent of DnD?

But back to #2. Most fiction about the summoning of very strong demons has long showy rituals. Not to mention that these demons are usually held against their will (a -50% limitation).

If the signature ability of a PC is to summon a strong ally, then, pretty much as a definition, the story tends to be about BOTH.
But we are dealing with a generic system, a system where someone can easily say: "I am the mute support droid who solves technical problems and such" or "I am a sentient animal who is great at physical tasks and fighting but has the ongoing problem of not being treated like anything but a normal animal in social situations".
Thus, wanting to be a frail summoner who fights by calling powerful spirits works just as well.

So, about fictional examples:

First, as said, there is the Bartimaeus series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartima...%29#Bartimaeus), in this case, summoner and summonee are actually coprotagonists with switching points of view.

Then, when we go East, we get a lot of examples from manga and anime.
The Manga / anime tactics follows the exploits of a Taisho Era exorcist who has two Yokai as his personal servants due to controlling them by name, one a rather humble fox spirit who doubles as a housekeeper, but on the other hand, an extremely powerful Tengu who only would work as a 150% ally.
Series such as Shaman King would be further examples, also the Pokemon franchise (Pokemon have great powers while their human trainers are perfectly normal), Yuna, the summoner from Final Fatasy X, the entire shin meami tensei series might or might not count, as at least technically, demons need to be of lower level than their summoners (which can be altered and also does not change that demons can easily be more powerful even at an equal level).
If we go into non summonable allies too, most of the books featuring dragonriders (Pern, Eragon, Temmeraire) only work with such powerful allies and the protagonist is usually the human rider, even if the dragon is very much a core element of such stories.

Also, those kind of allies must not always be unwilling, they can often be for sure, in the Bartimaeus example, it is a rather odd combination as he is unwilling but very much unable to disobey in most cases - and in some flashbacks, we see a case of him and other demons serving as normal allies, with either unwilling or minion, due to a genuine friendship with their summoner.

But I do see that the root issue is a rather common one: Power Gaming suspicion.

I have seen it done to death in a system I used to play before GURPS (The Dark Eye, German fantasy Roleplaying system with a defintie trend towards low magic / low power) and honestly, I find it rather silly.
If you have players like that, no kind of system will take away your job of making sure they are kept in check.
GURPS however needs to be what it is supposed to be, generic and universal.
As such, GM panic over the ever present power gamer should be served by marking the abilities which can be easily abused, as it is rather nicely done in HERO actually (one of the things I like about it, even though I don't think I'd switch over after already having invested much in learning and teaching people GURPS), but not by removing things that should be possible.
It is the same with, say, cosmic, it is meant to allow abilities that you sometimes DO need, but any kind of cosmic enhancement needs to be used with great care.
Same with allies, same with any other inherently very powerful trait.


For insubstantial allies or ones hiding in an item, Pokemon, Magi Labyrinth of Magic, Shaman King (I think it does qualify), Hikaru no Go (but much less powerful) and a few more.
As I think you realize, it is overall much more popular in eastern media, but, I dare say, that is exactly because most western gamers are more into being the big, uber macho guy with super combat skills and all than being weak and having a strong friend.
...which I actually find extremely annoying as I cannot really identify with that sort of uber masuclinity and don't really want to either, but that as a sidenote.

And, yes, minion is essentially a better loyalty, it means the minion puts up with anything, like a slave or a machine and, yes, working your ally to exhaustion is problematic, whether you have minion or not, but that is kind of besides the point.
I rarely encountered any player ever who did abuse his minions unless they were the kind of mindless constructs (zombies and skelleton warriors) where this is unproblematic anyway, but I think my experience is a bit different as I never, even in the teenage years, had any real "band of murderers" group as usually, they tended to rather pick fights among themselves than terrorize the surrounding...

I personally think that the +250% instead of +100% is more of an extreme prevention strategy to make the concept less attractive, but I think it shoots over the goal by also harassing anyone with such a concept.
GURPS usually advises to build an ability by making it mirror the workings as closely as possible with the rules, as simple as possible and with the cheapest available built in case of a power that does not clearly map to any advantage in the book.
Allies with summonable is a very easy way to model the helper from nowhere, but if it ends up being more expensive than a solution closer to what actually happens in the concept (say, the pokemon being shrunk / datafied to fit into a ball, the ally jumping over from another plane, etc. it isn't really a step into the right direction.
I think if the problem is allies being abused, then do change their cost, maybe abolishing the fixed price in favour to one proportional to the players point total (as is done in HERO for example) or something of that nature, or just preventing the "low frequency of appearance summonable ally summoned over and over till he stays for good" by letting an adventure move so fast that one day without the ally is a serious liability, or make more situations where sending him away is the best course.
Making a summonable ally almost twice the price (+250% instead of +100%) seems unnecessary and seems to at least not have been the general conesensus at the time when the pyramid article I quoted was written.

As a GM with two players using summonable allies in some way, I can of course always just say: "screw the official rules, I have got mon, erh, the game master chair", but I personally do think that this kind of rule punishes the players the most who DO care about balance, official rulings and such while I think those just playing by the books and not checking the unofficial FAQ and such will just blissfully remain ignorant and likely handle it the way many people seem to have understood it before...


For the last part, I admit, I would prefer a baseline that makes it work with stuff like preparation required, takes extra time, costs fatigue, maybe onset and trigger best...
Your suggestions about sacrificing a baby or doing a deed of valour sound clearly like a trigger.
Also, I think something like maximum duration or minimum duration could work for an ally, but, to be honest, not at the current values, those modifiers seem really broken for anything but perhaps the base cost of alternate forms...

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Yako

Thus, wanting to be a frail summoner who fights by calling powerful spirits works just as well.

Actually a frail summon doesn't mean that he isn't powerful. It just means he isn't *physically* powerful. He could, by knowing the right spells or by having a high will or the right knowledge, bind spirits that *are* physically powerful without having them have more points than the caster (at least individually).

If anybody wanted to play such a summoner in one of my games, there would have to be a lot of negotiation especially because I'm running a Science Fantasy campaign. For instance, would a demon bound on Planet X be able to even *hear* a summons on Planet Y? The place where spirits live in the DJverse is a place that has location, which means that even a spirit can't just jump between systems. Either the player would have to come up with another idea or we'd have to figure out (together) how to get around this.

So, about fictional examples:

Then, when we go East, we get a lot of examples from manga and anime.
The Manga / anime tactics follows the exploits of a Taisho Era exorcist who has two Yokai as his personal servants due to controlling them by name, one a rather humble fox spirit who doubles as a housekeeper, but on the other hand, an extremely powerful Tengu who only would work as a 150% ally.

Again, I think that the summoner was knowledgable without being a great fighter.

Series such as Shaman King would be further examples, also the Pokemon franchise (Pokemon have great powers while their human trainers are perfectly normal)

I believe those are for kids, which means they don't need to make sense.

However, I have watched a few episodes. When the kid acquires a new pocket monster, he has to catch it and either convince it to be bound, trick it, or force it somehow.

If we go into non summonable allies too, most of the books featuring dragonriders (Pern, Eragon, Temmeraire) only work with such powerful allies and the protagonist is usually the human rider, even if the dragon is very much a core element of such stories.

Yes. Now we're talking about things written before the advent of role-playing games. I would assume it's a campaign advantage and set aside points for a generic dragon as an ally.

Dragons would not be constantly available, but might have other problems; a dragon who lost their rider often suicided and likewise the reverse.

Then there were the fun shoulder-dragons which were more useful eventually.

But I do see that the root issue is a rather common one: Power Gaming suspicion.
...
If you have players like that, no kind of system will take away your job of making sure they are kept in check.

Of course. That's one of the main jobs of a GM. I had to balance a party of four extremely high point characters together allowing each of them their niche while leaving overlap. I had to warn my wife to avoid having gun skills because her high DX from martial arts (Doc Wynn is one of the top martial artists in the Confederation - the entire party is pretty much the best at what they do). With a point or two in some guns skills, she could outshoot the shooters in the party. This allows me to write adventures that are fun because the players don't have to worry about being killed easily (except for the mad scientist, but she has her own defenses).

GURPS however needs to be what it is supposed to be, generic and universal.
As such, GM panic over the ever present power gamer should be served by marking the abilities which can be easily abused, as it is rather nicely done in HERO actually (one of the things I like about it, even though I don't think I'd switch over after already having invested much in learning and teaching people GURPS), but not by removing things that should be possible.
It is the same with, say, cosmic, it is meant to allow abilities that you sometimes DO need, but any kind of cosmic enhancement needs to be used with great care.
Same with allies, same with any other inherently very powerful trait.

Frankly I don't have problems with most GURPS abilities, but rather how they are used. I don't like people feeling that they have to use a convoluted set of advantages in order to get around the ability that does it best.

Usually in my games I have my players describe their characters to me and I negotiate with them over how their background and abilities fit into the world (sometimes changing my world background to accommodate the player). Then I create the player and show them the character sheet, and there is another option to negotiate because I might have misunderstood what the player wanted.

So I don't worry about power gamers.

And, yes, minion is essentially a better loyalty, it means the minion puts up with anything, like a slave or a machine and, yes, working your ally to exhaustion is problematic, whether you have minion or not, but that is kind of besides the point.

Minion merely means that they will obey. However, I'd suggest being careful with a minion that isn't treated right. They can sometimes choose *how* they obey. Also, orders can be followed to the letter rather than the spirit, depending on the circumstances.

However, I've never had a player with a human ally, and most people treat animals fairly well.

I personally think that the +250% instead of +100% is more of an extreme prevention strategy to make the concept less attractive, but I think it shoots over the goal by also harassing anyone with such a concept.

You keep saying that +250%. Where do you get that from? The x5 for constantly is *not* an enhancement and shouldn't be mixed with them. If you have an ally with you constantly then it should be multiplied out first, and then have enhancements and limitations applied to it.

For instance, an ally of 100% of your CP is 5 points. If he's supernatural and there constantly (there is a recommendation that constantly not be used for normal allies) then he's a 25 point ally. Then you apply the enhancements and limitations to the 25 points.

Sometimes the math comes out the same, but sometimes it doesn't depending on the system used.

GURPS usually advises to build an ability by making it mirror the workings as closely as possible with the rules, as simple as possible and with the cheapest available built in case of a power that does not clearly map to any advantage in the book.
Allies with summonable is a very easy way to model the helper from nowhere, but if it ends up being more expensive than a solution closer to what actually happens in the concept (say, the pokemon being shrunk / datafied to fit into a ball, the ally jumping over from another plane, etc. it isn't really a step into the right direction.

Yes, for a Pokemon I wouldn't use summonable at all since that isn't what they do. For instance, once they are out of the Pokeball, they can't be summoned again; you have to get them inside again before you can call them out.

I think if the problem is allies being abused, then do change their cost, maybe abolishing the fixed price in favour to one proportional to the players point total (as is done in HERO for example) or something of that nature, or just preventing the "low frequency of appearance summonable ally summoned over and over till he stays for good" by letting an adventure move so fast that one day without the ally is a serious liability, or make more situations where sending him away is the best course.

I would only allow one summoning roll per day, just as for a human ally.

Making a summonable ally almost twice the price (+250% instead of +100%) seems unnecessary and seems to at least not have been the general conesensus at the time when the pyramid article I quoted was written.

A summonable ally is only +100%, with minion commonly added for +50% for a total of +150%.

As a GM with two players using summonable allies in some way, I can of course always just say: "screw the official rules, I have got mon, erh, the game master chair", but I personally do think that this kind of rule punishes the players the most who DO care about balance, official rulings and such while I think those just playing by the books and not checking the unofficial FAQ and such will just blissfully remain ignorant and likely handle it the way many people seem to have understood it before...

Rather than that, just add rules for time and cost for summoning. These limitations would only effect the cost of the summonable enhancement rather than the entire ally though.

For the last part, I admit, I would prefer a baseline that makes it work with stuff like preparation required, takes extra time, costs fatigue, maybe onset and trigger best...
Your suggestions about sacrificing a baby or doing a deed of valour sound clearly like a trigger.

I wouldn't call the cost a trigger, but it's your game...

Also, I think something like maximum duration or minimum duration could work for an ally, but, to be honest, not at the current values, those modifiers seem really broken for anything but perhaps the base cost of alternate forms...

I didn't think there were max and min durations for allies. Just a frequency of appearance. But you might be reading it from a book I hadn't thought of.