The Problem of Allies in D&D
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
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D&D players often attempt to get allies to help them out on their adventures. However, this presents several game mechanic and gameplay issues for both players and dungeon masters.
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Old grigoux of D&D 3.5 point on view : Angel ? = Magic circle against good (+métamagic).
Mining rules = 5000pg diamond is common (really hard to find yes, be 2 or 3 day with a good minning team.)
In my way of GM-ing. It's the counsil of gods who have imposed the "middle age fantasy héroic-story" (fantasy is not marvelous with unicorn everywhere)
And they have order to angel/devils (not démons/archon) to make everybody respecte the settings...
So if my player trie an stupid invocation, the solarian/balor accepte. But he only gonna look at themes, not helping at all, not doing anything (but cost money). The setting is "héroic-story".
My way of résolution = Politicial résolution !
My player love finding glitch in the rules, but the univers is really strong it's why we love the game ^^.
The rules existe in the méchianus and any gods can modify rules of d&d by roleplay.
I personally would up the encounter difficulty alot, to make it hard even with that many angels, while allowing the players to split control of the angels among them selfs, so everyone gets to play, and it gets more epic, and so that the 7 angels felt like it was super necessary to have that many to begin with
the angels may make combat slower, but slower combat doesn't mean it has to be less fun.
i would never cheese the angels of not working with them, because it destroys both fun, and immersion
there are a set of things to think about around the table
roleplay/story/Immersion, mechanics (rules as writen ), and fun
Fun should be priority one, roleplay priority two, rules as priority three
have to ask yourself what are your players looking for? are they looking for a easy battle, or are they doing because they believe if they don't do it, they would have very unfavorable odds? against this great threat
@@nolifezombie Never cheese the angels ?
Politically, they can do everything. They have the plan of light/infinity ( > lore of creation of d&d univers), they can create create an army of infinity solarian angel in 5 secondes.
So... If angels wanna anything, they obtain it or create it.
For my point of view, they are the only one faction, we need to restrain themes politicaly, or they gonna comme to hell and purge everything.
The main excuse is "free will" so they accepte to let hell existed and let mortals do stupid things.
Without respect for free will, the angels would have conquered the entire universe... in 10 minutes.
So yes, i approve the idea of "Never cheese the angels" ... But in the case you must have low-power paradise with no acess to plan of light.
Cheese angel's infinit power, or cheese angel's political right to acte.
A balance to adjute.
there's also an option for the allies to go on to a parallel mission. the players are fighting the boss inside the lair and the solars are holding off the small army of that boss somewhere near the lair.
I think this is the most elegant solution
@@isaacingleby8771
Agreed, thanks!
I did this 25 years ago once, thanks for the memory refresher.
Such a versatile option
Big Bads can summon allies as well, and high level allies can die too. Sometimes they can even heroically sacrifice themselves to save their new buddies in order to give them a shot at saving the world, etc...
and this works great when there's a power gap one way or the other
yeah something like that is what i would do too, have them have their allies, maybe in a few irrelevant small combat encounters till you get to "serious" story related combat, and then just have all the npc allies walk off to fight something else
Ironically, this type of thing happens more with good RPers than with min-maxers... because as you point out, the in-character thing to do is to just recruit an overwhelming force and go take the enemy out. And the problem here is that the in-character thing is also something that destroys the mechanical/tactical fun of the actual gameplay. These are the times when a good gamer (vs. just a good RPer) is needed -- good gamers are smart/experienced enough to suspend disbelief on the in-character thing so that they can have a good session.
And if the party has the time to do this, the enemy does too.
The party is not being properly challenged. He's treating high power characters the same as low level characters and that is the problem.
If they're high enough to cast gate, they're extra planar level threats and would be primary targets to be assassinated by the BBEG. They're targets for elder dragons to wipe out for loot. They're targets for other beings to summon THEM. They're abilities are required to stop other mass threats. etc.
They have near god level powers and they are being given practically no responsibilities and too few challenges.
What tactical part? 5e has pretty much 0 need for tactics.
Depends on the character. My character would think that having extra people would be worse, because of the burden of making sure they don't die.
A good character is a hero. A poor character is a farmer with a family to provide for.
Hiring a thousand men is a kings job. Heroes fight off monsters.
I’m playing a hero.
I'd say just to make things safe, the players should not meet many if any "powerful characters" that could sweep any problem they encounter. These legendary characters should only be talked about or their influence is always indirect. Make them a warrior queen in plate Armor. She's too busy giving speeches and fighting in the front lines or being involved in politics.
Maybe a powerful wizard in flowy robes. He might be busy with preventing a demon entering this realm.
An armored dragon who protects a stone wall city high in the mountains? He can't leave the people he's guarding in danger of a siege.
Something I have always done in my games is if the players have a lot of companions that they want to take with them and convince those companions to go with them I will have the NPCs take care of a different Combat while the players take care of the main one. So say they're fighting an Orc Chieftain and he's got a lot of Allies. The NPCs will handle some of the weak Grunts while the players handle the big threat. It usually works fairly well as my players find the help useful but not show stealing
Great guide on how to deal with hirelings and related sort. I am curious how you actually handled the "Summon Angels" situation.
If anyone is interested, this is how I would handle the situation without knowing any of the particulars of the campaign:
Allow the party to successfully summon an angel. He comes through the gate battered, bruised, and in a greatly weakened state. He explains that the void is overrunning his celestial realm and he was greatly injured in the process, and in fact he considers the appearance of such a gate a miracle so he could slip through and survive. He goes on, explaining that the void will most assuredly overrun his realm within the day, and then the void will be set to unleash upon the primordial plane.
In other, words, up the timeline. Don't give the heroes the time they thought they had. They get aid, yes, but not as much as they originally planned.
I would allow them to have one big battle, rebalanced for the inclusion of the Solar/Solars/allies. Then as they approach the BBEG, have the Solar/Solars/allies break off to find a different way in/clear a path for the heroes. Then, once they get to the BBEG, they see them and the Solar/Solars/allies duking it out. I would make the summoner roll some manner of die to determine a percentage, and then, having seen how powerful the Solar/Solars/allies were, have the BBEG snuff them out, and apply the rolled percentage as damage to the BBEG. This would give the summoner a huge climactic battle with their awesome ability, and give them a head start on the final battle, to make it feel like it made a significant difference without making the summon too OP.
I sometimes like using the brought allies as "lair actions" for the party if there's more than one or two allies. As in, they're off fighting bodyguards that would otherwise have been in the fight or disabling some sort of defense the boss might have had. And during the fight the players can use them like a Lair Action to do something to directly help the fight the players are in.
I like this a lot! I may use this in place of NPC turns when there’s a reason for them to fight.
That's a great idea! My campaign has 2 NPCs that run with the party. I've been playing them as characters in the encounters, but it's hard now the party is at L-12. I can do that. The rogue Goblin Lair reactions for a couple and the Hell Hound puppy reacts protective for another. Great idea
This seems like a good idea for a semi-large-scale combat Arc I have planned. Normally, I just have an NPC guide/camp-setter that tags along with reasonable stats and a support Ranger build with variable Feats and spells as needed to make the actual players look good.
What party knows the specific names of SEVEN Solars?
weaponized autism
Testify my dude!
I often find myself with players who want to amass a small army of npcs. I generally allow them to do so with a 'Yes, but'.
An interesting case happened lst sturday where they fought an army of orcs lead by a Cloud Giant count alongside some giant vulture riders, a blackguard and a Wyvern. They had an npcs that initially was suppose to be a quest npc, but essentially became their sidekick for 8 levels out of 14. I upgraded her stack block every so often, but still she was usually in the rear. For this battle I gave her a full lv14 player sheet for the player who usually controlled her to handle, basing it on what she learnt from each player character who she became close with. The battle was still pretty hard and epic. However after that, she'll be going home, because with the death of the Blackguard, her storyarc ended and she wants to see her family. She believes in the group and if something goes wrong, she'll avenge them.
So overall, great guide ^^.
A good rule of thumb is to make the summoned creature willing to help if it makes sense for their personality and they have a CR of 12 or less (fair power for a 9th level spell). They agree to help the characters for one whole day, but may need payment equal to the spell’s material component each day to keep them around. If the creature is of a higher CR, they may need persuading and will require extra gp to hire (1000 gp for each CR level above 12 per day). So if you want a Solar ally, you’ll need to both convince it to help and pay it an extra 9000 gp for the first day, then pay it 14,000 gp each successive day to keep it around. Money is a powerful tool to limit the power of allies.
Don't they need to know the summoned creature's name in order to properly summon it with the Gate spell?
The 5e version of Gate also reads the thusly:
"You gain no special power over the creature, and it is free to act as the GM deems appropriate. It might leave, attack you, or help you."
Could make the group do persuasion checks to see if they get the ally. To go off of what you said about the summoned creature was fighting another evil, as a side quest or storyline. The evil forces start gaining ground, and now it's another threat to party, world, plane. Another story plot could be if they gather a large amount of angels. Now the Gods may take note and do something
I would imagine Solars aren't just sitting around waiting to be Gated at the whims of some mortal.
Gate also requires you to speak the creature's name, so you can't just summon a random one. You could, however, talk it over with the players and have them earn a one-time favour of such a creature they can then use with Gate in the future.
Yeah. That will pretty much destroy the whole premise of this video. You will already know this Solar by name for this to work, and I doubt you have 7-10 of those friends to summon this way. If you do, the DM should be well aware of it and most likely planned for it.
Solars probably have things to do. They are not going to sit around for a week while the party keeps summoning.
The problem with the "speak the creature's name" is the same problem with "you must have seen the creature before" for Polymorph. Literally nobody regards the restriction. You can't really design an overpowered spell, make a convoluted restriction and then just toss it out there. Also, you can literally know random creature's names that you haven't met before. A lot of powerful creatures have names that are known to the vast majority of denizens of a D&D world. It's also pretty conceivable that a church has the names of powerful angels and archangels and planetars and solars, since that's literally their job. The DM has to basically break the player's fun every step of the way so that Gate can function as intended. It's just a bad spell for being able to do this.
"I would imagine Solars aren't just sitting around waiting to be Gated at the whims of some mortal." this argument doesn't work as well, because what happens if players want to summon a Solar to help them fight an evil they suspect they might fail to defeat and that's threatening very many people. What will the good solar do? Say to them "Piss off, I have angel things to do"? Or will every solar be conveniently fighting an even greater evil every time to justify not being able to help players?
Gate's just a vague, easily abusable spell. It's just bad design.
Well the mortals have nothing to do but spend their day gating Solars, so why wouldn't the Solars have nothing better to do either?
I would also say, why are the players the only forces fighting to stop the "Void" from destroying the multiverse....clearly there is something plotwise preventing the other major forces from participating already. Also, perhaps if you summon 7 solars, the enemy summons 7 void spawn to counter it and start attacking City X. Now the solars go keep the Void spawn busy while the players fight the big bad.
i love the idea of having players run NPC but now i have to hand them a stat block. i just wing it mostly with npc( most don’t last to long ). i will probably start playing it that way. THANK YOU Luke!
I've had the ally NPCs engaged in a different yet connected battle. Players are defending a small town? Maybe the NPCs are busy leading the civilians to safety.
In an older campaign the party was defending a whole city and had to basically assign certain NPCs to certain areas to defend. I was secretly rolling percentile dice and taking the enemy force into account to see if any of them were wounded or actually died. A few did.
Having the NPC dip out of combat reminded me of an encounter in my current campaign too. Party convinced a Vampire to help them who was only useful until her armour (which protected her from sunlight) remained intact. For every few hits she was taking, parts of the armour were torn off until she had to run for cover. Not to mention that Vampires are only really at full power in the dark as is. It was already a tough fight against an enemy with a hive mind so once the enemies worked out that "sunlight bad" they just started to rip the ally's armour to shreds.
There's been instances where maybe the players can't trust the NPCs available either. Dealing with a conspiracy that has some of the city watch on the payroll? Well, now the players can't go to the guards for help.
You basically cover all the bases here. There's a variety of options to address such a thing, and variety is the important thing.
One brainwave that came to me for the Solar issue, based on an event that happened in another game I was in, where we were able to recruit some crusaders to help us assault an enemy fiendish fortification - have the NPCs who would actively help, do so in a way that does not directly put them adjacent to or in the same encounters as the PCs. In the session I was in, the crusaders were occupied with maintaining the siege of the fort while we used the opportunity to get a highly skilled task force (the PCs) behind enemy lines to force the siege to break and rout the enemy properly. The focus remained on the PCs and hinged on their actions, even if the climax of those actions involved creating the opening for siccing a mass of allies on them. For the Solar example, with a major event as complex as the Encroaching Void, there are likely some important major enemies that the Solars could engage as a celestial unit, preventing them from entering the fray against the more vulnerable mortals - their energy would be much better spent in preventing reinforcements from the Void from coming in to overpower the PCs rather than directly adventuring with them, or in some other way being a 'second front' to the conflict, opposing the enemy and preventing the kind of collateral damage that the PCs can't be in every place at once to deal with. This could easily be combined with the "no, but" option, in that the allies might also provide some more material assistance up-front as well (some extra gear, the benefit of some of their spells, etc) - between the boon and the second front, if handled well, it should feel like the PCs managed to foil some aspect of the villain's plan before they even had to deal with it. Perhaps when they come up to the Void Vultists lairto interrupt their ritual, they find that the cult have been trying to summon the Void's harbingers for *days* now, and and it is only the tireless Solars brought in that have kept those greater monsters from answering the call - the frustrated high priest no longer gets to have a voidspawned horror with him in the boss fight, but he's still a powerful spellcaster... though now the other cultists will still be here to join the fray, since the horrible monster failed to appear and accept them as a sacrifice!
Ultimately, it all comes down to "How will doing what you are doing make the story better for the group?", a question which, as mentioned, does not have a single all-purpose answer.
Good Video idea. people always talk about pet companions, when they never really consider just actual people joining to help your party.
Just add an extra Pit Fiend for every solar and take control of both the Solars and Pit Fiends. Don’t actually roll their attacks or actions but have them "battle in the background" everyone wins. They get to summon cool allies, and the combat doesn't get bogged down with extra turns.
so use DM fiat to overrule someone spending 5k gold in diamonds and give no advantage to using those resources
1) Everything is DM fiat. That's how campaigns are made.
2) If you can cast a 9th level spell, 5k is a drop in the bucket.
3) If you're a half-ways-decent DM your players will feel a benefit and an advantage for any of the tactical choices they make in an campaign.
Yes DnD is a game. But its a cooperative one. Every game needs rules and boundaries or it loses meaning.
You could let your level 1 Player have a flame tongue weapon, that would feel awesome and be a huge advantage to that player. But that feeling will pass quickly when every encounter has no challenge and the other players feel useless.
You gotta be smarter than the mechanics of the game. @@Erribell
@@Erribellaa far as the player are aeare they don't know about a pit fiend. So in their eyes their spending of resources just took away an entire powerful entity from the battle. You as the DM make the balancing for encounters. You decide what would be appropriate for the party.
It's the same thing as fudging a die roll to make an outcome cooler. You could even have the planar use some helpful magic every know and again in between blows, if you feel like the party needs a bit more support in the actual fight.
@yarion4774 you are talking about over ruling player agency, even on a hypothetical one time basis,
If you cant let a player have an easier encounter after blowing a 9th level spell slot, blowing 5k gold, blowing the time required to find some entities true name etc then what actual agency does the player meaningfully have?
@@Erribell there is nothing to overrule. This has nothing to do with player agency. It has to do with theming, story and mechanical fluidity. But most importantly: context. Which is unfortunately always missing in these types of hypotheticals. If these summons involve prolonged effort that is not just played out in a few minutes of downtime, that's a different story. If the party wants to fight with celestials on their side, then you can bring that in. If they simply want to cheese a fight because they can, that might also be awesome to some. Does the party need/want a mechanical struggle in the boss fight? Do they care more about the story element in that encounter? But also, which is just as important, what do you want as a DM?
When you habe a campaign at lvl 18 you probably synched up your own desires with that of your party. If not, you are probably not having as much fun as you could have. In any case, summoning high level celestials the party has no prior affiliation to, could also encroach on your own boundaries as a DM. But again, if they planned this thing for a long time to get all they needed, that's a different thing. If everything fails, as said in the video, state your issues plainly. A simple "Hey guys, I really like this idea but I fear that it will trivialize this climactic encounter too severly."
But as said before, there are many, many buttons and levers to push and pull before this break of immersion needs to happen.
Depending on the context the appropriate response changes as well. Everybody is a player at the table and it is imperative to look out for everyone's fun.
The way I normally handle this (assuming the party doesn’t have total information on the bad guys stronghold) is make the situation more complicated than they first thought and the npc(s) will offer to handle the first unexpected problem and depending on the npc maybe they show up part way through the climactic fight if the party isn’t doing well or maybe they offer a new magic item that could be helpful before they leave. This way they still feel rewarded for the npc showing up but they don’t take the lime light
I think what's more interesting is having allies help in other ways. Sure you can have an army of angels with you, or maybe every few rounds the allies heal one of your characters. Maybe the BBEG summons a bunch of minions, but suddenly your allies spring out of nowhere and trap them. Or maybe several turns into the fight the allies help change the battlefield in favour of your group
Easy solution for the solars: for each solar the party recruits, the BBEG recruits an archdemon or an archdevil.
Allies are awesome, especially if you allow players to take control of them during combat. It encourages the DM to throw deadlier encounters at the party, using deadlier tactics, while not overburdening them at all.
A player of mine used Planar Binding and it's variants to summon up an angel army. I say army, I really mean 5 of each tier that the Planar Binding spells could summon. I had them roleplay the interaction, and they had to pay up, but they managed to convince the angels to stay and help with a big combat.
So the big fight breaks out. There were going to be waves of Blightburn Magma elementals, which were going to be a pain in the butt and soften up the other NPC's and the PC's before the bigger threats hit the field.
The Angel Army had abilities to support the NPC's and soften up the elementals. So, that's what I had happen. A few castings of Blade Barrier made it easy for the NPC's mop up. We skipped those waves, and moved on to the next thing. The Angels and NPC's were kept busy, the players got to speed up the combat somewhat, so they had better resources for the bigger threats. Went pretty good after that.
That sounds like a well executed example for this scenario.
In my game of Princes of the Apocolypse, the party faces the final dungeon. But throughout the campaign they brought together many NPCs that would suppott them. They didn't go out of their way to have them come doen the dungeon with them. But they heard of the little army of Gauntlet soldiers, adventurers and others that gathered in a nearby town to fight the increasing cultist army. They even got to see there comrsdes decked outvin weapons from the forge they inherited in Lost Mines of Phandelver.
Now they have even more motivation to end the elemental threat and ensure the victory of their friends and allies.
Well said, agree with almost everything. I think you missed a chance to mention in the case of Conjure Woodland Beings, that the DM decides what creatures of the chosen type show up. Each ally should be a case by case basis. As a DM, I tend to run the allies, because, more than a few of them have alternate goals/drives, and I don't want the players assuming since I am running one ally over another, that the one I am running always has some sinister plot to kill them all.
If im not mistaken officially there is only 21 solars so there is a limit😂 but, taking a solar out might have left a really important place undefended
i've done this a few times it's a fantastic storyline advancement, too.
OR if the adventure has multiple goals, (e.g. retrieve x from y, save a from b, fix this for that); the Solar (or other allies) can accomplish one of these concurrently to the PC accomplishing their objective off camera.
Another good tactic is to reverse this - the town/army/militia is in a big conflict and they send the PCs to go accomplish a, b, or C, like take out the secret stash of magical catapult ammunition to give their army a surviving chance, just before the battle ensues. This gives the PCs the spotlight on a major important objective while aiding in a bigger mass combat without actually engaging in said mass combat.
One idea - BBEG knows gate spell too. Also is powerful enough to sense that 7 solars have entered the material plane. Now have an epic mass combat with superpowerful entites and hhuge casualties as a set piece before the final confrontation 😀
My thinking is "if the have the resources, let them use them".
Have multiple objectives
Let the new allies attempt 1 objective.
If the players need muscle tostorm a castle and discover a back way in that becomes available only if the front guards need support, then let the allies cause a distraction in the front while pcs sneak in.
Perhaps the end boss is powered by some powerful giant relic. The allies could obtain the relic and perform a ritual to cut off the bosses access to its power.
Make some things easier, not all things otherwise the players may as well have stayed home.
Yes the tunnels are flooded with kobolds. The allies can help sweep the tunnels and herd the kobolds in one direction but only the players can track the shaman through the correct tunnel and stop him from rallying the kobolds back.
Yes Luke. Party reputation gets around fast. Good treatment? Willing NPCs. I like your attitude regarding Powerful allies. Variety is the spice of life. just like the song "you can't alway get what you want, but when you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need" That should be the understanding of the party. Sometimes they try to get the cake and eat it too. ( sometimes they may get a slice, and sometimes they may get a crumb) D&D is not a turn-key, automatic system. I had some players try to tell me at such and such level they are entitled to get these magic weapons RAW. 🤣 As a player, I've always enjoyed getting a reward that was hard won. A challenge. I can't stand a "Monty Hall, Santa Clause" dm. Great Vid! Adventuring ain't easy and that's why npcs don't do it themselves.
The answer to using allies/hirelings without needing to rework all encounters is simple and comes in 2 parts.
1. Each PC can gather as many NPC allies as they can, but they can only ever take one of their allies with them into battle. The rest are watching the caravan, back at base, or managing the tiny empire the PC is running as their downtime activity.
2. In combat, it doesn't matter what the NPC's stat block says. They take their turn after their primary PC takes their turn, and they make one attack on their turn. The damage from their one attack should be on par with the base attack move their PC makes most turns. One extra eldritch blast, sword swing, or arrow isn't going to derail whatever encounter you spent the last week crafting.
I like to make npc allies support types. I belive I've mentioned in other comments that I run the dawnguard dlc from skyrim as a 5e adventure. I gave Serrana the haste spell and some other support character abilities so she could buff the party more than take the spotlight. I also had the players run her Stat block and it went very well. Got some fun role play moments durring that campaign aswell. One of which she bonded with the cleric over cooking with the paladins cooks utensils that they "barrowed" from him.
I also have 3 solutions to either keep it manageable or to make it simple
1. If the ally is a celestial, I like to give the players a positive lair action instead of a whole statblock. For example: Initiative count 20 - a small AoE that gives Temp HP to allied and damages the enemies.
2. If a group of guards decides to help them, I may just put one "Swarm of Guards" at the table.
3. sometimes I talk with the players, we decide the allies would slow the game down, so instead I just take away some enemies, and we call it "even"
Solars are like stray cats. They don’t mind hanging out with you but have a tendency to wander off to play with shiny things. And introducing a second Solar starts a big huge fight between the Solars….
Old school d&d had a solution for this, hirelings get half xp share and full retainers get full xp share. Nothing halts your pcs getting too much allies like having to split in to many share their xp
Thank you for that reminder! Cheers. There is the overhead cost of too many allies in xp, time, motivation, monetary compensation, and morale. Sometimes it's better for the PC to just have a DIY attitude.
My rule on gate has been "ask the dm first", if theyre cool with the cleric gating in and planar binding something big, go for it (though keep it reasonable) an army of outsiders? If you have the resources and want to fight an army maybe. Plus most npcs tend to be meh to start and fall off fast, so hordes of them are still chaff mobs
When I started running Kingmaker recently I straight up said "I am not letting you travel around with 3+ named NPC's". At best I let them take 1 if their unique skills are needed, but otherwise I bend over backwards to make sure the party is split from them for the flimsiest reasons.
"Someone has to stay back and guard the place", "we'll scout the other side", "a bigger group will attract danger", "we will attack from the other side and divide their forces", "we have other things to do" and so on.
Also the Companions are always a level below the heroes, just to make sure they won't have a chance to dominate any encounter.
Are you sure that powerful being would just stick around there waiting for more? It probably has more business to do than hang out with the puny mortals. Once it has done what it's convinced to do (and it either does that immediately or does nothing), it departs.
Also you need the name of the creature. How many names of powerful extraplanar beings could your character (not player!) know? More than 2 is already demigod level.
I ran into this issue with PF2e, where in order to help balance the powerful allies the players had, I adjusted the encounter and split up each group so that several party members were with several allies (I have a group of eight, so it was already a big combat before the allies). However, because of this adjustment, once the players cleared the mooks of the main boss, they were left having to watch the allies take it out while they hoped for extremely high rolls since the monster was a bit too hard for them. It sucked, but the party agreed that maybe they shouldn't ask for the most powerful people to help them to their work.
Situations like this are why near the end of my last campaign I started using Chris "Goober" Ramsley's Companion system supplement (and my own homebrew extensions to it) for modelling allies. Admittedly the primary reason for using it is because it makes allies into effectively talking magic items and thereby ameliorates the issue of 5E's action economy not scaling well for hordes of combatants, but it can also be used to sneakily reduce the extra power the ally-recruiting party are taking into a situation whilst still buffing or widening the range of abilities and powers at their disposal so they feel they're getting something out of it.
In the case of powerful, iconic allies like the solar, I would probably just model them as a normal NPC the first time if it was a dramatic enough moment since that's likely what the player was aiming for, but if they were for some reason to stick around you bet they'd be turned into a companion card with a narrow but very powerful set of abilities.
Another thing that rules about the supplement for more normal NPC allies is that as the DM it makes you think about their characterisation. Since you have to come up with some mechanics that they can confer to their assigned player, you need to properly think about what would make sense as characteristic ability gifts from this NPC specifically and get into the weeds on their personality and background.
Brilliant video. If you're familiar with the Elric of Melnibone' series by Michael Moorcock, this was often a situation with the lead character. He was a powerful magic-user, with the ability to summon high-powered elementals, and sometimes even gods, to his aid.
But as he progressed through his saga, he found many of those who he summoned to be reluctant (or even annoyed) to help him. Ultimately, some of them didn't even render him aid, stating that they had more serious concerns elsewhere, and left him hanging.
Summoning a powerful entity by no means enslaves that creature to the will of the summoner. If anything, it could lead to possible disaster.
Another angle (but I haven't completed watch your video all the way through), is that this could serve as a future adventure hook, with the summoners creating an enemy, who initially helps them but later plots revenge on them for having interrupted their day...
Bonus points if someone/something the Summoned being cared for is lost while they were summoned away.
YES! That would be an excellent hook! I plan on using that...@@Lrbearclaw
I play solo so in a way, I'm always using allies and yes: when I go recruiting I use the NPC reaction table and modify my Charisma bonus vs. how the last recruit fared. Also, I am one of those players who enjoys spattering the dungeon floor with the viscera of my opponents. The challenge in my games is more about building my character's reputation so your approach totally aligns with what I've been doing.
The primary rule I've introduced about NPC Allies, is that no matter how many of them they collect, or are "traveling with them", only one can participate in combat at a time.
Basically just came out and declared that after an encounter went very poorly because there were 3 allies, and I over balanced the challenge based on that 😝
If you got 7 solars... Then the heavens may start asking questions. There's always a story method to limit summons.
For example, you gain the aid of a named solar. You can summon that solar, but other solars won't just drop what their doing and join in. Make the spell interesting, not just the resources for summoning but also a boon must be completed first.
Next, if the solar does help, then the next fight the BBG summons a balrog. It them starts to get dangerously like an arms race, the power becomes a means to destruction and fulfilling any prophetic end of world storylines.
Sometimes, I like putting stories together, where players are the architects of their own potential destruction. So here's how the scenario that I am thinking could play out.
Lets say that we modify the Void slightly (not sure what you are calling this creature of the void, so just going with that for now). So in this modification, we don't change the encounter, but how the Void operates. The entity in your world is not the Void itself, but an extension or essence of the Void. If anyone is familiar with the Phantasy Star series from the Sega Genesis, the Dark force entity is a similar concept. Where in PSIV a creature called the Profound Darkness was trying to break out of its subspace prison by sending a small essence of itself every 1000 years called a Dark Force.
So, because the Void is an inter planar entity, it sees the Solar and his plans instantly change. So it attacks the Solar and only the Solar, but with the angel being a lawful entity of pure good it is taking the damage on behalf of the mortals so that they don't suffer the horribly fate that would await them if the Void kills them in battle. Now this works if the Solar dies in battle. Then his body gets consumed by the Void. then the rest of the fight happens against the weakened Void. But there is no speech, no I'll get you next time Gadget, no. The Void just laughs as he is defeated by the players. Almost as if him losing...was exactly what he wanted.
Now, there is going to be a time jump, several years, probably around 10 years or so. The evil was defeated, there are other threats, but nothing as severe as the Void. Let the players tell you what they are doing over this time jump with the notion that the campaign is not actually done and that we will continue after the time jump. role play when appropriate, roll when necessary. But interject with some strange occurrences. Lightning, massive lighting with bolts as big as mountains streak across the sky. Food production drops by 1d4+1% per year for each year and other disasters as needed to show just how vital and life threatening this situation they found themselves in is.
What has been happening in this scenario that I am painting, is that the void didn't actually 'consume' the angel. But captured him in a torturous environment that makes the fires of Avernus look like a pleasant summer home. The Solar is now an ArchAngel. For this I'd probably just use a balor demon but with some solar abilities thrown in just to make them even more frightening. Also make sure to give them 666 HP, for, you know, reasons.
The lightning bursts and other disasters comes from the Void and his new corrupted ArchAngel soldier who has been slowly but surely capturing other solars to make more ArchAngels with. And these solars have been dedicated to other dieties that is causing problems. Like the diety of furtility which over the ten year jump is causing brithrate to decline at an unexpected rate. The diety of plant growth which is affecting the food production on farmlands and in nature in general, etc.
In short, your party now has visual and world affecting consequences of bringing a solar ally into a fight and a nasty end of the world scenario that is playing out before their eyes. As the Void has returned, now it doesn't want to conquer the world, it wants to destroy it. Wipe it clean, if you will. And that creates an interesting setup for the second half of what is now a very high level campaign (something that is sorely missing in 5e).
Anyways, I kind of went off into my own little bit world building there. Sorry about that...
But now you know what my players have to deal with in my campaigns.
One possible solution for epic tier allies is to treat them like Aragorn summoning the Army of the Dead: Give those allies an important task that (at least in the novels) largely happens "off screen" while the players--the "main characters"--go do the specific epic deeds in need of doing. The players can be allowed to feel like they've cleverly managed to bypass or "cheese" a bunch of unfun sloggy encounters by siccing their solars on them while the DM can conceal that the actual adventure path hasn't substantively changed--or that he's skipping to the more consequential meaty encounters of the game.
Of course, running NPCs like they're actual creatures with free will, obligations, personal interests and motivations as this video in part recommends actually solves a lot of problems. Solars might be very helpful, but they're not necessarily obedient. Perhaps only one or two of the most open minded solars agrees to work directly with the party and accept orders, but the rest will insist on rigid conformity with celestial sensibilities about tactics and the chain of command, eventually forming their own separate tactical unit.
But yeah, nice crunchy topic!
I luckly dont deal with my players wanting to hire mercenaries often, I actually have 2 npc companions that travel with them currently and they usually leave them behind to watch the wagon while they go off to do things.
Allies made easy.
Step 1: Table talk, time to full stop/pause things and hold a session zero 2.0 the topic is, obviously, PC allies.
Step 2: make a table wide decision. Are allies wanted. If everyone agrees allies are wanted then the table needs to then set limits.
Step 3: limits, how many allies are allowed? How many allies can one PC control?
At my table every character gains a sidekick (Tasha's) these come into play when a PC is away. The remaining PCs are allowed to "activate" one sidekick per missing PC. When not in use, the sidekicks are following the PCs at a relatively safe distance. During larger combats they have a small group of minions they are dealing with (no rolling needed)
When it comes to summons, especially summons with no duration, I limit them to one per PC.
In the case of summoning entities like Solars (and the like) to fight with you. These are high CR mobs. They are going to severely reduce the XP the PCs get. (That's usually enough to convince them to not abuse them) If you are using milestone XP, I have literally told PCs that if they are going to use a powerful mechanic like this to bypass the challenge, they will have to wait for the next milestone to level as they haven't learned anything of significant value to level up.
**END NOTE**
Usually if you explain to your players that their actions will have these two major consequences they will tone things down.
1- boring long combats where their characters take a backseat to their allies.
2- less XP / longer time between levels
The solution I'd come up with is to have the allies help without directly fighting alongside the players. Maybe they're mounting a frontal assault while your party slips behind enemy lines? Maybe they're dealing with the enemy reinforcements so the party can focus on the boss? They're still helping in a tangible way without bogging down or trivializing encounters.
I'm a big fan of shoving the allies offscreen and giving some indirect boon. "The solars go fight the reinforcements while you fight the big bad, as they know this fight holds the fate of the world, and they don't want you interrupted. "
They're Solars, they have things to do. I don't care if a player was jazzed up to use a bunch of diamonds to force a bunch of angels to do their bidding. You don't get to dictate what a CR 21 angel does, or how they react to being summoned and dictated to. You better be mad respectful talking to that LG aspect. And then maybe the first one would stay to help, if they weren't busy and the players were VERY convincing, but I'd have any angel's they summon after that see the Solar and go "I'm busy and you already have help, don't waste my time."
Your points were good, I especially agree with having a reputation. In the end though, I think this is just a symptom of having a natural leader and planner in your group. It's important to have objectives that require allies if your party is the type to want allies. They're basically the adventuring guild at that point. They NEED multiple overlapping objectives. That way they actually are challenged to use their allies and hirelings well. I've played with plenty of parties that didn't care about recruiting help, they just expected to do everything themselves. That party doesn't need overlapping goals. As soon as you have a natural leader in your gaming group you'll need to start throwing multiple challenges at them at once. The dragon needs to be slain before a particular day, but the kobolds in the sewers are doing a ritual on the same night, and an artifact needs to be delivered the next day. Then I'll have them do a series of checks to represent the other events while we're doing the main encounter. This lets them fight the dragon and have an army fighting the kobolds in the foot hills around the dragons lair.
When the players are trying to persuade an OP ally like a solar to join them on their quest, I would have them roll another persuasion check after each battle and raise the DC. It makes sense for solars because like you said, they are very busy with other work in the multiverse. I feel like this would be a fair way to handle this and not take away player agency.
If you allow your players to summon more than one extraplanar at a time, I don't know what to tell you.
There are many ways to deal with it - maybe Solars won’t agree with the way to tackle this problem and have an argument over it. Maybe Concordant Killers or Marut start to get involved, maybe the diety behind a couple of Solars intervene because it would sway the balance in the universe. Maybe let’s let them do anything but bring crazy unexpected consequences - maybe one Solar dies and other beings start to blame PCs for it or they have to deal with a problem the dead Solar was trying to solve. MANY ways to deal with the problem :)
At that level your characters are world-shaping powers. You are treating them like they're powerless chumps. You're not properly challenging them.
In my current game, one of the main questlines for the players is to actively go around and seek alliances with the many factions across the land. This is because I actively plan for these allies to be used in major battles. Essentially a modified Horn of Valhalla.
Of course, I make it very clear when the horn can and can't be used. If you're fighting a few ogres, nobody's gonna be bothered. If you're ready to storm a major boss' camp, then yeah, you'll need help. And about reputation, these allies only become summonable once an alliance is formed at all.
Allies NPC are good for certain situations
To provide for some temporary help in extreme situations such as fighting off 100 trolls or something like that.
Or the NPC allies only company the group only to a certain location then the party is on there on their own.
Maybe the allies are a couple of trolls who are heroes for hire and will offer the party their services for a price.
Solar could be treated like Dragon Balls like in Dragon Ball Z . Once the Soler(s) performs its objective then the Solar can't be resumed for 30 days.
Summing multiple Solars: the different Solars could have personality conflicts with each other.
One Solar could be extremely lazy
Another one could be very snobbish
One of the Solar could be easily distracted. Maybe a Solar could be the joker of the group.
Solar(s) might only be willing to help only in an epic battle like the ones in Lords of the Rings or against a divine super demon god. It has all kinds of invincibility and only a Solar(s) can remove those invincibility and make it possible for the adventures to even have a fighting chance . Afterwards the Solar(s) tell the party that the battle took a lot of their energy and they or it has to leave to regenerate for at least 30 days and it's up to them to finish the fight.
Most of this issues already solved if a spell description read closely. The Gate, for example require "...speak the name of a specific creature". If they do not know the real name of the solar, they can't summon it.
I like to use temporary summons in battles, or to help guard us for the night if it's something like a bag of tricks, but I'm generally careful to avoid making things too much more difficult for the GM in the process, and if I did want something impressive like a solar, I'd definitely discuss the idea with the rest of the party and the GM first.
I think a good idea would be to allow an ally but after a session or maybe two the enemies catch wind of this ally and come up with countermeasures
I do like the idea of having them handle other side missions during the adventure. The party needs them to distract their personal guard so the party can go right for the source or they cause a commotion while the party sneaks inside.
Some new players I have run one shots for seem to love asking every single person if they will help and join, while many veterans hate the bog and taking the spotlight. Though most learn to stay away from my ally NPCs because no matter what system, digital or not, or anything they never can roll well so barely end up helping anyway.
the biggest problem with hirelings/helpers/sidekicks/allies is how more than a few of them take up supermassive amounts of time
If you have a group that _likes_ commanding armies, game balance is not an issue. Not because the GM can rebalance existing encounters, but because the difficulty of the adventure chosen can be ramped up. Instead of picking an adventure path for levels 5-8, you pick one for levels 7-10, and then come in with an extra 4 hirelings. Even just having a "night crew" who ensure the PCs get uninterrupted rest, or can keep the enemies from resting, can significantly tip the balance, while not being harder to run (beyond creating and managing an extra set of characters).
Make it simpler. Add great cost (materials/etc) for the ability/spell. And/or limit it to times per day/week/etc. It can be a good "get out of jail free" card to play but the player/character has to decide when to use it.
Can also "substitute" the NPC turn for the character turn (via "concentration" or whatever mechanic). Just make it like a FFX summons. It keeps from slowing down the round, and still feels thematic and cool (i.e. who doesn't like turning into Ifrit for that mega fireball attack?).
Another method is to split them. So, players have convinced some npcs to join and they went to some dungeon or whatever. And so, group of npc either stays to fights enemies so they wouldn't attack pcs from behind, or there are different paths they can choose from and pcs go one way and npcs go another. But this method relies on talking to your players out of game.
I generally script allies into my campaigns so the encounters are already designed with them in mind (and if they don't team up with them that's their fault)
Did anyone else listen to the example and immediately start thinking of Mitchell and Webb?
It's Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit!
Yeah, I was with you on that 😂
@2:42 (about balancing encounters). I mean, that's kind of a meta problem with a lot of level based games. High level characters tend to face high level foes, so in terms of _relative_ power nothing really changes from levels 1-N. (Assuming that the system is balanced at high levels, which virtually FRPG is, admittedly).
This is one of the issues with combat based RPGs. You might have 10 times the hit points, but your opponents deal 10 times the damage, so the encounters play out as if you had never levelled up in the first place. For a few levels you get more options, sure - level 1 can be especially brutal, especially back in the days when it meant 1 magic missile spell per day - but by mid levels or earlier you'll be in this situation. It's true that the GM can occasionally throw in a horde of kobolds to let you throw down with, but most of the time you have to basically force yourself not to think, "Hang on, where were all these high level monsters threatening towns when I was level 1?"
It's probably a big factor in why ADD1e assumed PCs would mostly retire from adventuring at level 9-11 to become land holders of some sort, and when they _did_ go adventuring it was in different planes, underwater, or similarly exotic locales. Modern D&D can have PCs face kobolds, then goblinds, then orcs, then hobgoblins, then bugbears, then ogres, then giants... getting well into higher levels without ever facing non-sapient opposition, and requiring a lot from the poor GM to explain why the big bads decided to wait until the good guys were more of a challenge.
0:37 i mean even summoning demons for this makes sense from a sinple survival perspective for the demon. If the void is gonna kill everyone then it makes sense to put a fight on hold to deal with the issue
In addition to solution nr 3 : upkeep. As time goes on, allies will require food and other supplies. The longer you spend gathering more and more allies, the more resources are wasted on allies doing nothing.
Additional options
Time constraints : When trying to create an army, you may not have multiple weeks or even days before the BBEG accomplishes his goal. Or maybe the allies gotta be home for dinner.
Negative attention : The more people you have at your side, especially exotic creatures, the more attention you will draw. Maybe some "allies" will try to join only to take advantage of the party. Or the BBEG might send a group over to pick a few off.
For that first point; most outsiders do not require sustenance or supplies of any kind. Solars certainly don't.
I use allies to decrease the numbers in a fight like if the battle would be with 4 to 5 enemies I would have the ally take one or two of the enemies in a separate combat to easy the fight with the main party of players and for boss fights the allies would take the minions while the players would go start to the boss without its minions to help. I find that to work well and have the players feel like the ally is really helping in their adventures with out increasing the load of combat or making it too easy for the group.
I've used allies to give the players choices. "Here, you have these allies who have agreed to help you out. You have five different paths you could take as part of this questline, and you have NPCs who can try to hold down the fort while you sort out the individual issues."
No way the armies of hell don't know an army of goody two shoes are amassing.
I'd be sending swarms of demons
I hate saying no, especially if the players put a lot of work into their plan, so I always give them SOMETHING. In one instance, the party was asking for air support for a horde of enemies that would be upon them within the hour. But the NPC in question didn't like getting directly involved in conflicts, as it was bad for business and he didn't want to risk his new toy in combat. But he did agree to a supply drop, giving them valuable weapons and ammo just in time for the fight. In another, they asked a powerful NPC to help with a mission, since it was within the NPC's capabilities, directly furthered his goals, and totally the sort of thing he would be down for, he went with them into combat and was far more brutal than they were expecting and it made them somewhat terrified of one of their closest allies.
Have the Solars or whatever allies do other stuff in combat that gives everyone an advantage but doesn't steal the agency or make combat too long.
RAW - Deities and other Planar rulers can prevent gates from opening in their presence AND within their domain.
But also the player has no control and the DM has sole discretion of how it acts. (Leave, attack, or help as examples given.)
AND just for clarification this goes on for ONE minute, not 10 and certainly not for the whole adventure.
And nowhere in the spell does it say the creature has to be lv21 or whatever.
I do this thing where I give my players an ally card with 2 assists they can use during a fight, to represent the ally helping out but still keep the focus on the players. Let's see what your solutions are!
Yes and: The first Solar even helps the PCs to summon the army of other angels. You describe the apocalyptic level battle in a few well-chosen verses - make it just a short couple of stanzas of an epic poem about the coming of the new church, or a description of images in a gigantic tableau in a seemingly centuries old cathedral, glowing with a golden nimbus of glory. Describe how the PCs are depicted as great heroes - there's even a huge statue of the initial summoner.
Let the players bask in their clever victory for a few moments and enjoy it with them, before you tell them about the angels that still fly overhead. People cower before a Solar, who intones 'Approach not thy God with dust on your clothing and the filth of disorder in your mind!'
Then the players roll up their 1st level characters who are the great, great grandchildren of their high level now 'sainted' heroes.
Do they fight for freedom against the totalitarian authority of this new celestial law?
Do they have to quest to release a vestige of 'the Void' again to return freedom to the world?
Yes, If...
No, If...
Yes, if you help do X afterwards.
Yes, if the Warlock will forsake their Evil pact.
Yes, if you give the City 1/2 of the Rewards.
No, if you continue down this current quest
No, if the Paladin remains here
No, if I give you guards, who will man the wall
Also
Yes (Unknown)
No (Unknown)
Yes.The Solar valiantly pledges himself but dies of a sickness later because he broke a sacred law prevention him from intervention.
Yes. A Mayor gives Guards but uses this as a platform to further his corrupt ambition for power.
No. The Cosmic Entity has seen the Future and warns that a Victory here will trigger a Catastrophe. You must find another way
What if they're at 20th level? In 5e, the only thing a warlock loses when they break their pact is the ability to learn any new powers/spells from that patron. They still know how to do all the stuff they were doing before, so at 20th level that would be a very easy choice for the warlock, unless they where loyal to their patron. Also they may not have an evil patron.
Also, how would you halve a single, priceless reward?
In one of the campaigns that I'm playing in, our characters are a lot weaker and kinda function on a different scale from the enemies, imagine us being sciences experiments with a single type of power, meanwhile our enemies are very powerful mages. Our GM designs the challenges being almost impossible to overcome without getting allies and because it is a very roleplay heavy campaign, that is more than fine with us, in a way getting the allies is part of the challenge. Also those allies in combat function as "this character is able to take on those enemies, they will fight in this corner of the map" to make the GM's job easier.
I respect your effort and right to your opinions. But I disagree with "Allies being a Problem".
Great video, make some good points.
Split the experience points and loot equally amongst the NPCs. Your players will self police the issue.
Make the mission they're going on a heist / moving firefight / chase. It's a TPK if they try to fight all the mooks at once, and it's still a TPK if they try to do that with their allies.
Can allies be useful in that situation? Sure. But they don't change the basic fact that there are 400 goblins, and they're not free either.
I mean we've just finished two back-to-back end-at-20 campaigns.
Just to push back a bit on the outro :P
The premise itself is flawed. If there is a multiverse-ending threat, why would the players need to gate in solars in the first place? Surely the powers-at-be would already be far more aware of such an existential threat than a gang of superpowered adventurers and are already doing everything they can against it. Instead, the solar is more likely to use being gated in to ask the adventurers for help. "Hey, since you seem powerful and committed to the cause, why don't I put you all in the place you can help the most?" Cue sending them into the epic final boss fight you want.
Sometimes instead of trying to beat around the bush trying to force things to work in a certain way, you need to challenge your initial frame.
And the this applies to the lower levels with the city guard example: either the guard is already aware of the kobold problem or they are incompetent, so much so that they would barely be any help anyway. If the guard is already aware of the kobold problem, ask yourself as a DM (or better yet, a worldbuilder) why they haven't done anything yet. It's important to consider that even though the game might run around the players, the world doesn't. Things are typically the way they are for a reason, and ensuring that you have those reasons makes for a more immersive, complete, and real world, with real stakes.
My answers to this.
1. Make the being a specialist from its realm. Sometimes absurd but when thought about it makes sense. The example in this video are Solars. Ok, well this solar has no clue what to do in war. It is a baker. That's right a power angelic being that bakes for other angelic beings in the celestial plane; and you just pulled it out of its kitchen and it has no clue what to do. But it being a celestial it is compelled to help. Now do you have this nonfighter NPC greater being clumsily slug into combat with you, or utilize it some other way.
We make unique monster specialist all the time. Hags that cant fight but masters of political manipulation etc.
2. Do like the video games do and have the power being go off somewhere else to aid the adventure party. Now you have a new NPC making waves in the world and the results could affect the party later.
3. Make it overbearing. So much it may clash with party interest. You literally call a Solar battle general to your aid? Well now its trying to take charge and impose its selfless honorbound will on your party and boss them around into its plans to save the world. Let's see how the party likes being used as expendable fodder for the Solar's campaign. Being put into fight situations as sacrifice while it does the key work to save the world.
I think that, in order to prevent the combat from bogging down, you should never have more than half the player number of allies in the initiative order. If there are more, they form groups and you use the mass combat rules, which speed up the game considerably.
i have some of my players who have utterly absurdly powerful friends...
I told a player straight up that he could not start summoning monsters in combat to help. We already had a summoner as one of 6 players and playing virtual.
I try constantly to inform my players(who I swear after 15 years of dnd still haven't read the phb) do not understand that every player has pack tactics and that's how everyone can use Flanking and Rogues use sneak attack.
I'm not a new GM by any means, but I have recently been running into exactly this issue, haha. (Though instead of using Gate to summon powerful angels, my players try to recruit 90% of the monsters they come across, lol).
My gut response to this specific situation is for the Solar to be like, "Okay, I was in the middle of a big fight with unimaginable horrors when you summoned me just now. So how about this, I can either send a few of my subordinates with you, or I can go myself, but then you will have to do something for me of equal value to the greater good." (Being good doesn't mean fighting as a charity, I'm just saying).
With the Pixie thing...do they know what a t-rex is? In my game (frostmaiden) if the druid asks for that the pixies will all turn them into the Kobold Trex.(from the mine adventure)
AD&D casting Gate aged the caster 5 years. So, non-elf casters, back in the day, really gave a lot of thought before using it.
I thought the first thing that goes through SWAT's mind when they are called, is how they are going to justify shooting a random dog.
*pushes up glasses* Um actually, Solar's in the MM are level 18. You know this not by their challenge rating but the number of dice you roll for their HP and the additional HP divided by it's con modifier. (this is a light hearted joke)
Currently a necromancer in a campaign. Level 12 and i got an army of 16 undead. Every combat is basically an encounter vs encounter and i love it. Either that or a mage throws a fireball first round and the entire army dies lol.
10 minute, no concentration summon of a CR 21 seems like a very forgiving option.
As a player and as a DM I enjoy it when challenges are easy every now and then. Most of the time the challenges should be hard, otherwise it gets boring. But every few sessions an easy challenge makes the players feel like their characters are powerful and they feel victorious.
Personally I have allied npc's travel with the players for one specific goal and once it's done they part ways. Sometimes this is literally just one encounter with a boss or something and then they say peace. Now of course I always make sure they have a reason to be helping the players, maybe they are even using them. But I have never allowed more than one npc companion at a time, we use Bethesda rules in this house.
I have a pre-fix for this. I rework summon celestial as a 7th level spell, and in they new spell description the spell slot used to cnjure the creature cannot be recovered until it returns to its home plane. I basically remove planar binding and place it into these high level spell descriptions. Their is also a CR cap on them and even when upcast you cannot get a creature higher than a CR 10.
This sets expectations for when we get to Gate.
Now gate has these lines
"Deities and other planar rulers can prevent portals created by this spell from opening in their presence or anywhere within their domains."
Maybe Gods by default null any gate spells on their home plane where they keep all of their Solars. a Gods Solars are probably busy doing other things other than just waiting around to be summoned.
And then there is this line
"When you cast this spell, you can speak the name of a specific creature (a pseudonym, title, or nickname doesn't work)."
Meaning you cannot just summon solar, if you dont know a solars name you cannot summon it. And these names must be as difficult to get as a Demons true name, so getting 7 of them should be impossible.
At that point, you should just ban the gate spell, because it's not really usable. If you plan to nerf something so much that it is worthless, just remove it. No one needs a literal resource trap. You gotta remember that it's at the same level as Wish, and wish can do even more absurd things.
@@3of6mylove The gate spell is written the way it is specifically to prevent the abuse of summoning an army of solars. You cant mess with gods or thier most powerful allies. You also have to have the creatures specific name IE. it is written that you cannot summon any creature the DM has not yet named in the campaign. Now gate has a ton of other uses other than that so its still a viable spell. IE I've had my players use it to summon a Nalfeshee they fought mid campaign and knew the name of. Then they bound it into thier service. And thats cool. As this was a monster they once fought and was controlled by an evil NPC at the time.
I would say the vague nature of the Gate spell is its real problem its why I buffed and made more specific all the lower level conjuring spells. Now my players get basically min-gates, lower level spells capable of summon specific mid CR creatures as long as they make deals with them. Now when gate comes into my campaign and they want to talk to a Marilith or other high CR fiend or celestial players will know their demands will dwarf what those lesser finds would ask for. It also doesnt mean they go from summon celestial lv 7 spell for a Cr 4 celestial to lv 9 spell, CR 21 solar... which is one of the many bad game designs you find in 5E.
@@scetchmonkey007 Then I would say the best solution is to homebrew rework the Gate spell from the ground up, bearing in mind the power of similar 9th level options such as Wish and True Polymorph, and balance it around those.
@@3of6mylove Wish and True Polymorph are open ended spells that can literally do anything you could imagine them too. Gate as it is written is also in the same boat. As I've reworked the other summon spells I allow them all to be upcast even to 9th level to summon more powerful yet specific creatures. And even have them around every day. A 9th level spell is worth having a 150-200 hp monster with some decent damage potential around at your beck and call. In many ways thats better than turning yourself into a 341 hp dragon turtle. When Gate can summon a 313 hp Legendary Empyrean, and then the bard casts glibness to guarantee get it to work for you. Even that is unbalanced as a 9th level spell.
But as an open ended spell, if that Empyrean is somehow already connected to the campaign, the PC's have met it before and learned its true name. Then in a level 20 mission they use gate to summon it. That could be a real cool moment. It's why I leave it open ended written as is. And I focused on the lower level spells giving the players more precise control over what they can summon and for how long. And also specific rules in negotiating with fiends, fey, celestial or elementals keeps things very interesting.
I expect One DnD to basically kill all the summon spells. They have already stated they are changing all the PHB spells to no longer summon anything and to focus on the Tasha's style spells only. IE making it impossible to summon a simple bear that uses the same stats as other bears in the world. You instead summon a bear like beast that uses the stats of all other beast-like summons you can think off.
So what do you think happens to gate in that system? Or if you have any specific ideas on how to homebrew gate. I'd be interested in that.
True Names™. True Names™ are the price of using Gate. If you can find the True Name™ of seven Solars...?
But yeah, you have to really make it a level 18 problem if they want ONE Solar True Name™