What game(s) handles pets and summons the best?

[Undrave]

I've made it known I'm not a big fan of 'pet classes', classes with animal companions or summons. To me, they bog down the game, either make the character and their pet way too weak without the other OR break the action economy and give players too much of an advantage. I played a Shepperd Druid for a while and there was hardly any combat that couldn't be made incredibly easier by dropping 8 (buffed) wolves on it, but it was a pain to control..

But I know a lot of people enjoy them and I totally understand the appeal of the concepts! Wether one fateful companion or a cool summon, It's a cool idea that I don't think D&D has ever done properly.

I also don't have a lot of experience with other game system and I love to consult you lot about games you've experienced!

So here is my question: What games you've played do you think handles animal companions and/or summons the best? And what made it work for you?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

... Pokemon?

 

[Undrave]

... Pokemon?

A few years back, after the conclusion of a game of Cartoon Action Hour, a friend expressed interest in playing a Pokémon TTRPG and I looked around at the various fan efforts out there, and it was DIRE. They all had the same flaw: an obsession with reproducing the game mechanics of the video game without any sort of consideration put towards the level of complexity in those mechanics. If you’ve never looked under the hood of a Pokémon game you would realize that naughty word’s not fit for table.

Then they spend pages after pages detailing every single moves and Pokémon (at the time up to Gen 7 I believe?) and ability and gimmicks and held items… Even Pokémon themselves started removing moves, just to show how much bloat there is in those games.

There was one game with a ton of options for the human trainer to get involved in battles, with stuff like psychic powers (canon in Pokémon) and martial arts.

There was one that used the DnD stats and THEN derived the Pokémon Stats (Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, HP and Speed) out of those! For every Pokémon!

Needless to say, I was not enthused by any of them. That same friend suggested we invent our own system and I tried to steer the design towards a more sensible and simplified anime approach, but COVID happen and that friend moved so we never got very far.

It would actually be cool to find a system out there that can streamline the idea of having up to 6 pets on your 1 human character at all time, but I don’t intend to try tackling that concept again in the foreseeable future. I could see myself trying something more akin to Pokémon Legends Arceus or Pokémon Conquest, though. Those are way better basis than the old Gym Challenge style quest, which is definitely a single-player adventure.

 

[GMMichael]

So here is my question: What games you've played do you think handles animal companions and/or summons the best? And what made it work for you?

This problem was solved, believe it or not, back in 1991 by Final Fantasy 2 (4). A summon spell brings a monster from a magical realm to do elemental damage for one action, then it returns to its realm.


Since animal companions are (hopefully) more persistent, they can be a smaller, permanent, damage buff, until your opponent uses a turn to "damage" your companion, thusly scaring it away for the remainder of the battle. Or until you use your turn to motivate it back into the action.

That works for me because it's simple and does what some ranger-types really want animal companions to do: cause more damage.

 

[Undrave]

This problem was solved, believe it or not, back in 1991 by Final Fantasy 2 (4). A summon spell brings a monster from a magical realm to do elemental damage for one action, then it returns to its realm.

-snip-

Since animal companions are (hopefully) more persistent, they can be a smaller, permanent, damage buff, until your opponent uses a turn to "damage" your companion, thusly scaring it away for the remainder of the battle. Or until you use your turn to motivate it back into the action.

That works for me because it's simple and does what some ranger-types really want animal companions to do: cause more damage.

In Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced the summons are just bigger AoE I'm also a big fan of how Golden Sun handles its summons, it's a really cool system.

Any TTRPG uses that type of summons?

You're right that sometimes you need to take a step back from trying to simulate something and instead focus on what the players actually want to accomplish. You're right that most people just want some extra damage and like... basically a longer range mage hand to get them out of trouble every once in a while (like the pet monkey that brings you jail keys). You could represent such an animal companion by a card with the stats of the attack it can do or something and when it gets damaged you just flip it face down.

 

[Autumnal]

Tiny Supers has minion-summoning powers that can do City of Heroes masterminds, which is my personal benchmark for doing it right.

 

[Leatherhead]

In Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced the summons are just bigger AoE I'm also a big fan of how Golden Sun handles its summons, it's a really cool system.

"Just a bigger fireball" type summons are my least favorite kinds of summons to be fully honest. Even FFX had a more fun system where the summon effectively swapped out your current party for a monster in combat. Though that style of summon would be incredibly hard to sell for the rest of your group for most settings.

You're right that sometimes you need to take a step back from trying to simulate something and instead focus on what the players actually want to accomplish. You're right that most people just want some extra damage and like... basically a longer range mage hand to get them out of trouble every once in a while (like the pet monkey that brings you jail keys). You could represent such an animal companion by a card with the stats of the attack it can do or something and when it gets damaged you just flip it face down.

The Essence20 system has a mechanic called Contacts that has this functionality. It creates an incredibly stripped down NPC (or even group of NPCS) with only 3 or 4 different actions that your party can call in to help with some encounters (at a cost). The NPCs don't stick around for the entire encounter, and often come with RP restrictions on what they are allowed to do.

The e20 system also has no less than 3 different mechanics for having a more permanent character following your main character around. Running that gamut from non-combatant helpers with half-stat blocks, full combat but still simplified helpers that essentially gives the player handling them two characters (A bold move to be sure, but it works better in practice than it sounds), and even replacement characters with jacked up stats for big encounters (Power Ranger Zords and Combiners)

 

[thullgrim]

Savage Worlds runs large combats relatively well, summoning adding to the numbers isn’t really a problem.

PF2 requires summoners to sacrifice a price of their own action economy to order around the summoned monsters. It works fairly well.

 

[dbm]

I would agree that games which can handle big combats are a good choice for this sort of character type. In my experience it often comes down to good rules for minions / mooks / extras which enable lots of combatants in a game.

Savage Worlds is a great example and can easily handle this. I have found some Fate games to handle it well, too (specifically Legends of Anglerre as a Fate3 fantasy system was great at it). I would bet that D&D 4e could do it too, though I don’t remember if they had significant summoning abilities in that edition.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Sentinel Comics' equivalent to a summoner class is the minion-maker archetype, which seems to work nicely IME. It can be a little swingy if your opposition is too good or too bad at removing brittle targets, but if you're wise about the abilities you take from your power source and your Red zone choices you should be useful even if you struggle to keep a minion in play. Minion-maker has a quite good ally-Booster ability baked in that can help other PCs as well as their own minions, and if you prioritize other Boost abilities you can be a solid support character without your minions. Alternately, taking multi-target or persistent Hinders can make it much harder for enemies to remove your summons while also just making it harder for them to do anything well, which is always useful.

If you do manage to get multiple minions in play and keep them alive the enemy is going to be feeling it pretty quick. You can also trade bonuses to customize them from a small menu of upgrades, optimizing them for your current needs and giving you more versatility. At the same time, minion mechanics are very simple, with most PC summons only able to take a single type of action chosen when they're created and resolved with a single die, so they don't slow things down even with 3-4 in play (the most I've ever seen at once outside of Red zone abilities).

On the flip side, there are multiple ways for villains (who use asymmetrical rules than the heroes) to be summoners, all of which can be pretty potent if the heroes don't make an effort to keep their numbers under control. Legion villains have trouble coordinating large numbers of minions but have some unique abilities that let them spawn reactively, put out a pair of large minions without needing to roll dice, or just dump a flood of weak minions in exchange for some self-damage. Overlords get stronger the more minions they have in play, which can be boon or a bane depending on how fast the heroes scrub them off. Creators combine summoning with another archetype (potentially including Legion or Overlord to double down on the schtick) and are unique in being able to summon the stronger lieutenants, who are much tougher than mere minions but you only get one per action spent calling them in. Even non-summoner villains are frequently accompanied by minions bought as part of the GM's scene budget, so heroes need to consider how to deal with numerous weak targets - crowd control is an important part of the game's tactics.

Champions/Hero System also did a fair job at balancing their pets and summons (at least in 4th edition, which is where I checked out on keeping up with core changes), although they do have more impact on the effectiveness of the hero and take more table time to process their turns in play.

Tiny Supers has been mentioned and does a fair job of things. Their summoners seem to work best around the 5 trait level IME. At only 3 their minions feel kind of weak to me, and beyond 5 the synergies you can get by assigning powers to the summons gets alarming while the summoner becomes dangerously fragile by comparison, which is a bit swingy. They might be better off if there was a requirement for the summoner to invest some fraction (say 50%) of their total traits to themselves once they get to 6 traits so they don't wind up in a "Johnny Socko and His Giant Robot" situation over time. Conjuring up Godzilla every fight and then going to get a drink isn't actually all that much fun.