Tabletop roleplaying games have a long tradition of allies that are not other members of the party, but are subservient to one particular party member. Classes with pets, Necromancers and Enchanters that control enemies, and spellcaster's familiars are all common in the genre. Unfortunately, these additional and (sometimes) unexpected combatants can wreak havoc with a rules system, and are especially problematic when utilizing published adventures. Simply adding another turn on the side of the players puts the adversaries at a significant disadvantage. The way Realm of Runes handles minions, from a mechanical perspective, helps to alleviate this issue.
There are three categories of minions in Realm of Runes: mindless minions, animal minions and intelligent minions. Every type of minion acts on its master's turn, and does not get a separate entry into the initiative order. Beyond that similarity, each category is handled differently. All of them are designed to be useful tools that provide their masters with distinct advantages, while also not completely warping the structure of encounters beyond recognition.
MINDLESS MINIONS
Mindless minions are the simplest to understand and to utilize. They have no will of their own, even if they are normally intelligent creatures, and will not do anything at any time unless explicitly instructed to do so. These instructions are a trade in action economy. The master uses one action on its turn to direct the minion, and then the minion immediately uses two actions to carry out those instructions exactly. The only limit to the number of times a master can direct a mindless minion each turn is the quantity of actions it has, or is willing to spend on doing so. But the more actions devoted to the minion, the fewer the master has for moving around or other important things it might want to do with its turn.
There are a few different ways of acquiring mindless minions. Enchantment spells like dominate can turn other combatants into your mindless minion for as long as the spell maintains control over them, and some Necromancy spells do the same thing, but targeting undead specifically. Necromancy spells that create undead typically create mindless versions that exist to serve you until they are destroyed. (If you want to make fully autonomous undead, there's an esoteric ritual for that.) The most widely available way, however, is through the conjure creature spell and its variants.
Some of the most frustrating uses of magic in many systems are creature-summoning spells. These usually require using another book to look up monster statistics, and trying to work out on the fly which one of those monsters is actually the most helpful in your situation. If the user is unprepared, or likes to be especially thorough, this easily causes huge delays in the feel and flow of a combat, and giving players such unfettered access to monster statistics for study can lead to problematic metagaming, even if inadvertently. Perhaps worst of all, it makes those spells functionally useless if your group does not have any of those supplemental books with monster statistics, essentially requiring additional purchases to make them work as intended.
Conjure creature works differently. You create your monster on the fly with the spell, rather than picking from a lineup of specific monsters. The caster decides what it looks like during casting, allowing for the conjuration of literally anything the imagination can come up with, whether such creatures really exist or not. Want a bear with tentacles for legs? It's your magic, it can be what you want. The spell also provides a menu of different useful abilities that the conjured creature has at its disposal, which forms the backbone of the spell's functionality. These abilities are clear, diverse, and you can choose more of them the higher the level the spell is when you cast it, or if you devote more actions to casting the spell. As the spell is heightened further, more potent abilities become available as well, further improving the utility of whatever your mind can come up with, all without searching through books and usually finished within a few moments in practice.
ANIMAL MINIONS
Animal minions are those with animal Intelligence, which is defined as an ability modifier of -4 or lower. Creatures with this level of intelligence are still autonomous beings, but lack the understanding and language capabilities to coordinate well with those that they serve. Animal Companions are the most common sources of animal minions, though any creature that follows your instructions falls into this category as well. If you buy yourself a mount or a guard dog, you've got an animal minion. You can also use the Nature skill to domesticate creatures with animal intelligence, turning them into your animal minions through downtime.
When controlling an animal minion in combat, the most important factor is what tricks that minion knows how to perform. Unlike mindless minions, which are compelled to do exactly what you say and how you say to do it, animal minions are not robots. They are also not smart enough to understand language and take helpful suggestions. Instead, animal minions are taught tricks using the Nature skill during downtime. Animals you buy already know several tricks, and the price of buying animals this way is based on the number of tricks it already knows rather than what kind of animal it is. When you command your animal minion, you use your action to tell it which trick you want it to perform, and then the minion immediately uses two actions to carry out that trick to the best of its ability. Like mindless minions, you can command them multiple times in a turn, trading your action for two of theirs as many times as you choose.
Tricks do more than just provide a collection of activities the animal knows how to do. Teaching tricks can also improve the animal minion's proficiency in important areas like skills, saves and attack rolls. The more tricks the minion knows, the more useful and effective it becomes, rather than relying on gaining levels to improve like player characters. The more tricks a minion knows, however, the harder it is to teach new tricks, and some complex tricks are inherently more difficult to teach than others. Classes that gain animal companions through feats or features, like the Druid, Paladin and Ranger, gain animal companions that already know several tricks of the master's choice. These classes also usually have class feats available that directly and instantly teach the animal companion new tricks, which can be helpful if the companion already has a lot of tricks or there isn't a lot of downtime to spare in your adventure with which to train up your animal companion.
INTELLIGENT MINIONS
Intelligent minions are those with a -3 Intelligence modifier or better, but aren't under the domination of others. This category is not intended to be used for NPC allies, however, which are instead treated as individuals associating with player characters, and not as minions. These creatures can know languages, and are smart enough to coordinate with others. As such, they do not cost actions to direct, like mindless and animal minions do. They are comparatively rare, however. The most common type of intelligent minion is the spellcaster's familiar. While these creatures don't cost action economy to use in combat, their general frailty and small size makes using them that way usually a last resort without significant investment into doing so.
Each time the master of an Intelligent minion takes a turn in combat, the minion can also take two actions. These actions can be split up and fit in around the master's actions at will, as befits their ability to coordinate. Intelligent minions do not have to take actions if the situation doesn't call for it, and will most often do what their masters suggest. They're there to help, however they can.
Minions give players personalized allies which are useful helpers without totally destroying the game's expectations and challenge. The different categories of minions are designed to be intuitive and flexible, and the way they're used helps to cut down on play disruptions like looking up obscure rules and statistics. Next time we'll continue our exploration of classes with one that can be a prolific user and trainer of minions, the Ranger.
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