Cohort/Companion Houserule - Good? Crazy? Both?

[icefractal]

PCs fielding a large number of minions is often problematic from a "real time taken" standpoint. One fairly common house-rule is to ban such abilities, or limit them to 1/character. And those work ok, but I've got a less restrictive idea that I'm curious about:

Limit one extra creature per PC. If you would gain additional creatures, instead super-gestalt them all together.


Super-Gestalt is just Gestalt but for everything in the stat-block, not just class levels, choosing which one to take in the case of conflicts. As an example - you have an animal companion (Druid 7, brown bear), a familiar (Wizard 3, bat), and a cohort (Dwarf Rogue 8):

Size: Medium (rogue)
HD: 8d6 (rogue)
Speed: 40 (bear), fly 40 (bat)
AC: +4 natural armor (bear)
BAB: +6 (rogue)
Attacks: bite 2d6 (bear), 2 claws d8 (bear; only when hands are empty though)
SA: improved grab (bear), sneak attack +4d6 (rogue)
SQ: low-light vision (bear), blindsense 20 (bat), darkvision 60 (rogue), scent (bear), improved evasion, share spells, deliver spells, empathic link (all bat), improved uncanny dodge, trapfinding, trap sense +2 (all rogue)
Base Saves: Fort +5 (bear), Reflex +6 (rogue), Will +2 (rogue)
Abilities: Str 27 (bear), Dex 18 (rogue), Con 19 (bear), Int 10 (rogue), Wis 14 (bat), Cha 12 (rogue)
Skills: All the ranks, but not stacking for the same skill
Feats: All the feats
Appearance: A winged bear with a beard and opposable thumbs? :smalltongue:


While this could probably create an invincible creature, in the same way as Illithid Savant, that's already something that could be done (Emerald Legion, etc), and best dealt with by just disallowing it.

That said, would this be remotely balanced (as in 'not break things too badly'), would you use it, and what combinations would you make if so?

[Doctor Despair]

Wild Cohort gets a lot of value as a one-stop shop for extra HD.

[Telonius]

That could get interesting with an Artificer or an Effigy Master. You could actually form Voltron. :smallbiggrin:

[smasher0404]

My first concern would be prestige classes like Beastmaster (Complete Adventurer) and Beast Heart Adept (Dungeonscape) which are both focused on getting multiple animal companions (or magical beast companions in the latter's case). They're balanced around the newer companions being much weak than the first one, which doesn't happen if their abilities are just grafted onto the new companion. Given they are not the strongest classes, that might not be the biggest issue with the proposed house rule but still something to consider.

My bigger concern would be for the more necromancy-focused characters. There are a LOT of ways to raise creatures with class levels (Animate Dread Warrior, Vampirism, etc. etc.), that automatically gestalting all of them results in the minion becoming a lot stronger than the original character. It also destroys characters that are going for more of a "Legion of the Dead" type necromancer, since they can't accumulate those large numbers of background undead.

You also have to draw the line somewhere very specific in regards to enchantment. A thrall from Thallherd should probably count as your extra creature, but what about an NPC you keep dominated? Charmed? A dominated creature functions as an additional minion for you to control, but it gets thematically harder to justify gestalting them with your other minions (especially if they used to be a prior NPC).

There's also the matter of justifying the monstrosities that can result from this. Having a bat and a bear is a lot easier to justify than having a bat-bear hybrid.

[Yogibear41]

What is a bigger threat three cr 5 creatures or one cr 10 creature? One powerful ally is probably better than 3 moderately useful ones.

[icefractal]

My bigger concern would be for the more necromancy-focused characters. There are a LOT of ways to raise creatures with class levels (Animate Dread Warrior, Vampirism, etc. etc.), that automatically gestalting all of them results in the minion becoming a lot stronger than the original character. It also destroys characters that are going for more of a "Legion of the Dead" type necromancer, since they can't accumulate those large numbers of background undead.I wasn't thinking it applied to literally anyone working for you, just anyone who would be with the party the majority of the time. So for Leadership, it applies to the cohort but not the followers. But you're also expected to leave the followers at home most of the time.

So I'd say the same thing for a horde of undead - if you want to guard your tower with dozens of zombies, fine. If you want to bring those zombies into combat ... no. It may be thematically fitting but it's also slow AF.

And yes, this probably shouldn't apply to anyone who you only temporarily have control over. Although whether that means you can break the cap and take six turns in a row or whether it means mind controlling people to fight for you is questionably useful because it's mutually exclusive - that's up to the group.

About things like Animate Dead Warrior or Simulacrum which can be repeated as desired, I'm split. On the one hand, under normal rules you'd be getting more actions and more bodies, compared to just making the one stronger. On the other hand, combining them removes soft-limits such as vulnerability in combat and difficulty transporting that many creatures, which might discourage an overly large team in the normal rules. On the third hand, once PaO is in the mix you can pack tons of actions into the form factor (and target-ability) of a single body.

I'd say this doesn't remove the need for some limits on those methods if you don't want to go into TO territory.