Follower/Summon Question

[TheDux]

*Mostly Off Topic*

Found a GM who wants mostly new/newish players, but he is out of town and the other players are depending on me to help with builds...so I am depending on you wonderful people on the forums.

*Back on topic*

 

This can be applied to follower and summons.

 

One of the guys want to play a Native American shaman/mystic of some sort. He has a Spirit Bear as a companion. The bear is cool, slightly higher intelligence than typical bear, much larger and stronger, EDM, and can even heal.

 

The character has limited mind control, energy blasts, illusions, and such. He hasn't fully got the character down, but what he knows he wants is a Spirit Merge.

 

Spirit Merge is Multiform power where he and his bear become one entity. Basically a stronger form than either of them. He takes the bears strength and advantages while retaining some of his powers and higher intelligence, but loses ability to speak and some of his powers. A limitation we will add to this is something along the lines of "bear is dismissed until the Spirit Merge is deactivated".

 

The question is: Do both the character and follower have to buy this power?

 

He was also talking about a power where he and the bear power up an energy blast together. This seem like a power they both might need to take.

[Split Decision]

Re: Follower/Summon Question

 

Build the Spirit Merged character first; use the stronger of the two characers (mystic or bear) as a Multiform; Give the Multiform character Duplication with the (-0) Lim Cannot Recombine and make the Dupe the third character- the weakest form. If the bear is the weakest character, then you can make it up as a regular Duplication power, and make the special effect of the splitting that the Shaman summons the Bear.

 

Energy Blast can be bought by either of the two characters in the Duplication twinning, with the limitation Must be in the same hex as the other Dupe (-1/2). My suggestion is to buy it as a fractional addition to the Shaman's base EB, and put the limitation on the last few DCs... for instance

 

Shaman's Magic Blast: 8D6 EB vs. ED plus +4D6 EB vs. ED, Must be in the same hex as his Spirit Bear (-1/2). (Active: 40 + 20) (Real: 40 + 13).

[JmOz]

Re: Follower/Summon Question

 

Spliit almost has it dead on. By 5th rules it does not however matter thept of point cost, but rather the more nebulous concept of "Base form" which is the true/common form.

 

So in this example I would say the Shamen would be the base form. He would have either Follower*, summon, or Duplication* and Multiform.

 

In my game I would allow Duplication and Multiform to be placed in a MP, with duplication taking "lockout"

 

*Technicaly by the rules Followers and dupes disapear when a character multiforms

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Re: Follower/Summon Question

 

I'd add a minor additional disad to that EB -- 'Bear can do nothing (-1/4)' -- considering that it's supposed to be adding power to the EB. Otherwise, yeah, Split seems to have a good version.

[secretID]

Re: Follower/Summon Question

 

I'd think about doing it as a MP, "special" powers be damned. Slot one is the follower, and slot two is the abilities boost. Slot two has one or more side effect lims.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Follower/Summon Question

 

This is difficult to do well as a single build because the combined form suffers penalties - like being unable to speak - which are difficult to build (but not impossible).

 

OTOH, if the thread title is to be taken literally then it may be the only option as you can not really multiform with a follower or summoned creature.

 

The first question I would ask is 'who controls the bear - you or the GM?' and that would probably determine the build path I would take.