The Gaming Den

1) Your DM is an ass and you can't have any:

Every time you summon an undead Horde, a strangely more powerful encounter shows up just to kill it. And/or No you can't do that.

2) Mobility. All allies cut down on Mobility, so you actually pay a price. You have an undead Horde, you can't really carry it with you.

3) Allies cost resources. Not hard to figure out.

4) Limited Service. Like Planar Binding.

5) Allies are limited in abilities. Summon Monster, they are pussies next to you.

D&D tries to do all of these, and in weird combinations.

Leadership: 1/3/4/5 Your DM is supposed to determine what your Cohort is, and limit what he does, and he's lower level, and he costs a feat, and if he dies you get a penalty.

Why it doesn't work: Some DMs don't like being assholes, effectively removing a lot of restriction. A character of level -2 is worth more than a feat, the Leadership penalty is one time, I think, or you just don't let him die.

Planar Binding: 1/3/4 Your DM is supposed to make them attack you and subvert shit, and otherwise suck. It costs spell slots, and you are supposed to have to make deals. And they only do limited services.

Why it doesn't work: Your DM still doesn't want to be a dick. You do the spell slots for free during down time with a Cha mod so you don't have to make deals. Limited Services can be "give me infinite money." Still works surprisingly well for it's problems.

Rebuke Undead: 1/2/5 You can only rebuke shit that you actually run into, It often can't teleport or fly, so it takes management to get anywhere. It's supposed to be weak shit.

Why it doesn't work: If you do run into a Shadow, you rule the world.

Animate Undead: 1/2/3/5 You can only animate what you corpse find. They are often ground locked, and never can teleport. Costs money to make, that goes away permanently when it dies. They are limited to certain types and HD.

Why it doesn't work: It totally does. Animate Dead has never done anything to hurt the game except make the fighter feel bad, and Druid class features do that without Druid intervention.

Dominate bitch: 1/2/3/4/5 It's only what you can find, and might turn against you mid combat, like if you are a famous enchanter so someone fucking uses magic circle against evil/good. They probably can't cast spells or Teleport or Fly, since they failed a will save. Fly maybe. Costs spell slots, but those are down time slots, so no one cares. Stupid, can't do lots of things, must always be within communication. They have to be weak enough to have failed a will save and to not be immune to mind affecting.

Why it doesn't work: Lots of limitations subvertable. Unconscious is willing, ect. But still nothing stops them from turning on you mid battle, which will happen and will suck giant dick. Except MindRape, but that's 9th level and is basically just Diplomacy with different fluff.

Diplomacy: No limitations other than "must be an existing creature you have met" You win D&D.

Why it doesn't work: You win D&D.

Summons: 1/3/4/5 The designers have been a dick for the DM, giving you explicit lists of what you can summon that are really tiny. They cost spells slots, you can't even get around the cost. Very fucking Short durations. They are weak ass bitches.

Why it doesn't work: It's too weak to be worth it 90% of the time. Some exceptions, like Malconvokers and Druids, but those basically exist because they remove some of the limitations by drastically increasing gains per spell slot, or making the spell not cost resources by casting a spell you don't need in a situation you know the Monster is useful.

A system that does work:

1) Don't use every possible limitation system. Don't make the DM be a dick, be a dick for him, you don't have to sit at the table Mr designer.

2) If it's going to cost resources, make the resources actually cost. If it uses a daily resources, and lasts multiple days. It's not a cost, so you should take into account that it's free.

3) Don't let a minion be more powerful than the character controlling it. Ever.

4) Limit the number of minions somehow. Yes it's hard to cart a billion zombies, so that's really limited. But it's actually really fucking easy to cart a billion shadows.

So what do we have:

Rebuke undead has HD control limits. Monsters under control of your monsters count.

Fix Wish, make explicit what counts as a service, make it so that "Fight in a battle for me" isn't a service. "Guard me while I sleep" still valid.

Summons: Make the Summons not suck as much, a 9th level spell is worth more than CR 9. It's worth at least CR 15.

Make Leadership still cost a feat. A whole feat, not part of a Tome feat. Then make feats not suck. Now a Cohort is actually worth a feat, instead of substantially more than one.

Dominate shit could be a thing were you can only dominate lower CR, but then you mind wipe them and when they control is dispelled, they stand around.

Sure you don't have a CR 13 monster or three as your bitch at level 11. But at least you don't run into an encounter in which A) You can't do anything. B) Your back up for when you can't do anything is now eating your face.

Diplomacy: Fuck you, I have no idea. Ban that shit. Or just ban helpful and fanatic.

So question is how should it be limited? I think there should be a universal limit (barring mounts and class specific helpers)

If you're gonna make a universal limit, then you shouldn't have class-based exceptions. That just opens stuff up for "Command and Rebuke undead is a class feature - does it count?"

Now as to how it should be limited - I'm gonna be gleefully smug and say that the most elegant solution is to have all characters controlled by the same player share the same action pool - but if you wanted that sort of solution you'd be playing 4e not 3e. /gleeful smug

But since you stuck with 3e, here are some options:

• Use the built-in limits, soft as they are. Animal Companion has HD limits, rebuke Undead has HD limits Summon, Dominate and Control Undead are single target with use/day limits (although the multiday durations mean that the use limits are really really high) The Planar Binding / Ally spells have both HD as well as cost and RP restriction limits. And so on and so forth. This leaves open the potential for some character types (who either max out one or dabble in multiples) to be fielding company if not squadron level numbers of troops in a game that's supposed to be about squad to platoon level combat - so I can see why you're unhappy with it.
• Use more Enemies with countermeasures. At mid level or higher,a single Fireball clears most followers out of combat. Dispel, Rod of Negation and similar items can handle some of the summon/charm effects. And undead minions have a bunch of ways to hose - from Turning to enemies with Control Undead themselves. This still leaves open the potential for players to field large groups of units, but makes it slightly less attractive for them to do so. It has the upside of staying within the existing rules, but the downside of being an intentionally player-hosing tactic.
• Contrive / agree to do split-party simultaneous adventures. This is a popular solution in my own game group. Each player gets a Primary PC and then a cohort or pet or a platoon of mooks. he PC group gets two objectives and it's expected that the primary PCs will split up to handle them. The cohorts/pets/platoons are then RPed and handled in tactical combat by one of the players whose primary PC is on the other quest. The game jumps back and forth between the two groups at least every session, if not more often (sometimes jumping back and forth a couple times mid-session) This requires some agreement in advance and players have to trust each other enough to deal with purposefully playing each others' cohorts and being overshadowed when it's not their prime characters scene. It also has some real balance issues if you attempt to use classes and abilities straight up without some tweaking. If you attempt to impose this on pre-existing cohorts, companions and camp followers you can very easily end up with Joe playing a talking raven familiar, Brian gets the Awakened Griffin Mount, Mike gets the 12 HD planar ally with a bunch of at-will SLAs and Tammy get stuck playing the ogre skeleton that the cleric animated last week to carry the loot around.
• Impose some type of hard CR or HD based cap on minions which can be conrtolled by one player at a time. Any such cap should probably be limited by both power and number of minions. There are implementation as well as potential balance issues here. For implementation what CR do you count a paladin's warhorse or a wizard's familiar as? They both are potentially meaningful combatants, and more buff than the base animals, but counting them as the same HD as the PC (as the rules default to) is really overvaluing their likely contribution. For balance issues, such a change could force PC conjurers and druids away from [i[Summon[/i] spells and into other damage over time or area control effects (Evards, Acid Fog, Wall of Thorns, etc) that add equal (if not greater) amounts of complexity to combats.