Type: General
Action: Standard (active)
Range: Touch
Duration: Sustained
Saving Throw: None
Cost: 2 points per rank
You can call upon another creature—a minion—to aid you. This creature is created as an independent character with (Summon rank x 15) power points. Summoned minions are subject to the normal power level limits, and cannot have minions themselves. You can summon your minion to you automatically as a standard action; it appears in the nearest open space beside you. You always have the same minion unless you apply power modifiers allowing you to summon different minions. Your minion automatically has a helpful attitude and does its best to aid you and obey your commands.
Unconscious and dead minions disappear. Defeated minions recover normally except they recover from death as if they were disabled. You cannot summon a defeated minion until it has completely recovered. Your summoned minions also vanish if your effect is turned off, countered, or nullified.
POWER FEATS
• Mental Link: You have a mental link with your minions, allowing you to communicate with them over any distance.
• Progression: Each time you apply this feat, move your total number of minions one step up the Progression Table (2, 5, 10, etc.). Each minion is created with (rank x 15) power points. You can still only summon one minion per standard action.
• Sacrifice: When you are hit with an effect requiring a saving throw, you can spend a hero point to shift it to one of your minions instead. The minion must be within range of the attack and a viable target. Needless to say, this is not a particularly heroic feat. The Gamemaster may wish to restrict it to villains or nonplayer characters (in which case a hero earns a hero point when a villain uses this feat to avoid an effect by sacrificing a minion).
EXTRAS
• Fanatical (+1): Your summoned minions have a fanatical attitude and devotion to you.
• Heroic (+1): Creatures you summon are not subject to the minion rules, but treated like normal non-player characters. Gamemasters should be particularly cautious about allowing this extra for Summon effects used by player characters, especially ones summoning more than one minion.
• Horde (+1): You can summon up to your maximum number of minions with one standard action. You must have Progression (see this effect’s power feats) to take this extra.
• Type (+1/+2): Minions are normally identical in terms of traits. It’s a +1 modifier to summon minions of a general type (elementals, birds, fish, etc.), +2 to summon minions of a broad type (animals, demons, humanoids, etc .).
FLAWS
• Attitude (–1): Your summoned minions are less than cooperative. For a –1 modifier, they are indifferent. They are unfriendly for a –2 modifier, and hostile for a –3 modifier.
UNDER THE HOOD: SUMMON
Summon is a useful power; it doesn’t cost much to summon up a horde of minions, giving you a lot of effective actions per round! Gamemasters may wish to limit large numbers of minions (summoned or otherwise) to villains and non-player characters. Player character minions are subject to the campaign’s power level limits. There are also practical matters limiting just how much minions can do at any one time. First, directing your minions to do something is a move action. If you want to issue different commands to different groups of minions, then it’s one move action per command. So it’s easier to tell all of your minions “attack!” than it is to issue complex commands to each one in the midst of combat. Second, Gamemasters may wish to have groups of minions use aid actions (see Aiding Another, M&M, page 10) rather than rolling their actions separately. For example, instead of rolling eight attacks for eight different minions, the GM has seven minions aid the eighth, giving that minion a +14 bonus from their aid actions. This makes groups of minions more effective and efficient overall. GMs should keep in mind the limits on the number of opponents that can gang up on a character at once. Also, Gamemasters should keep in mind that lower power level minions have limits. For example, while a group of eight minions may easily be able to hit an opponent (especially if they use teamwork to give themselves one attack roll with a +14 bonus), they may not be able to hurt their target quite so easily. In particular, Gamemasters may wish to limit the use of the Heroic extra for Summon. Treating minions as normal characters can greatly slow down combat, since it becomes that much harder to take them out of a fight. MINIONS AS DESCRIPTORS Some power effects might seem to be Summon, calling up minions to do things for the character, but are actually better treated as descriptors of other effects. Take for example a shaman able to “summon” various spirits to perform magical tasks. By calling on particular spirits of the winds, he can attack a foe with Suffocate. Is the “wind spirit” a minion? Technically, no, it’s just a personified effect, since it cannot be attacked, interacted with, or do anything other than create the Suffocate effect. The same is true of a character summoning a “minion” that acts as a shield, providing the Deflect or Enhanced Dodge effect, but doing nothing else. Consider carefully whether or not the particular effect a player wants really needs Summon Minion, or if the “minion” is really just a descriptor or explanation for another effect, no different than “heat ray” is a descriptor for a Damage effect or “sticky webbing” is a descriptor for a Snare effect; in neither case does the character need Summon Heat Ray or Summon Webbing to create the desired powers.