This is the thing. There is absolutely right now ways to build a fighter to have lots of out of combat utility. People don't do it because being great at out of combat utility requires sacrificing in-combat strength (which is the same for casters), and people who play fighters aren't willing to make that sacrifice. This is doubly so because even a fighter built for out of combat utility isn't going to be as good at it as classes designed for out of combat utility...
Those sentences are contradictory. If it's actually possible to build a fighter with "lots of out of combat utility", that doesn't mean "lots for a fighter", it means "lots for a character".
"Since a party structure rewards specialization it is generally most optimal to divide roles amongst the party so that some specialize in combat and other specialize in utility and others specialize in social..."
You know what this is?
******** boring*.
This stupid Trinity-esque notion that every character in a D&D party needs to hyperspecialize in a single narrow aspect of the game to the active and severe detriment of everything else makes for bad characters, bad parties, and bad games. When you do that, you're setting yourself up to spend most of your D&D sessions sitting on your thumbs not playing D&D.
Made the Hyperspecialized Combat Monster? Awesome - you don't get to play D&D unless you're in initiative order.
Made the Hyperspecialized Social Goblin? Cool - the moment the party leaves town you get to stop playing D&D.
People need to STOP doing this and start making well-rounded characters that can participate and contribute in a wide range of situations and scenarios, and if that means you don't get quite as many Sacred Pluses in your primary area of specialty? Guess what - that's made up for by your allies being able to effectively aid you and bolster your attempts instead of starting at their phones ignoring the entire thing because it's not their phase of the game. Not their turn.
Don't be a Hyperspecialist that doesn't get to play D&D for eighty percent of every session. You can do better. I mean, unless the Simpleton crowd gets their way and strips all the tools for doing better out of the game because being able to contribute in more than one situation or scenario the party might face is *just too complicated*.
I mostly agree. I dislike the min-max philosophy that is inherent to hyperspecialization. I always try to make PCs at least semi-capable of more than just one thing. Even when I play a Fighter. Unfortunately, the min-max mindset is not something anybody can change directly. D&D 5E is popular in part because it caters both to people who want to min-max to the nth degree and to people who want more role-playing and non-mechanics-based engagement, so there will always be some incentive for people to make media that emphasizes min-maxing and thus hyperspecialization. The popularity of that media contributes then, to more people wanting to min-max. However, the desire to min-max in a significant portion of the RPGamer public largely precludes the existence of such media.
Incidentally, this thread was originally about balance, not complexity. It's impossible to avoid having some benefit to complexity (if a system has real choices, it's going to be possible to tune it for specific use cases), but it doesn't have to be as extreme as it currently is in D&D.
Yes. Thus my suggestions for increased complexity are also attempts to address balance.
Martials are never going to be the equal of spellcasters if they're not allowed to have more than just *one sole singular* option for interacting with the world. Right now, martials can use the Attack action and that is actually factually literally and entirely IT. They can do nothing else worth mentioning, in or out of combat, that isn't a basic skill check available to every character regardless of class or archetype.
Saying "martials can use Strength and Dex skills!" is not an argument. After all, spellcasters can use skills aligned with their stats too, and nothing is stopping a spellcaster from ALSO having Strength or Dex. Battlemages and soldier mages are a thing. Skill checks are a universal property to all characters and thus ate invisible, immaterial, and irrelevant to discussions of inter-archetype balance.
Martials get the ability to hit stuff a little harder. Spellcasters get the ability to manipulate reality as and when they see fit. There is simply no way to make those two things equivalent. No amount of passive damage or AC boost is going to measure up. It fundamentally cannot. So either martials get boosts to what they can do, or the Simpleton crowd gets its wish and spellcasters disappear from D&D forever because they're *just too complicated* and it's not fair someone might be able to play a spellcaster and do things a Simpleton Champion Fighter can't match.
One of those things will end D&D as the game to beat in the TTRPG space. One of them will make D&D a better experience. You pick which is which.
Martials are never going to be the equal of spellcasters if they're not allowed to have more than just *one sole singular* option for interacting with the world. Right now, martials can use the Attack action and that is actually factually literally and entirely IT. They can do nothing else worth mentioning, in or out of combat, that isn't a basic skill check available to every character regardless of class or archetype.
Well, there's a few options for "be better at skill checks" (e.g. expertise), but most martials don't have them and some casters do (not to mention that any caster willing to burn spell slots on enhance ability is better at skill checks than most martials), and the skill checks martials are prone to being good at aren't particularly transformational (what's the DC of turning invisible? Or flight? Or opening a gap through a 5' thick stone wall?).
I mean, they certainly could go ahead and give the champion Expertise in athletics and acrobatics, and actually list a bunch of over the top things you can do with a DC 25 or 30 check, but the default is that 'possible with a skill check' just isn't all that awesome.
I mean, by definition a Martial class is meant to be focused on combat. Having broad skills is what the Expert classes are for, with Expertise now being their signature thing. Really, I'm not sure what aspect of the game Martials can interact with that one of the other roles doesn't already cover. Honestly, given that it's hardly mandatory for a party to have a Martial and there are options that let them dip more into magic and skill aspects if you want, I'm not sure there's actually anything to fix, at least not in the major "alter how they engage with the game as a whole" way. Tweaking combat itself is another matter, and one I have reservations about, but overall I'm not sure how you give the Martials "more" without just making them at least enough like Expert that they pull ahead of them in overall performance.
overall I'm not sure how you give the Martials "more" without just making them at least enough like Expert that they pull ahead of them in overall performance.
Honestly, they should remove expertise from ranger and bard (if they want to buff their skills, they have magic) and add it to fighter and barbarian. Possibly limit it to only class skills, which still means rogue has a substantial benefit because the class skill list for fighter and barbarian is somewhat limited.
Don't be a Hyperspecialist that doesn't get to play D&D for eighty percent of every session. You can do better.
To add onto this, as long as D&D is going to talk about its three pillars of play, every class needs to have interesting and constructive options in each of those pillars. Not every class has to be equally good in each, but every class needs features that allow it to contribute something.
Right now with the current rules of 5e you can 100% do this IF YOU CHOOSE TO DO SO. I did not say "you have to" or "it is necessary that", I simply said people TEND not do so because you end up with a more effective party as a whole if you do not. You can't have a 20 in every ability score, that means some characters are good at some things and other characters are good at other things. If every character was equally good at everything that would be boring as every character would be fungible with every other character, you choice of class, race, feat, would mean nothing b/c a character that didn't choose them would be just as good as you at the thing.
Nothing in the rules stops you from playing a Changeling with the Actor feat, with high CHA and be a Battlemaster Fighter with the Maneuver that let's you add SDs to Persuasion checks and be totally amazing at social interactions. You will have to sacrifice a lower CON to do so, but that is totally a choice you can choose to make. Likewise nothing in the rules stops you from playing a Kenku Eldritch Knight Fighter with high INT and the Keen Mind or Skill Expert feat and be totally amazing at finding clues, solving puzzles, researching baddies, and disarming magical traps, again you'll have to sacrifice one of your other ability scores to do so, but it is totally a choice you can choose to make. Nothing in the rules stops you from playing a Tabaxi Fighter with high WIS and the Observant or Skill Expert feat and be totally amazing and keeping watch, spotting baddies/hazards. Nothing in the rules stops you from being a Criminal Goblin (or Earth Genasi) Arcane Archer Fighter with the Skulker feat and be totally amazing at sneaking around.
And FYI absolutely anyone can use the "Help" action so you can always participate in every scene to "Help" the member of the party that is the best at that thing. It's why Enhance Ability is a silly spell - Help does the same thing for FREE - if your party isn't already rolling with Adv when they have the chance to prep for a skill check without using EA, then your party is doing something wrong - use a set of tools, have a friend help you, you can so easily get Adv it blows my mind that people use a spell to do so. Likewise I wish they would get rid of Guidance, the number of times I've seen a cleric cast Guidance instead of using the Help action when they could have use Help is far more than I can count. People need to stop staring at their list of spells and engage with the story creatively....
Right now with the current rules of 5e you can 100% do this IF YOU CHOOSE TO DO SO.
Yes, you can choose to play a party consisting of a bard, a cleric, a druid, and a wizard. If you want a character useful in all pillars of play... play a spellcaster. The non-caster options simply won't compete.
1) A sacrifice, maybe not, but if you command your celestial spirit to attack an orphanage then again, I'd expect there to be consequences from the summon itself on that, or the power that granted it to you.
2) Of course I can, but I've been playing D&D for decades. Expecting inexperienced players to simply set aside aspects of design that may be a headache for them is not realistic, they're going to default to "this is here for a reason."
3) A small straight piece of iron has no listed cost, so nobody needs to remember it, that's the whole point of component pouches and foci in this game.
1) Where did you take that from? Summon Celestial doesn't say anything about it. They obey your verbal commands. Slaughtering an orphanage with a summoned celestial Just Works.
2) I dunno, during first games in 5e my group mostly ignored the nuances with V/S/M components of spells altogether. As well as tracking rations and ammo. Not to mention some silly limitations like Pact Weapon not working with sentient or artifact weapons, which we ignore to this day, because it's just stupid and pointless.
3) I think that could be the key to optionality of sorts. Some more or less common magical item or feature to "legally" circumvent complications if you want it.
1) Where did you take that from? Summon Celestial doesn't say anything about it. They obey your verbal commands. Slaughtering an orphanage with a summoned celestial Just Works.
Other than the part where it's a cleric/paladin spell and the types of cleric/paladin who would slaughter orphanages are probably not casting it (summon fiend should probably show up on the cleric spell list to cover evil clerics, but eh... D&D mostly figures those are NPCs).
Don't be a Hyperspecialist that doesn't get to play D&D for eighty percent of every session. You can do better.
To add onto this, as long as D&D is going to talk about its three pillars of play, every class needs to have interesting and constructive options in each of those pillars. Not every class has to be equally good in each, but every class needs features that allow it to contribute something.
Right now with the current rules of 5e you can 100% do this IF YOU CHOOSE TO DO SO. I did not say "you have to" or "it is necessary that", I simply said people TEND not do so because you end up with a more effective party as a whole if you do not. You can't have a 20 in every ability score, that means some characters are good at some things and other characters are good at other things. If every character was equally good at everything that would be boring as every character would be fungible with every other character, you choice of class, race, feat, would mean nothing b/c a character that didn't choose them would be just as good as you at the thing.
Nothing in the rules stops you from playing a Changeling with the Actor feat, with high CHA and be a Battlemaster Fighter with the Maneuver that let's you add SDs to Persuasion checks and be totally amazing at social interactions. You will have to sacrifice a lower CON to do so, but that is totally a choice you can choose to make. Likewise nothing in the rules stops you from playing a Kenku Eldritch Knight Fighter with high INT and the Keen Mind or Skill Expert feat and be totally amazing at finding clues, solving puzzles, researching baddies, and disarming magical traps, again you'll have to sacrifice one of your other ability scores to do so, but it is totally a choice you can choose to make. Nothing in the rules stops you from playing a Tabaxi Fighter with high WIS and the Observant or Skill Expert feat and be totally amazing and keeping watch, spotting baddies/hazards. Nothing in the rules stops you from being a Criminal Goblin (or Earth Genasi) Arcane Archer Fighter with the Skulker feat and be totally amazing at sneaking around.
And FYI absolutely anyone can use the "Help" action so you can always participate in every scene to "Help" the member of the party that is the best at that thing. It's why Enhance Ability is a silly spell - Help does the same thing for FREE - if your party isn't already rolling with Adv when they have the chance to prep for a skill check without using EA, then your party is doing something wrong - use a set of tools, have a friend help you, you can so easily get Adv it blows my mind that people use a spell to do so. Likewise I wish they would get rid of Guidance, the number of times I've seen a cleric cast Guidance instead of using the Help action when they could have use Help is far more than I can count. People need to stop staring at their list of spells and engage with the story creatively....
Thank you for validating my point so thoroughly. I appreciate it!
1) Where did you take that from? Summon Celestial doesn't say anything about it. They obey your verbal commands. Slaughtering an orphanage with a summoned celestial Just Works.
So you choose to run the game like a video game... and then complain that it's a video game. See the problem? Hint, it's not the rules.
Martials are never going to be the equal of spellcasters if they're not allowed to have more than just *one sole singular* option for interacting with the world. Right now, martials can use the Attack action and that is actually factually literally and entirely IT. They can do nothing else worth mentioning, in or out of combat, that isn't a basic skill check available to every character regardless of class or archetype.
I'm all for improving Martials, but why should they be the equal of spellcasters? Spellcasters use the most direct/overt form of magic. Magic should > not-magic.
I'm all for improving Martials, but why should they be the equal of spellcasters? Spellcasters use the most direct/overt form of magic. Magic should > not-magic.
Because a good game does not consist of "main characters and sidekicks", it has everyone be main characters, which means everyone has comparable ability to change the world. They don't have to do it in the same way or make the same changes, but in the end if a spellcaster can cast "shortcircuit plot", a martial character should also have abilities that shortcircuit plots.
I'm all for improving Martials, but why should they be the equal of spellcasters? Spellcasters use the most direct/overt form of magic. Magic should > not-magic.
Because a good game does not consist of "main characters and sidekicks", it has everyone be main characters, which means everyone has comparable ability to change the world. They don't have to do it in the same way or make the same changes, but in the end if a spellcaster can cast "shortcircuit plot", a martial character should also have abilities that shortcircuit plots.
Was Aragorn the "sidekick" of Gandalf?
Was Tanis the "sidekick" of Raistlin?
Was Steve Rogers the "sidekick" of Stephen Strange?
Having less raw power does not stop you from being a main or major character.
Steve Rogers is maybe the closest thing to a model of what martials in 5e should be like. Able to do physical feats that no caster can replicate and take damage at a scale that's unapproachable by the more fragile casters while emitting such an aura of charisma that people will do what he wants as if they're charmed.
Was Steve Rogers the "sidekick" of Stephen Strange?
Those are kind of bad examples because I would answer 'yes' to the first two, but there are methods that are used by writers to handle characters of differing power levels, and those methods can be used in an RPG... but they either require a large amount of DM bias, or specialized mechanics.
The basic way novel writers handle differing power levels is authorial fiat -- the less powerful character is important because the author put him in a position where his abilities were uniquely useful. Or he just declared success, authors don't roll dice. There's also a reverse effect where characters just seem to forget they can do things.
A DM can do this without any game mechanics, but the players will complain because it's being obviously biased in favor of certain characters. A viable actual game mechanic would amount to the player being able to declare a favorable coincidence, or a lucky roll, or some such. And at high level, we're not talking small coincidences, we're talking stuff like "Oh, the legion of ghosts recognize you as their rightful king and start following you and laying waste to your enemies".
There are game systems that do this, but it tends to be hard on the game master.
Yes, statblocks are not the be-all and end-all for any creature. Thanks for proving my point?
Which is exactly why summons should be more than stat blocks. They should have basic guidelines that form the experience with the creature.
You and me, we might be capable of coming up with flavor and RP for any spell. If all a new player sees while entering DnD is bare bones of stat blocks and things that only Just Work, they're gonna assume that DnD is like a videogame, but on a tabletop, without the graphics.
Which is exactly why summons should be more than stat blocks. They should have basic guidelines that form the experience with the creature.
They do have basic guidelines, that's my point. There are rules around using ability scores (which summons have) that are provided to every DM to adjudicate any action you ask of them. And Summon Celestial summons not merely a blank cipher, but a celestial spirit that takes an angelic form. The DM has the agency to determine whether that makes it nothing more than an amanuensis to your needs, or whether you orders of it have a consequence, without such needing to be mandated by the spell itself. Each table gets to decide how to find their fun. That's how it should be.
They do have basic guidelines, that's my point. There are rules around using ability scores (which summons have) that are provided to every DM to adjudicate any action you ask of them. And Summon Celestial summons not merely a blank cipher, but a celestial spirit that takes an angelic form. The DM has the agency to determine whether that makes it nothing more than an amanuensis to your needs, or whether you orders of it have a consequence, without such needing to be mandated by the spell itself. Each table gets to decide how to find their fun. That's how it should be.
Everything has ability scores, that's beyond the point. DM can homebrew it all, but what's a new player or a new DM to do? You can interpret the stat blocks and improvise with your decades of experience. Can a newbie do it just as well without guidelines? It's just like backgrounds. Sure, you can come up with a character's backstory, long and nuanced if you want to. You can even do most of the job integrating it with the DM's story and setting. But more often than not, I've seen guys just rolling dice on personality traits tables and occasionally trying to roleplay the flaws and bonds when they mattered. Without those tables to help flesh out the characters, I'm pretty certain they'd not bother and default to being their usual selves plus war crimes.
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Those sentences are contradictory. If it's actually possible to build a fighter with "lots of out of combat utility", that doesn't mean "lots for a fighter", it means "lots for a character".
I mostly agree. I dislike the min-max philosophy that is inherent to hyperspecialization. I always try to make PCs at least semi-capable of more than just one thing. Even when I play a Fighter. Unfortunately, the min-max mindset is not something anybody can change directly. D&D 5E is popular in part because it caters both to people who want to min-max to the nth degree and to people who want more role-playing and non-mechanics-based engagement, so there will always be some incentive for people to make media that emphasizes min-maxing and thus hyperspecialization. The popularity of that media contributes then, to more people wanting to min-max. However, the desire to min-max in a significant portion of the RPGamer public largely precludes the existence of such media.
Yes. Thus my suggestions for increased complexity are also attempts to address balance.
Martials are never going to be the equal of spellcasters if they're not allowed to have more than just *one sole singular* option for interacting with the world. Right now, martials can use the Attack action and that is actually factually literally and entirely IT. They can do nothing else worth mentioning, in or out of combat, that isn't a basic skill check available to every character regardless of class or archetype.
Saying "martials can use Strength and Dex skills!" is not an argument. After all, spellcasters can use skills aligned with their stats too, and nothing is stopping a spellcaster from ALSO having Strength or Dex. Battlemages and soldier mages are a thing. Skill checks are a universal property to all characters and thus ate invisible, immaterial, and irrelevant to discussions of inter-archetype balance.
Martials get the ability to hit stuff a little harder. Spellcasters get the ability to manipulate reality as and when they see fit. There is simply no way to make those two things equivalent. No amount of passive damage or AC boost is going to measure up. It fundamentally cannot. So either martials get boosts to what they can do, or the Simpleton crowd gets its wish and spellcasters disappear from D&D forever because they're *just too complicated* and it's not fair someone might be able to play a spellcaster and do things a Simpleton Champion Fighter can't match.
One of those things will end D&D as the game to beat in the TTRPG space. One of them will make D&D a better experience. You pick which is which.
Please do not contact or message me.
Well, there's a few options for "be better at skill checks" (e.g. expertise), but most martials don't have them and some casters do (not to mention that any caster willing to burn spell slots on enhance ability is better at skill checks than most martials), and the skill checks martials are prone to being good at aren't particularly transformational (what's the DC of turning invisible? Or flight? Or opening a gap through a 5' thick stone wall?).
I mean, they certainly could go ahead and give the champion Expertise in athletics and acrobatics, and actually list a bunch of over the top things you can do with a DC 25 or 30 check, but the default is that 'possible with a skill check' just isn't all that awesome.
I mean, by definition a Martial class is meant to be focused on combat. Having broad skills is what the Expert classes are for, with Expertise now being their signature thing. Really, I'm not sure what aspect of the game Martials can interact with that one of the other roles doesn't already cover. Honestly, given that it's hardly mandatory for a party to have a Martial and there are options that let them dip more into magic and skill aspects if you want, I'm not sure there's actually anything to fix, at least not in the major "alter how they engage with the game as a whole" way. Tweaking combat itself is another matter, and one I have reservations about, but overall I'm not sure how you give the Martials "more" without just making them at least enough like Expert that they pull ahead of them in overall performance.
In discussions like this, "martial" usually means "not a spellcaster" -- a rogue gets classed as martial.
Honestly, they should remove expertise from ranger and bard (if they want to buff their skills, they have magic) and add it to fighter and barbarian. Possibly limit it to only class skills, which still means rogue has a substantial benefit because the class skill list for fighter and barbarian is somewhat limited.
Right now with the current rules of 5e you can 100% do this IF YOU CHOOSE TO DO SO. I did not say "you have to" or "it is necessary that", I simply said people TEND not do so because you end up with a more effective party as a whole if you do not. You can't have a 20 in every ability score, that means some characters are good at some things and other characters are good at other things. If every character was equally good at everything that would be boring as every character would be fungible with every other character, you choice of class, race, feat, would mean nothing b/c a character that didn't choose them would be just as good as you at the thing.
Nothing in the rules stops you from playing a Changeling with the Actor feat, with high CHA and be a Battlemaster Fighter with the Maneuver that let's you add SDs to Persuasion checks and be totally amazing at social interactions. You will have to sacrifice a lower CON to do so, but that is totally a choice you can choose to make. Likewise nothing in the rules stops you from playing a Kenku Eldritch Knight Fighter with high INT and the Keen Mind or Skill Expert feat and be totally amazing at finding clues, solving puzzles, researching baddies, and disarming magical traps, again you'll have to sacrifice one of your other ability scores to do so, but it is totally a choice you can choose to make. Nothing in the rules stops you from playing a Tabaxi Fighter with high WIS and the Observant or Skill Expert feat and be totally amazing and keeping watch, spotting baddies/hazards. Nothing in the rules stops you from being a Criminal Goblin (or Earth Genasi) Arcane Archer Fighter with the Skulker feat and be totally amazing at sneaking around.
And FYI absolutely anyone can use the "Help" action so you can always participate in every scene to "Help" the member of the party that is the best at that thing. It's why Enhance Ability is a silly spell - Help does the same thing for FREE - if your party isn't already rolling with Adv when they have the chance to prep for a skill check without using EA, then your party is doing something wrong - use a set of tools, have a friend help you, you can so easily get Adv it blows my mind that people use a spell to do so. Likewise I wish they would get rid of Guidance, the number of times I've seen a cleric cast Guidance instead of using the Help action when they could have use Help is far more than I can count. People need to stop staring at their list of spells and engage with the story creatively....
Yes, you can choose to play a party consisting of a bard, a cleric, a druid, and a wizard. If you want a character useful in all pillars of play... play a spellcaster. The non-caster options simply won't compete.
1) Where did you take that from? Summon Celestial doesn't say anything about it. They obey your verbal commands. Slaughtering an orphanage with a summoned celestial Just Works.
2) I dunno, during first games in 5e my group mostly ignored the nuances with V/S/M components of spells altogether. As well as tracking rations and ammo. Not to mention some silly limitations like Pact Weapon not working with sentient or artifact weapons, which we ignore to this day, because it's just stupid and pointless.
3) I think that could be the key to optionality of sorts. Some more or less common magical item or feature to "legally" circumvent complications if you want it.
Other than the part where it's a cleric/paladin spell and the types of cleric/paladin who would slaughter orphanages are probably not casting it (summon fiend should probably show up on the cleric spell list to cover evil clerics, but eh... D&D mostly figures those are NPCs).
Thank you for validating my point so thoroughly. I appreciate it!
So you choose to run the game like a video game... and then complain that it's a video game. See the problem? Hint, it's not the rules.
I'm all for improving Martials, but why should they be the equal of spellcasters? Spellcasters use the most direct/overt form of magic. Magic should > not-magic.
Because a good game does not consist of "main characters and sidekicks", it has everyone be main characters, which means everyone has comparable ability to change the world. They don't have to do it in the same way or make the same changes, but in the end if a spellcaster can cast "shortcircuit plot", a martial character should also have abilities that shortcircuit plots.
It is. Tell me, why does the character background section exist in the PHB? It's got tons of text and tables that have nothing to do with stat blocks.
Was Aragorn the "sidekick" of Gandalf?
Was Tanis the "sidekick" of Raistlin?
Was Steve Rogers the "sidekick" of Stephen Strange?
Having less raw power does not stop you from being a main or major character.
Yes, statblocks are not the be-all and end-all for any creature. Thanks for proving my point?
Steve Rogers is maybe the closest thing to a model of what martials in 5e should be like. Able to do physical feats that no caster can replicate and take damage at a scale that's unapproachable by the more fragile casters while emitting such an aura of charisma that people will do what he wants as if they're charmed.
Those are kind of bad examples because I would answer 'yes' to the first two, but there are methods that are used by writers to handle characters of differing power levels, and those methods can be used in an RPG... but they either require a large amount of DM bias, or specialized mechanics.
The basic way novel writers handle differing power levels is authorial fiat -- the less powerful character is important because the author put him in a position where his abilities were uniquely useful. Or he just declared success, authors don't roll dice. There's also a reverse effect where characters just seem to forget they can do things.
A DM can do this without any game mechanics, but the players will complain because it's being obviously biased in favor of certain characters. A viable actual game mechanic would amount to the player being able to declare a favorable coincidence, or a lucky roll, or some such. And at high level, we're not talking small coincidences, we're talking stuff like "Oh, the legion of ghosts recognize you as their rightful king and start following you and laying waste to your enemies".
There are game systems that do this, but it tends to be hard on the game master.
Which is exactly why summons should be more than stat blocks. They should have basic guidelines that form the experience with the creature.
You and me, we might be capable of coming up with flavor and RP for any spell. If all a new player sees while entering DnD is bare bones of stat blocks and things that only Just Work, they're gonna assume that DnD is like a videogame, but on a tabletop, without the graphics.
I wouldn't, and I suspect the designers wouldn't either. If that's your benchmark for "sidekick" I expect D&D is going to keep disappointing you then.
They do have basic guidelines, that's my point. There are rules around using ability scores (which summons have) that are provided to every DM to adjudicate any action you ask of them. And Summon Celestial summons not merely a blank cipher, but a celestial spirit that takes an angelic form. The DM has the agency to determine whether that makes it nothing more than an amanuensis to your needs, or whether you orders of it have a consequence, without such needing to be mandated by the spell itself. Each table gets to decide how to find their fun. That's how it should be.
Everything has ability scores, that's beyond the point. DM can homebrew it all, but what's a new player or a new DM to do? You can interpret the stat blocks and improvise with your decades of experience. Can a newbie do it just as well without guidelines? It's just like backgrounds. Sure, you can come up with a character's backstory, long and nuanced if you want to. You can even do most of the job integrating it with the DM's story and setting. But more often than not, I've seen guys just rolling dice on personality traits tables and occasionally trying to roleplay the flaws and bonds when they mattered. Without those tables to help flesh out the characters, I'm pretty certain they'd not bother and default to being their usual selves plus war crimes.