The Wildfire pet description currently states "In combat, the wildfire spirit shares your initiative count, but it takes its turn immediately after yours. The only action it takes on its turn is the Dodge action, unless you take a bonus action on your turn to command it to take one of the actions in its stat block or to take the Dash, Disengage, Help, or Hide action."
The mechanics here are a bit janky. Because the pet's movement falls strictly after the druid's, it's not possible to e.g. have the pet move to your team-mate and then cast Cure Light Wounds on him/her in the same round.
This feels bad and erodes some of the unique utility offered by the pet. Accordingly, we are house-ruling that rather the pet's turn coming after the druid's, the pet's and druid's turns are effectively merged, such that pet movement, druid movement, bonus action and action can occur in any order, as per usual combat/action economy. This allows the pet to serve the function of a spell delivery vehicle, which feels much better and opens up a variety of cool strategies, like e.g. having the pet move to a downed ally and teleport him/her out in the same round.
As a side note, I'm not super keen on how controlling the pet ties up the druid's bonus action, i think it's not much of a stretch to make the pet control aspect be a free action, ie: controlled mentally, the same way conjured pets are currently controlled.
In any case, the pet movement issue is the main thing i'd like to see clarified/changed.
Edit: also, pet lasting just 1 hour? other uses of wildshape last longer based on the druid's level. I'd like to keep my pet around for >1hour seeing as all the subclass features are dependent on it. Maybe 1hr + 1/3rd druid level rounded down like circle of the moon?
If you want to do the "cast through your pet" thing with RAW, that's what prepared actions are for. You prepare cure wounds for when your pet gets within range, then cast it as a reaction during the pets turn. Works the same as your house ruled options, except it also takes up your reaction.
sure, but let's face it, that's pretty damn clunky.
I don't think there's really any kind of balance issue with merging the pet/caster action order.
i note that controlling conjured animals/elementals doesn't consume a bonus action/action at all so handling the wildfire pet the same way alsi increases consistency as well.
I don't even think it would be OP for the pet's flame seed to require your bonus action because the flame seed damage value is so small, however it would make fire bolt -> flame sphere ram -> pet attack a bit too strong, especially with the extra d8 on fire spells, so pet actions on BA is probably fine (though the pet's damage scales very poorly).
The idea behind putting the critter's turn immediately behind the druid's is to step on the "I command my critter to use the Help action so I get free advantage without a care in the world on my own, much more powerful stuff" tombuggery everyone tries to get up to with shit like the familiar rules.
Bonus action control of the pet went over very well on the artificer UA, striking a balance people liked between the character getting a full suite of completely free extra actions ("hey, my Battlesmith/Wildfire Druid can effectively Action Surge every turn because I get to make the critter act for free!") and the shitty Beastmaster "trade your action for the critter sucking" rules. A PC's main action is absolutely precious; their bonus action is less precious and can often be traded for critter actions without giving the character a free pass.
Summoning spells are a different kettle of fish, and it's also worth noting that nobody likes them. DMs despise those spells for gumming up combat and opening the door for egregious munchkinry ("I summon eight wolves to fish for prone crits", or "I summon eight pixies, then I command the pixies to turn everybody into a T-Rex, and then..."), and the players who aren't using those spells don't tend to enjoy watching one player take up the entire combat with orchestrating their Army of Darkness. Many tables simply dispermit those spells in the first place, and others have added significant houserules or homebrewed less kludgy and aggravating versions of the spells in question.
Frankly, I'm on board with the bonus-action control methodology Wizards is testing recently. It's long since past time for them to figure out universal rules for players controlling NPC summons/familiars/companions/sidekicks, and this seems like a good start.
The Wildfire pet description currently states "In combat, the wildfire spirit shares your initiative count, but it takes its turn immediately after yours. The only action it takes on its turn is the Dodge action, unless you take a bonus action on your turn to command it to take one of the actions in its stat block or to take the Dash, Disengage, Help, or Hide action."
The mechanics here are a bit janky. Because the pet's movement falls strictly after the druid's, it's not possible to e.g. have the pet move to your team-mate and then cast Cure Light Wounds on him/her in the same round.
This feels bad and erodes some of the unique utility offered by the pet. Accordingly, we are house-ruling that rather the pet's turn coming after the druid's, the pet's and druid's turns are effectively merged, such that pet movement, druid movement, bonus action and action can occur in any order, as per usual combat/action economy. This allows the pet to serve the function of a spell delivery vehicle, which feels much better and opens up a variety of cool strategies, like e.g. having the pet move to a downed ally and teleport him/her out in the same round.
As a side note, I'm not super keen on how controlling the pet ties up the druid's bonus action, i think it's not much of a stretch to make the pet control aspect be a free action, ie: controlled mentally, the same way conjured pets are currently controlled.
In any case, the pet movement issue is the main thing i'd like to see clarified/changed.
Edit: also, pet lasting just 1 hour? other uses of wildshape last longer based on the druid's level. I'd like to keep my pet around for >1hour seeing as all the subclass features are dependent on it. Maybe 1hr + 1/3rd druid level rounded down like circle of the moon?
If you want to do the "cast through your pet" thing with RAW, that's what prepared actions are for. You prepare cure wounds for when your pet gets within range, then cast it as a reaction during the pets turn. Works the same as your house ruled options, except it also takes up your reaction.
sure, but let's face it, that's pretty damn clunky.
I don't think there's really any kind of balance issue with merging the pet/caster action order.
i note that controlling conjured animals/elementals doesn't consume a bonus action/action at all so handling the wildfire pet the same way alsi increases consistency as well.
I don't even think it would be OP for the pet's flame seed to require your bonus action because the flame seed damage value is so small, however it would make fire bolt -> flame sphere ram -> pet attack a bit too strong, especially with the extra d8 on fire spells, so pet actions on BA is probably fine (though the pet's damage scales very poorly).
The idea behind putting the critter's turn immediately behind the druid's is to step on the "I command my critter to use the Help action so I get free advantage without a care in the world on my own, much more powerful stuff" tombuggery everyone tries to get up to with shit like the familiar rules.
Bonus action control of the pet went over very well on the artificer UA, striking a balance people liked between the character getting a full suite of completely free extra actions ("hey, my Battlesmith/Wildfire Druid can effectively Action Surge every turn because I get to make the critter act for free!") and the shitty Beastmaster "trade your action for the critter sucking" rules. A PC's main action is absolutely precious; their bonus action is less precious and can often be traded for critter actions without giving the character a free pass.
Summoning spells are a different kettle of fish, and it's also worth noting that nobody likes them. DMs despise those spells for gumming up combat and opening the door for egregious munchkinry ("I summon eight wolves to fish for prone crits", or "I summon eight pixies, then I command the pixies to turn everybody into a T-Rex, and then..."), and the players who aren't using those spells don't tend to enjoy watching one player take up the entire combat with orchestrating their Army of Darkness. Many tables simply dispermit those spells in the first place, and others have added significant houserules or homebrewed less kludgy and aggravating versions of the spells in question.
Frankly, I'm on board with the bonus-action control methodology Wizards is testing recently. It's long since past time for them to figure out universal rules for players controlling NPC summons/familiars/companions/sidekicks, and this seems like a good start.
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The only way to do a summon spell without everyone hating you is to summon the option with minimal powerful creatures, maintain the action economy.