I think summoning a horde is thematically great but that it's absolutely detrimental to the play experience.
Definitely never give them their own initiative, but I had another idea to simplify it.
The caster gets to designate an area for them based on the horde size. Enemies in that area have their movement messed with somehow. On caster's turn the horde smacks all hostiles within the zone once (roll damage, save for half). The horde can be damaged, damage equal to the health of a creature reduces the area it occupies. It must always occupy a contiguous region (or, for simplicity, just make it a circle).
Basically, the idea here is to emulate the basic deployment of siccing a critter on every enemy's effects without having to actually manage it.
Also, I'd say enemies in there are flanked.
Plenty of knobs to turn on the idea to balance it I think (how impaired is movement? How much damage?).
Yeah, this is the sort of thing that I was trying to go for with my example.
Honestly I think most summons could be better represented by a damage over time or area of effect sort of thing - I would gladly relegate the sort of classic ritual demonic summoning sort of stuff that actually brings a new being into the combat to an NPC only position (but I'd gladly relegate a lot of fantasy magic to an NPC only position, so I'm biased).
The only issue with pure spell versions is that part of the fun of summons is the feeling of gumming up the board.
Hence tokens and other stuff, gumming up the board and having some of the tactical positioning stuff but still not being a 'real' character that takes forever. You create an orchestra to guide not a mosh pit to slog through.
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
There was one 3.5 prestige class I loved that was basically a good aligned summoner who exploited demons and devils and other fiendish creatures
Are you by chance thinking of the Malconvoker?
This was it!
It was from the Complete Scoundrel
The reason it was in Complete Scoundrel was because you were essentially hiding the fact that you weren't evil from your summons, and tricking them into helping you
Gain charges by channeling, being near things that die or certain spells.
Spend charges to pay for your spells, which are various flavours of 'get that man' with your horde or 'protect that man with your body'.
Many of the spells leave behind a token with Y hitpoints. Spend your turn to recall your charges and remove all the tokens to get the tokens back.
I was thinking something like this, but the tokens are stacks on actual actors. So summoning 15 wolves is placing 3 wolf tokens on your 4 enemies and 3 on yourself. As summoned mooks they are less individual threats on the board and more a status the enemy is harried by.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Gain charges by channeling, being near things that die or certain spells.
Spend charges to pay for your spells, which are various flavours of 'get that man' with your horde or 'protect that man with your body'.
Many of the spells leave behind a token with Y hitpoints. Spend your turn to recall your charges and remove all the tokens to get the tokens back.
I was thinking something like this, but the tokens are stacks on actual actors. So summoning 15 wolves is placing 3 wolf tokens on your 4 enemies and 3 on yourself. As summoned mooks they are less individual threats on the board and more a status the enemy is harried by.
That's one of the perks of playing with Roll20 and its ilk - multiple attacks are easy to roll and calculate damage for automatically, as you just have to keep clicking
[Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Gain charges by channeling, being near things that die or certain spells.
Spend charges to pay for your spells, which are various flavours of 'get that man' with your horde or 'protect that man with your body'.
Many of the spells leave behind a token with Y hitpoints. Spend your turn to recall your charges and remove all the tokens to get the tokens back.
I was thinking something like this, but the tokens are stacks on actual actors. So summoning 15 wolves is placing 3 wolf tokens on your 4 enemies and 3 on yourself. As summoned mooks they are less individual threats on the board and more a status the enemy is harried by.
One thing you could do that would work well too, is that each token does ongoing damage at the start of each turn, plus a saving throw for effect. To make it easy you could have the saving throw DC stack per token applied. So lets say the trip ability from wolves, 1 wolf its DC 10 athletics lets say, two wolves? DC 15, 3 wolves, DC 20. these summoned creature tokens could have a max amount per enemy, so you could only have like 3 max on a single enemy at a given time, and when one goes away, you can move one from yourself to an enemy if you have one "stored". Any stored creatures count as X amount of temp HP each while they are stored, to narratively depict them guarding the summoner. The summoner gets extra HP but is still vulnerable to the concentration checks. You could have different summons have different defensive or other abilities while they are stored as well if you want.
So this makes things easier by getting rid of attack rolls for all the summons. enemies can still attack the summon tokens, and one way treat them would be as minions, so as long as they get hit, then they go away. Area of effect affects all summons in the area. You still get cool abilities and stuff, and masses of "creatures", but a lot less book keeping.
Id also let them appear anywhere in the summon range initially, but if you want to move a token after that the tokens are restricted by their type, so if there is a ravine, a wolf token can't get over it, but a hawk token could.
The problem with summoning, like many problems with cool character concepts that don't work well in gameplay, is action economy.
The more actions you take, the longer your turn takes and the more power you gain. So traditional summoning, where you just take an extra full turn per summon, is big problems all the time. Same issue that the beastmaster has always had; having a permanent pet that gets its own turn means you're playing two characters.
There are a few possible solutions from a design perspective; none of them are perfect and none of them fit very well into 5E. I just don't play summoners or pet characters in 5E, I'll reserve those for systems where it's normal to take multiple turns or control multiple characters, because making it normal to do that is the easiest way to make a summoner fit cleanly into the existing systems.
I like Lancer’s approach to summons. Drones usually just have passive triggers and act more like mobile emplacements or traps, except for the Ghast, which essentially allows the user to make a weapon attack from it’s position at the cost of possibly being blown up and losing it as a weapon until repaired. Then the Hydra also gets the Annihilation Nexus which allows it to do big attacks with any of it’s drones as a point of emanation. Still very powerful, but much more about tactical positioning and battlefield control.
doesn't the beastmaster have to sacrifice their own actions for the pet to attack? pathfinder 2 has a similar effect. you still benefit from having 4 actions to 3, but those 4 actions are split among two entities
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
friend is getting a new 5e game going and I decided to be an Iron Man (Armorer Artificer)
Starting at level 1 though, so my initial plan of "One armed man" would be pretty funny along with the feat I was considering taking as a Variant Human (Dual Wielder)
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PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
doesn't the beastmaster have to sacrifice their own actions for the pet to attack? pathfinder 2 has a similar effect. you still benefit from having 4 actions to 3, but those 4 actions are split among two entities
the new rules book (tasha's cauldron of everything) added the option of taking a beast spirit instead of an animal and using your bonus action to command it (which is the correct course as having to use your action made you objectively worse off)
doesn't the beastmaster have to sacrifice their own actions for the pet to attack? pathfinder 2 has a similar effect. you still benefit from having 4 actions to 3, but those 4 actions are split among two entities
In 3.5 and Pathfinder, I always played animal companions as animals first - i.e., they didn't attack unprovoked (unless specifically commanded to). They'd hang around and defend my druid to a point, but if they got hurt or spooked they'd try to run or hide. I find an animal with opinions and survival instincts of its own a lot more interesting than a perfectly obedient combat drone.
Not sure how that would work in a system where the druid is balanced around having a drone, though.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
doesn't the beastmaster have to sacrifice their own actions for the pet to attack? pathfinder 2 has a similar effect. you still benefit from having 4 actions to 3, but those 4 actions are split among two entities
the new rules book (tasha's cauldron of everything) added the option of taking a beast spirit instead of an animal and using your bonus action to command it (which is the correct course as having to use your action made you objectively worse off)
Basically, the old animal companion was terrible, due to action economy and how challenge rating worked.
I mean, at the end of the day, how are action surges and multi attacks and classes with worthwhile bonus actions that different from having a pet with a move and standard action? All of them are giving you extra actions above the default, one of them is just some extra meat on the board. As long as players aren't zoning out and figure out what they're doing by the time the turn rolls to them it shouldn't really affect game speed.
[edit] Not talking about summoning 16 wolves here. That is not your average pet class.
Glal on
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I mean, at the end of the day, how are action surges and multi attacks and classes with worthwhile bonus actions that different from having a pet with a move and standard action? All of them are giving you extra actions above the default, one of them is just some extra meat on the board. As long as players aren't zoning out and figure out what they're doing by the time the turn rolls to them it shouldn't really affect game speed.
[edit] Not talking about summoning 16 wolves here. That is not your average pet class.
I think your regular pet class is generally fine.
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Mx. QuillI now prefer "Myr. Quill", actually...{They/Them}Registered Userregular
Yea summoner seems like a good class for when you just have a small group, like 2-3 players.
In our 3 player group, our DM gave my druid a rust bag of tricks so I could get a taste of what it'd have been like if I did pick Circle of the Shepard, and while the animals it produces have gotten less useful at higher levels, he also showed me the Summon Elemental spell from Tasha's, and it's continued to be helpful. They're all meat shields to help distract from our fighter, in the end. I have considered using the normal Conjure Elemental spell for the beefier ones, but even rolling with advantage on a d20+8 Concentration check will occasionally get fucked by bad rolls and that would result in just one more baddie for us to kill.
Our sorcerer also got the gift of 2 1st through 5th level spells by touching a strange rune, one of which also lets him cast Summon Elemental (Air Only).
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Everyone who preordered the Modiphius 2d20 Dune RPG has now gotten a PDF copy of the complete core rulebook. I've started perusing it and so far I like it a lot! As a system it's on the lighter end of things, like their Dishonored game, but has a lot of options and seems to support a big variety of playstyles and setups. You can play a very traditional game where your mismatched crew of warriors, spies, sex nuns etc go on missions, or you can play a more abstract, elevated game about being the movers and shakers of a house doing intrigues and dispatching their servants and warriors and spies on missions.
Everyone who preordered the Modiphius 2d20 Dune RPG has now gotten a PDF copy of the complete core rulebook. I've started perusing it and so far I like it a lot! As a system it's on the lighter end of things, like their Dishonored game, but has a lot of options and seems to support a big variety of playstyles and setups. You can play a very traditional game where your mismatched crew of warriors, spies, sex nuns etc go on missions, or you can play a more abstract, elevated game about being the movers and shakers of a house doing intrigues and dispatching their servants and warriors and spies on missions.
Yeah, I even had one of my supervisors print out some character sheets and house sheets for me. Very nice designs for those! I can't wait for the book and dice to arrive, and reading through the pdf is making the wait harder
I'm not so sure. Exterminating Vampires would definitely be A Good Thing as far as they're concerned, considering how much of a fucking pain the Ravnos Antediluvian was, and there is a 100% chance they've already infiltrated some of the organizations involved in the Second Inquisition.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I don't think my group is actually going to ally with the SI, but I honestly, after today's game, I'm not quite as positive as I was.
3rd session the Descent Into Avernus D&D campaign I'm running tonight. The players continue through the Dungeon of the Dead Three, and have done alright so far against some of the nastier death trap encounters thanks to decent rolls and being a party of 6.
And then all of a sudden the luck turned for one player. Encounter with a single Reaper of Bhaal. The Reaper gets top of initiative order, the party paladin gets second. In that first turn the reaper lands a dagger hit, and thanks to their Aura of Murder which gives anyone nearby vulnerability to piecing, one shots the paladin. Paladin, next in initiative, fails the death save. Rest of the party works through the turn order, killing the Reaper in a single round. Back to the top of the turn order, Paladin... critical fail on the death save, dead. So basically battle starts, paladin immediately goes down, then everyone gets one turn, and then the paladin dies. Brutal luck. Moved on to mopping up some nearby enemies and then the session wrapped up until next week.
So, now what to do? Roll a new character?
Well as chance would have it, this Paladin happened to have just looted a Bag of Beans, and while he didn't know what they did, he did mention that he stashed them in a pocket by his chest. So I'm thinking, if those beans can do all those crazy effects after just 1 minute of being buried in dirt and watered, what happens if they take root in someone's freshly opened chest wound and are instead watered by their blood?
I think that's a fun way to keep this character in play. So, any good ideas for what happens to a Human Paladin of Hoar when they get revived by a magic bag of beans taking root in their chest?
Well, you could either have it be like, a literal beanstalk sort of thing, where they have vines or some other plant life sort of grow in and around the chest, replacing organs and starting to take over, or it can be like...a more metaphorical beanstalk. Like how beanstalks are essentially these gateways to new realms, what if instead it created this sort of...gateway in their chest? Maybe with vines and such on the outside edges for aesthetic, and inside like...some sort of portal that has either random effects or it acts as a somewhat limited bag of holding, where they can like...pull a sick weapon out of their chest when necessary, that expands the gateway more and more over time until it becomes a bigger and bigger risk to their structural integrity that prompts increasingly dire choices as the story goes on?
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I'm not so sure. Exterminating Vampires would definitely be A Good Thing as far as they're concerned, considering how much of a fucking pain the Ravnos Antediluvian was, and there is a 100% chance they've already infiltrated some of the organizations involved in the Second Inquisition.
Probably, but they're not going to stop there, and I'm sure losing the entire Vienna chantry was a pretty big blow to Magedom.
Still dying to know how they pulled that off... it's like if a SWAT team managed to take down Hogwarts. (I'd watch that film, take that, Cursed Child.)
How? Place was Tremere owned, the Order of Hermes probably drank to the Second Inquisiton that night, House Flambeau most definitely. Any living Mage that went there was probably in danger of having their precious Quintessence drained out of them from their neck.
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Mx. QuillI now prefer "Myr. Quill", actually...{They/Them}Registered Userregular
edited April 2021
Our DnD group had to perform an Anti-Heist at a party, in which we employed a 4th level Enhance Ability to help everyone out with Charisma checks and used my Wildshape uses to first scout out the manor and the to have a little owl keep watch outside. It was, by far, the most we'd ever planned for anything.
So naturally it all went to hell. We prevented 4 of the 6 thieves from escaping and kept the jewels safe, but we created a huge scene against the wishes of the lady of the house who'd secretly hired us to be guards and only got paid half of what was promised, plus we almost had charges pressed against us by casting Hold Person on one of the people we were like 80% sure was one of the thieves prior to everything kicking off (he was, and got away along with their warlock).
Our sorcerer at one point cast Steel Wind Strike, one of his spells he got when he touched an ancient rune, on the Hold Person'd thief trying to escape with the goods and the wizard pilot of their getaway tiny airship, and on a crit against both of them did 69 damage to immediately drop the thief and bisect the wizard who had only 1 hit point left.
We also established as a joke that my owl just mentally speaks like Hooty from The Owl House and renamed his Roll20 token.
3rd session the Descent Into Avernus D&D campaign I'm running tonight. The players continue through the Dungeon of the Dead Three, and have done alright so far against some of the nastier death trap encounters thanks to decent rolls and being a party of 6.
And then all of a sudden the luck turned for one player. Encounter with a single Reaper of Bhaal. The Reaper gets top of initiative order, the party paladin gets second. In that first turn the reaper lands a dagger hit, and thanks to their Aura of Murder which gives anyone nearby vulnerability to piecing, one shots the paladin. Paladin, next in initiative, fails the death save. Rest of the party works through the turn order, killing the Reaper in a single round. Back to the top of the turn order, Paladin... critical fail on the death save, dead. So basically battle starts, paladin immediately goes down, then everyone gets one turn, and then the paladin dies. Brutal luck. Moved on to mopping up some nearby enemies and then the session wrapped up until next week.
So, now what to do? Roll a new character?
Well as chance would have it, this Paladin happened to have just looted a Bag of Beans, and while he didn't know what they did, he did mention that he stashed them in a pocket by his chest. So I'm thinking, if those beans can do all those crazy effects after just 1 minute of being buried in dirt and watered, what happens if they take root in someone's freshly opened chest wound and are instead watered by their blood?
I think that's a fun way to keep this character in play. So, any good ideas for what happens to a Human Paladin of Hoar when they get revived by a magic bag of beans taking root in their chest?
Hoar sounds like an Oath of Vengeance type paladin. If the player is cool with it, perhaps a full/partial switch to Oath of the Ancients (it's all plant-y). Make it kind of a bargain or deal for keeping them breathing.
It depends on the player. Some people (like me, usually) are "I'd rather die than fuck with my perfect build". Others gleefully hand the GM knives to stab them with, fictionally.
Posts
from book of exalted deeds I think
Are you by chance thinking of the Malconvoker?
Gain charges by channeling, being near things that die or certain spells.
Spend charges to pay for your spells, which are various flavours of 'get that man' with your horde or 'protect that man with your body'.
Many of the spells leave behind a token with Y hitpoints. Spend your turn to recall your charges and remove all the tokens to get the tokens back.
Yeah, this is the sort of thing that I was trying to go for with my example.
Honestly I think most summons could be better represented by a damage over time or area of effect sort of thing - I would gladly relegate the sort of classic ritual demonic summoning sort of stuff that actually brings a new being into the combat to an NPC only position (but I'd gladly relegate a lot of fantasy magic to an NPC only position, so I'm biased).
Hence tokens and other stuff, gumming up the board and having some of the tactical positioning stuff but still not being a 'real' character that takes forever. You create an orchestra to guide not a mosh pit to slog through.
This was it!
It was from the Complete Scoundrel
The reason it was in Complete Scoundrel was because you were essentially hiding the fact that you weren't evil from your summons, and tricking them into helping you
I was thinking something like this, but the tokens are stacks on actual actors. So summoning 15 wolves is placing 3 wolf tokens on your 4 enemies and 3 on yourself. As summoned mooks they are less individual threats on the board and more a status the enemy is harried by.
That could be real cool.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
One thing you could do that would work well too, is that each token does ongoing damage at the start of each turn, plus a saving throw for effect. To make it easy you could have the saving throw DC stack per token applied. So lets say the trip ability from wolves, 1 wolf its DC 10 athletics lets say, two wolves? DC 15, 3 wolves, DC 20. these summoned creature tokens could have a max amount per enemy, so you could only have like 3 max on a single enemy at a given time, and when one goes away, you can move one from yourself to an enemy if you have one "stored". Any stored creatures count as X amount of temp HP each while they are stored, to narratively depict them guarding the summoner. The summoner gets extra HP but is still vulnerable to the concentration checks. You could have different summons have different defensive or other abilities while they are stored as well if you want.
So this makes things easier by getting rid of attack rolls for all the summons. enemies can still attack the summon tokens, and one way treat them would be as minions, so as long as they get hit, then they go away. Area of effect affects all summons in the area. You still get cool abilities and stuff, and masses of "creatures", but a lot less book keeping.
Id also let them appear anywhere in the summon range initially, but if you want to move a token after that the tokens are restricted by their type, so if there is a ravine, a wolf token can't get over it, but a hawk token could.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240235/cyoa-a-peaceful-time#latest
The more actions you take, the longer your turn takes and the more power you gain. So traditional summoning, where you just take an extra full turn per summon, is big problems all the time. Same issue that the beastmaster has always had; having a permanent pet that gets its own turn means you're playing two characters.
There are a few possible solutions from a design perspective; none of them are perfect and none of them fit very well into 5E. I just don't play summoners or pet characters in 5E, I'll reserve those for systems where it's normal to take multiple turns or control multiple characters, because making it normal to do that is the easiest way to make a summoner fit cleanly into the existing systems.
DIESEL
Against the Fall of Night Playtest
Nasty, Brutish, and Short
Starting at level 1 though, so my initial plan of "One armed man" would be pretty funny along with the feat I was considering taking as a Variant Human (Dual Wielder)
the new rules book (tasha's cauldron of everything) added the option of taking a beast spirit instead of an animal and using your bonus action to command it (which is the correct course as having to use your action made you objectively worse off)
In 3.5 and Pathfinder, I always played animal companions as animals first - i.e., they didn't attack unprovoked (unless specifically commanded to). They'd hang around and defend my druid to a point, but if they got hurt or spooked they'd try to run or hide. I find an animal with opinions and survival instincts of its own a lot more interesting than a perfectly obedient combat drone.
Not sure how that would work in a system where the druid is balanced around having a drone, though.
Basically, the old animal companion was terrible, due to action economy and how challenge rating worked.
[edit] Not talking about summoning 16 wolves here. That is not your average pet class.
I think your regular pet class is generally fine.
In our 3 player group, our DM gave my druid a rust bag of tricks so I could get a taste of what it'd have been like if I did pick Circle of the Shepard, and while the animals it produces have gotten less useful at higher levels, he also showed me the Summon Elemental spell from Tasha's, and it's continued to be helpful. They're all meat shields to help distract from our fighter, in the end. I have considered using the normal Conjure Elemental spell for the beefier ones, but even rolling with advantage on a d20+8 Concentration check will occasionally get fucked by bad rolls and that would result in just one more baddie for us to kill.
Our sorcerer also got the gift of 2 1st through 5th level spells by touching a strange rune, one of which also lets him cast Summon Elemental (Air Only).
Yeah, I even had one of my supervisors print out some character sheets and house sheets for me. Very nice designs for those! I can't wait for the book and dice to arrive, and reading through the pdf is making the wait harder
That'd be some real pimp-ass shit.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
The Technocracy thanks you for your services in advance.
Pretty sure it would be in their best interests to squash the SI.
And then all of a sudden the luck turned for one player. Encounter with a single Reaper of Bhaal. The Reaper gets top of initiative order, the party paladin gets second. In that first turn the reaper lands a dagger hit, and thanks to their Aura of Murder which gives anyone nearby vulnerability to piecing, one shots the paladin. Paladin, next in initiative, fails the death save. Rest of the party works through the turn order, killing the Reaper in a single round. Back to the top of the turn order, Paladin... critical fail on the death save, dead. So basically battle starts, paladin immediately goes down, then everyone gets one turn, and then the paladin dies. Brutal luck. Moved on to mopping up some nearby enemies and then the session wrapped up until next week.
So, now what to do? Roll a new character?
Well as chance would have it, this Paladin happened to have just looted a Bag of Beans, and while he didn't know what they did, he did mention that he stashed them in a pocket by his chest. So I'm thinking, if those beans can do all those crazy effects after just 1 minute of being buried in dirt and watered, what happens if they take root in someone's freshly opened chest wound and are instead watered by their blood?
I think that's a fun way to keep this character in play. So, any good ideas for what happens to a Human Paladin of Hoar when they get revived by a magic bag of beans taking root in their chest?
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
Probably, but they're not going to stop there, and I'm sure losing the entire Vienna chantry was a pretty big blow to Magedom.
Still dying to know how they pulled that off... it's like if a SWAT team managed to take down Hogwarts. (I'd watch that film, take that, Cursed Child.)
So naturally it all went to hell. We prevented 4 of the 6 thieves from escaping and kept the jewels safe, but we created a huge scene against the wishes of the lady of the house who'd secretly hired us to be guards and only got paid half of what was promised, plus we almost had charges pressed against us by casting Hold Person on one of the people we were like 80% sure was one of the thieves prior to everything kicking off (he was, and got away along with their warlock).
Our sorcerer at one point cast Steel Wind Strike, one of his spells he got when he touched an ancient rune, on the Hold Person'd thief trying to escape with the goods and the wizard pilot of their getaway tiny airship, and on a crit against both of them did 69 damage to immediately drop the thief and bisect the wizard who had only 1 hit point left.
We also established as a joke that my owl just mentally speaks like Hooty from The Owl House and renamed his Roll20 token.
Hoar sounds like an Oath of Vengeance type paladin. If the player is cool with it, perhaps a full/partial switch to Oath of the Ancients (it's all plant-y). Make it kind of a bargain or deal for keeping them breathing.
It depends on the player. Some people (like me, usually) are "I'd rather die than fuck with my perfect build". Others gleefully hand the GM knives to stab them with, fictionally.