Game Mechanics Support Minions

Should this be added?

  • Yes

    Votes: 10 71.4%
  • No

    Votes: 1 7.1%
  • Yes but...

    Votes: 3 21.4%
  • No but...

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    14

Depressed Snow Grouse

The Destroyer
I think that there should be support minions in the game. They could probably do stuff like provide buffs and heal.
This could kind of work as a Healer class because it would support your teammates.
I am still working on a way for this to be a viable option for summoner, and my current solution is:
You have support minion slots equal to 1/2 of your minion slots, rounded up. Support sentries use up support minion slots.
It's not a great solution, nor is it even a good one, but it makes it so that summoners are actually able to use it.

Content:
Cherub Staff
Cherub-Staff.png

Summons a Cherub to support you, and your allies.
Cherub.png

"Gives you, and your allies a small health regen boost."
"Gives rapidly diminishing returns."
Health regen boost equal to honey
Every extra summon (After the first one) has half the effectiveness of the one before it.

Crafted With:

5 Feathers
5 Fallen Stars
25 Sunplate
Builders Hammer
Builders Hammer.png

"Summons a tiny builder to help you build faster"
Builder.png

Increases placement speed by 25%
No idea how it could be crafted.
 
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I decided to update this a little bit.

Cherub Staff
Selection 2023-10-01T20.39.37.png

Summons a Cherub to support you
Selection 2023-10-01T20.22.42.png

"Gives you, and your allies a small health regen boost
Gives rapidly diminishing returns with each use"
Health Regen boost is equal to what a campfire gives you.
Every consecutive use, has half the power.
=
Crafted with:
5 Feathers
5 Fallen Stars
25 Sunplate

In case it isn't obvious, its meant to be a direct counterpart to the Imp Staff.
 
I decided to update this a little bit.

Cherub Staff
View attachment 430523
Summons a Cherub to support you
View attachment 430524
"Gives you, and your allies a small health regen boost
Gives rapidly diminishing returns with each use"
Health Regen boost is equal to what a campfire gives you.
Every consecutive use, has half the power.
=
Crafted with:
5 Feathers
5 Fallen Stars
25 Sunplate

In case it isn't obvious, its meant to be a direct counterpart to the Imp Staff.
I feel like this is a microcosm for my problem with most support minion ideas I've seen: they benefit other classes more than they benefit Summoners. A Melee player wouldn't need to give up a portion of their DPS to get the full use of this minion, but a Summoner would be potentially sacrificing a lot. Look at it this way: in pre-Hardmode, the most minions you can have for Wall of Flesh is 6 minions (excluding sentries). 1 base, 2 from Bee Armor, 1 from Pygmy Necklace, 1 from Summoning Potion, and 1 from Bewitching Table. Using this Cherub means that you're giving up 1/6 of your DPS, which is more than you'd get from the Summoner Emblem, a Hardmode accessory. And for what, the effect of a single Campfire? Compare to a Ranger, who gives up their 1 base minion slot, which will not be any significant portion of their DPS, and gets the exact same benefit. It's not a fair trade off.

I actually really like the idea of support minions and think they can absolutely work in the game, but they need to be balanced really carefully. They need to be better for Summoners than they are for other classes, but not so strong that they become centralizing.
 
I feel like this is a microcosm for my problem with most support minion ideas I've seen: they benefit other classes more than they benefit Summoners. A Melee player wouldn't need to give up a portion of their DPS to get the full use of this minion, but a Summoner would be potentially sacrificing a lot. Look at it this way: in pre-Hardmode, the most minions you can have for Wall of Flesh is 6 minions (excluding sentries). 1 base, 2 from Bee Armor, 1 from Pygmy Necklace, 1 from Summoning Potion, and 1 from Bewitching Table. Using this Cherub means that you're giving up 1/6 of your DPS, which is more than you'd get from the Summoner Emblem, a Hardmode accessory. And for what, the effect of a single Campfire? Compare to a Ranger, who gives up their 1 base minion slot, which will not be any significant portion of their DPS, and gets the exact same benefit. It's not a fair trade off.

I actually really like the idea of support minions and think they can absolutely work in the game, but they need to be balanced really carefully. They need to be better for Summoners than they are for other classes, but not so strong that they become centralizing.
tl;dr, there needs to be some way for Summoner-specific buffs to significantly boost the effects of support minions, otherwise they're the worst option for Summoner, and the best option for all other classes.
 
I feel like this is a microcosm for my problem with most support minion ideas I've seen: they benefit other classes more than they benefit Summoners. A Melee player wouldn't need to give up a portion of their DPS to get the full use of this minion, but a Summoner would be potentially sacrificing a lot. Look at it this way: in pre-Hardmode, the most minions you can have for Wall of Flesh is 6 minions (excluding sentries). 1 base, 2 from Bee Armor, 1 from Pygmy Necklace, 1 from Summoning Potion, and 1 from Bewitching Table. Using this Cherub means that you're giving up 1/6 of your DPS, which is more than you'd get from the Summoner Emblem, a Hardmode accessory. And for what, the effect of a single Campfire? Compare to a Ranger, who gives up their 1 base minion slot, which will not be any significant portion of their DPS, and gets the exact same benefit. It's not a fair trade off.

I actually really like the idea of support minions and think they can absolutely work in the game, but they need to be balanced really carefully. They need to be better for Summoners than they are for other classes, but not so strong that they become centralizing.
That's fair. Maybe make it scale with your summoner gear? I absolutely forgot to bring this into consideration when balancing this, so thanks for pointing this out. Another idea I had was it only really boosting summoner, but that's not a great solution.
 
I feel like this is a microcosm for my problem with most support minion ideas I've seen: they benefit other classes more than they benefit Summoners. A Melee player wouldn't need to give up a portion of their DPS to get the full use of this minion, but a Summoner would be potentially sacrificing a lot. Look at it this way: in pre-Hardmode, the most minions you can have for Wall of Flesh is 6 minions (excluding sentries). 1 base, 2 from Bee Armor, 1 from Pygmy Necklace, 1 from Summoning Potion, and 1 from Bewitching Table. Using this Cherub means that you're giving up 1/6 of your DPS, which is more than you'd get from the Summoner Emblem, a Hardmode accessory. And for what, the effect of a single Campfire? Compare to a Ranger, who gives up their 1 base minion slot, which will not be any significant portion of their DPS, and gets the exact same benefit. It's not a fair trade off.

I actually really like the idea of support minions and think they can absolutely work in the game, but they need to be balanced really carefully. They need to be better for Summoners than they are for other classes, but not so strong that they become centralizing.
But maybe that's what you want? say in multiplayer. There are currently not very many Healer/Support class Items, and I've been toying with this same idea but haven't gotten around to posting it.

EDIT: finally posted Weapons & Equip - Support Minion Ideas
 
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But maybe that's what you want? say in multiplayer. There are currently not very many Healer/Support class Items, and I've been toying with this same idea but haven't gotten around to posting it.
A single campfire that moves with you isn't that useful, especially because campfires are very cheap and their regen effect isn't all that. It also wouldn't change the fact that it would be a Summoner item that Summoners would never want to use.
That's fair. Maybe make it scale with your summoner gear? I absolutely forgot to bring this into consideration when balancing this, so thanks for pointing this out. Another idea I had was it only really boosting summoner, but that's not a great solution.
A while ago, there was a thread like this, and on that thread I did a little bit of thinking of my own for support summons. I'll copy/paste what I said there onto this thread:
  • Increases other Summon damage boosts by 33% (Summoner Emblem gives +20% instead of +15%, Stardust Armor gives +88% instead of +66%) but gives no damage on its own
  • Costs 2 Summon slots but makes all other minions cost 0.75 Summon slots, like Spiders (not useful if don't have many slots but gets much better if you have a lot of slots)
    • If you only have 3 minion slots, you get this buff and 1 other minion. But once you hit 6 slots, you don't lose any DPS, and beyond that you gain DPS pretty substantially
  • Summon damage gains a lifesteal effect (since lifesteal scales with damage, non-Summoners won't get much from it unless they use endgame summons, and the healing definitely offsets the damage lost since Summoners are notoriously fragile)
  • Effect applies to tag damage (there are a lot of possibilities here but the main point is it doesn't help non-Summoners at all)
  • Increases player defense by +2 for every unique minion summoned (not counting itself) (if you're mixing minions, this could be really strong)
Basically, we just need to make it work with what Summoners can already do that other classes can't do, while also balancing around the fact that you will almost always be giving up DPS for this. This can be on a basic level, like working specifically with Summon buffs, or on more involved levels, like how Summoners are really the only class that has multiple damage sources active at once. We gotta get creative.
 
A single campfire that moves with you isn't that useful, especially because campfires are very cheap and their regen effect isn't all that. It also wouldn't change the fact that it would be a Summoner item that Summoners would never want to use.

A while ago, there was a thread like this, and on that thread I did a little bit of thinking of my own for support summons. I'll copy/paste what I said there onto this thread:
  • Increases other Summon damage boosts by 33% (Summoner Emblem gives +20% instead of +15%, Stardust Armor gives +88% instead of +66%) but gives no damage on its own
  • Costs 2 Summon slots but makes all other minions cost 0.75 Summon slots, like Spiders (not useful if don't have many slots but gets much better if you have a lot of slots)
    • If you only have 3 minion slots, you get this buff and 1 other minion. But once you hit 6 slots, you don't lose any DPS, and beyond that you gain DPS pretty substantially
  • Summon damage gains a lifesteal effect (since lifesteal scales with damage, non-Summoners won't get much from it unless they use endgame summons, and the healing definitely offsets the damage lost since Summoners are notoriously fragile)
  • Effect applies to tag damage (there are a lot of possibilities here but the main point is it doesn't help non-Summoners at all)
  • Increases player defense by +2 for every unique minion summoned (not counting itself) (if you're mixing minions, this could be really strong)
Basically, we just need to make it work with what Summoners can already do that other classes can't do, while also balancing around the fact that you will almost always be giving up DPS for this. This can be on a basic level, like working specifically with Summon buffs, or on more involved levels, like how Summoners are really the only class that has multiple damage sources active at once. We gotta get creative.
Most of those don't let you actually support your allies, so it's a bit less support style than I was going for.
 
I had a idea of how to make this actually viable for summoners.
You have support minion slots which are 1/2 of your dps minion slots rounded up.
This should hopefully allow summoners to use these minions without sacrificing DPS, and I feel like this would just be better in general. Support Sentries would use support minion slots.
 
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I had a idea of how to make this actually viable for summoners.
You have support minion slots which are 1/2 of your dps minion slots rounded up.
This should hopefully allow summoners to use these minions without sacrificing DPS, and I feel like this would just be better in general. Support Sentries would use support minion slots.
As I explained in my post, the whole point of support items/minions is to allow players to support instead if they wish, which obviously means you have to sacrifice some dps. That is a resonable expectation but you know what is not? Expecting to be able to support and still do full dps with no trade off. If you can maintain full dps AND also support that makes the problem even worse.
 
As I explained in my post, the whole point of support items/minions is to allow players to support instead if they wish, which obviously means you have to sacrifice some dps. That is a resonable expectation but you know what is not? Expecting to be able to support and still do full dps with no trade off. If you can maintain full dps AND also support that makes the problem even worse.
I don't think it's that bad. It still rewards Summoners more than it rewards other classes, which is important. I don't think it's a perfect solution, nor do I think it's even that good of one to be honest, but it might be better than Support minions using the same Summon slots as every other minion. To know for sure we'd need to make a mod and playtest it.
 
I don't think it's that bad. It still rewards Summoners more than it rewards other classes, which is important. I don't think it's a perfect solution, nor do I think it's even that good of one to be honest, but it might be better than Support minions using the same Summon slots as every other minion. To know for sure we'd need to make a mod and playtest it.
Yeah, that's something that I considered. It's honestly not a great solution, but as you stated, it rewards summoners more than it rewards other classes, and doesn't cause summoners to sacrifice DPS. I do agree that starting a mod and playtesting this, is the best way to actually make sure everything is balanced.
 
Yeah, that's something that I considered. It's honestly not a great solution, but as you stated, it rewards summoners more than it rewards other classes, and doesn't cause summoners to sacrifice DPS. I do agree that starting a mod and playtesting this, is the best way to actually make sure everything is balanced.
If anyone does make a mod, I'd like to be on the team to contribute ideas. I strongly believe in the potential of support minions.
 
If anyone does make a mod, I'd like to be on the team to contribute ideas. I strongly believe in the potential of support minions.
I honestly want to try making it a mod at this point. I don't think this will be added in the first place, as we are too late in development for a huge summoner rework (Not a rework, but you get what I mean)
 
If anyone does make a mod, I'd like to be on the team to contribute ideas. I strongly believe in the potential of support minions.
I actually kind of made a mod.
Its not really support minions, but more of improving combat in general, but it does add support minions (Its supposed to, but I dont really have any coders)
 
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