So a character in the party is creating a familiar of sorts. It's tied up with his background story, but I'll save you the time and say it'll be some sort of human appearing dark entity.

The GM gave him free reign as a level 0 character and let him loose into the creature creation section of the core rule book. He created some sort of monster level 0 Tao.

Getting a 10 in strength costs a mere 15 of its 400 DP (since it's a level 0 character). It then picked up Muay Thai for 65 base damage (20+(15*3)). After that he tacked on 60 additional damage for a total base damage of 125.

It then picked up interaction with the world for 30 points. As a spirit it's invisible to everything without see super natural, right? Which promises it guaranteed surprise to most foes. In addition he can usually sneak behind most opponents without being seen. That's a whooping +170 to his attack right there.

And at level 1, with a base damage of 125, it has no problems blowing up any reasonably leveled opponent. Compounded by the fact that it can only be harmed by supernatural means, and things just get uglier.

Our GM is relatively new to GMing and this is my first campaign in Anima. What do you guys suggest the GM do? I myself see a couple of options:

--Force the summoner to tone down his familiar.

I'm not much of a fan of this option since it is all in the book. I know the GM has rights to tweak things, but tripling costs for certain abilities, for example, seems untasteful and highly subjective (which I admit GMs are perfectly within their place to do so.)

--Have most enemies be able to see the super natural and harm the super natural.

Given the direction of our campaign, that would be incredibly unlikely. In addition, as a player there's nothing worse than getting a nifty toy (whether that be an ability, artifact, or whatever) and then the GM refusing to allow you to use it. I follow more along the "make them have to use every trick in their hat to succeed" school of thought.

The problem arises that this familiar is so totally bad ass it eclipses every other character in the group. It's gobbling up all the cake.

As a side problem, the summoner himself, freed freed from investing too heavily in combat related abilities (since his familiar is the one fighting, really), has a lot of freedom with his DP. We thought perhaps of some sort of shared DP pool with the familiar, but if there is some sort of precedent to solving this problem I'm all ears.

This creature is a Soul / Spirit type creature ?

As per p283 :
- they are invisible to any non-special vision
- they have the Physical Exemption ability
- use Power to calculate LP
- are destroyed upon reaching 0 LP
- must pay 100 DP for the simple fact of being such creature (thus, only 300 left)

Nasty creature he made.
No real solution to the problem, I fear. Talking to him and asking for a less specialized creature might work.

I'm having similar problems on my table with a summoner. The rule as in any RPG is that it's up to the GM to accept something created by a player or not. This "thing" deals 125 damage, most of the time surprises its opponent and will attack him in the back. Let's compare to a magician having fire spells, he'll cast fireball the spell does 50 damage, costs 50 Zeon to cast (making it cast maybe 10 times each day), has no surprise effect. the problem you see is balance. This creature is totally overpowered compared to any character in the player group and any creature the GM will put against the players. It will become obvious after a few fights the fighter in the group will feel weak compared to it, the GM will have to put stronger opponents just to hope he can win a fight and nobody will have pleasure playing. Having a creature dealing reasonable damage (80) is already good, but this one uses surprise and can hardly be killed. Imagine the group encountering 2 such creatures ... I guess the group will have no chance to survive, simple as that. For a starting GM, he should only allow very basic creatures dealing damage in the range of what the other characters can do, and if it uses surprise have very low damage.

I also think, the best way in such cases is to talk to the player. Remind him, that you're playing this game as a group and that the group as a whole should be the focus of the game, not one single NPC creature. A party should be build in such a way, that it fits together and that everyone has it's niche.

Depending on the other characters, the GM also could run a not-so-heavy-combat-oriented campaign, where status and social grace is much more important. I think this player will lack these skills in roleplaying

Or you could teach him a lesson. Let him run loose and look how he get's a target of some organizations like the Inquistion, Tol Rauko, Requiem, Samael... there are many reasons why these groups don't want to have someone with this kind of creature running around. This may result in a new character quickly.

A fourth option would be to give the creature an undesireable personality. Do it in such a way that it's a risk to set this thing loose and the character might think if it's really necessary to set it free each time or not.

Also, as a side note: In my campaign I simply didn't allow my summoner to have a familiar at the beginning but gave him some rituals for crreatures he can summon. So he started with one crreature bound, but not as familiar. Now he tries to figure out which creature to take as familiar - and I can use several NPCs to shape his opinion.

Yeah new summoners should not have a familar. I dont even think its possible to achive the rolls needed for it at lv 0 or lv 1. But that aside the damage is the issue, not the familar part. I think the answer is fairly simple, first off running several games of anima I have noticed that the players will often be able to 1 shot lower level thugs with ANY charecter type. I have seen it with pyromancers, shadows, and summoners etc. Sufifce to say that OP chars in anima is nothing new.

I think some one hinted at this before. The summoner has terrible primary stats. What ever the main plot is, im sure the people that he is mercily killing with this creature will pick up that there guys are getting buchared at some point. when that happens they hire an assasin that can see super natural. GG.

Sorry I hate to double post but I got cut short in my response. One think to bear in mind, is you said that the creature had a str 10, the GM gets to determin the stats of creatures, not the player. It even says so right below that table. Also 15 DP is quite a bit to spend compared to 8 DP for an 8.

But even so lets say the GM approved everything about this creature. The first thing is your GM will learn a valuable lesson about the players in his group and that this particular player likes to power game. (Honestly this guy is a bit of a duche, but I dont blame him for min maxing we all do it at some point in our gaming life, most of us just dont feel the urge to make the GMs life miserable).

Speaking from a GMs perspective on the matter I would simply let them blaze though the obsticles I lay before them since its what would happen in real life in that situation. That creature is the type of thing villians are made of. I dont know what the setting or main plot line of your GMs game is, but that dosent matter. At some point in time some one will get irked by this creature and its summoner. From the sounds of it the creature is only good at sneaking up on people, not detecting them. I would have some one sneak up on the summoner and kidnap him or kill him out right. This would teach the player to not piss of the GM again, it would be consistant with realisum of the world. (Realisticly the creature would be able to burn though a large number of people before this happend), (realisticly doing so would anger the group whos people they belong to and they would put forth the nessicary reacorces to get rid of the summoner). Finally as some one else posted something like this would certinly attract the attention of tol rauko or the inqusition at some point in time and they might even take independant action against it.

Lastly make sure that this thing is NOT a familar because its impossible for a level 1 summoner to have a familar on his power alone. That is an immidatly nerf that I would issue since I would not have allowed it in the first place. Secondly make sure the creature is always attempting to break free of its masters control. Nothing says pwned like getting raped by your own etherial ninja.

Check GM's kit p15 to see what is recommanded for a summoner

You can also have a look at the sample summonner, and her Babelion (which is only bound, not turned familiar) pp28-29

The GM toolkit makes it pretty clear that this kind of power level is not what's intended for a starting summoner. However, it's there now, so the best approach for the GM is to deal with it as a major campaign character. As such, the moment the group runs into a dangerous opponent who's a summoner or dark paladin there's going to be trouble. Any group like this will gradually gain a reputation and any major enemies will start to have a defense against this creature and will target it first.Given that spirits are destroyed at 0 LP, it's very likely the ninja-spirit won't last long in the campaign.

This of course relies on the GM to balance things logically against the characters' capabilities. Taking a familiar should be risky, and one heavily based on combat is a huge risk.

Why are you still talking about familars, NO ONE SHOULD START the game at LEVEL ONE with a FAMILAR.

I've learned to use many minions and strike hard the summoner, so also the familiar feels pain!

commanderq said:

That's true, but it's done now, so I was just suggesting how I would deal with it. As GM, I certainly wouldn't have allowed a starting character a familiar at low level.

Another point, going back to the original post... the creature's stats were bought with DP? That rule isn't there for summoners, it's used for a few rare spells that actually create an entity. Summoned creatures should follow standard creature rules and have stats that are either chosen (when the GM has created the creature/character) or could feasibly be rolled by a summoner player with GM approval. The character didn't create the thing, so the GM has final say about whether a summoned creature exists at all and on what its stats are if it does.

I have a summoner and a Dark paladin with high summoning skills at my table, and I gave both a familiar a lvl 1 (first game I GM). Both familiars were created by me, so they're really balanced, I gave them lots of secondary skills and not much creature powers, and some disadvantages.

But the true problem I have now is with the numbers : 5 player characters + 2 familiars + possibly 3 other creatures bound = 10 on the PC side, this makes it difficult finding good opposition, it wouldn't be logical (even in fantasy terms) to have all bandits or guards being in groups of 10 ... Anyway it's not fully a familiar problem, as at lvl 3 or 4 maybe I wouldn't see a reason to not allow a familiar, but for the fights I have to have 1 tough mob, 2 or 3 lesser, and 4 to 7 low power things to get to 10.