The "Summoning" Fabled Powers

[Electroely]

Right now, there are four Fabled Power families in the game: Shield, Lightning, Summoning and Frost.

All of them are really fleshed out, with many powers to both cause their effects and augment them, except for the Summoning ones. There's only three of them (Minions, Charm and Portals) and they're kind of underwhelming. Minions deal low very damage (as their stats don't scale with frenzy level), Charm often ends up activating on a weaker enemy and Portals offer no direct advantage in combat.

I also noticed that for each run, the game picks two Fabled Power families which will be the only ones you will see throughout the run.

I bring this up because I've started to become pretty upset whenever the game picks Summoning as one of the two families. All the other ones have lots of variety to them, and the effects of certain powers can augment the player's build incredibly well. When Summoning is chosen I often reroll its powers just to end up getting the same power twice, because the possible power pool is tiny at that point.

I'd like to suggest that Summoning should no longer be a Fabled Power family. I would say I'd like to see them appear as regular powers instead, but as previously mentioned they're all kind of underwhelming (especially for Legendary-tier powers) and without any buffs to them I doubt I'd ever take any of them other than Charm, since it at least has potential to charm a helpful Rot.

[MrMyther]

57 minutes ago, Electroely said:

I also noticed that for each run, the game picks two Fabled Power families which will be the only ones you will see throughout the run.

I think a good way to change this would be to have ALL fables able to spawn, until the player(s) had picked up two fabled types.
The Summon family totally needs a bit of expanding the same way Charge and Shield have had though, definitely the worst of the four sets.

[Azamagon]

Yeah, they definitely feel underdeveloped. My gut feeling says that they are already working on expanding them though (just like they did with Lightning and Shield).

Just some quickly brainstormed ideas of what they could do:

• All minions' health and damage now scale with difficulty level.
• Whenever you gain boosts to things like runspeed, damage, critlcal chance etc it also applies to minions.
• All forms of minions will count as an allied player in respect to your gear and powers. For example:
  • They will count as being near an ally for the Mothball set.
  • If you give allies Shields (like with the Immorel Diadem), you also give Shields to your minions.
  • If you heal with the Gourdo Vest, you heal minions too.

New Summoning power ideas:

• Thinking With Portals (Rebalanced)
  • When you double tap Dodge, summon up to 2 Portals to teleport between. Upon teleporting, also gain +50% runspeed for 6 seconds.
• Trusted Ally (Fabled Summoning Power, Gold)
  • Start each clearing with a more durable minion, which can both shoot from afar and fight up close.
• Warp Hole (Fabled Summoning Power, Gold)
  • Somewhere close to the middle of the clearing, a warp hole is spawned. If you enter it, you will be teleported to a random spot on the clearing, while pushing back any nearby enemies and also boosting your runspeed by +50% for 6 seconds.
    • Enemies cannot enter the Warp hole.
• Strength in Numbers (Summoning Sub-power, Bronze)
  • For every minion or portal currently present on the battlefield, gain +10/15/20% damage.
• Explosive Goodbye (Summoning Sub-power, Gold)
  • Create an explosion whenever a minion dies, or create an explosion at both the entrance and exit of a portal when traversing it. Explosions via portal travel have a 5(?) second cooldown.
• Deadly Bonds (Summoning Sub-power, Silver)
  • Generate beams which link between you and all your minions and/or portals. Enemies touching these beams suffer up to 15/25% weapon damage every 0,5 seconds. The closer you (the player) are to the enemy, the more damage a beam deals.
    • Multiple beams can hit a single enemy at once. So good positioning can make it a quite powerful damaging tool.
• Necromancer (Minion-based Sub-power, Bronze)
  • Whenever a minion dies (and if not replaced by other minions), it will come back to life again after 12/10/8 seconds.
• Angry Mob (Minion-based Sub-power, Bronze)
  • Minions deal from +25/50/75% and up to +100/200/300% damage, depending on how close they are to you. The closer they are, the more damage they deal.
• Sturdy Minions (Minion-based Sub-power, Silver)
  • Minions have +50/100% maximum health.
• Meat Shield (Minion-based Sub-power, Gold)
  • When you take damage, redirect 75% of that damage to your closest minion instead.
• Slipstream (Portal-based Sub-power, Bronze)
  • Whenever you enter a portal, gain an additional +20/35/50% runspeed for 6 seconds.
• Warp Debris (Portal-based Sub-power, Bronze)
  • Whenever you enter a portal, shoot a piercing projectile from the exit position travelling back towards the entrance portal, dealing 100/150/200% weapon damage.
• Gravity Well (Portal-based Sub-power, Silver)
  • Enemies who are close to any of your portals move 33/50% slower.
    • Same radius as the Imposing Presence, but with the aura centered around your portal(s).
• Body Double (Portal-based Sub-power, Gold)
  • Whenever you enter a portal, summon a copy of yourself at the entrance portal. The copy lasts 5 seconds, can move, has 50% of your max health and fights with 25% of your power! 10 second cooldown.
    • The copy counts as a minion, and getting this power would allow you to also get the minion-based powers like Necromancer, Angry Mob, Sturdy Minions and Meat Shield.

[MrMyther]

6 hours ago, MrMyther said:

I think a good way to change this would be to have ALL fables able to spawn, until the player(s) had picked up two fabled types.
The Summon family totally needs a bit of expanding the same way Charge and Shield have had though, definitely the worst of the four sets.

Seems this is either already how it works - or multiplayer increases the fable capacity a bit.

[jambell]

On 3/16/2025 at 1:21 PM, Azamagon said:

Yeah, they definitely feel underdeveloped. My gut feeling says that they are already working on expanding them though (just like they did with Lightning and Shield).

This is indeed correct!

We have plans to revisit and develop these more, similar to those families.

Right now, With A Little Help and Enchantée are alright in some cases in single player because they act as another "player" on the field to draw aggro, but other than that, agreed that they are severely underwhelming. There is a lot of potential that is being unmet presently!

[GodIess]

I can suggest the following:

• Substitution

With perfect evasion, leave a copy of yourself that will draw attention to yourself and then disappear.
The improved version explodes after the action is over.

• Call for help

Every 10 attacks creates a minion that deals a few blows and disappears

• Savior

1 time per location if you take lethal damage and have at least 1 minion, restore 10% of your HP

[Azamagon]

17 hours ago, jambell said:

This is indeed correct!

We have plans to revisit and develop these more, similar to those families.

Right now, With A Little Help and Enchantée are alright in some cases in single player because they act as another "player" on the field to draw aggro, but other than that, agreed that they are severely underwhelming. There is a lot of potential that is being unmet presently!

So glad to hear that! ^_^

Also a little extra thought here: Please also take into consideration that some of these powers are also bad on "single target" boss encounters. For example, With a Little Help and Enchantée are almost entirely useless on the Owl boss, and are sadly entirely useless on the non-superfrenzy Swarm fight (same thing with Lightning powers). If that could be alleviated a bit, somehow, I think that would also go a long way into making the powers more enticing to pick.

[jambell]

3 hours ago, Azamagon said:

So glad to hear that! ^_^

Also a little extra thought here: Please also take into consideration that some of these powers are also bad on "single target" boss encounters. For example, With a Little Help and Enchantée are almost entirely useless on the Owl boss, and are sadly entirely useless on the non-superfrenzy Swarm fight (same thing with Lightning powers). If that could be alleviated a bit, somehow, I think that would also go a long way into making the powers more enticing to pick.

Yep, that is always in consideration!

However, it is by design that some builds have weaknesses. Part of making a good build is knowing what problems you have to deal during the run you are on, and making choices accordingly. If you take With A Little Help to draw aggro during a Super Frenzy run during the "rooms", but that power is a dud against a boss without adds, that is intended friction. For those bosses, you could consider this to be spending power later in order to retain health now: it's going to help you enter the boss fight with more health, but it's not going to help you a lot once you get there.

For example, look to Time Eater from Slay the Spire which punishes you for playing lots of cards -- if you land in Act 3 to find a Time Eater and have a Shiv build, you need to adjust your build now or you're going to lose.

Not everything can be good for every purpose, and skilled build-making is making choices with that in mind!

[Azamagon]

55 minutes ago, jambell said:

Yep, that is always in consideration!

However, it is by design that some builds have weaknesses. Part of making a good build is knowing what problems you have to deal during the run you are on, and making choices accordingly. If you take With A Little Help to draw aggro during a Super Frenzy run during the "rooms", but that power is a dud against a boss without adds, that is intended friction. For those bosses, you could consider this to be spending power later in order to retain health now: it's going to help you enter the boss fight with more health, but it's not going to help you a lot once you get there.

For example, look to Time Eater from Slay the Spire which punishes you for playing lots of cards -- if you land in Act 3 to find a Time Eater and have a Shiv build, you need to adjust your build now or you're going to lose.

Not everything can be good for every purpose, and skilled build-making is making choices with that in mind!

(I wanna preface this by saying that I'm not trying to be contrarian here, I just love to have a direct discussion about the game's design with one of the devs! I absolutely love the game, so please read the stuff below as if I'm saying it in a jolly and enthusiastic tone!)

I can totally see what you are saying with the design decisions you have to make. As I mostly play solo, taking minion powers and especially survivability powers are often essential to my kinda old and slow reflexes hehe. And the fact that we have the ability to pick up a whole bunch of powers along the way also alleviates some of these "dud on an addless bossfight" choices, so there's that too.

However, the slight problem I have with that kind of design is that there are some powers that work really well both against crowds and singular bosses. Just a very simple example, take a combination of say, Pinãta / Encore with Morale Booster and you will be quite survivable (and deal nice damage) against most things pretty easily. Or just Bloodthirsty on its own. But I guess stuff like that is an inevitable problem when you have so many choices and variables in a game like this.

I guess one way to keep things interesting is to make sure that the "niched" powers (like Lightning powers, which are pure crowd-oriented bonuses), are genuinely great at their niche. And, as we've said, yeah, Summoning powers need further development - but so are (imo) Lightning powers. Just taking Thin the Herd as your main (and even only) AoE-power and levelling that up arguably does a much better job at crowdclear than a bunch of Lightning powers combined do, imo. At least in tougher content where enemies have more health.

Aaaanyway, enough of my rambling! I'm super excited for the update on Thursday, as am I for the future Summoning powers! ^_^

[Anxiattack]

I have a question less related to the fabled powers, and more to do with the update itself. I was just wondering when we can expect the Grimhollow Heartstone to actually have an effect? Thanks in advance if you have an answer to this question Jambell!

[jambell]

2 hours ago, Azamagon said:

(I wanna preface this by saying that I'm not trying to be contrarian here, I just love to have a direct discussion about the game's design with one of the devs! I absolutely love the game, so please read the stuff below as if I'm saying it in a jolly and enthusiastic tone!)

Noted, and clarification appreciated!  Good points throughout! While I think aiming to make everything in the game precisely equally viable is probably an unattainable goal, I think this is a key point: "to make sure that the "niched" powers, are genuinely great at their niche". That seems like a great thing to keep in mind for sure!

12 minutes ago, Anxiattack said:

 I was just wondering when we can expect the Grimhollow Heartstone to actually have an effect? Thanks in advance if you have an answer to this question Jambell!

These are part of a larger system overhaul which will take some time to cook. More info to come

[Anxiattack]

Alright. Thank you for the clarification!