Summon Sickness

[Mathias]

Hi all,

Sorry to bother you peeps again... I just keep on hitting some question which confuse me.

If you spawn a monster it is spawned with an inactive marker.

1) Can Feral Bobcat use his natural defense (8+ x1) when he is spawned and attacked in the same
round?

2) Same goes for our the Hydra with the counterattack trait?

To maintain logic both question should be yes or no.

If yes, it feels odd a Hydra can't attack but can use counterattack in his "summoning-round".
(Just a feeling - however there is a point in saying a spawned monster can not attack but is in
a defensive stance when he enters the field to avoid being crushed by other monsters)

If not, could you introduce a "Summon Sickness" token?

[pixelgeek]

The answer to both is Yes. The lack of an attack when summoned is mostly, I suspect, a balancing issue.

[Arcanus]

That's right. The flavor is that the creature is in a defensive stance, it can still somewhat defend itself, but can't start moving and acting yet.

And yes, it was for balance. The creatures are a great bargain for continuous ongoing damage, but that one round delay (plus the other rounds it requires to reach the enemy) help make them balanced vs. direct attack spells.

We used to have it where creatures came into play with a guard marker, but that was a little too powerful. The Beastmaster just summoned a new "meat shield" each round and he was very hard to beat!