Did you know there are 24 figurines of wondrous power in the D&D game right now? Ever wanted to play with them but found their benefits unclear and activation or control a bit wanting? How about a new way to use figurines altogether: as full DMG2-style party companion characters? You’ve come to the right place!
Figurines of wondrous power have been classic and exciting magical D&D treasures for years. Yet these enchanted animal and beast statuettes feel a little more clunky in their execution in 4e. Here are some ideas to better appreciate, include and improve figurines of wondrous power in your game.
Flavor and Playstle Benefits
Figurines of wondrous power are a great way to spice up roleplaying as well as simply a enjoyable inclusion for players or characters who are fond of pets and animals. Sometimes pets mirror their owners’ particular style, looks and personality. This is a great opportunity to include or search for a loyal and tough Onyx Dog or powerful, majestic Golden Lion figurine in your treasure-unearthing adventures. Perhaps Amber Monkeys, an Obsidian Steed or a Serpentine Owl are more your style of fit the adventure better? There’s plenty more too, including bigger beasts and vermin.
As DM, portray the animal or beast believably, with typical pet loyalty and excitement over their owner or party as appropriate – and maybe even comical dislike of one particular party member. As a player, go ahead and name your newly discovered “pet” whatever you like – or change its name to something more your tastes if you’ve learned the figurine already had one. Maybe the figurine will like the change – or it might hate it! The figurine owner can of course jump in anytime and roleplay their pets actions and reactions as well, especially with other party members.
Pet mannerisms, communication and reactions are often easy and fun for an entire playgroup to interact with and mimic. And with pets being as close to a universal element and theme you can get, that familiarity comes a greater roleplaying comfort level: lots of simple, easy and familiar roleplaying potential here, so enjoy it!
Gameplay Advantages
Figurines of wondrous power also offer some excellent mechanical benefits. As magic items and not true pets, they tend to offer a notable extra boost of power to a character and party’s arsenal, especially true in the item rarity era where daily magic item use limits have been lifted – gone are the days of saving all your daily magic item powers for when you think you might really need them, and ultimately never using any of them.
Also, figurines can make for an extra character to fill a role or fill out party size in the style of DMG2’s NPC companion characters. Though not as strong or nearly as available in some ways, they make a decent extra “ally” for a particular fight if you summon them early.
Which brings me to my next point: as conjured creatures, there’s some special rules as to how they play, often meaning they’re easier to manage in play. For example, they lack basic attacks and so you don’t have to worry about making opportunity attacks with your figurines. Also, you don’t have to worry about or track conditions affecting your figurine’s summoned creature, only damage dealt to it. Healing is also easier to track – in short, they don’t heal! They “live” and get dismissed or die when it comes to combat, that’s it. However, see Figurines as Companion Characters below for a true companion character-style alternative.
For complete rules on figurines and conjurations, see the Adventurer’s Vault and Rules Compendium to achieve full figurine mastery and conjuration enlightenment, respectively.
Duration
Figurines typically only last 8 hours of continuous time, so you are faced with an interesting choice right away. Do you keep it out for most of your day’s worth of traveling and adventuring? Or save it as a “watch dog” for when you sleep at night. Choose wisely, figurine owner. Either way, they can be fun and helpful additions to your party, ready to fight for and defend its master or masters.
Action Economy
With the daily magic item use limit now removed from 4e, there still remains one major hurdle with figurines of wondrous power in actual play: their action economy. In general, it’s pretty terrible. Not only does it cost you your most valued action to summon them into the fray, every action they take also costs you a minor action.
Talk about a deterrent for in-game use, especially when figurines do not level like true party companions and don’t always have excellent attack powers. Few players find it palatable or worth the cost to spend their standard action for anything besides one of their own – and typically much more powerful – attacks.
Instead, I suggest conjuring them them as either a minor or move action instead of a standard. This gets figurines of wondrous power into the battle faster and attacking, still with a cost, but without their owner spending their most valued action.
Figurines as Companion Characters
Want to implement your figurine of wondrous power as a true companion character or party ally per the DMG2 rules? With a couple of rules tweaks their availability, healing and leveling, creating these “greater” figurines and allies is easy!
Availability: Simply waive the 8 hour rule, meaning the conjured creatures only go away if dismissed or “killed.” If killed, they’re available again to be summoned after you take an extended rest, as normal.
Healing: Also allow healing, but only slowly, during rests. Use three times the standard number of surges for a monster by tier: three, six and nine total healing surges for heroic, paragon and epic play, respectively. Allow a character to spend two surges to heal the figuring for one healing surge worth of healing. This way, the party can ocassionally share in the responsibility of keeping their magical companion “alive” and well for the next fight, without making it a bit too easy to heal.
Keep in mind figurines of wondrous power do indeed benefit from temporary hit points, so abilities, powers and magic items that provide them naturally become more useful and valuable in increasing the durability of your figurine’s conjured creature. Once more, packing some potions of vigor is a great idea!
By added limited healing, a handful of healing surges, and emphasizing temporary hit points as an alternative, the limits and mystique of these unique conjurations, creatures and wondrous magical treasures is retained.
Leveling: Use the Monster Builder to “level up” the figurine, and voila, instant and very magical NPC companion character! As usual, though, keep an eye out for any game-breaking powers and scale them back or change them, like DMG2 suggests. You don’t want a figurine of wondrous power stage-stealing the party’s thunder – you want it to do what any NPC party ally does: help out without dominating. Dominating is what the PCs, as the true stars of the story, should be doing – at least sometimes!
Further Reading
Want more magic items and party allies? Here are some related posts to help inspire your D&D game:
For magic items, you might like Treasure, Wish Lists and Low-Level Magic Items, The Big 3 Potions and Magic Items: Consumables and Transmutes.
For more on companion characters, check out and Companion Characters: Gather Your Allies! and Fear of Death: How to Smoothly Manage Character Death.
Kilsek