These small leather bags come in a variety of colors, gray being the most common. You can use a bag of tricks to conjure an obedient beast. You must spend a healing surge to activate the bag’s power, and you gain no other benefit for spending the healing surge.
When you use a bag of tricks to conjure a creature, it appears in an unoccupied space within 5 squares of you; the space must be large enough to contain the creature without squeezing. The creature obeys only you, responding to commands spoken in any language. The creature remains until the end of the encounter or for 5 minutes. The conjured creature acts on the same initiative count as you. Every action it takes costs you a minor action (which you use to issue commands), and a conjured creature cannot exceed its normal allotment of actions (a standard, a move, and a minor action) during its turn. If you spend no minor actions on your turn to command the creature, it remains where it is without taking any actions on its turn.
A conjured creature is a minion (MM 282). It has no healing surges and cannot be healed, and it cannot gain temporary hit points. When reduced to 0 hit points or fewer, the conjured creature disappears. If an object is placed in the bag of tricks, the bag ceases to function until the object is removed. A bag of tricks used for simple storage holds up to 3 pounds.
But! But! But! YOU, YOU, YOU, The PC, lose your minor action compared to it, the MINION , pfft, gaining a standard, move, minor. That's totally more important.
Ancient History wrote:We were working on Street Magic, and Frank asked me if a houngan had run over my dog.
Daily Power Standard Action
Grunt and flex (aka: spend a healing surge) to squeeze a little furry animal out of your pouch. You can then marionette this creature around the board^H^H^H^H^H battlefield attracting derision and hilarity in your wake until someone take it upon themself to put the poor thing out of its misery.
4E bag of tricks = bag of puppets
Although...
Cat: 4 damage + knock prone. Do you think they intentionally keep the killer housecat in as an easter egg?
The gist of it is that you can use a minor action to get a standard action, which breaks the economy of actions. Of course, you are losing a healing surge and the thing will die to strong language, but the economy of actions has already started with it inflation.
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
but it doesn't *increase* your number of actions. Nor does it actually upgrade a minor to a standard. It allows you to spend a minor action to do special "minion standard actions" that, thanks to EBD, have nothing to do with actual standard actions that you as a character could take.
Really, it lets you spend a minor action to attack for 4 damage, which is totally in line with what minor actions can already do. As long as they continue to balance minion actions to that standard, it doesn't seem to be an issue.
Besides, its a daily power. They're apparently allowed to break action economy in half. See: Helm of... Heroes, I think? for a magic item example. Or any Warlord power. Any of them.
A_Cynic wrote:But! But! But! YOU, YOU, YOU, The PC, lose your minor action compared to it, the MINION , pfft, gaining a standard, move, minor. That's totally more important.
Absentminded_Wizard wrote:So how long before somebody on the WotC boards decries this as totally broken despite the weakness of your minion's powers?
Five seconds. Ten, if you'll only count it as long as the complainer points to something far worse and claims it to be better, or vice versa. Kinda like all those people who freak out about Spiked Chain Fighters, but think a 1-20 save or lose God wizard is perfectly acceptable.
The funniest thing about the bag of tricks is the cat, which apparently knocks any creature prone on a hit. So apparently your cat can take down ogres rather easily.
RandomCasualty2 wrote:The funniest thing about the bag of tricks is the cat, which apparently knocks any creature prone on a hit. So apparently your cat can take down ogres rather easily.
One would say that's a tricky cat even. Yeah, that's a bad one. I'll go shoot myself in the kneecaps now.
Ancient History wrote:We were working on Street Magic, and Frank asked me if a houngan had run over my dog.
