[K Peculier]

After many years of seeing the community creatively roleplay youkais actively defeating people while munching on a fresh patch of grass face-down like a champ as the summoner...

I think it's probably fair to tone down their KO'd butts youkai team when they're down.

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Here are some solutions I've thought up.

1. Defeating the summoner will cause all their summons to unsummon themselves.

2. Defeating the summoner will cause all their summons to lose half HP until 0.

3. Defeating the summoner will cause all their summons to cost 5x the FP upkeep.

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Post down your thoughts and such below friends.

[adamkad1]

I think 3 is a nice option but like, what about other minion classes? (Engineer and priest?) they may not be as good as youkai (probably?) but still could clutch

[HaTeD]

I believe engi bots to be better than youkai atm. No drain, better tanking, more hit rate on abilities and an autohit on one that does really good damage if you can get it off.

youkai have their own hit scaling and wont hit a dedicated evasion user at all.

So long as we understand that youkai also need a little tuning to the GR2 update....

Yes, I support this post. I believe a mix of options 2-3 to be best for such a balance change. For reasons of logic and mechanical balance. I hope such balance changes are extended and/or given the same amount of thought when it comes to other summonable companions in the game.

[adamkad1]

As far as I understand, a youkai contract is typically to protect the summoner (or at least youkai's want to do it because the summoner lets them go into the physical world for extended periods of time, and an unconscious summoner probably still generates focus, so option 3 makes the most sense.
And yeah. Youkai kinda suck in combat due to what hated said. I only see Suzaku hitting a dedicated evasion user.

[K Peculier]

This isn't really about the strengths of youkai in general but more like how you have to go through the entire zoo on a summoner as their weird blue snake noodle thing hovers over the furthest corner of the map while you worked hard to make them eat dirt.

If you think about it, why would monsters/evil players suddenly just stop attacking you to go after your youkai when they're directly linked to you?

All youkai are created equally, some youkai are just better at running to a corner.

Another solution I can think of is that the youkai need to be within 3 tiles of the KO'd summoner to still be active on the battlefield to mimic the fact that they should be protecting the summoner rather than going on a journey of self-discovery.

[HaTeD]

i understand and agree with your logic, but at the same time i feel things need to be mechanically balanced. this might be a post for youkai specifically but i feel the same for all summoned companions.

some bots are better frames for becoming mechanations in that case by running to the corner of the map

either way, a debuff on the summons could be a pleasant change if their summoner get's ko'd

[Collector]

A good means of going about this would be to make KO'd targets enter a state where they can't be interacted with by living targets, and vice versa. In this way, Youkai wouldn't be able to take the FP from the summoner's FP pool to sustain themselves, and would be unsummoned during the next turn. This would also solve the problem of several skills and spells being applied to downed targets, rendering resurrection/death defying abilities less effective. A priest can Second Chance the basic attacker next to them for help, but they won't be doing much if they were just Adon Graxis'd while KO'd.

Make KO more impactful.

While Youkai contracts are definitely there to 'protect' the summoner, they have ample opportunity to do this before their summoner goes down. Having your summoner with 1000 base fp die while their six summons beat you to death shouldn't be a viable game plan, IC or otherwise.

Any sort of summon that lingers after their summoner/maintainer's death should be either removed from combat or destroyed.

[K Peculier]

i understand and agree with your logic, but at the same time i feel things need to be mechanically balanced. this might be a post for youkai specifically but i feel the same for all summoned companions.

some bots are better frames for becoming mechanations in that case by running to the corner of the map

either way, a debuff on the summons could be a pleasant change if their summoner get's ko'd

Considering summons that are able to be player controlled should theoretically not have full automatic AI/souls this could probably apply to controlled summons in general.

[Autumn]

I would say that summons staying after defeat is very advantageous for them and not in the wrong way, given that it can be actually very thematic. But given that this system exists from before GR was even a thing, and FP values have inflated by a fair margin since then, some of these systems may have become a bit strong, I think increasing the maintenance costs by double is reasonable, that way the youkai can persist after death, but not for a terribly lengthy amount of time.

It should be noted that anything beyond that starts to become unreasonable, as it should be noted that summoners are already at a disadvantage when dead obviously, not only losing access to momentum each turn they are incapacitated, but also future momentum through the badly beaten debuff, as well as FP Regeneration halting when you are not alive, which when you're gaining 20-30 each turn....that starts hacking away at their youkai upkeep already.

[Lolzytripd]

Perhaps a debuff while the controller is ko'd for all pets then, reduced momentum without the guidance.