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So, my group plays Narrative pretty much exclusively, using power levels with scenarios (or Open War cards)

It seems like, in terms of Summoning (Demons, or Gaunts from the big 'nid spawning monsters) - basically creating units without a cost, can get a little overpowering, especially in low Power Level games. At 50 Power Level one could summon dozens of PL worth of units. (Creating units from Scenario rules, such as recycling dead units, or paying command points to resurrect a unit, are 'free' as usual, as they are part of the scenario design or have a cost associated with them)

I feel like the easiest thing to do is that you cannot summon/create models that you hadn't already paid for - for example, if you have 40 Termagants in your army and you have a Tervigon, you can't create a new unit of ten until at least ten Termagants have died already. Or, if you're summoning some Daemons, you have to have paid for them in your army list already, whether they deployed or not (so you could deploy with 10 Plaguebearers, but then they died, your sorcerer could then summon them again. Or not deploy them at all, and summon them immediately)
Basically; you have to have paid PL for the unit at least once. You can recycle the Termagants a billion times if you so desire.

How do other groups deal with summoning in Open/Narrative play? What kind of creative houserules do other groups use for this kind of situation?

The whole point of open/narrative play is that the players have maximum agency. If your buddies are making things un-fun by spamming summoned units you need to talk to them about it. Also remember that even the open rules don’t technically allow proxies; if they are using buckets of Army Men instead of plague bearers, they need to step back and take a breath.

That said, for daemons especially, you can go the whole “summoned with sacrifice” route and limit summons to equivalent power of the army that’s already been destroyed. Unless they were already part of the army, as you said.

If you're playing Open or Narrative and it's not fun for both then you're doing it wrong. Have a chat and agree parameters for everyone to enjoy the game.

its narrative, so try and create some new rules to go along with it.

what if: after summoning, both players have a roll off to see who controls the daemons: Chaos wins, their binding spells worked, but the other player wins and the Daemons have turned on their masters. I like the new Empyric Storm chart for allowing both players to (potentially) get lesser/greater daemons of their own.


Narrative is also usually played with a disproportionate amount of points, so if I were playing a Summoning themed list, I would definitely give my opponent a leg up on points.

Yep, time to find new people to play with if they won't re-act to a conversation about the spirit of the game.

I always payed power level for my daemons when playing PL games regardless - it's just broken to be able to summon so much extra (and it obviously gets exponentially worse the smaller the game).

Or, I think a good middle ground at the beginning of the game is to establish a reasonable power level worth of monsters to be cast. Say 10 power per 50 power of the game level, etc. This will provide a few cool units of daemons and not break the game in half, etc.

Aye, agree the max number of free summoned things they can have. Easy fix.

Oh, no, don't get me wrong, we have fun all the time. My original post was basically the consensus my group had made, but we were wondering how other groups also did it.

Basically what we had agreed on was "can't bring new models onto the table unless they had already been paid for with PL initially."

Using our discussed houserule:

So in the situation with the 'nid player has purchased in his army, which includes a Tervigon and 40 Termagants, the Tervigon couldn't create a new unit of 10 until at least 10 Termagant models had died. If ten more models die, the Tervigon can bring those back on, etc. If there was only 8 dead models, the Tervigon couldn't create a new unit with them. So the dead models form a pool from which the Tervigon could use over and over, but at least the Termagants were paid for initially.

In the situation with Chaos and summoning demons, our houserule would mean Plaguebearers can't be summoned unless they were part of the original army power level spent. So say I bring 10 plaguebearers in my army, then I summon them, and they are all killed, I could then summon them again (and again) as I had paid for the models initially.

For example, last night my buddy and I played the Ambush at Dhorak Pass scenario from the rulebook. I took my freshly painted Thousand Sons instead of Alpha Legion, and I had no demons ready, so we used Tzaangors as the demons that get summoned on turn 3. I paid the PL in my initial army cost, and even with that, we kept it so I had less PL overall than him (as per the scenario, the defender outnumbers the attacker). It worked very well. In fact the game came down to my having one model left with one wound left that prevented his Commissar (also with 1 wound left!) from exiting the table, in overtime! What a hoot!

But, I do like some suggestions you guys have had, re: "summon with sacrifice", very cool, and the empyric storms table. Thanks for the replies everyone!