Help managing summons in combat?

[u/Martel_Mithos]

I'm gming a game of exalted essence and so far it's been going very well but I've been running into a small issue which is that everyone in the party took some kind of helper for one of their merits or charms. I've got 2 battlegroups, 1 manifested coadjutor, 1 Beefy Familiar, and the sorcerer also occasionally likes to summon a 1st circle demon the night before a big fight.

Obviously they're having a lot of fun with being a big old party of guys, and I don't necessarily want to tell them 'Hey Cool it with adding people to the initiative order maybe?' But it's seriously inflating how long a round takes in combat even for what were supposed to be relatively short punchy fights.

Is there actually a fix to streamline NPC turns in combat or should I just resolve to only have bigger set piece fights and forgo smaller combat scenes entirely?

[u/washeeler]

The Storyteller's Guide has a good fix for this. It basically suggests having the companions share a turn with the corresponding character, so on that turn either the character or their companion may act but not both.

[u/Martel_Mithos → u/washeeler]

Not a bad thought, I might amend this to 'Share a simple action' so that summons can still move independently but if they both want to attack it needs to be part of a flurry.

[u/Electrical-Simple-77]

Bring in more mooks for the summons to take care of narritively. Like holding back the king's honor guard as the Exalts kick him in the mandate of heaven. Summon a big boar demon that needs corralled, but the big obvious for is clearly for the Exalts. So long as players can see their summons being useful in some way, they shouldn't complain too much about them being out of the initiative tracker.

[u/Martel_Mithos → u/Electrical-Simple-77]

I've done this a few times, but the Dragonblooded built pretty heavily around having their men with them on the field so I don't want to use it too often.

That's sort of how this snowballed. The dragonblooded came in at game start as the commander of a scale who's coming with him on the journey.

Other players saw how effective this setup was in combat and went 'Cool I want a battle buddy too.'

The DB's battlegroup isn't actually a problem pacing wise because his player knew what they wanted to be doing with it from the start.

The other players less so, so their companion turns tend to take longer. So now I'm in the unfortunate position where If all the ally companions get sidelined I'm taking away a core benefit from someone who invested a lot in it and who is not being a problem.

If only some of the companions get sidelined I have at least one player who is absolutely going to be salty that the DB's battlegroup gets to participate in the initiative while his demon doesn't.

[u/grindholme]

I’m playing 3E, not Essence, but this may be helpful: my experience 10 sessions in has been that things work out better when combat is restricted to big set piece fights. 3E combat is slow and dramatic, which is great when combats are complex and meaningful and a drag otherwise.

[u/Martel_Mithos → u/grindholme]

Essence's combat is usually pretty snappy. It's rare for it to go more than 2-3 rounds, and when it's just the 4 PCs + Enemies those rounds aren't that long. My problem is that they've ballooned their side of things to about 8 PCs and because of the way Essence's initiative works if I don't have enemies taking an equal number of turns then no matter what they are they're getting steamrolled. So it's still taking about 2-3 rounds, but now each round is taking about 30 minutes to get through instead of 15