D&D 5E Valuing a Companion character (Animal Companion, Familiar, Cohort)

Hi everyone.I'm fiddling with the balance of pet classes and I was wondering how you as a player value your character's pets. Do you consider them to be a drain on your healing resources, and a liability that you like to overprotect? Or do you consider it to be a near doubling of your hit points since you have two separate HP pools to deplete (Making you have more to do as long as you aren't fighting something with significant area attacks)?If a pet never gets attacked, then in combat it is purely offensive power. If a pet gets dropped, a chunk of your offensive power goes down, but at least that damage didn't go to you or the other characters. In the middle, your pet is acting as both additional damage and defensive oomph.Basically, how do you factor that extra HP and extra healing cost into the pet's design? Do you think a damage focused pet character should deal equal damage to a solitary damage focused character? Or should they deal a little less since they have the defensive benefits of having two separate characters?

I think the power of pets is tied to the actions of the PC. If the pet needs to use the action of the PC to attack, then I see no problem. If the PC can attack and have pets that attack on their own, it seems more powerful than other PCs. I also could go with having the PC take on a follower or cohort like in older editions. I am not sure on having them wait until higher level before getting followers. I can see how this may not work for people wanting pets as a option at low level.

Is there a difference with human followers and animals? Does one lend itself to taking their own actions? What about smart monsters as followers?

I can also see that having pets makes the flanking option more powerful.

When you are a DM, the more you treat a pet like an actual player character in the party the less concern there is about "game balance". They are no longer just mechanics to deal with, they are characters with personalities and relationships to the others in the group. Thus the players and their PCs react and treat the pet as they would another party member and concerns about dealing too much damage or being a drain on healing fall away.

DEFCON 1 said:

When you are a DM, the more you treat a pet like an actual player character in the party the less concern there is about "game balance". They are no longer just mechanics to deal with, they are characters with personalities and relationships to the others in the group. Thus the players and their PCs react and treat the pet as they would another party member and concerns about dealing too much damage or being a drain on healing fall away.

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The downside of this approach is that if the pet is equivalent to a PC, the player is essentially running two characters at once. Depending on the player's experience, it may cause delays at the table. Additionally, some players might feel it is imbalanced to allow a player to run two characters (of course, this assumes that not everyone gets a pet).

Just some issues I've seen at my table over the years. It varies though. My current players can handle as many as four characters at the same time without significant slow downs, and don't seem to mind if another player has more characters than they do.

I'd never let my other group (newbies) attempt that though. One player drew the Knight (Deck of Many Things) and even though it was just a fighter, and he was running a ranger (not too high on complexity) his turns took much longer. Fortunately, he got tired of running that character and retired him, so the issue resolved itself.

I'm talking about mechanics. Should a damage focused pet based character deal comparable damage to a non pet based damage focused character, or should the pet character deal less since they, effectively, have double the hp?

Arguably, they should deal less damage if they have higher durability (I say durability, because if the pet user has double hp but less AC, for example, they effectively don't have double hp). That assumes everything else being equal, as some classes have less combat ability in exchange for greater versatility in the other pillars.

The tricky thing is, the double hp concept really only works if the hps are one pool. If they're divided into two pools, it becomes significantly more difficult to estimate what the effective durability actually amounts to. The pet user will fare far differently in a fight against single target damage (where double the durability is double durability) vs AoE damage (where the "double durability" is likely to not be double at all).

I'd guess the right amount to be 1.5 times the durability and damage of a solo class (assuming it's evenly divided between pet and master, whenever the pet is defeated the master functions at 3/4ths of solo capability). If you go 100% master and 50% pet, the pet is too expendable, and likely won't factor in too often. Flipped the other way, and it's the PC that becomes expendable.

IMO, pets are tricky to design unless baked into the game's assumptions (ie, if you give all the classes pets, it becomes relatively easy to balance).

Having played a Revised Ranger Beastmaster a few months back, I can say that the balance was very wobbly. When my pet was in the fight I felt like a beast, but it could get taken out fairly easily, and then I'd feel like a wimp. Still, I'd say it was in the right ballpark, at least for a pet class.