DMG2 Excerpt: Companion Characters

[Piratecat]

I've effectively used companion characters in every game I've ever run. It's good to see them in 4e.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

as others have mentioned - the reason to not use a regular PC is because it can be very complex.

The past few months, we usually had only 3 players and one DM in our group (with changing "cast" - normally we are 5, but 2 of us have to work weekend and evening/night shifts). So often, one of us is playing two characters. It is sometimes a daunting task to keep them all straight, and I know from myself that I occassionally forget special abilities. (Skewer the Weak, Shadow Walk come to my mind).

Running a real NPC is considerably easier.

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A thought occurs to me - if anyone is interested in playing a "simplified" D&D - just use NPC or Companion stats. That way, one can probably also easily recreate older edition gameplay with several henchmen at your side.

 

[Belorin]

This is pretty much an update of the old follower, henchmen and hirelings rules from 1E & 2E, I really kind of missed them, the leadership feat never really did them justice.

Bel

 

[Daern]

I've been reading through the War of the Burning Sky modules and looking at all the ally statblocks (possibly three or four allies at one time) and thinking "how would I turn these into simple monster stats?" --these DMGII tables look to be just the thing

 

[Baumi]

Last weekend I gave the players 2 NPCs too fill in the ranks (3 players and I didn't want to scale the adventure down).

I created them with the Character Builder and scaled them down according to the NPC rules (only 1 at-will, encounter, daily and only the most outstanding race/class features, I also used only the "summarize" and copied the attack/Damage stats). The only thing I did change was to stay with the usual (Pc-like) hitpoints and surges.

But after the adventure I realized that it would have been even easier to just use the Monster Builder ... which seems to be exactly like they suggest in this article. No worry about Items, stats .. just take a fitting monster and swap/change a power or two and change the hitpoints.

 

[weem]

I was excited when I saw this one was coming. I've done a number of companion things in my games and I was interested to see what they were going to present - but I think I will have to wait and see the various tables because what they have here is not anything that will help me much - what I have been doing is pretty simple and in a number of ways is similar to this already.

I'm really excited about the next one though, Advanced Encounters (Aug 24).

 

[CapnZapp]

Did I miss something, or did these rules basically boil down to "if the DM and players agree, it's okay to add a companion using the regular NPC stats."...?

I mean, there was considerable tweaking discussed, but really, what's the point.

I've already allowed the party to befriend a NPC Paladin (at a time they didn't have much healing themselves) who I gave 3 healing surges instead of the stupid one. (But who I otherwise used verbatim from the excellent Book of NPCs)

I don't really see anything that adds or changes this; what I'd call common sense.

So, did I miss something, or can we just skip that chapter when the book comes out?

 

[CapnZapp]

I should probably clarify. In 3E, there was a whole subsystem of mechanics governings hirelings and cohorts.

I don't see anything of this here.

Obviously I realize the worth of having an official "yes, it's okay to allow NPCs as allies" statement from the designers.

But other than that, it seems there is no crunch needed to run an ally*. Almost all of the excerpted text could be categorized as DM advice, and probably should have been presented as freely running text, rather than the numbered list, which suggests a procedure you should follow and could benefit from.

*) I'm guessing the referred-but-not-shown guidelines for ally hit points and surges will recommend less hp but more surges (changing the ally from being a monster into a PC in this regard). However, I'm not so sure that actually is necessary. Having lots of HP but few surges does seem to be a neat simplification, and allows the PC Leader to focus on the player characters.

 

[CapnZapp]

And oh...

It's a relief to see that we probably won't get any of the "an ally shares your actions" silliness.

OTOH, I expect any Rangers wanting an animal companion to select the Two-Weapon build and get their DM to give them their bear or wolf through this ally system instead.

 

[Nikosandros]

Did I miss something, or did these rules basically boil down to "if the DM and players agree, it's okay to add a companion using the regular NPC stats."...?

The excerpt is missing the table with hit points and healing surges. Using normal NPC rules means that an heroic companion only has one surge and, in my experience of having Splug accompany the party, this isn't enough.