Li Shenron
Legend
My view of sidekicks, and it's what I put in the feedback, was that they were unnecessarily complicated.
I already have the basics of the classes memorized but sidekicks required me to remember new classes that were *almost* like actual classes - enough similarity that it was easy to confuse what the features were.
I liked the idea of a sidekick, but not the execution.
I agree completely...
Let's wait until the second iteration of Sidekicks, but IMHO it's a terrible idea to just design them as "slightly inferior" PC classes. If that's what you really want, you don't need "sidekick classes", just use PHB classes and make basic obvious choices (e.g. Champion Fighter with Defense fighting style, Wizard with iconic spells...).
The level of the sidekick should really just be a gaming group's preference, not a hard rule. Because if the level is too high (relative to the PCs) then it won't feel much of a sidekick, and if it is too low it might be too squishy. But how high is too high? For some group the same level as the PC is already too high to call it a sidekick, but others groups wouldn't mind a dumb Fighter bodyguard of higher level than you, and others yet won't tolerate even a close level and would want it maybe 3-4 levels below at least. If we all start to house rule the level, then why having a hard rule at all?
The UA article also had another critical miss: many of the new unique features in these sidekick classes are actually good. So it creates a situation where a player would actually want the PC to have some of these features, and will inevitably ask "why sidekicks can have these features, but not regular PCs"?
In my feedback, I suggested that these new features could be introduced as variant/alternative class features for PHB classes. Then all we really need is guidelines for (a) designing sidekicks using PHB classes + variant features, with suggestions on what to choose (with the purpose of keeping the complexity as low as wanted, so that sidekicks feel less than regular PCs) and (b) handle XP sharing and/or level advancement in a simple way but without hard rules.