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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brown Jenkin" data-source="post: 1271575" data-attributes="member: 2572">Our campaign has 1 Animal Companion and 2 Cohorts. The Animal Companion and 1 Cohort are handled excactly the same way with the other Cohort picked up for off-camera running of a spy network. General principles are followed but each is treated as needed.Both Cohorts and Animal Companions are open to the characters. This is a neccesity since the player is responsible for the cohort durring combat.The Animal Companion and one Cohort were created from scratch by the players. The other was an NPC that latter became a Cohort so it was originally stated by the DM. The players do work with the DM on background so that the DM can resonably insert the character and can can include future plot hooks via the Cohort. All players have full future development rights. This could be justified in that the leader character can give orders on how the cohort is to train. It also takes some of the burden off the DM. The players have full control during combat but the DM can overrule any unreasonable actions. Outside of combat the PC can give orders on what to do but the DM has NPC control over thought, speach and actions. The player roll-plays the character while the DM role-plays the character. This relieves the DM of extra work in combat and the insider knowlege that goes with it, but prevents the Cohort from become a personality extention of the player. It might be possible for a player to successfully role-play two characters but that is asking a lot of others. This seems like a good compromise to me.XP via 3.5. One of the few 3.5 changes I fully embrace as needed and successful.Treasure is up the the party. This has not been an issue for us yet as the Animal Companion gets nothing, the secret cohort also gets nothing since the player is keeping this from the party, and the adventuring Cohort is a Rokugan Samurai so can spend xp to improve her weapons allowing the Cohort to maintain parity without a share of the treasure.This system seems to work well. The biggest issue I could see with player control of a Cohort in combat is that it does double the players actions in combat. This is not quite as extreme as it might sound at first since this is also the case for Animal Companions and Familiars since level 1. Since Druids, Rangers, Wizards and Sorcerers already control multiple "characters" durring combat why souldn't everone else be allowed this same feature of the game. As for the adventuring cohort it is a bodyguard for a spellcaster so its job is to stay with the spellcaster. If it ever left to fight in the front ranks instead of its job the DM would be perfectly justified in overruling that action.</blockquote>

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