DMG2 Excerpt: Companion Characters

[JPL]

Fascinating article. Maybe a first step toward "monster" PCs?

I'm running an occasional one-shot for my brother-in-law and his two young sons . . . my thought is to maybe give each of the boys a companion, and have dad play a leader character. That way, the boys get to do most of the cool stuff (along with their pet monsters), and Dad can hand out buffs and help with the tactical movement.

 

[Vael]

I'm going to be DMing a 4 PC party through a pregen adventure soon, I'll be thinking about adding a companion for the party to control, then I won't bother adjusting encounters.

 

[kenmarable]

Fascinating article. Maybe a first step toward "monster" PCs?

Actually that was my first thought as well. Certainly not perfectly balanced with PCs, but in a "balance light"* campaign it's the start of an interesting framework. Might be fun to start messing around with that idea.

* I like to think of this as campaigns that pass the "Is everyone still having fun?" test, but perhaps not the exacting mathematical balance test if you look too closely.

 

[hexgrid]

I'm already using a monster stat block for an NPC traveling with the party. It'll be nice to have the tables for hitpoints/healing surges and level advancement.

 

[JPL]

Actually that was my first thought as well. Certainly not perfectly balanced with PCs, but in a "balance light"* campaign it's the start of an interesting framework. Might be fun to start messing around with that idea.

* I like to think of this as campaigns that pass the "Is everyone still having fun?" test, but perhaps not the exacting mathematical balance test if you look too closely.

It's nice that they are upfront about certain abilities --- extra senses, flight, etc. --- being gamebreakers. In 3rd Edition, the tendency would've been to let you play a flying character, but with an ECL that crippled his effectiveness.

 

[Miyaa]

Now, if someone would make a 4e version of Nodwick.

 

[Negflar2099]

One thing that struck me about these rules is they can be used to make a lite version of your PC. That way if you miss a session and another person has to play your character they have a simpler version of your character to play.

I wonder how hard it would be to convert a PC to Companion rules.

 

[darjr]

Thats a great idea!

 

[CapnZapp]

You probably can, but 'common sense' advice can come in handy etc etc ...

Yes, you do have a point, but...

There is an awful lot of gobbledigoook there for simple henchmen.

This.

That excerpt was awfully wordy, and almost the opposite of "concise".

I feel as if this piece of text could be edited and condensed into a short paragraph, and that could be it. That feeling might turn out to be wrong.

 

[ST]

Honestly, some people feel that way about most of DMG1, right? I've heard it argued that the rules for everything except combat and skill challenges aren't rules and instead are "just DM advice".

I think they have a tendency with 4e material like this to try to talk about it in "plain English" accompanied with some tables, rather than doing it as rule text. I personally like that approach but I get that it's not everyone's preference.

Although looking over it again, I'd be interested to know what you'd cut -- the first bit is discussing situations where you might want to use this, and the rest is largely rules-speak albeit with explanatory text and page references. If the argument is "Well, an experienced DM knows how to do this stuff already", I'd just have to say that maybe other DMs would find it useful.