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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6175903" data-attributes="member: 27160">The other guys here have done a fine job already, so "what they said"!I'll just add that companion characters (in DMG2 but  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s thread gives clues - they're basically monsters with healing surges and benefits...) work well as henchmen, animal companions (a giant badger for the gnome? a dire wolf for the orc?) and the like. A good way to run them is for the players to control them in combat and the GM control them (using a very light touch) out of it. Minion 'companions' work as hirelings - I think there was a Dragon article on that a while back. They can scale to swarms if lots are hired, and work quite similarly to consumable magic items vis-a-vis cost and power.Edit: I'll also give a slightly spoilery, slightly personal and slightly truncated view of the cosmology for 4E.In the beginning, the Primordials made the multiverse. Not the gods - the Primordials. Then they decided to destroy it. You see, to them, the world(s) approximate plasticine, or Lego. You build something neat, then you want to break it all down to see what else you can build.Problem was, by then the gods had decided they really liked what had been built - and had added to it (things like intelligent living beings and such). So they objected to the slate being wiped clean - and thus the Dawn War began.When the dust had settled, the Primordials were all imprisoned or dead and the Primal spirits had formed a "cease fire line" that kept both gods and Primordials out of the Material plane. The gods weren't what you would call harmonious (the 'evil' ones and the devils fight the 'good' ones all the time), but the main conflict was finished - but for one thing. The surviving primordials (or rather, some of their creatures/juniors) had thrown a huge hissy fit, which became embodied (never mind how, for now) in a "shard of pure evil" that pierced the cosmos to its outer skin and, in doing so, formed the Abyss. So that's where demons come from.So these are the "sides": the gods (with sub-sides within their own ranks), the devils (who hate the gods, but hate the demons/primordials more), the demons (who hate the cosmos, and want to see it ended just like daddy intended), the primal spirits (who, with druid and other allies try to protect the material plane from all these immortal lunatics) and the (few) remaining primordials that are not corrupted by the Thing that's at the heart of the abyss.If you can't get some epic, four colour conflict out of that lot, then I suggest rewriting it in your own version - it's just one option, after all...</blockquote>

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