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Message: <blockquote data-quote="77IM" data-source="post: 7598314" data-attributes="member: 12377">Action-RPG video games often have an NPC or multiple NPCs who follow you you around and fight for you. But in older games, you would often get one of two problems: - If the NPCs were incompetent, because their AI was too stupid, you'd often have to rescue them. Like the NPC would charge right into the heat of battle and get rapidly ganked. In some games the NPCs would walk right off a cliff. In a milder case, the NPCs would simply not take cover appropriately, and get hit too much. - If the NPCs were too competent, then the best strategy would be for the player's character to hang back and just let the NPCs do all the work. That's no fun.Nowadays many games have good enough AI that it's not a problem. But that wasn't always an option. One very interesting solution, which I first noticed in LEGO Star Wars, was to reduce the NPC's damage and reduce the damage done to them. - The NPC would deal much less damage than the player. In LSW, the NPC would miss a lot, dealing maybe 1/4 to 1/2 as much damage as the player. Thus, because the NPC was ineffective, you couldn't just sit back and wait for them to deal with the enemies (I mean you could, but it would be boring, and often a certain amount of enemies would come after you instead). - The NPC would take much less damage than the player. In LSW, enemies firing at the NPC would miss a lot, hitting maybe 1/4 to 1/2 as often as they do against the player. Thus, you didn't need to rush out and rescue the NPC, or worry that they would wander into a fire zone, because they had some natural resistance. - So you might wonder, what's the point of the NPC? Well, they help you solve a lot of puzzles. LSW is normally a 2-player game so the single-player mode just makes the other character an NPC. Also, you can use the NPC as a kind of meat-shield; they'll hold up enemies for quite a while, so that you can move forward or activate a puzzle element.So I think a crucial part of balancing pets is to make them low offense, high defense. - Low offense means it doesn't matter that much whether they can act on their own, or give the ranger player "extra actions," because those extra actions are not that great. - High defense means that the pet isn't too squishy and won't become a burden needing to be rescued all the time. "High" defense should still be worse than a fighter or barbarian or other dedicated tank, though. - Put the two together, and the pet becomes a kind of movable terrain hazard that can harass foes, block their movement with OAs, or draw their fire. (But they are not as buff as the party tank, so you don't want them drawing TOO much fire.) Plus, such pets can often have a lot of utility, such as serving as a mount, or having a climb speed, or being able to track by scent.</blockquote>

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