NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Banshee16" data-source="post: 5018433" data-attributes="member: 7883">Personally, I find a game based on heroic medieval fantasy, in which characters *can't* have companions....whether that's a pet dog that helps savage those orcs, a tiger companion, a hawk you've trained to hunt, or an armoured warhorse you trample infantry, is in fact missing out on a lot, and is pretty incomplete.Frankly, the whole poke-mount thing with the Paladin's mount in 3.5 was just silly IMO.Maybe that's the point at which my desires for the game started diverging from WotC's attempts to find balance.  I'm not sure.  But much of the stuff that they started saying was either un-fun, or "took too much time away from the action" or "unbalanced because they gave extra XYZ" were things I felt were vital for immersion in the game world....ie. encumbrance rules.  How much can your backpack actually carry?  Can you really carry away 15,000 coins and a bunch of items from a dragon's horde in a backpack?Animal companions.  Having them scale in power based on character level was actually a good thing.Having to think about things like "what do I do with my horse when I go into that dungeon"?  IMO, it just immerses characters in the game world instead of being able to snap their fingers, and poof, the horse disappears.  Maybe it means the fighter has a page who he leaves behind to take care of the horses.  Or the wizard has an apprentice and one of his duties is to take care of the wizard's horse while the wizard is in the evil castle.Food.  Yeah, characters should have rations  They don't just live on air.  And frankly, instead of just carrying weapons, armor, and scrolls, the character might need a bedroll, flint & steel, some torches, a mirror for shaving (and for seeing monsters around corners in a dungeon), soap (might be a good idea to take a bath if you're going into town after being on the road for 15 days), etc.I just haven't seen animal companions be *that* disruptive.  But maybe my players just weren't trying to abuse the game (or even optimize)....I don't know.Banshee</blockquote>

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