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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6573161" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, DMG2's Companion Character rules do mention XP for companions, and you can relatively easily 'level them up', but it is a somewhat ill-defined process since the character is basically a monster and has nothing like a 'class'. This of course can be a virtue in that you're not really bound by any certain strictures in terms of what kind of progression such a character uses, they can gain/swap powers, acquire or lose pretty much any attribute, etc as desired. About all that is more-or-less mandated is HP, defences, attack bonuses, and damage expressions (roughly). This of course gets back to what I thought was a great attribute of 4e, a lack of 'structural crunch'. Where 3.x might impose a 'system' on such NPC advancement, 4e simply indicates that the existing XP system can be applied to a Companion and avoids something like a supplement full of "NPC Classes" or something that would tend to constrain people's ideas and expectations about them. Admittedly DMG1 did dabble in it with the class templates and instructions on making pseudo-classed NPCs, but its also clear WotC realized they didn't want to go in that direction anymore since AFAIK no class templates were ever released beyond PHB2 classes and they never did expand on or even use in any published source or comment on anywhere the pseudo-classed NPC option. It was basically stillborn. I'd assume there was some significant debate within WotC early on about direction, and there were some concessions made by each side, or perhaps there simply wasn't enough other material to pad out the page count of the DMG and so some stuff was included that didn't quite match up with the game's ultimate direction but which they thought might be useful to someone. I seem to recall there was a guy here who published a huge book of NPCs generated via those DMG rules. I think I used one of them once, and then pretty much concluded that basic stat blocks (and ultimately ones built to the CC guidelines) were a much better option. I'd still love to see all the options and rules variations that were considered in the 4e design process and rejected.</blockquote>

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