Remember that article I wrote last week? The one about handling companion NPCs? The one with a big ole “part 1” in the name? Right. This is the second part. The one in which I actually show you my system. Because I’m picking up where I left off, I don’t need to ramble. But, if you feel cheated out of the Long, Rambling Introduction, just read the one from the last article. It’s just as relevant here.

Angry’s System for Having Companion NPCs Adventure with the PC Party

I forgot to come up with a good name for this s$&%. Sorry. The name isn’t important. What is important is that I came up with my own way to stat up and manage companion NPCs. I told you why I came up with it last week. And what I wanted to accomplish with it. Now, I’m actually showing you what I came up with.

Companions are NPCs that join the player characters on their adventures—however briefly and for whatever reason—and contribute skills, abilities, and resources. They include hired help, purchased pets and mounts, loyal followers and retainers, familiars, bonded animal companions, and temporarily summoned or animated creatures. If there’s an NPC near the party rolling dice to help the party, they’re a companion.

Angry’s System for Having Companion NPCs Adventure with the PC Party has two parts. First, you—the GM—have to stat up the companion. And you do that mostly the same way you stat up custom monsters. But statting up companions is a bit more narrowly focused while being numerically more flexible. You’ll end up with companions that are roughly as effective as player characters at overcoming individual challenges while being less versatile. Companions have narrow roles and specialized skillsets.

Second, Angry’s System for Having Companion NPCs Adventure with the PC Party tells you how to manage companions in play. The system’s focused on letting the players use their companions effectively without bogging down the game too much. At the same time, it also strives to ensure that companions feel like independent characters in the world. They’re not just extensions of the PCs. Not just robots the players can wind up and unleash on the battlefield.

But look, companions make the game more complicated. There’s no way around that. I can reduce the complexity, but I can’t f$&%ing change the laws of game design physics. The payoff, though, is that the players get new ways to customize their party, they get new ways to deal with challenges, ways to cover their weaknesses at a cost, and the game gets some new narrative possibilities.

While Angry’s System for Having Companion NPCs Adventure with the PC Party doesn’t include hard limits on how many companions can join a party, there are increasingly severe costs built into the system. That said, you—the GM—should always feel totally justified in limiting the number of non-temporary companions in the party. After all, you have to keep track of all of this s$&%.

Prerequisite Angry House Rules

I originally built this system for my personal use. Which, honestly, is how anyone should build anything. But because of that, there’s a few of my personal house rules built into the system. Some of them I’ve talked about before. But they’ve probably changed a little since then. Who the f$&% can keep track of all the iterations of everything I’ve done? I sure as hell can’t.

Anyway, here’s a rundown of the Angry Rules built into the heart of Angry’s System for Having Companion NPCs Adventure with the PC Party.

Tiers of Play

You should know this one by now. While PCs have levels, everything else—including monsters, non-combat challenges, magical items, and companions—comes in broader power bands called tiers. There’s six tiers of play and each, except for the first, comprises three experience levels. If you’re not using my tiers of play, you can just read Apprentice tier as 2nd level, Journeyman tier as 4th level, Adventurer tier as 7th level, Veteran tier as 10th level, Champion tier as 13th level, Heroic tier as 16th level, and Legendary tier as 19th level. Those are the midpoints of each tier. Except Apprentice tier.

Creature Status

Health-wise, every creature is either uninjured, injured, staggered, critically injured, or disabled. These are mostly just terms to describe how many hit points a being has lost. Uninjured creatures haven’t lost any hit points. Injured creatures have lost at least one. Staggered creatures have lost half or more of their hit points. Critical creatures have lost three-quarters of their hit points. And disabled creatures have no hit points left. Whenever a creature crosses a hit point threshold, the player or GM must announce it. And because these statuses are visible in the world, the players and the GM must reveal the status of a character or creature when asked.

In addition to serving as narrative descriptors and blinking red warning lights, these statuses can also trigger special rules.

To make it easy to keep track of this s$&%, all hit points at the Angry table are listed with three values. Normal maximum hit points, staggered threshold, and critical threshold. As in the following:

Hit points 37|18|9

Each threshold is determined by taking the one before it, dividing by two, and rounding down.

Morale

Every NPC has a morale threshold that describes the status at which it must make a morale saving throw and what happens with it fails that save. It looks like this:

Morale critical (retreat)

Whenever a creature takes damage that brings its hit points down to the specified threshold or below or starts its turn with hit points below its stated threshold, it has to make a morale save. That’s just a Wisdom saving throw. The DC for morale saves is usually the highest passive Intimidate score from among all the creature’s visible foes. On my party sheet, I keep track of that. If the creature fails the save, it responds accordingly. Otherwise, it keeps fighting.

Other effects can force a morale save as well. Spells or abilities that cause fear, turning abilities, and intimidation actions, for example. And the DC for morale saves in those cases is based on the ability in question.

If a creature’s morale has broken, an ally can try to rally it by making a Charisma (Persuasion) check whose DC is determined by the highest passive Intimidate score from among all the creature’s visible foes. On a success, the creature’s morale is restored.

Fearless creatures only make morale saves when forced by spells or abilities.

Panicked creatures drop what they’re holding and flee recklessly. If they can’t flee, they cower and beg. Routed creatures keep their arms and flee as safely as possible, or fight frantically if unable to flee. Retreating creatures keep their arms and withdraw if able, surrender if they believe they won’t be slaughtered, or otherwise defend themselves and wait for an opportunity to surrender or withdraw. Berserk creatures can’t tell friend from foe, but they are overtaken with bloodlust and can’t stop fighting. They lay into the nearest creature—randomly determined if necessary—and use their strongest attacks. But they can’t cast spells or use any abilities that require concentration; mental focus; or Intelligence-, Wisdom-, or Charisma-based attacks or ability checks. Enraged creatures turn on their former allies, treating them as enemies and attacking them by their best possible means.

The Fourfold Goals of Angry’s System for Blah Blah Blah

I ended the first part of this by spelling out four goals for my companion system. First, my system had to offer a lot of variety. It had to allow me to build companions of every sort—hirelings, pets, familiars, summoned creatures, temporary allies, and so on—and to build them with specific roles or skillsets in mind. In my system, companions are either combatants or non-combatants and they’re either hirelings, followers, pets, thralls, or allies. The type of companion is explicitly stated. Its combat training—or lack thereof—determines how certain stats are calculated.

Second, companions had to be easy to manage. They couldn’t be as complex or versatile or PCs, they couldn’t require too many round-by-round decisions, and they shouldn’t involve any resource tracking beyond hit points. There’s limits on just how many things a companion stat block can have on it. Companions don’t have spell slots or hit dice. They don’t make repeated death saves. That’s all to limit how much s$%& a player has to keep track of to run a companion. Problem was that some companions had to have spellcasting or other magical abilities. And in D&D, spellcasting is basically synonymous with “you can do things X number of times per day.” F$&%ing D&D. To simplify the issue, though, I invented a new resource called Focus. And Focus has become such a useful tool, I now use it in all of my monster building. Whenever I build a spellcasting monster these days, I just give it a couple of Focus actions that work like specific spells and call it a day. There’s just no point in giving monsters more spells and more spell slots than they’ll use in their short lifespans.

Third, companions had to feel like independent creatures. That was tricky because I decided that players were just going to directly control companion NPCs during gameplay. I mean, it works for Savage Worlds. Ultimately, I cribbed some ideas from the CRPG Darkest Dungeon. Now, I am not recommending that game. DD does a couple of unique and clever things, but it layers it under tediously crappy gameplay. It does nothing to make its turn-based, rock-paper-scissors combat engaging. I know reviewers and players have gushed about the game’s brilliance because the game is interesting enough to seem unique and brilliant if you only play it for a few hours. If you’re curious, play it for a few hours and then dump it before you see all the really crappy design decisions that make playing it for the long haul an awful, terrible experience.

What’s interesting about Darkest Dungeons, though, is that it seems at first like you’re playing as a party of adventurers. But that illusion takes a crowbar to the kneecap the first time a character ignores your orders and just does whatever the hell he wants to do. Like stealing loot from a chest and keeping it for himself. Before you had a chance to disarm the trap on the chest even. And that illustrates how little it takes to remind you that a character you control is actually a free-willed, independent a$&hole who actually takes your orders as suggestions. And that’s how I came up with the personality and quirk system you’ll see below. And the NPC’s independence is furthered deepened by the loyalty and morale systems.

Fourth, companions had to fit into the game’s balance. They had to be as effective as player characters—which is reflected in their statistics—but they had to have limits and costs to keep them from becoming instant win buttons. The quirk system means that every companion causes a minor annoyance the party has to deal with. The loyalty system dissuades players from treating their allies like cannon fodder by turning those annoyances into major headaches, but it also rewards players who interact with their companions by building extra rewards on top of the annoyances. In fact, the system encourages players to build long-term relationships with allies instead of switching, swapping, and replacing them. Balancing that is the fact that companions are more fragile than PCs. When they go down, they’re much more likely to die. I’ve actually had reports from a few GMs who’ve been testing these rules for me at their tables about this. They’ve told that their players became very protective of their companions, more protective of them than their own PC allies. I consider that a win.

Companions have other costs as well. They eat up some of the treasure the party acquires. It turns out that, while money is a poor cost in D&D, players are very sensitive to losing the treasure they find. That’s a good lesson to remember, by the way. Losing is different from spending and most humans are extremely loss-averse. Likewise, overloading your party with companions—trying to win fights with sheer numbers—also results in XP loss.

So, that’s the goals and how they shaped Angry’s System for Having Compact NPCs Advance with the PC Port. But let’s look at the system itself.

The Anatomy of a Companion

Here’s two companions that appeared in my game. Hirelings. The party was in the market for a front-line fighter to fill a void and these two folks showed up for the job. Actually, there were three that showed up. But I’ll be damned if I can find Silifrey’s stats. EDIT: I found them. You’ll see them later. Ultimately, the party hired Rurik.

By the way, my idea was that when the party went looking for a hireling, they’d specify the skillset or role they were looking for and I’d create a few companion job applicants that mostly fit the bill, and then they’d talk to the companions and decide which one to hire. Without seeing their stat blocks, I might add. For some reason, the party decided Quarion was an a%&hole based on their interview.

Those are companion stat blocks. Complete ones. Note, though that the players should never see that stat block. The version they see should have the Interaction section removed. That part is for the GM’s eyes only. If you remove it, the stat blocks can easily be printed on cardstock and usually fit four-to-a-page. Mostly usually.

Now, let me give you a top-to-bottom tour and show you what weirdness companions have that monsters and PCs don’t. And what just works differently.

Tier and Type

Companions are generated for specific tiers of play. That determines their power level. Non-temporary companions should always be in the same tier as the PCs. And when the PCs enter a new tier of play, you level up their companions to keep pace. Temporary companions—particularly creatures animated or summoned with spells and especially particularly those summoned in groups—should always be a tier below the PCs.

There’s different types of companions. Hirelings are intelligent creatures the party hires. They expect shares of the treasure and they always have a Personality, a Quirk, Loyalty, and Loyalty Traits. Allies are intelligent creatures who follow the party for various narrative reasons. They have a Personality, a Quirk, Loyalty, and Loyalty Traits and they usually—but not always—expect a share of the treasure. Followers are allies that are loyal to a specific member of the party and that usually has something to do with the reason why they’re following the party. Pets are unintelligent creatures loyal to specific members of the party. They have Quirks but no Personality and usually have no Loyalty Traits. They don’t understand what treasure is and so don’t expect any. Thralls are creatures that are bonded to or magically compelled to obey a specific PC to the extent that they really can’t think or act on their own. Thralls do not have Personalities, Loyalty, or Loyalty Traits and only have Quirks in exceptional cases.

If the party hires a mercenary to fight with them or hires a guide to lead them through the wilderness and keep them alive, they’ve got a hireling. If the party befriends an outlander who joins them on their adventure, that’s an ally. If a bard or wizard attracts an apprentice, a fighter attracts a squire, or a noble has a loyal retainer, they’ve got followers. If the party buys a guard dog to protect their camp or if the ranger raises a wolf from birth and develops a special bond with it, those are pets. If a cleric or wizard waves his arms and says the magic words and a critter appears to do their bidding, that’s a thrall.

Some companions are loyal to the adventuring party as a whole. They’ll listen to any member of the party and they think of the whole party as their employer or whatever. Other companions—particularly unintelligent beasts—are loyal to specific members of the party. Even if they recognize all the PCs as their allies, there’s someone in the group whose authority they respect above all others. The PC to whom an NPC owes its loyalty to is called its Master.

Sometimes, PCs have to make ability checks to interact with companions. Like when a companion’s morale breaks and a PC wants to use an action to rally them. In general, players make Charisma (Persuasion) checks to interact with intelligent companions and Wisdom (Animal Handling) checks to interact with unintelligent creatures. If a companion has a Master, anyone trying to interact with it other than its Master has disadvantage on any such checks.

Hit Points, Recovery, Morale, and Death

As I said above, you’ve got to accept my house rules for status and morale if you want to use my companion rules. But there’s two other things to note as well.

First, companions don’t have hit dice. Instead, whenever a companion participates in a short rest, they recover a fixed number of hit points. It’s three-quarters of their max. That’s their Recovery value. The PCs’ own hit dice limit their adventures. They don’t need their employees whining about taking breaks and no one wants to keep track of their pet marmoset’s hit dice. This s$&% affects nothing. Trust me.

Second, companions don’t make death saves the way PCs do. They just aren’t as hardy as the heroes. When a companion starts their turn with 0 hit points and isn’t already stable, the GM rolls a single death save for the companion in secret. On a success, the companion becomes stable. On a failure, the companion becomes dead. I like to keep the companion’s aliveness a secret until a player can get their a$& over to them and examine them.

Focus and Focus Actions

In theory, companions shouldn’t have any resources to track except hit points. But that just doesn’t work. Because D&D likes resource pools too f$&%ing much and certain kinds of characters won’t feel right without them. So Focus.

Focus is generic inner power. It’s used to power specific abilities that just have to have a limited number of uses per day. Companions with such abilities have a single pool of Focus to spend on their Focus abilities. And every Focus ability has a cost, usually 1 Focus. At the end of a long rest, companions recover all their Focus.

As I said above, Focus is a great way to make a spellcaster companion or monster without wasting a crap-ton of time with spell lists and spell slots. It can also emulate other limited, magical abilities like a cleric’s channel divinity, a bard’s inspiration, or a paladin’s smite thingy. But, when you’re making companions, you should try your damndest to never use Focus. There’s almost always a better way to make a companion feel like a specific kind of character. One that doesn’t involve tracking a resource pool. Like, just make the barbarian’s rage an extra-dice-of-damage mechanic and ignore the daily limit. But I’ll get to that s$&% below. Just know Focus is there because it’s the only way to make spellcasters feel like spellcasters. If you’re doing anything else, don’t f$&%ing use it.

Interaction Stuff

It’s the stuff in the Interaction section that keeps an NPC from being a robot stat block for the players to shove around like a chess piece. And that’s necessary because, in Angry’s System for Companion Banana Fannah Fompanion, the players play companions while the GM portrays companions.

I’ve played a lot of Savage Worlds. Before the revision. It’s a cool game. And one of its central tenets is that the players control the party. Players usually end up leading around a bunch of on-screen extras. And during play, the players decide what those extras do and roll the dice and keep track of the results. It works perfectly fine. Especially because, in SW, extras are as effective as PCs, but they’re more fragile and less versatile. And Darkest Dungeon demonstrated that all it takes for a character to feel like an independent entity is for the character to occasionally just refuse to listen to the player and do its own thing.

So, when the players acquire a companion, you hand them a stat block and say, “here you go, all yours.” You can make a big f$&%ing deal over who gets to control which companion if you feel it necessary. But I don’t run games for kindergartners who can’t handle such things. Obviously, if the companion has a master, the master’s player should control the companion. After that, I guess you should just try to make sure the companions are spread evenly among the players. But frankly, I can’t give a s$&% how you handle this.

But when the GM hands the players the stat black, he keeps the Interaction section for himself. Obviously, you need two versions of each stat block. Don’t tear it up. Because, while the players get to make all the round-by-round decisions and die rolls and s$%&, the GM speaks for the companion. If the party is sitting around and shooting the s$&% at the campfire, the GM should portray the companion like any other NPC. And if the controlling player ever tries to make the companion do something the companion wouldn’t—or shouldn’t do—the GM overrides the action and tells the player what the companion does instead. And every once in awhile, under the GM’s control, the companion does something to remind the players that companions can think for themselves. And they’re pains-in-the-a$&es for it.

Personality tells you—the GM—what motivates the companion. Why they’re adventuring. And it gives you a general sense of what the NPC will and won’t do and how they want to be treated.

Quirks are specific game effects for you to activate whenever you want just to remind the players the NPC has its own ideas about what to do. Quirks always make the players’ lives a little harder. They’re never beneficial. And players can’t use them. Which is why they don’t even see them. Players have to infer a companion’s Quirk based on what they do.

Loyalty measures on a ten-point scale how the companion feels about the party or about the companion’s Master. And this is where a companion’s Master should be noted, by the way. When a companion’s Loyalty hits zero, they are done with the party’s s$&%. They abandon the party. And they should do so in a way that’s consistent with their alignment and quirk and causes a major problem. When a companion’s Loyalty is three or less, it’s low. The companion’s disgruntled and his annoyance is affecting his behavior. When a companion’s loyalty is seven or greater, they’re faithful and devoted and they’re usually willing to go out on a limb for the party. They’ll go above and beyond. And they become a true asset to the team.

When a PC attempts a social interaction ability check on a disgruntled companion—including attempts to rally a companion whose morale has failed—they have disadvantage. When attempting such checks on a devoted companion, they have advantage.

Intelligent companions have two Loyalty Traits, one for when they’re Disgruntled and one for when they’re Devoted. These traits work just like the companion’s Quirk. The GM can impose them whenever and however often he wants. Loyalty Traits are always related to a companion’s Quirk. They don’t override the companion’s Quirk or replace it. Instead, they’re something extra connected to the Quirk. When a companion’s Disgruntled, their quirk goes from minor annoyance to substantial hindrance. When they’re Devoted, the Quirk is still annoying, but there’s some benefit to putting up with it.

It’s important to always have the Loyalty Traits play off the Quirk. Not just because it just makes sense and is, therefore, part of what makes Angry’s Angelina Contessa Luisa Francesca such a brilliant f$&%ing system, but also because it makes it easier for the GM to keep an eye out for opportunities to use them in the game. Whether Quarion’s Loyalty is high, neutral, or low, the GM is always looking for an opportunity to drop a snarky or sarcastic quip into a social interaction scene. And that’s all the GM’s ever looking for. The trigger never changes. Just the effect.

Loyalty is one of my so-called Whatever Stats. That means you can do whatever the hell you want with it. Increase it, decrease it, whatever. And I’m totally on board with that. If the players treat a companion like s$%&, flush their Loyalty down the toilet. If they do something exceptionally kind for a companion—especially something that shows they understand the companion—boost their Loyalty to the top. But generally, unless something crazy happens during the game, I just evaluate the companion’s loyalty at the end of each adventure to see if it should go up or go down. After a successful adventure, if the companion got his share of the treasure and had nothing to gripe about, I’d bump his Loyalty up a point. But if an adventure went sour or the party stiffed the companion on some treasure or if I could remember something that annoyed the companion, I’d bump his Loyalty down a point. And, of course, I’d consider his current Loyalty. If the companion’s loyalty was already low and everything merely went fine, I’d probably leave his Loyalty right where it was.

Remember that some companions don’t get full interaction sections. Allies, followers, and hirelings always do. Thralls only have Personalities and Quirks in exceptional cases and they never have Loyalty. Unintelligent creatures have Quirks and Loyalties, but they don’t get Personalities and they don’t get Loyalty Traits.

Treasure, Equipment, and XP

Generally, you don’t have to track a companion’s stuff. They have whatever they have. The party can give them stuff. The players can equip companions with magic items or upgrade their gear and, if the party never shares any magical items, most companions eventually get pissed off and leave. Companions have the supplies they need to keep themselves alive and the money they need to live. The party doesn’t have to feed them, pay their living costs, or pay tolls or taxes on their behalf. Unintelligent creatures are a different story, of course, They don’t carry money and supplies. The party has to provide for their survival.

Companions don’t gain levels and don’t share in the party’s experience points. Instead, when the PCs hit a new tier of play, you just level the companions up. You just give them more hit points and use the companion-building charts below to tweak their numbers or give them new traits, actions, and abilities as directed.

But companions do affect the party’s treasure and hit points. Intelligent companions expect a half-share of any monetary treasure the party finds. And they expect to be treated like a member of the party when it comes to divvying up magical items. Basically, whatever system the PCs use to split their treasure, companions expect to participate as a half-PC. In my game, hirelings also charged a fixed cost per adventure. But because of the way D&D handles treasure, I can’t give you any guidelines for that. Fortunately, the half-share thing covers it well. Players notice it.

You might want to drop the cost for loyal followers—squires, apprentices, acolytes, and so on—but I wouldn’t. They’re contributing to the adventure and deserve a partial share of the rewards. They’re in danger just like the heroes. And they also have to pay living costs and they have to buy supplies and maintain their equipment. So, if you want to drop the treasure share thing, make sure you force the players to cover all the companion’s expenses.

The money the players pay their companions is just gone. Don’t keep track of it. Don’t use it to buy new stuff. Just assume the companion spends it on living costs, supplies, training, equipment maintenance, blackjack, booze, wenches, whatever. And he keeps just enough to have ready cash on hand to cover incidental adventuring costs like tolls and ship’s passage and s$&% like that.

As noted, companions don’t share in the party’s XP gain. I mean, they obviously gain XP because, every so often, they level up. But there’s no reason to keep track of that s$&% nor any reason to divvy the party’s XP up. Unless, of course, the party has a lot of extra fighters running around. Then, they totally should gain less XP from their adventures. If the total number of PCs and non-temporary companions participating in an encounter or adventure is greater than five, the party’s XP gain from the encounter or adventure is reduced by 10% for each additional member. If a party of four heroes brings two hirelings with them, they only get 90% of the XP they normally would. A party of five heroes with five mercenaries only gets 50% of the XP they otherwise should.

Note, however, that intelligent noncombatant allies count as half members and unintelligent noncombatant allies don’t count as all. So, a party of five player characters, four elderly archaeologists, three sellswords, two pack mules, and a partridge in the wizard’s backpack has ten members. Assuming the archaeologists couldn’t fight their ways out of an ancient Arkhosian pithoi with a +2 maul of pottery slaying that is.

But maybe you don’t use XP. Maybe you use milestone XP. I guess you’re going to have to figure this s$&% out for yourself. I’ve been telling you for years not to throw XP out. I don’t know what to tell you now. It’s your problem.

How to Make Friends… From Common Household Ingredients

Now you know pretty much everything you need to know about how companions work. And you could probably muddle through statting them up okay. But even though there’ve been times when I told you to “just wing it” and “do your best,” this ain’t going to be one of them. I took the time to work out a stat progression for companions based roughly on PC advancement and then tweaked it a bit.

Check it out.

Companion Base Statistics

Tier	Effective Level	Best Ability Modifier	Proficiency Bonus	Best Attack	Best Save DC	Best Skill	Best Expertise	Focus Pool	Traits/Actions
Apprentice	2	+2	+2	+4	12	+4	+6	2	1 Racial Trait, 1 or 2 Actions, 2 Skill or Tool Proficiencies, 1 Save Proficiency
Journeyman	4	+3	+2	+5	13	+5	+7	2	+1 Trait or Action
Adventurer	7	+3	+3	+6	14	+6	+9	3
Veteran	10	+4	+4	+8	16	+8	+12	3	+1 Trait or Action
Champion	13	+4	+5	+9	17	+9	+14	4
Heroic	16	+5	+5	+10	18	+10	+15	4	+1 Trait or Action
Legendary	19	+5	+6	+11	19	+11	+17	5

Obviously, the table starts with the tier of play and the equivalent PC level. When you make a non-temporary companion, put it in the same tier as the PCs. Temporary companions—summoned creatures and the like—and companions that show up in groups should be one tier below the PCs. Or one tier below the effect that summons them.

Before you get too into making a companion, you need to decide a few things. Decide whether it’s a combatant or not and, if it’s a combatant, decide what role it’s supposed to fill in combat. You can use whatever terms you like. Personally, I use the terms front-line, middle rank, and back-line. But sometimes, I also use phrases like tanker, spanker, healer, controller, supporter, debuffer, and so on. Note that non-combatants can fill combat roles. You can have a non-combat healer or a non-combat support character. But if the companion’s primary job is to fight with the party, they should be a combatant. Duh.

The other thing you need to decide is what role is the companion filling or what skillset are they bringing. And, if the party’s hiring someone, you need to ask them what they’re looking for. You build companions to fill specific roles or provide specific sets of skills. That’s all.

First, you want to set the companion’s ability scores. Or, at least, assign ability score modifiers. I don’t bother specifying scores anymore. The Best Ability Score Modifier column shows the highest modifier the companion should have. And that should probably be the ability score that’s most important for their skill, roll, effective class, or whatever. Set the other ability scores however makes sense to you, but remember they aren’t PCs. So, keep ’em on the average or below side.

I assume you know what the Proficiency Modifier is for. Following that, you’ve got columns for Best Attack Bonus, Best Save DC, Best Skill, and Best Skill with Expertise. If you can do basic math, you don’t need those columns. They just make things a little quicker. Every attack bonus, every save DC, and every skill modifier; they’re all calculated just the way they’d be calculated for a PC. But, there’s a few things to note.

First, non-combatant companions are not proficient with their attacks or combat spells. I mention this because every companion has at least one attack. They have to. The D&D world is dangerous. But if the companion’s a noncombatant, they aren’t good at attacking. Yes, that means a non-combatant apprentice wizard’s spell attack modifiers and spell save DCs for damaging spells don’t include their proficiency bonus.

Second, there’s a feature in D&D called expertise. With it, a character picks one or two proficiencies—skill or tool—and gets to add double their proficiency bonus to checks with that proficiency. Some monsters actually have hidden expertise. It’s particularly common with Perception. It’s also a great thing to give a non-combatant companion to emphasize their area of expertise. You know, the skill they’re hired to provide.

You can pretty much figure out all of the companion’s numerical stats now. As you can see from the table, every companion has one—and only one—saving throw proficiency and two skill or tool proficiencies. Pick them out and do the math.

A companion’s hit points are calculated just like a PC’s hit points using their effective level. Non-combatant companions use a d4 to determine their hit points unless they’re particularly hardy for some reason and need a d6. Back-line combatants use a d6, middle-rank combatants and skirmishers use a d8, and front-line combatants use a d10. Notice though that my example companion’s hit points look odd. Rurik should have 4d10+4 hit points and Quarion should have 4d8-4. Well, I treat my companions like PCs and assume that, at first level, they get the maximum possible hit points. Hence, Rurik has 11+(3d10+3) hit points. Quarion has 7+(3d8-3) hit points. You don’t have to do this. It ain’t important.

Calculate AC and initiative and speed and all that other stuff the way you’d do it for a PC. Just give the NPC the armor they should have.

Recovery is 75% of the companion’s maximum hit points.

Non-combatants test morale when they become injured unless they’re hardy enough to stand their ground until they become staggered. But that should be rare. Front-line and middle-rank combatants test their morale when they’re critical. Back-line combatants test morale when they become staggered. Combatants should retreat when they fail morale unless you have a compelling reason to give them some other response. Non-combatants panic.

That’s most of the mechanical stats done. Now it’s time to give the companion traits and actions. Basically, every companion should start with one trait that comes from their race or species. Unless they’re human. Figure out which one racial ability or feature to use and use it. Don’t pick a trait that grants extra actions or abilities or one that involves a set number of uses per day. Make it easy on yourself.

Beyond that, every companion must be able to make an attack every round. Even if they’re non-combatants. And every companion needs one other trait, action, reaction, or focus action that lets them do the job they’re supposed to do. On the battlefield or off. If you’re building an intelligent humanoid, the easiest way to create this s$&% is just to open the PHB and find a class feature that does the job. File off the fiddly bits, simplify it for a stat block, and stay the hell away from daily resource pools. If you’re building a dumb critter, do the same with the Monster Manual.

But there’s a big balance issue to consider, too. In D&D, a creature’s true power level is measured in its ability to deal damage. At least, a combatant’s combat power is measured by points of damage. When you build higher-tier combatant companions, you need to make sure they dish out the right amount of punishment. And that’s where you can use this helpful table I slapped together.

Companion Attacks and Damage

Tier	Multiple Attacks	Bonus Damage Ability	Cantrip/At-Will Damage	Focus/Limited Damage	Best Spell Level
Apprentice	1	+1d	1d	2d	1
Journeyman	1	+1d	1d	4d	2
Adventurer	2	+2d	2d	6d	4
Veteran	2	+4d	2d	8d	5
Champion	3	+6d	3d	10d	7
Heroic	3	+8d	3d	12d	8
Legendary	4	+10d	4d	14d	9

Every companion starts off with an attack they can crank out every round. If it’s a weapon attack, it’ll deal one die of damage with an ability modifier added on top. If it’s a spell attack, it’ll deal one die of damage straight up. No modifier. You can rip these attacks out of the book if you want. Take weapons from the weapon table and cantrips from the magic chapter. If you want to invent your own, just pick a d6, a d8, or a d10 for the basic damage die. Use d6s for light weapon attacks, attacks that have significant special effects riding on them, or attacks that damage multiple targets. Use d8s for medium weapon attacks or single-target spells that have significant special effects. And use d10s for heavy weapon attacks—especially two-handed attacks—and single-target magic attacks that have only minor additional effects. Easy.

Beyond Apprentice tier, combatant companions need a way to get more oomph from their attacks. To deal more damage. Unfortunately, D&D’s internal logic means it’s really weird to just keep bumping the number of damage dice on an attack. So, you need to get creative. Lots of monsters in D&D have the multiattack feature and your companions can too. Or you can invent other features that let the companion attack more than once per turn. The number of attacks the companion should get at each tier is listed.

You can instead give a companion some kind of bonus damage feature. Rogues sneak attack, for example, and bugbears make brutal attacks. Invent whatever feature or condition you want, but make sure it’s a condition that the companion’ll be able to meet on most of its turns. The table shows how many bonus damage dice a companion should get to add. Once each turn.

Now, there’s an art to this. It takes some finesse and some willingness to tinker. Even though my table says to let a companion deal an extra die of bonus damage at Apprentice tier, you might want to wait until Journeyman tier to add that trait if you’re making a barbarian that deals 1d10 damage per round. In fact, unless the bonus damage is central to the companion’s identity—like a rogue’s sneak attack—it’s probably best to ignore what my table says and not apply it until Journeyman tier. You have to feel this s$&% out.

If you’re giving a companion a spell or weird special attack, then you can just give it more dice worth of damage at every tier. My table shows you how many dice of damage such attacks should deal at each tier in the Cantrip/At-Will option.

And, if it’s not nearly as obvious as I think it should be, do not combine these options. That is, do not give a companion multiple attacks, a bonus damage feature, and then increase their attack’s damage. Pick one approach.

And note that if you’re giving a companion multiple attacks—say an archer with a backup pigsticker for when the foes don’t stay at a respectful distance—limit all this damage increase nonsense to their best single attack. The archer can have multishot, for example, but when he’s swinging his sword, he gets a sucky 1d6 damage per round.

Now, this is all to do with a companion’s round-to-round, over-and-over attacks. Weapon attacks and cantrips and claws and bites and s$&% like that. In addition to those basic attacks, some companions need special attacks they can dish out on a more limited basis. Spellcasters can’t live by cantrips alone and a summoned hellhound who never breathes fire is dull-as-s$&%. That’s what the Focus/Limited Damage column is all about. If a companion has a Focus Action or an action that recharges at a short or long rest—never give a companion an ability with a recharge roll—that column shows you how many dice of damage it should do. As for which die to use, follow my advice above.

Finally, if you want to create any sort of ability at all that does anything other than damage—limited-use or not—and you want to know how powerful it is, the last column tells you what spell level to look at. If you’re designing a Journeyman tier witch, for example, to fill a debuffer role, and you want to give her a cool witch’s curse effect, look at 2nd level spells for ideas. When she hits Veteran tier and its time to give her another trick, emulate a 5th level spell.

Unfortunately—actually, I personally think it’s fortunate—creating good companions is about creativity more than it’s about math. Nowhere is that more obvious than with the Interaction block. When it comes to filling in Personalities, Quirks, and Loyalty Traits, you’re kind of on your own. Remember, most thralls don’t need any of that s$&%. Pets and unintelligent critters only need a Quirk. They don’t have long-term goals and hopes and dreams and s$%&. And intelligent companions need them all.

Remember also that Quirks are annoyances. They remind the players they’re not in control. They should be inconvenient. And remember that Quirks and Loyalty Traits are always related. Specifically, they’re related in terms of what game situations they come up in. If a companion’s Quirk is something that bugs the party when they make camp, their Loyalty Traits should also apply when the party makes camp. Don’t ask the GM to watch more than one game situation for more than one trigger. That’s the key that keeps this s$&% manageable.

Like I said, I can’t help you with the creativity thing. All I can do is what I’ve already done. I can give you a bunch of mechanical systems so you know how to build and manage companions as game constructs. That way, you can focus on the creative stuff. And I can give you templates for the creative stuff so you don’t have a blank page with “…And Bring the NPC to Life” written across the top. That’s why I defined Quirks and Personalities and Loyalty the way I did. To help you focus your creativity. You’re on your own from here.

I mean, I guess I could give you a bunch of example companions in an easily downloadable PDF. That might help. But who has time to slap together a bunch of those? Not me.