Sidekicks
 

Spoiler: I'm going to be throwing in the Essentials Kit/Dragon of Icespire Peak monsters this week, since I need some of them for a one-shot I'm running Sunday. The process got me thinking about Sidekicks and how we'd integrate them into HL.

I'd love input from the community on the following approach. Criticism is very much welcome, and alternatives are even better!

Here's what I'm thinking:

1. Make them a separate source from other material, so they can be toggled independently of a particular adventure
2. Program them as individual classes; Warrior and Expert are straightforward.
3. Either make each type of Spellcaster its own class (this will be easier, but clunkier...) OR make one Spellcaster class with subclasses for each type. Wizard, Sorc, Bard, etc. will be chosen in a dropdown.

The spellcaster subclass approach will be dependent on a few things, most major factor being whether we can change what spellcasting stat is used, depending on which subclass is selected. If not, there's a middle ground where we break the class out into three; one INT based, one WIS based with Cleric and Druid subclasses, and one CHA based with Sorc, Lock, and Bard subclasses.

The other thing I'll have to test out is whether we can easily just apply these to a monster. The Sidekick rules are meant to put these class levels on top of an existing monster CR 1 or lower. I admit I've never played around with adding class levels directly to existing stock monsters.

So it turns out I was under the wrong impression; the sidekicks as published in the Essentials Kit are somewhat simplified from those in the UA. As published, they have their own starting stat blocks and are levels added to existing monsters.

I'm digging into the published versions now. But I think I'll keep the approach of programming them as classes.

The Essentials kit only gives you enough information to get them through level 6. I'm gonna compare their "class" features against the UA and see if they line up. Hmm.

Yes they are completely different. You will probably need to script these differently. Each sidekick being a different base template you will need to rework the current idea to fit that.