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:
- Make them a separate source from other material, so they can be toggled independently of a particular adventure
- Program them as individual classes; Warrior and Expert are straightforward.
- 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.