Animal Companions and Familiars

[jakjr15]

I was curious to know how people take care of players who have Animal Companions and/or Familiars. Do you give them a second character sheet to fill out as their minion, just place a dummy token on the map, or use an NPC sheet for the minion? If you do something else that I haven't though of, please list that as well.

So far I've only tried the character sheet option and the only downfall to it is initiative. If you don't put them in the combat tracker, they aren't able to be targeted (as far as I can figure out). If they are in the combat tracker, they take up a place in the initiative order that doesn't represent the players initiative. If there's a way to keep two players or creatures to have the same initiative, that may resolve this easy. I just find it a little annoying to have to adjust the initiative for the minion all the time.

[Willot]

In the past I just make a NPC sheet for it Then share it with the person who has it and tell them to pop its link down in the short cuts so they can bring it up when they need to

[tcrossbar]

I have a character sheet owned by the person that has the animal companion. When she rolls initiative, I click on her animal companion’s initiative and type in the same initiative -0.1 as the character. (So if she rolls a 19, I make her wolf’s initiative 18.9). That way the animal companion always goes right at the same time roughly, and is easily targetable and I can easily add effects and all that in the tracker. It’s been working well so far- though to be honest as a Druid, she barely uses her companion for some reason.

[Dolverk]

I've thought about creating a new Ancestry for the companions and label it according to the type of creature it is...ie... Riding Drake, Ape, Camel...etc. Then adding a new background titled "Minion". For classes, I've thought about using the following: Young, Mature, Nimble, Savage, and Specialized. Here is the problem i am having, I am unfamiliar with the programming of the ability boosts and flaws, and i cannot seem to find a way to auto program the ability boosts and flaws accordingly. If anyone knows how to do that and bypass the current setup, then it might be feasible for an auto build.

[stephan_]

There are at least three modules for companions, the only one I can currently find is this one.

[joelevan]

I use this one by nic227, as you found. It works really nicely!