Why Sidekick Rules are Great in D&D 5e! 

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I can never understand why we're not getting more classes. Them abandoning Artificer is sad as heck. But they also put it in a bad position. A half caster trying to make Legendary Items.

WotC shouldn't hamstring an entire class/play style in order to make it more beginner-friendly. Using a system like Sidekicks for that is a much better design choice.

I have used sidekicks as mercenaries that my party has hired to shore to shortcomings. My party has had moments where no one have thieves tool proficiency, buff spells or Frontline damage at various times. I also the option that they don't have to be strictly humans.

Finally someone who agrees with me that sidekicks should be the beginner friendly class. I've been posting this on their UA videos and the test survey for a while now.

Sidekick? Oh you mean the way my beast master player is buffing his animals.

I used sidekicks to introduce the game to my brother in law and his daughter. His daughter is 8 years old and the simplicity of sidekicks helped her actually get in the game.

Here's another fantastic use for Sidekicks: Non-magical Mounts. I wanted to play a Cavalier character but even with the Mounted feat, a regular warhorse or similar mount would die to the very first area spell that hit you past level 3 or so. However, by making my Warhorse a Sidekick, he gained enough HP to tank hits, an additional AC, AND the ability to defend me as I Lanced things! All for the low-low price of technically counting as 2 characters!

I turned Ismarck and Ireena from Curse of Strahd into sidekicks in my campaign, and it has worked out really well for my party. The sidekicks are excellent in dnd and I really love incorporating them.

If you use sidekick classes as beginner classes to help someone learn the game (or for a quickly made character, such as needing it right before a game or to replace a dead PC during a session), you could always give them the option to "upgrade" to a similar "advanced" class later on. Such as a warrior becoming a full fledged barbarian or fighter, or a healer magic user becoming a cleric or druid. It would help ease a new player into a game, or an experienced player into a new character, by letting them choose specifics after starting play with the character.

In one of my campaigns my DM implemented sideckicks as a way to allow us to invade a castle. He put a 6 months timeskip to allow us to hire/train the NPCs we'd like to bring with us and then divided the PCs into captains for 4 teams. It was cool, he said he took inspiration from Kefka's tower in FFVI.

Kobold sidekick

This was actually going to be my video for next week based on your comment to my video about the martial/caster divide haha. Back to the drawing board :P

1. Love you Gator! 2. I want Gator as a sidekick! 3. It's like the difference between the main characters in a story and the supporting characters. Love it!

We used sidekick when it was still in AU in a short game that only went to level 5 and only had 3 players. It was a Awakened Shrub (named NI from a Pot of awakening) spellcaster Druid. Ni loved to use Good berry as Berry's on him and thorn whip and the players loved him. Since the party was a Fighter (playing Ni also), a wiz and bard it worked well for this short game.

I’ve played as these 1/2 cr sidekicks The combat medic, scout/wood elf, thug and rubble stalker very good. If you want a 1/2 warlockish sidekick, noble stat block is good for that.

My favorite thing to do is create a side kick with skills the party is missing and giving them the healer feat. This way it helps them early levels and no one feels the need to be a healer or support if they don't need to

I’ve used the sidekick system quite a bit, every since the UA Great way to make a veteran version of a mob stat block. Depending on power of features o use the more powerful UA or the Tasha’s version

I have used sidekicks on many of my games. And it is a feature that should be in the PHB as they are the closest thing to hirelings and henchmen. The sidekicks are very similar to the "survivors" from the Van Rickten book. They are also a good guideline for "NPC Monsters".

My DM let me use a giant toad as a UA fighter side kick for my ranger and he was a menace! Being able to tank with his beefy 300+ HP and 3 chances to do the bite/swallow combo on his turn terrified any small fries on the battlefield. My DM even allowed him to attune to magic items as long as it could use them, so when we got a homebrew pair of wings, I made my battle toad an incredible mount for my party.

In older D&D editions, hiring henchmen was both a common and expected practice in the gameplay. Even in 3.5 and Pathfinder you get some use out of paying hirelings early on and, if you have leadership, to have followers and cohorts on deck to help accomplish stuff during downtime or just to hand off less interesting tasks to NPCs while you do the big adventures.

I ran LMOP a few years ago, post Tasha's, for three players. It was my first campaign and I was terrified of killing them all because LMOP is designed for 4-5 players. The neat solution to this was that my most experienced player ran a halfling cavalier fighter and we made his mount a sidekick. He effectively ran two characters in combat but the sidekick was a beast, so he didn't need to worry about the RP side. Worked like a dream.

Sidekick are fun, Used a mix of those rules & the drakewarden drake rules to stat up a baby dragon the party hatched

THE BEST MECHANIC, ITS SO COOL

I mean, there would be _some_ power creep. A 1 level dip in warrior to get +2 to all attack rolls would be very tempting to a lot of martial multiclass builds.

As someone who hasn't played D&D, yet, and is only scratching the surface, sidekicks are important to me, as it's very likely I'm gonna solo-play, probably. That, and the concept. And without knowing, or caring, what's possible, here's my 1st list for sidekicks... - Dagger-wielding, drunken chinpanzee - Berserk Ewok that talks like the Joker - Portable Sarlacc Pit that talks like Audrey II - Skaven-like rat Rogue with a crossbow (Sniper) who protects his stepdaughter, a human/elf druid - Friendly Incubus, healer, fights kinda like a boxer - A heroic Beholder with amnesia, but he does remember he hates Bards, and cats

In my first ever DM’nd 5-shot, we had a 4th player act as a Shield Guardian. Not within the rules, but they needed some skill proficiencies. I like to think it was a cool first DnD experience

I want more Gator he is funny.

wait animal .... i can creature a Magic Cat or a Holy Dog, that is basically as strong a the player? This is how the magical fish were created that can fulfill wishes;D

I'd probably call them simplified classes

I agree with making them the simple classes. Its an obvious solution but the designs dont seem to care. Granted they would have to boost martials which im convinced they dont want to do and will find any excuse to not do it.

In the RU-vid video introducing sidekicks Jeremy Crawford talks about using sidekick rules for beginner players. They could easily just add the option to DND beyond. Would make my life easier since i use create a monster for all my sidekicks.

I use these liberally. And home-brewed a barbarian and paladin sidekick. They are great for smaller groups and temporary party guests.

BUT KOBOLD

at my table weve used sidekicks as both a beast master rangers pet and as the ghost of a dead pc so they have something to do while in a dungeon before we can get their new character in worked pretty well

“Expert” is probably my third or fourth favorite class in the game. Bonus action help goes hard, especially once it gets extra range. I can’t even say I miss extra attack. Enough creatures have those to shore up your options.

Good option for having a durable mount if the DM allows it. You can end up with a horse that has more HP than you if you pick the right ASIs/Feats.

Could not agree more! Sidekicks are AMAZING for new players. I have 2 special needs kids and a 6 year old playing sidekicks in our family campaign right now. They are easy enough for them to play effectively and powerful enough not to be a liability to my 'veteran' kid players. I STRONGLY recommend them. Thank you for making this video

I love that wolf sidekick in the Tasha's Cauldron art

You could optionally change your Beast Master's Companion into a Sidekick for additional staying power. Obviously the proficiency bonuses and hp increases granted by the subclass will need to be removed, as the Sidekick will gain its own bonuses as it levels with the Ranger but otherwise the Companion should follow all the other restrictions set by the subclass.

Sidekick Expert is really cool for a warlock with pact of the chain. I makes it feel like the bond between the two grows as their powers grow together.

I completely agree that Sidekicks should be the go-to newbie class. (Saying it so Fighters can get more complexity, and maneuvers). I'm pretty sure that if sidekick classes were PC classes for newbies, most of my friends would have gotten into dnd (we have similar interests, but they saw regular classes as too complex (yes, they went after the spellcasters even though I warned them that they were more complex))

I play with sidekicks in one campaign because it was so hard for the dm to recruit more to the campaign (also didn’t feel up to it) and after we lost a player (work schedule changes) dm just let us have a backstory relevant npc sidekick. I chose a pirate childhood friend (expert sidekick class) for my character and our paladin/bard chose an acolyte friend (spellcaster healer sidekick) of his backstory. It worked out great 😊 and we adore them. Oh! And I also have a warrior sled dog (wolf stat block originally) from another campaign because our party was down to one frontliner and dm didn’t want to recruit and no one had a friend to offer to join us. So dm told me to change my sled dog to a warrior sidekick. Was nice though! Love it playing these characters. Honestly it gave me a lot of practice with this rule set and, while it’s a lot of work, I’m flattered by the trust my dm’s have given me in running these sidekicks accordingly.

As others have mentioned, Sidekicks also appear in the Essentials Kit/Dragon of Icepire Peak. There are stat blocks for them in that book, and they level up through the other adventures. They cap at level 11(with lvl 12 options) in Divine Contention. I used it with my daughter since I was DMing only 1 player.

I wish DNDBeyond had a sidekick builder to make this easier. You can build them with the homebrew options, but you have to rework them for every level.

One character I really want to play (mostly to see how many Realms-fans I can mess with) would practically require a sidekick. A Zakharan (Al-Qadim) Dwarf Fighter and his Elven Wife (probably a Spellcaster or Expert Sidekick) traveling the barbaric lands of the Sword Coast as a Merchant and caravan guard duo. But then I have always found the dozen or so settings shoehorned onto Forgotten Realms more interesting than the Realms themselves...

2024 PHB beginner classes: The 3 sidekicks and also Barbarian

Even with Tasha’s sidekicks, my favourite sidekick is a juvenile mimic that disguises itself as a spellbook and has levels in mage sidekick

Remember when D&D classes got followers as a class feature, so a level 9 Fighter could build a stronghold and he'd become a local lord with a whole army?

i love this idea!!! i will do this, im starting a game just now with 3 beginners :)

I use this for mounts and non-Familiar companions. Or if the DM allows, as health scaling for Find Familiar for each spell level.

Warrior: fighter+barbarian Expert: rogue+bard Caster: caster's apprentice The caster w druid spell list is good if the party have almost no caster, the cleric or bard if they didnt have a healer/support The warrior is perfect for animals they find since can be explained easily, a wilf w armor and a sword on his mouth is epic And the expert, well, i already commented on that but is perfect for tactical partys or as a literal sidekick for a Expert class character (rogue, bard, ranger and monk) since they provide skills proficiencies to help them and advantage on attacks and can coordinate really well

This is a fantastic idea and I only wish that you had shared it with us sooner so we could’ve all put it in our surveys!

I had a sprite mage sidekick in a campaign I played in a while ago. I think they actually made Spiritual Weapon decent, because they'd use their bonus action to attack with it or bring someone back up with healing word, and then use their action to turn invisible, meaning they could attack, but constantly be invisible, meaning 99% of enemies couldn't do anything, unless they prepared an action, which wasn't a very good idea, considering my character was absolutely a bigger threat. I was going to use thorn whip to yoink enemies up and drop them, but sadly my DM said Fluffy (that was her name) was too small to do that to medium or larger creatures. Also expertise in stealth + advantage from being invisible made her absolutely crazy for scouting.

This could majorly help with one of the issues with one of my characters. He was originally designed as an npc to show off the guns in my world, and the friend of my character. Ue eventually ended up being a second character, which isn't great since I was the DM at the time and my party is fairly small. Now that I'm not always the DM, this could help me have those two characters still be in the same party without taking up too much of the game.

I found these rules just the other day, and I completely agree. They are so much simpler for new players, and they are perfect for quickly creating characters for one-shots as well. The sheer simplicity and uniformity the Sidekick rules give the DM and players makes me want to use them for all NPCs from here on out.

I am currently playing in a RotF campaign and my goblin Cavalier is one of the people who takes care of the Sled dogs, and I asked my DM if I could have trained one for my goblin to ride, and I have to say, it has been a blast for everyone to have a dog sidekick. Highly recommend!

I made a boss named Empress of Blades that used a bunch of flying swords with level 9 spellcaster sidekick class. Each one representing a different type of spellcaster. Yes all the swords had names, they were all named after Minecraft music discs and was a meta hint at their capabilities; Ward(Cleric): spells that reduces or redirects damage, Stal(Wizard): Mirror image and Illusions, Wait(Sorcerer): spells that utilized conditions. Mellohi(Warlock): Primary Combat. (No, the blades didn't have haste it would've been a dick move anyways). However they all only knew these 4 cantrips: Blade Ward, Green Flame Blade, Booming Blade, Sword Burst. The Empress herself was a 9th level glory paladin (In all honesty she didn't really cast spells in the actual encounter). The boss chamber was in a mummy lords chamber, where the Empress was stealing a mummy lords heart to sell to a powerful necromancer. The fight was playtested before the session using the players characters. The playtest of the fight was an even fight with 3 of the 8 test characters going down (4 players all had 1 sidekick each, and one of them did use the jackleware sidekick, another one used a shadow. The shadow was bound to an amulet and the jackleware was just batshit crazy), but remembered/realized halfway through the actual fight that my players don't know strategy. To avoid a TPK, she was a mercenary with a specific job anyways so she didn't kill them, however the Aarakocra decided to spit in her face; so she borrowed its wings and left them at the entrance. Yes, they fixed it later. Note, my particular group's playstyles when it comes to playing the game or GM'ing is always chaotic, we actually have a list called the asshole counter and it went to triple digits within the 2nd month of creation across 4 seperate games (2 DnD, a Starfinder, and one I wasn't participating in). The rule is the asshole counter is every misdeed performed on an NPC. Short highlights included: summoning a volcano in the middle of a magic shop, releasing cloth golems (small CR 0 homebrew creatures) to destroy a alchemist shop, nuked a city with the scroll of comet (my game), and slow roasting a child in the middle of a highly populated space station. Some that I have contributed myself was eating a peyoti cactus then creating the most deadly poison ever and dumped it on a devils head. When leaving hell (within the hour of the previous), paid the gatekeeper to sell the soul of another player, which then turned into a reverse bidding war to who's soul we were paying off, which was enough of a distraction to cause a few dozen devils and demons to escape (this summoned an inevitable next session). And in a pokemon campaign, dropped an Aggron on Zyguarde from orbit.

I thought the Sidekick rules were in The Essentials Kit adventure before Tasha’s came out, iirc, which were a little different from the Tasha’s version

The expert sidekick in combination with a mastermind rogue is broken, they can both use help as a bonus to grant advantage to the other and gain extra damage, the rogue on my table does it all the time, and the sidekick is a feycreature w shillelagh so is like help, shillelagh w coordinated strike w advantage and then rogue do help to the sidekick and does sneak attack and so on, like a double combo attack, ypu can say like an...Coordinated Strike

I'll be certain to add sidekicks as an option for my new players. Makes so much sense, thanks!

My characters (lvl5) adopted 2 goblins and want them to lvl up with them, so i gave them lvl1 rouge sheets. I controll them, one of them has spider pets and is learning to extract poison to give to the party

The sidekick mechanic SHOULD BE how beast master ranger works with their companion.

A option i use to make martial better is to allow that if you have proficienvy on the weapon, the damage increase like on cantrips, adding the base weapon attack as a extra on the same levels as cantrips, which allows more simple attack damage just like cantrips. Is not much but for matials is a lot Now for AoE they should rethink the weapons special attacks from BG and onednd, like making twoweapon attacks a swimg that hit 3 consecutive creatures o a rravh that allows hitting 2 creatures on line, use the shield to better hit as with a better shield master that let you consider the shield as a weapon w 1d6 bludgeoning damage. Making new options tha you can get if you are proficient with such weapons is a good way of making martial stronger, and adding to figjting styles that you can do even more stuff for such classes, also, addi g expertise to monk and ramger is a good idea since tjose are too Expert classes and no damage dealer classes, both are field control classes, monk is not a dps, is a hitter and runner, you just need to watch almost any jackie chan movie to see it, which takes me that monk should get Disengage automatically every time it uses its flurry of blows, just like the drunken master does, monks are runners. while ranger is a 1 spell to field control and move along the battlefield to do stufg and make chaos happen, not forget its strong job should be out of combat on the Exploration pillar, which takes me to getting expertise to compete with the bard and rogue on that area, het the survival and perception expertise and now are a perfect tracker, or athletics and acrobatics to be a perfect traveler, or even investigation, survival and nature and can be a really good hunter, gish, take animal handling and nature and you are the perfect forest ranger taking care of the wild life

Been using the Sidekick mechanics for my own games, most recently with a Kobold character the party named Tor, and it’s much easier to manage and play as rather than another class-based character

"Flying is overpowered. I would ban urds." Me, currently playing an urd kobold artillerist artificer with Pack Tactics: Hehehe, yeah... it's overpowered. Funny thing is that two of our four person group can naturally fly (the other being a fairy), yet I'm the only one that uses it. Poor thing routinely gets her shit kicked in from melee attackers.

Kobold Tasha was so well done that I almost missed it!

in our latest sesions with my table i received a moonblade what it takes a new form based in my character (hexadin of the raven queen) so we reflavored the moonblade and i asked to my DM to take the "elfshadow" rune of the moonblade wich his statblock is exactly a 1/2 CR and make it a sidekick that helps the party until its defeated and it comes to my weapon to recover his physical form for 1d4 long rests The sidekick rules are extremely cool and i like them a lot, more in my table where we are 3 players and the master so we normally add a sidekick in our group to be 4

I’m actually currently playing a side kick flying sword in a witchlight campaign

Honestly, in terms of whether to use the UA or Tasha versions…if I’m giving my players a sidekick, it’s because I want them to have an NPC helper that’s useful, but not quite an extra party member. With the UA version, they are basically extra party members, just without subclasses. I don’t wanna deal with another character that can cast 9th level spells, I just want the party to have a minor helper that can cast some spells. Stronger doesn’t mean better and all. And as far as I have used it, the Tasha sidekicks don’t ever really become a “liability”. They just aren’t as strong as the PCs. Which is the point.

I love putting in lots of miscellaneous adventuring types throughout the game for the party to maybe pick up like how Skyrim does their followers. And if the party ends up making friends with more than they can reasonably field (usually one per player), then we have them all hangout in an abstracted safe area like BG3s camp and EVERYONE has loved that so far.

I've been saying sidekicks are great for litteral years and have seen 0 people talk about it past the first few days after Tasha's. Aside from what you mentioned they can take feats which makes them a great way to take feats useful to the party like chef or dungeon delver that most player characters can't justify taking themselves. They also make outstanding beast master pets, far stronger and more interesting than the spirit beasts. I particularly like a giant poisonous snake with the poisoner feat that makes it pretty dangerous and since the have built in poison that should make it more cost effective and useful since it could use its bonus action every turn to apply a poison to an allies weapon

Sidekicks are awesome! Great way to play as animals.

My party has a coffee making goblin named giblin, and when they leave him alone for a while he's going to become a sidekick to help them

Easy way to boost sidekicks if you want them to feel more impactful, give both the UA and the Tasha’s lists as they level, or, choose one of each

My character has an awakened giant wolfspider caster prodigy (the bard/warlock subclass) as a mount since we are both fully fey (its 3.5 we get more fuckery so we borrowed the mechanic) and im a tiny sized gnome who has a base move speed if 10 due to a flaw (anti-feat that lets you get another feat)

I have played a module with 3 players, where each player played a regular character and a sidekick, for 6 PCs total. The spellcaster sidekick I used ended up being on par with all the other characters, except the full casters. In other words, 1/2 a full caster is roughly equal to 1 martial. If you don't believe me, read my response post.

Almost 100k!

My brain has made a dragonborn paladin with a kobold squire, who is actually his adopted brother.

Grey Ooze Warriors are a menace in the early game. Both to melt enemy armor but also it removes the ability to get armor off defeated humanoids.

Sidekick rules are a great way to create a non-magical enemy in a high-level campaign.

Before Tasha's, Sidekicks were released in the D&D Essentials Kit.

I feel like there is a disconnect in the discourse. There is no reason "beginner friendly" and "underpowered" should be strictly coupled with one another. It's like the people who say that min-maxers are not roleplayers. While I agree that sidekicks could be a good player option for simplicity, I think we should push back harder against the "simple = underpowered" implication going on too. If people want champion to be simple, it's ABSOLUTELY possible to rework it in a way that keeps the simplicity but makes it actually balanced

Really liked the simplicity of them, in fact I got curious how a player for example could consistently play and "evolve" as a sidekick. Might be a bit strange for me to ask since there a lot of more..."Interesting" and more developed classes to play, but do you guys think that there would exist a reasonable way of improving as a PC sidekick? Following a similar idea that you presented in the video, I was thinking that depending on the DM, there would be a way to do it. Thanks for the video by the way!

My player who is a necromancer used these rules to basically "awaken" a zombie to give him a second in command for his zombie army

Out of the Abyss is a perfect campaign for this. Chapter 1 throws like 10 npcs at the party, and you can pick up more along the way. Using sidekick mechanics can make the npcs last a bit longer and give the players something else to manage while they are low level

I have a feeling I might just use the sidekick feature for the next session I run, considering I just gave my party an awakened rat who was kind of the apprentice to a wizard before joining the party >w>

Thank you for your information video

Kobolds are notoriously envious of urds.

My party decided to adopt a local kobold, so I let them build her into a sidekick in charge of making camp in the background most of the time, and filling in for a missing player at the direction of one of the players when we’re under capacity so I don’t need to adjust combat balance. Has worked well.

Hey Kobold since the D&D playtests aren't going the way you are wanting, have you given any thought to Kobold Press's Tales of the valiant since its reference document got dropped recently?

This reminds me of the time I hired two Redbrand mercenaries to help remove an orc nest and had them go first to their grusome deaths! Ah... good times!

As a DM, sidekicks are incredible if your party is low on players. They are good at supplementing the party without outshining them. I prefer to let the players control a sidekick, though I choose the creature type so they can have something strong, but not overpowered.

Nerfing casters for balance is preferable to power creeping. I don't understand why some fail to see that elevating everything to match an overpowered standard effectively mirrors a nerf, but with the escalating issue of power creep.

Making sks into the new begginer classes and boosting martial is a hell of agood idea.

We had Droop from mines of phandelver be a sidekick

The main thing I want in 50A (50th Anniversary edition) is a better way to scale monsters up and down. There's already 'reduced threat' versions of monsters, and there should be 'increased threat' versions too. I can boost the stats however I like, but the reason I want it in a book is so they'll make a tool to automate it.

I would straight up play a campaign as a golden retriever with a sword in my mouth.

beginner classes would be cool, have a squire for a knight etc.

My DM constantly wants us to play sidekicks so we can have interesting monsters instead of the standard races for some of his campaigns, but the Tasha spellcaster is too weak to be fun. (I didn't realize they nerfed it from the UA version until I started playing one.)