Interview | Paul Hughes on Pets, Sidekicks & Monster Madness | GGP

“What do you get when you mix a thousand-legged centipede, a skeleton butler, and an emotionally resilient owlbear cub? A Paul Hughes interview, of course.”

In this special episode of GGP, Inver and Josh are joined by Pets & Sidekicks co-creator Paul Hughes, longtime EN World writer and TTRPG monster crafter. Together, they delve into:

✦ The design philosophy behind scalable companions in Advanced 5E

✦ Balancing action economy with adorable, devastating pets

✦ The evolution of owlbears, undead stealth features, and companion mechanics

✦ Narrative tips for GMs and players using sentient sidekicks

✦ A few spicy skeleton jokes (because, obviously)

Whether you’re a game designer, monster-crafting aficionado, or just really into fantasy fur babies, there’s something here to chew on.

For you CR crunchers out there, Paul promises a future Deep Dive on CR calculations, action economy balancing, and high-level companion builds. Get ready.

🎙️ Audio Note: The sound quality in this one had a bit of a rough roll, but we promise the content is still legendary. Blame neither Paul nor Scott. All honor to our audio wizard.

And now, for the RELEVANT LINKS:

✦ Support Pets & Sidekicks on Kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/enworld/companions-compendium

✦ Peek behind the curtain at Paul’s mad genius: blogofholding.com

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