Editing Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (section)

==Sidekick Classes==
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything introduced 5th Edition's first NPC classes (or rather, reprinted/expanded on the sidekick rules used in the D&D Essentials Kit and Dragon of Icespire Peak).  Sidekick classes are intended not for player characters but instead as a way to allow weak allied monsters to level up with the players, and as such are basically strictly inferior versions of player classes.  The rules only allow monsters with a base challenge rating of 1/2 or lower to gain levels in these classes.  These are useful for creating NPCs that are somewhat useful but will not outshine the players in battle and have the advantage of being extremely easy to create and run because they are much simpler than player classes. It even mentions using them on non-sentient monsters, giving the example of a Wolf, so you can have fun animal companions be useful to the party without anyone specifically taking an animal companion class.

However, they are still intentionally crappier than the PC classes, so if your idea is to fill an empty niche in a lopsided party comp, you're better of going with a straight up DMPC. Besides, if you're concerned about having too many complicated things to run, then why the heck are you even the DM?

===[[Expert]]===
The Expert is the only sidekick class that isn't directly based on an existing class.  The Expert is the [[Skill Monkey]] of the sidekick classes, and in combat their main ability is giving assists to their allies, using features that make the help action much more effective.

===[[Spellcaster]]===
The spellcaster has three subclasses.  The mage is just a crappier version of a [[Wizard]].  The healer casts using wisdom and can cast both [[Cleric]] and [[Druid]] spells.  And the prodigy casts using charisma and can cast both [[Bard]] and [[Warlock]] spells.  All of them can only cast up to 5th level spells.

===[[Warrior]]===
Basically just a champion [[Fighter]] with all the fun parts taken out of it.