Template talk:Person/doc
Do we need all the "companion" categories?
Just wondering if we really need separate categories for familiars, animal companions, spirit animals, etc? Wouldn't it just be easier if we had one category where we could fit all of them? After all, most of the time, people have one or the other, they rarely have two or more. Secondly, as far as I can tell, we don't need separate entries for autogenerating categories, right? --Brandingopportunity (talk) 13:58, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
- You are correct. While I'm normally a fan of specificity, this level of detail does seem redundant. Fortunately, you can leave off any parameters that don't apply to a given character without consequence, keeping them from cluttering the code, but they are pretty unwieldy at current. I wouldn't mind seeing them go away, especially since it would make the template more forward compatible should new companions/etc. be released and for Starfinder, that at least as far as has been announced, will only really have one such category (drones).—
Yoda8myhead (talk) 18:44, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
- I think we have multiple parameters so that the label text would match the bonded companion type. There's probably another way to do that. Would we want these consolidated into, say, bonded and bondedtype? Or do away with it altogether in favor of saying companion should list both bonded and unbonded companions? -Oznogon (talk) 19:13, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
- What is the definition of an unbonded companion? A friend with whom that person travels? If that's the case, I think that person can just be mentioned in the main body of the article, leaving the category in the boxed text just for bonded companions (familiars, animal companions, phantoms, etc). --Brandingopportunity (talk) 19:20, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
- Literally any companion that isn't bonded. Mechanically, a character with the Leadership feat gains a companion NPC beholden to the PC but not bonded to them in the same sense as an animal companion, eidolon, etc., which is probably the inspiration for this parameter. In practice, we tend to use the companion parameter generically to refer to traveling or adventuring companions currently associated with a character, like Torius Vin and Celeste, or Rodrick and Hrym. -Oznogon (talk) 19:42, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
- Well we can add 'cohort' to this burgeoning list as well, which is more specific to the Leadership feat. I think I've only used companion (and not many of us do) for travelling companions and known acquaintances, and often wondered why this needs to go in an infobox as that information is better discussed in the text. Happy to see away with these. Re the more class-based companions, I agree that the distinction is to make the bold parameter description relevant to the type of companion, but that was set up originally when there were just two in type: familiar and animal companion. Now that it is more complex and potentially growing, I'd also agree we could sensibly simplify here too. To keep it really simple we could just have companion for all types and place the type of companion in italicized parentheses after the name. So:
- Companion Droogami, snow leopard (animal companion)