COMPANION EQUIPMENT
Companions have their own gear slots the player manages — weapons, armor, accessories — extending the loot economy across the whole party and making allies' effectiveness a player responsibility.
- SOLO-DEV COST MEDIUM
- TIMING REAL-TIME / TURN
- COMMON IN RPG · CRPG · OPEN-WORLD · ACTION-RPG
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord has players outfit companions piece by piece for battlefield roles and delegate them as caravan leaders or party captains whose gear genuinely matters. Fallout: New Vegas gives each companion equipment access with personal weapon preferences, so arming Boone with a better rifle is both optimization and characterization. Designers use companion equipment to solve the loot-glut problem elegantly — the sword your character outgrew arms a companion instead of a vendor bin, giving second lives to the whole item economy — and to deepen party customization: gearing allies for roles (tank, sniper, support) is a build system multiplied across the roster. Equipment sharing also strengthens attachment; investing your best finds in someone is mechanical affection. Key decisions: how much of a companion's loadout is player-controlled versus fixed for character identity (signature weapons resist replacement for good narrative reasons), whether companions use gear honestly (ammo consumption, durability) or abstractly, and interface cost — outfitting six characters through clunky menus multiplies every inventory pain by six. Pitfall: companion gear that doesn't visibly matter; if a fully-geared ally performs like a naked one, players correctly stop engaging, and the loot economy's second life dies with it.