Custom Companions as (what I'd like to see as) Possible Incarnate Powers

I have a lot of toons in this game who will never appear on screen at the same time, though many are conceived as related in some way to others. My scrapper will never meet my defender, except possibly in AE.

But what if the interface that let's you build NPCs in AE could be used to build an NPC in the regular game?

Plenty of superheroes have sidekicks, like Rodentman and Birdy, or Colonel Courage and Bugle Boy, or Captain Powderkeg and Pammy Powderkeg, etc. It's not uncommon for experienced heroes or villains to have a full-time sidekick or lackey to guide.

Sure, you can have another player make the sidekick character, but players, even RPers, often want to do their own thing on their own terms, and the team-ups can only occur when both players are on and willing to play those two characters, a feat I've seldom been able to achieve.

Conceived as an Incarnate Power, the various trees would allow for the various ATs, minus EATs, to be built, with each tier representing the ranks as per AE; Minion, Lieutenent, Boss, and Elite Boss, and the various branches defining which power sets are primary choices for the NPC to use.

I see such a pet being controlled like a Lore pet or MM pet, and as with MM pets the Companion would not auto-dismiss, though the cool-down would be extremely long, and the inactive time needed to spot an alternate Companion would be longer still.

Sure, there is the potential for such pets to generate lag, but no more so than the Lore pets already create (except maybe if your Companion pet is an MM, but maybe that AT isn't available).

Perhaps the Incarnate system is the wrong venue for such a power, but I can think of no other area of the game where this would fit, outside of AE, and an awful lot of games these days provide PC characters with NPC pets they can earn which never despawn on their own. I believe that such a concept lends itself well to a world of superheroes and supervillains, and that via the Incarnate Tier system, it wouldn't break the game.

The paragon Rewards tokens might also make such a power possible, but I'd rather not use such tokens to buy powers good for only a single toon, and potentially have to be bought multiple times to grant that toon a defender sidekick or a scrapper sidekick. A money-maker for Paragon, sure, but it doesn't allow for the Tier / Rank system to determine the 'growth' of the NPC.

Thought?

That'd be hard to do...I'd be happy to settle for random generic heroes/villains as a Lore set.

I believe the lag issue may not be related to the number of entities, but to those entities' complexity. A pre-made model is much simpler than a model with its own attached costume data, which means that it is far less laggy to have a bazillion boxed mooks than a bazillion custom critters.