Pawn Guide (Mechanics/Basic Knowledge)

[Paprika]

What are Pawns?

Your main Pawn is your friend for the whole game. (Unless you throw him off a cliff)
You're forced to make one at the beginning of the game and you can hire up to 2 Pawns created by other players.
Pawns can be : Strider, Ranger, Fighter, Warrior, Mage and Sorcerer
Hybrid classes (Mystic Knight, Magick Archer, and Assasin) aren't available to Pawns.
Pawns are one of the most interesting mechanics of Dragon's Dogma, because they work on the principle of "monkey see, monkey do".

How do Pawns work?

Pawns learn to do things over time by mimicking your actions
Let's say I'm a strider, and my pawn is a strider too:
My pawn will learn how to behave (AS A STRIDER, THIS IS IMPORTANT) according to how I play my class
If I climb on certain monsters, use a special kind of arrows or spend my time gathering items instead of fighting, my pawn will do exactly the same, after a while.

Once a Pawn kills enough of a certain kind of monster, or it just uses the right spell on it, it gains knowledge on that monster.
A pawn gains knowledge on quests too, when you hire a pawn with a level higher than yours (not recommended), you can sometimes hear spoilers on the quest you're currently doing.
The Bestiary Knowledge goes from 0 to 3 stars, don't forget to advertise your pawn properly if he's a master at fighting Griffins or other mythical creatures !

Your pawn (and rented pawns) collect items on the field:
mushrooms, sacks of gold, arrows, etc (not equipment)
Don't worry about the rented pawns "stealing" what you give them, or what they pick up.
The only thing Pawns bring back with them when you send them back home, is the equipment you forced them to put on (which resulted in your Pawn wearing a thong in the console version).
You can take anything from a rented pawn's INVENTORY, anything you EQUIP on them is considered a gift to the other player if you send them back with it (that's how we traded equipments on the console version)

One can give pawns some items in order to be lighter (being the lightest possible is important, since inventory weight affects your running and your stamina recovery)

Renting another player's pawn takes Rift Crystals, which are SUPER important in the expansion.
If you rent a Pawn from one of your friends, it's free (I'm not 100% sure, but that's how it was in the console version).

How do I know how my Pawn will behave?

Now getting to the most important (hard) part, Inclination:

Your pawn has 2 main behaviour schemes that you can see on its status (on the start menu), and one "optional" behaviour, which you can only know by talking to your pawn.

They are :

Scather -> Your pawn goes for the biggest enemy first, climbing him most of the time, and ignoring every small threat
A pawn gets this inclination if you rush into fights, or use the command "Go!" (more about those later)

Challenger -> Your pawn focuses on Magick-casting enemies, or bow users

Utilitarian -> Your pawn focuses on buffs, grappling enemies, and even using group healing items (!)
This behaviour works best with a pawn with good Bestiary Knowledge, allowing him to decide which buffs are the best against a certain kind of enemy
Using the "Help!" command is a bad idea, as it will mainly give your pawn the Guardian inclination

Mitigator -> Your pawn focuses on the smallest threat first, like a goblin for example.
It allows you to only look at the biggest threat in the fight, as a sorcerer will use AoE spells to kill all the small fry at once.

Medicant -> Your pawn focuses on healing, or removing debuffs.
It's useful for Healing mages, since they'll stay away from the fight and heal you/buff you from afar

Guardian (bad) -> Your pawn comes to your help ALL THE TIME, stopping whatever he was doing, even casting for mages (!)
This is the reason we avoid using the action commands, you never want this inclination on your pawn, and seasoned players don't like renting a Guardian pawn

Nexus -> Your pawn focuses on reviving other pawns, during boss fights for example
It's really easy to get this inclination, and it's not very useful

Pioneer -> Your pawn scouts ahead of the party, locates items, enemies, BUT he might engage a fight without you, which is pretty dumb
You get this inclination by using the "Go!" command outside of combat

Acquisitor -> This inclination works well with Pioneer, the huge downside is that your pawn will focus on gathering items, even when in combat.

Miscellaneous Tips

It is not recommended to use the D-pad commands ("Go!", "Help!" , "Come!") as they will give your pawn useless inclinations (most of the time)

At the Encampment, pretty early into the game, a vendor sells "Inclination Elixirs", so you don't have to teach your pawn everyhting by yourself, you just have to know what behaviour you want your pawn to have.

Thanks to ҉Minorou : It is always free to hire pawns of your level or lower. It only costs rift crystals to hire pawns of a higher level than you. Your friends' pawns will always be free to hire, regardless of level.

However, please be aware that there is an experience bonus/penalty for having support pawns of a different level than you. For example, if you hire a pawn 7 levels lower than you, you'll earn 7% more experience from killing enemies. If you hire a pawn 10 levels higher than you, you'll get 10% less experience from kills. This bonus/penalty goes up to a maximum of 25 levels, or 25% bonus/penalty."



Ask anything I might have forgotten, there's a ton of information the game doesn't give you

[Cecyl]

Автор сообщения: SaikyoHero

If I get this right, my strider pawn should get scather/utilitarian if I want him to mount big monsters and dish out damage, like I will do with my assassin, correct?

In terms of height/weight is there something I should be mindful of?

Yup, you've got to go Scather primary for your pawn to do that, which he shall be doing anyway since that's what you will do with your assassin, I don't know if Utilitarian secondary is of any use though, Utilitarian really only has its use when it is primary, especially on non-caster vocations.

[Jemolk]

Автор сообщения: Paprika

Автор сообщения: Jemolk

I do want to use a fighter. I'm just not sure whether climbing is useful for a tank. Will it slow the monster down, or make it stop to try to shake the fighter off it? Or will it just bum-rush the guy casting Bolide/Gicel?

Climbing draws the monster's attention, but your stamina takes a huge drop if the monster tries to shake you off

For Red classes like Warrior & Fighter, as long as you give them the utilitarian inclination and get their hate generating skills (Battle Cry and Shield Summons respectively), you'll be fine I think

Автор сообщения: Elybar Cruhl

Never go Challenger with act of atonement or you'll just make your warrior go full r etard.
He'll want to use act of atonement and will keep eating arrows/whatever ranged enemies send at him without moving an inch.

Even without act of atonement, Challenger is a bad idea on a warrior, especially if he's playing a sorcerer, in which case ranged enemies aren't really the main issue as he will be able to take care of them far more easily than his warrior.

Better go with Mitigator/Utilitarian and throw a pioneer in there as you want you warrior to be the one that engages combat with war cry most of the time. Otherwise the set of skills you gave is good and is probably what I'm gonna use on my own warrior, switching from act of atonement to either corona slash or exodus slash depending on what is waiting for me.
Probably gonna use Whirlwind slash as 3rd skill (gotta thank willsimplybe for reminding me about that skill) to help ♥♥♥♥ down the larger enemies.

Excellent, thanks guys! I guess my original plan (Scather/Challenger/Mitigator Fighter), uninformed as it was, wasn't that bad, but I should throw Utilitarian in there instead of Challenger. Probably still Scather as the main, as I'm going to be running High Miasma (Post-Game) or High Comestion (early) at all times to deal with the little guys if they're fast, and Fulmination would basically kill all the small enemies in the area if they're slow enough for me to use it. So what I really have to worry about is the large, high-stagger/knockdown monsters. Your tips helped a lot, so thanks again! And if anything is wrong with my plan that you see, please, by all means tell me so I can fix it!

[DX]

Any ideas about which inclinations or classes were most popular on ps3?

[Cecyl]

Lots of mages.

Inclinations were a mess for the most part, to be honest, there was a lot of guardian pawns, most people had no idea how inclinations worked so you were kinda forced to use the most popular (and effective) pawns.

[Jemolk]

Автор сообщения: DX

Any ideas about which inclinations or classes were most popular on ps3?

My fighter tank was pretty popular. Not stellar, but he made me a lot of Rift Crystals. Despite being a big beefy male rather than a hot female. He still helped people well and carried a lot of stuff. I can't remember his inclinations, but I'm pretty sure I remember he was NOT a guardian.

[Chronoreaper]

Thanks for the guide mate been years since i played DD and good to know i can get ready to make a pawn for my friends to use :)

[kuaikukia]

Автор сообщения: Paprika

Автор сообщения: kuaikukia

Question, If I throw my pawn of the cliff, Is he or she die permanent?

Throwing rented pawns off a cliff takes them back to the Rift, meaning you have to rent them again

Throwing your main pawn off a cliff, or into the Brine, takes it back to the Rift too, but it's not permanent, and it's the only way to travel on your own

Ah I see. Thx

[SirthOsiris]

Probably was a lot of mages. If there's one thing people probably didn't want to be, it was a dedicated healer. So if you always want a healer, make your main pawn do it.

[Paprika]

Автор сообщения: DX

Any ideas about which inclinations or classes were most popular on ps3?

It really depends on the level of players
The most hired pawns are healing/support mages as a lot of people already said

The only thing you have to worry about is NOT HAVING A GUARDIAN PAWN
Seriously, if your pawn has guardian or nexus it's useless 95% of the time

[Orzark101]

First off all thanks for the guidelines , it will surelly help me ;)

But I have a few more questions :

- So my main pawn will ( after a while ) mimic me , but if my character is a warrior type and I wish the create a Healer pawn I guess it will be best that I use the knowlege chair then ? Cause otherwise my "healer" will have warrior behaviour right ?

- Is the knowlege chair free and unlimited to use ? It won't work on rented pawns I supose ?

Thanks

[Paprika]

Автор сообщения: Orzark101

First off all thanks for the guidelines , it will surelly help me ;)

But I have a few more questions :

- So my main pawn will ( after a while ) mimic me , but if my character is a warrior type and I wish the create a Healer pawn I guess it will be best that I use the knowlege chair then ? Cause otherwise my "healer" will have warrior behaviour right ?

- Is the knowlege chair free and unlimited to use ? It won't work on rented pawns I supose ?

Thanks

A blank slate pawn will learn from you
A pawn you guide with the knowledge chair or inclination elixirs won't copy everything you do
The main issue that's hard to explain is that pawns get better the more Bestiary Knowledge they get

The knowledge chair is free and has unlimited uses, you should check the wiki because the questions your pawns asks you are random, and sometimes hard to understand

You can only teach your main pawn

[Chronoreaper]

Автор сообщения: Paprika

Автор сообщения: Orzark101

First off all thanks for the guidelines , it will surelly help me ;)

But I have a few more questions :

- So my main pawn will ( after a while ) mimic me , but if my character is a warrior type and I wish the create a Healer pawn I guess it will be best that I use the knowlege chair then ? Cause otherwise my "healer" will have warrior behaviour right ?

- Is the knowlege chair free and unlimited to use ? It won't work on rented pawns I supose ?

Thanks

A blank slate pawn will learn from you
A pawn you guide with the knowledge chair or inclination elixirs won't copy everything you do
The main issue that's hard to explain is that pawns get better the more Bestiary Knowledge they get

The knowledge chair is free and has unlimited uses, you should check the wiki because the questions your pawns asks you are random, and sometimes hard to understand

You can only teach your main pawn

basically they learn the behavior and attack patterns of aggressive creatures mostly as well as what to do during there conflicts and they retain the knowledge when they get summoned by another and further when rerenwed( i don't know if they get more after being summoned by another and sent back to the owner basically), least from a personal observation picked up my old ps3 copy barely worked cause of the disc damage but still managed to do some research.

[Paprika]

Автор сообщения: Chronoreaper

basically they learn the behavior and attack patterns of aggressive creatures mostly as well as what to do during there conflicts and they retain the knowledge when they get summoned by another and further when rerenwed( i don't know if they get more after being summoned by another and sent back to the owner basically), least from a personal observation picked up my old ps3 copy barely worked cause of the disc damage but still managed to do some research.

I just talked about Bestiary Knowledge, read the whole thread

[Orzark101]

Автор сообщения: Paprika

Автор сообщения: Orzark101

First off all thanks for the guidelines , it will surelly help me ;)

But I have a few more questions :

- So my main pawn will ( after a while ) mimic me , but if my character is a warrior type and I wish the create a Healer pawn I guess it will be best that I use the knowlege chair then ? Cause otherwise my "healer" will have warrior behaviour right ?

- Is the knowlege chair free and unlimited to use ? It won't work on rented pawns I supose ?

Thanks

A blank slate pawn will learn from you
A pawn you guide with the knowledge chair or inclination elixirs won't copy everything you do
The main issue that's hard to explain is that pawns get better the more Bestiary Knowledge they get

The knowledge chair is free and has unlimited uses, you should check the wiki because the questions your pawns asks you are random, and sometimes hard to understand

You can only teach your main pawn

Thank you ,

I'll check the wiki :)

But is my logic correct ?( sorry not english native speaker so sorry for the strange expressions I might use : p )

If I play offensive char and defensive pawn it's advisable to use the chair ? Otherwise my healer will after awhile charge the ennemies screaming this is spartaaaaaaaa in stead of supporting me ?


( but my pawn will do better the more he fights the same type of ennemies, He won't be good immediatly even using the chair . Make sense ;) )

[Paprika]

Автор сообщения: Orzark101

Thank you ,

I'll check the wiki :)

But is my logic correct ?( sorry not english native speaker so sorry for the strange expressions I might use : p )

If I play offensive char and defensive pawn it's advisable to use the chair ? Otherwise my healer will after awhile charge the ennemies screaming this is spartaaaaaaaa in stead of supporting me ?


( but my pawn will do better the more he fights the same type of ennemies, He won't be good immediatly even using the chair . Make sense ;) )

If it's your very first playthrough, I wouldn't worry about that to be honest
Enjoy the game, play the vocations you want, this will get you through the main game whatever you pick
I feel like it's better to make your own choices in this game, every build/pawn is different
You should avoid spamming the pawn commands, that's the only important thing