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

[-Armageddon-]

Paprika の投稿を引用：

Since you wanna act rude this is the last answer I'll give you, follow this link:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Dragon%27s+dogma+pawn

It was not my intention to sound rude(i apologize) i just hate when people say "read" instead of just taking the simple way and just type one sentence and answer the question, if i could find it i wouldn't have asked, or maybe i have read it few hrs ago and forgot.

Anyways, what happens if a pawn gets some inclination that sucks like the guardian or nexus, is there any way to remove it? Or do anything about it?

[SirthOsiris]

There's a potion to reset Inclinations that goes along with the potions to set Inclinations.

Here, one of the pawn communities has a couple more in-depth guides.

How to set inclinations with optimal pawn set ups.
http://pastebin.com/8Z7Wja7F

How the elixers work.
http://imgur.com/a/Il3ia

[-Armageddon-]

Btw OP i think you should put your prefered presets for pawns in your post:

Healing mage - Utilitarian/Medicant
Ranger - Challenger/Mitigator
Tanky fighter(or warrior) - Scather/Mitigator
Assasin/strider - Challenger/Mitigator/Scather

[-Armageddon-]

SirthOsiris how many inclinations can pawn have? 3,4? If they have 3 and i want them to have 2 such as Utilitarian/Medicant only for my mage, can that be done? i dont want them to have Challenger ever for example.

[Paprika]

Omnia の投稿を引用：

Btw OP i think you should put your prefered presets for pawns in your post:

Healing mage - Utilitarian/Medicant
Ranger - Challenger/Mitigator
Tanky fighter(or warrior) - Scather/Mitigator
Assasin/strider - Challenger/Mitigator/Scather

It's up to your personal preference as I said dude
You should experiment with pawn behaviours to see which one is the best for you
I don't like Guardian but maybe you'll love being babysitted, who knows

[SirthOsiris]

Omnia の投稿を引用：

SirthOsiris how many inclinations can pawn have? 3,4? If they have 3 and i want them to have 2 such as Utilitarian/Medicant only for my mage, can that be done? i dont want them to have Challenger ever for example.

2 with a 3rd not showing up. Technically all at varying levels, but those 2 to 3 set the main AI. This question is answered in the guide for this topic. Otherwise, just never do anything that ups challenger.

[Paprika]

SirthOsiris の投稿を引用：

2 with a 3rd not showing up. Technically all at varying levels, but those 2 to 3 set the main AI. This question is answered in the guide for this topic. Otherwise, just never do anything that ups challenger.

What's wrong with Challenger ?

[SirthOsiris]

Paprika の投稿を引用：

SirthOsiris の投稿を引用：

2 with a 3rd not showing up. Technically all at varying levels, but those 2 to 3 set the main AI. This question is answered in the guide for this topic. Otherwise, just never do anything that ups challenger.

What's wrong with Challenger ?

Quoted person doesn't want challenger.

[-Armageddon-]

SirthOsiris の投稿を引用：

Omnia の投稿を引用：

SirthOsiris how many inclinations can pawn have? 3,4? If they have 3 and i want them to have 2 such as Utilitarian/Medicant only for my mage, can that be done? i dont want them to have Challenger ever for example.

2 with a 3rd not showing up. Technically all at varying levels, but those 2 to 3 set the main AI. This question is answered in the guide for this topic. Otherwise, just never do anything that ups challenger.

So those 2 are the main and the 3rd incliunation is like and extra one wich is a behavior that the npc uses rearly?

[Paprika]

Again, you didn't read the discussion.
We talked about this exact same issue a few pages before, the exact same question

[-Armageddon-]

Paprika の投稿を引用：

Again, you didn't read the discussion.
We talked about this exact same issue a few pages before, the exact same question

Just answer it mate....

[Cecyl]

This
Fkin
Guy

[Paprika]

Omnia の投稿を引用：

Just answer it mate....

I gave you links, advice, answers

It's the second time you ask this question and I answer the best I can , either you're trolling, or you're actually mentally challenged

[SirthOsiris]

People just set up 3 main inclinations, the third just doesn't show up when looking at the pawn. This question is answered in the original post.

Also, I'm reading type as time. We're taking our time to answer questions in said original post, who was made by the guy you are arguing with.

[DX]

Good info, so bumpy poo