Using the rules in Tasha's I added some sidekicks to my players' party. But I created them using standard PC races, and stat arrays and just stuck the Sidekick classes on top of that basis.
Looking closer at the rules, it seems that this is not actually an option. Wondering if this obvious (to me) way of using the classes was left off intentionally, and why.
Not going to change the characters to something else, they work fine as is, just curious.
Why wouldn’t you be allowed to give them a PC race? The rules for sidekicks say to start with a monster stat block but there’s nothing in them that says that stat block can’t have another modification on it or be a custom stat block to start with. A friend of mine is fond of taking a regular monster and giving it a PC race and a background and turning it into an NPC. All the sidekick rules really say is that it has to be CR 1/2 or lower. So you could take something like a commoner or guard or bandit or noble from the basic rules and slap any race you want onto it and it would still be under CR 1/2 and eligible to be a sidekick. There’s even rules in the DMG for adding races onto stat blocks to create NPCs. They’re not quite the same as using a regular PC race but they aren’t that different either so I don’t see why you couldn’t do it if you want to. Besides your the DM and can do what makes sense to you. There are D&D police so nobody is going to reposes your DMG or anything for it.
I know this be a little old, but there are two ways to play as PC races with Sidekicks:
The first way is to use the rules Dungeon Masters get to be able to change or apply races to NPCs. I think it's in the 2014's DMG, and it includes the base races as well as some other cool extra ones like Skeletons or Zombies. Which according to those rules, does not change the creature's CR, which is what matters for Tasha's version.
The second way is to play them using the Essential's Kit rule book's version. They came with the Dragon Of Icespire Peak adventure, which is how I'm assuming you might get access to them if you wanna do it in D&D beyond. Same concept as in Tasha's, but these sidekicks came with everything pre-made with the option to add from the standard playable race features if you wanted to. It only goes from lvl 1 to 6, but it's otherwise the exact same as Tasha's, so you may level past 7 using that.
Using the rules in Tasha's I added some sidekicks to my players' party.
But I created them using standard PC races, and stat arrays and just stuck the Sidekick classes on top of that basis.
Looking closer at the rules, it seems that this is not actually an option. Wondering if this obvious (to me) way of using the classes was left off intentionally, and why.
Not going to change the characters to something else, they work fine as is, just curious.
Why wouldn’t you be allowed to give them a PC race? The rules for sidekicks say to start with a monster stat block but there’s nothing in them that says that stat block can’t have another modification on it or be a custom stat block to start with. A friend of mine is fond of taking a regular monster and giving it a PC race and a background and turning it into an NPC. All the sidekick rules really say is that it has to be CR 1/2 or lower. So you could take something like a commoner or guard or bandit or noble from the basic rules and slap any race you want onto it and it would still be under CR 1/2 and eligible to be a sidekick. There’s even rules in the DMG for adding races onto stat blocks to create NPCs. They’re not quite the same as using a regular PC race but they aren’t that different either so I don’t see why you couldn’t do it if you want to. Besides your the DM and can do what makes sense to you. There are D&D police so nobody is going to reposes your DMG or anything for it.
I know this be a little old, but there are two ways to play as PC races with Sidekicks: