Yelling at a bear

I finally retired my Gloomhaven character.  (Spoilers ahead, for a specific unlocked class).  My quest was straightforward and its end happened to coincide with Wendy's quest ending so we unlocked two new classes simultaneously.  We unlocked two pet classes at the same time, the Beast Tyrant and the Summoner.  She chose to swap from Mindthief to Cragheart, which is good since our party had basically no healing, and I decided to drive a bear.  The Beast Tyrant is special because it has two miniatures, one for the tiny Tyrant and one for the Bear that the tyrant commands.

Go Bear!  Slay the enemies!

Most time in games pet classes are a huge problem.  There are all kinds of ways they can be a problem but the most common issue is that pets open you up to AOE effects, and so either the pet class is terrible because the pet dies, or they are too good because the pet always lives.  They often waffle back and forth between those extremes depending on how much AOE there is.

The Beast Tyrant is surprisingly solid in this way.  Bear is designed to live the entire time, and while you have to heal it through AOE effects it does output a small amount of damage by itself so it is certainly worth it.  Bear has lots of hit points so it won't die to a single screwup, and it has the basic monster AI so it won't kill itself on traps or anything. 

The numbers seem fine.  I do a ton of damage telling Bear to attack people, but I have extremely limited utility.  In fact the Tyrant just sits in the starting room of the dungeon while Bear follows the rest of the group through the dungeon smashing things.  How exactly I command Bear from so far away is unclear - can Bear even hear me from four rooms away? 

But one of the problems of pet classes does rear its ugly head - control.  When there are enemies Bear always runs towards them to eat them, which is usually fine.  But when there are no enemies Bear just stands there like an idiot.  It feels incredibly awkward to watch my party members run towards the next room while Bear just sits immobile, waiting for a new monster to be revealed so Bear can run and eat them in the face.  There are also real problems with specific objectives.  We had one dungeon where we had to collect 5 objects using loot actions, and getting Bear to an object and using Bear's loot action is *extremely* annoying.  If there are enemies nearby I can't do it because Bear runs away after the enemies.  If there aren't enemies moving Bear is a pain in the ass.

There are certainly dungeons where Bear is superb.  Any time there is a single room or otherwise limited movement required Bear is a damage machine.  Bear just keeps on eating people and its limited AI isn't an issue since it rushes to eat enemies each turn which is exactly what I want.  But when there are doors to open or tricky things to do Bear is terrible.

The Summoner class is even more extreme because their control over their many summoned creatures is worse, the summons are often nearly immobile, and those summoned creatures are more fragile so even a small screwup means they die.  They are even better in those single room scenarios, and even worse on large maps.

Pet classes are always a problem.  I will give Gloomhaven a ton of credit though; even if there are issues with the pet classes they do a great job implementing them.  The issues with pets are hard to get around and Gloomhaven minimized them.

Plus it is amazing fun to tell Bear to go eat the enemies.  I spend a lot of time yelling "Bear is driving car!" and mauling enemies to death and laughing about how my dude can't even see where Bear is but somehow I can command it to move and attack very precisely.  It is so much fun to tell my minions to slay my enemies while I chill out at the back like a boss.

So far I think the Brute is still my favourite class, but it is definitely fun to tell Bear to chomp people for the moment.