Modern Companions (NeoForge 1.21.1)

Modern Companions is a faithful NeoForge 1.21.1 port/rebrand of Human Companions with new branding, soul gems, summoning wand, a bundled BasicWeapons-inspired arsenal, and expanded class kit flavor. Hire RPG-flavored human followers, gear them up, and command them with a clear stance UI.

What You Get

• Fourteen Recruitable Roles: Knight, Vanguard, Axeguard, Berserker, Scout, Archer, Arbalist, Beastmaster, Cleric, Alchemist, Stormcaller, Fire Mage, Lightning Mage, Necromancer—each with tailored AI, weapon prefs, and perks.
• Spawn Gems: All spawn eggs are class-colored gems on the Modern Companions creative tab; they still behave like eggs but match the new branding.
• Soul Gems: Soul Gems are obtained by using the Companion Mover on a recruited Companion, converting them into an item preserving their stats and inventories, which can then be used to convert them back into an entity.
• Custom Weapons: Daggers, clubs, hammers, spears, quarterstaves, and glaives in every vanilla material (plus bronze if that mod is present). Standard crafting recipes (JEI/REI friendly); companions auto-prefer their class weapon type.
• RPG Stats & Leveling: STR/DEX/INT/END shape damage, speed, XP gain, and bulk. A superlinear XP curve makes high levels meaningful; health scales with END and level.
• Custom Names: Use a nametag on a Companion to change their name!
• Limits: There is no level cap and no hard limit on party size—you can level companions indefinitely and command as many as you can gather; only performance/server rules apply.
• Commands in the GUI: Follow ↔ Patrol ↔ Guard cycle, alert/hunt toggles, sprint toggle (on = sprint, off = jog), auto-pickup, patrol radius +/- (2–32), clear target, release. Shift+right-click to sit/stand, right-click to open the screen.
• Deep Taming Loop: Each untamed companion demands two specific foods/resources; supply both stacks to tame. They self-heal from food in their 6×9 inventory and politely ping you when hurt and empty.
• Resurrection Built-in: Tamed companions drop a Resurrection Scroll containing full stats/inventory. Hold a nether star in off-hand to activate (adds a glint), then use the scroll on a block/face to respawn them exactly there; Beastmaster pets are cleared on revival to avoid duplicates.
• Beastmaster Pets: Permanent pet (wolf/fox/cat/panda/camel/hoglin/etc.) that auto-respawns, inherits STR/DEX/END scaling, and ignores friendly fire from its master.
• Self-care: Along with regular veggies and cooked foods, Companions also eat enchanted golden foods/honey and will drink beneficial potions (regen/instant health, etc.), applying the effects and holding onto empty bottles when they can, dropping them when they can't.
• Staying close: Follow AI recalls companions that drift ~35 blocks away on the same dimension to a safe spot near you, when set to follow.
• Custom Skins: You can assign specific companions any skin you want! Using the command /companionskin "NAME" URL you can assign skins to your companions like so; /companionskin "Daniel George" https://i.imgur.com/FWADR65.png
• Curios + Sophisticated Backpacks (optional): Curio rendering is toggleable per companion. If a companion wears a Sophisticated Backpack in the Curios back slot, picked-up items fill the backpack before the companion inventory.
• Preferred weapons & shields: Preferred weapon types grant +2 damage; companions fall back to any available weapon if preferred gear is missing; Vanguard shield handling improved (modded shields, no double-shield bug).
• Personality & Journal: Companions roll 1–2 traits, a backstory, morale, and a Bond track (XP from travel/feeding/resurrection). A Journal/Bio button shows traits with effect blurbs, backstory, morale, bond, kills/major kills, resurrections, distance traveled, and age. Companions start age 18–35 and age +1 year every ~90 in-game days (visual only). Legacy companions with missing traits/backstory/age are backfilled once.
• Morale & Bond: Morale [-1,1] gives tiny buffs (+0.5 dmg/armor) when high and matching penalties when low; feeds, bond level-ups, and traits can raise/soften it; near-death/resurrection lowers it. Bond XP comes from time-with-owner ticks, feeding, and resurrection; Devoted/Glutton boost bond XP. Bond levels raise the morale floor.
• Trait effects: Brave (+dmg, closer follow); Cautious (farther follow, slower); Guardian (+armor); Reckless (+speed, closer); Stalwart (KB resist); Quickstep (+speed/follow speed); Glutton (bonus bond XP from feeding); Disciplined (+XP gain, softer morale loss); Lucky (duplicate drop chance); Night Owl (small night dmg/speed); Sun-Blessed (small day dmg/speed); Jokester (softer morale loss); Melancholic (minor dmg penalty when morale low); Devoted (+armor, bonus bond XP).

A custom Orc skin wearing some modded weapons, armor, curios and a sophisticated backpack!

Worldgen & Spawns

• Companion buildings generate across the Overworld (random-spread set); each spawns exactly one resident when generated.
• Certain structures will house certain Companions.

Class Details

• Knight: Balanced melee with swords/clubs/spears; reliable frontliner.
• Vanguard: Shielded tank; actively raises/lowers shields against ranged threats (respecting axe breaks/cooldowns), +HP/KB resist, 30% projectile DR, resistance aura ticks, and taunts monsters off the owner.
• Axeguard: Axe bruiser; heavy hits, closes to melee.
• Berserker: Ramps damage as health drops, cleaves nearby foes, high KB resist, lighter armor mitigation.
• Scout: Fast skirmisher; speed+jump buffs, reduced fall damage, bonus damage on backstab or distracted targets.
• Archer: Classic bow user with ranged AI; auto-equips bows/arrows.
• Arbalist: 1.21 crossbow behavior (charge/cooldown/LOS); favors crossbows.
• Beastmaster: Bow + scaling pet; buffs nearby tamed animals and deals bonus damage to beasts.
• Cleric: Support melee; periodic heals/regen/resistance to allies under 65% HP, extra damage vs undead, carries totem/golden gear theme.
• Alchemist: Potion support; throws regen/heal at allies and weakness/slow at enemies, sometimes upgraded potency; uses dagger/staff if no potions in hand.
• Stormcaller: Trident brawler; calls lightning on hit (shorter cooldown in rain/thunder) and gains brief strength after striking.
• Fire Mage: Caster that peppers foes with precise, non-igniting blaze fireballs and occasionally fires a heavier ghast-style blast.
• Lightning Mage: Precision caster dropping single-target lightning and 4-target chain bursts that hit harder during storms.
• Necromancer: Wither-skull artillery that can raise short-lived wither skeleton allies; other companions treat the summons as friendly.

How It Plays

1. Find: Companion houses generate across the Overworld (spacing ~20 chunks by default; configurable).
2. Hire: Right-click untamed companions with the exact items they request (shown in chat and the GUI). When both requested stacks hit zero, they tame and begin following.
3. Command: Use the GUI to set stance, toggle pickup, and set patrol radius; Shift+right-click to sit/stand on the spot.
4. Equip: Drop weapons/armor in their 6×9 inventory; they auto-equip the best armor and a class-appropriate weapon each tick.
5. Progress: Gain XP from kills; MMO-style curve. Level ups increase health; STR/DEX/INT/END modify combat/XP/defense.
6. Recover: If a tamed companion dies, grab the Resurrection Scroll they drop. With an off-hand nether star, activate, then right-click a surface to respawn them exactly there.
7. Regroup fast: If they drift out ~35 blocks, built-in recall snaps them to you; the Summoning Wand can pull every companion (and Beastmaster pet) in the dimension instantly.

Items & Crafting

Weapons: Vanilla-style recipes for every weapon/material combo; JEI/REI will show them. Bronze variants appear only when a bronze mod is loaded.

Companion Mover: Owner-only tool that captures a companion into a glinting stored item (preserves full NBT/UUID/inventory) for redeployment.

Soul Gems: A Companion's soul transferred into a Soul Gem using the Companion Mover.

Summoning Wand: Teleports all of your living companions (and Beastmaster pets) in the dimension to a safe spot near you on a short cooldown.

Gem Eggs: Retextured spawn eggs available on the Modern Companions creative tab; survival acquisition is up to pack makers/datapacks.

Resurrection Scroll: Drops only from tamed companions. Activation consumes one nether star (off-hand).

Attribute Enchantments

Empower, Nimbility, Enlightenment, Vitality (armor-only): Add STR/DEX/INT/END bonuses from companion armor; stats recalc live as gear changes. Levels I-III available.

Availability: Custom-textured enchanted books live on the Modern Companions creative tab and can drop from dungeon/mineshaft/stronghold library/temple/buried treasure/shipwreck loot tables.

Config & Packmaker Notes

• Friendly fire, fall damage, spawn armor/weapon, and house spacing are configurable.
• Data pack uses pack_format 48; loot injections use NeoForge global loot modifiers for compatibility.
• Better Combat detected: reach modifiers are skipped to avoid stacking with that mod’s reach.

Technical Notes

• Recipes & tags: All custom weapons use vanilla-style JSON recipes and standard tool/block tags; JEI/REI will list them automatically. Spawn eggs are items with gem textures; survival acquisition is left to pack makers/datapacks.
• Resurrection: Activation is purely item logic (nether star off-hand). Auto-loot blacklist prevents companions from grabbing their own scroll.
• XP & health scaling: Companions gain XP when they land killing blows (server-side event). INT raises XP gain (≈ +3% per INT over 4). A superlinear curve governs level costs: XP needed ≈ 20 + 10·(level+1)^1.35. Each level raises max health by +⅓ heart (via attribute modifier), and END grants +1 HP per point above 4, plus up to 35% physical mitigation via END-based reduction. Current health is clamped to new max on level-up; the GUI shows level, XP bar, and kills.
• Beastmaster pets: Pets are permanently bound, inherit STR/DEX/END scaling, and automatically respawn after a short timer if they die or unload. Respawn is suppressed while the Beastmaster is dying/dropped to a scroll to prevent dupes. Pets also avoid friendly fire from their master.
• Random names: Companions roll from a large male/female name pool on spawn, and Beastmaster pets get their own sizable pet-name list. Names are saved, shown on hover (not always-on), and carried through resurrection/pet respawn.

FAQ

• Do companions take fall damage? Toggle in config (default on).
• Can they hurt me/each other? Player FF off by default; companion FF off by default; both configurable.
• Where are recipes? Standard JSON recipes; view with JEI/REI. Resurrection uses nether star activation.

Take a squad with you, keep them fed, and enjoy the extra firepower. Feedback and balance reports are welcome!

Credits

• Human Companions - justinwon777
• Basic Weapons - Khazoda