The Non-Euclidian Staircase

Currently, I'm a bit scant on characters with friends and associates who aren't also PCs (with one exception, detailed below). Ezhno has a trained falcon. Nikolao has the household serving-girl he rescued from being caught up in suspicion as part of the plot to kill him by installing her has his lover. Both of those probably fit better into the prior questions.

But despite current trends, I've had PCs with NPC friends quite often. It's a common behavior in Amber play for me to do so. Kyle McNaly had a coconspirator/magic student. Scout Carter had a bodyguard assigned by the King. Having non-Amberite NPCs hanging around is fairly risky given the sort of power-plays that often go on in Amber games, but it's also fairly true to the books (the Corwin/Ganelon relationship before we find out who Ganelon actually is serving as an example). I've yet to have an NPC companion in an Amber game who didn't have at least a couple of significant secrets...

The "DNPC" (plucky reporter, sidekick, girlfriend-in-peril, etc.) is also a great role in the superhero standard, and I've done more than a bit of use of that, with mixed results. Unfortunately, gaming doesn't quite work as well as the comics here, and NPCs with low point totals are way too fragile in most supers games to replicate the survivability of a Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen without lots of GM fiat. It's a problem with the exponential power issues of the game mechanics... Or perhaps with the artificiality of the classic comic book scenario.

Among my current PCs, there is one notable exception. Gevrok has Leadership (the d20 feat that lets you gather an NPC following) and he and Rilla are companied by NPC lizard-man Druid (whom he and Rilla rescued from a Hydra) named Thyssn. The fact that Gevrok can only really even talk to Thyssn via an interpreter and that Thyssn just makes the freak quotient of the party even higher. A half-orc, a half-dragon, a lizard man and Rilla, who's just a normal person... No wonder she frequently dies her hair odd colors. Also, Gevrok recently acquired (from a friendly Baron) a squad of crossbowmen to assist as well... and promptly lost all but one of them to a Fireball (after failing to cast the "Mass Resist Elements" he had prepared for just such an occasion). We haven't had another session for him to be all guilty over that yet. This is working out fairly well, though, a Gevrok's oddly anarchic style of leadership lends itself better to smaller groups. He'll learn from his mistake and do better next time.

As for playing them... GMs differ in preference. Some allow the NPC to be an extension of the player who "paid for" them (via whatever game mechanic offers that option), and I'm all for that... it's simpler in stress situations. The GM then takes over the NPC's voice during dialog scenes, of course. Other GMs prefer the NPCs stay under GM control, which adds to their work-load (not, IMO, a good thing), but also adds to the potential for a surprise (potentially a nasty one) from the NPC now and then. And that's a good thing.