Companions analysis / main character builds

Being almost done with my first Pendor game, I thought I'd look back and do some analysis/number crunching backed up with what I learned through my first playthrough. For the record, min/maxing and number crunching is one of my favorite things to do in strategy games and is one of the reasons I love M&B. This is what I personally enjoy in strategy games, and I recognize other players have different approaches--"rule of cool", lore, roleplaying, troops that look good--and if you are one of these players I warn you in advance that you may not enjoy my post.

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So one thing I know I did wrong from an optimization standpoint in my first game is how I leveled up my companions. I took the advice that bobknight posted somewhere about gathering 20 companions, and building them along a PD6+noldor bow/WM6 trajectory. I recognize why that's a good method of building a combat companion, but I find that it fails to account for a few things, namely the companion's actual utility versus how much loot they consume.

To recap, companions are useful for the following reasons:

1) Covering party skills that the main character can't cover
2) Training up lower level troops (stackable)
3) Combat like regular soldiers, except they can't die and you can change their gear and they are somewhat more expensive
4) Training CKOs
5) Promotion to lords
6) Dialogue-based stuff like right to rule, gathering intel, emissary/minister
7) Can be used to capture prisoners since you can give them blunt weapons

In exchange for all this, they eat 3 shares of loot each, or 60 shares for bobknight's 10-Persuasion, 20-companion party. I had ~15 companions in my party for much of the game with Persuasion 8, and managed to level the lower guys to the 23-27 range. I also went for 10+4 looting on my main, but I didn't large amounts of great gear from loot. Most of the quality loot I got was from autocalcing Noldor much earlier in the game when my looting skill was lower, buying directly from Elacrai, Noldor tournaments, and from knighthood order quests.

My theory is that although 10+4 looting increases the number of pieces you find by 140%, if you drag 20 companions around, you won't see the vast majority of that gain. Consider the following, a situation where you have 15 companions and 4 stacks of troops as I did for most of the game (HAs, Rogue Knights, RRs and Adventurers). The total number of shares to be allocated is 10 (you) + 45 (15x3 shares each for companions) + 4 (regular troops), for a total of 59. Say you find 100 pieces after a battle, boosted to 240 thanks to 10+4 looting. You only get to see 10/59 = 17% of the total loot, or 41 pieces. Where does the rest go? Well, your companions hoard 45/59 = 76% of the loot, or 183 pieces. Your troops claim a negligible amount. So I set about answering the question: is dragging that many companions around even worth it, while giving up 3/4ths of all of the loot you can find?

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First, I perused the wiki and pulled together a spreadsheet of the relevant information on the companions. I intentionally didn't consider the potential of companions as lords, only as party members. You'll also notice that I removed Surgery from this spreadsheet, as it's probably the most powerful skill in the game and I assume that the main character will go for 10+4 surgery. Here is the result

Some explanations are in order.

1) The color coding of the companions' names refers to which group they're in for the companion circle. The green guys are in a compatible group, while the red guys conflict with them, for the outer circle. Same for the blue/purple inner circle.

2) The four "30 Str at Lvl" columns refer to what level they can max out a stat at if you put every level-up point into that stat after you first recruit the companion. It gives you an idea of which companions are naturally good at what, for the purposes of maxing out party skills or combat skills for CKO training. Any result at level 27 or higher is greyed out, because I assume if you're maxing out a stat you want it done as early as possible. I chose level 27 arbitrarily because that's where my low-level companions got to in my first (1000-day) game.

3) "Lv1 Str+Agi" is a simple formula--add the companion's strength+agility and subtract the number of levels they gained at level 1. This number gives you an idea of the companion's raw combat potential backing out their level gains. It is far from perfect since it doesn't account for weapon proficiencies.

4) "WPF limit" is simply what the NPC's soft cap is based on their existing weapon master skill.

5) "Best WPF" is simply the NPCs actual best weapon proficiency score. In many cases, this is much higher than it should be based on actual points spent in weapon mastery.

6) "Impl. Agi" is the agility score implied by their best weapon proficiency. In other words, how high would the companion's agility have to be in order to get a weapon master skill high enough to achieve that weapon proficiency.

As you can see, the high-level guys have weapon proficiency scores way higher than they should based on their WM and agi stats. They are also much better warriors than they should be based on what their Str/Agi were at level 1.

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Breaking down these numbers, you get a good idea of which companions are good at what and in what direction they should be developed. Importantly, it also lets you compare a companion's combat efficiency against a normal troop to decide whether or not they are worth including at the price of 3 loot shares. I went through the companions individually and came up with some interesting conclusions.

I broke the companions into four groups based on level: high-, mid-, low-level, and newbies. The four groups have some broad similarities between them.

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The high-level group consists of Leth, the knights, and Boadice. In general, none of these guys are good for party skills or CKO skill training, but they can be great lords due to points spent in leadership and a mixed array of Int skills, plus powerful household troops. Jocelyn is the exception but he has trainer 5 at level 38, and fills a different niche. Also, these guys have very high combat abilities out of the gate, which makes them very good in the early game as pure fighters since they are as good as honor troops but are invincible.

Leth: strongest combat companion in the game, comparable to a Noldor Noble probably. He has no utility as a skill guy or a general trainer, but he can train CKO proficiencies to the max. If he manages to gain a level (he was still 500k away in my game), pump his int and give him 2 points in trainer. I wouldn't keep him in my party late game, as his combat power can easily be matched by a pimped-out CKO or Shadow Legion. Besides, you will probably have him out of the party all the time anyway as he'll be busy training the last few proficiencies on your CKO.

Alistair/Roland: Same as Leth pretty much. Their useful WPF range from 350-430, average 400, which make them comparable to Eventide/Dawn knights. Which makes sense, given that's what they are. Best equipment loadout is probably 1H+shield with a siege crossbow+bolts. This means they'll use their sword/board in field battles and shoot Xbows in sieges. As archers they are comparable to KotEGs. In my game they both gained a level, which I put in Int and raised trainer to 2. Late game these guys eat 3 shares each and bring at most 2 points of trainer to the table from a utility perspective. Make them lords or dump them altogether unless you are doing a lot of autocalcing.

Jocelyn: One of the best companions, as level 38 with Training 5 makes him a keeper the whole game until you are using purely honor troops that require no training. Best guy for training CKO proficiencies early on as well.

Boadice: She's interesting. At level 30 there's a chance she may gain a few levels so thinking about her build matters. She has WM 8 despite a 16 agility score, meaning if you want to improve her WPF soft cap you need to spend 11 (!) levels raising her agility to 27 before you can give her WM 9. This means she should pump strength or int, or both if you expect to gain several levels. She already has Trainer 2 so she's good to keep in the party during the autocalc Noldor with berserkers phase.

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Mid-level guys: Frederick, Donavan, Sir Rayne, Sigismund and Diev. I find these guys the worst of the bunch overall from a combat perspective, due to weak stats and proficiencies only marginally better than companions who are far lower in level. Their main redeeming quality is that they are great trainers.

Sigismund: Easily the best CKO trainer for Strength, IF and PS. Worth keeping him in the party and gaining as many levels as you can... assuming you can get him to level 30 (I didn't), you could raise his strength to 38, max out IF and PS, and dump 4 points into trainer (his max). Overcapping strength by 8 points effectively means +3 damage and 4 extra ranks of Ironflesh for your CKO. It is not worth raising his Agility as he already has WPF of 330 in 2H and 300 in Xbows, which you can only exceed by going up to WM 8, which requires 9 levels worth of investments in Agi. In other words his effective agility is already in the 21-24 range.

Rayne/Donavan/Fredrick: these guys are similar in that they are good general trainers. Donavan has no redeeming qualities beyond that--terrible warrior for his level, and too high in level to use as a party skill guy. Rayne is the same, except he can be a decent lord and you need him to found Falcon chapters. Fredrick actually has the raw stats to be a great warrior, and is low enough in level that you can mold him in any direction you wish, including archery.

Diev: This guy sucks. He's the best archer you can get early on besides Leth (and only because he starts with enough PD to equip a Noldor bow), but that's his only redeeming quality. His build is terrible with too many wasted skill points in Int skills that you will never use, because he doesn't make a particularly good lord. His weapon proficiencies are pretty bad for a level 25 guy. He's basically comparable to a Rogue Knight, except worse at fighting. As an archer he's probably strictly worse than a Ravenstern Ranger, despite the fact he can equip a Noldor bow. On the upside, if  he gains levels you can give him points in trainer and he'll help raise your RRs, bladesmen and berserkers. Problem is, he's not even maxed out in WM so you need to prioritize your first points there. Best build is probably to pump agility at every levelup with the goal of maxing WM, and put all extra points into Trainer.
edit-I have changed my opinion on Diev after using him more. Starting with PD7 is a great boon, as he can immediately equip a gemstone bow. I gave him a Sapphire bow and 3 stacks of arrows and he leveled nicely. He mainly needs to raise agility to pump Weapon Master, and points in trainer if you're going to use him for PD training on CKO.

Mid-level guys: Adonja, Julia, Sara, Alyssa, Ediz, Kaverra. Overall, this group has a lot of potential to eventually become great fighting companions as they have a lot of points invested in Str/Agi for their level. They and the newbies are the best ones to use bobknight's WM 6-->PD6-->Max WM build. Since they are low level they are also great to use as CKO trainers, since they can max Strength or Agility easily.

Alyssa: She's interesting, as she has PT 8 despite having only 12 strength. Given that you would have to pump strength by 15 points to raise PT even 1 point, and you need to be level 30 to max it, it's not worth doing a Str build on her. Go pure agility on her maxing weapon master, possibly shield, and horse archery if you're going to give her a horse. All spare points go into trainer. Equipment could easily be four stacks of throwing weapons, or 3x thrown+slashing 2H, who cares if she gets into a melee and dies.

Sara: Also very interesting, as she's the best Agi trainer in the game (tied with Ansen, 30 agi at level 22) and the second-best trader. I have seen others recommend using her as the Charisma guy, which I did, but she never once succeeded on an emissary mission despite 10 points in Persuasion. Also, looking at this thread (http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?topic=46290.0) it doesn't appear that Persuasion has any impact on the success of companion missions. If that's true, using Sara as your charisma/trader means that you want to save Leslie for something else.

Kaverra: Similar to Alyssa, except she's a better PT trainer since she can max strength at level 26 due to higher base stats.edit-Kaverra makes a very good archer if you don't plan to use a throwing CKO. Throwing is a suboptimal choice for companions anyway, it is better to "waste" only one companion on it (Alyssa, per sher's guide) than two even if you want to use a throwing CKO.

Ediz/Julia/Adonja: These guys are very similar in that they have high natural str/agi, are low level, and start with points in power draw. They can easily be good horse or foot archers, looters, or trainers for any agility skill. Still, even maxed out, they are going to be comparable to Doomguides/CKOs so are probably not worth giving up 3 shares of loot lategame unless you need them for training (regular troops or CKOs). Adonja is probably the best power draw trainer in the game because unlike Leslie, she has decent starting agility and can therefore pump WM to help her gain the levels she needs to max strength. Adonja's 3/3/3 in tracking/PF/spotting is misleading because her starting int is too low to make her a good int hero.

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Newbies: these guys are basically blank slates. Obviously Ansen and Leslie, but I also chose to group Riva and Kassim in this group because they are still pretty low level.

Riva/Kassim: These guys are essentially the same. You can think of them as lower level versions of Adonja/Julia/Kassim, but with lower base stats, or you can think of them as higher level versions of Ansen and Leslie, who essentially put their first four levelups in Str and Agi. Still, they are low enough in level to be malleable, and you can use them as int or cha heroes if necessary.

Ansen: The best medic in the game, bar none. Also the best int hero overall. IMO he is a no-brainer to take in the inner circle (giving up Boadice and Fredrick is not a big loss, IMO) and he should max First Aid, Wound Treatment, and Engineering. Extra skill points go into Trainer. Since he maxes Int out at level 18, he'll probably have another 7-8 points to spend by the end of the game. I originally aimed for a 12/12 str/agi build after maxing int, which was useless, because in Pendor a 12/12 hero is totally useless as a combatant. Better to put all points in strength to maximize his survivability, or continue boosting Int and have him cover more than 4 party skills.edit - you only need one int hero if you have a pure int build on your main. I tried out 10+4 First Aid on main per sher's guide and and really liked it. IMO go pure int on Ansen and have him do spotting, wound treatment, training, tracking (don't need to max it) and engineering. He can do First Aid also if you think your main won't have enough skill points.

Leslie: Overall the most "blank slate" character in the game. She is the best Trader and probably Cha hero overall, second best Int hero, second best Str trainer, and tied for 3rd best Agi trainer. She can be built into a good fighter, but she'll never be as good as Adonja/Julia/Ediz/Kaverra as her base Str/Agi are simply lower. I used her as my 2nd int hero, getting tracking and spotting (I had 10+4 pathfinding and ~6+2-ish tactics on my main). If you don't use Sara as your Cha hero, then Leslie will be your trader, and Riva will probably be your second int hero. edit - don't use a 2nd int hero or a trader. Main can cover trade, not worth wasting a bunch of levelups on a companion just to raise Cha to 30. Trade doesn't even work if the companion is hurt, which will happen often to a 30 Cha companion. I now feel Leslie should be used as a warrior

Taking all this into consideration, I don't think it makes sense to take companions who are purely combatants and contribute no utility to the party. They just aren't good enough at fighting to justify giving up 3 shares of loot, when you could easily replace them with a Ravenstern Ranger in the midgame and a CKO in the lategame from a combat effectiveness standpoint. This is in contrast to mods like Native and Brytenwalda, where most of the troops have relatively low skills and gear (elites have ~3-5 powerstrike and 200-250 WPF), and pure fighter companions are worth it because they are much better than normal troops and are invincible. In PoP normal troops are so strong (they are meant to challenge the player) that companions are quite underpowered on the battlefield relative to how much they cost you in terms of loot.

You can run with a minimum amount of companions. You basically need something like:

(Using the green circle)

Party skills:
Ansen: FA/Wound/Engi/Trainer
Riva: Track/Spot/Tactics/Trainer
Sara: Trade
Kassim/Ediz: Looting

CKO training (assuming you are using bows instead of thrown weapons... if you want thrown, use the red circle and grab Leslie for int skills, Sigismund for PS/IF and Kaverra for PT):
Adonja: Power Draw, and possibly PS/IF
Kassim/Ediz: Shield, Ath, Riding, HA

General training
Jocelyn, Donavan

You can leave Rayne and Roland out altogether, and roll with 8 companions at the cost of 24 shares of loot. You may be able to find stable combinations that will give you Frederick, Donavan, Rayne, Boadice and Jocelyn plus party skill guys to let you do a lot of zerker/glad autocalcing. And when you do that with fewer companions, you'll get a lot more loot!

(And don't forget about the possibility of adding Inar Ironhand with Trainer 5 at Level 60)

Haha I did exactly the same thing with Leslie. The trade skill is very deceptive, it's more useful to your game to have her as your pathfinder/scout. My biggest sticking point when playing PoP has always been that I want all my companions to be capable in combat, and it's incredibly sub-optimal.

One thing I'm not too familiar with is the concept of overcapping. The main one being Sigismund and Strength. If you raise his strength to 38, do you mean this in effect grants a +4 bonus to your CKO's IronFlesh and Powerstrike?

Very thorough and objective breakdown of the companions. Thanks for putting this together.

If you compare your companions ability vs their lootshares, you need to properly understand how actual loot quality works before you estimate the liability or usefulness of 20 companions available to the player.

Based on my opinoin, it´s useless to run all 20 as it has no benefits. I usually run around with 11 or 12 and am happy with it. But each to his own.
I´ve done quite a few observations about loot quality and it´s mechanism. Some of them are pretty old ones but you may want to look those posts up to get a better idea why loot´s often more crappy than not as most of it hasn´t changed since MnB.

Which companions would you recommend for a party containing five or less Heroes.  Is there a character build that could do well with just one companion or none at all ?

a) It totally depends on your preferences.
b) It totally depends on your preferences.

The nice thing about MnB in general is there is no musthave way.

Going with no or one companion at all hugely depends on your style of play and wether or not you´re willing certain aspects of the game to pull it off.

Just go on and play more PoP and you´ll realize how you´d do it.

From a min/max perspective, you main character's build should always put every point in Int because you can use gems to raise your other stats. You should always max Surgery on your main as well, and IMO pathfinding is another good one to raise. Many people like maxing Looter on your main as well.

For a small party build, I'd go with Jocelyn + 2 int heroes and possibly a trader. You need Jocelyn for training (you'll find it hard to get level 30+ troops otherwise) until you are using pure honor troop armies that don't need training. You also need companions to handle the Int skills you don't have enough points for on your main. I'd go with Ansen+either Leslie or Riva. You could also skip a dedicated Trade hero and just settle for Leslie's 5 trade, perhaps boosted to 5+2 with investment from your main. You handle looting yourself. So I think you could get away with using only 3 companions permanently, or add Inar Ironhand for a while, who is basically Jocelyn on steroids.

You could still use the other companions for RTR missions and emissary/minister/lords. You could also send other companions to do CKO training, even if they aren't in your party--Lethaldiran can still boost several of their stats/skills pretty high. Alyssa can give 8 PT even if you don't level her, etc.

For a solo build, I think the absolutely critical skills would be trainer, surgery and wound treatment. You'd have to do a ton of grinding in tournaments or soloing small bandit parties to gain enough levels for your trainer to be meaningful. Also, without maxing pathfinding and spotting, you'd basically be slow and blind. Your army would still be effective once a battle starts, but everything would just go slower in your game and you might have a hard time finding unique spawns as they'd be out of vision range. Autocalcing with zerks/glads would probably be out of the question, as you really need multiple trainers to help you replenish your army in reasonable time.

I'd say that First Aid is better to max out than Wound Treatment. Having 10+4 First Aid makes you lose only 20% of your damage taken instead of 40% for 10 First Aid, (i.e. 10+4 First Aid is twice as good as 10 First Aid). You'll need to not get knocked out, of course, and you'd also want a companion with 10 First Aid as backup.

The benefit for stats like Pathfinding and Wound Treatment scales linearly, so 10+4 is nice for those skills, but only gives you modest benefits over having just 10. (Surgery behaves like First Aid, which is why having 10+4 for that is also awesome).

Agreed, I meant for a solo/no companions game, Wound Treatment is better than FA. With no points in Wound Treatment your knocked out units will take forever to heal. Keep in mind in a solo game First Aid will only help one unit (you) whereas WT helps your whole army.

Do you guys actually follow the min-max strat of leveling intelligence? It takes so long to build up enough renown to field an army capable of taking on the unique spawns, unless you get obscenely lucky with Meregan or Alaric. That's a lot of the game spent with non-Int attributes at 12.

No. I don´t. Screw min-max approaches in any game unless you´re afflicted by severe anancasm. I play a game to have fun - and the road to perdition is pretty much half of the fun of it. So this means I pretty much end everytime at a certain balanced character with 21/21/18/21 w/o elixirs and 7-8ish range of skills. It´s my understanding of enjoyment.

MnB/WB doesn´t focus on min/max that much, and PoP does even less. It was developed and balanced about giving the player a real challenge without beeing ridiculously unfair.

Which is the reason there´s no ungodly amount of unfair equipment around or why your level 41 Noldorgearing Supersoldiers can still be whacked by the odd farmercluster (Pitchforks are deadly, even Geralt of Rivia had to learn that lesson) or may gullibly believe in arrow immunity.

This means no matter which way approach you follow, you should still have plenty of fun wether you do or don´t min-maxing. Just take your time and your pace - due to the larger randomness in Pendor things will play out differently each time anyways.

So as long as you enjoy yourself it matters little what you do. Just play it smartly.

Like realizing after a couple of false starts that it´s more smart to use companions early on and rather raising your leaderskills asap to a reasonable amount as long as the levels roll in easy is and using the +1 skill point from INT lategame when your stats are high enough to support those decisions may be the smarter approach then the opposite.

But really, those are things that small usage of the awesome hardware brain1.0 should accomplish on it´s own.

I love minmaxing in any game I play so I have put every point in int for both of my PoP characters so far

With my first character, I was able to get a decent number of Qualis gems by kiting spawns into each other or into marshal armies. It requires a lot of save/loading but it can work until you get enough renown.

But really, because of the potential of Qualis Gems, if you want your character to be really effective at everything you have to go for the Int strat. By endgame you really want 10 leadership for the morale bonus and wage reduction, you want a high prisoner management to have a good chance of capturing lords/spawns, you definitely want 10+4 surgery to preserve your precious troops like HAs, Doomguides or CKOs, and you want decent levels in your chosen combat skills--WM, PS, and either PD or PT. Plus you need 6 Riding for the best horses and you may need Ath/HA if you want to be an archer or a footsoldier.

Doing all of these almost necessitates a pure int build. One of the main reasons I like playing PoP is that it's the only mod that lets you build a character who is both an exceptional warrior and a great army commander.

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Also if you play a pretty female/mysterious stranger/fend for yourself/scholar/lure of gold, you can start with stats something like 5/13/14/5, after the Rane Qualis you have 7/15/16/7. That lets you start with WM5 right out of the gate, which makes you a pretty effective warrior despite low strength. Remember in most mods people will focus on getting 15/15 str/agi at the beginning and then never raise them again.

It's actually really fun for me to play the total-INT method by now.

Yeah really, the early parts of PoP are the most addictive, after getting the big army and having farmed qualis gems and being able to do everything, then it feels more grindyish (but then there are the massive battles which are amazing)


For companions, I have:
1 INT focus (Usually Ansen) who does all the INT skills I don't
1 STR skills (to get 10s in the skills for CKO) Probably Siggy
1 AGI skills (similar to above, I don't need Riding, Horse Archery as I use foot CKO) Probably Sara (long-term she also gets the highest weapon prof. for Archery I guess)
Rest are all PD4 and then INT to max out Trainer. Then they can go to PD6 eventually..

Jenurik Name said:

Do you guys actually follow the min-max strat of leveling intelligence? It takes so long to build up enough renown to field an army capable of taking on the unique spawns, unless you get obscenely lucky with Meregan or Alaric. That's a lot of the game spent with non-Int attributes at 12.

Click to expand...

No I go relatively balanced with a STR preference, as I find I can get enough of the stats I need from companions, books and achievements. Come mid-late game I have too much fun one-shotting horses and riders with Orator Baccus and 10 PS. 

Jenurik Name said:

One thing I'm not too familiar with is the concept of overcapping. The main one being Sigismund and Strength. If you raise his strength to 38, do you mean this in effect grants a +4 bonus to your CKO's IronFlesh and Powerstrike?

Click to expand...

No, not exactly. IF and PS are still limited to 10. But extra points in strength still increase HP and damage. Normally you would stop at 30 strength on a character, but going up to 38 gives you 8 extra HP (equivalent to 4 ranks of ironflesh) and +2.6 extra damage that doesn't get multipliers (since every 3 points of strength is +1 damage).

The same would be true of agility, in that every point increases attack speed and movement speed, by 1% I believe. For example, you could put every point into Agi for Sara and have it at 38 by level 30, which would give your CKO 38 str/agi before upgrades. With 6 upgrades, you'd be at 50/50. Most top-tier troops don't have more than 24 agi and 30 str, meaning you'd have 20 extra HP, +6.6 damage, and +26% movement and attack speed over a standard honor troop. Shadow Legion, generally considered the most powerful honor troop, only has 27/18 pre upgrades. Starting with 38/38 gives you a huge edge over Shadow Legion, despite the fact that SLC will have ~50 higher WPF.

Of course, this would be complete overkill, but super fun nonetheless.

I wanted to post a few more thoughts on companion builds here.

As a refresher, there are 10 party skills in the game. The #1 priority with companions is to make sure these are covered.

Int - 3 medic skills
Int - 3 ranger skills
Int - engi/tactics
Agi - looting
Cha - trade

A point on looting: I realized why it's better to get looting on your main than on a companion. Looting only works if the looter is alive at the end of the battle, and it's easier to keep your main alive than a companion. If you invest in 30 agi in a companion, you probably want him in the thick of the fight.

Ansen can hit 39 Int by level 27, giving +52 skill points to spend. Counting the 8 points he starts with in FA, Wound and Engi, this means he has 60 skill points total and can max out 6 of the 10 party skills by level 27. You could easily cover looting + 2 other int skills (surgery and one ranger skill or tactics), plus trade optionally, on your main. This would mean every other character can go with a pure combat or combat/trainer build, or you can run with just one companion. I think a pure int build with Ansen is better than 30 int and then str or agi, because a few points in str/agi late game won't be enough to salvage him as a warrior. Better to just put him at the bottom of your spawn list and use him as a pure skill monkey. Trainer can be covered with companions likely to get kills and gain levels.

If you want a dedicated trader, Sara is probably a better choice than Leslie if you want to minimize # of companions. For starters, she is a much better character than Leslie. Even though she is 9 levels higher, she has 11 more points of Agi, 5 more Int, and 4 more Cha. Even if you pump Cha on her, she has 18 agility and can get to 6 WM to be a decent warrior. If you take a detour for 3 levels and raise Str to 10, she can equip a maiden crossbow, making her useful in combat despite pumping mostly Cha.  Crossbows are nice because they don't require investment in PD/PT/PS to be useful. Give her an Xbow and 3 stacks of bolts, hopefully she'll get some kills in sieges. With her native 16 int, you can even put your spare skill points in trainer up to level 5. Str can be raised to 10 and Cha to 30 by level 27. Really, Sara's starting stats are so high she's good at any role.

Leslie is best used as an int hero. Her starting stats are average so if you build her purely as a Cha hero, she'll be totally useless at everything else. Int heroes aren't supposed to fight anyway so it's OK if they're useless on the battlefield. A Cha hero is only needed when you're at the shop, so it's fine if they die in fights. I am not sure if it's better to use Ansen and Leslie and have each of them cover 3 skills+training, or to have Ansen cover 6 and rely on combat/trainer hybrids. The returns on investing in trainer are better than linear, but pure int heroes will have trouble gaining levels on their own, so trainer is worth less anyway.

All other characters should be built as combat/trainer hybrids. They are either CKO trainers maxing Str/Agi and associated skills, with extra points in Trainer, or they're Str/Agi/Int mixes with extra points in Trainer. Companions should never be used as pure warriors because in 80% of cases, they are worse than regular troops (Leth and the knights are equal to regular troops, but eat a lot more loot).

Alyssa is really underrated. 8 PT is the equivalent of 24 strength. With a max Agi build, she can reach 420+ WPF at level 30, making her the 3rd best throwing unit in the game after Shadow Legion and CKOs. Give her 4 stacks of broadheads and just let her throw spears in every fight until she dies. She should get a lot of kills. She is better than other companions at this because she doesn't have to invest in strength, while other combat companions have to invest in both Str and Agi.

Riva/Kassim/Adonja/Julia/Ediz and even Diev and non-int Leslie are all the same, they should be built as archer/trainer hybrids. One of these should max PD, and another should max Riding/HA. Archery is the only area of combat where companions have a comparative advantage over regular troops, because despite their comparatively poor skills and WPF, companions can at least equip Noldor bows and extra ammo, letting them score more kills than a regular archer like Raven Ranger or Silvermist. They are still inferior to CKOs and possibly Doomguides, but then so is everything else. (and these troops are very hard to get)

I am not sure which companion is best to use as the Athletics/Shield trainer. I am thinking Frederick as he has solid combat stats and already has a bit of a foot-soldier orientation. Other options would be Julia, Riva or Kassim.

Maybe this post will help:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,255110.msg7954779.html#msg7954779