The only follower in my game at the moment (despite useful hints about AP batteries, etc) is my wife's Vingan's alynx. She had difficulty deciding when it came to choosing abilities, so I told her to pick ones which she could reasonably expect to be able to gain help/AP from. So the cat has hunting and brave: the cat's presence around her legs is very reassuring when frightening things are around (extremely useful versus shades, etc).
In the event of it having to fight I thought I might allow it to give (default ability value) 6AP. Then again, perhaps hunting or brave with an improvisational modifier could be used. However, I suspect my wife would rather have her character die than risk injury to the cat!
In other respects the cat is a normal gavrening: having the typical abilities of its species. If a situation arose where APs could be given, then perhaps default 6, a more appropriate number derived from cat's abilities, or an amount improvised from the two 'named abilities'.
I probably wouldn't disallow sentient, but there might be no situation where it could be used to give AP without some form of improvisational modifier (and from having a very well played Yinkini character in my group, I know how much trouble an intelligent cat is).
So my bench mark for (animal) follower abilities would be: can the character reasonably be expected to gain aid from the follower. The alynx may have move silently, but how can the character reasonably gain AP from this?
Cheers
Meirion
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