Scroll of Companion

The Scroll of Companion was a surprise for players during the beta test, where it first appeared. The scroll allows the player to summon a random companion (which appears to be a critter randomly chosen from the game's files) to pick up gold for them within a short radius.

Functionality

Demon Hunter with a greedy companion.

Not much is known about the scroll, very likely because there isn't much to know about it. It is a frequent drop, it doesn't have much of an affect on gameplay and is, more than anything, a vanity item. This is likely as close as a player will find to a "non-combat pet" in Diablo III, unlike what is seen in World of WarCraft where pet collectors are often more rabid than their wards.

As stated, this item first appeared in the Diablo III beta test, which only included roughly a third of Act I, which is a very small amount of actual game content. And yet, there were a surprising number of companions that could be summoned from the scroll. Testers reported snakes, rats, roaches, insects, bunnies, and other animals. The scroll lasts for five minutes, and the pet stays in a fairly close orbit around the character, which makes the utility of the scroll dubious at best. Gold is picked up in Diablo III by simply walking over it, and the pet does not stray far from its master, so the player would have to walk very close to the gold in any event simply to have the pet pick it up. Yet, the point of the companion scroll very likely isn't to impact gameplay in some purposeful way, but to add some sort of fun vanity item that has a limited duration and is completely optional to use.

Scroll of Summon Controversy

It did not, of course, take very long for the stout cries of "Immersion!" and "diabloish!" to ring forth from the forums, and fans who felt that having a pet rabbit trail a character decked out in Legendary items throughout Hell wasn't very appealing or, at least, it wasn't "Diablo"[1].