Getting friendlies out of your way

Is there a good way to get friendlies to get out of your way? A couple of my most recent sessions I had a Mistress companion who refused to move through a web and there was no other way around. She'd destroy me if I kicked her or anything, so I just vomited myself to death out of frustration. Any tips?

Teleport her or yourself. Use a wand or read a scroll, and if you have telecontrol you can get on the opposite side.

Or just get around her. Destroy the walls on either side of her by digging, or sulfuric acid, or a wand of lightning or striking.

Worst case wait for a hattifattener or something to show up and destroy them for you.

Maybe even plant a mine next to her, wait for an enemy to trigger it

And next time ask before committing suicide

But yeah this used to really annoy me. Once I had 4 baby mammoths and I thought it was awesome but I could hardly move and they stole all my kills from me. So I rarely tame creatures, except to sci-talk them and kill them again

Well both of these times I was only in the underwater tunnel--the first dungeon--so I didn't have anything fancy enough to get around. Would be nice if there was just a "get the fuck out of my way!" button. :C

Oh well, despite its flaws IVAN is definitely one of my favorite roguelikes. DoomRL is probably the only one I like more. ;D

It is the main reason I don't keep pets much. The only instance I get them is when I'm fighting a really dangerous enemy. If an enemy is too hard for me to fight I usually try to tame it. If the creature actually moves aside when I want to move forward, then I keep it. If not, I leave take them to me hometown and leave it there for future use there. :3

The reason would have been because she was stuck in a web. Even weaker pets you could move without any problems normally can't be moved past when they're stuck. You should have backed out so she'd get free trying to reach you, then continued on your merry way.

Or maybe she wasn't stuck, I just reread the OP. If you're not strong enough to muscle past a pet, go back, find a branching path, then walk around them and take the lead.

The second time, I was in a dead end and as I said in the first dungeon so I had very little to do to bypass. I'll keep all these options in mind for later though.

Pickaxe is always handy to prevent things like this from happening. I too have become very frustrated by allies who displace you and take all the kills, hampering your stat gains.

Not sure if it still applies for 0.50, but in CVS onwards some characters/monsters have the "IsMasochist" tag which means that they won't turn on you if you attack or otherwise harm them - also useful for this particular situation.
Masochists currently are:

SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.

An easy way to get minions stronger than you get out of the way is to tell them to not follow. If standing next to you, they will automatically try to take a step toward you and swap places with you. They may take a short while to free themselves if stuck, but they should still prefer to move towards you AFAIK.

For minions weaker than you, you'll just have to wait for them to free themselves if they get stuck to move past.

Or even better, don't keep any minions.

Good point about the no following JoKe.

nomud, ah ok that makes more sense. Yeah it'd be hard to come by most of those items in UT.

Wow 4zb4, I had no idea about the masochist property. I'd seen it in the scripts but assumed it was just descriptive. Awesome!