How many sidekicks does a hero need?

Doesn't there need to be one with an unrequited affection for the hero? Or can that be an incidental character?

Fantasy women can be physically smaller or less-than-perfect... if they have eldritch powers and a good heart.

I dunno about eldritch powers. I mean, yeah, it's a fantasy novel and there will be a certain amount of magic and what-not, but I hadn't planned for my hero to be so endowed. (In this magical universe, magic isn't that powerful.)

OTOH, I'm sick of Xena-style kick-ass warrior women and I refuse to write one. My hero, male or female, isn't endowed with Amazing Fighting Ability. As a guy, he was intended to be just sort of an amiable doofus, like Eddings' (Bel)Garath. (So, a good heart, yes. I don't have enough angst in my entire body to write an anti-hero.)

I guess if I make my hero female, the trick will be to make her the catalyst and the "hero" without endowing her with tediously outstanding gifts. (I'm trying to picture my amiable doofus as female and failing....)

Contemporary genre demands aside, I guess I'd need a particular reason to make my hero female. It's going to add a certain level of complication, so there would need to be a story-related reason. (Or maybe I'm just limited by the society I was raised in, finding myself unable to picture a woman being allowed to leave home and traipse around the world out of idle curiosity? Maybe that's enough reason to make the hero female?)

It's all very puzzling and very entertaining to think about.