Eh, I just play with escorts enhanced these days. Gives 'em some regen and has them stick close to you instead of lemming themselves into the unknown. Saved (and.lost) probably hundreds of escorts with the vanilla system and it's... fine. Not great, but you get used to it. Just often more frustrating than I find enjoyable, and it's nice to have the option to not deal with the frustrating aspects. Probably kinda' prefer something like that is regulated to add-ons, really... I like options like that more than set in stone game design, yeh.
Even with enhanced escorts get killed plenty often, though. There's basically sod all you can do when a shiv elemental drops vapor on top of an early escort in bear forest or whatever, heh.
Still, I could see someone expanding enhanced into a randboss rando style difficulty slider thing. Switch for AI behavior (vanilla suicide lemming, enhanced baseline, maybe something in between), setting for regen amount and personal firepower, maybe something to drop more enemies in ala storm events... spice things up, give full control to the player as to what sort of experience they want to deal with. Might be nice.
All that said, AoA escorts are definitely hella' more interesting than EoR yetis. Minibosses that sit on their arse, always in the same places, always barely a consideration as to "do I fight this" is just... somewhat boring, honestly. Escorts keep you on your toes, add behavior and scenarios that are pretty different from the normal stuff you deal with, etc. If they weren't quite so far down the flimsy suicidal lemming path, it'd be straight up good stuff rather than just okay.
E: Though it does occur to me that alternate escorts could be a thing, ala alt zones. Treasure goblins, anyone? Super speedy high dodge or decent health critters on a timer that bolt the second they see you

If you want it similarly themed they could be thieves on the run or somethin'.