Summons

Good news: Arcana is back in development, and should have a pre-release soon! I have 128 upgradeable spells to make :'3
I've been struggling to think up a way to add summons to my datapack, such as zombies, vexes, and bees that fight for you. The addition of mannequins has given me hope for humanoid summons, but I still haven't fleshed out how the system will work, besides using scaled-down wolves connected to mannequins using a scoreboard id system, where the mannequins are constantly teleported to the wolves and on a team with no collision. I have a few questions though...

Should I test for identical scores in the normal way, or use macros to instantly access the entity with the correct score? Which way is better for performance?
In the past, I wanted to use the wolf as a hitbox and have the entity be invulnerable, but now I'm considering making the mannequin into the damageable entity. Both have their benefits and downsides. Which would you use?
Should I rely on the wolf to deal damage normally or would a custom damage system using raycasts be better?
Are there any new issues that might arise from using this combination of entities?