I've been posting elsewhere about how to challenge a *big* group of players in my 12 person Rise of the Rune Lords campaign and I have another question: How do you all use NPCs in your players groups?
Even though I'm playing with a football team's worth of characters, most of them are newbies and the party is massively lacking in healing and magic. So initially I dropped my highly-optimized battle Cleric in as their NPC, but she comes and goes as the narrative requires, kind of like Batman in the Justice League. However, now I'm thinking about switching her over to a Mystic Theurge or even a gestalt character to fill that magic gap and reducing her combat superiority.
Long story short, I want to help them without enabling recklessness, laziness, or having the NPC win the fight for them. How do you all handle such things? Do you have players control NPCs in combat, similar to the leadership feat, or do you play them to the fullest?
2 blogs on encounter design at the top
as a player in a 15 PC party with 15 cohorts and like 10 pets i can tell you the following
a massive party alone will trivialize encounters of a size that fails to account for their own
particular forms of crippling hyperspecialization become viable
magic resources are spread even thinner
treasure is divided even thinner than that
more consumables get wasted
costs of Upkeep increase
Sheltering, Feeding, Clothing, Cleaning and Maintenance 4 PCs is fine
Sheltering, Feeding, Clothing, Cleaning, and Maintenance for a mercenary mounted artillery unit of 30 Soldiers, 10 Combat Pets, and 40 Horses is a lot more difficult. costs 30 times more. a horse for each soldier, and 10 pack horses.
roleplaying becomes harder
in fact, the best solution for such a party
is to, as soon as you finish, move on to either kingmaker, skull and shackles, or serpent's skull. even better, homebrew a mercenary company campaign for these guys.
another good idea
for such a large army, abandon any hopes of roleplay entirely, turn it into a wargame.
I don't use combatant NPCs if at all avoidable. I'd rather adjust the adventure so the PCs don't need the help.
I don't use combatant NPCs if at all avoidable. I'd rather adjust the adventure so the PCs don't need the help.
good idea
I've already banned Leadership, and thankfully only two of the players have animal companions. Believe it or not, the roleplaying has been good and combat hasn't been too overly complicated, mostly because they were steamrolling stuff due to their action economy and some astonishingly lucky rolls on charms and intimidates, lol. Even as I've upped the difficulty, they have gotten used to researching their next moves so that when it comes to be their turn they are ready.
What do you think about having one of the players control the NPC inside combat?
Bumping this in case anyone has an insight before I go live with this tomorrow.
The plan now is to tone down my Cleric a bit (magically changing from a battle cleric to mystic theurge) and let one of the players control her in combat. I think that should nicely bridge their potential deficits while still ultimately leaving the power in their hands. Any thoughts?
That's an excellent idea, thank you.
For today's session I did in fact change my cleric to a cleric/wizard/ Mystic Theurge that I let one of my players control during combat, and it worked out great. I'm going to flesh out the character and make sure she's built around utility rather than melting faces, and it should be all good.
A shame, since she was a wrecking ball. Ah well, now she'll be a fire ball ;)