Cren's page

When if ever is it ok to have a npc party member?

Sometimes you dont have enough players, or the story would benefit from a npc party member, but in my experience there are a host of problems that go along with including one. From the players perspective it is easy to see a these npcs in several ways.
1. The party police who's job it is to control what th pcs can do.
2. The baby-sitter who's job it is to point where the party needs to go and save their bums.
3. The marysue, because the DM ( am I allowed to say that?) wants to run and play at the same time.

As for the gm it is too easy to use npcs as a goto crutch for gming. And making marysue is easy to do without noticing . I think it's never ok to make a npc that is more awesome than the pcs. An advanced and self aware gm would be able to avoid these, and there are instances where an npc party member would be apropriate.

Do you have any advice or stories about successful, or unsuccessful npc party members?

I just wanted some advice on starting a new story, here are my current plans:

The pcs are captured and taken to castle Thorne. They are blindfolded on the way there. Be sure to describe the hard feel of their captors. In the cell their thrown in they meet another prisoner named john who says that they have been captured by the steelflesh.  Jhon is a former guard 15 years who has resigned to his fate. The steelflesh have been capturing people of talent and bringing them to castle Thorne. They take them to a room where prisoners minds are transfused into the warforged like steelflesh. If they find the candidates mind unsatisfactory they send them to work in the steel minds below castle Thorne.  The pcs find a way to escape the cell, but are herded to the mines. There they encounter several waves of kobold slavers. Expect the mines to take the majority of the time.  Finally the pcs escape the mines into the underdark where they are greeted by myceloid ( bestiary 3) who claims to be leading them to the suface but leads them to his house and attempts to eat them. The pcs find a secret passage to the surface in the house where they are finally free.