Two Person Campaign

[Benjamin Marsh]

Hello all,

I was hoping to run a campaign with just my wife and myself. Does anyone have any tips for how to effectively run a pathfinder campaign with only one PC? I imagine it would become quite boring when every encounter is only one or two creatures.

Thanks for your input!

[Alexander Kilcoyne]

Two Gestalt characters perhaps...

[Kaiyanwang]

In my experience, for solo adventures Wizards and Rogues are the best (the first for flexibility of spells, the second of skills).

I guess a ranger, witch, or inquisitor could be nice classes for solo too.

The important thing is that you should

1) Adjust challenges as less front-loaded fight and more as complicated situations which can be resolved with clever use of spells and skill and RPG

2) Add DMPCs. Constant or ever-changing, it's your choice, but the single PC need allies. Maybe gain allies could even be the first part of several adventures.

[Blueluck]

One on one roleplaying can be great fun! You have a tremendous ability to customize the stories to a single player, and to make one character the protagonist.

I'm going to give you some advice, which will be very different from much of what you will hear from most people in this forum. My advice comes from personal experience and second hand experience, and I'm going to suggest a campaign of a different kind than you would run for more than one player.

• Don't let your player control more than one character. By keeping your player to a single perspective, she will have the opportunity to become totally immersed in that personality. Asking her to play multiple characters robs her of that opportunity.

  Also, if you control the other characters, she will be able to converse with them and have relationships with them, rather than moving them around like the pieces and pawns on a chess board. Relationships are much more interesting to roleplay than strategic maneuvers are.

• Don't make powerful NPCs who are completely on her side. Slowly working your way into the good graces of a boss who initially has a grudge against you is much more interesting than having a powerful patron.

• Don't worry about the fights! With one player, conversation and relationships will take much more of your time. Fights will be interesting because of their social significance, the dialogue that accompanies them, the time an manner in which they take place, etc. Some may be tactically interesting, and others won't, but that's not where the best part of your game will be taking place.

• Don't worry about power level. With only one character, there is not competition between players for time in the spotlight. Whatever kind of character she decides to play, your wife will be the main character. Challenges will be geared to make her experience rewarding.

  Along those lines, I suggest an attribute array like 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8. As a storyteller, it's more interesting if your protagonist has dramatic strengths and weaknesses.
  

[Nymor]

If it suits the character she wants to roleplay, let her take "leadership" as fast as possible ;)

A druid or a ?/Shadowdancer seem other 2 pretty good characters for solo campaigns

[Jit]

Off the top of my head;

Since it is only the two of you - build the campaign around her charachter

Make sure to give the PC plenty of safe houses, some friends and a couple of useful contacts and a patron(or two)

The focus of the campaign could be on spying/politics/crimefighting.

(basically any combat except bar brawls are going to be
a) deadly for the pc
b) a cake walk

so encourage hand to hand combat/the use of nonlethal weaponry and the taking of prisoners in the campaign world;)

sadly this also severly limits the types and amounts of monsters you can use

Oh, and give your wife Nodwick.

[Blueluck]

Jit wrote:

encourage hand to hand combat/the use of nonlethal weaponry and the taking of prisoners in the campaign world;)

I agree. Most people, and even most animals, rarely fight to the death. Most will surrender or flee. Also, in almost every society the penalty for murder is far harsher than the penalty for beating someone up.

[Necromancer]

Running standard characters in a solo campaign is tough (combat-wise); recently, I was reminded about gestalt characters (from Unearthed Arcana) which are now a must for any solo games I'm running. Here's my experience running Council of Thieves solo with an unconventional character and a lot of improvisation: Thread link

[scthomas]

Necromancer wrote:

Running standard characters in a solo campaign is tough (combat-wise); recently, I was reminded about gestalt characters (from Unearthed Arcana) which are now a must for any solo games I'm running. Here's my experience running Council of Thieves solo with an unconventional character and a lot of improvisation: Thread link

I've always been a big fan of Gestalt's outside of a 4+man party. Unearthed Arcana really does hit it well on the wording, it doesn't really empower the characters alot more it just gives them more choices.

I was going to run a campaign with my wife and it was a gestalt setup, she decided to go with weird diversity ( Oracle/Rogue ) while the NPC I crafted were all going to be thematic ( Alchemist/Artificier, Monk/Swordsage, and old Kobold Summoner/Witch ).

A favorite quote from a friend of mine is that all the players are Heroes and hense should do heroic things. Their plans and goals should be beyond mundane otherwise after 3rd level you could just retire and live a pretty nice life.

For idea's of how to impliment gestalt. In my story something happened to the mutli-verse and multiple alternate realities collapsed and merged. The character was sitting at a table with friends and saw the world "degauss" like an old CRT monitor and she saw all of the alternate heroic options of what she had become. When they all merged in her brain she fought off the insanity of it all and took away from it two of the sets of learning.