So, the next campaign I'm going to play with friends, we only have two of our usual group coming in. (three including me) soo I'm going to have to DMPC more than likely. One is rolling a Sorcerer, the other a Monk. I'm a little bit confused at what to roll to match them. They want a bandaid but hmph.
Support Cleric
Battle-Cleric
Caster Druid (kind of interested)
If we are lucky, and extreemmeellyy lucky, we may be able to have our friend come by on their Anti-paladin but I doubt it.
Any opinions?
I would take one that makes them better. A Bard for example that doesn't use a bow and is focused on making them better. May require a wand of clw though. A unoptimised cleric focused on healing could also work. DMPCs can be fine but you don't want to overshadow your players. You don't have to make them suck either but you probably don't want to have them as focused as your PCs.
Thank you for the input! I am actually still pretty intrigued on a Druid, but I can wait for when it's someone elses turn to DM lol. I'll try not to let my knowledg eof the future obscure the challenge.
A bard sidekick could actually be just as fun. You could give him a bow even; it's the archery feats that would risk overshadowing the players, not the basic use of the bow. Bardic knowledge would help fill a lot of the void of limited knowledge skills, and the various archetypes could help fill specific voids as well.
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What if you, you know, just didn't DMPC?
I've run quite a few D&D games with just two players--generally a Rogue-type and a Fighter-type. It works fine.
A monk and a sorcerer can be even more versatile than that--I see no need to add a third character.
Yeah, I've considered that as well lol. Just am a bit worried on balance issues, but then again everything can be scaled appropriately.
When I have to give the party an NPC i like to give them something that has a lot of options. A bard works well for this. Most of the time you act in an support role and from time to time if they really needed it use some of your more potent abilities. But if their handling the encounter I generally let them have it and use aid another options or other actions that aren't going to steal the show. I like casters in this roll. Stick to your low level spells/powers unless battle starts going south and then throw your better fire power out there. I also usually focus on things like buffing, battle field control, and debuffing while avoiding save or suck, summoning, and direct damage(again let there characters have the spot light and drive the action.
Another option is to rotate NPC's through the party based on the story or needs of the group while avoiding getting really attached to one and making it a DMPC. Then again in most groups i've played in we wanted the npc when we had a small group so I'd ask the players whether they want to go it alone or have help.
Yeah, like everyone else said, if you are going to have a DMPC, make it an enabler; let your PC make the other PCs better so they still get to take charge.
Loving all the suggestions. I've decided that they will encounter a Bard in the prison and he will stick around for a majority of the story :P
DMPC that turns out to be the villain is always fun. A loyal character who is always there for the group, but is actually trying to use them for his/her own gain.
Lol, sounds fun! Plays a sad song just before slicing your throat >.>
Xerxes I'm hesitant to recommend the villain as the DMPC. Unless you like your party trying to murder your NPC's in the future. That trap got sprung on my party along time ago and we still haven't forgiven that gm. It will be a memorable experience for the party if you do it well but a lot of them might not thank you for it.
Touche touche...campaign won't last long enough for a lot of development.
Oh yeah, no i didn't mean like a PC who is gonna slit their throats as they sleep or lead them into a trap of sure demise. I meant a villain that is slowly trying to corrupt/use them in minor ways. It will eventually lead to an encounter where they will find out and decide whether to move on with him/her, part ways, try to turn to "good", or challenge and stop them.
I totally see your point, it is too easy for it to turn into a "You've been lead into a trap now fight your way out" here comes the TPK.
A villain who is not cackling in the night and vowing to eat all the little children when the PCs are asleep, but who is working toward a goal that will cause people harm, but still believes he/she is doing right. This will not only make for a fun villain to play for the DM, but one who the PCs will want to try and save/understand.
DMPC that turns out to be the villain is always fun. A loyal character who is always there for the group, but is actually trying to use them for his/her own gain.
I hate those personally. It's just not a trope that is going to fit well with a lot of players and/or campaigns.
You have a few options with a two person party...
Use a NPC ... I personally would go with a Life Oracle... easy to keep up with and can support without taking the spotlight off the party.
A few others...
1. Let them Gestalt... and keep everything else single class. This gives them extra power to account for less players.
2. Give them both a free Leadership feat... each gets a NPC under their control and that ups the party to 4.
3. Really go wild on loot. This one can be fun. You can give them the WBL of a 4 person party increasing their power.
Problems involved...
1. They still have One round of actions each... so large amounts of enemies are still going to hurt if it was meant for a party of 4.
2. This can be an issue if your players aren't good at (or dont want to) keep up with an NPC.
3. Same as number 1. Also you have an issue if you gain another player. I once played in a 2 person Gestalt game that quickly became a 5 player game lol. We just dropped the Gestalt and kept going.
DMPC that turns out to be the villain is always fun. A loyal character who is always there for the group, but is actually trying to use them for his/her own gain.I hate those personally. It's just not a trope that is going to fit well with a lot of players and/or campaigns.
How so? If you don't mind me asking for a bit of clarification. I've done this a few times and it always seemed to work out great. I ask because I would like to know where it tends to fall apart most often.
You have a few options with a two person party...
Use a NPC ... I personally would go with a Life Oracle... easy to keep up with and can support without taking the spotlight off the party.
A few others...
1. Let them Gestalt... and keep everything else single class. This gives them extra power to account for less players.
2. Give them both a free Leadership feat... each gets a NPC under their control and that ups the party to 4.
3. Really go wild on loot. This one can be fun. You can give them the WBL of a 4 person party increasing their power.
Problems involved...
1. They still have One round of actions each... so large amounts of enemies are still going to hurt if it was meant for a party of 4.
2. This can be an issue if your players aren't good at (or dont want to) keep up with an NPC.
3. Same as number 1. Also you have an issue if you gain another player. I once played in a 2 person Gestalt game that quickly became a 5 player game lol. We just dropped the Gestalt and kept going.
I like this man's plan if your PCs can keep up with it. Having a DMPC is always fun, but if the PCs would like this better then I would do this.
How so? If you don't mind me asking for a bit of clarification. I've done this a few times and it always seemed to work out great. I ask because I would like to know where it tends to fall apart most often.DMPC that turns out to be the villain is always fun. A loyal character who is always there for the group, but is actually trying to use them for his/her own gain.I hate those personally. It's just not a trope that is going to fit well with a lot of players and/or campaigns.
It's just never worked well in any of the groups I've been in. Of course, I've never actually had the luxury of playing with the same group very long, so that could well be part of it. A group of the same people who have known each other a long time would likely find the trust issues raised by that scenario to be far less of a problem than a group that doesn't really know each other outside of the game. It can certainly be done, and even done well, but it is not one of the easier ones to pull off unless you really know your players.
Witch would make a great DMPC, especially a hedge witch.
Decent healing but not super, so they have to watch themselves.
Debuff as needed: AC, AB, Saves, Skills, and Misfortune is great if they don't have super tanks. Slumber works nice for crowd control and it's easy enough for you as the DM to 'wake' combatants as the frontliners get taken out, regulating how many enemies the party has to face at once.
Minimal offense, so the party still has to do the actual work, and witch is squishy enough that they have to make an effort to keep it alive and protected.
How so? If you don't mind me asking for a bit of clarification. I've done this a few times and it always seemed to work out great. I ask because I would like to know where it tends to fall apart most often.DMPC that turns out to be the villain is always fun. A loyal character who is always there for the group, but is actually trying to use them for his/her own gain.I hate those personally. It's just not a trope that is going to fit well with a lot of players and/or campaigns.
Lets say you play the same campaign for a year and a half. You have had the same npc from lvl 1 to level 18. He has been with you on every adventure searching for an over arching big bad(which is him by the way). He is sleeping with the Paladins wife who is also an NPC in the party and has fathered the child your Paladin has been raising as his own. He has been screwing the party at every turn and leading us on a marry chase that results in many important people getting killed.In the middle of a very desperate encounter the wife and the other npc turn on you. She back stabs and kills one PC. My character kills her to the horror of the Paladin(who has an emotional break down in character and close to one outside). Leaving me alone to kill a large group of fire giants and stone golems on my own. The NPC escapes with the magical mcguffin we needed to stop the apocalypses. We then have to hunt him down and kill him but the harm has been done. I'm not bitter at all by the way.
The problem is if you get the party attached to a NPC and don't give them any proper warning there will be a betrayal they may take it badly. And this leads to all your future NPC's getting murdered( I know meta gaming is wrong but our gm really pissed us off).
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DMPC that turns out to be the villain is always fun. A loyal character who is always there for the group, but is actually trying to use them for his/her own gain.
I agree. This is imho the best justification for dmpc's. If the only dmpc you ever meet is a villain, then it gets kinda impossible to insert a villainous dmpc into the party. Just sayin.
It's like meeting a beautiful woman in the woods after dark falls in a Clark Ashton Smith Averoigne story. She's going to eat your soul, dude. Think about it.
I disagree with the slumber hex. it is not good that the fight ended by a single anction of the DMPC.
The slumber hex doesn't always land, especially on the BBEG. And with multiple goons, they can wake each other up as needed. Plus you don't need to min-max your witch, instead of a 20 int and 7 charisma you could have one with 16 int and 14 charisma, and still be very helpful to the party, while dropping your DC enough that you aren't winning the fight for the party automatically.
How so? If you don't mind me asking for a bit of clarification. I've done this a few times and it always seemed to work out great. I ask because I would like to know where it tends to fall apart most often.DMPC that turns out to be the villain is always fun. A loyal character who is always there for the group, but is actually trying to use them for his/her own gain.I hate those personally. It's just not a trope that is going to fit well with a lot of players and/or campaigns.Lets say you play the same campaign for a year and a half. You have had the same npc from lvl 1 to level 18. He has been with you on every adventure searching for an over arching big bad(which is him by the way). He is sleeping with the Paladins wife who is also an NPC in the party and has fathered the child your Paladin has been raising as his own. He has been screwing the party at every turn and leading us on a marry chase that results in many important people getting killed.In the middle of a very desperate encounter the wife and the other npc turn on you. She back stabs and kills one PC. My character kills her to the horror of the Paladin(who has an emotional break down in character and close to one outside). Leaving me alone to kill a large group of fire giants and stone golems on my own. The NPC escapes with the magical mcguffin we needed to stop the apocalypses. We then have to hunt him down and kill him but the harm has been done. I'm not bitter at all by the way.
The problem is if you get the party attached to a NPC and don't give them any proper warning there will be a betrayal they may take it badly. And this leads to all your future NPC's getting murdered( I know meta gaming is wrong but our gm really pissed us off).
oh nos.
Not what i had in mind when I make DMPCs villains but dear Ser I am terribly sorry for your loss. That sounds both horrifying... and amazing. From 1-18!?! dang... I can't hold my DMPCs from turning after maybe 5-6 lvls...
Cool story though bro... totally answered my question and gave me things to consider.
How so? If you don't mind me asking for a bit of clarification. I've done this a few times and it always seemed to work out great. I ask because I would like to know where it tends to fall apart most often.DMPC that turns out to be the villain is always fun. A loyal character who is always there for the group, but is actually trying to use them for his/her own gain.I hate those personally. It's just not a trope that is going to fit well with a lot of players and/or campaigns.Lets say you play the same campaign for a year and a half. You have had the same npc from lvl 1 to level 18. He has been with you on every adventure searching for an over arching big bad(which is him by the way). He is sleeping with the Paladins wife who is also an NPC in the party and has fathered the child your Paladin has been raising as his own. He has been screwing the party at every turn and leading us on a marry chase that results in many important people getting killed.In the middle of a very desperate encounter the wife and the other npc turn on you. She back stabs and kills one PC. My character kills her to the horror of the Paladin(who has an emotional break down in character and close to one outside). Leaving me alone to kill a large group of fire giants and stone golems on my own. The NPC escapes with the magical mcguffin we needed to stop the apocalypses. We then have to hunt him down and kill him but the harm has been done. I'm not bitter at all by the way.
That sounds...EPIC!!!
That is definitely the extreme to avoid when using an DMPC like that. 5 or 6 levels and and the DMPC turns out to work for the ultimate bad guy is one thing, and is still hard enough to for many players to swallow. Something like the above will make it so players never trust your DMPCs ever again, and that can make it harder on you to tell the story you want to tell. Some people will really, really like it, but most will want to kill any DMPC you introduce immediately.
I've been down to two players quite a bit lately. When I think they need more help in-game and don't want to scale things back I have them create two characters each. One usually ends up being the main, more-interesting character, but both usually end up getting some "shine time" as well. For one thing, it ups the odds that they've got at least one character they're pretty happy with.
M
Ah.... villainous DMPCs... wait I think we all blacked out there for a sec... what was this post originally about again?
Making two chars works if you got experienced players that can multi task...if not npc's it is...and i'm glad everyone enjoyed my story lol...on the plus side we did win the fight and safe the world...what makes that even better was it was our first campaign we had ever played as a group in 2nd edition...good times.
So, the next campaign I'm going to play with friends, we only have two of our usual group coming in. (three including me) soo I'm going to have to DMPC more than likely. One is rolling a Sorcerer, the other a Monk. I'm a little bit confused at what to roll to match them. They want a bandaid but hmph.
Support Cleric
Battle-Cleric
Caster Druid (kind of interested)If we are lucky, and extreemmeellyy lucky, we may be able to have our friend come by on their Anti-paladin but I doubt it.
Any opinions?
Hey, I'm playing a campaign with only 3 players* (GM Included). The solution we found in making each player control 2 characters! Now you have a party of 4 characters! The ideal number!
There's no DMPC and the players can have twice the fun (or at least, twice the actions)!
*Well, technically, it has 4 players, but two of them, simply by virtue of chance, were only able to play when it was my turn to GM.