Players playing 2 or more characters

Just wanted to know what are people's opinions about players playing 2 or more characters.

I know when I tried it, took over an NPC, I tended to forget about one of the characters so I was just wondering what are some of the opinions out there. If people tried it, how it went, etc.

I think this works best when one of the characters is a support class (e.g. healing-oriented cleric).

Edit: Erp! Sent it out too fast! Anyway, the idea is that one of the characters is sort of a drone who just acts in a support role while the primary character does all the roleplaying. Effectivly, the support character is a henchman.

I am my group's test case for the Leadership feat.

My primary character is a Wizard5/Alienist5.

My cohort is a PsychicWarrior8.

It seems to be working fairly well. I admit that I focus most of my roleplaying on my Wizard and use my Cohort, mainly, as a fighting drone, but she has a smidgeon of her own personality.

Our Monk9 is also thinking about taking leadership. If he does, we might consider swapping cohorts (I run his, he runs mine). We hope that this will keep our cohorts from just being direct extensions of our main characters.

Admitedly, we have played quite a bit of Ars Magica, so character swapping (troupe-style play) is not a new concept for us.

I'm not in favor of it and try to avoid it where possible, but I don't think it's a cardinal sin. I think it's less fun, except maybe in combat. And for most players, it's distracting to roleplay two different characters simultaneously. Which character speaks when and how do you know which it is? It seems to become an exercise in min/maxing. Hmmm...who has a better diplomacy...okay, he says...

Not to say it always happens this way, and there are times when we have a player out that we'll do this, but I try to avoid it if I can find a reasonable explanation for their characters indisposition. In a town it's a good chance for a Wiz to work on magic items or a cleric/paladin to spend some time in service or devotion. Ftr types can be fitted for that special they've been wanting. Imprisonment for drunkenness or lewd behavior also works. And someone can always get kidnapped or wrongfully imprisoned, but I prefer to save that for special occasions.

Outside of a town setting--dungeon crawls, wilderness, etc. it's a bit harder to come up with reasonable explanations, but on the other hand, there's generally not as much roleplaying in those scenarios as rollplaying, so I think it's less distracting to double-up.

the primary / secondary character option can work, but sitting arround a table with four other people and having a conversation between your two "selves" feels rather odd.

Troll

The primary reason for doing this is a shortage of PC's. I've always found that this is better solved through the DM running an NPC as a member of the party.

Out of curiosity.. if people don't (at least occasionally) play more than one PC, what do you all do when Barry McPlayer can't make it to the session, and yet, Tharg of the Black Hand is right there in the dungeon with everyone else?

Our group has a decent array of experience in this area, although I wish that weren't the case.

For the brief period of time we played 2e, there were only four members of or group including the DM. To avoid a small party or having the DM control several NPCs, we decided to have each player create and control 2 characters. Overall, I'd say it worked fairly well, but it certainly isn't optimal. There were more than a few occasions where a player clearly acted in the best interest of one PC over the other, or simply forgot the full range of capabilities each character provided.

More recently, our group has expanded to seven people which is great. The problem now, of course, is coordinating a mutually acceptable gaming time for everyone. Generally, five or six of us are able to attend, and we play the PCs of those who are absent. During those sessions, the absent player's character is used primarily in support by employing their most basic function throughout the session: fighting; healing; spellcasting; scouting.

Leadership aside, I would only recommend allowing two characters if that's the only way to get the party up to fighting trim, such as when there are only two or three players. Beyond that it can really bog a game down and severly impacts the amount or role-playing that gets done.

Well, I have only done this once, and that was to run my group of 4 players through Dragon Mountain. At that time, it wasn't so bad, other than roleplaying elements, such as:

DM: Ok, you guys just got to town, what are you going to do?
PC: Ok, my male character and female character are going to get a room and get it on.

I thought it was lame, but other than that instance it wasn't that bad having them play more than one character, though I did have them beefing up one character and throwing the other to the side.