D&D 5E Have players play their own rescuers

[Melance]

I have an idea for my next session and I'm curious if anyone has any helpful input or can tell me just how bad of an idea it is. My players have been arrested for questioning and are currently locked in prison. Instead of doing a fairly standard prison break, I was going to have a group of pregenerated characters break into the prison to rescue their leader only to help the PCs escape their cells. I thought it would be fun for the players to play these pregenerated characters rescuing themselves but I'm worried about them being overwhelmed by playing a unfamiliar character.

Has anyone tried this or have any creative criticism?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I’ve given players bunches of NPCs to play in sessions before (as well as being on the other side and being handed an NPC to play), and that’s generally gone pretty well. That being said, I kinda feel like giving them NPCs to rescue their own characters takes some of the agency away from the PCs. What if the one PC totally came up with an awesome way to escape after the last session and they can’t wait to try it out?

My general rule for prison escapes is that I’ll have something that can happen if they don’t come up with a good plan to escape, but only use that as a last resort.

 

[Xeviat]

That seems fun!


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[iserith]

I'd ask the players if they want to do that before you surprise them with it. If you use XP, I'd also award whatever XP the rescuing PCs earn to the rescued PCs so the players aren't out a session's worth of experience points.

 

[Melance]

I was going to have the NPC's essentially open the cell but the PC's will essentially have to get out on their own. Though I can see your point as well. I think I'll leave it as an option if they struggle too long with the escape.

 

[Melance]

I use XP but I give it out per session, not for combat and such. My system is a bit of a blend between XP and milestone because I sometimes need them to hit a certain level before the next part of the story. All of that to say, you are absolutely correct that they should be rewarded XP to their mains.

 

[Melance]

Forgot to ask. When you've done this, did you give them a full character sheet or something abbreviated? I was thinking of doing an abbreviated character sheet to make it less overwhelming.

 

[Eltab]

As a total stereotype, one of the guards is on the Thieves Guild's payroll. He recognizes that the PCs are a potential useful tool.
When the excitement starts, he whispers to the PCs that they can get out too ... at the low low cost of a favor in return.

In answer to your original question: Let your players decide if they want to play the breakers-in or the breakers-out - or even split up and some play on each.

 

[alienux]

Forgot to ask. When you've done this, did you give them a full character sheet or something abbreviated? I was thinking of doing an abbreviated character sheet to make it less overwhelming.

If it's something that's going to be temporary, I probably wouldn't worry about having full character sheets. Just enough of their abilities and stats for them to use in those NPC's portion of the story.

 

[Satyrn]

Forgot to ask. When you've done this, did you give them a full character sheet or something abbreviated? I was thinking of doing an abbreviated character sheet to make it less overwhelming.

Full character sheet.

I've done something similar. I sprang 4 pregenerated characters on my players for a surprise one-off dungeon delve. These characters were higher level than the PCs, but were related - I gave the wizard player a sorcerer; the fighter player a paladin, etc - and were meant to die in the scenario's boss fight (but if they didn't it would still be a fade to black moment).

The whole thing was meant to foreshadow what the PCs would be seeing and facing later on.

It worked well. And was memorable.

Oh, yeah. I made some weird character creation choices - things tge players probably never would have. The sorcerer, for example, had beefed up hit points and all of his combat spells were melee ranged necromancy spells.