How to cope with only 2 players

[fl8m]

I've only got 2 players and me
I've tried a variety of things to help compensate for not having 2 other party members, increasing thier level, giving them more magic items/tailor made items, npc party members.
all of them have problems,
increasing thier level just meant increasing the difficluty of encoutners or they get less xp
more items/tailor made items made encounters to easy or dependent more on thier items
than the actions of thier characters
npc party members works well, but either distracts the dm, or steals some of the players thunder.

Does anybody else have less than 4 players? if so what do you do to help cope with it?
oh yeah and "find more players" doesn't work, I'm rabidly antisocial and live in utah

 

[Nifft]

I've got 2-4 players, usually 2 or 3.

There are a number of ways to deal with this:
1/ Gestalt from Unearthed Arcana.
2/ Generalists instead of specialists (Ranger, Bard, Fighter/Rogue, Druid instead of Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue).
3/ Tailor your encounters (takes lots of practice as a DM) -- this is what I do.

-- N

 

[Thanee]

EL is based on four party members, with only two party members you should simply halve the number of opponents, or reduce CR by 2 to get a roughly appropriate challenge for two PCs.

Trying Gestalt rules might work well. It basically makes the PCs stronger and increases the bases they could cover (i.e. a Gestalt Druid/Ranger and a Gestalt Rogue/Wizard could make a formidable team), while leaving them at the same level (you then could just ignore the fact, that they are better than normal characters of their level and still base the EL on their character level).

Bye
Thanee

 

[TheAuldGrump]

A method that I have used: Change the theme of the game. It is much easier to run a game of intrigue and investigation with 2 players than to do a dungeon crawl. Encounters become a thing to avoid, sort of like the difference between Thief and Doom...

The Auld Grump

 

[cmanos]

was one of the reasons I loved Thief.

 

[philreed]

I'll definitely second the suggestion to run a different style of game.

 

[Whisper72]

In the past I have frequently had the same, most of the time I DM'd for 2 players. One of the things we did was have each player play with 2 or sometimes even 3 PC's.

It does pose the threat of metagaming (i.e. it is even more difficult to differentiate between PC and player knowledge, and knowledge between the PC's), but especially if your game is more dungeoncrawly versus intrigue, then the knowledge factor is less important as long as the party does not split up, and elsewise it is a matter of being stern and alert for such cases...

 

[Li Shenron]

increasing thier level just meant increasing the difficluty of encoutners or they get less xp

This just isn't... If you have half the players, so have half the monsters and they'll get the same Xp as before.

I am with the idea of just lessening the number of combats if survival seems to be the problem.

IMO the real problem can rather be the limited options the party has. I've run a solo game only once for a couple of evenings, the player was a Druid (which is quite versatile) and I let her befriend an NPC Bard who followed her in the adventure. Since the Bard was fairly decent in exploration skills (traps & locks were really out of the Druid's league) and added a few arcane tricks, the whole thing went quite well overall.

 

[HellHound]

First few times I seriously altered the style of game. Gear the encounters and adventures directly to the player characters.

But the two most recent campaigns we used the Gestalt rules for the PCs, but not for the NPCs. two Gestalt PCs are not nearly as powerful as 4 non-gestalts, but if they play smart and you tweak the adventures a bit for them, they can run through most modules designed for their level.

 

[Shallown]

I would also suggest a style change but to be more specific run an urban campaign.

Take advantage of one of the best things of running 2 people and that is the added time you can devote to character/npc interaction. I know in larger groups combat starts taking up more and more time as you gain levels and its hard with large groups to do a lot of NPC interaction becuase it is usually single player with GM time that is hard to balance out without boring the other players.

A weakness in 2-3 player games is if things go wrong they are more likely to end up all dead. When luck truns on 2 people in a 2-3 player game it is deadly in a 6-7 player game two characters going down is a speed bump not a killer. If you run an urban campaign you can better introduce a means to save the party from a TPK by having people/help nearby. I mean what's the odds of the kings patrol stumbling across a party in the woods being slaughtered by a troll versus the same group in town being attacked by a rival thieves guild and having the guard arrive or other help.

Also finding help, as far as, healing or hiring people with skills you might not have in an urban campaign is easier than a larger game world. Instead of days of travel back to a city you walk down the street and get help.

Hope this helps

later