Poll: Who did play in a group where the master had a "pet NPC"?

[diaglo]

i've met four DMs in the last 3 years who have had pet NPCs inserted into the party. all the parties were large, so they did not require extra help. however, the DM felt a need to be a player as well as a DM. in 3 of the 4 campaigns it totally sucked.

b/c of the size of the party the DMs scaled up the adventure. as things got too hard for the party, deus ex machina kicked in. NPC killed NPC or solved riddle or cast a spell (even when he wasn't a spellcaster) or etc...mostly we, the players, were sidekicks for the NPC. this is the worst possible scenario you can get in as a gamer.

the fourth campaign worked mostly. the NPC was a filler when not everyone could make it. the DM was reasonable with his judicious use of his NPCs and their abilities. mostly he rotated them. never had the same one for more than 2 sessions.

 

[Imhotepthewise]

Pet NPCs.

Three Things:

The thing I've found after 25+ years of RPGing is that good NPCs make a good game great. Read Sepulchrave's Wyre story hour, for example.

NPCs should earn experience at half the rate of PCs, to encourage their use with minor penalty.

NPCs should rarely, if ever, prevent a TPK.

 

[Oghma]

Gunter, you just described what I would call an NPC. That's not a DM pet, it's an NPC created for a purpose and phased in or out of the campaign as needed. Well done!

Let's see if we can round out what a pet NPC is.

A "pet" NPC has some qualities that are unique:

The DM plays it as a character.

The NPC is, for some reason, essential to the adventure or campaign. Indisputably so.

The NPC excels at everything - combat, spellcasting, whatever. They are rarely damaged at the end of a fight, and sometimes their spell list seems to never be exhausted.

The NPC is often better equipped than most of the party.

Adventures are often designed around the NPC.

Occasional rules slips always fall in the favor of the NPC.

Bad things just don't happen to pet NPCs.

I know there are more, I just can't think of any.

 

[rounser]

to start, a campaign mover is an npc (usually a archmage)who shows up in times of peril and/or indecision and guides the players to safety and/or a satisfactory ending to the day's session. mine is Keras Silverblade, the level 45 fey'ri(FR) wizard. i long ago last track of his age and i could care less. my boy keras shows up at the last possible minute, doles out some wisdom, drops a meteor swarm on a seemingly implacable hoard of goblins/minotaurs/politicians, and disappears like nothing happened. so indulge me please: who is your campaign mover?

Check out all his majesty...

 

[Pants]

Check out all his majesty...

Was that from the Wizard's boards?

 

[JoeGKushner]

When I was younger I made that mistake a lot. It's not that you have powerful NPCs in the campaign, it's that they're in the party, taking the limelight away from the players on a constant basis. Ah, the young old days.

I've also been in campaigns like that. Sometimes I don't mind it that much as it allows the GM to throw things at us that we normally couldn't handle because we've got the uber NPC with us so the XP comes quick but othertimes...

 

[jdavis]

Check out all his majesty...

Ok so the 45th level half Demon elf is doling out wisdom and saving the party? Why isn't he trying to kill the party and take over the world? Oh wait he's the DMs super PC that he uses to stroke his own ego. That is a perfect example of of a petNPC. He shows all the signs:

He's 45th level for goodness sake, that's just silly, I'm willing to bet the players are relatively low level (you know under epic level by this standard). The character is so powerful he doesn't have to worry about getting hurt or the party turning on him.

He's a "cool" character; part Demon super warrior who is working for the good guys (gee the character who has turned against his evil roots to help good, that sounds familiar).

The character is used to guide the players "in times of peril or indicision"...... wait isn't peril part of the fun of the game, and by indicision I am assuming he means "push the story along when the players can't figure out what's going on in his adventure."

Ah but here is the kicker, he shows up at the last minute and doles out wisdom and a meteor storm, boy I bet the players just love it when the DM has his pet appear out of the blue to save them from a encounter the DM designed to be more than they could beat and then preaches to them about what they should of done. Then he just disappears like nothing happens. I wonder if he would show up and save the day if the characters just said to heck with it and went home?

Ah it's a campaign mover, I thought a campaign mover was something that advanced the storyline not solved the storyline and then doles out the DMs "wisdom".

 

[Black Omega]

Well, worst case scenario is indeed the PC's saying 'Heck with this, he can finish this job himself.' and going home.

I can sympathize with wanting the PC's to take action at times. But having an NPC show up to give them a kick and some wisdom doesn't seem as effective to me as having some bad guys show up, get their butts kicked, and the PC's get new ideas.

My group was waiting in an alley not too long ago, trying to decide how to check out a meeting place with criminals. The planning was going in circles. Some bad guys showed up, looking for revenge on one PC (the group knew they had been followed.)

It was a non-fight. There were more PC's there than the bad guys had known, and the wizard quickly Dominated the leader of the bad guys. Using that as an idea, they sent him in to look around for them. It moved the plot along, and my PC's came up with a plan to check the place out I had not expected, I think it worked pretty well.

 

[Remathilis]

A great example of Pet NPC

Game I played in over college. The DM had a pet ranger he had written a long story about in High School. We rolled up PCs for his game, and after 5-6 sessions of not really having much to do (long story), we met his pet, a famous hero of a bygone era. He was a member of a Harper's like society, which we were able to join.
There is were it got bad. The plot moved to an evil-force destroying the world and NPC was the choosen one to stop it. While he didn't hang around much with us, he did manage to show up at critical moments to save us from conflicts we COULD not handle on purpose (such as 5 5th level PCs vs an 18th level psy warrior) and became more and more the focus of the war (kinda like Neo in the Matrix). After the game ended for various reasons (not the least being we could do nothing of importance but be there at important events) we found out that the world would end because of this NPC and there was nothing we could have done to stop it, nothing.

I told him next time, I'll just read the book.

 

[El Diablo Grande]

If there is one thing I can't stand....grrr.

I think Oghma hit the nail on the head with the defination of a pet NPC/DM's personal character. As a long time DM, I've never run my own character as a traveling/adventuring companion to the party. And if an NPC comes along for story reasons, he's always in the background of a fight or conflict with the player characters taking care of the main problem.