D&D General Am I the only one who plays D&D with more than 1 character per player???

[aco175]

@Brak ,I just wanted to say congrats for making it 15 years on the boards and posting only 3 times. I was going to welcome you, but I'll award you the Ultimate Lurker Award instead. You cannot see it, but it looks like a gnome paladin in all his glory.

To answer your question, I mostly seen in in earlier editions where you needed a party of 6-12 characters to fill rolls and fight monsters in the numbers put out in the books. By 3e/4e the party of 4-5 was set and could fill all the rolls and the books set encounters for this size. My group has one player who will play 2 PCs when needed with one being more combat and the other more 2nd tier- mostly a caster type. There is also plenty of times where a NPC joins for a while and one of the players will run it.

 

[Shiroiken]

I've done it back in 1E, where it was fairly common with low player games. In 5E I created a West Marches style campaign, where players owned multiple characters. If there were too few players, the group had the option to hire one (or more) of the other characters as a henchman to bring the party up to size. The henchman would be controlled by the player, but only earn half xp and gold (taking a full share), nor participate in any roleplay (except to roll dice during checks). It worked fairly well, and was useful during a near TPK, with only 2 players having their henchman characters survive. Of course, they were really upset to find they only earned half the XP and gold when they got back to town...

 

[Brak]

@Brak ,I just wanted to say congrats for making it 15 years on the boards and posting only 3 times. I was going to welcome you, but I'll award you the Ultimate Lurker Award instead. You cannot see it, but it looks like a gnome paladin in all his glory.

LOL. I think I am the "Ultimate Lurker" since I've read this board almost every day for those 15 years! Oh darn! Now I have 4 posts!

 

[cmad1977]

I’d never play in a game where anyone at the table played more than 1 character at a time.

 

[werecorpse]

Way back I’ve played games with 2 players and a GM. In D&D each then controlled a couple of characters but that was seen as a somewhat undesirable necessity, as a way to get around the issue of a party “too small” for modules. Once we got up to 3+ players we tended to each choose a favourite and if it was needed the GM would run an NPC.

My regular game groups have 6 & 8 players now so we really have the opposite issue.

 

[commandercrud]

My regular game groups have 6 & 8 players now so we really have the opposite issue.

Anyone ever do 2 players for 1 character? Now that would be something.

 

[werecorpse]

Only In a “learning the game“ style game iirc plus I have played some online play where the players knew they would have attendance issues so had someone ready to step in when they left - but not at the same time.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I will say that on occasions where I've played more than one character, I tend to not "inhabit" either character very deeply. The roleplaying tends to be pretty sparse.

 

[Lanefan]

My campaigns frequently have multiple PCs per player but with only one active in any given session unless the active PC dies. I never had it where one player is running the whole adventuring party. There's been no need of that.

That's how I've been running since covid hit: one player running a party of 4-6 characters. So far, so good, 10 months and about 60 sessions later.

In general, I almost always allow players to run two at once if they want; and at low level I actively encourage it such than if (when!) one dies the player still has the second to run.

 

[Lanefan]

Anyone ever do 2 players for 1 character? Now that would be something.

Once or twice, yes. I've seen it done where neither player could guarantee to be at every session but one usually would be (and if both showed up one got an NPC to run); and I've seen it done where two players each had a PC and shared a third one between them.