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

[Benjamin Olson]

The closest I've ever done to multiple characters is throwing in a party NPC that the group played collectively. I would totally be down for it in principle, but I've never had a consistently small group of players who weren't newbies.

If I ever end up actually DMing Waterdeep Dragon Heist, I'll probably have everyone roll a sidekick and take turns bringing theirs along when everyone is actually at the session. The campaign involves basically never leaving the city and having a home base which is also a business, so until the climax at least it makes sense that one or more people would be back at home holding down the fort.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

We're running a West Marches style campaign that kicks off tomorrow, actually. Each player can have up to 3 characters but they only choose one of them to play at any given session.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

It' happens ever now and then. It was more common back when we started in the early 80's (being so young everyone wanted to play everything...and different things every half hour!... LOL!). Eventually we matured into our early teens (about '84, I was 14/15 then) that went by the wayside in favour of getting actual "Henchmen". We played Henchmen as "not-quite-PC's-but-maybe-later". Some Henchmen even outlasted their original PC 'boss' (Ulo Ironbeard, 'Snake-Eyes', and Father...in particular).

Still, every now and then a Player will have an idea for a PC and want to give it a 'test run', so I'll let them bring it in to the group and the player then plays his main and his 'test'. Eventually one dies or the Player picks one and the other retires/leaves/whatever, or they officially hand over the reigns to me to run the PC as a sort of "quasi-Henchman" for the rest of that adventure.

Mostly...1 PC per Player though. Probably 95% of the time.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Ace]

I don't know that I have ever, in almost 35 years of playing 1e - 5e, played D&D in a group where each player used only 1 character. Since most of our parties had 6+ characters and we would have somewhere between 1 and 3 players + DM, I have always played more than one character. Usually it was just me and a DM, so I would play the entire party. This has been the only D&D I have ever known. But after many years of reading D&D forums and articles I have almost never seen this even mentioned as a valid form of play. It is always just one character per player. There are single player adventures, but they are special adventures made for 1 character.

I understand that, for many, a big part of the social experience of playing D&D is "role playing" where a player takes on the role of a character and interacts with other players/characters. This inter-player experience is missing if you are the only player and perhaps diminished if you are controlling more than 1 character, but in my experience D&D is still a fun game without it.

Is this anyone else's experience or I am really the only one?

I used to do this back in the 1E and 2E days when the group was small or we wanted a larger party. I haven't done it since 3X since characters are capable enough on their own and the game is meant to balance at 4 PC's anyway.

Generally I have found that this type of play is not as good for "deep RP." type games however this isn't always the way the game is played. Tactical and Adventure driven games are just as valid and were quite common back in the day.

 

[Li Shenron]

I don't know that I have ever, in almost 35 years of playing 1e - 5e, played D&D in a group where each player used only 1 character. Since most of our parties had 6+ characters and we would have somewhere between 1 and 3 players + DM, I have always played more than one character. Usually it was just me and a DM, so I would play the entire party. This has been the only D&D I have ever known. But after many years of reading D&D forums and articles I have almost never seen this even mentioned as a valid form of play. It is always just one character per player. There are single player adventures, but they are special adventures made for 1 character.

I understand that, for many, a big part of the social experience of playing D&D is "role playing" where a player takes on the role of a character and interacts with other players/characters. This inter-player experience is missing if you are the only player and perhaps diminished if you are controlling more than 1 character, but in my experience D&D is still a fun game without it.

Is this anyone else's experience or I am really the only one?

It is fine. Usually whenever I have less than 4 players, I ask the most experienced one if they want to play 2 PC at the same time. For a very old-feel game it's not inappropriate to have 2 or even 3 PC per player to reach party size 8-10.

While the "inmersive role-playing experience" may diminish, there are other potential interesting benefits: players are less likely to feel bad about PC death, and to concentrate on future character development instead of paying attention to the here and now. It certainly results in a very different style of game.

 

[Older Beholder]

Is this anyone else's experience or I am really the only one?

The first time I ever played, (2nd edition) the DM had us all make 3 characters.
In the first battle he killed off 1 character of each player (I assume to get a party of characters he was happy with?) and then we continued with the surviving two characters each.

The first games I ran in high school were usually only with one or two friends, so they mostly played a couple of characters each until I found more people that wanted to play and then we went to the one character per player stlye.

I've had one DM since playing 5E that had us each make 2 characters.
Like most things it has advantages and disadvantages.

 

[Charlaquin]

For my next campaign, players will be allowed to have as many characters as they want, but they can only control one character at a time (they can swap “controlled” characters between adventures).

 

[Older Beholder]

For my next campaign, players will be allowed to have as many characters as they want, but they can only control one character at a time (they can swap “controlled” characters between adventures).

I‘ve always liked the idea of having a pool of characters but I’ve never done it as either player or DM. It seems like a good way to try out things you don’t usually play, or that you don’t want to feel stuck playing all the time.

 

[Dragonsbane]

I've been in groups that have done it occasionally for various reasons, but it's not ideal. It definitely limits roleplay when you have more than 1 character per player.

I have been running games for one player who has 4 PCs all the time. He has four amazing voices at has convos between them, its awesome.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I started in 2e, and I believe D&D was moving past multi-character play at that point. The notion of having a swarm of hirelings, while realistic in a medieval setting, is alien to me. (I would handwave this kind of thing as as G.)

Ironically I've done a little of that in Pathfinder 1e (one campaign) because we uplifted a dog and someone had to control him. And in 5e, we have two NPCs that we control in combat. (It's the Avernus adventure, and our characters know nothing about the planes, so we travel with two smarter NPCs. They are, of course, not as badass as us.)

IMO the game is generally too complicated to run with lots of hirelings; just keeping track of where they are to see if they get fireballed or not is too big of a problem. Same reason why we don't use mounts, not even for non-combat purposes (where are you keeping them, are smart bad guys killing then, etc). A typical reasonably experienced player is capable of handling a henchman.