How do you feel about DM PCs?

[Gez]

Yes. The "plot device" thing is a good flaw too. If the DMPC has an important/obligatory part of the adventure attached to it, it's almost always a bad idea, because it means in most cases the spotlight will be stolen from the PCs, which is the one thing that absolutely should not happen.

Here's something that happened recently in one of the campaign I DM.

[sblock]The characters had been granted the services of a shield guardian by a (formerly) powerful (compared to them) wizard, who had lost his magic when he tried to become a lich through a deal with a demon lord (Orcus). Upon losing his life, he lost his shadow too, and with his shadow, his magical abilities. So he struck a deal with the PCs to lend them this powerful construct (they needed it for another quest) in exchange for them hunting down his shadow. To ensure the deal is followed, the shield guardian is actually controlled by a minion of the failed lich, a sort of tiny beholderkin without eye ray powers.

Many many events and adventures pass, and the construct proves a very, very big asset to them -- at least when they're ambushed by random encounters on the road.

Anyway, one of the seemingly unrelated adventures have them investigating a city for mysterious murders. Eventually, they find out demon cultists in old catacombs beneath the city, and attack the cultists. The shield guardian had been left behind, as they didn't wanted to encumber themselves with the huge metal guy while spelunking and sneaking.

It turned out the demon cult was led by a Shadow Demon with the Fiend of Blasphemy and Fiend of Possession prestige classes, and with the spellcasting ability of our ninth-level wizard... Orcus melded one of his elite shadow demons with the wizard's shadow, creating a powerful tool of evil and chaos.

Big showdown. The player quickly dispose of every cultists, but the shadow fiend just hop from item to item (including cultist corpses), possessing them as animated objects, and keep on attacking. As the players do not find ways to damage the demon's immaterial shape, only its vehicles, the situation becomes desperate...

... Until the shield guardian and its beholderkin arrives, and with a prepared scroll, suck out the essence of the demon/shadow and emprison it within the shield guardian. Beholderkin and construct then left promptly, thanking the PCs for fulfilling their half of the bargain, and returning to the wizard.

Now, it was Deus Ex Machina. A deliberate choice. I wanted to remove an overpowered toy from the PCs, conclude the "shadowhunt" story arc, and get the player wondering how will the wizard fare once reunited with his shadow, now that it is demon-bound. And they really don't have the time to check that out now.

During all the campaign, these two DMPC, the beholderkin and the shield guardian, were just background presence. As I said, outside of random ambushes during travel, they never got to intervene, since the PCs prefered to not be spent with aberrations. Plus, they suspected the beholderkin to spy on them (and they were perfectly right, since the beholderkin wanted to know if they'd found the shadow yet).[/sblock]

So, I don't think this was too bad. PCs felt angered and ripped off because they still needed the construct: nice drive for future plots. They've had the spotlight about all the time: the NPC' spotlight was just a little foreshadowing during the combat, as PC could make Listen check to hear metallic footsteps approaching. Then the shield guardian appearing, the beholderkin chanting, the animated pillar slumping to the ground, and it's over.

 

[fusangite]

I saw DM PCs listed as an annoyance in the "DM Schticks That Grind Your Gears" thread. As a DM who has occasionally run a character that adventures alongside the party, I'm curious as to why this is annoying to some. Is it the overall concept, or is it a case where the DM is too nice to his own character?

As DM, I control way more of what is going on in the campaign than the players do. Furthermore, most of the power the players can exert on the course of the campaign is in decisions they make collectively as a party. While individual characters may inflict more or less damage in given situations they have minimal individual control of the campaign, ultimatelty, the only non-DM controlled agent in the campaign is the party. What you are doing by inserting a DMPC into the party is you are effectively given yourself a near-veto over the only real decisions the players get to make in the whole campaign. I tend to see DMPCs as mirco-railroading tools and, as a DM, avoid them at all costs.

Actually, my players are sometimes frustrated by how cryptic and flighty my major NPCs are but I want to make sure that my PCs are not bystanders in their own story.

 

[fusangite]

If the DM has time to be a player also, then he has time to make a better adventure that doesn't require a DMPC.

If you want to be a player, be a player.

I wish I'd said that.

 

[Endur]

It´s however a problem when the players have 1st level (evil) characters and the DM plays the witch king of Angmar.

Well, if the party was a bunch of first level good characters, the GM would play Gandalf as the DMPC. So the Witch King of Angmar is the evil equivalent of Gandalf.

 

[Sarellion]

I think party NPCs can certainly be appropriate in some cases and inappropriate in others, and as a GM, I play accordingly. Especially frustrating for the players is the way that GMs who absolutely refuse to have any NPC help the party make up excuses for why no NPCs will help when asked. For instance, when the PCs let a powerful evil character who ruled a kingdom know about an incoming invasion of the region and make a pact with her, they manage to get her to bring a Shadow Clone of herself as well as some followers to help in the battle. The Shadow Clone and followers were defeated, and ultimately, it was the PCs who won the day, but it would not have made sense for PCs crafty and diplomatic enough to forge allies with old enemies against a greater threat to be summarily rejected without cause every...single...time...

Yes, that syndrome of the arrogant or moronic allies to prevent outside intervention is quite irritating.

 

[Sarellion]

Well, if the party was a bunch of first level good characters, the GM would play Gandalf as the DMPC. So the Witch King of Angmar is the evil equivalent of Gandalf.

Well I wonder if it would be so bad if the DM remembered to play his DMPC like Gandalf.

There are enough groups with regular NPCs running around like Priggle in Defenders of Daybreak (Piratecat), One Certain Step in Sagiro´s storyhour or Gunthar in El-Remmen´s Into the Frying Pan. I have to say that they seem to be decent additions with Gunthar being a close borderline case in general and especially when he clashed with the newcomer Logan.

 

[Agent Oracle]

<gollum>We hates them! Filthy Hobbitses..</gollum>

Seriously. Once, way back when I started playing D&D (just before AD&D) I was the GM, and I ran a NPC / Pc. Lizardman, cleric. Gave him some wicked powers, and was a total gloryhog. 'cause I knew whenever the baddie was low enough on HP for my Main character to killsteal.

I stopped doing it after a campaign though, becuase I realized how lame it was.

Since then, i've been in MANY campaigns with GMPC's. most of them badly run.

-The Werebear fighter / wizard (who was either forgotten in the heat of combat or else hogging the glory)

-The Trio: "Bob" "Elf-Girl" and "Dwarf-Guy". The GM didn't know descriptive adjectives, so his campaign was a wash. but he ran 3 GMPC's with the party. "Bob" was his favored Arrow-fiend build fighter (didn't even have a melee weapon on his character sheet), "Elf-Girl" (I'm not making that up, it said "Elf-Girl" on her character sheet) Was a pacifist who existed to stand in the back of the party and wait until the battle was over and heal us all. Dwarf-Guy was ALSO a pacifist, who equally existed to stand at the back of the party until the group was near death, then throw out an 8th level "Boom".

-The Bishonen: Drow (Same race, with a homebrewed +0 LA flavor!) Schitzoid pacifist prince / Homicidal half-cat who'se trigger to change was.. what else? combat! My character had him in manacles and hobbles for most of the campaign, at least, until we could get him restored to power, and cured... and we were happy to leave him behind, only to have theGM bring him back as a enemy (with JUST the homicidal half-cat in charge) He was actually pretty well run though, if you discount the gratuitous RP.

 

[klofft]

I love 'em!

I'm really pretty shocked at how frequent bad experiences with GMPCs are. We've used them with regularity and have had no problems at all, other than the fact that, as "quasi-NPCs," they rarely get to reach their RP potential. In one of our games, the GMPC is kept a tad weaker than the PCs. She's basically filling in a hole in the team's skill base. In the other, the character is a full member of the party. It was simply a case of everyone wants to play, only one is able to DM. So everyone thought the DM making a character made perfect sense. As it turns out, being an INT 8 Cleric makes him a good supporting character. In general, we also find them useful tools if the players are REALLY clueless about what to do next (though such a device needs to be carefully used).

But still...really surprised. It sounds like, in most cases, it's the result of a GM with an immaturity problem, who really just needs players to basically witness the novel he's writing in front of them (I've run into this in other games). But in some cases, it seems to be a player problem of trust in the GM.

Interesting.
C

 

[Thanee]

As long as the DM plays the PC as any other NPC, I see no problem there.

Some DMs simply cannot do so, and always seem to put their own PCs into favorable positions, those DMs should not play their own PCs while DMing.

Some PC roles are less suited than others... supportive characters, fighter types, those make perfect characters for a DM to play alongside the party, but the riddle-solvers, or social interactors are not so well-suited.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I'm far too busy running regular NPCs. Running a PC in addition to that would be far too much effort.