How do you have a mentor travel with a group of PC's and NOT steal their spotlight?

[kigmatzomat]

I'll point out this is the "Ben Kenobi/Gandalf" connundrum. Why does Obi Wan need Luke or Gandalf the hobbits?

1. Mentor can only be in one place at a time and whatever he's doing needs at least two pair of hands.

2. Mentor is holding back in case they run into BBEG. "I'll deal with the Balrog/Vader, you go ahead!"

3. Mentor's gotta sleep.

4. Mentor is great wiz-bang mage but hasn't left his tower except to go to Wizard's conventions since he was an apprentice. Can't cook, has no idea how to navigate cross-country, hates horses, couldn't track an elephant across a muddy field. Basically, he's field artillery and needs someone to get him where he needs to go.

5. Mentor hasn't told PCs he's heap-big-mage. Why? The pestering (can you cast fly? Will you enchant my sword? Tell me my future) should be avoided. He's Rich Guy #4, who needs an escort to get to the Hills of McGuffin. If the party looks like they are going to have a character death he'll intervene, preferrably as subtlely or scroll/wand based as possible.

 

[Psion]

I'd make him more of a bookish sage than a typical war wizard.

Make him a mostly non combatant wizard. Low concentration score, not (m)any combat spells, weak physical stats (age penalties?), no combat focused magical gear, etc.

Perhaps he has sworn an oath not to use his magic on unwilling creatures? - can get a few buffs out of him, possibly a carefully placed battlefield control spell - but that's going to be about it...

If a wizard, maybe his spellbooks got stolen or destroyed.

He might be able to use a few spell trigger items, or low level spells in the PC's spellbooks, but as is, he is very vulnerable to his enemies (which also might have the "lay low" implication... his enemies might know he is weak and are on the lookout for him). So, while learned, perhaps with a potent magic item, scroll or two, he is really relying on the PCs to get him somewhere that he can recover his spells.

 

[Voadam]

So the PCs go from being the main characters of the game to henchmen for the DMs pet NPC. Woot woot!

PCs are henchmen all the time. Lots of adventures have the PCs being hired to do things. Given that the OP's request was for how to make being hired to escort the mentor in his investigations work, your crticism seems misplaced and less than helpful.

 

[The_Gneech]

Cripple him. He could be sick, under a curse, under a geas or be poisoned. He's physically (or perhaps magically) unable to use his abilities at their full strength and he needs the adventurers to do what he would normally do for himself.

This was my suggestion. Give him all sorts of knowledge but put him under curse that if he uses magic, he will die horribly.

Then have the villain maneuver him into a situation where he has to use magic to save the PCs.

-The Gneech

 

[Storm Raven]

The "make him ill" thing works.

Or make him not human. perhaps he is an incorporeal shade who can talk to the party, but cannot physically affect the world around them. And can only be present for short periods of time. (See OotS for an idea on how this might be executed).

Or maybe the mentor is magcially bound within some sort of prison - a book, a snow globe, or so on that the party must tote around with them. Alternatively, the mentor could be the memories of a dead sage kept in an ancient artifact (and the artifact has benefits and drawbacks).

Or the mentor's mind is in the body of an animal, and for some reason cannot get out of it. A talking dog for a mentor could pose interesting adventuring possibilities.

 

[Voadam]

Or make him not human. perhaps he is an incorporeal shade who can talk to the party, but cannot physically affect the world around them. And can only be present for short periods of time. (See OotS for an idea on how this might be executed).

Or maybe the mentor is magcially bound within some sort of prison - a book, a snow globe, or so on that the party must tote around with them. Alternatively, the mentor could be the memories of a dead sage kept in an ancient artifact (and the artifact has benefits and drawbacks).

A ghost and the party carries around the object he is bound to/

 

[Gold Roger]

I say: Kick the mentor out.

D&D is a game with some story elements, not a story. Just because Gandalf and Frodo travelled together doesn't mean that you should have some high level wizard tagging along with the party. And I say wizard because nine times out of ten the mentor is some super powerful wizard.

I generally agree, but that shouldn't be reason to disregard any attempt for some unusual situations in the game.

I think "PC's are around someone more powerfull then them, yet they are still important" is unusual and interesting to be worth a try.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

1) A crippled/injured mentor is good. I have an adventure in which a group of students at a private academy (in an FRPG world) are out on a wilderness survival skills training trip when the teacher is incapacitated by a fall into a river gully, striking his head and breaking his leg. They have to get him (and themselves, of course) back to the academy. It works out pretty well...

2) The mentor who is an "Ivory Tower"/retiree type works well too. A hero whose adventuring days are long past due to physical/mental infirmity who nonetheless is travelling with his star pupils may find himself overwhelmed at just how fast things are happening, like a 50 year old athelete trying to step back onto the field with the 20-somethings. He may KNOW what he's supposed to do, but may not be able to do it anymore, or not fast enough, or not with unfamiliar teammates.

3) The mentor could be dead: an advising spirit incapable of action. All he can offer is advice. Or if he CAN act, perhaps he can do so only once before moving on to the next plane of existence...

 

[Psion]

I say: Kick the mentor out.

D&D is a game with some story elements, not a story. Just because Gandalf and Frodo travelled together doesn't mean that you should have some high level wizard tagging along with the party. And I say wizard because nine times out of ten the mentor is some super powerful wizard.

While I agree with the principle that some things work better for games than stories, I've seen a lot of neat ideas in this thread (and others) that would lead to interesting gaming that you would miss out in if you outright rejected the concept.

 

[Woas]

I didn't get through the whole thread so maybe somebody mentioned it.

Give the group a magic item that somehow communicates with the mentor. Sort of like a magical cell phone I guess. It could be like a pair of magic books that when one writes in one book, the text appears in the twin book miles away. Actually I think there are already magic items that are in pairs that create telepathic links between two people. I can't think of it off hand though.. maybe a pair of rings or something.


An item like this isn't game breaking or anything. And assuming the group is on good terms with the mentor, as the DM you could have the mentor ask the group to return the item afterward their task is completed if you really don't want them telepathically speaking with him/her anymore.