Even another PC?
D&D 5E How Often Do You Have NPCs Join the Party?
- Thread starter KarinsDad
- Start date
Even another PC?
Celebrim
Legend
You quoted a statement and called it a question, so I can see how that would be confusing.
"How Often Do You Have NPCs Join the Party?"
Happier now?
The Crimson Binome
Hero
It depends on how you define "the party". On the off chance that the established group of PCs won't accept a new PC to their ranks, the DM will be forced to split time between the groups, creating a sub-par experience all around.
I'm going to have to say rarely because when the party introduces themselves as "Killer", "Destroyer", "Slayer", "Eviscerator", and "Joe", most NPC's turn and walk away as quickly as possible.
Celebrim
Legend
Yes. It doesn't happen often, but early in my career I did run into a few cases of new PC's not being able to integrate with the party and hostilities arising between new party members and old party members on reasonable role-playing grounds. Since that time, I've take care to make sure that part of the process of character creation is explaining why you'd be compatible with the rest of the party so as to avoid those uncomfortable moments when you realize that truly, playing to their character, neither PC has any reason to accept the companionship of the other.
And the group that I was in the longest as a player, the RP that impressed me and convinced me to come back was on the night my character and one other where introduced, there was such wonderful RP around the idea of accepting new people into the party, largely driven not by the DM but the players. It included a lot of gorgeous RP I forget now, but I do remember this gem from a longer conversation:
Barbarian: Bah, enough about myself. What do you do?
Paladin of Mystra: I am sworn to the service of the Goddess Mystra.
Barbarian: Oh... and who is she?
Paladin of Mystra *smiling brightly*: Why she is the Goddess of M....many wonderful things.
Diplomacy for the win.
Mishihari Lord
First Post
As an adventurer, a for-real member of the party? Never. But there have been plenty of henchmen, guides, people to be escorted safely, fellow travelers on a ship, rescued princess, etc. There's probably an NPC with the party at least 50% of the time.
Which in turn forces the established group to more or less accept the new PC.
There is no doubt that I have seen many instances where given an actual choice, one set of PCs would never join up with a given PC (if actually played in character). The neurotic PC, the evil PC in a group of good, the chaotic PC who does random stuff, etc.
I do think that some people are going down the "the DM cannot force this on us" rabbit hole a little too much in this discussion. The game tends to be cooperative between the DM and players in many cases (or at least at many tables), so if a DM introduces an NPC to join the group, the DM is, more or less, the one adding that creature (sentient sword, whatever) to the party.
Yes, one can make a very literal case that this does not happen without the agreement of the PCs, but the adventure does not even happen without the agreement of the PCs and sometimes, the adventure itself (as designed by the DM) includes an NPC that joins the party.
Mishihari Lord
First Post
This reminds me of a game I played in. We came to a ferry in the underdark and the ferryman demanded a most unreasonable fee. We chatted for several minutes, mostly jokingly, about whether we should pay or just kill him and take the ferry. The ferryman ran off in terror. We had intended this to be out of character, but according to our house rules anything said can be taken by the DM as said by a PC so he was totally legit in making this call.
Wow. If we had this house rule, entire kingdoms would be after us. Our group is very non-politically correct.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Full-patch NPC party members are pretty much SOP around here; sometimes due to party recruitment (we need a Thief, let's try to pick one up in the next town), sometimes due to story considerations (we're sending an observer with you to make sure things don't get out of hand, please bring her back alive and in one piece), sometimes when someone's hench becomes significant enough to warrant full-member status (the longest-serving NPC I've ever had started out this way), sometimes for pure entertainment reasons if I-as-DM think things are getting a little stale, sometimes to flesh out an otherwise too-small party (I've both played in and run parties of 2 PCs and 3 NPCs), sometimes as charmed ex-enemies, and sometimes for DM-nefarious reasons* e.g. a spy or traitor...or some combination of some of these.
Most of the time the players take care of the dice-rolling, and I make sure the NPCs stay in character and that they don't know too much (I've had parties go way wrong now and then because the players thought an NPC was giving hints where in fact he or she was as much in the dark as they, and just guessing); and if someone's character dies or there's a visitor the NPC acquires a player for a while. A few times I've had situations where a player likes playing an NPC so much they take it over as their own actual character.
And then there's this story: a player had a character who had really fallen afoul of the party and left in a hurry; but the player wanted the character in play and to be accepted by the party. So we hatched a scheme whereby the actual PC would return in disguise and be brought in as if an NPC (I'd get instructions by note or out-of-game), and at the same time a second character would come in, actually an NPC but run in all respects as if it was this player's PC (again, instructions would be given out-of-game). The idea was that after a few adventures we could reveal all and, as the actual PC had behaved herself and shown herself to be useful the party would take her back in. This all worked fine except on the reveal the party threw out the original PC a second time - but kept the NPC!
* - and to pull this off there need to be non-enemy NPCs in the party on a regular basis, otherwise the sudden appearance of an in-party NPC sets off too many unjustified-in-character alarm bells.
Lan-"giving me an NPC to play is a fine method of murdering an otherwise useful character"-efan
Most of the time the players take care of the dice-rolling, and I make sure the NPCs stay in character and that they don't know too much (I've had parties go way wrong now and then because the players thought an NPC was giving hints where in fact he or she was as much in the dark as they, and just guessing); and if someone's character dies or there's a visitor the NPC acquires a player for a while. A few times I've had situations where a player likes playing an NPC so much they take it over as their own actual character.
And then there's this story: a player had a character who had really fallen afoul of the party and left in a hurry; but the player wanted the character in play and to be accepted by the party. So we hatched a scheme whereby the actual PC would return in disguise and be brought in as if an NPC (I'd get instructions by note or out-of-game), and at the same time a second character would come in, actually an NPC but run in all respects as if it was this player's PC (again, instructions would be given out-of-game). The idea was that after a few adventures we could reveal all and, as the actual PC had behaved herself and shown herself to be useful the party would take her back in. This all worked fine except on the reveal the party threw out the original PC a second time - but kept the NPC!
* - and to pull this off there need to be non-enemy NPCs in the party on a regular basis, otherwise the sudden appearance of an in-party NPC sets off too many unjustified-in-character alarm bells.
Lan-"giving me an NPC to play is a fine method of murdering an otherwise useful character"-efan
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