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Jeremy Crawford Talks Sidekicks
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<blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 7552819" data-attributes="member: 2629"><p>The appreciation for secondary party members has, historically in my experiences at least, been more a factor of how they were played than who played them.</p><p></p><p>In the old days we had a party with no healing except an NPC cleric named Ontzlake that the DM ran. It provided the DM with a conduit to work in adventure hooks, redirect when the game was going off course and to provide him with his adventuring fix... he loved to play, but only had time for one game which he ran as a DM.</p><p></p><p>In the middle days, when Sunless Citadel was first released, my group adopted Meepo. The DM never advanced him in levels, but he adventured (hid) with us for nearly a year in real time... until he was kidnapped and murdered by an enemy force. We avenged him, but I consider that year of adventurig to be amongst the best D&D I've ever had the priviledge to join, and it was due in no small part to the presence of a DM run Meepo.</p><p></p><p>I've had multiple experiences with multi-PC games where each player played two characters. Ther was good (characters in the game designed with secrets and ties), and bad parts (optimizing them together or using one to optimize the other). In the end, those games tended to have less, not more, role playing as people were juggling too many stats, too many actions, and too many concerns for their PCs to really fully embody either. </p><p></p><p>To me, the sidekick needs to be an NPC that the player can direct as a guiding force, but that the DM can grab at any moment and for which the DM is the ultimate controller. The DM should be the one to know the sidekicks secrets, the sidekicks hidden fears, the sidekicks innermost desires... </p><p></p><p>They also need to fix those rules so that a Warlock sidekick spellcaster doesn't get all of those warlock spells. It is not right to give a sidekick something mechanically that a PC can't possibly have when they emulate the same concept.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="jgsugden, post: 7552819, member: 2629"] The appreciation for secondary party members has, historically in my experiences at least, been more a factor of how they were played than who played them. In the old days we had a party with no healing except an NPC cleric named Ontzlake that the DM ran. It provided the DM with a conduit to work in adventure hooks, redirect when the game was going off course and to provide him with his adventuring fix... he loved to play, but only had time for one game which he ran as a DM. In the middle days, when Sunless Citadel was first released, my group adopted Meepo. The DM never advanced him in levels, but he adventured (hid) with us for nearly a year in real time... until he was kidnapped and murdered by an enemy force. We avenged him, but I consider that year of adventurig to be amongst the best D&D I've ever had the priviledge to join, and it was due in no small part to the presence of a DM run Meepo. I've had multiple experiences with multi-PC games where each player played two characters. Ther was good (characters in the game designed with secrets and ties), and bad parts (optimizing them together or using one to optimize the other). In the end, those games tended to have less, not more, role playing as people were juggling too many stats, too many actions, and too many concerns for their PCs to really fully embody either. To me, the sidekick needs to be an NPC that the player can direct as a guiding force, but that the DM can grab at any moment and for which the DM is the ultimate controller. The DM should be the one to know the sidekicks secrets, the sidekicks hidden fears, the sidekicks innermost desires... They also need to fix those rules so that a Warlock sidekick spellcaster doesn't get all of those warlock spells. It is not right to give a sidekick something mechanically that a PC can't possibly have when they emulate the same concept. [/QUOTE]
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