More than one PC per player: Good or Bad?

[Kaodi]

I do not have any real experience with this, beyond a very brief time DMing, but I was thinking that perhaps something that may be important to the dynamic is who those PCs interact with. My gut feeling is that perhaps it could work well if you instate a rule that a players PCs cannot be each others party member of prime concern. Their best friends, rivals, or relatives should be someone elses PCs, so that others players can kind of jumpstart each others roleplaying. In practice, maybe this is completely wrong, though. Maybe it would be better if they were each others primary relationship. Any thoughts, experiences with this?

 

[TwinBahamut]

I think it only really works under rare circumstances, and it only works at a cost to the game. It simply hurts roleplaying and reduces the extent to which the player really knows his characters.

I am currently running a one on one campaign in which, for various reasons, my one player is running an entire team of five PCs in battle. Even with me running their roleplaying aspects like they were NPCs and effectively making them absent outside of battle, it still bogs down the game quite a lot. It is something of an extreme case, but it proves to me that the 1 player = 1 character rule is there for a reason, for system mastery reasons as well as roleplaying ones. Put simply, it probably takes one player running five PCs more time to run through a round of combat than five players running five PCs.

On the other hand, I fully support the idea of each player having multiple PCs, so long as these other PCs are never in the party together at the same time. In other words, each player has a couple alternate characters who could be used if we want to change up the team dynamics, but the 1 player = 1 character rule is never broken within any individual adventure. This kind of game works great.

 

[Lanefan]

Must be something in the Victoria air! To expand a bit:

First off, I think it somewhat depends on what edition/game you're playing. It's way easier to run multiple characters in 1e than in 3e, for example (I know, having done both). That said:

As a DM I like it when there are more PCs. I find it's much harder to balance encounters when there are too few characters in the party. In small groups I think it's necessary to have at least one player double up on PCs, and the rest of the time I don't find it detracts from the game. Net positive.

As a player I enjoy playing more than one PC, and I like it fine when other players do it.

Another consideration is that if you as player are running more than one it's not the end of your night if one gets captured or killed or whatever; this opens up some options for the DM.

Further, the larger the party is, the more opportunities there are for in-party interactions (romances, conflicts, murder, etc.) and that's always a benefit.

1) Make one, if not both, characters mechanically simple. Given the choice between a battlerager and a greatweapon fighter, choose the greatweapon because there's less involved at the table.

Also, try to make them take different roles (to swipe a 4e term) within the party - I usually prefer to have one front-line tank and one back-line healer or wizard.

The suggestion upthread about banning inter-relations between characters run by the same player is sound most of the time; however, there's occasions when someone has an idea going in for two characters to be related somehow and it's usually not the end of the world to allow such. More fun is when one player's characters come in conflict with each other...

And having more than one character in the world (as opposed to in a given party) goes without saying.

Lanefan

 

[Celebrim]

If...

The group is just starting out, and...
It's a very small group...
The group favors traditional dungeoneering or combat challenges...
You anticipate a fairly high fatality rate in the system, especially early on...

Then its not a bad idea.

Essentially, you let the system pair the characters down to a core set of survivors, and then, rather than upping the challenge, you simply go with similar challenges with a smaller group of characters. This largely elimenates the necessity of creating and introducing new PC's.

 

[Stormborn]

I've done it from both sides of the screen and have no problems with it. As a player I tend to make one of the PCs a strong silent type who nevertheless has some personality quirks to give him some RPing hooks. For example, I played a Cleric who was mostly quietly supportive, but tended to sermonize in particular situations and gave out coppers to any poor person he met. THe Cleric was a sharp contrast to the very vocale and somewhat mean Sorcerer who was the party's Face, whom I also played. I didn't try to get into much RPing between them, and they were designed so there would never be any confusion between what either might do or say. I liked the variety and options, not just for mechanical variety but also RP chances. Some days I would be more in the mood to be the Cleric, and the Sorcerer would be brooding over something, mostly I focused on the Sorcerer and that was fine since the Cleric was designed to be somewhat retiring and deferential.

As a GM I like having more PCs, more hooks to use. However, I have a player who tends to focus on the RPing and not her mechanics. What this tends to mean is that her PCs have great back stories and are played well, but she forgets her abilities and gets frustrated that the characters are not as powerful as she would like. I have another player who has no problems in that regard at all and has very effective characters, but they may not be as story laden as the others. It just kind of depends on the player, but overall I would say it was a good thing

 

[Mad Mac]

I've done it several times on both sides of the screen, and it can work, but ultimately I find it is better to stick to one character per player whenever possible. It's just harder to get into more than one character.

One suggestion I can give though, is that if you are running more than one character, it can help to designate one of the characters as your "main" character and make them the focus of roleplaying and such. The secondary character can be run as an loyal sidekick or otherwise unassuming personality.

It not only helps the player get into their character, but it can make it easier to create a dual roleplay dynamic if you are playing, say, a pampered Eladrin Wizard and her softspoken but very dangerous bodyguard.

It may seem like a small thing, but I've found it quite helpful in the past. In some cases I'll even start the (small) group out on an easy adventure with just the designated main characters and have them recruit some extra help later on.

Of course, you can always switch focus if you find yourself becoming bored with your current primary character.

 

[mach1.9pants]

We are running 2 PC's per player at the moment. Forced to really, 4E is not as much fun with just 2 PCs, we tried that and 3 PCs (one controlled by me... the DM) but this is better. Basically the 2nd PC has become a bit of a henchman, the main PC have become the spokespeople.
I'd prefer 4 or 5 players but in small town NZ, not enough geeks around, everybody too busy huntin', shootin', fishin' etc...we do that too

 

[Derulbaskul]

My favourite campaigns have been with two players with two characters each. My second favourite was three players each with two characters.

If there are four or more players then I do prefer one character per player only.

 

[orsal]

I don't like it.

The main reason: the PCs need to coordinate their actions, and ordinarily that's a challenge the players take on. When two characters are played by the same player, they somehow get played as if they have a mysterious telepathic bond.

I also think conversational verisimilitude suffers. With one character per player, anything said at the table that isn't obviously OOC can be understood to be the character speaking. With different characters, you end up not roleplaying conversation much, because it's so awkward, every time you speak, to have to say who's speaking.

 

[Kask]

Hmmm, awkward would be a better description.