Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 4739007" data-attributes="member: 53980">We've done this on occasion in my group and I think it's fine under the right circumstances.First, make absolutely certain that anyone playing a second character is capable of multi-tasking.  In my experience, if you have someone who can barely decide on a plan of action when he has one character, it will be exponentially worse if he has two.  No one wants to wait 10 minutes for John to complete both his turns.Second, make sure that everyone is fine with the idea.  The aforementioned player, after trying it, decided he didn't like having a second character but was perfectly fine if the other players had them.  If he hadn't been, I wouldn't have allowed secondary characters (as we call them) anytime that player was present for game.Lastly, I think it depends on the size of the group (and how many characters the DM can handle at a time without too much stress).  It's very convenient to have players run two characters if the group is small (one to three players).  Much more than that and I probably wouldn't need or allow it (five players with a total of ten characters would probably be more than I could easily keep track of).The method I usually prefer is to consider the secondaries NPCs run by the players.  Essentially, I'll collaborate with them in creating the character (or sometimes introduce an NPC during play and see if any of the players is interested), but maintaining and running the character is up to that player.  Roleplaying the secondary is shared between the player and DM (I can see how this might cause friction in some groups, but it's never been a problem for us).  The DM has final say regarding how the NPC behaves, but I give the players a lot of leeway.  It frees the players to focus on their primary characters, while allowing them to explore their secondary's personality if they are interested.</blockquote>

Verification