More than one PC per player?

[Iron Sheep]

My most recent group gradually winnowed down to just two players, due to real life getting in the way (players going off to the middle east, etc), so the players ended up playing two characters each in the campaigns that we were running to give some balance to the party.

Campaign 1:

Player 1: Half-orc Barbarian, Halfling Arcane Trickster
Player 2: Human Druid, Dwarven Fighter/Cleric

Campiagn 2 (this was Palladium FRP game converted to D&D):

Player 2: Pygmy Bard/Rogue, Human Warmage
Player 3: Kobold Fighter/Rogue, Lizardfolk Cleric with Lizardfolk Sorcerer cohort.

It worked pretty well, but there are some general observations that I made:

• Spontaneous casters work best because you have a lot of paperwork with two characters, so anything you can do to cut it down is good. The player of the Druid and the Fighter/Cleric had to spend a lot of time selecting spells, which was a hassle for her.
• In both games we had started playing just one character each, and added a second as the group shrank. This meant that we had a character who already had a well defined personality and which we were comfortable playing before we introduced the secondary characters. It also meant that the first characters were more important to the players, as we had more invested in them. Role-playing focused games tended to concentrate on these initial characters, although as the game progressed it evened out a lot.
• All the characters had distinct personalities, and there was intra-group roleplaying.
• In both games, both players had a combat oriented character, and a magic-oriented character, and this was a good thing.
• The cohort in the second game was intended to be the primary arcane caster, but as we hit the early teen levels it became clear that she couldn't do it all, so we introduced the warmage. She became a very good and useful generalist, covering the gaps in the warmage's spell selection.
• All the players were mature and were out to have fun, so we didn't have problems with each player having their characters do their own thing, or not helping the other out.
• None of the players were real power-gamers, so we didn't have anyone making killer-combo character pairs.

If I were having a 2 player campaign starting from scratch, I'd seriously look into having gestalt characters, but that does have the problem that you can't decrease the power levels if you have more people join your group.

All in all, no real problems, and we had a lot of fun.

Corran

 

[Kareyev]

I ran a short campaign where each player had multiple characters (I was told it was close to what dark sun did). At the beginning of each session the players would take the role of leaders of a wealthy guild who needed to find adventures for some work. They would "hire" the right set of characters from theire. I think each player could have something like 3 characters ready at any time. To keep levels moving all characters for an individual worked out of one xp pool (so they all leveled at the same time, item creation costs impacted everyone, etc). Gave the players the flexibility to have characters with the right skills for various tasks and try out lots of combinations. For a while I even had the guild lend the charaters magic items so we could try out those magic items we never seemed to use. It was a lot of fun.

 

[Kaleon Moonshae]

multiple char.

I have tried it all a number of ways and find that it really depends on the group. I have had a group of 12 players each playing 2 characters before and it went just fine, I had one of the players help me adjudicate combat but the expansive story we were able to tell with 48 characters was on the scope of jordon which was awesome.

I have played in games where the players couldn't even play one character, let alone two competently.

Right now I am in two games, one playing and one dming. The one I am playing in I have a cohort (which honestly is the same as playing two characters if your dm lets you create your own cohort). My cohort is a deaf, mute half-ogre who is in love with the little human wizard he guards (she, of course, is not interested). I am having no problems, but then I made him mute for that very reason.

The game I am running is online and it is much easier to run two characters in such a setting, specially if you cna "clone" your chat program so that you can have a avatar for each. I would let my players play up to 4 pcs if they want and showed they could handle it.

I also really love solo or duo games. The style of play and the available types of games are different but can be much more interesting at times (with one or two likeminded characters you can run games based around art theft and things like that).

That's my two cents

 

[thundershot]

My group has multiple characters in multiple groups throughout the game world, but generally we only have one pc per player as a main 'adventuring' character. Occasionally we'll have cameos from others, though.

In the old days we had massive parties where everyone played a half-dozen pcs two or three per adventure.

Holy crap. You just described MY group.

The various groups running through my gaming world all have some connection to the "greater whole" of the group. There's someone in every group that has adventured at some point with someone in each other group.

Even the evil group is run as an NPC who used to be the ORIGINAL (OD&D) party's arch nemesis.

The one thing I DO do differently is that I use a character as the DM to help balance out the party, and so I always have a "voice" present in case role playing starts to stagger. Of course, they never initiate anything, unless the party is completely stumped, I'll roll various skill checks to see if they WOULD be able to help.


Chris

 

[reapersaurus]

I loathe the idea of multiple characters per player, but that's because I tend to be roleplay oriented. Character depth is hard enough to get without splitting people's attention.

My solution for low player-count games (I ran a 1 PC game for years along side my standard 5 player game) is to redouble my work on NPCs. Yeah, they aren't as deep as a PC, but you can acheive enough verisimilitude to augment the PC and the story. And it's more work for the DM, but DM's are supposed to bust their butt outside of game time.

On the other hand, if you run a more gamist game, where the PCs are playing pieces for the players, then I see nothing wrong with multiple characters.

Let me get this straight:

You think that a player can't split their attention efficiently between 2 characters, but you as the DM can split is efficiently between MANY NPC's?

Just so we're straight on this - if so, that sounds incredibly insulting to your players.

And I'm fascinated : what exactly is a "gamist game", and why wouldn't the PC be the playing piece for the player?

 

[Kaleon Moonshae]

gamist game

Let me get this straight:

You think that a player can't split their attention efficiently between 2 characters, but you as the DM can split is efficiently between MANY NPC's?

Just so we're straight on this - if so, that sounds incredibly insulting to your players.

And I'm fascinated : what exactly is a "gamist game", and why wouldn't the PC be the playing piece for the player?

I think what he was getting at was if the game is run more like a boardgame, where your character is just a piece on the board and there is not much attention put into roleplaying, but more of a hack in slash game, but I could be wrong.

Also, it isn't insulting to the players, that isn't their job (running tons of characters and trying to put life into them) and also, for most dms, npcs are not fleshed out *nearly* as indepth as the pc characters are. It is much easier for a DM to run 23 npcs than it is for most players to run 2 characters, by and large. That is not meant to be insulting as I am on both sides of the line and see it from both. I write maybe 40 pages worth of background and story for my player characters, while I only write maybe 1 to 2 pages for my most indepth NPCs. Also, when a DM runs an NPC he is running a secondary character that does not interact as often as the PCs do, also making it easier.

Now that I have said that, let me also say that I do not agree that all DMs can run multiple npcs any more than I agree that no Player can run multiple PCs. Although, if a player can't run multiple PCs it isn't a failing on the player's part and he can still be a good player, if the DM can't run multiple NPCs then he may need to look for a new job, since that is central to our profession as DMs.

just my two cents

 

[Nareth]

I'm sure I'll be an oddball here. My group has 6 players, and 3 of them play 2 characters each. The fun thing is, they actually roleplay each character, including changing their voices and mannerisms. We've even had a pair of characters played by one of my players that violently disagreed with each other over a course of action. It was fun to watch the player argue with himself.

 

[thundershot]

I'm sure I'll be an oddball here. My group has 6 players, and 3 of them play 2 characters each. The fun thing is, they actually roleplay each character, including changing their voices and mannerisms. We've even had a pair of characters played by one of my players that violently disagreed with each other over a course of action. It was fun to watch the player argue with himself.

Wait.. you mean people don't normally use other voices for their characters??



Chris

 

[Zen]

Well all right. I'm glad to hear that even though our group has been very insular for many years, we haven’t degenerated into some sort of freakish mutant gaming group. Or, at least using 2 pc’s per character doesn’t indicate that.

We’ve been doing this for years and haven’t had any real abuses – the players value both PC’s equally when it comes to taking risks, and there hasn’t been very much ‘spontaneous psychic communication’ between characters controlled by one player, etc. We also get experience more classes and all that entails – more spells, feats, skills, and whatnot -- in less time.

Thanks for clearing up what Gestalt is—our DM has UA, I’ll look into it.

Using two PC’s does allow for some interesting adventures. Once, in a Spelljammer game, we were taken prisoner. I was playing both the captain of our ship and a wizard who served as helmsmen. When the crew was brought before the Drow who had captured us, I got to tell them off as the captain and then instantly plead for our lives as the helmsmen –yes, all in different voices (my wizards are always British, for some reason).

I miss that Captain, sometimes…

 

[Tuzenbach]

If I'm not playing 3-4 characters at once, I'm not happy. Taking on personas isn't what I do when I do D&D. It's strictly strategy and tactics and for that, I need to know that I have a competent core group that I can count on. Namely, my characters!

In all the D&D games I've played as a player there has always been somebody screwing with the group cohesion. Their lack of planning and sudden, irrational actions have put my characters in danger far too many times. In short, I need more than one character to "bail out" my other character(s) should the players I play with make bad moves.........which is all too frequently!