Multiple characters per player?

[mkletch]

How is that different really? The question was, do you tailor the adventures to your PCs. Especially if they aren't store-bought modules, there's no point in even making an adventure if it's not tailored to your PCs. If they have no hope of success, you have to make sure they can find that out before they embark on something.

No, sometimes it is more interesting if they find out after they get into something that it is beyond them. Then they have to find a way out, or take a different approach to rescue a captured character, or come back later having a better idea of what is there. Sometimes, it is the getting out of or escaping trouble that is more interesting than having any possibility of overcoming it. "Wow, I can't believe we made it out of there. We'll havbe to hire some mercenaries to help us clear this out."

Yes, but it's your responsibility to not provide a lot of challenges that only a rogue or a fighter can overcome to our hypothetical all-wizard party. Sure, they may overcome them by hiring a consultant rogue, or some cheap mercenary muscle, but the point is, there has to be some way to overcome the challenge, even if it just means ignoring that and going around it. And that requires tailoring.

No, it requires problem solving on the part of the PCs. Anything that a PC of the appropriate class could overcome, and NPC or higher level magic from an item or NPC can also overcome. With that in mind, nothing ever needs to be tailored. Granted, you don't put 1st level characters against a site based adventures where the lowest EL is 8. That's just stupid. But presenting them with five rumors that lead to quests of varying difficulty, each designed as a self-contained quest, that's what I do. I don't expect an ancient tomb, for example, to present challenges for all character classes. If it was designed to thwart thieves, the rogue will be stymied, and the wizard or fighter may have a good time with it. Who cares who the characters are? The buy that built this tomb had certin "business requirements" in mind. THAT is what I consider, and the only thing I consider.

You've got to tailor the adventures to the PCs you have, not take them as is for the hypothetical balanced party, otherwise, not only do the PCs fail at almost everything they attempt, but the players get extremely frustrated and you are left to DM alone.

I don't expect any party composition, or party size. Like I said, it depends on the story, or the site, depending on the type of adventure. There is a ranger-shadowdancer that is robbing caravans. He cannot fail his hide check versus even the best PC's spot. How to find him? Easily possible with almost any 1st level spellcaster. Catching him may be another thing entirely, but that is for the players to decide, not me.

The other option is, you can state up front that they need to create a balanced party, because you'll be throwing challenges at them that require the full suite of abilities that a "balanced" party provides, but then you're taking away one of the key elements of player enjoyment: the ability to create the character they want to.

I don't believe in balanced parties, either. It is up to the players to make those decisions. That is why they have multi-classing rules, IMO. Give THEM the information. Let THEM decide. Help THEM build the story. Tailoring the adventure overmuch makes the decisions for them. I'd rather leave it all open.

I was a player, and the DM set up a similar situation: provided rumors and plot threads. We made a bad choice, and had four 3rd level characters facing an angry triceratops. We downed the thing using tactics and terrain. We saved the farmer's field. We did not make the even worse decision of trying to figure out how it got there or who/what was responsible.

Sometimes it is not a bad thing to make the players think. Not just be scared, but actually think.

-Fletch!

 

[mkletch]

I absolutely never change an adventure because of what characters the player choose to play. Right now we have a wide assortment of characters, and levels, all playing in the continuing campaign we have.

However, the campaign and adventures do not change just because the adventure works best with a talented wizard, but the party has only some multi-class characters with a level or two of arcane magic. The players/characters MUST deal with it and that usually means they have to deal with things in unusual manners, which my players happen to find exciting.

Maybe I just have unusual players, but they actually enjoy having to come up with off the cuff schemes to overcome obstacles. And well, if they can't, then the characters suffer the consequences.

This is where I come from. We did the WotC Adventure Path with NO WIZARD. All the way up to Bastion, when we had a new guy join. He did not know the party composition, and we got lucky - he did pick Wizard. I and the players in my groups expect to have an adventure, not just a series of tasks.

A little role-playing, a little action and wash it down with some beer makes for a fun time. Too much of any of the above makes for a less entertaining time.

I'm all over that.

-Fletch!

 

[Hollywood]

This is where I come from. We did the WotC Adventure Path with NO WIZARD. All the way up to Bastion, when we had a new guy join. He did not know the party composition, and we got lucky - he did pick Wizard. I and the players in my groups expect to have an adventure, not just a series of tasks.

Haven't tried that, most do custom adventures in FR although think I'll do City of Spider Queen as it looks fairly good. But yeah, I agree with you. Heck, when I start out a campaign, or am looking at rejuvinating it with new characters, I just have the players make up characters withing certain guidelines BEFORE meeting. Normally the players don't talk to each other and kinda come up with characters in a vacuum, although sometimes they do conspire together. Makes, I think, for a more "realistic" [silly word in D&D. ] party and more fun too.

 

[DrSkull]

I've found when you have 1 PC each and lots of "employees" of one sort or another, that this works much better than having multiple PC's per player.

 

[Desdichado]

Fletch (or mkletch): I don't think we're actually disagreeing, then, although we think we are. I think I'm assuming that by not tailoring adventures, you're putting stuff up that the PCs genuinely can't handle no matter what they do. You're describing ways around that and describing ways in which the PCs actually can accomplish what you put in front of them.

And I suspect that when I advocate tailoring, you're imagining that I'm taking all the teeth out of my adventures in favor of my PCs, which I'm not doing in the least.

So, likely what we're doing really isn't that different. The important point to me is that players are allowed to play what they want, not be forced into a role they're not interested (the infamous reluctant cleric being one such role.) And by tailoring the story, it isn't so much changing the challenges (although a party with no magic users would have a hard time against certain things) as using what the PCs are as a springboard for adventures. Again, my biggest complaint is with railroading. Whether or not you tailor adventures because of party composition, you certainly have to tailor it due to party actions in game, or it turns out that it doesn't matter too much what the PCs choose to do, except for on the tactical battle map. I find that style of play very "against the grain" for me.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Originally posted by Azure Trance

This means that my players have a backup character, and can also change characters if they get bored with the present one.

I think running multiple characters in a game can be quite problematic with the wrong sort of players, but if you've already got the wrong sort of players, almost anything can be problematic...

Curiously, how did you fit them in story wise?

I tend not to worry hugely. Ever read lord of the rings? Where the party keep splitting up, going their own seperate ways and meeting back up again? Happens in a bunch of other books too, where the party changes composition, but almost inevitably meets up again at an appropriate moment.

I just assume that at whatever point the player wants to swap characters, the incoming character just happened to be in the area and heard his old mates were around, while the outgoing character wants to take a break (or whatever other little idea we can think up - a character left behind has been tracking the others for months trying to catch up for instance, and may be quite upset the others left, or one character dislikes travelling by boat so intensely that he'd rather take the long route by foot etc).