Players running more than one PC

[Ariosto]

I like having multiple PCs per player in a campaign, but prefer only one per session.

That said, two characters each can be helpful in sessions with only two or three players. One could make up a stronger party with NPCs, but that gives the DM more to manage. I also find that players tend to treat second PCs with more consideration than NPCs, and that I like how that affects play.

Once characters acquire henchmen, a different PC-NPC relationship enters the picture.

 

[rgard]

I'm curious what you folks think of players running more than one PC at a time. Do you like it or not? Does that change if you're the DM or a player?

Are there any other variables that make you like it more or less: number of players, game system/edition, party level, number of PCs being run per person, character complexity, etc.

Finally, is your opinion categorical, or are there exceptions?
-blarg

I've done it as a player and allowed it as a DM.

As a player...

1. 1E - in the first campaign I played in, we all had 4-5 PCs and we usually played 2-3 of the characters in each session. This started out as having a spell caster and a fighter or thief for each player. Once the spell caster had used up all the spells, the player focused on playing the fighter or thief. Most played like that, but my illusionist and magic user always drew daggers and waded in when out of spells.

This campaign was a total hack and slash campaign with little roleplaying. We had two camps of players and used the multiple characters to ensure one player's PC didn't whack all the other players' PCs. Of course we eventually had our PC war.

2. 1E - same characters as above, but different campaign. None of the encounters were scaled to what would be a normal 4 PC party. We played 4-5 characters each just to stay alive. This was a total slugfest between NPCs and PCs.

For both the above campaigns there wasn't a session that went by that one of the players eventually exclaimed, "Sh^t! I would have made my save if I had remembered..." some magic item, or something like that.

3. 3E - I played two PCs in one campaign, playing both in most of the sessions. I played a Martial Rogue/Swashbuckler/Battlesorcerer and a Ur Priest/Wizard/Mystic Theurge. We had 2 experienced players and a bunch of players completely new to the game. The DM asked me to play another character to try to keep the party alive long enough for the other players to learn the game without getting turned off by early PC death. The PCs I played were versatile enough to help the party when needed and the multi-classing also ensured the new players with single class PCs eventually outshone my PCs in power.

I didn't have any issues keeping the two characters separate. It was fun in that the one was Chaotic Good and the other Neutral Evil...and were cousins as part of the back story. Schizo city. The Ur Priest/Wiz/MT is a sociopath, but sneaky about it. The other character is the straight up good guy. I find it easier to play two completely different personalities than two similar ones in that the two similar ones are harder to keep goals and outlooks separate and not let them merge into one personality.

As a DM...

1. 1E - DM'd some of the same PCs (not mine) as in 1 (as a player) above. Never an issue. I scaled the encounters to the PC strength present, though I almost had a TPK on my hands in the Hill Giant Steading (G1). I did try to weave in more role playing for the players, but went with the flow and we all rolled lots of dice. And much fun was had by all.

2. 3E - I've let more experienced players play 2 PCs. Again, mostly a fighter type or rogue and a spell caster. Once the spell caster shot his wad, the player had a fighter or rogue to stay engaged. Eventually the less experienced players would want to play 2 PCs a well. Unless the newbie was really smart, this usually ended up in death for one of his PCs. I will suggest (prior to the gaming session) that the player only play one PC if I think he or she can't handle keeping the personalities separate or if he or she can't keep track of what all the two characters can do.

I've put a hard limit of 2 PCs (played at a single session) in 3E. I do expect the player to keep the personalities separate and if I don't see that in game, I will tell the player to reduce the head count to 1.

Overall, I think the record keeping during and between sessions is the hardest part of playing more than 1 PC at a time. For example, 3 of us from the 1E days had a mini reunion in Ann Arbor 17 years after we had parted ways post-college. We were recalling some of the adventures we played in and two of us had walked away from one of the last sessions thinking we each had the same items of loot.

Funny how we can remember specific details from a free-form game, 17 years after we played it.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Wik]

Time for me to weigh in on this one...

I'm not a fan, either as a GM or a player. This applies in pretty much every system, but I'm particularly talking about 4e herein.

As a GM, I've seen two different players running two characters. One player decided to drop both PCs in favour of a Warlock (ha!), while the other one is still running those two PCs. The first player took up a lot more of the game time, because he had a hard time figuring out powers, while the second player is much better at it. However, I just don't *like* it now that my group is at a decent size. I don't think there's anything to gain by it.

So, there may not be any real "problems" with it, but there's an aesthetic involved I'm not a huge fan of.

As a player, I really don't like it. I feel I have to concentrate more to really bring out the best of both characters, and that gets me away from the spirit of the game and the things I love most about the game (namely, creative problem solving and getting a laugh out of playing my character's faults to the hilt). Basically, when I'm running two PCs, I feel like I'm pretty much a GM in a slightly different role.

Two weeks ago, I played two characters in a dungeon delve, and while it was fun, I didn't really feel like I was "in character" or anything like that. I was juggling powers, trying to figure out both of my characters, and trying to set up good "tag teams" between the PCs. last week, I played my first 4e game as a player playing only one PC, and I enjoyed it a lot more. I was able to focus on my character, and had a lot of fun doing that.

So, yeah, I find as a player that two PCs are a distraction I'm not a fan of.

 

[Wik]

Oh, yeah. In some systems (Shadowrun, DARK SUN, and any mercenary- or army-based RPG) work great if you allow multiple PCs, but only one PC per player at a time. The other characters are not involved in the current "mission". I enjoy that style of play, and maybe I'll adopt it in the next campaign I run (it'd fit in well with a 4e game, I think).

 

[Umbran]

If your game is largely about the tactical stuff, then players can run more than one character well enough, if they are the sort who can keep that many tactical options in their head.

If your game is more about personality interaction... well, most players are not so good switching contexts of personality. Multiple characters wash out into a less compelling portrayal of any of them. Or, more likely, one character takes the fore, and the other gets short shrift.

This all in my experience, of course.

 

[jasonbostwick]

My only experience with multiple PCs per player has been as a DM; I've only ever played in a few one-shots when I rotate to have another member of the group DM a session.

My typical D&D experience is with small campaigns, with myself DMing and 1-3 players, so I've had a few incidents where multiple PCs/player was used to varying degrees of success.

The first, and in my opinion least successful, was the first campaign I ran in which we started with around 5 players, but as a few of the players left the game their PCs were adopted by the others as secondary PCs to maintain the storyline. Juggling that many characters in the group stifled roleplaying to a large degree, and the campaign slowly drifted towards simply managing the logistics of the party before we called it quits.

Conversely, one summer I found myself with only one player available to play with any regularity, and we started a mini solo-campaign (in 3.5e). After a session played with another friend of ours, the player took on that players PC as a cohort and played both for the rest of the campaign. While in the group dynamic multiple PCs per player had stifled roleplaying, giving the solo player an extra character allowed for a lot more variety and really kept the campaign going.

Last summer I played another solo campaign with that player in 4e, and based on the success of the first we decided it would work best for him to have a cohort to act as his bodyguard (he was playing an artificer). Eventually he picked up a second cohort through play, and the dynamic worked very well - while he focused mainly on roleplaying his PC, the extra 'party members' let the combats remain interesting and gave him a few more hooks to work with.

While the small group sizes in my non-solo games make it a bit difficult to run published modules, I'm very reluctant to give more PCs to the players - I really enjoy the 'partner' dynamic that can occur in a two player game, and wouldn't want to bog that down with other personalities.

To sum it up, I find that multiple PCs per player are a boon for solo campaigns, but they tend to stifle roleplaying and cause headaches the second you add a second player.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

In a normal situation where there are 4 of 5 players in the group I would generally only allow 1 PC per player. When a player misses a session in my group another player takes over playing his PC for that session. I don't allow 1 person to have 2 PC's that he plays week-in, week-out.

If I only had 2 players then I would consider letting them have 2 PC's each. Unless you change a few things about how you play, D&D doesn't really work with parties of 2 PC's. So if it was a choice between 2 PC's per player or a party of 2 I probably would allow multiple PC's.

The problem I have with multiple PC's are that there tends to be less roleplaying, players have trouble separating knowledge between the 2 PC's and it can slow the game down.

I had one player than once wanted to play 2 PC's when the other 4 players in the group only had 1 PC. He said that he had played 2 PC's at once lots of times before so he could handle it. I said no, not because I didn't think he could handle it, but because I could just see the problems it would cause with the other players. It wouldn't have surprised me if a couple of session in, everyone wanted to have 2 PC's or they wanted the other player to get rid of one of his 2.

Olaf the Stout

 

[WalterKovacs]

I've done it mostly out of necessity. Our group is small (we currently have 3 players, it was 4 at one point, and the fifth character was a DM PC). One of the players basically had 2 of his own characters, and he's currently running the DM PC. The two characters he was running (Tiefling warlock and drow rogue) were effectively the same character as far as RP'ing went, considering the same role and 'type' of race, not to mention allignment. Even while he ran the DM character (tact lord, which is fine as a DM PC, basically supports the party more thatn doing anything mcuh himself) I would roleplay the PC whenever it was necessary and would veto anything that seemed like the character wouldn't do it.

We've been going through the modules (Keep on the Shadowfell, Thunderspire, Pyramid of Shadows at the moment) so it hasn't been much of a problem in terms of RP stuff (We haven't had a whole lot), and it does speed up combats, and opens up using delay and readying so that all the melee characters are able to get combat advantage while attacking.

 

[Cadfan]

If your game is largely about the tactical stuff, then players can run more than one character well enough, if they are the sort who can keep that many tactical options in their head.

If your game is more about personality interaction... well, most players are not so good switching contexts of personality. Multiple characters wash out into a less compelling portrayal of any of them. Or, more likely, one character takes the fore, and the other gets short shrift.

This all in my experience, of course.

I basically agree. If you're running multiple PCs due to a lack of sufficient players, bluebooking can be a great way to bring roleplaying back into the game.

When my (now) wife started playing D&D, she was kind of shy about it all. She started in a private game where she ran two, and then three characters. She NEVER roleplays in character with them, even now after much time has passed. But out of game she makes up stories about them constantly.

That can be just as good.

 

[Lanefan]

Playing multiple characters simultaneously:

Both as DM and player, I'm all for it; for a number of reasons:

- there's room to try an oddball class now and then (Bard, Monk: I'm looking at you) without ruining the party makeup
- if one dies (and it will) you've still got the other to play
- one or two characters removed from combat doesn't screw the party over
- the potential for in-party dynamics (conflict, romance, etc.) expands logarithmically with each added character
- bigger parties mean the DM can get more creative with the numbers and types of opponents

As player, I usually prefer to have one somewhat-simple front-liner (Fighter, Ranger, Cavalier) and one more complex spellcaster type (Wizard, Druid, or some variant) running together. Two front-liners can get a bit dull, and two back-liners can get to be a bit overwhelming at anything higher than very low level.

In most cases, I cap it at two characters each in a party; rarely, someone will end up playing three or extremely rarely four (example: player x has two characters in a party that ends up rescuing a third one).

That said, and having done both, it's easier in 1e than it is in 3e; and by a lot
(can't speak for 2e or 4e, having played neither).

Having multiple characters in the game world:

I'm even more in favour of this! Reasons:

- you can cycle characters in and out to suit the party needs and-or your own interests at the time
- the overall level advancement rate is slowed (the ExP are being spread among more characters) making the sweet spot last longer
- the "inactive" characters can form secondary parties of their own and go off adventuring, adding depth to the game and allowing they and the DM to advance plot points that might otherwise get ignored
- if an active one dies permanently or otherwise has its career cut short, there's a replacement readily available (important in games where char-gen is a headache)

The above are true for any edition.

There's a bit of extra work for the DM here: every now and then you need to sit down with the player(s) and catch their retired characters up. I usually do this outside the main sessions, often over a beer in the pub.

Lanefan