Players running more than one PC

[Jhaelen]

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).

Yup, the best incarnation of a similar system that I know of is Ars Magica's troupe gaming style:
Every player has a wizard PC (Magus), a non-wizard pc (Companion), and any number of mercenaries/npcs (Grog/Turba). Typically only one player gets to play the magus, while the rest either plays companions or grogs. When we played adventures at our home base (Covenant), players would switch between the different roles all the time, depending on what pcs were available at a given location. This can be great fun if you can pull it off.

In D&D 2E when a player wasn't present someone else would play her pc as a secondary character. This didn't work very well, though, so in 3E pcs of players that aren't present simply fade into the background.

I'm often using DM-PCs but those are played by the DM (if/when required; generally they also just fade into the background).

I'm not fond of the army-of-henchmen concept that seems to have been the prevalent in 1E.

 

[frankthedm]

Normally I am not a fan of multiple players to a PC since it can make a character seem shallow. Although for 4E, two PCs to a player worked pretty well us for when our group tried 4E.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

I've played in groups with more than one player.

I've also had players play with a second character when someone couldn't make it.


Basically the only problems I've found are that either all the roleplaying suffers (if there is no "primary" character) or the characterization of the non primary character suffers.

For instance, when I had two "interesting" characters, I failed to roleplay either very well, and had an awful time having them talk to one another. But when I had an interesting character and his servant thug who couldn't speak, it was more like "normal" d&d.


So my opinion is that additional pcs are fine, but each player should have only one "character"

 

[Mallus]

Do you like it or not?

No sir, I don't like it. I don't like it one bit.

Does that change if you're the DM or a player?

Nope.

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

No exceptions. Running multiple characters gets in the way of the experience I want out of the game, both as player and as DM (well, less so as DM. I suppose I could a campaign in that mode, but my preference would be to use NPC's to bulk up a small party).

 

[Krensky]

Other then the aforementioned troupe style, I'm not a fan, but I've done it.

In a game I'm running now, a player faded out and then disappeared. Due to the number of players, the party needed his character around for both combat and non-combat roles. He's run by me for social issues (not really an issue since the character was a quiet loner in the first place), in combat he's run by the players (generally one player at a time, with it pretty much going by default to someone whose PC isn't present). Non-combat rolls and ability use is kind of a toss up, sometimes the players invoke them, sometimes I do.

 

[MrAlgothi]

Our DM has been letting the players run his 2 DMPCs for the last several months, it has greatly sped up combat. The DM also loves not having to "Play against himself" and can focus more on monster tactics while us players can focus more on Player/team tactics. It has worked out great for us so far. We rotate who plays what, The Dwarven Cleric or Dwarven Bravura Warlord, and it adds a nice bit of variety to our play styles and a bit of game knowledge at that.

 

[Pravus]

I'm curious what you folks think of players running more than one PC at a time.

When I started playing D&D (back with the Red box) it was only myself and my friend Tom that wanted to play so we took turn playing the "party" and running the games. Granted as young boys we didn't desire a lot of role-play in our games we just wanted to kill monsters and take their stuff.

When I entered High School there was a D&D Club which at that point we had enough people to allow 1 PC per player and have a party. But in my home games I still ran multiple PCs.

After High School we as a group were often 1 DM and 2 or 3 players so we often ran 2 or 3 PCs each and did so for many years.

It has only been in the last few years where I have sought new gaming groups that I encountered the 1 PC to 1 Player rule and found it odd to me but then we usually had 4 to 6 players in each group so it seemed fair.

One thing I found a little odd is several people mentioning that multiple PC stifled Role-play in the game. I suppose my style of gaming is more narrative then immersive as I tend to describe what a PC is doing or saying then try and act it out. But as far as PC to NPC role-playing I always found that fewer Players with more PCs actually worked better when it came to the interaction. I suppose it is from the 2 or 3 PCs played by one player are all on the same page as to the goal of the encounter. Some might think that is not the way to play the game but I look at it more as 2 good friends (the PCS) getting together where one knows the other so well as to instinctively know what the other would do.

When I ran more then 1 PC I also tended to create 2 PCs that complimented and had a connection with each other. I wouldn't say one was primary and the other secondary because to me secondary seem too expendable perhaps it might be better to describe them as best of friends but one was the leader and the other followed.

When I run games I tend to let the players decide what is a good number of PCs for the party so if there is only 2 players and they want 5 PCs then it is up to them how that happens but I tend to not want to have a DM controlled PC as I have my own NPCs and monsters to handle.

 

[grickherder]

I don't mind but to me it makes sense for the player to have a "main" character to focus on for roleplaying, and then take more of an NPC approach with the other character. Roleplaying conversations between PC 1 and PC 2 from the same player's a little weird.

This is how I handle it in one of the games I'm running right now. The 3 players are all hard core 3.xers who love system mastery and want to try out as many options and whatnot as possible (they enjoy crunch). So they each have a character that they RP with and then can add a character of the same level which they don't RP with but control in encounters.

If the story is at such a point that it can even pass as plausible, they can change the second characters as they like-- their main 3 characters are the heads of a mercenary adventuring company and have a wide pool of people to bring in as needed. With PHB2 having just come out, I'm expecting to see the Paladin and Wizard replaced by a Warden and a Druid very, very soon.

 

[TerraDave]

I don't mind but to me it makes sense for the player to have a "main" character to focus on for roleplaying, and then take more of an NPC approach with the other character. Roleplaying conversations between PC 1 and PC 2 from the same player's a little weird.

Right, it works well when one is clearly a sidekick/cohort/henchman. At least with not too many players. (I have used some henchmen in pre-3E d&d, but never the true old school style of 6 pcs with two henchmen each...).

In 4E, I would also recomend doing the cohort "NPC style", with a smaller suite of powers and simpler presentation.

 

[El Mahdi]

I'm currently running a game with only two players, so I have them playing two characters each. However, when we started the game, I had them each make only one character (they chose a Bard and a Wizard/Rogue). These became their primary characters. For the first adventure, I filled in extra roles (such as Fighters, Rangers, etc.) with DM-npc's. Also, during the course of that first adventure, they encountered a couple of npc's that wanted to join up with them (a Human Fighter/Mercenary and a Warforged Monk). Of course the joining up was my idea. I wanted to fill out some of the roles in the group that were missing, but I still wanted tactical decisions in combat to be the players decisions, not mine.

It's actually worked out quite well.

The players original characters were obviously their primary characters. And, as far as roleplaying outside of combat, really the only characters that do the talking. But, I don't see a problem with that. Also, my campaign plots are really only built around their primary characters. The extra characters are really only there to fill out tactical roles in combat. But, some roleplaying with the extra characters has trickled into the game, especially with the Warforged. I think that's probably because my players had to think up a name for him when he joined their group (he was found in a Wizards tower and has amnesia).

If you allow this or do this in your games, I think you have to accept that your players are probably going to have a primary character (the one they actually roleplay) and the second (or third, or fourth, or...) characters are just going to be combat characters. Personally, I don't see a problem with it, and it easily fixes any shortcomings in party roles. It also saves me the extra work of running even more characters, especially when the actions of those characters would have a major impact on what my players may do. When they are running those characters, the parties decisions are all theirs, and not mine. As it should be.