D&D 5E Players with multiple characters

[Pickaxe]

Do you allow players to run multiple characters, and, if so, is that common in your campaigns?

I have definitely been in campaigns where I have run multiple characters, including an Age of Worms campaign where I ran the whole party. But I’ve thinking about this, as the focus on characters and story in 5e would seem to discourage running multiple characters.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Generally it's one character at a time. "Allow" is an unusual way of framing things, I feel.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

"Allow, but it's infrequent". This goes for most RPG's. Exceptions there are, like Hackmaster 4th. In HM4 there are rules and methods for a PC having Henchmen as well as 1 Protoge. Neither are quite the 'same' as a PC in terms of freedom and XP earning...but Protoge is pretty dang close.

My players tend to only play one character at a time in most games. Sometimes they'll get board with a PC and make a new one. I let them bring in the new PC and play them concurrently. The old PC then "retires" or otherwise leaves the group (and becomes a back-up PC, if needed).

Doesn't really bother me as a DM. It just gives me more PC's to kill.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Draegn]

My players have alternates for the times when their primary characters are doing something else. So they run the alternate. The player who had her paladin on a diplomatic mission ran her sage while the paladin was away. One of the magicians whilst stoking her wizardly furnace to create an item ran her pirate then had her sail away when the item was created.

The only time each player ran everyone of their characters at the same time was when their home city was under siege.

 

[aco175]

My table is currently short on players, so one of the players usually has 2 PCs and I find myself having a DM-NPC tag along most of the time to fill in blanks.

 

[Sunseeker]

I always encourage players to make multiple characters at start. 2 extras at least.

Those characters level up in the background (because I don't see the benefit of bringing in low-level PCs to a higher level party, +/-1).

If Bob gets tired of playing his PC they can be switched out at any time at a "rest" area, unless there is something explicitly preventing that.

 

[the Jester]

Other- disallow except under special circumstances.

 

[ccs]

I'd say "Allow, but infrequently."

In our Sunday (PF) game, we only have 3 players right now. So in the current campaign 1 guy is running an NPC who's been with the group almost from the start. Another just recently took the Leadership feat & so now has a 9th lv cleric cohort. The 3rd guy just isn't comfortable playing more than 1 character at these lvs at a time.
Sometimes, dependent upon RP/plot/etc there's an NPC under my control with the group.
When the group #d 4 players they tended to share control of the long term NPC.

Now when I say "running" I actually mean the combat/mechanical ends of things. The RP of that long term NPC & cleric cohort? That's still done by me. But the groups pretty good about having them act in consistent ways during combat and suggesting appropriate responses, etc.

My Thur group is large enough that there's no need for anyone to play additional characters/NPCs. In fact they aren't keen on having NPCs tagging along at all.
Though if we end up running a 5e version of Skull & Shackles (a PF pirates AP) I think I will assign each of them an extra pair of pirates to control. That way (I) don't get stuck rolling stuff for 30ish crew like I did when I ran this for the actual PF group a few years ago. And it'll add RP activity when one PC is dealing with NPCs. Instead of me doing all the talking....

 

[iserith]

I run my game with a player pool. So while there are only 5 seats per session that I run, there are usually double that many players in the pool. Each of those characters typically have a character and a backup character. So for a given game, I might have up to 20 PCs floating in and out. Generally there's a fairly strong A-team of regulars and a number of lower-level adventures that rotate in and out. The relationships between that many characters all develop overtime like it's a cast of thousands. It's pretty awesome.

In a given session, players play just the one PC at a time though.

 

[aco175]

I'm jealous of Iserith and his abundance of players.