Running a game for two players

[Wednesday Boy]

Hey all,
Real life has caused a number of my gaming group to go on hiatus so the party for our upcoming campaign is going to be only two players. We might use of companion characters at times to round out the party but primarily the party will just be the two characters. (And we'll be making characters this Friday, so we don't have that set in stone yet.) Any tips for how to run a two player game that I can pass along to the GM would be greatly appreciated. (Thanks ahead of time!)

 

[Uller]

My son runs a game in which I play two characters. We started at 2nd level to give him a liittle bigger xp budget for encounters. He uses a lot of minions and healing potions. Also we've used minions as allies to round out the party. They make good fodder to keep the monsters occupied...after the fight any 'dead' patry minions can be restored with a healing surge and a heal check.

 

[The Red King]

If he is comfortable with the idea, ask the DM to play a cleric that's primary function is healing. Maybe a frelance priest doing his part in exchange for a donation to his temple? He can help steer the PC's away from anything evil by refusing to heal them on religious grounds.

 

[Hactarcomp]

My friend is currently on and off running an adventure with me and one other player. We are both running two characters, which is surprisingly fun. Getting to go twice in combat is a lot of fun. I'm not sure how well only two characters would work. (I also have a particular dislike of DMPCs/companion characters, although that may be mostly because I completely suck at running them as a DM.)

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone!

Personally speaking I'd like to avoid playing more than one character (and I'm a little hesitant to play a companion character). When I first started gaming we used to play two characters each and while I could run them with no trouble mechanically I had a difficult time roleplaying two characters well. It always seemed like one was my actual character and one was a robot that only came to life when my actual character wasn't around. So I'd prefer to focus on one character if I can.

 

[The Human Target]

In my experience, 2 players aren't as tough as you'd think. It really depends on what the classes are, but start things off very very easy until you find the sweet spot of combat challenges.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

In my experience, 2 players aren't as tough as you'd think. It really depends on what the classes are, but start things off very very easy until you find the sweet spot of combat challenges.

That's what I was thinking too. The GM is very open to bending the rules and not being cutthroat until we figure out an ideal challenge for just the two of us. Do you have an estimate on how the XP budget should be adjusted? The GM is interested in playing with higher level characters so we'll start at level 10.

The GM expects to tailor the combats to our characters (i.e., if we're both primarily melee characters he won't have hosts of flying enemies). In addition I assume that he should be careful about including enemies who daze or stun easily and often, regardless of our classes.

 

[The Human Target]

I haven't played with 2 players enough to have specific suggestions on XP type math.

Especially since we were running 2 level 3 PCs.

I figure starting out higher levels going to change the situation somewhat. The player characters will be tougher, but the monster are going to have a lot more weird attacks.