D&D 5E Suggestions for a 2 player group

[MNblockhead]

Currently I'm running a notoriously deadly mega-dungeon. Rappan Atthuk. There are a few times when only two could show up and I didn't run anything differently. It is up to them to play differently. Some of these were among my favorite games. The fear and anxiety is ratcheted up. Players rely more on careful planning and stealth. They know that head-on combat is highly likely to result in death if they don't have a backup plan and a means of escape.

But my players are experienced, which is not your case. Instead of changing the rules or spending time reworking all the encounters, you could have them play several levels above the recommended levels for the adventure you want to run.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

One thing I'd add is that for combat encounters, I'd recommend being sparing with monsters that can paralyze/stun/incapacitate/etc. - with a small adventuring party, that sort of thing can rapidly swing a simple battle into a TPK.

 

[GlassJaw]

Currently I'm running a notoriously deadly mega-dungeon. Rappan Atthuk. There are a few times when only two could show up and I didn't run anything differently. It is up to them to play differently. Some of these were among my favorite games. The fear and anxiety is ratcheted up. Players rely more on careful planning and stealth. They know that head-on combat is highly likely to result in death if they don't have a backup plan and a means of escape.

This sounds very cool! I love Rappan Athuk. However, this strategy only goes so far. In many cases with published modules, you have to kill the bad guys, and a smaller group is going to drastically change the difficultly. A small group can quickly find themselves over their head unless the characters are over-leveled for the area.

 

[commandercrud]

I wouldn't power up the PCs. I'd just use fewer or weaker monsters. And allow NPCs to help out when the PCs ask to bring them along.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm looking for some ideas on what to do for just 2 players

Run something that's not D&D? At least not 5e, where being outnumbered sucks pretty hard, because the smaller the party, the less plausible it becomes for them to be always double-teaming lone monsters?

that does NOT involve having NPC's with them to "help"

That would be the classic solution. There's the Sidekick types in the essential set, or the NPCs could be built more like a PC, but strictly support, a healer or the like, that doesn't do much except help out between challenges.

5e is comparatively free of niche protection so if you start the PCs at 2nd or 3rd, let them MC and use feats, they should be able to cover all the bases.

Some of the things I'm already considering

That last I'd consider just letting recover hps.
Heck, the Healing Surge variant might be worth a look.

Only other thing is be sure to use the higher multipliers when figuring difficulty and be extra careful about outnumbering a party of two. Not only is being outnumbered always that much worse in 5e thanks to BA, but with only two PCs the margin for error is slim.

If you make suggestions keep in mind that I will be going with Theater of the Mind for combat.

A lone enemy vs the party is the easiest combat to run TotM, If there's some way you could make it thematic for the campaign, to always be going up against individual monsters?

 

[Esker]

I agree with earlier posters that if it is a homebrewed campaign, you don't necessarily need to do anything to the rules, just adjust the adventure. If you are trying to play a pre-written module, you could just have the PCs be higher level than what it's written for. That said, two high level PCs are not as powerful as four lower level PCs in most scenarios, due to the action economy and due to the impact of status effects, etc. (on the flip side, they are less vulnerable to AoE damage).

Some house rules that could help:

Healing potions always heal the maximum instead of rolling. I like this better than the bonus action, since it makes taking a turn to heal an actually potentially viable choice, without creating an excessive supply of low opportunity cost in-combat healing.

Monsters always do average damage. Reduces the role of unlucky rolls taking a PC down, which is obviously a much bigger deal in a two person party. Potentially gameable, since once you've seen a monster's attack you know exactly how many hits you can take, but not a big deal, IMO.

When unconscious and making death saves, you can spend hit dice to add to your death save like bardic inspiration, and if you get 20 or above you're up with 1 HP. (This is a bit weaker than the rule you proposed about staying up for 1+CON mod rounds)

 

[Oofta]

I agree with earlier posters that if it is a homebrewed campaign, you don't necessarily need to do anything to the rules, just adjust the adventure. If you are trying to play a pre-written module, you could just have the PCs be higher level than what it's written for. That said, two high level PCs are not as powerful as four lower level PCs in most scenarios, due to the action economy and due to the impact of status effects, etc. (on the flip side, they are less vulnerable to AoE damage).

Some house rules that could help:

Healing potions always heal the maximum instead of rolling. I like this better than the bonus action, since it makes taking a turn to heal an actually potentially viable choice, without creating an excessive supply of low opportunity cost in-combat healing.

I may use this one in my regular home campaign simply because the group is light on healing.

Monsters always do average damage. Reduces the role of unlucky rolls taking a PC down, which is obviously a much bigger deal in a two person party. Potentially gameable, since once you've seen a monster's attack you know exactly how many hits you can take, but not a big deal, IMO.

I do this one now, it makes my life easier and speeds up combat. I even let players do it if they aren't good at math in their head.

 

[commandercrud]

I'd strongly recommend allowing the PCs to find more healing potions than adjust the healing rules. That way you can always tweak it as time goes on if necessary over regretting having been too lenient.

 

[aco175]

Some of this will depend on the classes the other 2 play. If one is a cleric or healer-type, they should be fine with just some of the DM awareness in making the numbers match for 2 instead of 4-5.

I also seen the gestalt character where you basically roll two classes into one and they advance like just one. I never tried it, but some like it.

 

[Esker]

I may use this one in my regular home campaign simply because the group is light on healing.

I personally like this one regardless of the party. With RAW, healing potions offer so little healing that it's almost never worth using them during a fight, unless nobody has a healing spell and you're pouring one down an unconscious character's throat; at which point it hardly matters how many HP it restores, it's just a "get 'em up" action. And they're not worth using out of combat most of the time either, since it's pretty easy to come by out of combat healing. So the potions need boosting to feel worth ever using an action to drink one yourself; but having to still use a regular action makes it more of a tactical decision to do it. Plus, as a DM it's easy to tweak pricing and availability on a sliding scale to hit the sweet spot for how often PCs get the benefit.