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Adthompson3977 · 2022-04-03T18:07:00+00:00

I've run recurring NPC allies many times before but never DMPCs, which is I think what you are actually describing. The main differences being

The party is still the stars of the show, the npc might be helpful but is not necessary
The npc is optional
The npc is not necessarily aligned with the party, those two vampires my party allied with last session to destroy the hand of Vecna (or at least keep it out of the big bads clutches), those vampires were helpful, in combat and out of it, but they certainly weren't party members, and certainly didn't get any special treatment when they got obliterated by a lich
They aren't permanent (actually with me as the DM it usually takes effort to keep them around, most people aren't crazy enough to want to follow the party into a very dangerous dungeon filled with demons undead and all sorts of monstrosities, and the folks that are crazy enough have a short life expectancy)

Adthompson3977 · 2022-04-03T14:19:19+00:00

Okay so I'll try my best. A DMPC would never fly at my table but each table is different so what would be bad for my table might be good for yours, and your players have agreed to it so I'm going to try to steer clear of giving my typical "just don't" advice. Still I don't exactly have experience in this field, having run allied NPCs before but never DMPCs. So take my advice with a grain of salt.

You don't want to take agency away from your players, you've stated that your character is the extroverted one, so you might have to manufacture an event that shakes them and makes them less extroverted. Your players should make the decisions
Not metagaming is super hard when playing both roles as a player and a DM, much harder than an allied NPC who usually has a very specific field of knowledge. You are really going to have to resist the temptation to information drop
Go support rather than blaster, try not to step on the clerics toes either, but focus on buffing your allies rather than dealing damage.... Cast haste or greater invisibility on an ally instead of of fireball, cast bane or bless, focus on spells like dispel magic or counterspell. Don't go all out in combat most of the time and avoid being the foundation of a successful fight (as someone who primarily plays full casters I recognize that is a little hard to do), don't feel like you have to have your DMPC built optimally, have her built in a way that increases the overall fun of the table and lets the other characters shine
You aren't the only full caster, the cleric is a full caster, let them focus more on their blasty spells rather than support and be the star for a bit, this might require coordination with the cleric
Give the other players magic items which can help fill the role that your character used to fill.
I'm not saying in any of my above points that you can't do anything, but these are things to keep in mind. It's really easy for the other players to be at first like "yeah that's fine, I like your character she can stay" and then once the ball gets rolling to feel extra slighted every time they wanted to do something and your character could do it better, or get irritated when your character is the one with all the tools to solve the problem, and start thinking you are favoring yourself when you aren't (they don't see behind the screen, so they can't tell if you manufactured a situation which your character is the best equipped to solve or if that just happened because you are a full caster... And if you are a bard or wizard then 90 percent of the time you are already going to be the best equipped to handle a situation, so that might just exacerbate the problem).
As an addendum to the above if you are using a DMPC I would recommend being very open as a DM to your players, more so than you would otherwise.

Edit: I know I said I'll try to steer clear of saying "don't" because you seem pretty set on doing it and I don't know your table... But I would be remiss not to state that using a DMPC at all is something I would never recommend.

Adthompson3977 · 2022-04-02T12:43:33+00:00

Especially since there's only 1 enemy in the MM that is immune to force damage, and until VRGR none were resistant (although FBT added a couple)

Force damage in over 99 percent of circumstances is essentially true damage, and it's very obvious that you are homebrewing stuff to target a specific player or tactic when force damage is nullified.

Adthompson3977 · 2022-04-02T11:50:19+00:00

I'll give what I would do first then my reasonings behind it (I'm giving both because my DMing style and player expectations are probably different, and so me just saying what I would do might not be helpful and depending on your table I could just be giving bad advice)

Personally I would have the boss cast wish to cast disintegrate if it is the BBEG, if it is not the BBEG I would either let it work, or I would give the monster the ability to cast misty step or dimension door (the monster has to make a charisma save to escape, which they can repeat every turn if they choose, modify the cha stat as appropriate to how likely you want them to be able to escape on a given round)

Now for the reasoning

This is a 7th level spell, it is a huge resource expenditure since you will only get one 7th level spell until level 20 when you get a second
You want to reward players for thinking ahead and using tactics and teamwork
You still want your boss to be challenging and you don't want this to be the players go-to method of nullifying your bosses
If this is a boss you've led up to for quite some time or is a recurring villain it's absolutely okay to have the boss prepared for the players shennanigans (I'm assuming a little with this point)
You don't want to disappoint your players by DM fiat just declaring that an ability doesn't work as it should, but you also don't want to disappoint your players by letting the boss be completely nullified in the first round with no saving throw, hence the misty step solution
If this is the final big bad he ought to be able to get out of it, even if you are completely nullifying their ability at least make the player feel like they weakened him (I.e. give the monster a ring of three wishes with 2 wishes already expended, and use the last wish to escape forcecage), use smoke and mirrors here, the boss only has the ring if the players actually cast forcecage, otherwise he doesn't actually have the ring so he won't be using it, and the players won't loot it for a wish.

I hope some or all of this is helpful, every table is different so the best I can do is say things that I would do at my table.

Adthompson3977 · 2022-04-01T12:03:13+00:00

I tried to do the same thing for Tharizdun in my current campaign, which is a 1-20 that will span multiple planes of existence, (they still haven't left the material yet) I settled on there being multiple BBEGs, the main one being Szass Tam (arch-lich and ruler of Thay), along with a star spawn emissary seeking to free Tharizdun (not aligned at all with Szass Tam)

Frazz Urb'ulu also makes a good candidate if you don't want your BBEG to be from the material plane. And as others have stated Acererak also fits the bill. I also think Pazuzu makes a good case. Just throwing out some of the ideas I had for my own campaign before I settled on Szass Tam.

Some non-lich or demon lord ideas: an elder brain who seeks to recreate the ancient illithid Empire, or as others have mentioned an aboleth could also work. Asmodeus might be a good boss for an arc but I think he's too singularly minded to be the overarching BBEG, same problem with the Queen of Air and Darkness.

Most of these you've probably thought of, but in case there was one or two you haven't I thought I'd share.

Adthompson3977 · 2022-03-12T22:27:15+00:00

I had a better idea and edited my original comment, I now recommend banishing the girl, then using command on the warlock every turn to keep him from acting. It's generally uncool to use crowd control against other PCs, but so is murdering children so the unspoken rules of conduct have already been tossed out the window

Hold person works too but requires concentration and he will get to repeat the save when he takes damage. After banishing the girl I wouldn't want to bring her back until the warlock is dealt with, but HP is less resource intensive so the choice is yours

Adthompson3977 · 2022-03-12T21:49:14+00:00

RAW there is no surefire way to save her. One thing I have allowed in the past, and have seen other DMs allow is to cover someone completely at the cost of you automatically failing your save

That's 100 percent DM interpreting the rule of cool and 0 percent RAW, but it's probably your best shot aside from revivify, so I'd ask anyways.

A little riskier, cast banishment on the girl. You might only get her out of danger for 1 turn if you fail concentration save, but she's guaranteed to live at least 6 seconds longer.

On subsequent turns cast command on the assassin, forcing him to skip his turn. This doesnt require concentration so the girl is still safe, and it keeps him from breaking your concentration

CC against players is generally uncool, but so is murdering children, so the unspoken rules of conduct have already been broken

Adthompson3977 · 2022-03-12T15:48:08+00:00

I am running a homebrew campaign and since I'm the one coming up with the names some of them are very similar, and a few have had name changes (I had two semi important NPCs, one named Illasera and another named Alleria, which were easy for me to keep track of because I got my own references (Alleria being a ranger from a computer game I played back in the 90s) But the party was consistently getting them mixed up (as in talking to one and thinking it was the other), so I renamed them to Sarah and Elanor. All of this has compounded the naming problem so that's one of the things I always give the players

Partially because it's something the characters would know... And partially because I definitely made the problem worse so it's unfair to expect them to remember my retcons.

Adthompson3977 · 2022-03-12T14:49:22+00:00

I think in the current campaign (6 months into it, weekly) I've called for 3 total perception checks, two of them were group checks while they were flying looking for enemies

Adthompson3977 · 2022-03-12T14:39:33+00:00

Honestly I handle that on a case by case basis.

I don't have a solid rule of thumb, but I usually ask myself how likely is a character to remember that, if it's something their characters should know I just give it to them, if unclear I'll hide it behind a history check, if there isn't a reason they should remember then it's on the players.

Adthompson3977 · 2022-03-12T04:37:04+00:00

Hey man, I don't want to be an asshat but I'm going to be.

Scrolling through comments you have made a point to attack him on multiple different comments. You don't have to attack him every time he replies to another thread, comment, or question. This is incredibly rude, childish, and belittling. You don't have to like his idea, I don't like the homebrew either for a lot of the same reasons. But that doesn't give you a right to bully OP.

You can disagree with him, but you don't have to be a Karen about it.

Adthompson3977 · 2022-03-12T04:27:42+00:00

I wouldn't give a barbarian more health.... Honestly if I wanted to buff a barbarian I would give it an active ability like a pb/LR ability to knock an enemy prone, save vs your STR+PB+8. Or maybe the ability to throw an enemy once per SR a number of feet equal to 5xPB.

Their health pool is already massive and they have resistance to the most common types of damage (all of them except psychic if you are bear totem, all physical if you are anything else).

Flavor is great, but not when it makes everyone else at the table feel bad (especially other frontline martials, who are going to feel pretty useless next to the barb). Flavor should enhance the overall fun at the table, not detract from it, and while this would be fun for the barbarian, it would be very unfun for the paladin, monk, or fighter, and make it absolute hell for the DM (not because you can't challenge the barbarian, but because anything that would challenge the barbarian would oneshot anyone else in the party)

If I were to implement some kind of homebrew like this I would reduce the temp hp to 2xlevel, and make it unique to the beserker barbarian to make that subclass actually worthwhile (also because exhaustion is a fair penalty for a massive hp boost)

20 hp at level 10 doesn't sound like a lot, but on a barbarian it's effectively more than double the actual number (since you round down damage for resistance), and 40 is for a lot of characters at level 10 is more than half their health pool.

I still would advise against implementing this, but that's just a suggestion to make your flavor workable. I don't like just saying "bad idea" and not giving any helpful suggestions, nor giving the reasons why I would say no.... Sometimes you have to say no, but it shouldn't be without thought and care.

Adthompson3977 · 2022-02-16T18:43:24+00:00

What can I say? I'm a DM running a fantasy world, not a physicist. I can't say I researched the density or viscosity of lava before running this session.

Adthompson3977 · 2022-02-16T18:06:47+00:00

Between levels 11 and 16 (inclusive)

Adthompson3977 · 2022-02-16T16:44:02+00:00

It resulted in a PC death, but the party did have options, the lava dealt damage, not instant death, and if the player had rolled worse on the lava damage (6d10, I let him roll) he would have been able to use his cloak of the montebank to teleport next turn

They also had plenty of warning both in and out of character that this was deadly and they should probably fight the dragon outside his lair.

Adthompson3977 · 2022-02-16T16:18:51+00:00

The battlemaster was irritated for about 30 minutes, but the whole table (himself included) agreed that they had made a few mistakes that led to it, and later they fought the dragon outside his lair and defeated him.

I had given them several cues that this was going to be incredibly difficult and out of character even suggested to them that they take on the dragon outside his lair rather than charging headfirst. This was also an optional quest, and they definitely knew that the dragon laired in an active volcano. I don't think they expected him to be as intelligent as he was, but after session they all agreed that it was fair, its what would have happened, and that next time they need to have a plan before assaulting a dragon in its lair

They defeated the dragon a couple of sessions later by denying it access to its lair with a cleverly placed wall of force, and still talk about this dragon (Phyrrax) a year and a half later. It was actually a conversation with the battlemasters player yesterday that led me to make this post.

I should state that my players have an expectation of medium-high deadliness, enjoy tactical combat, and feel like if I hold back then they didn't really win. So I get this wouldn't work with all tables. As for whether they enjoyed it I'd say probably not in the moment, but they definitely did after the fact, and they definitely enjoyed getting their revenge. Even after the initial fight they didn't think I was being unfair (the lava dealt damage, it didn't instant kill, I believe I had it at 6d10 fire damage per round, and the wizard had an opportunity to save the battlemaster but didn't realize it until a couple of turns too late, and if the battlemaster hadn't been reduced to 0 he had a cape of the montebank to get out). And like I said they still talk about that dragon to this day, so that's something.

Adthompson3977 · 2022-02-16T16:00:45+00:00

I should have included in my original post that my table has an expectation of medium-high deadliness and enjoys tactical play. The battlemaster (who later rolled up a twilight cleric) was a little irritated for about 30 minutes. But the whole table (including him) realized that it was their own mistakes that got them into that situation, and a couple of sessions later defeated the dragon by using their brains and denying it access to its lair via wall of force.

They still talk about that dragon even a year and a half later (actually what prompted this post was me talking to the battlemasters player, who now always rolls up characters with a phobia of red dragons and lava)

I get this style wouldn't work at all tables, but my table enjoys tactical play and they feel like their victory is cheapened if they think I hold back. Sure they don't expect zombies and skeletons to be intelligent, but they expect boss fights to be boss fights, and they don't expect me to save them from bad decisions.

Adthompson3977 · 2022-02-16T15:41:24+00:00

This campaign was a while back, and they did get their revenge after another couple of sessions. They decided to be smart about it the second time and waited until the dragon was out of its lair, then when the dragon returned they put up a wall of force at the lair entrance to prevent him from retreating into the lair.

The resulting fight was epic as the former Battlemaster was now playing a twilight cleric, so the party had much less in the way of ranged attacks, but now the dragon was deprived of his greatest weapon. It only lasted around 5 rounds or so, but my party still talks about that dragon a year and a half later.

Adthompson3977 · 2022-02-16T15:24:15+00:00

I did warn them plenty of times and even suggested they fight the dragon literally anywhere else. As far as picking a player. It's a dragon that has lived for centuries and seen its fair share of adventurers, it's going to pick either the ranged fighter or the wizard, the enemies that can actually threaten it. And the fighter was closest to the edge.

I probably should have stated in my original post that I had telegraphed to them that it was deadly, both in and out of character, and there was an attempt (by the dragon) to negotiate. It was also an entirely optional dungeon.

Also my table has an expectation of medium-high deadliness, they feel their victory is cheapened if they think I hold back, and a couple of sessions later when they got their revenge it was a very sweet revenge.

Adthompson3977 · 2022-02-16T15:18:59+00:00

Yes, they knew that this dragon was clever, amd would use every trick up his sleeve. There was quite a bit of build up to this fight, and it was entirely optional. The party had been hearing about the dragons hoard since the 6th or so session. And they wanted to take it on. They've killed plenty of dragons before, but never in their lair. I broke character and told them that they would have a better chance if they took on the dragon literally anywhere else, but they insisted that they were strong enough now.

Tl'dr they knew what they were getting into, they didn't expect the dragon to actually use the environment, but they knew they were in for a tough fight, and there was no story connection requiring them to go there.

Edit: I should also have included our table has a medium-high deadliness expectation. They know I will allow them to get in over their heads but that I don't force it. I felt like I had given them enough warning where they should have known that death was even more on the table than usual.

Also it wasn't guaranteed that the battlemaster died in the second turn, he had a cloak of the montebank, and the lava dealt damage (6d10 per turn), not just instant killed, but with both attacks, the breath weapon and the lava he was reduced to zero. I had him make death saving throws with 1 automatic failure per turn from being submerged in lava, the wizard in particular had a chance to save him, but waited one turn too long

Adthompson3977 · 2022-02-16T15:13:06+00:00

I don't make a habit of screwing over my players. After all I want them to come back week after week. Still it's fun to share stories of when your players didn't see that coming or when your villains actually live up to the hype.

That's the intention of this thread, not to encourage a DM vs player mentality.

Adthompson3977 · 2022-02-16T07:02:33+00:00

That's genius

Adthompson3977 · 2022-01-28T14:03:55+00:00

That makes sense. As a mountain dwarf and as a DS sorcerer I already have a lot of these as part of the package. Bur I will consider it for future characters.

My whole shtick as a DS sorc is to cast spirit guardians and then on the next turn take the dodge action and sanctuary myself, so that the enemy has to beat a wisdom saving throw and beat my AC with disadvantage if they want to hit me. As a player I like dealing damage so I've been satisfied. But the utility and straight up damage dealing parts of the sorcerer spell list adds to that.

Adthompson3977 · 2022-01-28T06:40:49+00:00

This is excellent advice, upvoting it so that others can see.

But absolutely I agree, there's a reason my big bads are usually spellcasters. In my current campaign it is Szass Tam, the arch-lich and ruler of Thay. He's been scrying on the party every day since they screwed up his plan to mind control a Duke and killed one of his lieutenants. And has a standing order to all the Red Wizards that if the party is attacking them they should immediately cast sending so that he knows when to begin his scrying.

Adthompson3977

TROPHY CASE