Pro Tips for Hirelings, Followers, NPCs, and DMPCs in D&D

this game is too hard we need some help baby why don't you some actually barbarian is right these dungeons are real meat grinders yeah we should pick up a hireling or something in town that's a good point I wonder if carry the under as a palpable well yeah I'm sure Gary would be happy to join you all oh yes Gary's back but but who's gonna find traps for us now welcome to the DM lair I'm Luke R and I've been a dungeon master since high school on this channel I'll give practical dungeon master advice that you can implement at your game table today in the lair we're gonna talk about how to use hirelings followers NPCs and DM pcs in your Dungeons & Dragons or RPG game I've also heard them referred to as henchman or cohorts or retainers but I think the first four categories suffice for this discussion also in order to avoid saying hirelings followers NPCs and D NPCs over and over again I'm just gonna refer to them collectively as allies that should help avoid lots of monotonous repetition and for the context of this discussion what I'm talking about specifically is when the Allied travels with the group and helps them on their adventures I'm not talking about a random and PC in a town that just sells them a sword or something now this is what we're going to do first I'm going to give you some reasons why you may want to consider using allies in your game and I'll explain why not to use allies then I'll go over some best practices for using allies including some common pitfalls that you should avoid finally I'll delve into each type of ally hireling follower NPC and D NPC giving you my specific recommendations for how to use each in your games and when I get to DM PC I won't lie there might be just a wee bit of a rant before we jump in I want to give a quick shout out to the following patrons and gentle members mal couth Abuk I Sofia W Rainier the Conqueror Trenton C and iron Lord 79 thank you so much for supporting the channel and the other DD content I create and if you'd like to become part of what we're doing around here and get access to some exclusive perks there's a link to my patreon in the description or you can click the join button down below next to the subscribe button why use an ally okay first let's take a look at a few reasons that dungeon masters might consider using hirelings followers npcs and DM pcs in their games the first reason is that the game is short on players perhaps there are only two or three players and the dungeon master wants to fill out the ranks a little bit for instance many modules are designed for four players so it could be challenging for a group with only two players to run it so the DM allows them to take on a couple allies to help them out next the dungeon master and players might want to fill a vital role in the group that no one is willing to play for instance if having a cleric is really necessary and no one wants to play one the group could take on a cleric hireling to tag along and toss down some healing when needed finally the group might just need a little extra help on a tough mission or two so they take on an ally or two to help them out yeah an extra barbarian or two is always a good idea bad reasons to use an ally now I would not consider using allies when you already have a full group if you're sitting at 5 or 6 players already then throwing them some allies is definitely going to bog the game down some especially in combats and also at that point it's not like they really need the help or should be missing any vital roles in my opinion you're just risking adding bloat to the game and slowing things down which is one of the main reasons that players whip out their phones and build dice towers by the way probably the absolute worst reason to use allies in the game is because the dungeon master wants to be a player too we're gonna get into that little gem of a discussion a little later when I talk about DM pcs but for now let me just say no bad idea best practices for using allies okay so let's say you're using some allies in your game here are some general suggestions for a dungeon master when doing so first of all run the ally in such a way that it goes along with the players plans and ideas the Ally should cooperate with them and help them accomplish their goals please do not have the ally work against the players or even be difficult with them you're not going to get any points from your players for clever role-playing all you're gonna do is piss them off and make them regret having a lie in the first place and to a certain extent we need to abolish the plot device of having an ally actually be a villain in disguise like you could do that maybe once with a group of players and have it be clever and cool after that it'll just get old and your players will become suspicious of every single hireling follower NPC or D NPC that you try to sneak into the game so use that technique very judiciously or not at all next since you have an ally in the group that is conveniently controlled by the DM to one degree or another more on that later you the dungeon master can use that ally to remind the players of common-sense things they should already know now why is that because players skulls are dense and the DM has to repeat things several times for it to stick because what you told them the last game session has surely been forgotten by now because they sometimes think that attacking a town guard in broad daylight won't have grave consequences no not for any of those reasons pitfalls to avoid when running allies first don't reveal too much information via the allies and what I mean here is that sometimes players will sometimes try to use allies as conduits for getting information and hints from the dungeon master don't fall for this hey Gary do you know which way we should go in this dungeon nope I have no idea I'm just here to stab things and get shiny it's okay to have allies use their abilities for the party for instance a cleric using a medicine role to determine how a dead shopkeeper died is fine but don't let allies become information caches that your players can mine I often like to play my allies as rather simple or brain-dead for this very reason or I might just simply tell my players out of character not to try to squeeze them for plot information that they wouldn't have access to next do not have an ally steal the spotlight from the players and ally should not be the one that rescues the group from certain death slays the dragon almost single-handedly and drags the sorry PCs back to town for healing as a dungeon master your primary goal is to make your players shy and be the center of attention in the game not a hireling or your fancy-pants DMP see this is one reason I usually have allies be much weaker than the players not useless weak just not as strong as they are finally do not give allies special treatment oh you're a special super NPC traveling with the group always seems to escape death you're awesome DM PC always manages to pull through as though his hit point pool it's practically bottomless nope that stuff is crap treat the Allies the same way you would treat the characters ruthlessly and without a shred of mercy alrighty then now let's deep dive into specific recommendations for running hirelings followers NPCs and DM pcs in your Dungeons & Dragons game how to use hirelings now this is how I define a hireling it's someone the party hires to accompany them on an adventure the first thing to note about hirelings is that they are not morons they know that the adventuring life is very dangerous and the likelihood of death is very high thus they demand payment upfront and they usually pass it to their family or deposit it in a bank or something for safekeeping or they might even demand an equal share of the loot obtained on the adventure I mean come on they're taking all the same risks as the characters why shouldn't they want this it's not unreasonable in any way even though your players are probably not going to like it oh and if the PC is get a reputation for not giving hirelings their cut of the profit or mistreating them or having to many of them die guess what nobody is going to want to work with them they just expect to churn through hirelings like a meat grinder and have an endless supply no one is that stupid not even miserly hirelings next I make hirelings weaker than the PCs but not so weak that they are completely useless because then why have them I feel like about half the pcs level is about right so the higher legs have roughly half the hip points and have half the damage output hireling spell casters have access to spells half as powerful as the PCs what I usually do is pick a nom player-character stab lock from the back of the monster Manuel Valls guide to monsters or morning canis no mofos and then I tweak it as needed to hit the stats and abilities I'm aiming for here's an example of a hireling from my ancient dragon game that I roamed my patrons I basically started with druid stat block and then tweaked it one of the things I did was get rid of most of the spells and just pick three that she has access to and instead of using spell slots I gave her a certain number of uses per day this simplified things for me when I'm running her I also wrote a quick summary of all of her abilities down on this three by five card so I wouldn't have to look anything up you see when I run her in combat my goal is to do it quickly and bog the game down as little as possible now I prefer to run higher links 100% myself both in combat and out of combat however I think it'll be perfectly fine to have your players run a hireling in combat to remove some of the burden from the game master out of combat though I think the Dungeon Master should be role-playing the hireling and in all honesty that usually means not doing much and taking the backseat only speaking up when the player specifically addressed the hireling or need them to do something now here's something to consider - you should the hireling get a share of the experience points from that feeding monsters in the game honestly I think a good argument could be made for hirelings getting a share of the XP however my style as a dungeon master is not to screw my players over and I feel like there's definitely an element of that at play if they are losing out on XP when they have a hireling there's also the fact that the howling isn't as powerful as they are and doesn't contribute as much at the end of the day I use milestone experience points so I don't really have to worry about this but if I didn't I would just give my players their full cut of experience points and call it a day in other words I'm not gonna screw my players out of their experience points because they have a hireling with them they can they can keep their experience point it's not it's not gonna break my game okay now we're going to jump into followers and NPCs and these are going to go a lot quicker because many elements of running them at the table are the same as with hirelings how to use followers first let's define followers these are people that follow the characters or a particular character out of loyalty or some other motivation they might be followers or retainers from a specific system like Matt Colville strongholds and followers or interns if you're running an acquisitions incorporated style of game something I highly recommend by the way in fact I have a video on my channel on the benefits of running an acquisition incorporated style of game if you want to check it out just click this card right here the first thing to note about followers is that they join the party for their own reasons or due to a game mechanic and thus don't expect any payment an example of this is Gary the intern yeah I'm just looking to advance my career up the corporate ladder no pain needed for followers I make them about half as weak as the PCs and pick a stat block from one of the core rule books tweaking it as needed I usually run them in combat and out of combat but I think it'd be fine for players to run them in combat and remember too that followers who aren't treated well by the characters might very well say screw it and leave the party in fact because they are there for reasons other than payment they might bugger off even faster and easier than hirelings and if the party gets a reputation for not treating followers well or having them die all the time pretty soon no one will want to follow them so it might be a good idea for characters to even raise them from the dead when they die how to use NPCs an NPC in the context of this discussion is someone who accompanies the party for a limited time often just for a mission or two for personal motivations and often as part of the storyline the dungeon master creates now NPCs are much the same as hirelings with these important distinctions first an NPC might be of a similar power level as the PCs but be very careful not to steal the spotlight in fact it's probably safer to make them weaker than the PCs and certainly don't make them stronger this is dangerous and it'll make your players feel small next I always run NPC's both in combat and out of combat NPCs are far more important than hirelings and followers so I feel like the DM should always control them now yes by a strict definition outside of the context of this discussion both hirelings and followers are NPCs too remember our categories I've created so we can talk intelligibly about this topic I'll just leave the nitpicking semantics for the comments section down below how to use DM pcs ok where do we even start with our beloved DM pcs let's let's just define them first she'll be a DM PC is a full-blown PC with a character sheet and everything that the dungeon master themselves play usually this is so the DM can also be a player in the game a DM PC is present during the entire campaign adventures with the group receives an equal share of loot and levels up with the other pcs ok so how to use DM pcs you don't period end of story thank you very much goodbye I mean they suck they really suck trust me ok let me explain Dungeon Master's there are a variety of reasons not to have a DM PC first it plugs the game down because the dungeon master has to run a full-blown character sheet in addition to all of the other things they do during a game and don't tell me that it doesn't take longer than running a simple stab lock for a hireling or follower I've done it before so I know there is a reason that Wizards of the coast published creatures in the monster manual in stat block form to make it easier and faster for the DM to run monsters at the game table next the dungeon master has conflicting interests when they are both the DM and a player it's extremely difficult to be impartial and unbiased when you're straddling the dungeon master screen pick one side and be done with it which leads me into our next point it's even easier with the DM PC for the dungeon master to steal the spotlight from their players the NPC often becomes super powerful and awesome and gets all of the cool loot in the game I mean come on how many times have you played in a game where the dungeon master did exactly this ok maybe you have it but the point remains it's a huge temptation and danger oh and have I mentioned plot armor yet that's right the DM PC never seems to be in danger or die I wonder why could it be the dungeon master is protecting their precious DM PC from mr. death remember what I about conflicting interests this is one of them now I have used DM pcs before so it's not like I'm mr. holy britches or anything but I shouldn't have and now I now realize that let me know your tips for running allies in the game next week we'll go over ten ways to keep your DD group from falling apart but until then click right here to learn how to run down time in your games and until next time let's play D&D

Channel: the DM Lair

Views: 91,006

Keywords: d&d, d&d 5e, dnd, dnd 5e, dnd 5th edition, dungeons and dragons, dungeons & dragons, rpg, role-playing game, roleplaying game, dungeon master tips, DM tips, dungeon master advice, DM advice, the dm lair, luke hart, d&d hirelings, d&d followers, d&d followers rules, d&d npc, d&d npcs, d&d dmpc, dnd dmpc, how to use hirelings, how to use followers, how to use dmpc

Id: YzA4BuxLm-c

Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 10 2020