Why You Should Never Have a DMPC in D&D

this week's episode of our show is sponsored by the Grim Hollow Vatican Clans Kickstarter which is bringing two awesome new source books for fifth edition this Kickstarter is launching on February 15th with two massive books for you to explore the worlds of grim Hollow first off we have the Raiders guide to valiko this book is going to be a setting Guide to the world of valiko with tons of player options available in it not only are there more Transformations the amazing system that was introduced in the Grim Hollow campaign setting allowing your player characters to transform into new monsters and creatures but there are also new martial Maneuvers and new rules for large-scale combat encounters involving massive raids we also have The Saga of Seasons which is a campaign for levels 3 to 11 which spans the length of an entire year where you get to muster your own Clan and survive all four seasons in the world of valika this project is brought to you by some of our favorite minds and creators at ghostfire gaming and is sure to be an awesome expansion to the already amazing Grim Hollow campaign setting so follow the links in the description below to check out the kickstarter which is going to be running through late February and into March and now under this week's episode greetings my name is Monty Martin and I'm Kelly McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes Welcome to our Channel where we cover everything RPGs including advice for players and guides for Dungeon Masters we upload new videos on Tuesdays and Thursdays so please subscribe to our Channel like this video and ring that Bell so that you never miss an episode the dreaded so many memories over the Decades of Dungeons and Dragons dmpcs as we call them have been around for a very long time in d d and other ttrpgs and over the years we've heard many reasons from many dungeon Masters on why they want to use them generally though Monty and I have had poor experiences with our run-ins with dmpcs and there's a lot of things that can go wrong with them today though we're not going to focus on the many many ways that they can go wrong but we're going to talk about the three most common reasons we've heard on why DMS want to use them and talk about other options that might help you not need to use a dmpc in your games the three most common reasons we hear from dungeon Masters that want to use a dmpc are as follows the first that they want to introduce a non-player character that joins the adventuring party and follows the player characters around because that's going to be important to the story in some way shape or form the second most common reason that we see is that dungeon Masters want to address a perceived Gap in the capabilities of their player characters most often because the party might lack a Healer or a tank in some way shape or form and the final and probably most common and admittedly hardest to address is because the dungeon master wants to play a character themselves so we're going to address each of these reasons in turn and hopefully by the end of this video we'll have convinced any of you out there that want a dmpc why it's just not necessary and we'll also hopefully show you different options that might help your game out allow you to participate in the ways that you wanted to but without taking agency away from your players with a dmpc so let's dive into the first reason the dungeon master wants to incorporate an NPC who is pivotal to the plotline and story this is perhaps the most valid reason to include a dungeon master player character it's one of those things that has a very good intent behind it but often suffers from execution and requires a little bit of a mindset change to differentiate this because I would say in most cases this is not a dmpc this is a very important NPC but elevating that character to the status of a dmpc is a bit of a mindset shift and I think it's better that if you think that there is a character that is important to your story that you as a dungeon master recognize that that is still an NPC and don't Elevate them into your in your mind as a dmpc having an NPC that tags along with the party is not a problem and we're not saying that it's when that NPC is designed in the same way as a player character participates in all of the game aspects that the player characters also interact with that now you're stealing the spotlight away from the player characters and the biggest reason why is that often these characters are injected into the campaign to be a protagonist in the story and the thing is the player characters are the protagonists in the story so by having an NPC who is the protagonist you're taking something that's vital to the players and giving that to an NPC a few things that you can Implement to kind of resolve this issue and still allow this NPC to be important is I like to think of Lord of the Rings I know I say that a lot I always like to think you always think a lot of the rigs I'm never not thinking about Lord of the Rings it's my favorite yeah everything so let's think about Lord of the Rings in my mind's eye of turning Lord of the Rings into a d d campaign we have a lot of player characters involved but I actually would argue that Frodo is not a player character he is an NPC but I also want to point out that through the story of Lord of the Rings Frodo is not generally very useful in combat he's not the one saving the day he's not Aragorn jumping in with his sword to to fight off hordes of Orcs he's not Legolas shooting down hundreds of Orcs from a d he's not one of those primary characters who's doing something useful in combat Frodo is a very important character his job is to carry the ring having an NPC that is your ring bearer so to speak is not a problem have the NPC be important because they're the only ones who can carry the ring but they're not very useful anywhere else so they're actually now a liability that the party needs to protect they need to get them where they need to go I think that that's a great way to use an important NPC just don't make them valuable in the aspects of the game that the player characters are going to be engaging with I got to push back on you Kelly Frodo and Sam are absolutely player characters they're Sam is I think they both are they're just one that the dungeon master worked with very closely during character creation to get the buy-in from them to be the key characters and I think that this idea of could that key NPC be a player character is a really important solution to this problem the heir to the throne that doesn't need to be an NPC that's perfect for a player character the long lost last of their kind that doesn't need to be an NPC that could be a player character the ring bearer absolutely should be a player character it's just that if you're gonna give this player a character that slightly elevated position that's probably something that you should discuss with a player during session zero get their buy-in and even discuss it with the rest of the group so they understand why this player character is getting this slightly important role I also think that if you are addressing this in session zero it's great because not every character wants that much of a spotlight I've talked to the players at my time table and one of my players has said outright I prefer to be a secondary character I don't want the spotlight on me all the time it makes me uncomfortable there's another player character who loves having their moment in the spotlight so generally me putting a bit more attention on that player character still makes everybody at the table happy and I will also argue that although Frodo is the pivotal character of Lord of the Rings when you ask anybody so many people say my favorite character Sam or Aragorn or Legolas or Gimli or Gandalf just because you have a character who's carrying a story element along with them doesn't lessen the impact that the other characters get to have when you address this in session zero in the past Monty's asked when we were doing one of our pre-stream campaigns we were going to do a wedding party and you said do any of you guys want to be the groom yeah and Joe was the one who was like yeah I'll be the groom and we were like cool none of nobody else really wanted to be and so we all kind of picked roles on how we were related to Joe's character and why we were in the wedding party Joe got to be the groom for this wedding party Entourage and that allowed Joe to have that sort of pivotal place in the story but the rest of us all felt very valuable and important and at no point did I feel like Joe was more of a main character than I was so I think that when you address this in session zero and throw it out there hey it would be really helpful to the story if one of you was blank the ring bearer the chosen one what whatever does anybody want that role and you decide amongst yourselves we're all good and this and this is doubly so if that role does carry a potential power amount I think of if you were trying to have a campaign maybe inspired by avatar The Last Airbender it's like okay so who's the Avatar that comes with that player character having a higher level of power which means that you have to discuss that with the group and say okay well just like in avatar The Last Airbender Aang has to be in the Avatar State that's not a mode that he can always be in and so the other characters and the other players they still have their strengths and they still have their so many ways that they're pivotal and important to the plot even though once in a while the Avatar or Captain Planet or they get infused with their superpowers and that gets unlocked for just that one encounter and that's kind of an understanding amongst everybody at the table powerful NPCs joining your party is something that I just personally try to avoid my drakenheim campaign has a whole bunch of super powerful NPCs the faction leaders and the way that I justify this is they're the leaders of their factions yes they're important to the story but they exist more as patrons that are sending the players on missions and they're too important and have too many responsibilities to be going off on every single Mission with the player characters they're running the kingdom they're running the faction they're running the Mage Guild they might even be off fighting other battles at the same time as the player characters are doing their own objectives so there's a lot of different ways to justify this and generally I think that if you have this impulse to put a dmpc in your party first recognize that's just an NPC and second of all think of the ways that you can give more power to the player characters in deciding that is by letting that role fall to the players or just make sure that they're not always there in drachenheim Monty portrays so many memorable NPCs very powerful ones very competent ones most of the time though the Dirty Work needs to be done by the player characters a lot of these NPCs still allow the DM to have great chances for role play for interaction with the player characters to help them form plans and ideas and help them through the campaign this is a lot of the reasons why I hear a DM say well I want the dmpc to help them out with figuring out what to do next you can have an NPC do that but then they're a mage of the amethyst Academy they don't go into combat they specialize in different types of magic they can heal you when you get back maybe but they're not they're not going into the the Dragon's Den so to speak that's for the player characters the adventurers you could also have something like a caravan or an Entourage of NPCs that travel with the party but their jobs are different than the parties the party is established in this instance as the ones who have to go again do the dirty work with they're the ones who protect they're the ones who need to go hunting or killing the monsters all of that but then they can return to the Caravan or Entourage who has their cook their blacksmith whatever the group that's traveling with them who can help them out give them advice this this is a really great way of Designing NPCs that don't need to be player character NPCs and still give the dungeon master so much opportunity to play and I think the final thing that I would just say with this and a common Pitfall that you'll run into with NPCs in general is that oftentimes when a dungeon master wants an NPC to be an important part of the plot you run the risk of the player characters just not liking that NPC as a person and then you get this difficult scenario where the player characters now are kind of forced into helping a person they don't like and because of that it makes them resent the end NBC even more this is doubly so if you've decided to make that NPC an annoying child or just giving them annoying and bossy personality traits and this is why it can be helpful to a dial that back or B give the player characters the choice of several different NPCs and so they can choose someone that they actually like to be the one that follows around with them or helps them out or doing that uh tomb of annihilation does a really good job of this in that the party has to hire a guide to help them through the jungle but there's a phase where they get to choose which of the 12 guides they want to hire to follow along with them so it actually lets them choose an NPC to come with them that they're going to be more compatible with rather than just being stuck with that really annoying guide NPC that none of them can stand uh when I was running out of the Abyss which has eight or nine NPCs that travel with the party my player characters definitely held on to the little Mike and Ed with their dear life but they let some of the other more annoying NPCs fall behind they they didn't maliciously use them update but there were definitely instances where like one of them would trip and fall and they're like we don't care about that guy keep running yeah and this is why the making investing all of that into a single NPC is a bit of a risk whereas as soon as you spread that across multiple NPCs and let the players choose who they want to work with who they want to associate with all of a sudden you can have your NPC that follows the party it's just that the players are totally down with it because they picked it how many times have you had a meepo situation where the player characters fell in love with the goblin NPC that you thought or the rattling NPC that you thought was going to die in that first session and now they've become The Unofficial mascot of the party when these things happen organically it's amazing but when you try to force it doesn't feel good the second reason that we hear a lot for wanting a dmpc is because the dungeon master has decided that a certain role in the party needs to be filled this is often times a Healer or a tank and I'm going to start off by telling you that in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition party balance isn't the same as it was in Prior editions or possibly in other games definitely not in video games and definitely not in video games uh in most video games it's like okay we need to have a well-rounded party in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition you could have a party of all wizards and be fine you can have a party of all bards and be fine uh there's you can mix and match the classes any way you want and I'm here to tell you that we have three years four years worth of videos of us playing without a Healer and we do have a tank but absolutely no dedicated healer and we've been oh okay and there's only three characters in the party I actually can't think of I think the last time we actually even had somebody in our party that had like a healing spell was like when we were doing that that uh again the wedding party came yes when we did the red hand of Duty I drew it in a bar but neither of them were like it was a moon Druid and a lore bar like they had healing word they were not healers no but amongst the party and d5e you have so many healing spells available to so many different classes that like do you have a druid and they took cure wounds and you have a bar took healing word you're probably okay yeah um for tanks oh no you don't have a tank well Wizards have a lot of ways to reduce damage with spells as long as they're all taking different spells spell casters can do a lot uh your your Rogue may not be able to tank but they can mitigate damage in other ways there there's ways to deal with any situation and I think it's the player's job to figure that out I 100 agree it is the player's job to figure out within the mix of their abilities how they're going to overcome these problems sometimes does mean when you have a party that doesn't have a tank and doesn't have a tealer it often means that that party has more Battlefield control abilities they do more damage and it can oftentimes in my experience at least not having healer it usually leads to one-sided combats where it's still a challenge but the player characters know that because they don't have any healing they can't really afford to take a lot of hits so they have to hit hard and they have to come in with a strategy and they have to walk away kind of unscathed and it took a while for me to realize no one took damage in that fight am I challenging my players I'm like oh they don't have a Healer so if they take damage it's a bigger problem for them than if they did so it can be a mindset change and ultimately if you do still think that your players need a little bit of help perhaps they're newer to the game they need a little bit more infrastructure I think the best way to address it personally is magic items there are so many magic items you can hand out to solve this problem if your party doesn't have a Healer just make potions more readily available healing potions take an action to use but that's part of the fun of not having a Healer is you need to figure out when you got to use a potion uh there is also the staff of healing great magic item to award to a party who doesn't have a dedicated healer you could also Homebrew an item like a wand of cure wounds or something of that sort take a spell that does healing attached to a wander staff you've got yourself a magic item I just took the one of magic missiles which doesn't require Attunement and doesn't require you to have to be a spellcaster but lets you shoot magic missiles and I just changed magic nizzle out for cure wounds and it's actually not that over powered it works kind of perfectly and it's a great way to put an item in the party that anybody in the group can use that is really what I think of that wand of cure wounds is is it's like an automatically replenishing store of healing potions and that way I don't have to worry about it I know that they always have a couple little heels and I don't have to always be handing out healing potions as treasure and making sure that the party has enough healing potions there's the wand in the party it always keeps them covered and that helps you also because the staff of healing does require Attunement and you have to be a cleric Druid or Paladin or Bard I think to attune to it so you could remove that requirement and just say anyone can attend to it and anyone can use that staff that's not a problem also if you're missing a tank there's so many great magic items like giving one of your squishier characters a cloak of protection ring of protection animated Shield there's so many different ways that you can let them be a little bit tankier boosting up their AC or even giving them Scrolls of spell that will help them out in dealing with situations in combat there's also a lot of magic items out there that allow you to summon other creatures like summoning Elementals and they can make really good meat Shields or tanks you summon a fire Elemental and throw it out in front of the enemies now all of the squishy spell casters can deal with casting their spells well the fire Elemental takes the brunt of the damage summoning magic items are a great way to solve the we don't have a tank issue you can start handing them out relatively early it also lets your players have to be a little bit strategic I love the elemental gems because they're one use only they summon the elemental and so it means that if the players are going into a situation where they feel they need a tank to take the hits here's your Earth Elemental gem decide it use it carefully I think that when we address one of the other major reasons why DMS often want to create a dmpc within this the other thing that they always say is but I want somebody to help the players out I want somebody to converse with them by losing the dmpc I'm not going to have that one thing that you can see Monty use all the time in our game and I have implemented into my games as well I love adding sentience to a magic item that's staff of healing give it a personality by giving a magic item a personality you're doing the service of a dmpc without any of the problems imagine it like this the problem with the dmpc is that it takes agency away from the players it forces decisions upon them by having another player character in there who is acting as a player character when it's an item the item needs to be activated by the player characters the abilities of it need to be used by the player characters this means that all the agencies in the hands of the player characters but that magic item has a voice so they are able to bounce ideas off of it hey magic staff you're old and ancient what can you tell us about these ruins that we found you in well now the staff can tell them the history of these ruins it can it can navigate for them it can give them clues or tips or hints maybe in the past this this staff was a world traveled Sage who was cursed to be imbued into their own staff when they died so they might know a lot of lore and history and just elements that you can actually use to converse with your player characters this allows you to fill that gap of somebody who can help navigate through the campaign especially for newer players but they're in a match game and because they're a magic item it also means that you can put restraints or curses or limits on what that sentient item knows just like any other NPC I also have done this with warlock patrons and have the Warlock patrons or even the deities sometimes be a more tangible presence you got to be a little bit more careful with warlock patrons and deities because they exist in a higher power Dynamic to the player characters so it can feel like the God is bossing the player around so the sentient magic item is really good because ascending a magic item can give the players advice it can give them their opinion but that advice can be bad advice that advice that opinion can be wrong and it could also be up to the player characters to decide whether or not they even listen to it in the first place even if it is good and correct advice and ultimately that means that even if it is good advice and it is true information it's up to the player characters just to decide whether or not they heed that advice so as we come into the final and probably the most difficult reason why DMS out there want to use dnpcs it's because they feel like a forever DM and they want to play too the first thing that I gotta say is that the DM is a player in the game as well and their fun is just as important as everybody else and that's why this is one of the most difficult ones to tackle because yeah DMS want to have fun too and sometimes being a player character is fun but but let's think about all the things that make being a player character fun why do you want to play D D why do we enjoy having a player character specifically well it's so much fun to be challenged in combat encounters isn't it it's really great being surprised by all those plot twists and it's so much fun when you have to make interesting decisions and face the consequences of your actions isn't it wonderful to solve puzzles and to explore unknown worlds not know what's behind the dark doors of that dungeon isn't it amazing to be surprised at the treasure and the rewards that you experience or Unravel that mystery or experience that plot twist that you just weren't expecting and if you've been following along with all this really really carefully you might start to notice that a lot of those things don't work if you're the dungeon master you are the dungeon master you can never be challenged in combat it doesn't matter that you came up with a cool build for your player character you control all the bad guys anyway so you can't be challenged by combat at all you can't unravel or solve the mystery because you already know what the answer is you're not going to be surprised by the plot twist because you determined what it was and you can't really explore that world that you made yourself you can't have that wonderful role-playing experience with the other NPCs because you'll just be talking to yourself you knew that treasure was there you knew what the answer to the puzzle was you knew what the meaning behind the prophecy was you can't make any interesting choices for your character because you're the one that decides what the consequences for those choices are the truth is the dungeon master can't be a player character because the experiences are fundamentally incompatible everything that makes being a player character in Dungeons and Dragons or any role-playing game is basically denied to you when you are the DM because nothing can surprise you you control everything what makes being a PC fun is all the things that is DM you can never have so then the question becomes how do we solve this and this is the trickiest part maybe you do feel like a forever DM and the reason why you're creating a dmpc is because you just want to play D and D and try out that Paladin build that you've been looking at for years so in this part of the video I'm speaking directly to the players the ones who are playing at tables have never been a DM and are maybe a little afraid to be a DM and I'm telling you it's not as intimidating as you think it can be a lot of fun and you don't need to commit to a full year or two Year campaign but it might be a really nice favor to your dungeon master to say you know what I think I want to try running a one shot if you're with an established group there's a good chance of the people at that table there's going to be an amount of trust and an amount of friendship that is important because anybody at my table could try running a game don't judge the new people stepping into the the DM seat let them figure things out if they ask for help we can all help them but giving the dungeon master who's been your dungeon master for years the opportunity to say yeah I'd love to play in your one shot that sounds amazing could be the most exciting moment for them oh they have player characters that they definitely want to try out I'm sure Monty has player characters that he wants to try out he's played in several of my games that I've ran and he'll probably play in several more Monty's voice that he prefers being a dungeon master but every once in a while he says I have an itch to try something yeah and so we figure it out we get a few games in to let Monty try out the player characters that he's excited about being a dungeon master is incredibly rewarding I love expanding and building my world I love role playing my NPCs and I love seeing the situations that my player characters get into and seeing the choices that they make and the responses that they do I love thinking about my NPCs as living and breathing people who respond in logical or sometimes illogical ways to because people don't like always act in logical ways after all but in ways that make sense for the scenario at hand and there's a lot of ways that you can get enjoyment out of those things certainly as a DM I love role-playing with the players and I find that the experience of being able to be one of my NPCs and portray that character and riff off of my players that's a ton of fun I love seeing how my players react when they discover all of these things but it is a different type of enjoyment and it's a different type of experience to the the experience that you have as a player character I often read ahead for spoilers in video games and movies and books and stuff like that it's a terrible bad habit so that's why I tend to enjoy being the dungeon master more than I enjoy playing because I kind of like knowing what's going to happen next and I kind of like having that little bit of extra control but I do think that ultimately the separation and acknowledging that the dungeon master for all their power the delight and surprise of being a PC is part of what makes it so special and it's ironic that the dungeon master for all their power it's like they can't experience that it's like the God who does not know what it means to be mortal because the fact that they are a god makes it impossible for them to comprehend what mortality actually means and this incompatibility unfortunately I think is the the reason why dmpcs cause problems because if a DM is not aware that they're actually going to be denied these things in the pursuit of them that's where the problems come and if you're not building a dmpc for the pursuit of those elements then I think all of the other solutions that we've presented are the reasons why you shouldn't have a dmpc and if you are in the pursuit of these I think it's really important to talk to your table and say I would love one of you to just run a couple sessions so that I can take a break from dming and try out being a player the truth of a dmpc is that they're almost the truth of the dnpc is that when you break it down they're probably not necessary and they don't do the one thing that so many people want from them which is that experience of being a player character so in that respect don't do it it just doesn't do what in theory it's supposed to do the final thing that I'll just say is that perhaps the last little tip that if you really want that experience of being a player character and as close as you can get as a DM put all that energy in to your villain and then then you might be cooking with gas I know that there are people out there who love their dmpcs and their table is okay with it and if that is the case we're not here to say you're not allowed but we are here to say be careful and possibly look at other solutions that might allow your player characters to experience the story you're presenting more fully and look for other ways that you can tell the stories you want to tell without needing a dmpc yeah and and again I just always feel like in every example I've seen where uh DM came forward and say this is my example of a time that a dmpc worked my reaction was that's not at the NPC that's an NPC right it's it's almost always when it works it's just an NPC it doesn't help in combat they just give advice to the players that's an NPC yeah you know and maybe it is possible that there is somebody out there that has cracked it and has figured out a way to make all this work and satisfy Everything at Once I'd love to hear from you but you might be the exception that proves the rule so with that if you have good or bad stories about dmpcs in your games let us know about them in the comments below the videos that we create on our channel are made possible with the incredible generosity of our patreon supporters if you enjoy the work that we do here on YouTube please consider joining our community by following the links in the description below and if you want to see a lot of the solutions that we've talked about with sentient magic items great NPCs and role-playing from a dungeon master and the player characters you can check out our world of drachenheim which airs Tuesday evenings on Twitch you can find all the previous episodes of that campaign right up over here and we've got plenty more great advice for Dungeon Masters right up over here please subscribe to our Channel like this video and ring that Bell so that you never miss an episode thanks so much for watching we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 134,818

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: CLRLpg7ZcUs

Length: 33min 30sec (2010 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 09 2023