Last week was significant for the Friday Night Roleplayers because, having completed the initial adventure in Anminster, they were considering whether to continue with the current characters or start somewhere fresh.
One of the major barriers to play for our group has been the irregular attendance of at least half of the group due to very understandable personal pressures.
In practice, each session has two or three players present at best. The side-effect of the smaller group has been that they find it much harder to overcome the difficulties presented in the adventures.
The catalyst for discussion was a useful post by Rick Stump, of Don’t Split The Party fame, entitled “Your Party Had Better Have More Than Four People In It – Hints for Players and GMs“. The basic recommendation is that a party should have six characters as an optimum. This post is all about how the Friday Night Roleplayers responded to that advice.
One Player, One Character
The default assumption at my gaming table has long been the idea that each player should roleplay one character in a single session. I imagine it’s the default assumption at most tables. This is fine. But it’s been the root of many problems for a while now.
If you only have two players at the table for a session and each plays only one character, it’s harder. In fact, the TPK at one point became common for us – especially when we played a new system where, as Games Master, I didn’t know how things work out in a fight. I often found myself fudging rolls, reducing monster numbers, or tweaking adventures on the fly… all of which is undesirable. It never occurred to the players to hire henchmen, by the way, because that’s not really a “thing” anymore in a post-3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons economy.
Of course, we’ve been taking the journey back to playing Classic Fantasy, emulating the older feel and style of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1e/2e). This week we made a significant step on that journey when the players agreed to consider playing with more than one character each.
The Goal of Six
We decided to heed Rick’s advice and aim for a party size of at least six characters. The two players who almost always attend agreed to create two player characters each – one as their main character and the other as a very close ally with full stats, just less focus on roleplaying goals. With the other two players who are currently occasionally attending, we can construct a party of six characters if everyone shows.
That said, not everyone shows. To mitigate this, I have agreed to create a pair of henchmen that the party will hire. These will be standard non-player characters who can act as torchbearers and extra pairs of hands. They will take the full party to eight, with flexibility for making up the numbers to six if one or both of the other two players are absent.
The goal is six characters in the party. This will make the survivability of the party much greater and allow me to stop fudging monster numbers or changing the adventures on the fly.
Party Fit For Purpose
The players have also focused on doing two things:
- Deciding what their current adventuring goals are going to be.
- Making sure the party is fit for that purpose.
In other words, things got easier once the chaps decided that they want to go dungeon-delving, returning to Griffinwatch and then (hopefully) finding the road to the Fire Citadel of the Dragon Kings.
Glar the Rank 2 Fighter was fit for purpose and motivated to go on these adventures already. Glar’s player, Ian, opted to create an Elven Magic-User to provide (for the first time in our group) the magical offensive ability they’ve been missing.
Jungai the Rank 1 Ranger, however, was felt to be poorly suited to the dungeon environment… despite discussion around his usefulness on the wilderness journey. Jungai’s player, Pete, decided to create a Fighter of his own and agreed to play the role of the Cleric as a second character. Thus, the two Dwarven twins were born.
As the other two players both run a Thief and a Fighter/Thief respectively, the chaps felt they had the “Scouting & Intelligence” elements covered whenever either chap turned up to play.
The two henchmen will simply provide extra pairs of hands and bulk up the numbers in a fight. If the other two players want to also add an extra character to their portfolio, that’s fine – although I’d recommend any of Bard, Paladin, or a second Magic-User as priorities.
This completed, I now feel that I can write the adventures we all want to play. I don’t have to skimp on the monsters and other challenges, or the treasure, and we can expect some epic moments around the table.
Game on!
Sounds like a great, and balanced party.
I have been pretty lucky in my gaming career to have always had at least 6 players in my games, and in the off chance that someone doesn’t show up, another player will run their character. The current party, all new Rank 1 characters, consists of a human monk, elf ranger, half-elf magic-user, human cleric, human bard, and dwarf fighter. So all the bases are covered, with the dwarf fighter picking up Mechanisms to cover the only real deficiency left by the lack of a thief. On a side note, the bard is Miranda Drake, Valamir’s little sister, now all grown up and an adventurer like her big brother. It’s nice to have at least one link between parties to maintain that feel of progression, even when starting a new campaign. Right now their killing kobolds in an attempt to rescue a kidnapped little boy and girl in a moldy old tomb. But you already knew that. 😉
I would also like to point out that the hiring of henchmen will be covered in the Classic Fantasy Unearthed Companion. You didn’t think I would call my mages “magic-users”, let my cleric also turn demons and devils, have a 10′ pole in the equipment list, and no rules for henchmen do you? 😉