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Drakevarg
2010-01-18, 01:15 PM
A while back, I was playing a campaign run by my cousin. In this campaign, which was admittedly quite rambling and incoherent, he introduced three characters which I would categorize under DMPC, Deus Ex Machina, and ???.

The DMPC was a fellow named Wilhelm ver Magnusson, whom we first met upon awaking in the aftermath of an ambush that our military party recieved. (Our background was that we were officers in the local military, or rather the party's ranger was. Being a Gnoll who didn't speak Common, the military basically considered me the ranger's "pet," since he was the only one who could understand me.) He was the only other survivor.

After a violent battle that result in our near-death before he came out of completely nowhere, sprinted across the entire battlefield in one round, and used a custom weapon to instantly take out the leader of the bandits we were fighting, he stole an opportunity for my character to torture the bandit leader for information, I tried to kill him via tossing him off a cliff. He escaped and we kinda just assumed he'd become a recurring villian because of that. Later he turned up, mauled half to death by some minotaurs we'd killed not long before, and told our ranger (who'd been scouting ahead and found him) that he was actually a member of this world's equivalent to the CIA and was ordered to hunt down some mysterious evil fellow. After chugging down a health potion, he wandered into some dungeon, killed the bad guy off-screen, and the fortress we were in started to collapse. So we did the whole outrun the fireball thing, and he wandered off to collect the bounty, which he later came back and split with us before riding off into the sunset again.

I call this guy a DMPC because he pretty much got to do the plot all by himself. He beat the bandit leader, he tortured the bandit leader for information, and he killed the villian (that we weren't even TOLD about), and basically did all the day-saving alone. Meanwhile, our party wandered around a vaguely haunted fortress all day, getting pissed off by what appeared to be a pocket dimension filled with an infinite supply of identical rooms.

Oh, and he didn't even bother to get statted out until after the whole bandit fight.

Next, the Deus Ex Machina; this one was alot simpler. Whilst taking a boat to the nearest city that didn't suck (the one we were at only had a single silver weapon in the entire city of 10,000, apparently.) we met a fellow named Dan the Man. At one point, we we had an encounter with pirates. Very well equipped pirates, since they had alchemist's fire-based spearguns and a boarding party that consisted of a tower shield phalanx. (Fortunately my character had absurdly high Strength and I just lopped the shields in half.)

Anywho, my plan was to board the pirate ship and light their supply of alchemist's fire, making their ship kersplode. I managed to get the boarding half done, but as I was trying to punch a hole to the floor below me to reach the alchemist fire stores, the pirates abandoned ship and lit the stuff themselves. With the ranger and I still on board.

Predictibly we died in the resulting explosion. However, by some amazing coincidence Dan the Man was an epic-level cleric and rezzed us. I say Deus Ex Machina because we had no hintings at all that Dan the Man was anything but background fluff.

And now the ???, and the actual question behind this whole rant. ??? was a fellow named Vlad. He was a 6th level mage, and I knew his stats because I was asked to write them up myself. (The DM in question was good at ad-libbing, but I knew more about the rules than he did.) The character wasn't invincible, my character could snap him like a twig if I ever got within melee range, but he did have access to the spell Summon Undead III, which became absurdly overpowered when you considered that the DM houseruled that summon spells last until the end of combat. Vlad could use it to summon a Young Adult Red Dragon Skeleton. With 20 HD. Yeah.

The reason I'm not just labeling him as a DMPC just yet is that after he'd done his thing and left, he showed up again in a later session. This time he didn't have stats, and basically just wandered around as an omnipotent nutjob. He never did anything that directly affected the plot, he just wandered in and out of the story, did wacky things, and left. The DM later told us that Vlad was basically his "Stess Ball," which he made come in and do insane things just so the DM wouldn't snap under the stress of pulling an entire narrative out of his ass.

So the question I offer to you, apart from an invitation to simply give your thoughts on all that, is "does an omnipotent nutball who wanders in and out of the story but never directly affects the plot" a DMPC, or just a distraction?

Gnorman
2010-01-18, 01:21 PM
"An omnipotent nutball who wanders in and out of the story but never directly affects the plot"

This is a pretty good description of Elminster, who is basically the head DMPC in DMPC land.

So, yes. Vlad is a DMPC.

Sliver
2010-01-18, 01:23 PM
A character that is there only because the DM wants to play something for his own needs and doesn't do anything else is.. Yeah, pretty much a DMPC..

Drakevarg
2010-01-18, 01:24 PM
Well of course Wilhelm is, I was asking about Vlad. Though based on the wording of your post you just checked the name at the top then scrolled down to the bottom to see what the question was.

Gnorman
2010-01-18, 01:50 PM
Well of course Wilhelm is, I was asking about Vlad. Though based on the wording of your post you just checked the name at the top then scrolled down to the bottom to see what the question was.

Read the whole accursed thing, thank you very much. Just mixed the names up.

Solaris
2010-01-18, 01:59 PM
A character that is there only because the DM wants to play something for his own needs and doesn't do anything else is.. Yeah, pretty much a DMPC..

More importantly, all three are examples of badly-done DMPCs.
The only solution is to kill it with fire. Then find a new DM, preferably in Mexico where they won't extradite you for having set your previous one on fire.

Kylarra
2010-01-18, 02:06 PM
While 1 and 3 are most certainly DMPCs, I'm not certain 2 is anything other than a one shot DeM from a DM who didn't want a TPK to end the campaign. Poorly implemented to be sure, but maybe not a DMPC.

Sliver
2010-01-18, 02:08 PM
More importantly, all three are examples of badly-done DMPCs.
The only solution is to kill it with fire. Then find a new DM, preferably in Mexico where they won't extradite you for having set your previous one on fire.

Really, if gravity couldn't take care of the first one, the second one is an epic reviver that is too lazy to do the job himself (would you, if your character was epic, revive some low level (which I assume you are, otherwise a 6th level DMPC wouldn't matter much) mook, like, ever?) and the third one travels in the speed of plot, do you think just mere fire is enough to destroy these DMPCs? Nah, in that case skip the kill it with fire part, just kill it with more fire.

Androgeus
2010-01-18, 02:15 PM
More importantly, all three are examples of badly-done DMPCs.
The only solution is to kill it with fire.
The DM must be what your refering to
Then set the character sheets on fire...

Drakevarg
2010-01-18, 02:18 PM
Read the whole accursed thing, thank you very much. Just mixed the names up.

My apologies.


Really, if gravity couldn't take care of the first one,

Actually, I never reached the cliff's edge. I got about 20 feet away from the edge before he broke the grapple and took advantage of his Run feat to skedadle. (This was before any of us realized that running requires constitution checks, which would have made a ton of differance when you consider that I had nearly as much CON as O-Chul and he... didn't.)


(which I assume you are, otherwise a 6th level DMPC wouldn't matter much)

We were 5th or 6th level, I can't remember anymore. And the 6th level wizard wouldn't be a bother if it weren't for the fact that he could summon a minion with more HP than the entire party combined, complete immunity to Fire AND Cold damage, a grapple modifier of about +27, and about 5 melee attacks that were pretty much guarenteed to hit can could one-shot any of use with a single one of them. And then house-ruled in so that it wouldn't disappear until the fight was over.

Mystic Muse
2010-01-18, 02:20 PM
Then set the character sheets on fire...

then burn the ashes and make sure the fire is on fire.

Solaris
2010-01-18, 02:25 PM
Really, if gravity couldn't take care of the first one, the second one is an epic reviver that is too lazy to do the job himself (would you, if your character was epic, revive some low level (which I assume you are, otherwise a 6th level DMPC wouldn't matter much) mook, like, ever?) and the third one travels in the speed of plot, do you think just mere fire is enough to destroy these DMPCs? Nah, in that case skip the kill it with fire part, just kill it with more fire.


The DM must be what your refering to
Then set the character sheets on fire...


then burn the ashes and make sure the fire is on fire.

One of these three got it.

Drakevarg
2010-01-18, 02:34 PM
I suppose I should have gotten the hint when the DM admitted that he dislikes putting up with non-human characters, runs a world so low-magic that a major trade town only has one or two low-powered magic items in the entire city, and the entire campaign consisted of randomly hopping between nonsensical locations that are never explained.

Our first locale was a fortress/hotel that had an infinite supply of indentical rooms with nothing interesting in them... the only way I got out was by punching a hole in the floor... and was populated by shades that avoided us like the plague... and had no apparent relationship between inside and outside, as I once tried to force myself out of the place by charging in a straight line until I went out the side of the building, I was doing said charge on the second floor... when I got through the wall I was on the 7th. Thank god for maxed out climb check and massive STR bonuses...

...and the next locale was some sort of steampunkish fortress with a prison filled with Shadow Mastiffs, a smelting plant, and some sort of automaton guards.

I had no idea what was going on at any point... especially since the DMPCs stoll all of the work... and then the DM somehow managed to find ways to screw up my fun... like blowing up that ship before I could.

EDIT: I think the main reason I put up with it is because he is good enough to make all this up on the fly, and because in the first ever campaign he ran was an awesome seafaring campaign were I wound up becoming a gladiatior and got to fight a giant spider that got loose in the arena... after killing a pair of velociraptors, no less.

Androgeus
2010-01-18, 02:40 PM
then burn the ashes and make sure the fire is on fire.

And then take all the little bits and jump on them until you get blisters... or you can think of something even more unpleasant

Grommen
2010-01-18, 02:45 PM
All 3 are really badly run NPC's.