DM for a small group

[Orsayan]

My group is rather small. We used to be 5 players but due to various events that we cant solve, we are now down to 3. We just recently started playing after a long break.

This means that some classes are not so attractive anymore, since the players kind of have to have a high surviveability. Wizards and Sorcerers are the most obvious example that comes to mind, especially on lower level. Another example is ranged classes like archers or what not.

As a DM I also feel sometimes restricted as I cant introduce just any type of encounter since it could be devastating to the small group. It is also catastrophic if one player dies, then the other player also usually dies and the session ends or they roll new characters.

Any tips on how to resolve this? I dont think searching for new players is possible. Mainly cos we live in a small town in Sweden and ad&d is rather rare here (there is a swedish fantasy rpg equivalent that people tend to play).

[Saladman]

Go old school and let them take on hirelings or henchmen. After seeing it work for allied NPCs in Savage Worlds I'd even suggest letting them run the hirelings themselves - within reason. If they start going suicidal or telepathic with them you may have to step in and ghost them. That goes over best if you just warn them upfront it can happen if they're asking too much, or sometimes just when you know something they don't.

Pay and morale become issues of course, meaning the PCs have to make some choices as to a balance between help and riches.

I'm guessing from the sound of it you're playing 3.x or 4E? 3E hirelings would probably be NPC class warriors or specialists. Henchmen is obviously the Leadership feat, but even there I think there's room to break the rules a little for a specific campaign, and drop the level requirement, or even drop the feat requirement if you want it available to everyone.

[sharona]

What about letting them run secondary characters as proteges or sidekicks of a sort? Something a bit more equal in status than a henchman or hireling, although you'd still need to stress that these are separate characters with their own lives and motivations and such.

It's a concept I've played in other small-player games, and later when I started playing HackMaster I found that they were a formal part of the game. Of course, in that game, part of the real reason for proteges was so you had an already-started character to jump in and take over when your main character died. In HM you could assign some of your character's XP to the protege and level them up, in fact it was expected as part of the mentoring.

Speaking of XP, rewards and penalties in XP for good/bad RPing of the main PC/secondary PC relationship can be a pretty good motivator.

Another thought would be NPCs who have some reason to come along, perhaps as part of the plot hook, an albatross or mentor or some other type. The caster who is simply looking to travel the world and learn new stuff - or "eventually go see the other continent, as long as we're headed more or less towards the coast I'm cool", who's willing to do some casting and take some risks in exchange for the PC muscle/protection/companionship on the road.

Personally I'd prefer to run two full-fledged characters, given the choice. I give them different classes and very different personalities and skillsets to keep them separate in my head and in their actions. The one time I had two LG clerics in the same campaign, they were still very different, one belonged to the empire-church-in-power and the other to a much smaller justice-oriented deity. And if not for adventuring together they'd never have interacted much. It was funny getting into my justice-cleric's head and realizing he'd consider my other character to be way too flighty and unstable to be in a position of such responsibility, but hey that's what nepotism gets you when your family helps the church run things.

[Bagelson]

You may want to look at a less combat-centric style of play or system. In my current group we're three players + the GM and in our current game I'm the only dedicated warrior. Fights are usually varied since the system allows us to have an all-round competence, and we can make up with ingenuity where our skills don't match. But the challenges are constructed thereafter; even in 10-hour long sessions we rarely see more than a single fight.

[Orsayan]

Yes we play 3.5e and the thought of hirelings or henchmen has struck us. So you guys think its best for them to controll them as long as its not too obviuos that its the same character?



Speaking of XP, rewards and penalties in XP for good/bad RPing of the main PC/secondary PC relationship can be a pretty good motivator.


Thats a good advice. I can say like, the EL is 10 but if the players play obviously bad with their characters in the fight, I drop it to EL 9 or so. The other issue though is non-fights, I should let them controll both characters but it would be hard to discern whats telepahty and whats not.

About not having that much fights in the games, we dont really. We also have like 1 or 2 fights per a 8 hour session but the thing is when it actually boils down to raw steel, you would rather be a fighter then a wizard OR I (as DM) would have to modify encounters all the time to suit combat for wizards.

Now the players are a fighter and a monk. Speaking with them during the day today, they want to make a rogue and a cleric. I feel that this cleric will be there to pocketheal, like a walking healing-spell. So I dont know exactly how to balance this.

[crichelle]

I recently DM'd for a group of two using 3.5 rules. One player was a Warmage and the other was a Druid (both started at level 8). You are welcome to take or leave my experiences and opinions based on you and players playstyle.

1) Composition
The very first thing we did was make the player characters. They were free to chosen the race, class, etc and then I began filling in the parts of my world. Since they had a healer (druid) and a blaster (warmage), encounters with magic enemies could approach the appropriate ECL moreso then dedicated brawlers, which, if they grappled one of the two characters would likely kill them. The Druid's animal companion helped give a bit of tanky options in a pinch. If they had been lacking a healer, simply giving the party a couple wands of cure light wounds would ensure that as long as they didn't wipe mid-combat they would be fine. Also, starting them at a level other then one gave us some flexibility.

2) Opposition
As I said before, monsters were chosen with great care. Physical attack monsters were a much greater threat then their ECL might suggest due to the squishiness of the party. A handful of wolves lead by a dire wolf almost wiped them the first session due to surrounding them and interrupting the spell casting. Comparatively, enemy mages cooked almost instantly to the combined firepower of the party, meaning for them I generally ran them under the party's level by one or two at the most.

3) Drama
This is completely personal preference, but I fudged my monsters rolls right and left. By never letting the players see me roll, I would ensure that combats were taunt affairs but never actually wiped the party. Generally for this group it meant hitting instead of critting, or failing a concentration, etc. Small groups already feel like they are on a razors edge during combat and I always found they enjoyed it more when their characters did not wipe each session.

[DropsonExistanc]

The 2 groups I'm in right now, 3.5 and Pathfinder, are both 3-player. It does work a lot better for combat-defocused play; when I was DMing the 3.5, I got a start at the end of a session realizing that I hadn't run any combats that evening! The players were too invested in the detective work and storylines to care. It mostly happened because I hadn't prepped for that one outside of zoning into my setting.

As for balancing combat-effectiveness, have you loomed at the gestalt rules from Unearthed Arcana? Those could potentially help solve the ability holes in the group.

[Bastian Weaver]

Why not let them have two characters each? It's usually fun.

[Kurgan]

I've run games for small groups before. In fact, I often prefer having only about 3 players.

Anyways, it has already been stated, but I'll say it again: give the players henchmen. In games past, I gave them npc allies that I would roleplay and they would control in combat [lets face it, controlling all sides in the fight is not that fun] based on the personality.

For example, the level 1 cowardly teenaged wizard that the players decided to up and pick up at one point, yeah, the person controlling him did not have him lead any charges.

In order to gives the players the limelight, the npcs, while normally starting around the same power level as the players, would get say half xp. Seemed to work well with us.

[TheOOB]

Really any class combo can work for a small group, you just need to tailor the campaign to fit. A Paladin and a cleric will get a much different campaign than an Illusionist and a Rogue. The trick is to find some specialty and focus on that.

In all truth though, D&D is not the best game system for small groups. D&D is a very combat focused system, and it is very difficult to build good combat encounters for a group that is small and not well rounded(though there is little a wizard and a druid combo couldn't do). Naturally that means it would be better to focus on non-combat encounters, which honestly D&D is not the best at.

Personally, I'd use this as an opportunity to try another game system. There are several systems that work great with fewer players. AEG's Legend of the Five Rings works great with only a couple players, as does their older 7th Sea(My favorite system, if you can find it, though it desperately needs a second edition). Anything from White Wolf's World of Darkness can work well if you like a more gothic modern setting(as can Exalted, which is an awesome system if you can get past the overly complex and clunky rules).

I've run Shadowrun with as few as three people and been fine(you could run it with two, but the system favors specialization in characters so it doesn't always work). Paranoia works with a group of any size if you can convince them to start shooting eachother.

[Knaight]

3 players isn't really that small, and basically no changes need to be made. Don't worry about it. 2 players might warrant some slight changes, but it also opens up a lot of options that often aren't explored meaningfully regarding group templates, so it works out.