DM plays a party of PCs & players play monsters with stat blocks

[TyGuy]

A bit of role reversal. An idea I have rolling around for a one shot. Anyone ever do something like this? Does this sound fun?

[Second Wind]

Character sheets are usually complex to give the players options, whereas monster stat blocks are usually simple to limit the DM's bookkeeping. Flipping that around might bore players and overload the DM.

[Gtdead]

I was thinking about that as a tactical challenge. I'd be interested to see how DMs would deal against an optimized party algorithm.

[Pex]

It was done in 2E as a modules called Reverse Dungeon.

[DwarfFighter]

Do it! For a one-shot, at the very least your players will have the opportunity to RP something different, and the DM may gain insight into how to run the monsters in new ways.

-DF

[Cicciograna]

It was done in 2E as a modules called Reverse Dungeon.

How was it?

[Nitrosaur]

I did it for a Halloween one shot. The party played classic monsters, a green hag (witch), werewolf, doppleganger and githyanki (slasher like Jason who looks like teleports), and they went around town on Halloween causing mayhem till a party of 4 level 5 characters, fighter, cleric, wizard and rogue, came to fight them. It was a fun one shot, full of monster shenanigans like going trick or treating, to a christian rock concert and the old carnival, but we learnt that day that a way over deadly encounter to PCs is not really deadly, the party I controlled demolished them. I've been wanting to do something like that again with full on adult dragons, but no luck so far. My advice, lean into the monster stuff, let them do what a mosnter would do besides fighting adventurers, and don't underestimate the PCs power compared to the monsters.

[Angelalex242]

There was once a 2E module called 'Council of Wyrms.' Exactly like it says on the tin, the PCs play Dragons. And adventure as dragons. Of course, for a dragon, downtime is frequently years...or even centuries.

There was a different 2E module called 'Requiem, the Grim Harvest.' Unsurprisingly, this lets PCs play undead. Not just classical vampires, but any kind of undead they want. Even if Ghosts and Vampires are most frequent...or mummies/liches if you want to cast spells.

[TyGuy]

Anyone on the forum have experience with the 2e or other published material that did reverse dungeon stuff?

[Myth27]

I think a game called "wicked ones" works exactly like this, you could look into that. Anyway for a one-shot it could totally be fun. The main concern is the lack of abilities most monsters have.

[elliemiller340]

Sounds interesting, but I neer ever play this, but on this Halloween, I am thinking to plan for playing this game, can you share few videos of this game..?

[LordShade]

Not Reverse Dungeon, but I played some Council of Wyrms. It's a difficult mode to make work, because the different dragon classes have such variance in XP requirements--different members of the party would be hibernating at different times.

I did use the CoW rules for draconic followers of normal PCs.

[Tanarii]

Monsters are designed to be simple to run and go down in one encounter.

PCs are designed to have lots of bells and whistles and have the endurance to stick through many encounters.

The player-monsters will die after the first encounter with DM-PC enemies. They won't even get to their second encounter. The DM will have much more mental load trying to run the combat than normal in that one combat, and the players will have very little. Doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me.

[Zhorn]

From knowing how much of a pain in the backside it is to have the party verse NPCs with class levels, now having the party put on NPC statblocks also... that's a game I'd want to avoid.
Sure, for a gimmick battle or oneshot, try anything for the experience, but I don't see it as something you'll want to return to.

[ATHATH]

Something that could work for a one-shot would be giving players control over groups of monsters (or as individual leaders of those monsters who assume direct control over them in battle), pitting them against each other in some way (ideally in a big free for all battle that all pf the factions can participate in), and then having DM-controlled PCs barge in partway through the conflict as rogue agents/a mutual threat. Maybe something could be done with the elemental cults in Princes of the Apocalypse?

[clash]

The big issue to watch out for is that monsters have loads more hp than pcs and comparatively weaker defenses. This is done so that players can feel like they are contributing more often than missing as they whittle away the monsters defenses. If players are playing the monsters they may find it frustrating as they miss more often even if when they hit, they take out a good chunk of health.

[Catullus64]

Did this once in college, and it was a hoot. The setup went something like this:

An evil sorcerer knows that the heroes have discovered the location of his tower. He doesn't have the resources to defend it properly, so he hires a handful of goblins, raises a few skeletons, and binds a few odd local monsters (the players) and charges them to defend the tower, intending to make his escape while they get slaughtered.

The players were each allowed to choose one monster of CR 3 or lower. If I recall correctly, the party consisted of a Yeti, a Blue Dragon Wyrmling, a Phase Spider, and an Intellect Devourer. The only change I allowed was that all of them added Common as a language if they didn't have it already.

The party of heroes that they were up against (Rogue, Wizard, Paladin, Barbarian) were all built to be Level 7, such that in a direct party-on-monster confrontation the monsters would be slaughtered, so they had to build a strategy around misdirection, ambushes, and splitting up the enemy. I played the heroes as overconfident and reliant on cliche tricks, such as trying to show up at the wizard's tower disguised as travelling merchants, or trying to distract monsters by throwing rocks.

Evil did manage to triumph at the end, though the Yeti, the Phase Spider, and all the Skeletons died. With their magical compulsion to defend the tower fulfilled, the survivors (most of the Goblins, the Wyrmling, & the Intellect Devourer, now possessed of the shiny new body of a Level 7 Barbarian) went off to find the evil wizard and give him a piece of their mind.

[Reynaert]

Monsters are designed to be simple to run and go down in one encounter.

PCs are designed to have lots of bells and whistles and have the endurance to stick through many encounters.

The player-monsters will die after the first encounter with DM-PC enemies. They won't even get to their second encounter. The DM will have much more mental load trying to run the combat than normal in that one combat, and the players will have very little. Doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me.

I've also participated in something like this (not D&D though) and the solution was to simply have the NPCs respawn after every encounter.
(Also, towards the end it derailed totally, with both sides hamming up their roles in completely over the top "this is how a bad pc/npc plays" tropes, but that's neither here nor there).

[TyGuy]

Monsters are designed to be simple to run and go down in one encounter.

PCs are designed to have lots of bells and whistles and have the endurance to stick through many encounters.

The player-monsters will die after the first encounter with DM-PC enemies. They won't even get to their second encounter. The DM will have much more mental load trying to run the combat than normal in that one combat, and the players will have very little. Doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me.
You seem to be thinking constrained parameters of "fair". There's no reason to do this with "easy" encounters.


I've also participated in something like this (not D&D though) and the solution was to simply have the NPCs respawn after every encounter.
(Also, towards the end it derailed totally, with both sides hamming up their roles in completely over the top "this is how a bad pc/npc plays" tropes, but that's neither here nor there).
My current idea is to do the same hero group against 3 stages/ waves. First wave the players run NPCs balanced for a hard encounter. Second wave they have the forces of a just into deadly. And the third is a well into deadly fight. The heroes get a short rest between 2 & 3.
The first wave is an expected victory for the heroes, but will soften them up. Second is meant to be favored for the heroes but feasible to win for the monsters. And the third wave is heavily favored for the players but in the realm of the heroes pulling off a victory with a combination of luck and strategy.

[Tanarii]

You seem to be thinking constrained parameters of "fair". There's no reason to do this with "easy" encounters.
I was thinking one group of monsters against multiple groups of PCs.

If the players are controlling say 2 adventuring days worth of monsters broken into multiple encounters vs a DM's single group of PCs, they will probably win in the end.

I still think it'll be boring for the players and overload for the DM though. Monsters are designed to be controlled all by one person, and PCs by one each. Flipping that will be difficult. You'll have to pick a variety of complex monsters for each encounter, and somewhat straightforward PCs.