ideas for surprisingly popular NPC

[kingcheesepants]

So long story short there's an incompetent (but not evil) necromancer that the party became a bit fond of (mostly they think his incompetence is hilarious). I wasn't planning on having him be a recurring character but since he was a surprise hit I think I want to try to have him show up from time to time and maybe give the party some quests (which may or may not involve fixing his magical mistakes). Any ideas on how you might utilize a semi-powerful but also careless wizard who creates more trouble than he can handle?

[Sigreid]

He can point them at evil wizards and priests that he "fell in with not knowing what they really were" and get the party to eliminate them. Big reveal would be that he's not incompetent at all but has been using the party to eliminate the competition while climbing to be a big bad in his own right.

[Unoriginal]

So long story short there's an incompetent (but not evil) necromancer that the party became a bit fond of (mostly they think his incompetence is hilarious). I wasn't planning on having him be a recurring character but since he was a surprise hit I think I want to try to have him show up from time to time and maybe give the party some quests (which may or may not involve fixing his magical mistakes). Any ideas on how you might utilize a semi-powerful but also careless wizard who creates more trouble than he can handle?

Sending the PCs to search magic items, ingredients for magic items or people who know the recipe for magic items can often be fun.

An idea for a quest I had was to have the PCs find a Demon Armor, and bring it to an armor-making master (who, in my idea, is a Tortle) to upgrade it into a Balor Armor.

[Magicspook]

He tried to create a flesh golem, but ended up animating all the scarecrows for miles around! If the party could take care of them, pretty please?

[Pex]

He can point them at evil wizards and priests that he "fell in with not knowing what they really were" and get the party to eliminate them. Big reveal would be that he's not incompetent at all but has been using the party to eliminate the competition while climbing to be a big bad in his own right.

No, do not do that at all. Do not punish players for engaging the game world. Do not punish players for caring about a minor NPC who was only meant to appear for that one time encounter. Do this and you will have murder hobo players forever who never, ever trust or like any NPC again.

Falling in with the wrong crowd is fine and the party needs to deal with his new "friends".

A true evil necromancer arrives in town framing him.

An experiment goes wrong.

All good, but do not betray the players' trust.

[Sigreid]

No, do not do that at all. Do not punish players for engaging the game world. Do not punish players for caring about a minor NPC who was only meant to appear for that one time encounter. Do this and you will have murder hobo players forever who never, ever trust or like any NPC again.

Falling in with the wrong crowd is fine and the party needs to deal with his new "friends".

A true evil necromancer arrives in town framing him.

An experiment goes wrong.

All good, but do not betray the players' trust.

Except that in this case he's mostly harmless because he's incompetent and they like him because they think he's pathetic and hilarious.

[Kane0]

Yeah i'd agree with Pex on this one, just let the incompetent and endearing necromancer be incompetent and endearing.

Perhaps he is actually a much better doctor than mage thanks to his non-undead related necromancy studies, or is actually rather talented at some other school of magic he hasnt really delved into.

Even if he himself is sort of incompetent he could still be a useful for helping with mage work like performing research, scribing scrolls/spellbooks and participating in rituals. With a chance of 'complication' if you want to make it interesting.

He could also be a font of knowledge derived from his own mishaps. Like "Yeah of course I know about that kind of curse, its the same kind that I tried on the neighbors cat remember? Couldnt turn left for a week!"

[Segev]

No, do not do that at all. Do not punish players for engaging the game world. Do not punish players for caring about a minor NPC who was only meant to appear for that one time encounter. Do this and you will have murder hobo players forever who never, ever trust or like any NPC again.

Falling in with the wrong crowd is fine and the party needs to deal with his new "friends".

A true evil necromancer arrives in town framing him.

An experiment goes wrong.

All good, but do not betray the players' trust.


Except that in this case he's mostly harmless because he's incompetent and they like him because they think he's pathetic and hilarious.

Sure, but I'm with Pex, here: don't make him turn out to be more evil than he seems to be at this point. That would ruin what the players love about him.

So, ideas...

The party runs into him showing off his new crawling claw familiar, and later, he calls them in because he realizes he accidentally animated the WHOLE murderer, and somewhere there's a morhg that's running around, and he wants them to find it and destroy it (or come to him to handle it once they find it) before it kills somebody.

His Improved Unseen Servant spell created either a very angry Invisible Stalker or a poltergeist, and now it's run him out of his tower. Could the party please help him get rid of it? ...it may also know how to arm his security spells. And have let loose some of his experiments.

A spate of zombie horde attacks - about the size of a company of soldiers - led by a horrifying death knight is shaking down local villages and towns, threatening to level them and add their corpses to their number if they don't pay protection money. Investigation leads back to the necromancer, who proudly tells them about how the local Duke commissioned him to make a security force so he didn't have to raise levies from the farmfolk. The Duke denies this, and wants the necromancer brought in or slain for his villainous minions' rampage. It turns out that it was a tricksome bard who feigned being the Duke to get the necromancer to make the undead - legitimately paid him off with ill-gotten gains from the villagers - and has been using disguise self to be the "death knight" in the lead of the horde that obey him because he got the command authority from the necromancer. (If the party thinks of it, they can bring the necromancer with them and his word alone would be enough to stop the zombies, since they're still bound to obey him.)

He's heard that haunted houses are popular attractions, so he's making one of his own. Would the party please run through it and rate how spooky it is for him? (He's already got the first draft made, so even if they want to convince him it's a bad idea, there's A HAUNTED HOUSE there that they may need to deal with.)

A thief burgled his tower, stealing several items the necromancer would like back. Amongst them is a jar containing a sample of the Mists of Ravenloft.

His toad familiar caught the undead bug he was storing an elemental spirit in while he was constructing a flesh golem meant to house it. His familiar has now turned into a froghemoth. Please catch him and bring him home safely!

A few villages are getting concerned as it turns out that all their children's missing teeth really are being replaced by silver coins overnight, and none of the adults are doing it. The adventure leads to the revelation that the necromancer accidentally overcharged a spell he was developing to use silver coins instead of black onyx to animate teeth into undead, and now the teeth themselves are stealing coins from his vault to empoewr the spell on any teeth they discover lying around. Also, they're running around underfoot and not particularly good servants or warriors, even if they're a hassle in swarms.

[BerzerkerUnit]

No, do not do that at all. Do not punish players for engaging the game world. Do not punish players for caring about a minor NPC who was only meant to appear for that one time encounter. Do this and you will have murder hobo players forever who never, ever trust or like any NPC again.

Falling in with the wrong crowd is fine and the party needs to deal with his new "friends".

A true evil necromancer arrives in town framing him.

An experiment goes wrong.

All good, but do not betray the players' trust.

Hard agree. I had Players carting off an NPC that was supposed to be a one off. He was 5 levels lower than they were and 100 years old (human) and they still wanted him on the road with them. They started inserting him into other campaigns I was running. I couldn't have an encounter with "a spellcaster" without him becoming Phandril on his quest for RRRREEEEEVVVEEENNNGGGEEE!

[Sigreid]

Meh, whatever makes you happy but it does sound to me like a Darth Jar Jar setup.

[yellowrocket]

Think about merlin from Disney sword and the stone. Bright but not quite there.

I like the simple quests from him. Fix my mistakes or get me this ingredient.

Also love that those can lead to other discoveries in the fly. A good use of random encounter and npc tables.

[Joe the Rat]

From a random bit of Facebook:

When he does manage to animate something, the undead has its own clearly defined personality and motivations independent of the necromancer's intentions.

He manages to animate a skeleton (he prefers skeletons because they don't leave a trail of fleshy bits) to act as a doorman or dogsbody, but upon animation, the skeleton, free of its meaty shackles, can now indulge in its deep urges to commit crime.


Having to track down his creations (which are off doing utterly ridiculous bits of trouble-making) could make for nice side-quests. If course, he doesn't want you to destroy them - just bring them back.

[Steven K]

Romance. Not all players will be into it, but I don't know your group, so... give the necromancer a crush. Have player characters decide to intervene as wing men/women/whatever. Make it hilarious, roll with literally anything they suggest (that isn't, you know, problematic in some way).

Use NPC to introduce other NPCs. He means well, and he just gets so excited about every new thing. So whenever an NPC catches his attention he proudly shows them off to the party. Make him an excellent hype man for why this guy/girl/whatever is so cool. Sneak plot relevant or quest giver or love interest or what have you NPCs into the mix as necessary.

Give gifts to the party. Just, like, actual stuff. A bottle of wine, some new arrows, a book, whatever.

Dude's a necromancer, have a shadowy cabal start trying to make inroads with him, and set the PCs up to be suspicious and worried about their friend.