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View Full Version : For the DM's: Who was/is your favorite DMPC?



Zeta Kai
2008-08-01, 10:22 PM
... and why?

My favorite DMPC has got to be Gol-Run, the dwarven apothecarian-turned-wizard/adventure. Nobody in my group of players wanted to be a wizard (no munchkins here), so I decided to run a DMPC to balance the pirate party (snarky rogue, thuggish fighter, & ingenue cleric). But I refused to let Gol-Run over-shadow the group, so he was an evoker (no Batman here). He also was a lazy, greedy coward who was more interested in supporting his growing apothecary business than delving into dungeons or sailing across the world to foil insidious cults. But, he did genuinely care about the gang, & they grew to be fond of him too (both in & out of the game). Of course, it helped that his business made him rather rich, so he could always finance whatever crazy schemes the players cooked up.

So, there's mine. Who's yours?

RTGoodman
2008-08-01, 10:58 PM
I had the same sort of thing happen when I DMed Red Hand of Doom the first time. No one wanted to play a Wizard (and the party was a Heal-Bot Cleric, a Soulknife, and a Rogue, so they REALLY needed one), so I basically pulled out one of my own PCs that I never got to play for more than one session - Eldagor the Big Game Hunter Evoker (complete with pith helmet :smallbiggrin:). He basically just shot magic missiles and the occasional fireball, plus cast the occasional party buff, but it was great fun to have him call out "Tally-hoe, chaps!" as he rode around the battlefield firing his wand of magic missile.

Basically, we can't play a session of D&D anymore without someone mentioning how funny and/or cool he was.

arguskos
2008-08-02, 12:09 AM
Mine is the half-elven Master Alchemist Pemby Litharil. He was a powerful spellcaster that served as the party's sponsor to a local kingdom. The key thing he did though was give them a way to contact him, just in case they needed potions out in the dungeon and they couldn't come back to town for some reason.

So, several sessions later, the party is deep underwater (don't ask why), and decides they need more potions of water breathing. So, they call up Pemby, who teleports to them. Underwater. He doesn't have water breathing active. He ends up freaking out, teleporting back to his shop, downing a potion of water breathing there, grabbing a scroll of teleport, and coming back just to see what they frikkin' wanted. When they mention what it was they wanted from him, he almost loses it on them.

This was not the only situation they pulled him into that was dangerous. Once, they called him into a combat situation, between them and three nycaloths. Needless to say, he wasn't too pleased with that one.

Overall, Pemby was a sweet-hearted guy who really wanted to help out, but ended up getting sorta victimized by my sadistic PC's. I always felt bad for him after that campaign. However, he was one of my favorites due to his "assume the best" attitude and his (and my) love of potions and potion-equivalents.

-argus

SuperPanda
2008-08-02, 12:54 AM
I've only run 1 game where there was DMPCs (and I use plural here for a reason)... the party wound up with 4 of them but that was mainly because the only players I had were my little brother (dumb as a brick fighter) and my little sister (cleptomanic/Paranoid delusional Sorceress).

So, I have 2 answers to this question... my favorite DMPC and my dice's favorite DMPC.

First the actual DMPC, my dice's favorite.

The character was nothing more than a spoiled elven brat who was about as high born as it was possible to get. He was the up and comming star in Elven Archery (Ranger > Deepwood Sniper) who refused to ever use a sword or other melee weapon. The party came to love him for two reasons... the first was that he was constantly competing with the low born human fighter for kills (in character) making it fun for my sister whenever he won and fun for my brother whenever he lost. And second was I could not roll under a 15 on a d20 with his ranged attack or over a 3 with his melee attacks. This paired with my brother's inability to roll under a 12 on melee or over a 5 on ranged added a fun dynamic to the game.

--

My favorite DMPC was actually the secondary BBEG of the game, and he wasn't my favorite because he was scary powerful or anything.

He was a toned down cleric given proficency in a Scythe and a heavy focus on Necromancy. Ezekiel met up with the party in a friendly manner to begin with (he didn't know they were on the way to kill his boss) and got to talking to them about his life. He made sure to introduce them to his father (a shruken head he carried) and mentioned his devotion to Nerull in passsing. He was so confident and unaware of the fact that these things might be considered evil that the players got incredibly creeped out by him. (they didn't even stop to think about him just having a low Int or Wis score since he was a caster...) Because they were so creeped out, they didn't want to risk him turning on them before they got alone with his boss. Instead they thought that they could use him to their advantage. He, being oblivious of their schemes, offered to stable their horses promising that his brothers would look after them.

Well his brothers turned out to be three Zombies. He admited to the players that he zombified one of his older brothers after he was killed by a crocidile but had to do so to the other two without their consent because they didn't want to travel with him and he didn't want to be lonely when he went traveling.

And after that point, the mere mention of this character sent shivers of fear or discomfort down enough players backs that I made sure they never had to fight him (beyond the initial encounter where they killed him once). Rather they merely heard that Ezekiel had risen as an undead and was the right hand of the BBEG leading several characters to consider early retirement as they were more afraid of the minion than the BBEG...

It made me happy as a DM and a story teller.

mabriss lethe
2008-08-02, 01:07 AM
Irving, the morbidly obese Goblin monk who only found enlightenment on a full stomach. Two parts Orson Wells, three parts Jackie Chan, and a dash of baron Harkonen. He would just sort of show up in the most inappropriate places, Prison cells adjacent to the party, Just around a blind curve deep in a dungeon, just coming out of a brothel as the PCs happen to walk in front of it. You get the idea.

He doled out many bits of sage wisdom and cryptic advice in exchange for a freshly cooked meal and good booze. As soon as the PCs turned their backs, he'd disappear as if he was never there.

Oh, and your story reminds me of another fun one.

Middlin' Jeb, the Bumpkin Champion of the Death Goddess. Middlin' Jeb (Ol' Jeb is his dad and Lil' Jeb is his son) was a commoner who'd been conscripted to fight in a nasty border clash. He left a happy go lucky farm hand, but the things he saw changed him. He came back more than a little insane, whispering about how someone called "the Quiet Lady" had saved him and showed him visions, gave him "the touch." He bacame something of a faith healer, started a cult dedicated to the Quiet Lady, using his powers to heal or to "bring back" those on the brink of death. (his two 1st level feats were Death devotion and Healing Devotion. ) He would use the healing on those he could help, and the death on those he couldn't. The dead ones rose up as wights shortly thereafter, and even they believed they'd been "blessed by the quiet lady" to continue to serve her. so yeah. redneck zombie evangelists!

ghost_warlock
2008-08-02, 01:44 AM
I don't usually run a DMPC, most of my recent games have had enough players that there wasn't any need for one. Back when I was just getting started gaming it was usually just myself and a friend or two so one of us would run a DMPC to round out the party or just for the feeling of being a player rather than a referee.

However, a few years back I accidentally created a DMPC for an otherwise well-rounded party. I say 'accidentally' because I never meant for the NPC to join the party or become as embroiled in the plot to the extent he eventually was. It was just that the dice loved the NPC and the PCs enjoyed the novelty:

The scenario was that the party was traveling through the underground 'vacation cottage' of a BBEG-in-training necromancer and the party came across a slave who had been locked up for the express purpose of keeping the place clean (the BBEGIT couldn't afford the luxury of a gelatinous cube). The party freed the young man, William, and decided to escort him out of the dungeon (the entrance was a long way from civilization and they were feeling benevolent).

A short while later, the party got into a fight with some zombies and William decided to help out as best he could/work for his freedom. The thing was, he was only armed with a broom (I ruled it would work like an improvised quarterstaff: -4 to hit, 1d6 dmg). Rolling the dice in view of the party, the first attack roll came up a nat-20. William the janitor was suddenly more interesting to the party. With player prompting ("just to see what it comes up"), I re-rolled to confirm a crit even though zombies are immune. Nat-20. "Again!" Nat-20. William had auto-killed a zombie with a broom (we had decided to use those variant rules). The players were howling with excitement and I decided to retcon that undead creatures were, though immune to crits, vulnerable to auto-kills.

Later in the dungeon, William pulled the exact same auto-kill-with-a-broom trick with a ghoul. "The dice don't lie," said one player, "janitors are badass!"

William never became more than a novelty feature of the campaign, although he remained a near-constant presence (mosty just a cohort-of-sorts; three levels below the other characters and under DM control). He ended up taking levels of diviner though he only had an Int of 13 (very useful to the party for some minor buffs and utilities they otherwise would have used scrolls for). He also always carried a broom as a weapon; though he did spend a feat to remove the -4 'improvised weapon' penalty and also took Weapon Focus (broom). :smalltongue:

The dice never favored William as much as they did during that first dungeon, but he became known as a King of Crit - when he did manage to hit an opponent, it was usually because of a nat-20 and he almost always seemed capable of confirming a crit. (I spent another feat on improving his chance to confirm a crit, can't remember what the feat name was - actually pretty much all of his feats went towards improving his broom proficiency). :smallbiggrin:

bosssmiley
2008-08-02, 05:12 AM
I don't use DMPCs in anything other than Justin Bacon's 'walking wand of CLW' capacity. If there aren't enough players around to fill out the party that day we'll either just have one of the players use their cohort character as a stand-in, or play something else.

Lord Iames Osari
2008-08-02, 10:16 AM
My favorite DMPC has to have been Kenji, the 20th-level monk... in a party where everyone else was 4th level (I've gotten better since).

In fairness to me, though, Kenji never really overshadowed the others (hard to believe, I'm sure) - or at least, my players never complained to me about it.

What made Kenji my favorite? Hard to say, really. Probably the fact that while , in hindsight, he easily could have been a horrible game-wrecker, it all somehow worked out okay.

Armoury99
2008-08-02, 10:39 AM
Three little words: Jhary-a-Conal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Champion)

Obviously we were playing a game of Elric! This guy is the perfect NPC/DMPC. The perfect accompaniment to heroes, tool of fate, and spokesperson for the plot. Always valuable but never outshining the Eternal Champion(s) because that's his cosmically appointed job.

He's the perfect helpful NPC... complete with Slider's-esque random trips between dimensions where he's needed.

If only I'd invented him :smallsigh:

DMfromTheAbyss
2008-08-02, 11:28 AM
I ended up running an NPC to "go along with the party" for over 3 years and he had been intended as an encounter...

It started out with a dungeon I made up... it had a powerful lich, bunch of monsters and the lich even had his own escape Spelljammer ready to go (can you say prepped recurring villain). Guarding the Spelljammer was a skeleton warrior vaugely based on Spinal from Killer Instinct (he was very good at shield bashing and was sort of Kung Fu). The whole dungeon had an "elven theme" as the lich had been an elf researcher/wizard. I had a bit of background on all the undead as many were actually "research subjects" of the lich. (which was a good rationalization for making them tougher basically).

Enter the PC's, a psychotic Druid/ranger with a hate of undead, a half/drow fighter thief, an asian badass monk (this was not 3rd ed obviously). They manage to sneak through a good portion of the dungeon, get right up to the Lich, Accidently break the hidden phylactery the first round of combat. Kill the Lich before he can even think about escaping. (so much for the villain... but hey they won by being competant so I can't complain). At this point the ranger/druid goes around trying to find all the undead they missed... gets beaten up semi bad... saved and basically told to wait outside with the horses while they finish looting the place. (this worked out as the Player had to leave early go to an apointment anyway)

They find the spelljammer, confront the guardian, and of all things parley with it... It's not under the lich's control now... but it's like a million years old and doesn't speak anything but ancient languages... except yes it does speak Eastern, (damn the monk speaks Eastern) which apparently hasn't changed much in the last x thousand years anyway so the conversation happens... he tells a sad story... they get DM cudos and the thing basically does the "go ahead and put me out of my undying misery" bit (yeah they roleplayed it to death) only now they feel bad for him... so they pack him up smuggle him past the druid (next session) and take him back to the Wizard who sent them on the mission. They all get rewards (equivilent of a wish a piece, cool piece of loot etc). The ENTIRE party insists on using their rewards to bring the skeleton back to life. The wizard has some trouble due to the extreme age... but multiple wishes worth of oomph manage it. They then basically drag him around (hey he's good in a fight and he owes us!) and start splitting treasure with him (full share) talking with him, making friends, roleplaying...
...
After a while (years of playing) he ended up opening up an epic side plot, marrying a PC and having a dozen kids with some sort of epic destiny to save the multiverse...

Yeah that was not my idea, but it sure was fun... all time favorite NPC

Talanic
2008-08-03, 01:20 AM
Lord Declan Charton is the only one I've run.

The party had reached a city that had been split in half by the epic world-shattering events that they'd accidentally been caught in, and they're trying to piece the planet back together; each piece has time running at a different speed/direction and the part of the city that they encounter was actually frozen, so it's a place they know a little about.

The noble and royal districts (including the palace) were on the other side of the rift and the mage guild was entirely destroyed (cuts went along ley lines and any ley nexus was devastated). They find out that there are three people in power here, who might have the artifact that they need to piece this part of the world back together, and are urged to seek out the Paladin first.

The all-chaotic party hesitantly does, and breathed an immense sigh of relief minutes after meeting him, when they realized that I was using Fax Celestis's Paladin variant, and Declan is chaotic good.

He accompanied them to the next fight and they discovered that he has an armor-boosting aura and almost no damage output, especially against their major recurring foe, which can randomly banish a victim from time for a few rounds. In fact, the bard got banished near the end of the fight--and the paladin was in her square when the fight was over and she reappeared.

"Do I land in a compromising position on him?"
"Reflex save."
*rolls high*
"You made it. It means you can decide--is a compromising position good or bad?"
"Good. Definitely good."

On returning to his headquarters to rest, he offered her the use of the master bathroom, connected to his quarters (or to the hallway). Everyone else, he then added, could use the public baths over thataway.

She opted not to exit to the hallway, and his motivation for joining the party was there. The players voted him in and he's stayed so far.

Chymist
2008-08-03, 01:48 AM
My favorite DMPC/NPC would have to be the twins. As a bit of backstory, I had a large party (8 PCs, one with leadership and a cohort), at about level 9-10, and they had to defend a keep against an army of devils and undead (and an evil party of NPCs). The odds were horribly stacked against the group, and I had given a few rumors of reinforcements, but nobody had shown up. Then, halfway through the catapult bombardment, the reinforcements teleported in.

The two DMPCs were level 12-13, one a cleric, one a paladin, who were twin aasimar. (Of course, they arrived in full plate, with full plate barding on their horses, in order to fill everyone with hope and excitement, when I realized that even though I had filled their character sheets out to the last minor detail, I had forgotten one thing. Their names.

As a group, we used a battle mat that could be drawn on with wet erase markers, but we had no minitures. Sometimes we used lego men and women for our characters, but usually we just used our individual d12s. With each player having a unique dice set, it worked fairly well. Of course, the two aasimar reinforcements were on horseback, so I needed something that would cover the squares on the mat appropriately, so I grabbed two decks of cards.

When the players asked the names of the two new arrivals, I had only one possible answer for them. Vegas... and Hoyle. Vegas (she was the cleric), saved the lives of several of the characters and personally killed at least a couple of Erinyes, while the paladin (Hoyle), was even more popular. His wisecraking, laid-back mannor was so unlike any other paladin our group has ever seen that he even was loved by the entire group.

They left after the battle, but in the next campaign, the group ran into them again while looking for a powerful cleric to remove a curse (the orange ioun stone found in the treasure was cursed pretty badly... the halfling cleric of the group turned into a gnoll)

While I have made many DMPCs and hundreds and hundreds of NPCs, these two stand out in our gaming group as the only ones that anyone can still name.

FMArthur
2008-08-03, 02:23 AM
It's kind of funny, I keep hearing stories here about terrible DMPCs full of railroading, party take-overs, and glory-hogging, so I've totally avoided that until last week when my players went out of their way to recruit one. Not as in, "we need a cleric, let's hire one for now", but "this guy's really cool! let's bring him into the fold".

Recently, my players have taken a liking to The Chameleon Squad, an elite group of Chameleons (five Changeling Factotum/Chameleons) hired to do tough jobs for the mean Duke Gengris. Anyway, these guys were tough encounters whenever they appeared, not only because they're using a really good and versatile class, but also because, being Changelings, the ambush usually had the element of surprise going for it. I had to bend a few things in favor of the players (like letting PCs make characters with max health but NPCs just averages) because they really were resilient, resourceful and generally challenging characters who, if used optimally, would've wiped the floor with my players.

So I gave them little quirks like infighting, lack of coordinated teamwork, and competitiveness, things that the leader (named Nathaniel) tried to put a stop to but couldn't. There were three encounters with these guys, the first one where the Squad nearly killed the entire party (one had to fake his own death to survive!) and the players had to run, the second where they had to cave in a tunnel to escape from them, and then when the players purposefully led an enraged adult red dragon (CR 15 with avg party lvl 13... they wanted to hunt one, I didn't make 'em!) into a dead end in a large room containing the unsuspecting Chameleon Squad, the dragon foiled their plans by smashing the exit down. The party came up with a great plan, succeeded on their collective diplomacy check, and teamed up with the Squad for dragon-ownage, splitting the loot and everything. The whole "assigned to kill you" thing was put on standby for a day as a generous gift from Nathaniel, the Squad leader.

Later on, after the party had killed the duke after killing all but one of the chameleons in a tough throne room battle, they decide that since the duke was paying the Chameleon Squad, there's no reason to fight, and offer him a place in the party. Nathaniel, the last remaining member of the Chameleon Squad, accepts the offer and has been adventuring with them for a couple sessions since then. The players call him Nate now, and he contributes to the party in his own way and is often willing to fill whatever role that they request each day, as long as he gets an equal cut of the loot. Occasionally he'll call upon old connections when they need something and ask him, but he isn't always the "fountain of information", because I didn't want to fall in that hole. At the moment, they're stealing an airship and using him to pretend to be various people to do it.

HardboiledJJ
2008-08-03, 02:23 AM
First and foremost, props for using Jhary-a-Conal Armoury99. Nobody pulls the mulltiverse together quite like him.

My favorite DMPC was an unexpected one, both for me and my players. I was running Deadlands (wild west w/supernatural) and at one point felt obligated to drop hints that Jack the Ripper was perhaps resurfaced and mucking about in New York. My normally brazen players decided to play it safe in the high plains rather than stick around in dark alleys (in all fairness he is pretty salty and has some supernatural oomph in that setting). Needless to say I was bummed to lose the story arc I had written, but quite happy to have learned a bit more about pushing my posse's buttons.

Many sessions later, the crew runs afoul of a conspiracy plot involving the Masons and a cult of Baphomet. Once again the grizzled gunslingers are totally out of their element when tracking things Back East. Being an appropriately evil DM I drop hints of JtFR's (the teams eventual moniker: short for Jack the F*cking Ripper) ties to the Masons and watch them squirm. After much ado they finally steel themselves for a confrontation.

At this point I find it important to explain that not a single person in the party had the skill Scrutinize (sense motive). Jack on the other hand has multiple doctorates, including Psychology. And ALOT of Bluff to go with his other skills.

A fight almost breaks out. . .until Jack convinces them that they should work together to stop the Baphomet cult-the real problem. What ensued was one of the most charismatic and interesting NPCs ever. It became an ongoing game to see just how much they'd be willing to let him get away with, and just how audacious a story I could keep feeding them (at one point he convinced them that the prostitutes he had killed in England were actually hosts for the Shan-a Lovecraftian mind controlling alien race-and that he selflessly took on the horrid task in order to save his country. Still my proudest moment as a DM was when I worked up a fake tear during his monologue and had the team comfort him over his anguish). They fight the cult and stop them, there is the sudden but inevitable betrayal as Jack tries to take the demon's power for himself which they barely prevent and he leaves.

Jack continues to be a recurring character in my world. His relationship with that an other parties is like a roller coaster. He's an utter gentleman, and often helps them at the most unexpected times. People also seem to appreciate someone that can alleviate phobias gained from a horror setting. Then there's always the sudden but inevitable betrayal, followed by Jack giving the party just enough time to simmer down and then offer a "perfectly rational explanation" along with an apology. They always know he's gonna pull something but they like him/fear him enough to always let him come back. And I just love seeing how deep a hole they are willing to dig for themselves.