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Friendly NPCs in Combat

Posted: Sat 02 Nov 2019, 17:39
by PencilBoy99
My players like making friends w/ NPCs and bringing them along. How do you handle this? Just let one of the players run the NPC w/ their slim monster stats?

Re: Friendly NPCs in Combat

Posted: Sat 02 Nov 2019, 18:10
by Valyar
If the NPC will be constant companion of the characters or will be there for longer period, I will delegate the control of the NPC to one of them. Otherwise I am running the NPC.

Re: Friendly NPCs in Combat

Posted: Sat 02 Nov 2019, 18:35
by Ebrim
If the NPC will be constant companion of the characters or will be there for longer period, I will delegate the control of the NPC to one of them. Otherwise I am running the NPC.
I like this approach.

Re: Friendly NPCs in Combat

Posted: Sun 03 Nov 2019, 01:45
by Elthrandil
Most of the time I just describe what the NPC's are doing during combat, and I take away some of the enemies the players would face otherwise. I am not a big fan of all these additional rolls - they can become quite boring for the players if you have a lot of other NPCs involved.

Re: Friendly NPCs in Combat

Posted: Sun 03 Nov 2019, 01:53
by Ebrim
Most of the time I just describe what the NPC's are doing during combat, and I take away some of the enemies the players would face otherwise. I am not a big fan of all these additional rolls - they can become quite boring for the players if you have a lot of other NPCs involved.
Yeah, I wouldn't ever at the table try and control more than 1 friendly NPC. If there are multiple I'd use the rules for helping so the friendlies would act as a team. Even if I don't want to delegate full control over the NPC's I'll usually delegate their rolls unless I specifically think knowledge of their stats is going to be detrimental to the game. And if NPCs are around but don't directly impact the PC's they all get abstracted away into the narrative.