Long story short, in the homebrew campaign I'm running with my buds, there are opportunities for friendly NPCs to temporarily join their party if they want the support. It's supposed to be a hard world but they're doing alright for the most part; when they aren't, it's really one-sided. Complicating matters, as we all know, finding times to get the whole party together can be rare. Out of a party of 4, we have decided that we'll play with 2 and hope for 3-4 at any given session.
All well and good, and I try to scale fights to the number of PCs. But there's also the challenge of composition too; they have 2 support-build spellcasters, 1 range-attack druid, and 1 paladin. Things can go sideways with composition versus enemies that are, so far, mostly beastly melee attackers.
So, all of this is to say: I had planned on having friendly NPCs in the world anyway, but didn't want to commit to making them until I got a sense of what my PCs would need. At the same time, I don't want to make anyone that'd outshine the PCs with abilities. A real "nice to have but not necessary" type of character I can throw at the party when they want (or need) that extra oomph. For folks who listen to Naddpod, I'm basically after a Balnor.
Any ideas from people who might have done this? Other than, you know, a Balnor. For the purposes of where the players are right now any NPC they'd meet is a thri-kreen reskinned to be an anthropomorphic honeybee. My own musings are maybe a rogue, or barbarian (yes, in part because of the pun).
What about a sidekick? Specifically a warrior sidekick. You can even flavor it as a pet wolf or something so there’s no pressure on you to role play it during conversations.
I had a similar situation in my previous campaign and pretty much did what Xalthu suggested: created a stat block and added some fighter abilities to it. (Sidekicks didn't exist at the time, and I find the sidekick progression a little fiddly anyway.) Tanking + reliable DPS is a good combo at any level.
I might stay away from a barbarian only because the party could quickly learn to abuse their large HP pool and let them do all the dirty work. A fighter type is more middle-of-the-road while still offering martial power and adaptability. You could also use a veteran as a starting point.
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Long story short, in the homebrew campaign I'm running with my buds, there are opportunities for friendly NPCs to temporarily join their party if they want the support. It's supposed to be a hard world but they're doing alright for the most part; when they aren't, it's really one-sided. Complicating matters, as we all know, finding times to get the whole party together can be rare. Out of a party of 4, we have decided that we'll play with 2 and hope for 3-4 at any given session.
All well and good, and I try to scale fights to the number of PCs. But there's also the challenge of composition too; they have 2 support-build spellcasters, 1 range-attack druid, and 1 paladin. Things can go sideways with composition versus enemies that are, so far, mostly beastly melee attackers.
So, all of this is to say: I had planned on having friendly NPCs in the world anyway, but didn't want to commit to making them until I got a sense of what my PCs would need. At the same time, I don't want to make anyone that'd outshine the PCs with abilities. A real "nice to have but not necessary" type of character I can throw at the party when they want (or need) that extra oomph. For folks who listen to Naddpod, I'm basically after a Balnor.
Any ideas from people who might have done this? Other than, you know, a Balnor. For the purposes of where the players are right now any NPC they'd meet is a thri-kreen reskinned to be an anthropomorphic honeybee. My own musings are maybe a rogue, or barbarian (yes, in part because of the pun).
What about a sidekick? Specifically a warrior sidekick.
You can even flavor it as a pet wolf or something so there’s no pressure on you to role play it during conversations.
I had a similar situation in my previous campaign and pretty much did what Xalthu suggested: created a stat block and added some fighter abilities to it. (Sidekicks didn't exist at the time, and I find the sidekick progression a little fiddly anyway.) Tanking + reliable DPS is a good combo at any level.
I might stay away from a barbarian only because the party could quickly learn to abuse their large HP pool and let them do all the dirty work. A fighter type is more middle-of-the-road while still offering martial power and adaptability. You could also use a veteran as a starting point.