I'm starting a new a campaign with players who have played together once before. Last time we struggled getting the party to unify and getting the characters out of there back story and be involved with campaign (9 sessions.)
I was a player in that round and the DM of that game is now a player in mine. So i have thought about approaching him and having him make 2 characters ... The character who he wants to play (Player) ... and the a character who will act as a leader and hire the rest of the party for a quest (Leader).
For the first few sessions he will be the leader character. He will ultimately fall in combat and i'm hoping that his death will unify the party. The trick is that no one but him and I would be aware that this was planned from day one. They would all just see a player character getting killed at an early level by a stronger bad guy (who would then run after killing the leader) then the character he actually wanted to play ... would join the party in the next session.
Has anyone tried anything like this? do you think this is a mistake?
If you did this, I'd suggest just making it an NPC. It gets bit weird when you have "planned" character deaths; some other players may feel like something was cheated or they were intentionally misled. Source - DM and player did almost that exact thing in a game I was a player for. We made it work for the campaign, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.
Your other players also might think "oh, he gets to have a new character because he didn't like his old one, maybe i can do that too" etc etc
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I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
Try it, but be prepared for the simple fact that players *will not* follow the script. Moreover, if the bad guy runs away, it could be seen as DM Fiat and railroading the story to your blood thirsty PCs. To sum up, this would have to be done carefully, and with full knowledge that the players are going to screw it up.
Has anyone tried anything like this? do you think this is a mistake?
Players can surprise you with their ability to circumvent your plan. That said, "Hoard of the Dragon Queen" did this pretty well:
In the initial scenario, a Big-Bad threatens to kill some captive villagers unless a single PC faces him in one-on-one combat (while the others watch from a distance). The outmatched PC usually falls to 0 HP, after which the big bad goes for another shot (which automatically inflicts failed death saves). This gives the other PC's a solid reason to really hate the Big-Bad (but not to be able to do much about it, since the captive villagers still need to be released).
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I'm starting a new a campaign with players who have played together once before. Last time we struggled getting the party to unify and getting the characters out of there back story and be involved with campaign (9 sessions.)
I was a player in that round and the DM of that game is now a player in mine. So i have thought about approaching him and having him make 2 characters ... The character who he wants to play (Player) ... and the a character who will act as a leader and hire the rest of the party for a quest (Leader).
For the first few sessions he will be the leader character. He will ultimately fall in combat and i'm hoping that his death will unify the party. The trick is that no one but him and I would be aware that this was planned from day one. They would all just see a player character getting killed at an early level by a stronger bad guy (who would then run after killing the leader) then the character he actually wanted to play ... would join the party in the next session.
Has anyone tried anything like this? do you think this is a mistake?
If you did this, I'd suggest just making it an NPC. It gets bit weird when you have "planned" character deaths; some other players may feel like something was cheated or they were intentionally misled. Source - DM and player did almost that exact thing in a game I was a player for. We made it work for the campaign, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.
Your other players also might think "oh, he gets to have a new character because he didn't like his old one, maybe i can do that too" etc etc
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
Try it, but be prepared for the simple fact that players *will not* follow the script. Moreover, if the bad guy runs away, it could be seen as DM Fiat and railroading the story to your blood thirsty PCs. To sum up, this would have to be done carefully, and with full knowledge that the players are going to screw it up.
The best plans never survive first contact