Building DNPCs your players will Actually Like
Like many burgeoning DMs whose first foray into the realm of being a Dungeon Master was fifth edition of D&D, I ran a pretty common opening game, The Lost Mines of Phandelver, and then tied it in almost immediately to Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat. When first released, these books were… underwhelming. And that’s being kind to them. Back then, I didn’t really realize how lacking they were for DM’s to work with, but the plot was pretty linear, didn’t allow for player agency as well as it could have, and got a bit convoluted at times. (Seriously, the gambling ship came out of fucking nowhere. We just skipped that one).
What I learned pretty quickly was that the module was, as Captain Barbossa once said, more of a guideline. We went off the book more often than we followed it. I created an entire subplot following the Churchmice (a guild of thieves whose goal was to steal and archive holy relics so that they were safe and out of the hands of those who would use them for evil) and a group of Bhaalist Monks that used a subclass I round in a third party supplement that I cannot for the life of me find at the moment. (That particular binder is probably in the storage unit).
The problem I began to fall into was that I was trying to balance the encounters for an ever changing number of players as a new DM (we fluctuated between 5 and 9, and since we were playing at a game shop had limited time and space to play with. We’ve since settled to four players and play on discord because I had to move and ruin everything. Sorry guys!). In order to fix this issue, I added in what I now know to be called a DMPC, or better known as the Dungeon Master’s Player Character.
Normally, these characters are a big no-no. As the DM, you are everything in the world except a member of the party. By taking over that role, you are essentially taking away player agency, because your intricate knowledge of the plot makes it all too easy for you to take over the glory from the players themselves. This is their time to shine, you are the DM, your moments to shine are boss battles and story twists, not the actions of the characters themselves.
So, why do I break this rule? Well, there’s one thing that really helps me be able to do this in the games I run… My players trust me. I’ve never used the DMPC to steal the spotlight from characters. I’ve used them to push characters, feed information they were struggling to unveil, or have a voice in the party so that they can ask questions without having the disembodied voice of a god tell them “Hey, you know that explodes if you apply heat, right?”
Once trust is built, the key thing to understand is how does one build and implement a DMPC in a game properly? Well, there are a few rules to follow, so let's go through them one by one:
1. They are not as powerful as the players.
At least not intentionally. Most of the DMPCs I make for my party to pal around with are at least a level lower than them, if not more. Only Derek One-Arm was at the same level as the players, but I think he deserves his own spotlight. He was a one armed orc who joined in with the party and became a very powerful ally, overtime becoming more beloved to the party than some of the members of their own group. If a PC died, that was sad, especially if they couldn’t do anything about it, but if Derek were threatened… the gods themselves would tremble.
Nowadays, I keep the DMPCs that are going to be traveling with the party one level lower than them, and have a handful that are much lower level and just go on short stints with the party. There have even been a few one shots that I’ve turned into short stories where the players take over a few of these DMPCs with their actual stats and allow the PC who they’re connected to the opportunity to really shine compared to the much lower leveled side characters.
2. They fill a role your players didn’t during character creation without overshadowing.
Once I ran a campaign using the Princes of the Apocalypse sourcebook for fifth edition, a reimagination of the Temple of Elemental Evil as the first introduction to D&D for some new players. One of those new players was our dear Morgan, only in this game she was a desert elf named Menelwen (apparently she had a thing for M names). In that game she was a wizard, we had a half-orc fighter named Thok, a human rogue named Henry, and a human druid named Vega. Vega was the only healer in the party, and he would often have to go early or miss sessions because of work, eventually dropping the game altogether, meaning the only person who had any ability to heal was gone. Rather than make them constantly stock up on potions or face threats underpowered, I created a DNPC who would join their party from time to time, meant to only be a filler when Vega was gone. His role was to just support where needed, so I multiclassed him into something that shouldn’t have been all that useful: a bladesinging wizard/devotion paladin.
Theamen Summerridge wasn’t meant to be a powerful wizard or a mighty paladin, just have enough of each class to be useful in necessary situations, mostly to act as an emergency healer and alternate target to keep the squishier characters from tanking more damage than their role required. He would step in when Vega stepped out, but something happened that I didn’t expect. The party fell in love with his character, Menelwen in particular as her character married him at the end of the campaign, and actually had three children with him. In fact, one of those children, a paladin daughter named Thea, is now the DNPC Nicole runs with our party in our Monday game, meaning she’s a second generation DNPC. All this from a character that was just meant to throw some lay on hands around to keep the party from dying if there were a few bad rolls that night.
This actually became a theme in our group, where the players would meet an NPC who would tag along with them for a bit, to the point where as we move into later books, you’ll notice more characters that seem to rotate in and out of the group, including Damian for those of you who have read at my second book. If not, take a look and learn a little of our biker boy and see if you can figure out what class he is. I have actually started asking them before certain missions which one of their DNPC allies they would want to bring along for certain missions, if any, giving them the option to balance their party in a way they see fit, giving them even more agency when it comes to these characters affecting the game.
3. They ask questions rather than spoon feed answers.
I know I said that I use them to feed information to my players, but I do it in a very specific way. I have the DMPC ask them questions or muse aloud, basically acting like a sounding board to their ideas. With a little pushing and prodding, I can get them to walk “me” through every step of a plan in order to see the hole in it that I see (usually a pretty big one that will get them all killed, rather than just fail slightly and be amusing). They will also sometimes ask the DMPC for their input, which I will normally roll for, you know, just to see if that NPC is smart enough to notice something or passes a check the group has failed, which kind of ties into filling a role.
This especially helps in the books, because not all of the characters are from the world they’re currently in, which means the DNPC can sometimes help Smithers stay sane (getting his jokes and references) or help him explain aspects of the world to the other players whose characters don’t understand something. If Smithers doesn’t know what something is, how it works, or how to explain it, maybe this other character can, helping to progress the story rather than leaving the characters in the dark.
4. They don’t take big moments away from the players.
The other day, when our Monday group was fighting Zariel (JUSTICE FOR KARLACH!) in the 3rd party campaign Chains of Asmodeus, Nicole paused after Thea hit, and we could hear a tightness in her voice.
“Should she smite?” she asked us, obviously seeming a bit torn. We all cheered and said YES! Of course she should! Why wouldn’t she?
“Because then she’ll get the kill.”
Now, had this been early, we may have felt a bit weird about Thea getting the final blow on a big boss, but we’d been traveling with her for a while, love the character, and much like Khorne, we care not from whence the blood flows. We cheered as Thea took down that fallen angel and dropped the evil bitch.
In the Displaced campaign, there’s a DNPC late in the story who dropped two of four major bosses, getting the kill shots, and though I was feeling guilty for it, my players cheered them on as well, teasing each other that they needed to work up to that character’s level (despite being a higher level than them). These moments are only possible when there is such trust in the DM and love for the NPC that it doesn’t feel like a kill stealing or a glory hogging moment. I avoid letting DNPCs get the kill, especially early on, because the story is about the player’s characters, not ours as DMs.
My players, and my groups, love our DNPCs because we treat them like people in the world of the campaign. They are our allies, our friends, and, in some cases, our spouses. The only reason DNPCs work in our games is because of the relationships built, and they are built by following the above rules and by listening to your players. If the DNPC is starting to encroach on their agency, pull them back or remove them. Have them come in as guests at non-pivotal moments, allowing these important moments to be controlled by player agency, and have the DNPC in the background for support. Only when players feel close and connected to the DNPC is it occasionally acceptable for them to do something exceptional that adds to the player’s experience. It doesn’t do to have weak allies you need to babysit, nor have such strong allies that they needn’t even be there. There is a tightrope to walk when using these types of characters, and it is difficult to do well, but when it is…
chef’s kiss
