Is this really a good idea?

[Delicious Taffy]

I'm a relatively new DM; I've succesfully run a campaign in a system called Living Legends, but have basically grown tired with it. After seeing D&D 4e, I though it was similar enough to LL to easily change over, yet different enough to offer new types of fun.

There are 6 people who have expressed interest in having me DM for them in 4e, which is twice the size of the last group I managed. I'm not opposed to that, and actually have been helping them each make two characters, so they'll be familiar with the process and some rules.

The problem for me is that they want to play both characters at once. I obviously shut that down, by offering a compromise. I've agreed to find a way they can each incorporate both characters, but not at the same time. So, here's the basic idea I'm toying with right now.

In this setting, a country has been struck by some disaster or other. The neighboring 6 countries have each sent a pair of liaisons to provide a sort of relief effort, with each pair being controlled by one of the players. After an initial meeting to get everyone familiar with each other, only half of the 12 set out for the damaged country. Each member of the group has a special ring/mark/whatever, which allows them to come and go as they please, provided the party isn't currently in the middle of something too serious. I'm debating between letting them swap at either a short or extended rest. If a player is absent, their characters are both absent as well.

My question is whether or not this is a good idea for my first campaign in 4e. Not only is it a six-player party, there are 12 characters hopping in and out Gandalf-style. I like the idea in theory, but I feel as though it might simply end up a confusing mess. At the time of this writing, 4/12 characters have been finished, so I have time to refine my concept before we start. Any thoughts and/or advice for a concerned newbie DM?

[Sol]

It does seem like a lot to juggle, and will slow down item and experience progression unevenly, depending on how often given characters are present, and will definitely make balancing combats harder on you, because you won't know whether you have a three striker, one defender, one controller, one leader party that week, or a four controller two defender party. And while that can be self-balanced by requiring a given role distribution, some characters will be better than others, and players may not want to get forced into a given role.

A less troublesome concept would be to run two concurrent campaigns each with a defined set of characters, who share a world and maybe an overall story arc, but who never directly interact -- but this would still make level advancement twice as slow.

I also don't think that creating characters in 4e is a very good way to learn the rules, and, for new players, playing multiple characters at once may lead to lots of confusion and lots of rereading this week's character sheet to remember what they can do with this character, versus the other one.

TL/DR: It's doable, especially with some tweaks, but I wouldn't.

[Delicious Taffy]

That's largely what I'm worried about, is juggling a dozen characters at once. In my Living Legends campaign, one of my players managed to hornswoggle me into letting him hire half a dozen mercenaries. He already had two PCs, one of which had a mount and companion. It was absolutely ludicrous to manage, so I'm heavily considering tossing the whole idea and just having them pick a primary character, then use the other as just a backup.

[Inevitability]

If you aren't confident in your ability to manage half a dozen PC's, don't even consider running a dozen. Explain that for you, as a GM trying to learn a new system, twelve PC's will be simply too much. Keep the option for additional PC's later on open, but make it clear everyone will have to start with a single character.

After a few months, reevaluate the situation and consider if twelve PC's are manageable then.

[MwaO]

If you aren't confident in your ability to manage half a dozen PC's, don't even consider running a dozen. Explain that for you, as a GM trying to learn a new system, twelve PC's will be simply too much. Keep the option for additional PC's later on open, but make it clear everyone will have to start with a single character.

After a few months, reevaluate the situation and consider if twelve PC's are manageable then.

Yup, that. No need to complicate learning as you go.

[Nightgaun7]

Shut that down now, before they get even more excited. I could run it, but then I can run 4E in my head (mostly). When you feel like you can 1) Make or run a monster on the fly with nothing more than scratch paper and 2) accurately predict what the PCs will do for a round of combat then come back to this idea. That's the level of familiarity you will need to have to make good encounters when you don't know what will be showing up for any given encounter.

I can't stress enough how important it is for a GM to know what the players can do in 4E.

[Excession]

In this setting, a country has been struck by some disaster or other. The neighboring 6 countries have each sent a pair of liaisons to provide a sort of relief effort, with each pair being controlled by one of the players. After an initial meeting to get everyone familiar with each other, only half of the 12 set out for the damaged country. Each member of the group has a special ring/mark/whatever, which allows them to come and go as they please, provided the party isn't currently in the middle of something too serious. I'm debating between letting them swap at either a short or extended rest. If a player is absent, their characters are both absent as well.

My question is whether or not this is a good idea for my first campaign in 4e. Not only is it a six-player party, there are 12 characters hopping in and out Gandalf-style. I like the idea in theory, but I feel as though it might simply end up a confusing mess. At the time of this writing, 4/12 characters have been finished, so I have time to refine my concept before we start. Any thoughts and/or advice for a concerned newbie DM?

For a DM, and players, new to 4e, I would not recommend giving everyone two characters. IMO 4e is at its best when everyone know roughly what the other PCs can do and works with them to win. If each player's character can change session to session, that synergy is going to be much harder to get right. Also, 4e characters can be complex and sometimes slow to play, especially for anyone new, and learning two characters at once will make that much worse.

I recommend starting with a more standard set up. Play a few sessions before making changes.

[Delicious Taffy]

Alright, thanks for the advice, folks! It's been very helpful. I'll be canning the 12-Player Drop In/Drop Out Co-Op idea, since It's pretty much been established that it requires a seasoned 4e DM to pull off. A six-person party is plenty big already.

[Tegu8788]

It's a possibility, but yeah, takes lots of work. I've got an idea for a game full of mercenaries, where a band is constantly hired for different jobs, and party composition is constantly in flux, with occasional outsiders being brought in. But it means a lot of work as a DM, and missions that only last a single session. Very tricky.

[MoutonRustique]

Should you (OP) re-check this thread, I have this bit of (possibly controversial) advice :

For PCs, use the average value for the damage roll - and have the main attack(s) well written* down on the same page as the defenses and hp values.

With 6 (new) players, you want to shave off those seconds on each players' turns where you can and this little trick can save you A LOT of time.


*By this I mean that the player should make the attack "out of context" a few times and personally write down what they find they look at before, during and after making the attack - and with the presentation they find best.

OR
If you really, really want people to roll for damage, calculate the damage so that people only have to roll a die - and then add the rest of the (now fixed) damage.

...but seriously, even when people roll attack and damage at the same time, being able to just call a number on a hit as opposed to creating said number and then calling that number is a huge time saver.

My 2cp.

[ThePurple]

...but seriously, even when people roll attack and damage at the same time, being able to just call a number on a hit as opposed to creating said number and then calling that number is a huge time saver.

One of the common recommendations I see for speeding up players' turns is the GM outright telling the players what the monsters' defenses are. In a face-to-face context, this can easily be accomplished by writing them down on a sticky note and attaching it the the outside of the GM screen (or, if you have a white board of some kind, just writing it down there) so that the players can see it at a glance rather than asking you.

In my games, I tend to "hide" defenses for the first couple of attacks against a specific target and then just outright tell the players after they've gotten a couple turns of attacks in so that there's some sense of numerical mystery in the first few rounds as the players discover the capabilities of the monsters before they settle into the tactical optimization of how best to kill their opponents.

[Tegu8788]

I'll write down the highest and the lowest defense. That way they know if they just hit, or just miss, but there are still some room for uncertainty. Keeps the fun, but speeds stuff up.

[MwaO]

The best trick I've heard is a Chris Perkins idea - whoever gets their turn done in a minute gets a +2 to hit.

[Delicious Taffy]

Well, the good news is, I've decided to can the whole concept of shifting party members. The bad news is, half of my players aren't going to get along with the other half. More specifically, there's one particular player the others are generally annoyed by or just plain don't like, who happens to be living with two others. This pretty much forces me to cut the players into two separate groups of 3, so there's no risk of overpopulation.

The upside to this is that I can handle a 3-player group much more easily, as I've done in the past. The downside is that I now have two groups, one of which has only one character partially finished and two empty sheets, because those players keep refusing to contact me about helping them fill them out. It wouldn't be so bad, but they've all been over here multiple times, and not a one of them has brought it up. I've had to be the one to approach the subject, and then I simply get talked over or ignored, so I'm honestly not particularly interested in helping them at this point due to the repeated snubbing.

The other trio has been mostly helpful setting up their characters, thankfully. We only have the finishing touches to fill out, and then I can start setting things up in earnest. So, even though I now have only half the players I thought I would, it's still easily salvaged, and I have less to manage when we actually start playing.

[Yakk]

With a 3 player group standard encounter building rules are not too bad.

If you want more foes that are not minions, you can use "half monsters" - monsters with max HP equal to their bloodied value, but same damage and attacks. Use 75% XP for them, allowing marginaly larger encounters. This works on solos and elites as well reasonably.

This, plus players being 1 level higher,mactually lets you use prebuilt adventures for a party of 5.

[Tegu8788]

Sounds like you only have 1 party of 3. If they aren't willing to even build a character, much less even talk about there concept, I don't see a good reason to expect they'd be good players, or consistent. A hard lesson I've had to learn is not everyone that says they want to play will actually be any good at your table.

[Laserlight]

I started with three players, added a fourth after a few sessions, added a fifth a couple months later. I think 3-4 is ideal.

When they wanted to try different characters, I gave them an NPC ritual caster who can send them from the Natural World to the Realms of Night, and pull them back in a few hours. In the Realms, they all have their alternate forms: barbarian becomes warlock, fighter becomes paladin, etc. Both forms have the same soul, and XP earned applies to both. There's no possibility of mixing--the warlock is only with the pally, never with the fighter--so I only have to cope with two combinations of characters rather than 32.

The downside is that I now have two groups, one of which has only one character partially finished and two empty sheets, because those players keep refusing to contact me about helping them fill them out.

The upside is, you have one group and one never-going-to-be-a-group. :-)