#RPGaDAY – August 22, 2025 (ALLY)

 

#RPGaDAY – August 22, 2025 (ALLY)

Ally– Not sure what to talk about for ally. I pretty much always run a campaign with an NPC ally as a member of the party.  I know that can be a contentious topic, with some people feeling it is fine and others being dead set against it.  I am always careful to just have someone for support, to help some, but never steal the limelight or glory.  One of my NPCs would never be the one to kill the BBEG, I would never take that hard won outcome from one of the players. I usually have them be a basic fighter, with limit special abilities, items, or power. Help everyone, hit sometimes, take hits sometimes, etc.

When you read about the discussions online, the main complaint is DM’s who seem to want to be a player, have the coolest and most powerful character, who always saves the day. This is not about that.  The player’s characters should never feel second fiddle to an NPC. That is not to say that you cannot have more powerful NPCs than the players, I do that regularly.  My players say they inherently fear the old, blind, handicapped, one-eyed, one-legged NPC. The more harmless/powerless the NPC appears, the more powerful they are. Just because one time, they encountered Odin in that form. My players are generally not murder hobos, who kill everyone they meet for fun, profit, etc. 

I do try to make my companion NPCs, along with regularly appearing NPC characters memorable and flushed out. I was trying to remember some of my campaign NPCs over the years.  I had a were-boar NPC fighter, they called Ham with the group for one game.  For the Godlings campaign, they had the lawful good fighter/paladin Y-Mon travel with them.  No one wanted to play lawful good and since all the alignments needed to be represented for the Crown of Gods chosen one’s storyline, he filled it nicely.

For the Grimdark campaign we just played last, the group met another team of adventurers camped outside a wizard’s tower.  They had been there for a bit and were unable to access the tower when the group showed up.  Those NPCs were:

Avren Popin – A chaotic good 39-year-old Human male Fighter, who was jovial, 6’4”, 300 lbs., with a stubbly Chin, who used a battle axe in combat and always swore in Dwarvish.  Avren traveled with them some, including an adventure to the Feylands, where he was captured by some giant spiders and was extremely traumatized by it.

Thrust Wandergon – A chaotic neutral 31-year-old Human male Rogue Thief who was surly, small, and thin, with a pockmarked face, and when talked he had an annoying high nasally voice.  To make it worse, he seemed to talk to himself a lot, and they did not find out until later that he was actually talking to Sala, his neutral evil sentient short sword. The group did not really trust him, although the others in his party did and he mostly just stayed to himself.

Cade Crodo – A lawful neutral male middle aged Gnome Artificer, with a long handlebar mustache and chin beard, knotted at bottom.  He seemed to have a permanent non-detection ability and was more of an alchemist/herbalist, who did some trading and regularly supplied the group with multiple one-use potions, powders, and elixirs. He did have a large bag of holding he traveled with and he discussed some odd things with the group’s character who also had a bag of holding.  They had both been visited by the Bagman, an otherworldly entity that could travel between bags of holding, emerging to abduct people unseen in the middle of the night, who would sometimes leave little trinkets for the bag of holding owners. It was traumatic enough to the player character that he traded in his bag of holding for another magical storage item.

He had a protector named Taka, who was a neutral animated full set of battered plate mail armor, with a full closed helmet. He did not speak at all, just signed basic things, and the group never confirmed but just assumed that Cade had in some way created him. He had a long sword and shield he fought with or often just punched people with his metal gauntlets.