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Basically I am doing a high level campaign and they needs to get every ally they can get to stop the universe being destroyed by evil titans. Now, they recently got an NPC to tag along with them who they know is a good elysium titan cursed to be human unless they go on this little sidequest to cure her of this. Normally, especially given the high fatality rate of this camapign , they would leap at the chance to do this. The final battle is meant to be tough and they need as many assets as they can bring to the last battle. But, no, either they're just glad shes free from this prison she was in or, they don't want her along at all even just to act as the groups healer and instinctively don't trust the character; or under-state the benefits of this. Its just very bizarre and surprising when you see a group behave in a way that makes things much harder for themselves and that they turn away an obvious benefit. Still, they're the player characters and its only an optional thing. Plus it is more characterful that they have their reasons...even if they are a little petty and may doom everyone in existence.

edit- Shes not a DMPC shes meant as an exposition device and as a optional side mission for the heroes to do. If anything, keeping her in human form means she stays as an effective DMPC when fulfilling this quest means she would be leaving the party coz mission accomplished.So if they didn't want a DMPC in the group then completing the quest to get rid of her would be the best option all around.

BTW its a Pathfinder campaign.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Its just very bizarre and surprising when you see a group behave in a way that makes things much harder for themselves and that they turn away an obvious benefit.

You must be new to DMing.

In all seriousness, it's not unusual for players to reject the kind of NPC you are describing. The party forms what you might call the players' zone of control in the RPG world, which is otherwise under the DM's purview. You are in effect infiltrating that zone.

Yep. Avoid DMPCs whenever possible.

Especially since you clearly have a strong story line in mind for your campagin. there's nothing really wrong with a DM keeping a campaign "on a rail," its just that at some point, the PCs want to tell their story too.

DM run PC's are the Devil's PCs.

DMPCs are probably one of the worst things a DM can do to their players. The tend to 1) have cooler powers/gear 2) be a higher level 3) know everything and anything (after all they have access to the DM's head) and the biggest thing (because the previous three all relate to this) 4) they tend to hog the spotlight from the party.

Well thats the thing. The character is only tagging along (aside from exposition device) because they're meant to do this side mission to restore her power so she can be one of a number of allies (think Dragonage or Mass Effect) that they can take into the final battle. At which stage she will cease being an active member of the adventuring party entirely. They seem fine wanting her as a healer to stop them dying and for advice; but not the 20% war asset that would really help you out in the final battle.... Shes really not meant as a player character, more as a quest for the party to do which would be in their interest.

Oh I know that they have some egos so shes a soft and non assertive character who has no desire to be a titan again anyway. I did that specifically so that they would not resent the character and would take pity/symathise with the character. This has worked for some of them and not others. I believe the word baby-sit was used.

As has been said, it sounds like the players may be a bit jaded and have experienced the bad side of DMPCs. Remember, it's the player's story, not your PCs.

(OK, technically it's your story as well, but a DMPC comes off as trying to steal more of the spotlight.)

Yeah, just make her wait somewhere while the results of the side mission are obtained. Then you get her for the end war and the players don't mind.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Well thats the thing. The character is only tagging along (aside from exposition device) because they're meant to do this side mission to restore her power so she can be one of a number of allies (think Dragonage or Mass Effect) that they can take into the final battle.

That's the part that's probably rankling your PCs. It's not a side quest if they are "meant to" do it. Players want some control over how they deal with situations the GM provides. Roleplaying involves an unwritten agreement between players and GM that the GM will allow the players to pick the how, when, and where, and even some of the what. In return, the GM gets to create the broad strokes of the story.

You may have bigger problems between you and your players, and this is just a symptom. Alternatively, they may just find this particular character/quest uninteresting.

I would have the character leave the party, tell them she is going to prepare to try to sidequest on her own, and then leave. Allow the PCs to decide if they want her or not, and resist the urge to heavy handedly show them how much they need her. If they never restore her, and fail at the end, at least they failed for their own reasons. (Plus, they know that you probably won't allow that to happen, and they don't really need to do the quest to get her help at the end.)

 pretre wrote:
Yeah, just make her wait somewhere while the results of the side mission are obtained. Then you get her for the end war and the players don't mind.

They would need to bring her along in order to immerse her in the waters to purify her. Its not a go and fetch this iterm Plus as I said before, they want her to tag along; except the one guy who doesn't even like other PC taking away from him..

No, it was completely optional. Originally she was in prison and it was only after they heard rumors of this prisoner that one of the heroes broke in to speak with her so that they might find out some more knowledge of the characters. They then, of their own accord, went to this library and asked for ways of removing the curse to restore her to being a titan. During a fight she escapes and is about to be dragged back to prison when the heroes, again, intercede and persuade the angels to let her go. They did not have to do any of that and the whole side mission might not have even come up. However, having done the research and gotton the lass freed, they then firmly decide "we're going to keep her as a human"; despite having researched how to cure her. They also do seem to want her as a cleric and for advice. So my point isn't that they "have" to do it. Only, if you've done all that and come this far on this quest that you've actively pursued then why suddenly change at the last minute? Admittedly I did have the angels make it clear that they would try to hunt the heroes down and kill them if they tried to restore her. So it might be that they've chickened out or think that the angels are more useful as allies and don't want to cause a rift. Although they've kind of already done that by sneaking into the prison and being caught at it. Plus I've made it clear that the angels are going to stay in heaven and not help the heroes out (ala Spawn and Diablo, they're kinda not nice). So the logic of not offending them is a little strange. But had they not pursued this quest then it would not have been discovered. I have no problem with accepting their decision and I haven't forced the point on them. I simply find their decision bizarre.


As an aside. It would be impossible to plan things if I let the heroes dictate the story and frankly they are generally more interested in loot, or acquiring powe,r or how you tell the tale as we take turns as GM. Also, it tends to aggrevate the group much more when one character hogs all of the attention as the heroes are dragged onto their personal quests to enhance their power. For example I recently let this fighter character do the side mission he had been nagging me about where he goes back and reclaims his kingdom. So I did this and whilst I kept it brisk the rest of the heroes felt they were being taken for a ride and did not relate to the other hero who they see as kind of a selfish dick (hes basically Joffery and they have to help Joffery get power). Whilst if the other heroes try to do anything in the characters "personal quest" they get very agitated and feel like they're intruding. So generally I would say the group prefers to have the GM act as a neutral party and set the adventure; with the heroes having to deal with this.

p.s I don't know if you've read the Pathfinder bestiary but titans are brick. There are three of them on the bad guys team. Having one on their side means they will only have to face two during the final battle. I haven't made that explicitly known, but its pretty easy to guess that having an Elysium titan as a war asset is useful and will make the heroes lives easier.and longer...

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

 pretre wrote:
Yeah, just make her wait somewhere while the results of the side mission are obtained. Then you get her for the end war and the players don't mind.

They would need to bring her along in order to immerse her in the waters to purify her. Its not a go and fetch this iterm Plus as I said before, they want her to tag along; except the one guy who doesn't even like other PC taking away from him..

Does the party have a healer? If so, she's not needed. If you really want to see how much they value her, remove her from the party. Like Polonius said give them a 'choice'. Take her away, perhaps make it down the road that they have to go rescue her again, or make it so that their choices got her killed. Do not force your PCs down a side quest (you used the word meant to, which makes us think that it's not really a side quest), unless everyone at the table is okay with it (I DM for a very new group of players, and they're very much okay with just going by what the AP says and not deviating from it too much...).

No, it was completely optional. Originally she was in prison and it was only after they heard rumors of this prisoner that one of the heroes broke in to speak with her so that they might find out some more knowledge of the characters. They then, of their own accord, went to this library and asked for ways of removing the curse to restore her to being a titan. During a fight she escapes and is about to be dragged back to prison when the heroes, again, intercede and persuade the angels to let her go. They did not have to do any of that and the whole side mission might not have even come up. However, having done the research and gotton the lass freed, they then firmly decide "we're going to keep her as a human"; despite having researched how to cure her. They also do seem to want her as a cleric and for advice. So my point isn't that they "have" to do it. Only, if you've done all that and come this far on this quest that you've actively pursued then why suddenly change at the last minute? Admittedly I did have the angels make it clear that they would try to hunt the heroes down and kill them if they tried to restore her. So it might be that they've chickened out or think that the angels are more useful as allies and don't want to cause a rift. Although they've kind of already done that by sneaking into the prison and being caught at it. Plus I've made it clear that the angels are going to stay in heaven and not help the heroes out (ala Spawn and Diablo, they're kinda not nice). So the logic of not offending them is a little strange. But had they not pursued this quest then it would not have been discovered. I have no problem with accepting their decision and I haven't forced the point on them. I simply find their decision bizarre.

Okay, so they freed her several times, and know what she truly is. Does the NPC 'know this'? I.e. does she know she's a titan bound to a human body? If so, then why the hell does she not just leave? It's very obvious that the party isn't making an attempt to free her from that form. If she doesn't know, then it's up to the PCs to reveal that to her. If they don't, then so what they have a walking box of band-aids. It could just be that they 1) feel your adventure is too hard and they need the extra healing, so they might as well keep her around until the very end and then set out to free her from the human form. 2) They just don't care about the fact that she's a titan, if they are experienced players, they will know that more times than not, a DM will not throw something at the party that they cannot be equipped to handle. In this case, you giving them a potential Titan ally means you've made the Titan fight a lot easier on them as they only have to face 2 and not 3. They may not see it that way, they may see it as, "we can handle the Titans ourselves, freeing her just makes it easier." If number 2 is the case, perhaps give them a taste of the future. Throw a titan, or a titan's lackey at them and purposely make it difficult, but not to the point where they're all dead. Force them to retreat, licking their wounds, and re-thinking their plans, at that point they may go, "We totally need to free her."

Alternatively, have you asked them flat out after a session, why they haven't gone and freed her from her human form? That might be the easiest way to answer this question.

This sort of stuff happens all the time, don't worry about it, just drop the plot thread the players aren't interested in and focus on stuff they generally are interested in. If it's a small plot thread you can always have it come back later.

NPCs like that are better if they only come into play sometimes, rather than regularly. Also, players are often happier if THEY are the big strategic asset in the last fight, rather than an NPC, even if an NPC would make far more logical sense!

We do have a healer, but he tends not to turn up at the club when hes needed. They have already faced one titan plus two storm giants. Even though I had misread the rules on criticals so that they weren't needing to confirm their many, many critical hits and had access to a healing pool to restore themselves the fight still ended with 3 out of 4 characters dead. This is also after I had the titan crush a Baelor with its hand and how it survived its arm being blown off only to regenerate seconds later. This being after I had showbn the titan charge through a chaos army whilst having cannons shot at it before it plowed through the castle wall the heroes were defending. I've pretty heavily made it clear that these things are brick and they take them very seriously as a threat. THey know that the final mission requires them to defeat 3 of these monsters. They'll have plenty of time to be heroic and badass defeating the leader one; but the other two will need to be dealt with. They simply can't survivie fighting 2 titans plus whatever storm giants and flesh golems they have in tow.

Also, the above makes her being a good titan a big deal. Its pretty much one step below saying she is a goddess trapped in human form. Plus, I'd say that they're very engaged with the sense of threat and horror of the titans (very much inspired by Attack on Titan anime BTW ).

If I have the character leave on her own accord, this would make the heroes think she had betrayed and manipulated them (like the angels said she would) so they would hunt down and kill her to avenge their honor. If she tells them her intent then they will stop her from going or there will be a massive fight over those who trust/do not trust the character. Plus, precisely because I didn't want to force the issue and have the good titan show up anyway I made it so that she is just happy to be free and doing good; not concerned with being stuck in her weakened human state. They would have to be the ones who force this to happen.

I agree. She'll probably die during the final few battles in human form. I might consider getting rid of her earlier because just using her for free band aids is a little cheap.

THey have some beardy characters, believe me, they are still the strategic asset. Its like saying Shephard isn't the main character because he lures a thresher maw to kill a reaper rather than shoot it himself with a gun. Plenty of excuse for them to be awesome and they will get to kill big bad leader titan eventually.

Heh, the idea of an Attack on Titan themed D'n'D game is really cool, btw. It's all about being outmatched, outgunned, and then being awesome anyway. I gotta catch up on that show!

Da Boss, have you ever played the old D&D module Against the Giants?

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

 pretre wrote:
Yeah, just make her wait somewhere while the results of the side mission are obtained. Then you get her for the end war and the players don't mind.

They would need to bring her along in order to immerse her in the waters to purify her. Its not a go and fetch this iterm Plus as I said before, they want her to tag along; except the one guy who doesn't even like other PC taking away from him..

...Unless, the GM says otherwise. Your game, your rules. The mission could be changed to 'fight to the water, then the Package (cursed-titan-girl) will be escorted in by the 0-level minions.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

No, it was completely optional. Originally she was in prison and it was only after they heard rumors of this prisoner that one of the heroes broke in to speak with her so that they might find out some more knowledge of the characters. They then, of their own accord, went to this library and asked for ways of removing the curse to restore her to being a titan. During a fight she escapes and is about to be dragged back to prison when the heroes, again, intercede and persuade the angels to let her go. They did not have to do any of that and the whole side mission might not have even come up. However, having done the research and gotton the lass freed, they then firmly decide "we're going to keep her as a human"; despite having researched how to cure her. They also do seem to want her as a cleric and for advice. So my point isn't that they "have" to do it. Only, if you've done all that and come this far on this quest that you've actively pursued then why suddenly change at the last minute? Admittedly I did have the angels make it clear that they would try to hunt the heroes down and kill them if they tried to restore her. So it might be that they've chickened out or think that the angels are more useful as allies and don't want to cause a rift. Although they've kind of already done that by sneaking into the prison and being caught at it. Plus I've made it clear that the angels are going to stay in heaven and not help the heroes out (ala Spawn and Diablo, they're kinda not nice). So the logic of not offending them is a little strange. But had they not pursued this quest then it would not have been discovered. I have no problem with accepting their decision and I haven't forced the point on them. I simply find their decision bizarre.

I'm confused, but then again I'm only getting the cliffs notes version here.

You may need to punt and ask your players how they feel. Maybe the Combined Wisdom of Dakka jumped on the DMPC concern (it's common enough)

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

As an aside. It would be impossible to plan things if I let the heroes dictate the story and frankly they are generally more interested in loot, or acquiring powe,r or how you tell the tale as we take turns as GM. Also, it tends to aggrevate the group much more when one character hogs all of the attention as the heroes are dragged onto their personal quests to enhance their power. For example I recently let this fighter character do the side mission he had been nagging me about where he goes back and reclaims his kingdom. So I did this and whilst I kept it brisk the rest of the heroes felt they were being taken for a ride and did not relate to the other hero who they see as kind of a selfish dick (hes basically Joffery and they have to help Joffery get power). Whilst if the other heroes try to do anything in the characters "personal quest" they get very agitated and feel like they're intruding. So generally I would say the group prefers to have the GM act as a neutral party and set the adventure; with the heroes having to deal with this.

This is a learning experience. You're running a sandbox, so you have to deal with players having freedom.Most good GMs I've played with run in a style where there's a central quest and the players have some measure of independence, but not a lot in the high-level sense. I know when I plot an adventure or campaign out I try to plan for the most likely courses of action.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

p.s I don't know if you've read the Pathfinder bestiary but titans are brick. There are three of them on the bad guys team. Having one on their side means they will only have to face two during the final battle. I haven't made that explicitly known, but its pretty easy to guess that having an Elysium titan as a war asset is useful and will make the heroes lives easier.and longer...

OK, but consider again that the Elysium Titan is an NPC (or player-controlled if you want, your call) and not the character they;ve been playing and building up over time.

 kronk wrote:
Da Boss, have you ever played the old D&D module Against the Giants?

Haven't played it, but have read it. Seems like it's a classic for a reason. The earliest edition of D'n'D I've played is 3.0 (though we played some adventures from Planescape in uni, converted to the newer system).

If you can tolerate Anime at all though, it's worth watching the first three episodes of Attack on Titan. It's really very good, and I am by no means an anime fanboy.

@Balance

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/elysian-titan

Yeah...the heroes job is to take down the leader. Three of them at once will kill most parties. I highly doubt the party will reach lvl15 and even with some beardy equipment, characters and such they will struggle. I think its a perfectly reasonable goal to make killing one of them (the leader n most powerful one) be the climax of the story. So its not really an NPC helping them in the fight, its more, the armored titan appears and the good titan attacks it then heroes rush on to save the world and kill big bad.

BTW, does the trample damage count as a free attack on anything occupying the same space as the titan? Also does moving through its reach provoke attacks of opportunity?


I could suggest that they bring some water back in a bottle I suppose. Less dramatic I'll admit. I guess I'll see how they react to her presence next week.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
does the trample damage count as a free attack on anything occupying the same space as the titan?

Trample is just an overrun maneuver that takes a full-round (rather than standard) action and doesn't require a check.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Also does moving through its reach provoke attacks of opportunity?

Sure, why would AoO be different in this case? Keep in mind that threat range is defined as the spaces into which the character or monster can make a melee attack. Trample is a not a melee attack. It is an extraordinary ability/special attack.

My general impression from your posts is that you tend to railroad your players. That is, you want them to run through the options that you have prepared. Many players seem to prefer that the DM focus more on adjudicating the consequences of the actions they chose rather than limiting/determining those choices.

Just have her storm out in a huff - "Are you coming with me or not?!"
*door slams*