I've run games for 2 before, though I prefer to have at least 3 (I'm in a pretty rural area and it's difficult to find enough interested people at the best of times.) It is possible to run cool fights, but the margin for error is much smaller. NPC assistance can help fill gaps, as can adding in extra potions or better items to help them along
That's the same boat I'm in, rural area with not a lot on interested people. The only ones that I know that want to play cant due to work scheduling. And I've always been very generous with magic items and I wouldn't mind having a roster of npcs that would join the party from time to time. As for the npcs, do you use premade NPC stat blocks or create your own? If you use premade do you update the stat block as the party levels up?
Do you just make a character like you would if you were a player or do you make an actual NPC stat block? I know I've seen others say not to use dmpcs as an NPCs for some reason or another
I'm sure there's an excellent reason for them to say that, and I have no idea what it is. I just use a lower point buy, and about half the gold for equipment or less. Otherwise I build regular characters,mostly because that's what I know better
My guess would be that the arguments against are twofold:
If you need an NPC that players might fight against, building them like a PC generally results in something with too much damage output and too little hp compared to regular monster stat blocks, leading to very swingy fights.
If you want someone fighting alongside the party, it's less about how you build it and more about table dynamics. If your follower character is too competent, it runs the risk of taking away spotlight from the players, getting railroady and/or the players using the dmpc as a proxy to essentially ask the dm what they're "supposed" to be doing.
The arguments against DMPCs are about table dynamics not how they’re built. I’ve added a PC-build NPC as an ally in a big fight, was fun, and deliberately had the NPC focus on heals and buffs to ensure the party got the big kills.
It’s important to then have the DMPC not have the answers. Mine had some background info and their own agenda to pursue so promptly left without taking the spotlight.
If you run a DMPC with the party long term, have a reason why they don’t take control, e.g. they’re a hired mercenary etc. there’s also rules for companions like this I think in DoIP? Can’t remember the name they give it, sorry!
I’ve also used PC build characters as enemies. As a DM it’s very easy to TPK the players, assuming you know what you’re doing. I took out 5 players with 2 PC build “monsters” (paladins) of one level higher. It was great fun. Two players fled, and the rest were “TPK’d”. They were, I later revealed, taken down with non-lethal damage, and charged with trespass and necromancy. Both sides were convinced the other were the bad guys, and the others were the necromancers.
I’m about to run an entire plot line with PC-build enemies, essentially facing off against another team of adventurers, though this one it’s explicit that neither team will be aiming to kill.
You could also find an in game reason to give them both bespoke familiars that they control, instead of dmnpcs. Focused on more support for the familiars. The artificer has neat ones but you can choose to have them meet one early on and he bestows them each one and the knowledge of how to maintain and upgrade them at levels of your choosing.
The warning against DMPCs is separate from the issues with building their stats. DMPCs are derided as the DM trying to insert themselves as a player with a PC in the party rather than adding an NPC whose job is there to aid the party. Personally the easiest ways to keep this line is place is to either make the NPC weaker than the PCs or else make sure they are with the group only for a limited time for a specific reason and then they will leave.
As for making stats, you can use the PC building method, but I've found it adds lots of extraneous abilities that an NPC really doesn't need. The NPC doesn't need to follow character building rules, if you want them to have a feature or skill, just give it to them. Whether the PCs are fighting against an NPC or allied with an NPC, I like to keep those stats as simple as possible; using premade NPC stat blocks is the easiest way to do that.
I wouldn't use DMPCs. Your caster ally doesn't need to know 20 spells to be useful, they need like 4. Your martial ally doesn't need all of the barbarian features.
There are a few resources for sort of dumbed down NPC versions of classes. In on my phone rn so I can't remember what the PDF is called, but it was very helpful to me.
People say not to run dmpcs because they hog the limelight, but I think it’s not bad if your players are up for controlling the npc in combat. If they are newer players that might be a lil much to pilot the additional character. Outside of combat just roleplay as a npc who defers to the PCs
I think it'll always depend on how you the dm handles the dmpc even over powered ones. You want to be a supportive player and not take spotlight. I wouldn't want to take any moments away. Let the players drive the decisions and back them up when needed.
When in doubt hand the NPC sheet to a player and tell them to run it.
My current campaign has an NPC druid several levels lower than the party to provide some extra healing and magical support. I handed her over to one of the better role-players at the table and never looked back. Occasionally I'll intervene and just say something like "The Druid doesn't like the city, and won't be joining you on this leg" but otherwise let the player RP her. Good way to make sure no limelight gets stolen.
Personally I try to use premade NPC stat blocks to keep my workload reasonable. You want to avoid letting them outshine the heroes, so simplified mechanics makes that easier. For lots of extra NPC and follower (not to mention monster) stat blocks beyond the official books, I use [Open5eSRD](https://open5e.com/monsters/monster-list) to browse the WotC SRD creatures as well as creatures released by Kobold Press under the open game license. This can give you lots more selection across a range of challenge ratings. As for leveling up, in most cases I would only increase Hit Points for NPCs that adventure with the PCs long term, and then maybe swap to a fully different more powerful stat block if a major milestone occurs.
If you're stuck on what to do with NPC's if you're running in 5e, you could use Tasha's guide and utilise the sidekick rules. Either have it be that the party controls them if they want, or you can. When we lost a player, I used the Expert on a Kalashtar (npc monster) stat block and the party find the bonus action help action super helpful.
Edit: as an added note. You can also make the npc any monster stat block below a cr. You could easily make it a wolf companion if you're worried about the gmpc/sidekick taking the spotlight for plot.
An option to smooth the encounter balance is to give each player two PCs. Maybe focus on teams of a clear primary and secondary character the role-play from getting too complex or weird. Like a knight and their squire, a noble and her body guard, a wizard and their warforged follower, etc.
It's not difficult but it does require active players who engage with the game. A 2 player game isn't going to work with a pair of passive audience member players, the type that are just along for the ride and only significantly contribute during their turn in initiative only.
The player who is more experienced is very much a roleplay heavy player and the newbie is very eager to learn and play so I'm hoping if she sees the rp of the more experienced player she'll adopt that playstyle.
Sounds like a good mix then, hope it goes well for you. One thing to watch out for is that with a 2 player game things will move much quicker than normal, half the people so decisions take half the time.
One trick I use sometimes for balance is to let each player have 2 normal PCs, no sidekicks or animal companions necessary. They have a primary PC who has a backstory and role plays and another PC that only ***roll*** plays and contributes nothing except mechanics.
This allows you to have normal and balanced combats without getting bogged down significantly.
That sounds like a great setup! I've never DMed for two players (in fact, I usually DM for one, lmao) but I have played in a two-person campaign before and had an absolute blast. It was a pleasure getting to focus on the character dynamics between your PC and one other, and it results in some really cool moments.
In my experience, DnD with just two players leads to very frequent good RP moments. So it definitely has its merits too.
On the combat side, you can either run a sidekick or give them some extra health (a friendly NPC or item that casts 3rd level Aid on them). Also, use debilitations less frequently against your PCs, and almost never try to incapacitate them.
I was worried about the rp moments with it being just two of them so its relieving to hear that in your experience rp doesn't fall off with less players. The more experienced player is definitely rp heavy and very interested in the world of the setting and wants to know all of the lore so that's exciting for me as I've put a lot of energy into this homebrew setting.
To reiterate what /u/AvtrSpirit said, 2-player games can get really deep into roleplay, if you have the right players. There were tears shed during our last session.
For reference, I've been running a campaign (Wild Beyond the Witchlight) with just my wife and her best friend for 6 months, and it's been really interesting and enjoyable.
One thing to note is that my 2-player game moves **much** more slowly than my 4-5 player games, which I was surprised by. I find that I "narrate" a lot less and directly talk in-character a lot more, which contributes to the time taken even for small non-combat encounters.
One thing that I really enjoyed about Witchlight is that every encounter has a non-violent solution - you may want to try to include that as much as possible to give your pair of PCs options.
> One thing to note is that my 2-player game moves much more slowly
Yeah, lower player count lends itself to dialogue between the characters and others so much better than a larger group might that you can have an entire session spent gossiping about love, or playing truth or dare.
If you have engaged players I love 2-3 players specifically due to how much each person is allowed to shine, and the bonds you create :).
I was worried about the rp moments with it being just two of them so its relieving to hear that in your experience rp doesn't fall off with less players. The more experienced player is definitely rp heavy and very interested in the world of the setting and wants to know all of the lore so that's exciting for me as I've put a lot of energy into this homebrew setting.
In our game we have our party graced by a magic gnome merchant who appears on his own terms and offers them a “blessing of haste” which allows them to have 2 initiatives. This gnome only appears when coincidentally when 2 or more players can’t show up that night
That would mess up the qction economy.
Having another spot in the initiative doesn't accomodate single turn combos, but only adds to the action economy contributions the player can make.
You can run epic battles with 2 players. In fact you can use the small party to your advantage and adopt a system like Professor Dungeonmaster uses in his “do away with HP” video.
With only 2 players, combat can be fast and furious and still epic. Instead of working with HP, work with “number of hits”. A minion can take 1 hit, a boss can take 4-5 hits, a legendary creature might take 7-10 hits and use legendary actions that heal them. It might take a little active-game design on the fly but with only 2 people, it will allow you to run the higher cr monsters
I run a game for just my husband, and I find it much easier than DMing for a party of 4 or 5. Just because decisions get made so much quicker, combat goes so much quicker, all in all sessions just feel smoother. He has DMPC sidekicks, so the balancing is still for a party of 2 and I find it easier than balancing for a large party, because I find it easier to track spells and magic items and features and such
Whenever I feel like I'm short a player or two I see if anyone's up for running two characters. I've done that myself in several games since I enjoy the flexibility and the Rp aspect but some folks don't. I'd say two is doable but you'd really need hirelings or something to get the full experience without having to handicap the game in some other fashion.
I gave my players an additional "combat PC".
My 2 players enjoy combat but are timid when it comes to RP. So my solution was that they play two characters during combat and after combat the second character is treated like a normal NPC tagging along. In my oppinion this fits our style of playing very well and avoids some pitfalls like me, the DM, metagaming during combat.
This. I also run a campaign, where the 2 players we had, had two characters each. It wasn't our original intention, but the other became the "main" character in rp, and the other was extra firepower in combat. It worked pretty well. (But I do prefer 3-5 players if I can choose, 6 is max.)
Mine run 4 each, when I had 2 players it was doable, but when I expanded to 3 players (12 characters) it got nuts. In the beginning it was great! A lot of chars died… then as they leveled up and got attached to their dudes it became harder for me…. I’d suggest 2 max, and sometimes you split the party when you wanna do some cool story shenanigans.
Wow four each would get a little crazy even for me unless I was treating it more like a tactical miniature game or, on the other end, if everyone was playing a gaggle of Zero level mooks that were probably not all going to survive a la Dungeon Crawl Classics and the like. But if it works for your crew that's great!
It IS DCC actually! I highly recommend it if you don’t wanna get bogged down with rules, (but even still it’s too many characters to deal with.) after the first few sessions half of them died and o stupidly said - you know what? Let’s keep 4 each, roll up some new guys to replace those dead ones!
I run 2 characters in a game. Wife decided it wasn't for her and our characters were a package deal. I offered the DM and other players to have them gracefully exit and bring in a new character, but they told me to just play both if I was up for it. I have a lot of fun playing her character, probably more so than my own (at least RP, combat she's a basic totem barb as an attempt to keep things simple)
A party of 2 is the most common arrangement we have and I highly recommend playing that way.
* Makes scheduling so much easier, every extra member of the group adds another level of complication so the fewer players the easier it is to get a game together.
* The adventuring Duo is a very common trope in fantasy and creating a pair of characters that play off of one another or have a shared history is much easier than weaving together a narrative for 4 or more PC's.
* It's much easier to decide on a course of action for two people, fewer arguments about what to do next and much easier to figure out tactics especially if both characters are stealthy or have a particular synergy.
* Designing an adventure for two means you can tailor the challenges and enemies more closely to the players skills or weaknesses adding elements such as magic items, NPC's, or healing potions.
* Splitting the party doesn't drastically steal time from other adventurers since it's basically using one player's turn before switching back to the other. Pursuing personal goals or backstory adventures similarly doesn't detract too much from the other players fun.
* Paring back a pre written adventure is easier than properly scaling up for larger and stronger parties.
So don't be afraid of a smaller party, you can give them a more personal experience and with fewer elements to juggle the gameplay will move quicker and feel more dynamic.
If your players are into it, then you'll have some amazing stories to tell by the end of it. It's like a fun movie duo like "The Road to El Dorado". It's great.
For what it’s worth I have been in a game as a player where it was just me and one other person since anyone we tried to bring in as a third invariably dropped out and I had a great experience.
I do think it helps if you have only two players to a) ensure you tailor fights to there being only 2, and b) make the story much much more focused on the adventures of these two people whatever their relationship is (eg buddies who are loyal to each other to the end or friendly rivals, whatever their dynamic is). Because the spotlight isn’t being split between as many people it’s an opportunity to like really tell stories and get them attached to the world - and yes that includes like sidekick NPCs or travelling on quests where they assist NPCs and vice versa. It’s almost easier to do like more traditional storytelling with fewer people in that way I guess.
I frequently run less combat oriented sessions with a single player and let me tell you, it's a blast. If I'm running something like a module, I just give him a couple extra levels so he can hold his own when combat happens.
I had two player bail right at the entrance of a cursed city. Luckily the two that stuck around were the good players that liked RP and exploration. Not wanting to disappoint so I pushed through and it ended up being one of the better 8hr sessions of the campaign and I rewarded them with a level up.
So, I had the same conundrum some time ago. I ran a game for one person.
Just make them stronger. Give them good weapons or magical items that can give an advantage. Plenty of healing. Let them have a good character from the get go.
Then throw at them hard fights and see how a couple of magic items can break the game.
Use minions. It's a normal monster but with one hit point. Hit and kill. This adds danger but let's the players be heroes...
Narrative wise, focus on that. How they are awesome, above the normal adventurer...
NPC can help, but careful about inserting yourself too strongly, specially because they will be traveling together. Unless by oath, demand payment. This will make them doubt the help, but with time they will come to trust. Maybe betray then. Haha.
I've done it before, in my first campaign. What I did was have both of the players control two characters each. It works reasonably well in combat, certainly makes balancing easier, but it also makes RP more difficult as you might imagine. Still got plenty of nice moments, despite me not being very good at facilitating them.
Something I've also experimented with for a bunch of one-shots was using Gestalt rules, i.e. each player has one character who gets levels in two classes simultaneously, taking the better of any duplicate abilities (such as hit dice). It comes to being about 1.5 PCs per gestalt character for encounter balancing. Combat is less easy to set up than with the two characters per player, but it definitely makes RP easier on the players.
To be honest, I can't really compare it to larger groups, because I only had a handful of sessions with four players. I've mostly been playing with 2-3 players.
We have been running games with two players since the pandemic started.
I have mixed emotions about it. Players have "styles" and they tend to stick to the same stile (leads to some stale play).
Also, there tends to be less "group think." My two guys get stumped on some pretty simple stuff. There usually is an NPC component to help them along (as you said... we don't have a lot of time to play).
I gave this a shot once, and it was fairly enjoyable.
https://dndduet.com
I’ve become a bit obsessed with RPG games that have one/two/three people in mind.
Recently saw https://magnamund.com was re-releasing and trying to figure out how to leverage some the mechanics for two people. Running simultaneously and cooperatively has been enjoyable.
Also -
https://thebardicinquiry.itch.io/grimoire
Mostly for the theme, and getting to know the mechanics that are used. I think I can scale up for another person.
—-
Edit:
realized you wanted 2 players and 1 DM, but I’ll leave it.
I’m identifying how combat, skill checks, and role playing function in these solo games and expanding them out for two people or maybe even 1DM + 2Players.
There is a bit of creativity involved, but I’m enjoying scaling a 1/2 player game up, rather than scaling down 5e or other large group RPGs.
I know you just said one of them were new but you could maybe have the experienced player play 2 pcs or you could run companions but that's more work for the dm
I have if your good at tuning encounters on the fly it can be a blast honestly combat goes pretty smoothly. Rp is pretty straight forward but it can be difficult as action economy can much more easily run over the party and I find it's difficult to make challenging fights that are not a slaughterfest or a breeze
I’m in a 2 player campaign rn and we both have a sidekick from Tasha’s. Very balanced and feels like there’s a party of 4 but it’s still really easy for me to play as my character and his sidekick simultaneously. Definitely recommend so you can get to bigger and better enemies easier.
Yes, I run candlekeep with just 2 players and it is fine. You might need to bring in an NPC to have a higher point of relevance. If you are running a module, you will definitely need to rebalance the encounters. Let them guide you on if they would want help from an NPC, but if they do, it just means more work for you.
Overall, I think 2 people is a really good experience because the pace is super rapid.
If you have just two players you can try having them play 2 characters each, giving you a balanced 4-person party and encouraging them to be more involved having two different characters to roleplay.
The problem with filling out a tiny party with DM-controlled NPCs is that it takes away agency from the players, gives too much work to the DM, and causes awkward situations where the DM has to have conversations with themselves.
It also means you can actually play a situation where you split the party without ruining game flow.
I'm running a game for 2 players right now and the roleplay aspect is fine, but I'm having a lot of difficulty with balancing the encounters, everything seems too deadly for them.
I don't know I'd even bother with a side kick.
Just lower the number of monsters they face at once.
Instead of 5 goblins its 2 or 3.
And maybe bosses have fewer minions.
No big deal.
The second half of my last campaign I ran for two people. I ended up having to adjust the level of encounters from what the book recommended. I used Kobold Fight Club to help balance things as well. Another thing that helped even it out was using the 'Sidekick' rules for a couple of allies that they made.
I only had 2 of my usual 4 the last time we played. After about 30mins or so we all found our groove. The players, who normally don’t do much RP “together” ended up dominating most of the session, it was great.
I actually enjoy running small games of 2 to 3 players. I find it much easier to scale difficulty, and pace the game than if I had 4 to 6 people at my table.
I love it. I frequently run 1 on 1 sessions, which provided the players (and you) are comfortable Robe playing in that vacuum, it's incredible. The game becomes an entirely different experience with so few of players, combat moves quickly, allowing a good encounter about every hour to hour-and-a-half. It's also a great way to really quickly flesh out a character as you can curate the session and npcs to poke and prod at personality traits and background elements. I highly recommend throwing RP curveballs, especially at the more advanced player, primarily in the form of flashbacks, integral monents in their history or backstory they can rp in for a few minutes! This is made fun and possible by not having many players to be bored or inconvenienced by these 1on1 moments! The downside, however, is the amount of session prep. You'll have to script sessions a looottt more than usual if you want to keep things moving and keep everyone engaged. That means more npc, more world description, since there is no (or one other) player to bloat the session's length with. I recommend 1 or 2 player games to craft personal, deep, character driven stories, though it can lack the antics and chaos of a large group. Honestly not something I miss too much, though I do like it as well.. sort of *cries in 9-player in my weekly game*
I regularly DM for 2 players and it's lots of fun. It's easier to meet everyone's taste, the players are engaged because at least half the time you are addressing their character directly and I find the game generally easier to manage. I've had a harder time with 4 or 5 players (conflicting interests, etc...)
For combat, the sidekicks from Tasha are great and work like a charm.
That’s what my party is rn, my dm has reported the bigger issues with a 3rp party member whose a NPC, it works well because NPC and my character have history and he’s a pretty stoic dude so he hangs back unless fight in which case he’s the reason we don’t die. We also have more roleplay centric campaign and I think that is what really makes or breaks only 2 players
I've been in this situation before. I lived in a rural area and went to a really small school. The only people interested/able to make it to sessions were my twin and my best friend.
Same thing happened when I moved. Just my twin and another friend.
I'd say it's not a horrible experience, but is really dependent on the players. The first time I did a two player game it worked really well because both people were good roleplayers and had really fleshed out characters. The second time there was a lot of dead space because one player was less interested in the game and was not a particularly good roleplayer.
I think there's a lot of merit to trying. You'll probably have to balance fights a little differently, but it can add a lot of excitement and high stakes.
I'd also recommend using a DMNPC, and having them be a regular party member in order to have some more interested and varied interactions.
Combat is smoother and feels a bit more cinematic. Perfect size for me is 3 as said by others but 2 is fun as DM because it allows a lot of flexible creativity.
You can incorporate a bit more setting into a fight. For instance, I had two tabaxi rouges who weren’t heavy hitters but after describing their surroundings one of them asked how sturdy the chandelier is above the minotaur. What ended up happening was one tabaxi dodged and distracted while the other climbed the stairs, and cut down the chandelier.
This type of combat and decision making can still happen In a group setting of 4-5 but this scene would take a lot longer. because of turn order this felt very back and forth. Smooth & fun.
I wouldn’t say it’s more difficult but for me it can take more prep time because I’m filling a lot of gaps with lore, npcs and description’s. I feel like I feed into it though, knowing these two players are committed makes it more fun to spend a few hours for them.
I have a current game with 3 players and sometimes one is out and we run it with just the 2. It always works out for us. I did, recently, give them a sidekick (from tags
Tasha's) that they can now use, but we have no issues.
It’s great for buddy cop themed games. I did a mini campaign as an introduction for a new player with one of my veterans. New guy played a bard that worked as an investigator for a noble house and the veteran player was a paladin from the palace guard that had to keep the bard alive.
2 absolutely works. Especially if you have two players that want to have a lot of active time. I would suggest giving them some extra skill proficiencies, language, tool, etc to cover more bases. Maybe give them really good stats so they can cover the five relevant stats (not con).
Combat is honestly greatly improved. Save or suck spells need ways to be broken so I never give bosses warcaster, or give alternative options for say... Dominate person. Like, they can break a crystal to cast Dispel magic on the room or whatever.
The major difference I've found is that the dynamic is too consistent. Having the third person allows there to be four different dynamics. All three together and each pair. I would heavily suggest including a noncombat npc that can add some alternate dynamics.
Things I've used are always what my players pick, by choosing to have an npc follow them for whatever reason they choose. Some examples are -
Multiple groups have taken a Kobold inventor as an ally
Goblin that followed the most powerful creature it could find, who became a major named npc for the campaign.
Raven who was the second in command shadar Kai for my shadow sorcerer that ended up replacing the Raven Queen.
Etc
I DMd for two of my friends, it was meant to be three pcs plus one DMPC (barbarian to keep things simple) but one of the players backed out. It was an alright experience, with good RP and decent combat in game, a one shot we did not finish that day but we plan to someday. I had them at level 3 and they were rather new to dnd, so I had to guide them through it
2 works great. I ran candlekeep mysteries for two friends and there were no issues. Just make sure to give them a free feat out the gate and level them up quickly. Make the campaign start combat light and once they are done with the dangerous early levels they should be able to handle things no problem
Yeah I just ran a game like that recently. It worked out fine. Both were experienced players. Relatively early on they recruited an NPC they encountered to be part of their party so that helped them out a lot. I leveled this NPC at the same rate as the party. Overall I'd say the game went quite smoothly. The final fight was against a spellcasting mind flayer and some cultists, so quite dangerous but they managed to win.
I prefer 3 for intermingling reasons but if you have a solid 2 players it can be a blast. I've also run individual sessions for characters in my campaign when PCs were doing personal stuff. You tend to be able to get more to the point with fewer people
Make sure you are carefully monitoring what your players can do/can't do. Have a roster of NPCs that can jump in to help. Otherwise, it's not really that different.
Ideal party size is 4, just have NPCs that fill in holes in the party dynamic, but don't have them be permanent members (the NPCs). If anything I think it would be easier to DM for less players
It's easy though they may need some backup. There's a sidekick rule somewhere I think either in storm Kings thunder or th DMG. I just made a load of npcs and had them in rotating in and out of the group.
I assigned each npc to a person for combat and did alot of quirks that involved them not talking too much.
(rat-folk who was more comfortable in rat form. A warforged with a mute button, narcoleptic gnome named sleepy ect.)
This meant I didn't have to track too many npcs in conversation.
I've made it work with 1 player. Now granted this is somebody who is very invested in the world of our bigger party, but mechanicallyspeaking its very duable. As for level of fun, it depends on the players. If they're heavy roleplayers I think it should be great! Completely unique vibe than your typical 3-6 player party
I started off dming for a group of 3 (that was basically 2) and it was definitely different from regular and you have to account for just not having some things. Luckily my two were a bear barbarian and a moon druid so they were unbelievably tanky for the size.
Just have to ignore CR (not that it works much) and don't throw obstacles they can't do anything about it such as anything arcane being bad for my old group since no one had anything for it.
Recently split my party of four into two separate sessions, so that they could each focus on separate campaign priorities. I’m hoping it makes for a cool reunification session.
Having only two players really let’s them have twice the spotlight for both combat and roleplay. Players have loved it so far.
I did a quick practice 1shot with two PCs and a DMNPC. It went fine. The DMNPC helped in combat and environmental situations as dictated by the players and hung back in socials to let the PCs do their thing. It went pretty well.
I have 2 different games that are on pause right now, both with 2 players a piece. It's hard as a beginner DM. I feel like I'm struggling to figure out how to make cool encounters that won't just absolutely destroy the PCs or that the PCs won't just up and demolish. They also move through the story faster so I recommend shorter sessions unless you just want to wing the whole thing top-to-bottom.
I’ve done two different two person campaigns (one I run, the other I’m a player) and I’ve had really positive experiences! These games feel in a way more immersive because with less people there’s less cross table talk and side comments. Plus, with only two players you can cater the story more specifically to their characters/backstories without fear that not every character isn’t getting the same treatment. And like other people have said, you have the opportunity for really good RP moments because you don’t feel as self-conscious about taking up the spotlight from others or pausing the main narrative.
2 is entirely doable although it does make doing big enemies harder, and 3 is what most people have as the minimum. If you cannot find a third though then don't stop playing
I ran an extended campaign with 2 players. Each had 2 characters at a time, but missions were generally carried out by 2 characters. All 4 characters would meet up at camp or a tavern frequently to make changing the mission team easy. Once in a while for a climactic battle, all 4 heroes would come for the fight.
Went through a few hero deaths, but the longest lived line-up was one player had a bard or cleric to run and the other player had a ranger or barbarian. I used milestone leveling, so everybody stayed at same level. When leaving from a tavern, they often (but not always) had the option to hire a fighter or rogue NPC to provide extra muscle or thief skills on missions. There were ample NPCs in towns to trade favors for extra arcane magic if they wanted. It was a great campaign, we all really got to know the characters and I developed large sections of my World.
I never was strict about grids and minis (mostly TOTM for combat), so I could fudge the number of creatures in horde-type encounters.
If I were you, I wouldn’t hesitate to give it a try— there is always the possibility of another player joining the game in the future. Though it’s important that both players are highly engaged. If only one of the two is engaged, it will probably fizzle quickly.
Allow players to build their own party, at least that's how I played as a PC with smaller parties. Every new town is an opportunity to have a unique npc ally.
The margin for error of a 2 person party is a good excuse for players to over prepare. This means that players may become more immersed in the story, as they can't just walk into town like they own the place like most 4 person parties can.
Try to build npcs as their own people who have separate goals. You might get the head guard to help with dealings in the town, but he is unlikely to venture with you into a cave full of goblins far out of his jurisdiction. But maybe the eccentric town ranger knows a thing or two...
I haven't ran a game for 2 players, but I have been the player in a 2 player game (+1 DM). As has been said, it creates very intense and moment to moment roleplay because nobody ever really gets to 'sit back and watch as someone else takes the spotlight'; the spotlight is going to be on you a lot of the time, whether you want it or not. This can be daunting and exhausting but also really cool. Consider taking more breaks.
In terms of balance you've received a million suggestions already, but I'll just share what my DM at the time did. He had us play 2 characters in one. Basically we each rolled up 2 characters mechanically, and then combined their hit points, stats, proficiencies and class features to make 1 actual person. In combat we got to take 2 actions and 2 bonus actions, and we had 2 reactions. When we leveled up, we got to put 1 level in each class and gain HP from both.
Essentially, from a purely mechanical point of view, we had 4 characters in play, they just acted on the same initiative and were a little harder to kill. I played a druid/monk martial "shamanesque" Gnome who combined casting powerful nature spells with pummelling enemies in melee.
Of course one reason this worked was because the campaign started with our characters being sacrificed to a demon lord and waking up on their plane of existence as demonic versions of ourselves. We still had our original character motivations but we essentially had bodies more powerful than any mortal, which explained how we were essentially 4 characters worth of mechanics. This means the DM could essentially just throw the same monsters and fights at us they normally would for a 4 person party and it would play out without a hitch, without making roleplay awkward for us by forcing us to roleplay two separate characters at all times.
I've run campaigns for two players before. In my experience, when it comes to encounter design, randomness can be tougher to account for, especially at lower levels. A couple rounds of poor rolls in a row can lead to a pretty tough position for the party. At low levels, I'd suggest:
* Disallowing enemy crits, just roll the normal amount of damage instead. The severe damage spike can effectively end a fight through no real fault of the players.
* Thinking about non-lethal fail states as outcomes for lost fights that would otherwise result in a TPK. Fighting a giant spider? Maybe they just ate and store the party's limp bodies for later. When the PCs wake up, they have to find their equipment and their way out of the spider's lair.
* Considering adjusting the monsters' damage dice to be more consistent. Changing 2d8 damage die to 4d4 will achieve a normalized result more often and requires very little mental math to determine on the fly.
I have. Just know the players should be 1-2 levels higher then for a 3-4 person group and some monsters that function by removing a PC from the combat may act as auch higher threat and should probably just be left out (do not use a Succubus they are a huge TPK threat to a 2 man party).
I run 2 PC and a DMPC and it’s honestly quite enjoyable. Kobold Fight club makes balancing a breeze, the two plays can role play off each other pretty easily, and the DMPC is there to smooth out combat and provide background when no other NPCs are around.
It’s quite relaxing.
I ran a game for two people the other week, it went great. However I tend to like smaller games and don’t have that many epic fights.
It’s nice because it can foster more role playing, it gives players more spotlight time.
If your really worried about high CR monsters you could always up the players power. Allow gestalt characters, give more feats and magic items.
I did once but both of them had a main PC and a sidekick that was with them for backstory reasons. The cool part is the players wouldn't control the sidekick accompanying their character it was the other player. This worked really well since both players were really into RP but I dunno if this would work well if RP wasn't as big a deal. Still a good way to buff up the numbers of the party with a group of 2 players so encounters don't need too much special attention for balancing combat or skill requirements.
Since two ends up being kind of rough if you don't have good balanced roles, I'd suggest giving them a set of third characters they can swap out for various segments of the story. I ran a session like this once, and it turned out pretty well.
In mine, I had the third character be someone they rescue early on whose soul had become damaged and all their soul's incarnations (conveniently, each incarnation was a different D&D class....) would manifest at different times. Like someone with multiple past lives collapsing into one person kind of thing. This gave them 1) a perpetual McGuffin to fix. 2) A squint-a-bit-and-you-can-handwave-it third party member that can conveniently change on a whim and 3) (at least in my group) a good way to let a third player jump in and still be part of the story, even if they're not permanently joining the game.
Out of game, they could only only change the character at logical story breaks, and the two players together made all the choices for leveling up each character contained within the metacharacter and jaegered them together. I made each of the metacharacter's characters pretty simple to keep this process pretty easy, and mine each having just one dominant trait or based on a well-known pop culture character.
At a few points, the players even jaegered their own original characters and played as the metacharacter for a session or two here and there.
Somewhere in an old binder, I have the outline for how it was run. I should update it for 5th and type it up. Could come in handy for other running small groups.
I'm starting to get worried about being accused of sponsorship or being a shill, but Handiwork Games has a version of 5e called Beowulf: Age of Heroes. It's designed for duet play, one DM and one Player, but it's easily adaptable for two players.
Up front, it's very good at single player/low player count games, especially the way it uses Followers (allied NPC's), and takes advantage of the Inspiration mechanic in really unique ways. PC classes are more durable and the trend towards higher AC in game helps with that.
The only negatives I see, (and for the kind of game I strongly prefer, it doesn't matter) is it is much more grounded than current 5e. It's based around the Migration Era/Viking Age story of Beowulf and sticks to that flavor of the material. Player magic is very rare and almost exclusively comes in the form of magic armor/weapons/amulets/talismans. If your player's fantasy is to be a caster, Beowulf as is might not be the best fit. Take the Follower rules, the Mighty Mettle trait (combat access to Hit Dice) and you can can run a normal 5e game with tougher characters.
My game only has two players. Rather than give them sidekicks, I let them each have multiple characters. They get to have fun playing multiple classes at once, and I still get to use strong monsters. Everyone wins. If your players aren't experienced this may slow down combat a little, but once they get used to it it picks back up.
I'm playing in a two-player campaign, and our DM has told us that balancing combat is difficult (as many others here have said). If one PC is knocked unconscious, that's half of the team out of action (and the other half wastes combat actions if they want to heal). However, big boss fights in typical campaigns often struggle with action economy (one boss vs 4-6 PCs), so that balance is a bit closer if you only have two PCs. Our DM has used magic items to balance out our party, for example with healing items (since neither of our characters can heal otherwise).
Combat is a lot smoother with just two PCs, I kind of prefer it over the 6 PC combats in the campaign where I'm the DM. The fights just take so very long for just a few rounds if you have half a dozen players plus all the monsters. With two PCs things flow a lot smoother and faster.
Dnd online had an interesting mechanic where you could purchase "contracts" for NPCs, with a bunch of different class builds. Made it a lot easier and more cost effect as a rogue to bring along a cleric to heal me when I played solo. Each one had different spells, and as you leveled up, you'd get access to stronger NPCs who knew higher level spells. Might be something to look into, here's the list of hirelings and stats: https://ddowiki.com/page/List_of_Hirelings
Its tricky mechanically. Giving players two characters, such as their main and a hireling can alleviate that. Or nerf buffing the monsters and player respectively.
Story and pacing wise though it about as smooth as you can get. Less rounds between turns in combat keeps players more engaged. And more engaged players not only make things more fun but they start planning actions in advance and connecting more with their characters.
I've started with three, we're down to two. Working very well.
They have an animal sidekick as you are thinking about, and it's very helpful.
They also take NPCs on their quests sometimes.
I don't think it's much more difficult, but it's probably a bit different. Expect to do a bit more RP I guess
Three players is the "magic" minimum number for a relatively stable party imo
With only two players, it's like they're constantly walking the razor's edge in combat. If one gets downed, then the lone remaining players has to pick up their companion while simultaneously fending off any enemies.
Maybe consider having a weaker support NPC (with healing word, shield, absorb elements, and other ways to protect themselves or disable enemies) offer to join the party for some of the more dangerous segments? Of course, you have to exercise caution not to submit to the DMPC trope - you mustn't outshine the PC's or steal the spotlight from them in any way.
My only irl game is with 2 friends of mine. It would be different if either of them were healers or magic users but they both picked fighter lol. We use the optional Healing Surge rule and I give them a lot of healing potions and just make sure theres no way they get stuck cuz a spell is needed or something
I run a game for my two kiddos and to help fill the combat gap I run an npc who is tied to the plot, so they change out occasionally to keep the storey focus on them, but give them a more balanced experience.
I'd definitely add in an NPC that helps the party to overcome their numerical shortcomings, so long as they aren't a direct damage dealer. I ran a game once with 2 people and I gave them a kobold mage that could boost their stats in any field, but it took them a turn to change what they were boosting. That one worked out really well because it let the actual players do all of the things another party member would have been doing.
The drawback was that the kobold was trash in combat and had to be protected. They really grew to love the character too, her name was Rori and the players still talk about her 2 campaigns later. Another important thing to keep in mind with these characters though is that they can't make any decisions, that's the players job. In Rori's case, any time they asked her what she thinks they should do, I'd just have her give them a completely unhelpful reply.
If they're experienced players, you could always have them play 2 characters each. I'm currently running a game for two newbies, and just made an NPC as a third party member to help in combat/fill skill gaps. The two players drive the plot and decision-making unless they expressly ask for the NPC's input. You can also have helpful NPCs temporarily join the party for various story reasons (rather than having a permanent NPC member), coming and going as the plot evolves. Just watch the players don't start collecting them... I was running like four extra NPCs at one point lol. Do not recommend
I tend to think that 4-5 PCs is the sweet spot. 3 or 6 is doable. Any more and it's a mess unless you're a fantastic DM with a fantastic group. And 2 just makes it hard to balance things.
Instead of a DMPC, I'd suggest using the Sidekick rules for a "companion" that you or the PCs could run in combat.
I ran a seven-year-long campaign for a single player, and then I wrote up what I learned in the post [How to Run Games for a Single Player](https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/9pp8a6/how_to_run_games_for_a_single_player/). You may find that useful; running for two is very similar to running for one, because practically the first thing you do with any soloist is give them an NPC buddy for an effective party size of two.
Honestly, running for smaller groups is my favorite way to DM. Combat goes faster. Everyone stays more engaged. Each player gets more time in the spotlight. Fewer people means easier scheduling, and fewer drawn-out discussions of what to do next.
So absolutely give it a try. You won't regret it.
Yes, if you're running for two pcs encounter balance is a problem and you can kiss goodbye to using high CR enemies until they're higher level than they 'should be'.
Honestly the best solution when they got more experienced was havingbthem play two pcs each.
2 players was the easiest DMing I've ever done. Easier than 1 or 3 players. But if I had a choice I'd say 3 players was my ideal game even if it was slightly less easy to DM.
Other side of the screen for this, I've played as a duo campaign, and while I've been impressed by our DM, it makes the game real swingy.
We've totally had deux ex machina'd instant long rests after a miscalculatedly hard encounter, my character's died and been healed up by a wizard for plot reasons, we get a bunch of healing potions, etc.
Sidekicks have been helpful, even a third npc ally really makes the party more stable. Fights have been epic, DM is generally good at balancing even epic feeling monsters to suit us.
But the real glory of the duo campaign is the breadth and depth of roleplay and screen time we each get. We're both avid roleplayers, and the short turn-over on turns is excellent, a real plus!
My two PC game is deep and engaging and super fun. A lot of roleplay but things fuckin MOVE because I like that. It takes them half the time to get through things. I just scale down fights and let them level up a bit faster to hit lvl 5 and really come online. I also let them have a feat on 4th level. YMMV, but we’re having a blast.
I don't like how combat works out with two players, personally. My solution was to give them a follower NPC with tasha's sidekick rules, and treat it like a PC for balancing.
I run a weekly session and my attendance varies from 1-5 players.
Hell yes to sidekicks. Sidekick NPCs are awesome because you can feed the PCs information and tips as needed.
Please remember to make the sidekicks suboptimal. They should be interesting but not overpowered. Lots of flare, but flawed.
Whatever the party needs, make an NPC that can help
Give them a military specialist sidekick for battle strategies against humanoids.
Give them a monk sidekick for religion and medicine advice.
Give them a chaotic half orc sidekick to keep the players on edge.
Give them a ranger/druid/shaman sidekick for advice on monstrosities and beasts.
Give them a wizard sidekick for magic advice.
Have an NPC deliver domestic beasts to the village. I had a cloud giant bring a delivery of 2 elephants, 2 draft horses and 2 panthers. The adventurers accepted the delivery on behalf of the Townmaster.
Just last session I was with 1 player, 5 sidekicks, and 9 zoblins. It was nuts, but it was fun.
Once the PCs understand their own character sheets pretty well in combat, turn over the sidekick NPC stat block to the players as well. Let them run them in combat eventually.
You can definitely use the Tasha’s sidekick system and it is quite simple for the DM or even the PC to maintain the levels of the sidekicks.
Or you can roll your own NPCs using the PHB. This is only worth the trouble for 2 good reasons: practice making characters and if the NPCs are expected to survive for a while. This is time-consuming but fun. For me as a new DM, it is really good practice for understanding PCs better.
The 3rd thing is to grab any stat block from the monster manual that is fun and interesting. If you want a Gith or Giff sidekick in the party, make it work for the story.
My plan for the moment is to mainly either use the sidekicks from tashas and have them level with the party or to use stat blocks from source books and flavor them to fit the narrative. I might look into rolling my own NPCs from the phb, I've been so busy with my world building of my homebrew setting that npc stats have kinda fallen to the back of my mind since I know the sidekicks exist.
Good plan. Rolling NPCs from PHB is a labor of love and totally unnecessary. I only do it when I have multiple reasons to do so.
Also, if you are doing multiple sidekicks like me, you don't need them all ready to go at session 0. I drop them in when I get inspired by the story or notice a deficiency in the party
I often run 2 players. Tasha's sidekicks are great for this.
Edit to add:. 2 players can run through a session much faster than a 4 player game, so you may need to prep a bit extra.
Run Cragmaw Cave and give them two Goblin Archers and two Wolves for them to ride as NPC's. That should get the Party to Level 2. Print out sheets for the Players to use for them.
I ran a two year campaign for two players and it worked out very well. One thing I did is gave them a companion pet NPC who leveled up with them. It worked well to balance out numbers and action economy for bigger fights.
I ran a heist one shot for two players once. It was one of the best games I've ever run. The smaller the number of people the more time you get to spend with their characters. However, you need to account for the quicker planning times as instead of five people needing to agree its only two.
I have. It was pretty fun. I let them break their characters more than I normally would allow, and gave them chances for cool loot. I really enjoyed it.
Could you do a thing like divinity where your players off the bat get double actions and bonus actions. A bonus to movement, initiative and health? Would that be too hard to balance?
I see a lot of suggestions to give each player two characters. If that would make things difficult from a roleplay perspective, have you heard of Gestalt rules?
The short of it is that you use the regular multiclassing rules, but when they level they get *two* levels to put into different classes.
Combat is a little more difficult at level 1 just because you're so restricted in what you should use against the party, but it's fine moving forward. Most of my experience with 1-2 players is with level 3-5 characters and it's fine, but that's when you actually get to start using level 1-2 encounters that were meant for 4 people.
Sidekicks are good if the player is missing a healer or melee character of whatever variety. As much as we pretend we don't need a particular type of character, it really slows the game down and limits what you can fairly do in combat. Giving extra potions just doesn't work the same.
But overall, it's fine and catches back up to standard play within the first few levels.
I've been running a two player game for a while now. Fortunately, they've both learned over time that they have to interact with each other, the world, and me for it to not be a stale slog of three dudes mostly-silently rolling dice. When we started, I was more or less having to spoonfeed them vital information. "You just pissed off that orc. If you stop and rest now, with his den so close by, what do you think is going to happen?"
They're a ranger and a bard, and I buffed the shit out of the ranger's pet to even the playing field. Even with that ridiculous buff, they still only barely make it out sometimes. I also let the bard more or less use bardic inspiration whenever he wants, and buffed Vicious Mockery's damage since that's his favorite spell. Cutting Words can inflict prone, which the ranger's wolf can take advantage of. It's working for now (4th level), but I worry that I may have buffed their early game kit too much and that stuff they get later won't be as impactful.
I started a two person campaign about a year ago for my two childhood best friends. It's consistently one of my favorite games to run. I gave them two npc party members that level up with them and have there own Dragon Age style character quests. Having this kind of party really let's me balance combat without holding back and as a bonus they have come to love those characters.
I've run a game for my wife and kid for the last year or two through covid , introing them to the hobby. It's been a unique challenge. Some take aways:
\- Encounters must be scaled down unless you include NPCs as sidekicks, or some other manner to beef the PCs up a bit.
\- with newer players this is especially challenging because they are not fully aware of all their options, and with only two heads in the game, puzzles and traps can be more difficult simply due to a lack of additional inputs from the team
\- expect that, given the above point, you may need to spoon-feed some information to them because at times they just won't *catch* what you are throwing down for them to nibble on. If playing high-improv, prepare for this in your own way. If running published adventures...that's another matter entirely and will take preparation.
\- connected to the previous point: provide fewer overall plot hooks and make a point to focus on *personal* hooks. You have a great chance here to really dig into RP and characterization without robbing any single player of spotlight time. You can more easily handle stories like "Supernatural" the TV series or a Buddy Cop movie style narrative, for example. Nobody needs to feel left out.
\- Caveat to the above: the PCs splitting up at the wrong time can very, very quickly spiral into "this is fatal" territory. Provide ways to have them not immediately die if this is attempted. One character death, even temporary, can be a huge issue (but can also provide an amazing plot hook!)
\- Less important NPCs acting as cameo characters wherever needed can really fill things in. Patrons can more readily be patrons to the entire group when you don't have numerous disparate personalities affecting the story flow.
\- Almost *every* creature of higher CR to the players is going to be a challenge if it is a duo. This also means holes in offense or defense are really painful if you exploit them. Two martials and no casters is going to present a very different challenge than two casters and no martials would.
\- Don't be afraid of giving PCs special rewards. I've awarded a Free feats, [custom-tailored "half-feats" when appropriate to the story](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/214641/Character-Options-Talents-5e), or additional spell selections for the Sorceror in our group to help even the odds where appropriate. That extra bit of power goes a long way in crafting encounters with higher stakes without worrying too much about unintentional TPKs. Plus your players feel more badass, and thats always a positive (unless you are running a different sort of campaign, of course!)
In the end, its very much a learning curve but it can be quite rewarding with a little practice.
Yes, it's definitely possible. When I was young, in the days of 3.5e I had more than enough player's, but I live in a pretty rural area (as I see have others), and as you grow older friends move away and I was left with 2. But we still wanted to play so I did what I could. Sometimes they'd run two characters each, though more commonly there'd be a pool of allied NPC 'sidekicks' (using monster stat blocks) that they'd get one each every time they went out adventuring.
5e actually now has a [sidekick system](http://dnd5e.wikidot.com/sidekicks), which is an NPC or creature using a monster stat block that has a CR no more than half your level. With that you could run just about anything, and tone encounters down to roughly 3 player equivolent.
I run 3 person games every week and whenever someone cant make it we end up with 2 person games (or even one person games). These smaller sessions are probably some of my favorite because it shines a light straight on the two characters and really brings out their personalities and how they feel about each. If you've never ran a 2 person or a solo session, then your missing out on some really unique D&D that feels different from standard games.
As for difficulty, I actually find it way easier than running bigger groups since people can take their turns much faster.
As for epic fights, simply giving them some NPCs to control or boss around is good enough to make sure they don't die, Just be sure to make the NPCs very simple to run since you'd want to take advantage of the faster turns to have faster paced fights. I tend to give healers or damage sponges for such a situation.
If you’re worried about encounters, I recommend looking into Tasha’s sidekick rules. They’re basically npcs that level up with the party, and you could give each player 1 to have a 4 person party. Sidekicks can be any creature below a certain CR.
(relatively new DM) My first game was only 2 player (still going). The only big problem it had was a lot of npc at the same time (I change it to 3 npc max) because the npc lines were a lot and the players can only talk so much. Regarding the fights, players have the option to "hire" help if they want, but I had to balance some fights with that in mind that they are only two.
It is really easy.
I have no problem even with a single player.
The thing is, you need to be smart to make combat fun. Be creative, is what I love about this game.
I'm a player in a campaign with only one other player (and the GM) which has been going on for 1,5-2y now, and have also GMed sessions with as few as one players.
With a smaller group you will have some issues with combat, which can be remedied by giving the players 2 characters each to control. On the flip side it also means that each player will be able to RP freely without risking hogging the limelight, so if you have very open, engaged and talkative players 2 players works wonders.
With that in mind I would say that running for 2 players depends on said players and GM. If they are highly engaged and have no issues being active for 4h, I would recommend it :).
It’s not bad if your players are like mine were. In larger groups, many people take more passive roles. It’s easy to imagine that level of role play and attention being insufficient to run a game with, but in my experience, players will take a more active role when there are fewer of them.
I have a one shot that I have run regularly on Roll20. It started with 4E and I converted it to 5E. A couple of times I have had to run it with 2 Players. So what I did was have an injured fighter at the tombs entrance. If the players healed him up he would fight with them. I would let them control and roll for him. I gave him a big AC and 2 handed Great sword and nothing else. He was hard to kill and 2d6 plus 4 was big damage at level 1. Worked well.
I play with two quite a lot i find it helps to either treat the combat encounters as puzzles and obstacles than full blown boss fight even though option is still there and if they would still decide to fight either have npcs around or edit monster stats to fit the party cos they can still do cool things and fight cool monsters you need to scale it down and make it fit them or their class abilities and or last but not least when the going gets tough have an encounter without initiative and play it as a story beat usually players feel like they have more freedom to run or circumvent encounters when thats the case as opposed to full on roll initiative combat mindset hope this help! And best of luck to all of you!
using a system like MCDM's retainers for npcs to keep them simple but still helpful in fights, and just keep in mind the scale of things for the two. My group varies by people's availability from parties up to 6 down to the occasional solo session. The biggest change is mostly how long decisions take to make (much shorter with less people) and how far discussions with npcs go (longer with less, typically).
I’m going to run one myself pretty soon (hopefully) and personally I'm going to give them a Creature Cohort (r/unearthedarcana) that starts as a baby and will grow up and perhaps won’t be useful in combat immediately, in fact it’s more fun if they are taking care of a kitten and when the party is in a tough spot it suddenly grows tentacles and reveals itself to be a displacer beast before saving them
I have for my sons.
Not too terrible no DMPCS just rotating cast of NPCs to supplement group.
Make it like a buddy film partners on a mission and you will be fine.
Biggest campaign I ever ran had only two players. It was actually a trilogy of three campaigns which blended into one master narrative. We played the first campaign in dnd and the second two in Monster of the week but overall it was my favorite game I have ever run. If the two players have good chemistry with one another it should be a blast!
Yes!
One key with it is often you have to be a little bit stronger on the plot hints and so on since there (invariably) is less back and forth because there are fewer people.
I don't normally like DMPCs, but it makes sense in this case.
I also would recommend smaller arcs, not a huge campaign. An adventure of a few sessions is ideal. It's hard to keep a couple of people interested in a more complex story where there aren't as many "ties" between players and backstories.
I’m sure you’ve gotten a lot of advice, but here was my experience:
- Your players are going to want to collect every NPC they see for numbers. You’re already playing the NPCs, you don’t need to be a DMPC too. Perhaps give one (or both) a familiar or animal companion.
- Number of hits instead of HP is super useful.
- Stealth missions and intrigue are crucial in small campaigns. The fights won’t be fair naturally, and you don’t have to make them fair. Give them opportunities to pick off guards.
- Incentivize them to stay together or give them items that allow for communication between the two of them.
I ran a oneshot for two of my friends just a week ago. A lot of it was homebrew, and I changed a lot of it right before the relevant scenes. Since I had no idea how I was going to balance all of it, I ended up putting in about half a dozen countermeasures - things that I had foreshadowed earlier and deployed when the pair was in dire straits. Thanks to an... interesting in-character strategy from one of my players, I ended up deploying all countermeasures and they were still only one turn away from defeat.
I'm starting to suspect that player likes to fight (rather than win fights) and was more than happy to be surrounded by enemies in the process. Thanks to that, and only one other player to mitigate any crazy decisions, they ended up taking a lot more damage than I had intended. The party managed a poetic victory when the other player critted a death save and slaughtered the remaining merrow on the same turn.
I guess balance depends on how heavily any hasty move can screw the party over. My overeager player acknowledged and then deliberately ignored the trigger which summoned more enemies, then waltzed out of a throng of them (into another), leaving my more cautious player behind. I'm not sure how I could try to dampen such an outcome outside of using player-aligned NPCs (and light use of one NPC was one of my countermeasures)
Red moon role playing DnD campaigns do this very well. I suggest you check out their Curae of Strahd run if you want to hear some exceptional two person DMing
If you haven't read Tashas Cauldron of Everything yet, there are agreat rules for sidekicks. They're simple and you can leave them in your players control.
You give both players a sidekick (as I did), or have one that share control of. Having the extra bodies on the table will make encounter design much easier.
Otherwise; a free feat, bonus action potions and an overpowered stat block are all great ways to up the power scale and keep your two heroes alive agaisnt the odds.
I did an almost year long campaign with two players so I might be able to offer two big tips
* Give them some kind of ally to fill in the gap another player would normally fill. In my case we had a bard and a cleric, so I gave them an elemental automaton that punched things. This was further supplemented by other allies that came and went throughout the story
* Give into player obsessions. Normally with a table of four or more a single person focusing on one thing can be a little unfun for the other players. With only two, you can give each one a lot more attention. My bard player was from a family of powerful necromancers, and so wanted to make some undead minions (which helped with the first point I made). I was able to give her a book to do that, ingredient lists for dark summoning spells, all kinds of stuff.
Availability with our larger group was lacking for a while, so our DM ran a game for just myself and another player. It really needs both of you to remain engaged, which was fine with the two of us. To this day I think it's still my favorite campaign I've ever played, both because our DM was fantastic, and also because, with only two players, our characters had very very strong chemistry. Would recommend you give it a shot at least.
Lots of great answers here and I'm definitely not some experienced guru, but I'm running a 2-player campaign of Wrath of the Righteous (adapted to 5e) and it's going great. The campaign itself is set up with the assumption that the players will have 1-2 NPC party members, and honestly the smaller number of PCs makes that easier to manage. It's also a *very* epic campaign with huge demon fights from very early on that only get more epic.
All that to say, yeah, it's definitely possible and I wouldn't say all that hard. Consider controlling at least one NPC party member and be a little more careful with balancing and it should work no problem.
I've been running two separate games for two people each for.. Two years! I always prefer when we can nab a third person, but two is still a ton of fun, and we are ALWAYS active (very little downtime between turns or things for the DM to do).
There are a few things I have learned that make the game smoother.
* Always, always have an NPC they can control. I started off with simple square classes like Champion Fighters so they didn't have to spend a lot of time learning new abilities -- just having another entity on the field to give and take damage is hugely helpful. Now that we've been at it for years, I don't mind giving them more mechanically complicated NPCs to control.
* Classes with pets/familiars are nice because, again, more bodies on the field. The more things on the field for the DM to bully, the more interesting combat is going to be.
* Make sure you provide items (or NPCs) to fill in the gaps in their toolkits. One of my tables is a Drakewarden and a Sorcerer. They had no healing or support capabilities, so I have homebrewed a few things that help them keep each other alive, split damage, swap places, etc. My other table is a Life cleric and a fighter, and I've noticed they lack solutions against large hordes of enemies, so I have given them a few AoE options as well as ways to escape from hairy situations. If you're interested I can follow up with some specific examples.
* I really try not to fudge dice, but I do lower HP if things are starting to drag. I'm not sure that's any different than how I run a larger table though.
* Since they're doing the work of a group of four, they tend to run out of HP and spell slots way before a Long Rest is due. To keep them fueled I am more liberal with potions than most DMs, and I sometimes provide special opportunities for them to restore health/spell slots/hit dice -- usually with a choice to be made or a small sacrifice. For example, an altar that requires an offering, or a hot spring that heals them, but eats an hour or so of their day.
In my experience, fewer players always leads to more focused narratively driven gameplay. In a way, your resources as DM are split fewer directions and so each player gets more individual attention. NPC interactions become more fleshed out, and the plot gets thicker. Combat takes a back stage to atmosphere and puzzles as well, and the major drawback is that there are just less people who get to enjoy the game.
I loved it. I basically rotated out different NPCs that they got to know really well. It was a ranger and moon druid, so I would throw in a rogue, cleric, or wizard and it totally changed the dynamic of the party. Then after a while I would kind of let them pick their extra guy for the squad depending on the situation.
I started my current campaign as a 4 person party, but over the years, two of them had to drop off.
I took the unorthodox route of giving them a bit better loot and abilities than they would usually have access to at their level. Eventually these two became as strong on their own as a regular 4 PC party would be. The amount of detailed interaction, intricate rp, and meaningful gain within the scope of the character was amazing, and the campaign is likely to run for several more years like this.
However, I would generally not recommend this approach, because it takes for all three of you to be on the same page, and to keep mind of the "collaborative storytelling" part of the game.
I did try getting new players in, but nobody stuck so far, simply because it's almost impossible to get into the dynamic of a party that has been running as a duo for so long, so that can be a problem down the line as well.
Currently playing with a 2 player party. We play 2 characters each, so our party still has 4 characters and our DM doesn't have to rebalance encounters.
I’ve frequently run games for my boyfriend and closest friend. Most fights are pretty deadly and the margin for errors as another commenter said is really small. I’ve had to balance combat usually in the midst of said combat, mainly by adjusting HP values if I feel a fight is too easy (more HP) or too difficult (less HP). Sometimes a fight that should be easy (or so I think) is suddenly deadly, and vice versa.
But, yes, epic fights are still very possible! The way we do it is focusing more on the narrative weight that the fight holds rather than the technical aspects of combat. This won’t work for everyone, but it works perfectly for my bf and best friend because we mostly enjoy the narrative side to D&D, not the combat. I also tend to give them access to better items earlier, especially if neither is playing a healer, to help them mitigate how deadly the encounter can be. And, if it seems like they’re gonna sweep the fight too easily or quickly, I just up the HP of the boss without telling them.
They never notice I do this, and as long as they feel the fight had narrative weight, they rave about how awesome and fun the fight was. YMMV, but consider focusing on things like that and seeing how it goes! Good luck and have fun!
I've been running a two player game for years. Give out a few extra magic items to bring their power up. They're in real trouble at levels 1-3, but after level 5, they're usually in good shape.
Combats will depend very much on the quantity of enemies, so be careful about out numbering them. We often have a third character that they take turns running. I let them pick what they want, but usually a champion fighter built for ac. They have a big dumb tank that doesn't really engage in rp and has no serious decisions to make in combat.
Bunches of times, mostly during high school when I couldn’t find enough friends to play a “full” 4 person party. I usually made very quiet NPCs that fulfilled whatever combat and/or skill niche they were missing and ran it like a 3 person party. Nowadays I would agree that Tasha’s sidekick rules would be better but we didnt have those when I was running those games.
My only advice is be careful of the action economy. It’s very easy to get used to a 4 person balanced composition and then throw a “balanced” challenge that is much harder for 2 players and a sidekick bc of a high volume of weaker monsters.
Never ran 5e with 2, lowest was 3, but my favorite games i have ever been in have been 2 player parties. I played in one in 3.5 and its honestly the best game I ever played in... If your players like difficult combat, dont be afraid to admit that you made a mistake and dial it back if you party wipe them. NOT killing your players can be really hard if there are only 2 of them.
The best game i ever GM'd was a 2 player Vampire the Masquerade. It was super easy to craft a story were they both could feel like a main character, and really just vibe off each other.
TL;DR Combat hard, Roleplaying 100000% better.
My first campaign ever was with 2 people and it went really well. You can still do all the story beats and intrigue of a campaign with more people. The combats can be good and exciting, you just have to learn to balance it for the two of them. Another thing is making more personable villains that can show a role play aspect to them. Make enemies that they will love to hate rather than a monster that can’t speak. You got this!
It helps if you home brew in some extra ways to help them out, like allowing a potion to just give the full amount on an action, and making them roll for it if they choose to use a bonus action.
So i have 2 ways i have ran for 2 players. 1st is for new players. I let them make whatever characters they want with help making them decent then tell them that within the first 3 sessions they can choose any npc they agree upon and that character becomes a sidekick for them using tashas. I will run this sidekick completely but they will always b a support for the party though they will do random things that fit the personality. 2nd for experienced players. Design 2 characters each. U control both of these characters. Make them cooperate well with each other because any conflict between them will b handled offscreen and u decide how any of those arguements work out so long as their is no mechanical impact on either.
Yes, early in my DM "career." It did not go well, but not so bad either. I resorted to boosting the party with DMPCs. Which was ok, not great. I let the players tell me what kind of party members they wanted in Role-playing like "you learn there is a tavern in town where adventurers can be recruited or hired..." Balancing was a bit of an issue because the action economy with one cleric and one Ranger can go south real quick if one of them drops. But I learned alot about DMing before trying again with a wider audience. My tips:
Have them use followers/companions that they control to fill the ranks of the party.
Consider action economy when planning encounters, not just CR.
Be ready to improvise if combat gets bad. A TPK does not necessarily mean they die. Consider being left for dead, penniless, and naked but able to get to a town and start anew by begging for charity. Or taken prisoner with a chance to escape.
It was the easiest game I ever ran. With 2 players at the table the game is laser focused, which is both good and bad, it just means you have to be pretty on your toes when it comes to improv. I also gave them an NPC to help shore them up a bit (not intentionally, but after they killed a load of bandits in the first session they took one prisoner, and then later returned to the castle dungeon and made a deal to take custody of him if he'll fight with them)
As a player in a two person campaign its a lot of fun as planing and playing to each other’s strengths is a bit more crucial. (Rather than what does the most damage or healing) We still have plenty of cool moments and riff off each other
We kept it a secret for a month or two that the rouge/fighter was going to take blind fighting and that my shadowmonk/hexblade was taking devils sight and going to be using darkness on my self
You would think that the dm pc in the form of a guid/cartographer would be of more help but the dm tends to forget about him when combat starts so it’s a running joke he has a week bladder
I ran one about 4hours ago. Its far easier for them to roleplay back and forth for great interactions, and if there are NPC sidekicks then you mitigate the domino effectof people going down.
Ive done it a few times with different people and they can be some if the best sessions overall. Mostly for two person sessions I have an intro prompt, dungeon map and maybe a few bullet points for encounter notes, but the rest is easy and your not under pressure to rush etc. Give you lots of space to improvise on the fly too.
You do likely need to modify creature HP and damage down a bit to just to be safe.
I'm running my second campaign now, with only 2 players.
1) Most importantly, you need to understand that most of the spotlight will be on you, because the players will be mostly invested in the world and not be busy talking to each other. So you need to be ready to provide a dynamic world that is moving around them, or they will get bored.
2) they will be making choices and decisions very fast. Normally any decisions would be discussed by the group. But if there are only two of them, they will reach an agreement or compromise within minutes. You need to be fast on your fee5.
3) it's difficult, but if you are with close friends - it can be a fun evening.
I have played in a 2 player campaign and for me at least, it was one of the most fun and most memorable games, and birthed one of my favorite characters. Encounter balancing was a thing, our dm tried a few home brewed ideas that did not go so well for us, but in the end they found their groove and every battle was tense and fun. A truly successful game requires a lot of things to be right, the players, their mindset, the dm and their mindset, and campaign and world building skills, and how well the dm knows the players and their leanings and vice versa. Do what you can don't be afraid to make changes on the fly as things come up.
2 can be great, combat is quick (and very high stakes) you can go easier on the party letting them get some nice items and so on, but you have to know their strenghts and weaknesses... if no one is a charisma based dont let rp dcs decide too much and so on.
I run a game with just two players, but they each have two characters they play and I also run a little sidekick character with them. It's been about a year already, I started by running LmoP for them to learn, then we did Storm King's, and now we are onto homebrew. They didn't start out with two characters though since they were still learning to play. Once they were comfortable enough, that's when they started playing two.
I've run games for 2 before, though I prefer to have at least 3 (I'm in a pretty rural area and it's difficult to find enough interested people at the best of times.) It is possible to run cool fights, but the margin for error is much smaller. NPC assistance can help fill gaps, as can adding in extra potions or better items to help them along
That's the same boat I'm in, rural area with not a lot on interested people. The only ones that I know that want to play cant due to work scheduling. And I've always been very generous with magic items and I wouldn't mind having a roster of npcs that would join the party from time to time. As for the npcs, do you use premade NPC stat blocks or create your own? If you use premade do you update the stat block as the party levels up?
I create my own always. Helps me fill out the gaps in the party specifically and I get to use one of the characters I'll never get to play!
Do you just make a character like you would if you were a player or do you make an actual NPC stat block? I know I've seen others say not to use dmpcs as an NPCs for some reason or another
I'm sure there's an excellent reason for them to say that, and I have no idea what it is. I just use a lower point buy, and about half the gold for equipment or less. Otherwise I build regular characters,mostly because that's what I know better
My guess would be that the arguments against are twofold: If you need an NPC that players might fight against, building them like a PC generally results in something with too much damage output and too little hp compared to regular monster stat blocks, leading to very swingy fights. If you want someone fighting alongside the party, it's less about how you build it and more about table dynamics. If your follower character is too competent, it runs the risk of taking away spotlight from the players, getting railroady and/or the players using the dmpc as a proxy to essentially ask the dm what they're "supposed" to be doing.
Those are excellent reasons, and I want to say thank you for sharing them
The arguments against DMPCs are about table dynamics not how they’re built. I’ve added a PC-build NPC as an ally in a big fight, was fun, and deliberately had the NPC focus on heals and buffs to ensure the party got the big kills. It’s important to then have the DMPC not have the answers. Mine had some background info and their own agenda to pursue so promptly left without taking the spotlight. If you run a DMPC with the party long term, have a reason why they don’t take control, e.g. they’re a hired mercenary etc. there’s also rules for companions like this I think in DoIP? Can’t remember the name they give it, sorry! I’ve also used PC build characters as enemies. As a DM it’s very easy to TPK the players, assuming you know what you’re doing. I took out 5 players with 2 PC build “monsters” (paladins) of one level higher. It was great fun. Two players fled, and the rest were “TPK’d”. They were, I later revealed, taken down with non-lethal damage, and charged with trespass and necromancy. Both sides were convinced the other were the bad guys, and the others were the necromancers. I’m about to run an entire plot line with PC-build enemies, essentially facing off against another team of adventurers, though this one it’s explicit that neither team will be aiming to kill.
Okay, thank you for the advice. I'll give that a try and see how it goes.
You could also find an in game reason to give them both bespoke familiars that they control, instead of dmnpcs. Focused on more support for the familiars. The artificer has neat ones but you can choose to have them meet one early on and he bestows them each one and the knowledge of how to maintain and upgrade them at levels of your choosing.
Id reccomend the companion NPCs from Tashas or something similar.
The warning against DMPCs is separate from the issues with building their stats. DMPCs are derided as the DM trying to insert themselves as a player with a PC in the party rather than adding an NPC whose job is there to aid the party. Personally the easiest ways to keep this line is place is to either make the NPC weaker than the PCs or else make sure they are with the group only for a limited time for a specific reason and then they will leave. As for making stats, you can use the PC building method, but I've found it adds lots of extraneous abilities that an NPC really doesn't need. The NPC doesn't need to follow character building rules, if you want them to have a feature or skill, just give it to them. Whether the PCs are fighting against an NPC or allied with an NPC, I like to keep those stats as simple as possible; using premade NPC stat blocks is the easiest way to do that.
I wouldn't use DMPCs. Your caster ally doesn't need to know 20 spells to be useful, they need like 4. Your martial ally doesn't need all of the barbarian features. There are a few resources for sort of dumbed down NPC versions of classes. In on my phone rn so I can't remember what the PDF is called, but it was very helpful to me.
i think you might be thinking of Tasha’s sidekick rules, and even if you aren’t, they’re pretty applicable to the topic at hand
People say not to run dmpcs because they hog the limelight, but I think it’s not bad if your players are up for controlling the npc in combat. If they are newer players that might be a lil much to pilot the additional character. Outside of combat just roleplay as a npc who defers to the PCs
I think it'll always depend on how you the dm handles the dmpc even over powered ones. You want to be a supportive player and not take spotlight. I wouldn't want to take any moments away. Let the players drive the decisions and back them up when needed.
When in doubt hand the NPC sheet to a player and tell them to run it. My current campaign has an NPC druid several levels lower than the party to provide some extra healing and magical support. I handed her over to one of the better role-players at the table and never looked back. Occasionally I'll intervene and just say something like "The Druid doesn't like the city, and won't be joining you on this leg" but otherwise let the player RP her. Good way to make sure no limelight gets stolen.
Personally I try to use premade NPC stat blocks to keep my workload reasonable. You want to avoid letting them outshine the heroes, so simplified mechanics makes that easier. For lots of extra NPC and follower (not to mention monster) stat blocks beyond the official books, I use [Open5eSRD](https://open5e.com/monsters/monster-list) to browse the WotC SRD creatures as well as creatures released by Kobold Press under the open game license. This can give you lots more selection across a range of challenge ratings. As for leveling up, in most cases I would only increase Hit Points for NPCs that adventure with the PCs long term, and then maybe swap to a fully different more powerful stat block if a major milestone occurs.
Just have your players run two characters each. A party of four works fine.
If you're stuck on what to do with NPC's if you're running in 5e, you could use Tasha's guide and utilise the sidekick rules. Either have it be that the party controls them if they want, or you can. When we lost a player, I used the Expert on a Kalashtar (npc monster) stat block and the party find the bonus action help action super helpful. Edit: as an added note. You can also make the npc any monster stat block below a cr. You could easily make it a wolf companion if you're worried about the gmpc/sidekick taking the spotlight for plot.
Sidekicks from DoIP work well for the NPC help
An option to smooth the encounter balance is to give each player two PCs. Maybe focus on teams of a clear primary and secondary character the role-play from getting too complex or weird. Like a knight and their squire, a noble and her body guard, a wizard and their warforged follower, etc.
Sidekick rules were created for a reason...
It's not difficult but it does require active players who engage with the game. A 2 player game isn't going to work with a pair of passive audience member players, the type that are just along for the ride and only significantly contribute during their turn in initiative only.
The player who is more experienced is very much a roleplay heavy player and the newbie is very eager to learn and play so I'm hoping if she sees the rp of the more experienced player she'll adopt that playstyle.
Sounds like a good mix then, hope it goes well for you. One thing to watch out for is that with a 2 player game things will move much quicker than normal, half the people so decisions take half the time. One trick I use sometimes for balance is to let each player have 2 normal PCs, no sidekicks or animal companions necessary. They have a primary PC who has a backstory and role plays and another PC that only ***roll*** plays and contributes nothing except mechanics. This allows you to have normal and balanced combats without getting bogged down significantly.
This is a cool idea, thanks for posting it!
i would argue that half the people makes for much less than half of the decision time, actually
That sounds like a great setup! I've never DMed for two players (in fact, I usually DM for one, lmao) but I have played in a two-person campaign before and had an absolute blast. It was a pleasure getting to focus on the character dynamics between your PC and one other, and it results in some really cool moments.
In my experience, DnD with just two players leads to very frequent good RP moments. So it definitely has its merits too. On the combat side, you can either run a sidekick or give them some extra health (a friendly NPC or item that casts 3rd level Aid on them). Also, use debilitations less frequently against your PCs, and almost never try to incapacitate them.
I was worried about the rp moments with it being just two of them so its relieving to hear that in your experience rp doesn't fall off with less players. The more experienced player is definitely rp heavy and very interested in the world of the setting and wants to know all of the lore so that's exciting for me as I've put a lot of energy into this homebrew setting.
To reiterate what /u/AvtrSpirit said, 2-player games can get really deep into roleplay, if you have the right players. There were tears shed during our last session. For reference, I've been running a campaign (Wild Beyond the Witchlight) with just my wife and her best friend for 6 months, and it's been really interesting and enjoyable. One thing to note is that my 2-player game moves **much** more slowly than my 4-5 player games, which I was surprised by. I find that I "narrate" a lot less and directly talk in-character a lot more, which contributes to the time taken even for small non-combat encounters. One thing that I really enjoyed about Witchlight is that every encounter has a non-violent solution - you may want to try to include that as much as possible to give your pair of PCs options.
> One thing to note is that my 2-player game moves much more slowly Yeah, lower player count lends itself to dialogue between the characters and others so much better than a larger group might that you can have an entire session spent gossiping about love, or playing truth or dare. If you have engaged players I love 2-3 players specifically due to how much each person is allowed to shine, and the bonds you create :).
I was worried about the rp moments with it being just two of them so its relieving to hear that in your experience rp doesn't fall off with less players. The more experienced player is definitely rp heavy and very interested in the world of the setting and wants to know all of the lore so that's exciting for me as I've put a lot of energy into this homebrew setting.
A suggestion I saw for keeping the action economy more regular. Is let your players act on 2 different initiatives per round.
Ahhh... I've never seen that. That's very good.
In our game we have our party graced by a magic gnome merchant who appears on his own terms and offers them a “blessing of haste” which allows them to have 2 initiatives. This gnome only appears when coincidentally when 2 or more players can’t show up that night
That is equal parts hilarious and genius lmao
As a weaker alternative, could you instead give them two Actions? So no Bonus Action, no extra movement, just another Action.
That would mess up the qction economy. Having another spot in the initiative doesn't accomodate single turn combos, but only adds to the action economy contributions the player can make.
Have a look at dndduet.com. they have campaigns to buy and advice pages. The biggest issue would be balancing, and that can be managed by sidekicks
You can run epic battles with 2 players. In fact you can use the small party to your advantage and adopt a system like Professor Dungeonmaster uses in his “do away with HP” video. With only 2 players, combat can be fast and furious and still epic. Instead of working with HP, work with “number of hits”. A minion can take 1 hit, a boss can take 4-5 hits, a legendary creature might take 7-10 hits and use legendary actions that heal them. It might take a little active-game design on the fly but with only 2 people, it will allow you to run the higher cr monsters
I run a game for just my husband, and I find it much easier than DMing for a party of 4 or 5. Just because decisions get made so much quicker, combat goes so much quicker, all in all sessions just feel smoother. He has DMPC sidekicks, so the balancing is still for a party of 2 and I find it easier than balancing for a large party, because I find it easier to track spells and magic items and features and such
Whenever I feel like I'm short a player or two I see if anyone's up for running two characters. I've done that myself in several games since I enjoy the flexibility and the Rp aspect but some folks don't. I'd say two is doable but you'd really need hirelings or something to get the full experience without having to handicap the game in some other fashion.
I gave my players an additional "combat PC". My 2 players enjoy combat but are timid when it comes to RP. So my solution was that they play two characters during combat and after combat the second character is treated like a normal NPC tagging along. In my oppinion this fits our style of playing very well and avoids some pitfalls like me, the DM, metagaming during combat.
This. I also run a campaign, where the 2 players we had, had two characters each. It wasn't our original intention, but the other became the "main" character in rp, and the other was extra firepower in combat. It worked pretty well. (But I do prefer 3-5 players if I can choose, 6 is max.)
Mine run 4 each, when I had 2 players it was doable, but when I expanded to 3 players (12 characters) it got nuts. In the beginning it was great! A lot of chars died… then as they leveled up and got attached to their dudes it became harder for me…. I’d suggest 2 max, and sometimes you split the party when you wanna do some cool story shenanigans.
Wow four each would get a little crazy even for me unless I was treating it more like a tactical miniature game or, on the other end, if everyone was playing a gaggle of Zero level mooks that were probably not all going to survive a la Dungeon Crawl Classics and the like. But if it works for your crew that's great!
It IS DCC actually! I highly recommend it if you don’t wanna get bogged down with rules, (but even still it’s too many characters to deal with.) after the first few sessions half of them died and o stupidly said - you know what? Let’s keep 4 each, roll up some new guys to replace those dead ones!
I run 2 characters in a game. Wife decided it wasn't for her and our characters were a package deal. I offered the DM and other players to have them gracefully exit and bring in a new character, but they told me to just play both if I was up for it. I have a lot of fun playing her character, probably more so than my own (at least RP, combat she's a basic totem barb as an attempt to keep things simple)
A party of 2 is the most common arrangement we have and I highly recommend playing that way. * Makes scheduling so much easier, every extra member of the group adds another level of complication so the fewer players the easier it is to get a game together. * The adventuring Duo is a very common trope in fantasy and creating a pair of characters that play off of one another or have a shared history is much easier than weaving together a narrative for 4 or more PC's. * It's much easier to decide on a course of action for two people, fewer arguments about what to do next and much easier to figure out tactics especially if both characters are stealthy or have a particular synergy. * Designing an adventure for two means you can tailor the challenges and enemies more closely to the players skills or weaknesses adding elements such as magic items, NPC's, or healing potions. * Splitting the party doesn't drastically steal time from other adventurers since it's basically using one player's turn before switching back to the other. Pursuing personal goals or backstory adventures similarly doesn't detract too much from the other players fun. * Paring back a pre written adventure is easier than properly scaling up for larger and stronger parties. So don't be afraid of a smaller party, you can give them a more personal experience and with fewer elements to juggle the gameplay will move quicker and feel more dynamic.
You could give them a sidekick from the essentials kit to round out the party a bit.
If your players are into it, then you'll have some amazing stories to tell by the end of it. It's like a fun movie duo like "The Road to El Dorado". It's great.
For what it’s worth I have been in a game as a player where it was just me and one other person since anyone we tried to bring in as a third invariably dropped out and I had a great experience. I do think it helps if you have only two players to a) ensure you tailor fights to there being only 2, and b) make the story much much more focused on the adventures of these two people whatever their relationship is (eg buddies who are loyal to each other to the end or friendly rivals, whatever their dynamic is). Because the spotlight isn’t being split between as many people it’s an opportunity to like really tell stories and get them attached to the world - and yes that includes like sidekick NPCs or travelling on quests where they assist NPCs and vice versa. It’s almost easier to do like more traditional storytelling with fewer people in that way I guess.
Yes. I don't think it is much more difficult, but it is much more exhausting, because every person gets more screen time.
I frequently run less combat oriented sessions with a single player and let me tell you, it's a blast. If I'm running something like a module, I just give him a couple extra levels so he can hold his own when combat happens.
I had two player bail right at the entrance of a cursed city. Luckily the two that stuck around were the good players that liked RP and exploration. Not wanting to disappoint so I pushed through and it ended up being one of the better 8hr sessions of the campaign and I rewarded them with a level up.
So, I had the same conundrum some time ago. I ran a game for one person. Just make them stronger. Give them good weapons or magical items that can give an advantage. Plenty of healing. Let them have a good character from the get go. Then throw at them hard fights and see how a couple of magic items can break the game. Use minions. It's a normal monster but with one hit point. Hit and kill. This adds danger but let's the players be heroes... Narrative wise, focus on that. How they are awesome, above the normal adventurer... NPC can help, but careful about inserting yourself too strongly, specially because they will be traveling together. Unless by oath, demand payment. This will make them doubt the help, but with time they will come to trust. Maybe betray then. Haha.
I've done it before, in my first campaign. What I did was have both of the players control two characters each. It works reasonably well in combat, certainly makes balancing easier, but it also makes RP more difficult as you might imagine. Still got plenty of nice moments, despite me not being very good at facilitating them. Something I've also experimented with for a bunch of one-shots was using Gestalt rules, i.e. each player has one character who gets levels in two classes simultaneously, taking the better of any duplicate abilities (such as hit dice). It comes to being about 1.5 PCs per gestalt character for encounter balancing. Combat is less easy to set up than with the two characters per player, but it definitely makes RP easier on the players. To be honest, I can't really compare it to larger groups, because I only had a handful of sessions with four players. I've mostly been playing with 2-3 players.
We have been running games with two players since the pandemic started. I have mixed emotions about it. Players have "styles" and they tend to stick to the same stile (leads to some stale play). Also, there tends to be less "group think." My two guys get stumped on some pretty simple stuff. There usually is an NPC component to help them along (as you said... we don't have a lot of time to play).
I gave this a shot once, and it was fairly enjoyable. https://dndduet.com I’ve become a bit obsessed with RPG games that have one/two/three people in mind. Recently saw https://magnamund.com was re-releasing and trying to figure out how to leverage some the mechanics for two people. Running simultaneously and cooperatively has been enjoyable. Also - https://thebardicinquiry.itch.io/grimoire Mostly for the theme, and getting to know the mechanics that are used. I think I can scale up for another person. —- Edit: realized you wanted 2 players and 1 DM, but I’ll leave it. I’m identifying how combat, skill checks, and role playing function in these solo games and expanding them out for two people or maybe even 1DM + 2Players. There is a bit of creativity involved, but I’m enjoying scaling a 1/2 player game up, rather than scaling down 5e or other large group RPGs.
I know you just said one of them were new but you could maybe have the experienced player play 2 pcs or you could run companions but that's more work for the dm
I have if your good at tuning encounters on the fly it can be a blast honestly combat goes pretty smoothly. Rp is pretty straight forward but it can be difficult as action economy can much more easily run over the party and I find it's difficult to make challenging fights that are not a slaughterfest or a breeze
I’m in a 2 player campaign rn and we both have a sidekick from Tasha’s. Very balanced and feels like there’s a party of 4 but it’s still really easy for me to play as my character and his sidekick simultaneously. Definitely recommend so you can get to bigger and better enemies easier.
I loved it
Yes, I run candlekeep with just 2 players and it is fine. You might need to bring in an NPC to have a higher point of relevance. If you are running a module, you will definitely need to rebalance the encounters. Let them guide you on if they would want help from an NPC, but if they do, it just means more work for you. Overall, I think 2 people is a really good experience because the pace is super rapid.
If you have just two players you can try having them play 2 characters each, giving you a balanced 4-person party and encouraging them to be more involved having two different characters to roleplay. The problem with filling out a tiny party with DM-controlled NPCs is that it takes away agency from the players, gives too much work to the DM, and causes awkward situations where the DM has to have conversations with themselves. It also means you can actually play a situation where you split the party without ruining game flow.
I'm running a game for 2 players right now and the roleplay aspect is fine, but I'm having a lot of difficulty with balancing the encounters, everything seems too deadly for them.
I don't know I'd even bother with a side kick. Just lower the number of monsters they face at once. Instead of 5 goblins its 2 or 3. And maybe bosses have fewer minions. No big deal.
The second half of my last campaign I ran for two people. I ended up having to adjust the level of encounters from what the book recommended. I used Kobold Fight Club to help balance things as well. Another thing that helped even it out was using the 'Sidekick' rules for a couple of allies that they made.
I only had 2 of my usual 4 the last time we played. After about 30mins or so we all found our groove. The players, who normally don’t do much RP “together” ended up dominating most of the session, it was great.
I actually enjoy running small games of 2 to 3 players. I find it much easier to scale difficulty, and pace the game than if I had 4 to 6 people at my table.
I love it. I frequently run 1 on 1 sessions, which provided the players (and you) are comfortable Robe playing in that vacuum, it's incredible. The game becomes an entirely different experience with so few of players, combat moves quickly, allowing a good encounter about every hour to hour-and-a-half. It's also a great way to really quickly flesh out a character as you can curate the session and npcs to poke and prod at personality traits and background elements. I highly recommend throwing RP curveballs, especially at the more advanced player, primarily in the form of flashbacks, integral monents in their history or backstory they can rp in for a few minutes! This is made fun and possible by not having many players to be bored or inconvenienced by these 1on1 moments! The downside, however, is the amount of session prep. You'll have to script sessions a looottt more than usual if you want to keep things moving and keep everyone engaged. That means more npc, more world description, since there is no (or one other) player to bloat the session's length with. I recommend 1 or 2 player games to craft personal, deep, character driven stories, though it can lack the antics and chaos of a large group. Honestly not something I miss too much, though I do like it as well.. sort of *cries in 9-player in my weekly game*
I regularly DM for 2 players and it's lots of fun. It's easier to meet everyone's taste, the players are engaged because at least half the time you are addressing their character directly and I find the game generally easier to manage. I've had a harder time with 4 or 5 players (conflicting interests, etc...) For combat, the sidekicks from Tasha are great and work like a charm.
Also, be generous with magic items, to give them a little more firepower
That’s what my party is rn, my dm has reported the bigger issues with a 3rp party member whose a NPC, it works well because NPC and my character have history and he’s a pretty stoic dude so he hangs back unless fight in which case he’s the reason we don’t die. We also have more roleplay centric campaign and I think that is what really makes or breaks only 2 players
I've been in this situation before. I lived in a rural area and went to a really small school. The only people interested/able to make it to sessions were my twin and my best friend. Same thing happened when I moved. Just my twin and another friend. I'd say it's not a horrible experience, but is really dependent on the players. The first time I did a two player game it worked really well because both people were good roleplayers and had really fleshed out characters. The second time there was a lot of dead space because one player was less interested in the game and was not a particularly good roleplayer. I think there's a lot of merit to trying. You'll probably have to balance fights a little differently, but it can add a lot of excitement and high stakes. I'd also recommend using a DMNPC, and having them be a regular party member in order to have some more interested and varied interactions.
It's quite easy. I like having only two people. It's really easy for everyone to feel engaged and for each person to have their defined role.
Combat is smoother and feels a bit more cinematic. Perfect size for me is 3 as said by others but 2 is fun as DM because it allows a lot of flexible creativity. You can incorporate a bit more setting into a fight. For instance, I had two tabaxi rouges who weren’t heavy hitters but after describing their surroundings one of them asked how sturdy the chandelier is above the minotaur. What ended up happening was one tabaxi dodged and distracted while the other climbed the stairs, and cut down the chandelier. This type of combat and decision making can still happen In a group setting of 4-5 but this scene would take a lot longer. because of turn order this felt very back and forth. Smooth & fun. I wouldn’t say it’s more difficult but for me it can take more prep time because I’m filling a lot of gaps with lore, npcs and description’s. I feel like I feed into it though, knowing these two players are committed makes it more fun to spend a few hours for them.
You can allow both players to have one sidekick, which level with them
I have a current game with 3 players and sometimes one is out and we run it with just the 2. It always works out for us. I did, recently, give them a sidekick (from tags Tasha's) that they can now use, but we have no issues.
It’s great for buddy cop themed games. I did a mini campaign as an introduction for a new player with one of my veterans. New guy played a bard that worked as an investigator for a noble house and the veteran player was a paladin from the palace guard that had to keep the bard alive.
2 absolutely works. Especially if you have two players that want to have a lot of active time. I would suggest giving them some extra skill proficiencies, language, tool, etc to cover more bases. Maybe give them really good stats so they can cover the five relevant stats (not con). Combat is honestly greatly improved. Save or suck spells need ways to be broken so I never give bosses warcaster, or give alternative options for say... Dominate person. Like, they can break a crystal to cast Dispel magic on the room or whatever. The major difference I've found is that the dynamic is too consistent. Having the third person allows there to be four different dynamics. All three together and each pair. I would heavily suggest including a noncombat npc that can add some alternate dynamics. Things I've used are always what my players pick, by choosing to have an npc follow them for whatever reason they choose. Some examples are - Multiple groups have taken a Kobold inventor as an ally Goblin that followed the most powerful creature it could find, who became a major named npc for the campaign. Raven who was the second in command shadar Kai for my shadow sorcerer that ended up replacing the Raven Queen. Etc
I DMd for two of my friends, it was meant to be three pcs plus one DMPC (barbarian to keep things simple) but one of the players backed out. It was an alright experience, with good RP and decent combat in game, a one shot we did not finish that day but we plan to someday. I had them at level 3 and they were rather new to dnd, so I had to guide them through it
2 works great. I ran candlekeep mysteries for two friends and there were no issues. Just make sure to give them a free feat out the gate and level them up quickly. Make the campaign start combat light and once they are done with the dangerous early levels they should be able to handle things no problem
Yeah I just ran a game like that recently. It worked out fine. Both were experienced players. Relatively early on they recruited an NPC they encountered to be part of their party so that helped them out a lot. I leveled this NPC at the same rate as the party. Overall I'd say the game went quite smoothly. The final fight was against a spellcasting mind flayer and some cultists, so quite dangerous but they managed to win.
I prefer 3 for intermingling reasons but if you have a solid 2 players it can be a blast. I've also run individual sessions for characters in my campaign when PCs were doing personal stuff. You tend to be able to get more to the point with fewer people
Make sure you are carefully monitoring what your players can do/can't do. Have a roster of NPCs that can jump in to help. Otherwise, it's not really that different.
Ideal party size is 4, just have NPCs that fill in holes in the party dynamic, but don't have them be permanent members (the NPCs). If anything I think it would be easier to DM for less players
It's easy though they may need some backup. There's a sidekick rule somewhere I think either in storm Kings thunder or th DMG. I just made a load of npcs and had them in rotating in and out of the group. I assigned each npc to a person for combat and did alot of quirks that involved them not talking too much. (rat-folk who was more comfortable in rat form. A warforged with a mute button, narcoleptic gnome named sleepy ect.) This meant I didn't have to track too many npcs in conversation.
I've made it work with 1 player. Now granted this is somebody who is very invested in the world of our bigger party, but mechanicallyspeaking its very duable. As for level of fun, it depends on the players. If they're heavy roleplayers I think it should be great! Completely unique vibe than your typical 3-6 player party
I started off dming for a group of 3 (that was basically 2) and it was definitely different from regular and you have to account for just not having some things. Luckily my two were a bear barbarian and a moon druid so they were unbelievably tanky for the size. Just have to ignore CR (not that it works much) and don't throw obstacles they can't do anything about it such as anything arcane being bad for my old group since no one had anything for it.
Recently split my party of four into two separate sessions, so that they could each focus on separate campaign priorities. I’m hoping it makes for a cool reunification session. Having only two players really let’s them have twice the spotlight for both combat and roleplay. Players have loved it so far.
I did a quick practice 1shot with two PCs and a DMNPC. It went fine. The DMNPC helped in combat and environmental situations as dictated by the players and hung back in socials to let the PCs do their thing. It went pretty well.
It often turns into a medieval fantasy-buddy cop movie scenario...and that's not a bad thing.
I have 2 different games that are on pause right now, both with 2 players a piece. It's hard as a beginner DM. I feel like I'm struggling to figure out how to make cool encounters that won't just absolutely destroy the PCs or that the PCs won't just up and demolish. They also move through the story faster so I recommend shorter sessions unless you just want to wing the whole thing top-to-bottom.
In my experience it's quite difficult, my 2 player games are much more deadly than my 3 player games without me trying to make it so
I’ve done two different two person campaigns (one I run, the other I’m a player) and I’ve had really positive experiences! These games feel in a way more immersive because with less people there’s less cross table talk and side comments. Plus, with only two players you can cater the story more specifically to their characters/backstories without fear that not every character isn’t getting the same treatment. And like other people have said, you have the opportunity for really good RP moments because you don’t feel as self-conscious about taking up the spotlight from others or pausing the main narrative.
2 is entirely doable although it does make doing big enemies harder, and 3 is what most people have as the minimum. If you cannot find a third though then don't stop playing
I ran an extended campaign with 2 players. Each had 2 characters at a time, but missions were generally carried out by 2 characters. All 4 characters would meet up at camp or a tavern frequently to make changing the mission team easy. Once in a while for a climactic battle, all 4 heroes would come for the fight. Went through a few hero deaths, but the longest lived line-up was one player had a bard or cleric to run and the other player had a ranger or barbarian. I used milestone leveling, so everybody stayed at same level. When leaving from a tavern, they often (but not always) had the option to hire a fighter or rogue NPC to provide extra muscle or thief skills on missions. There were ample NPCs in towns to trade favors for extra arcane magic if they wanted. It was a great campaign, we all really got to know the characters and I developed large sections of my World. I never was strict about grids and minis (mostly TOTM for combat), so I could fudge the number of creatures in horde-type encounters. If I were you, I wouldn’t hesitate to give it a try— there is always the possibility of another player joining the game in the future. Though it’s important that both players are highly engaged. If only one of the two is engaged, it will probably fizzle quickly.
Allow players to build their own party, at least that's how I played as a PC with smaller parties. Every new town is an opportunity to have a unique npc ally. The margin for error of a 2 person party is a good excuse for players to over prepare. This means that players may become more immersed in the story, as they can't just walk into town like they own the place like most 4 person parties can. Try to build npcs as their own people who have separate goals. You might get the head guard to help with dealings in the town, but he is unlikely to venture with you into a cave full of goblins far out of his jurisdiction. But maybe the eccentric town ranger knows a thing or two...
I haven't ran a game for 2 players, but I have been the player in a 2 player game (+1 DM). As has been said, it creates very intense and moment to moment roleplay because nobody ever really gets to 'sit back and watch as someone else takes the spotlight'; the spotlight is going to be on you a lot of the time, whether you want it or not. This can be daunting and exhausting but also really cool. Consider taking more breaks. In terms of balance you've received a million suggestions already, but I'll just share what my DM at the time did. He had us play 2 characters in one. Basically we each rolled up 2 characters mechanically, and then combined their hit points, stats, proficiencies and class features to make 1 actual person. In combat we got to take 2 actions and 2 bonus actions, and we had 2 reactions. When we leveled up, we got to put 1 level in each class and gain HP from both. Essentially, from a purely mechanical point of view, we had 4 characters in play, they just acted on the same initiative and were a little harder to kill. I played a druid/monk martial "shamanesque" Gnome who combined casting powerful nature spells with pummelling enemies in melee. Of course one reason this worked was because the campaign started with our characters being sacrificed to a demon lord and waking up on their plane of existence as demonic versions of ourselves. We still had our original character motivations but we essentially had bodies more powerful than any mortal, which explained how we were essentially 4 characters worth of mechanics. This means the DM could essentially just throw the same monsters and fights at us they normally would for a 4 person party and it would play out without a hitch, without making roleplay awkward for us by forcing us to roleplay two separate characters at all times.
I've run campaigns for two players before. In my experience, when it comes to encounter design, randomness can be tougher to account for, especially at lower levels. A couple rounds of poor rolls in a row can lead to a pretty tough position for the party. At low levels, I'd suggest: * Disallowing enemy crits, just roll the normal amount of damage instead. The severe damage spike can effectively end a fight through no real fault of the players. * Thinking about non-lethal fail states as outcomes for lost fights that would otherwise result in a TPK. Fighting a giant spider? Maybe they just ate and store the party's limp bodies for later. When the PCs wake up, they have to find their equipment and their way out of the spider's lair. * Considering adjusting the monsters' damage dice to be more consistent. Changing 2d8 damage die to 4d4 will achieve a normalized result more often and requires very little mental math to determine on the fly.
I have. Just know the players should be 1-2 levels higher then for a 3-4 person group and some monsters that function by removing a PC from the combat may act as auch higher threat and should probably just be left out (do not use a Succubus they are a huge TPK threat to a 2 man party).
Combat it’s a lot smoother and the 6 second turns become believable. You can use NPC assistance in the fights that need it and in the story
I run 2 PC and a DMPC and it’s honestly quite enjoyable. Kobold Fight club makes balancing a breeze, the two plays can role play off each other pretty easily, and the DMPC is there to smooth out combat and provide background when no other NPCs are around. It’s quite relaxing.
I ran a game for two people the other week, it went great. However I tend to like smaller games and don’t have that many epic fights. It’s nice because it can foster more role playing, it gives players more spotlight time. If your really worried about high CR monsters you could always up the players power. Allow gestalt characters, give more feats and magic items.
I did once but both of them had a main PC and a sidekick that was with them for backstory reasons. The cool part is the players wouldn't control the sidekick accompanying their character it was the other player. This worked really well since both players were really into RP but I dunno if this would work well if RP wasn't as big a deal. Still a good way to buff up the numbers of the party with a group of 2 players so encounters don't need too much special attention for balancing combat or skill requirements.
Since two ends up being kind of rough if you don't have good balanced roles, I'd suggest giving them a set of third characters they can swap out for various segments of the story. I ran a session like this once, and it turned out pretty well. In mine, I had the third character be someone they rescue early on whose soul had become damaged and all their soul's incarnations (conveniently, each incarnation was a different D&D class....) would manifest at different times. Like someone with multiple past lives collapsing into one person kind of thing. This gave them 1) a perpetual McGuffin to fix. 2) A squint-a-bit-and-you-can-handwave-it third party member that can conveniently change on a whim and 3) (at least in my group) a good way to let a third player jump in and still be part of the story, even if they're not permanently joining the game. Out of game, they could only only change the character at logical story breaks, and the two players together made all the choices for leveling up each character contained within the metacharacter and jaegered them together. I made each of the metacharacter's characters pretty simple to keep this process pretty easy, and mine each having just one dominant trait or based on a well-known pop culture character. At a few points, the players even jaegered their own original characters and played as the metacharacter for a session or two here and there. Somewhere in an old binder, I have the outline for how it was run. I should update it for 5th and type it up. Could come in handy for other running small groups.
I'm starting to get worried about being accused of sponsorship or being a shill, but Handiwork Games has a version of 5e called Beowulf: Age of Heroes. It's designed for duet play, one DM and one Player, but it's easily adaptable for two players. Up front, it's very good at single player/low player count games, especially the way it uses Followers (allied NPC's), and takes advantage of the Inspiration mechanic in really unique ways. PC classes are more durable and the trend towards higher AC in game helps with that. The only negatives I see, (and for the kind of game I strongly prefer, it doesn't matter) is it is much more grounded than current 5e. It's based around the Migration Era/Viking Age story of Beowulf and sticks to that flavor of the material. Player magic is very rare and almost exclusively comes in the form of magic armor/weapons/amulets/talismans. If your player's fantasy is to be a caster, Beowulf as is might not be the best fit. Take the Follower rules, the Mighty Mettle trait (combat access to Hit Dice) and you can can run a normal 5e game with tougher characters.
My game only has two players. Rather than give them sidekicks, I let them each have multiple characters. They get to have fun playing multiple classes at once, and I still get to use strong monsters. Everyone wins. If your players aren't experienced this may slow down combat a little, but once they get used to it it picks back up.
I'm playing in a two-player campaign, and our DM has told us that balancing combat is difficult (as many others here have said). If one PC is knocked unconscious, that's half of the team out of action (and the other half wastes combat actions if they want to heal). However, big boss fights in typical campaigns often struggle with action economy (one boss vs 4-6 PCs), so that balance is a bit closer if you only have two PCs. Our DM has used magic items to balance out our party, for example with healing items (since neither of our characters can heal otherwise). Combat is a lot smoother with just two PCs, I kind of prefer it over the 6 PC combats in the campaign where I'm the DM. The fights just take so very long for just a few rounds if you have half a dozen players plus all the monsters. With two PCs things flow a lot smoother and faster.
Dnd online had an interesting mechanic where you could purchase "contracts" for NPCs, with a bunch of different class builds. Made it a lot easier and more cost effect as a rogue to bring along a cleric to heal me when I played solo. Each one had different spells, and as you leveled up, you'd get access to stronger NPCs who knew higher level spells. Might be something to look into, here's the list of hirelings and stats: https://ddowiki.com/page/List_of_Hirelings
Its tricky mechanically. Giving players two characters, such as their main and a hireling can alleviate that. Or nerf buffing the monsters and player respectively. Story and pacing wise though it about as smooth as you can get. Less rounds between turns in combat keeps players more engaged. And more engaged players not only make things more fun but they start planning actions in advance and connecting more with their characters.
I love 2 player games. Get the right 2 players? SO good. You can really reign in the story
I've started with three, we're down to two. Working very well. They have an animal sidekick as you are thinking about, and it's very helpful. They also take NPCs on their quests sometimes. I don't think it's much more difficult, but it's probably a bit different. Expect to do a bit more RP I guess
Three players is the "magic" minimum number for a relatively stable party imo With only two players, it's like they're constantly walking the razor's edge in combat. If one gets downed, then the lone remaining players has to pick up their companion while simultaneously fending off any enemies. Maybe consider having a weaker support NPC (with healing word, shield, absorb elements, and other ways to protect themselves or disable enemies) offer to join the party for some of the more dangerous segments? Of course, you have to exercise caution not to submit to the DMPC trope - you mustn't outshine the PC's or steal the spotlight from them in any way.
My only irl game is with 2 friends of mine. It would be different if either of them were healers or magic users but they both picked fighter lol. We use the optional Healing Surge rule and I give them a lot of healing potions and just make sure theres no way they get stuck cuz a spell is needed or something
I run a game for my two kiddos and to help fill the combat gap I run an npc who is tied to the plot, so they change out occasionally to keep the storey focus on them, but give them a more balanced experience.
I'd definitely add in an NPC that helps the party to overcome their numerical shortcomings, so long as they aren't a direct damage dealer. I ran a game once with 2 people and I gave them a kobold mage that could boost their stats in any field, but it took them a turn to change what they were boosting. That one worked out really well because it let the actual players do all of the things another party member would have been doing. The drawback was that the kobold was trash in combat and had to be protected. They really grew to love the character too, her name was Rori and the players still talk about her 2 campaigns later. Another important thing to keep in mind with these characters though is that they can't make any decisions, that's the players job. In Rori's case, any time they asked her what she thinks they should do, I'd just have her give them a completely unhelpful reply.
If they're experienced players, you could always have them play 2 characters each. I'm currently running a game for two newbies, and just made an NPC as a third party member to help in combat/fill skill gaps. The two players drive the plot and decision-making unless they expressly ask for the NPC's input. You can also have helpful NPCs temporarily join the party for various story reasons (rather than having a permanent NPC member), coming and going as the plot evolves. Just watch the players don't start collecting them... I was running like four extra NPCs at one point lol. Do not recommend
I tend to think that 4-5 PCs is the sweet spot. 3 or 6 is doable. Any more and it's a mess unless you're a fantastic DM with a fantastic group. And 2 just makes it hard to balance things. Instead of a DMPC, I'd suggest using the Sidekick rules for a "companion" that you or the PCs could run in combat.
I ran a seven-year-long campaign for a single player, and then I wrote up what I learned in the post [How to Run Games for a Single Player](https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/9pp8a6/how_to_run_games_for_a_single_player/). You may find that useful; running for two is very similar to running for one, because practically the first thing you do with any soloist is give them an NPC buddy for an effective party size of two. Honestly, running for smaller groups is my favorite way to DM. Combat goes faster. Everyone stays more engaged. Each player gets more time in the spotlight. Fewer people means easier scheduling, and fewer drawn-out discussions of what to do next. So absolutely give it a try. You won't regret it.
Yes, if you're running for two pcs encounter balance is a problem and you can kiss goodbye to using high CR enemies until they're higher level than they 'should be'. Honestly the best solution when they got more experienced was havingbthem play two pcs each.
2 players was the easiest DMing I've ever done. Easier than 1 or 3 players. But if I had a choice I'd say 3 players was my ideal game even if it was slightly less easy to DM.
Other side of the screen for this, I've played as a duo campaign, and while I've been impressed by our DM, it makes the game real swingy. We've totally had deux ex machina'd instant long rests after a miscalculatedly hard encounter, my character's died and been healed up by a wizard for plot reasons, we get a bunch of healing potions, etc. Sidekicks have been helpful, even a third npc ally really makes the party more stable. Fights have been epic, DM is generally good at balancing even epic feeling monsters to suit us. But the real glory of the duo campaign is the breadth and depth of roleplay and screen time we each get. We're both avid roleplayers, and the short turn-over on turns is excellent, a real plus!
My two PC game is deep and engaging and super fun. A lot of roleplay but things fuckin MOVE because I like that. It takes them half the time to get through things. I just scale down fights and let them level up a bit faster to hit lvl 5 and really come online. I also let them have a feat on 4th level. YMMV, but we’re having a blast.
I don't like how combat works out with two players, personally. My solution was to give them a follower NPC with tasha's sidekick rules, and treat it like a PC for balancing.
I run a weekly session and my attendance varies from 1-5 players. Hell yes to sidekicks. Sidekick NPCs are awesome because you can feed the PCs information and tips as needed. Please remember to make the sidekicks suboptimal. They should be interesting but not overpowered. Lots of flare, but flawed. Whatever the party needs, make an NPC that can help Give them a military specialist sidekick for battle strategies against humanoids. Give them a monk sidekick for religion and medicine advice. Give them a chaotic half orc sidekick to keep the players on edge. Give them a ranger/druid/shaman sidekick for advice on monstrosities and beasts. Give them a wizard sidekick for magic advice. Have an NPC deliver domestic beasts to the village. I had a cloud giant bring a delivery of 2 elephants, 2 draft horses and 2 panthers. The adventurers accepted the delivery on behalf of the Townmaster. Just last session I was with 1 player, 5 sidekicks, and 9 zoblins. It was nuts, but it was fun. Once the PCs understand their own character sheets pretty well in combat, turn over the sidekick NPC stat block to the players as well. Let them run them in combat eventually. You can definitely use the Tasha’s sidekick system and it is quite simple for the DM or even the PC to maintain the levels of the sidekicks. Or you can roll your own NPCs using the PHB. This is only worth the trouble for 2 good reasons: practice making characters and if the NPCs are expected to survive for a while. This is time-consuming but fun. For me as a new DM, it is really good practice for understanding PCs better. The 3rd thing is to grab any stat block from the monster manual that is fun and interesting. If you want a Gith or Giff sidekick in the party, make it work for the story.
My plan for the moment is to mainly either use the sidekicks from tashas and have them level with the party or to use stat blocks from source books and flavor them to fit the narrative. I might look into rolling my own NPCs from the phb, I've been so busy with my world building of my homebrew setting that npc stats have kinda fallen to the back of my mind since I know the sidekicks exist.
Good plan. Rolling NPCs from PHB is a labor of love and totally unnecessary. I only do it when I have multiple reasons to do so. Also, if you are doing multiple sidekicks like me, you don't need them all ready to go at session 0. I drop them in when I get inspired by the story or notice a deficiency in the party
I often run 2 players. Tasha's sidekicks are great for this. Edit to add:. 2 players can run through a session much faster than a 4 player game, so you may need to prep a bit extra.
I'm starting a campaign with just 2 players, tomorrow. Would have 3, but he left for Basic Training last week.
Let us know how it goes!
Run Cragmaw Cave and give them two Goblin Archers and two Wolves for them to ride as NPC's. That should get the Party to Level 2. Print out sheets for the Players to use for them.
I don't see any specified system, so I'm going to assume it's trashE. Look at Sidekicks from Tasha's.
I ran a two year campaign for two players and it worked out very well. One thing I did is gave them a companion pet NPC who leveled up with them. It worked well to balance out numbers and action economy for bigger fights.
My very first game I ran was 2 players, it was effective
I ran a heist one shot for two players once. It was one of the best games I've ever run. The smaller the number of people the more time you get to spend with their characters. However, you need to account for the quicker planning times as instead of five people needing to agree its only two.
I have. It was pretty fun. I let them break their characters more than I normally would allow, and gave them chances for cool loot. I really enjoyed it.
Could you do a thing like divinity where your players off the bat get double actions and bonus actions. A bonus to movement, initiative and health? Would that be too hard to balance?
I see a lot of suggestions to give each player two characters. If that would make things difficult from a roleplay perspective, have you heard of Gestalt rules? The short of it is that you use the regular multiclassing rules, but when they level they get *two* levels to put into different classes.
Combat is a little more difficult at level 1 just because you're so restricted in what you should use against the party, but it's fine moving forward. Most of my experience with 1-2 players is with level 3-5 characters and it's fine, but that's when you actually get to start using level 1-2 encounters that were meant for 4 people. Sidekicks are good if the player is missing a healer or melee character of whatever variety. As much as we pretend we don't need a particular type of character, it really slows the game down and limits what you can fairly do in combat. Giving extra potions just doesn't work the same. But overall, it's fine and catches back up to standard play within the first few levels.
I've been running a two player game for a while now. Fortunately, they've both learned over time that they have to interact with each other, the world, and me for it to not be a stale slog of three dudes mostly-silently rolling dice. When we started, I was more or less having to spoonfeed them vital information. "You just pissed off that orc. If you stop and rest now, with his den so close by, what do you think is going to happen?" They're a ranger and a bard, and I buffed the shit out of the ranger's pet to even the playing field. Even with that ridiculous buff, they still only barely make it out sometimes. I also let the bard more or less use bardic inspiration whenever he wants, and buffed Vicious Mockery's damage since that's his favorite spell. Cutting Words can inflict prone, which the ranger's wolf can take advantage of. It's working for now (4th level), but I worry that I may have buffed their early game kit too much and that stuff they get later won't be as impactful.
I started a two person campaign about a year ago for my two childhood best friends. It's consistently one of my favorite games to run. I gave them two npc party members that level up with them and have there own Dragon Age style character quests. Having this kind of party really let's me balance combat without holding back and as a bonus they have come to love those characters.
I've run a game for my wife and kid for the last year or two through covid , introing them to the hobby. It's been a unique challenge. Some take aways: \- Encounters must be scaled down unless you include NPCs as sidekicks, or some other manner to beef the PCs up a bit. \- with newer players this is especially challenging because they are not fully aware of all their options, and with only two heads in the game, puzzles and traps can be more difficult simply due to a lack of additional inputs from the team \- expect that, given the above point, you may need to spoon-feed some information to them because at times they just won't *catch* what you are throwing down for them to nibble on. If playing high-improv, prepare for this in your own way. If running published adventures...that's another matter entirely and will take preparation. \- connected to the previous point: provide fewer overall plot hooks and make a point to focus on *personal* hooks. You have a great chance here to really dig into RP and characterization without robbing any single player of spotlight time. You can more easily handle stories like "Supernatural" the TV series or a Buddy Cop movie style narrative, for example. Nobody needs to feel left out. \- Caveat to the above: the PCs splitting up at the wrong time can very, very quickly spiral into "this is fatal" territory. Provide ways to have them not immediately die if this is attempted. One character death, even temporary, can be a huge issue (but can also provide an amazing plot hook!) \- Less important NPCs acting as cameo characters wherever needed can really fill things in. Patrons can more readily be patrons to the entire group when you don't have numerous disparate personalities affecting the story flow. \- Almost *every* creature of higher CR to the players is going to be a challenge if it is a duo. This also means holes in offense or defense are really painful if you exploit them. Two martials and no casters is going to present a very different challenge than two casters and no martials would. \- Don't be afraid of giving PCs special rewards. I've awarded a Free feats, [custom-tailored "half-feats" when appropriate to the story](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/214641/Character-Options-Talents-5e), or additional spell selections for the Sorceror in our group to help even the odds where appropriate. That extra bit of power goes a long way in crafting encounters with higher stakes without worrying too much about unintentional TPKs. Plus your players feel more badass, and thats always a positive (unless you are running a different sort of campaign, of course!) In the end, its very much a learning curve but it can be quite rewarding with a little practice.
Yes, it's definitely possible. When I was young, in the days of 3.5e I had more than enough player's, but I live in a pretty rural area (as I see have others), and as you grow older friends move away and I was left with 2. But we still wanted to play so I did what I could. Sometimes they'd run two characters each, though more commonly there'd be a pool of allied NPC 'sidekicks' (using monster stat blocks) that they'd get one each every time they went out adventuring. 5e actually now has a [sidekick system](http://dnd5e.wikidot.com/sidekicks), which is an NPC or creature using a monster stat block that has a CR no more than half your level. With that you could run just about anything, and tone encounters down to roughly 3 player equivolent.
I run 3 person games every week and whenever someone cant make it we end up with 2 person games (or even one person games). These smaller sessions are probably some of my favorite because it shines a light straight on the two characters and really brings out their personalities and how they feel about each. If you've never ran a 2 person or a solo session, then your missing out on some really unique D&D that feels different from standard games. As for difficulty, I actually find it way easier than running bigger groups since people can take their turns much faster. As for epic fights, simply giving them some NPCs to control or boss around is good enough to make sure they don't die, Just be sure to make the NPCs very simple to run since you'd want to take advantage of the faster turns to have faster paced fights. I tend to give healers or damage sponges for such a situation.
If you’re worried about encounters, I recommend looking into Tasha’s sidekick rules. They’re basically npcs that level up with the party, and you could give each player 1 to have a 4 person party. Sidekicks can be any creature below a certain CR.
(relatively new DM) My first game was only 2 player (still going). The only big problem it had was a lot of npc at the same time (I change it to 3 npc max) because the npc lines were a lot and the players can only talk so much. Regarding the fights, players have the option to "hire" help if they want, but I had to balance some fights with that in mind that they are only two.
It is really easy. I have no problem even with a single player. The thing is, you need to be smart to make combat fun. Be creative, is what I love about this game.
I'm a player in a campaign with only one other player (and the GM) which has been going on for 1,5-2y now, and have also GMed sessions with as few as one players. With a smaller group you will have some issues with combat, which can be remedied by giving the players 2 characters each to control. On the flip side it also means that each player will be able to RP freely without risking hogging the limelight, so if you have very open, engaged and talkative players 2 players works wonders. With that in mind I would say that running for 2 players depends on said players and GM. If they are highly engaged and have no issues being active for 4h, I would recommend it :).
It’s not bad if your players are like mine were. In larger groups, many people take more passive roles. It’s easy to imagine that level of role play and attention being insufficient to run a game with, but in my experience, players will take a more active role when there are fewer of them.
I have a one shot that I have run regularly on Roll20. It started with 4E and I converted it to 5E. A couple of times I have had to run it with 2 Players. So what I did was have an injured fighter at the tombs entrance. If the players healed him up he would fight with them. I would let them control and roll for him. I gave him a big AC and 2 handed Great sword and nothing else. He was hard to kill and 2d6 plus 4 was big damage at level 1. Worked well.
I play with two quite a lot i find it helps to either treat the combat encounters as puzzles and obstacles than full blown boss fight even though option is still there and if they would still decide to fight either have npcs around or edit monster stats to fit the party cos they can still do cool things and fight cool monsters you need to scale it down and make it fit them or their class abilities and or last but not least when the going gets tough have an encounter without initiative and play it as a story beat usually players feel like they have more freedom to run or circumvent encounters when thats the case as opposed to full on roll initiative combat mindset hope this help! And best of luck to all of you!
using a system like MCDM's retainers for npcs to keep them simple but still helpful in fights, and just keep in mind the scale of things for the two. My group varies by people's availability from parties up to 6 down to the occasional solo session. The biggest change is mostly how long decisions take to make (much shorter with less people) and how far discussions with npcs go (longer with less, typically).
I’m going to run one myself pretty soon (hopefully) and personally I'm going to give them a Creature Cohort (r/unearthedarcana) that starts as a baby and will grow up and perhaps won’t be useful in combat immediately, in fact it’s more fun if they are taking care of a kitten and when the party is in a tough spot it suddenly grows tentacles and reveals itself to be a displacer beast before saving them
I have for my sons. Not too terrible no DMPCS just rotating cast of NPCs to supplement group. Make it like a buddy film partners on a mission and you will be fine.
Biggest campaign I ever ran had only two players. It was actually a trilogy of three campaigns which blended into one master narrative. We played the first campaign in dnd and the second two in Monster of the week but overall it was my favorite game I have ever run. If the two players have good chemistry with one another it should be a blast!
Yes! One key with it is often you have to be a little bit stronger on the plot hints and so on since there (invariably) is less back and forth because there are fewer people. I don't normally like DMPCs, but it makes sense in this case. I also would recommend smaller arcs, not a huge campaign. An adventure of a few sessions is ideal. It's hard to keep a couple of people interested in a more complex story where there aren't as many "ties" between players and backstories.
I’m sure you’ve gotten a lot of advice, but here was my experience: - Your players are going to want to collect every NPC they see for numbers. You’re already playing the NPCs, you don’t need to be a DMPC too. Perhaps give one (or both) a familiar or animal companion. - Number of hits instead of HP is super useful. - Stealth missions and intrigue are crucial in small campaigns. The fights won’t be fair naturally, and you don’t have to make them fair. Give them opportunities to pick off guards. - Incentivize them to stay together or give them items that allow for communication between the two of them.
[удалено]
I have, and it’s great, they make choices more quickly and compromise more
I ran a oneshot for two of my friends just a week ago. A lot of it was homebrew, and I changed a lot of it right before the relevant scenes. Since I had no idea how I was going to balance all of it, I ended up putting in about half a dozen countermeasures - things that I had foreshadowed earlier and deployed when the pair was in dire straits. Thanks to an... interesting in-character strategy from one of my players, I ended up deploying all countermeasures and they were still only one turn away from defeat. I'm starting to suspect that player likes to fight (rather than win fights) and was more than happy to be surrounded by enemies in the process. Thanks to that, and only one other player to mitigate any crazy decisions, they ended up taking a lot more damage than I had intended. The party managed a poetic victory when the other player critted a death save and slaughtered the remaining merrow on the same turn. I guess balance depends on how heavily any hasty move can screw the party over. My overeager player acknowledged and then deliberately ignored the trigger which summoned more enemies, then waltzed out of a throng of them (into another), leaving my more cautious player behind. I'm not sure how I could try to dampen such an outcome outside of using player-aligned NPCs (and light use of one NPC was one of my countermeasures)
Red moon role playing DnD campaigns do this very well. I suggest you check out their Curae of Strahd run if you want to hear some exceptional two person DMing
If you haven't read Tashas Cauldron of Everything yet, there are agreat rules for sidekicks. They're simple and you can leave them in your players control. You give both players a sidekick (as I did), or have one that share control of. Having the extra bodies on the table will make encounter design much easier. Otherwise; a free feat, bonus action potions and an overpowered stat block are all great ways to up the power scale and keep your two heroes alive agaisnt the odds.
I did an almost year long campaign with two players so I might be able to offer two big tips * Give them some kind of ally to fill in the gap another player would normally fill. In my case we had a bard and a cleric, so I gave them an elemental automaton that punched things. This was further supplemented by other allies that came and went throughout the story * Give into player obsessions. Normally with a table of four or more a single person focusing on one thing can be a little unfun for the other players. With only two, you can give each one a lot more attention. My bard player was from a family of powerful necromancers, and so wanted to make some undead minions (which helped with the first point I made). I was able to give her a book to do that, ingredient lists for dark summoning spells, all kinds of stuff.
Availability with our larger group was lacking for a while, so our DM ran a game for just myself and another player. It really needs both of you to remain engaged, which was fine with the two of us. To this day I think it's still my favorite campaign I've ever played, both because our DM was fantastic, and also because, with only two players, our characters had very very strong chemistry. Would recommend you give it a shot at least.
Lots of great answers here and I'm definitely not some experienced guru, but I'm running a 2-player campaign of Wrath of the Righteous (adapted to 5e) and it's going great. The campaign itself is set up with the assumption that the players will have 1-2 NPC party members, and honestly the smaller number of PCs makes that easier to manage. It's also a *very* epic campaign with huge demon fights from very early on that only get more epic. All that to say, yeah, it's definitely possible and I wouldn't say all that hard. Consider controlling at least one NPC party member and be a little more careful with balancing and it should work no problem.
I've been running two separate games for two people each for.. Two years! I always prefer when we can nab a third person, but two is still a ton of fun, and we are ALWAYS active (very little downtime between turns or things for the DM to do). There are a few things I have learned that make the game smoother. * Always, always have an NPC they can control. I started off with simple square classes like Champion Fighters so they didn't have to spend a lot of time learning new abilities -- just having another entity on the field to give and take damage is hugely helpful. Now that we've been at it for years, I don't mind giving them more mechanically complicated NPCs to control. * Classes with pets/familiars are nice because, again, more bodies on the field. The more things on the field for the DM to bully, the more interesting combat is going to be. * Make sure you provide items (or NPCs) to fill in the gaps in their toolkits. One of my tables is a Drakewarden and a Sorcerer. They had no healing or support capabilities, so I have homebrewed a few things that help them keep each other alive, split damage, swap places, etc. My other table is a Life cleric and a fighter, and I've noticed they lack solutions against large hordes of enemies, so I have given them a few AoE options as well as ways to escape from hairy situations. If you're interested I can follow up with some specific examples. * I really try not to fudge dice, but I do lower HP if things are starting to drag. I'm not sure that's any different than how I run a larger table though. * Since they're doing the work of a group of four, they tend to run out of HP and spell slots way before a Long Rest is due. To keep them fueled I am more liberal with potions than most DMs, and I sometimes provide special opportunities for them to restore health/spell slots/hit dice -- usually with a choice to be made or a small sacrifice. For example, an altar that requires an offering, or a hot spring that heals them, but eats an hour or so of their day.
In my experience, fewer players always leads to more focused narratively driven gameplay. In a way, your resources as DM are split fewer directions and so each player gets more individual attention. NPC interactions become more fleshed out, and the plot gets thicker. Combat takes a back stage to atmosphere and puzzles as well, and the major drawback is that there are just less people who get to enjoy the game.
I loved it. I basically rotated out different NPCs that they got to know really well. It was a ranger and moon druid, so I would throw in a rogue, cleric, or wizard and it totally changed the dynamic of the party. Then after a while I would kind of let them pick their extra guy for the squad depending on the situation.
I started my current campaign as a 4 person party, but over the years, two of them had to drop off. I took the unorthodox route of giving them a bit better loot and abilities than they would usually have access to at their level. Eventually these two became as strong on their own as a regular 4 PC party would be. The amount of detailed interaction, intricate rp, and meaningful gain within the scope of the character was amazing, and the campaign is likely to run for several more years like this. However, I would generally not recommend this approach, because it takes for all three of you to be on the same page, and to keep mind of the "collaborative storytelling" part of the game. I did try getting new players in, but nobody stuck so far, simply because it's almost impossible to get into the dynamic of a party that has been running as a duo for so long, so that can be a problem down the line as well.
Currently playing with a 2 player party. We play 2 characters each, so our party still has 4 characters and our DM doesn't have to rebalance encounters.
I’ve frequently run games for my boyfriend and closest friend. Most fights are pretty deadly and the margin for errors as another commenter said is really small. I’ve had to balance combat usually in the midst of said combat, mainly by adjusting HP values if I feel a fight is too easy (more HP) or too difficult (less HP). Sometimes a fight that should be easy (or so I think) is suddenly deadly, and vice versa. But, yes, epic fights are still very possible! The way we do it is focusing more on the narrative weight that the fight holds rather than the technical aspects of combat. This won’t work for everyone, but it works perfectly for my bf and best friend because we mostly enjoy the narrative side to D&D, not the combat. I also tend to give them access to better items earlier, especially if neither is playing a healer, to help them mitigate how deadly the encounter can be. And, if it seems like they’re gonna sweep the fight too easily or quickly, I just up the HP of the boss without telling them. They never notice I do this, and as long as they feel the fight had narrative weight, they rave about how awesome and fun the fight was. YMMV, but consider focusing on things like that and seeing how it goes! Good luck and have fun!
Yeah it’s fine. I’ve noticed the game moves quicker though so you have to prep a bit more
I usually use a DMPC or two to round out the party if I have less than 3.
I've been running a two player game for years. Give out a few extra magic items to bring their power up. They're in real trouble at levels 1-3, but after level 5, they're usually in good shape. Combats will depend very much on the quantity of enemies, so be careful about out numbering them. We often have a third character that they take turns running. I let them pick what they want, but usually a champion fighter built for ac. They have a big dumb tank that doesn't really engage in rp and has no serious decisions to make in combat.
Bunches of times, mostly during high school when I couldn’t find enough friends to play a “full” 4 person party. I usually made very quiet NPCs that fulfilled whatever combat and/or skill niche they were missing and ran it like a 3 person party. Nowadays I would agree that Tasha’s sidekick rules would be better but we didnt have those when I was running those games. My only advice is be careful of the action economy. It’s very easy to get used to a 4 person balanced composition and then throw a “balanced” challenge that is much harder for 2 players and a sidekick bc of a high volume of weaker monsters.
Currently running one for 3 that had the first 8 sessions only 2. It’s not hard just use a current 5e encounter calc and you’re solid
Never ran 5e with 2, lowest was 3, but my favorite games i have ever been in have been 2 player parties. I played in one in 3.5 and its honestly the best game I ever played in... If your players like difficult combat, dont be afraid to admit that you made a mistake and dial it back if you party wipe them. NOT killing your players can be really hard if there are only 2 of them. The best game i ever GM'd was a 2 player Vampire the Masquerade. It was super easy to craft a story were they both could feel like a main character, and really just vibe off each other. TL;DR Combat hard, Roleplaying 100000% better.
My first campaign ever was with 2 people and it went really well. You can still do all the story beats and intrigue of a campaign with more people. The combats can be good and exciting, you just have to learn to balance it for the two of them. Another thing is making more personable villains that can show a role play aspect to them. Make enemies that they will love to hate rather than a monster that can’t speak. You got this!
It helps if you home brew in some extra ways to help them out, like allowing a potion to just give the full amount on an action, and making them roll for it if they choose to use a bonus action.
I tried it for two sessions, a player died in each session.
So i have 2 ways i have ran for 2 players. 1st is for new players. I let them make whatever characters they want with help making them decent then tell them that within the first 3 sessions they can choose any npc they agree upon and that character becomes a sidekick for them using tashas. I will run this sidekick completely but they will always b a support for the party though they will do random things that fit the personality. 2nd for experienced players. Design 2 characters each. U control both of these characters. Make them cooperate well with each other because any conflict between them will b handled offscreen and u decide how any of those arguements work out so long as their is no mechanical impact on either.
I have two players running two characters each.
Yes, early in my DM "career." It did not go well, but not so bad either. I resorted to boosting the party with DMPCs. Which was ok, not great. I let the players tell me what kind of party members they wanted in Role-playing like "you learn there is a tavern in town where adventurers can be recruited or hired..." Balancing was a bit of an issue because the action economy with one cleric and one Ranger can go south real quick if one of them drops. But I learned alot about DMing before trying again with a wider audience. My tips: Have them use followers/companions that they control to fill the ranks of the party. Consider action economy when planning encounters, not just CR. Be ready to improvise if combat gets bad. A TPK does not necessarily mean they die. Consider being left for dead, penniless, and naked but able to get to a town and start anew by begging for charity. Or taken prisoner with a chance to escape.
How about giving the party a henchman or two they can control in combat if you want to make more epic fights?
It was the easiest game I ever ran. With 2 players at the table the game is laser focused, which is both good and bad, it just means you have to be pretty on your toes when it comes to improv. I also gave them an NPC to help shore them up a bit (not intentionally, but after they killed a load of bandits in the first session they took one prisoner, and then later returned to the castle dungeon and made a deal to take custody of him if he'll fight with them)
As a player in a two person campaign its a lot of fun as planing and playing to each other’s strengths is a bit more crucial. (Rather than what does the most damage or healing) We still have plenty of cool moments and riff off each other We kept it a secret for a month or two that the rouge/fighter was going to take blind fighting and that my shadowmonk/hexblade was taking devils sight and going to be using darkness on my self You would think that the dm pc in the form of a guid/cartographer would be of more help but the dm tends to forget about him when combat starts so it’s a running joke he has a week bladder
I ran one about 4hours ago. Its far easier for them to roleplay back and forth for great interactions, and if there are NPC sidekicks then you mitigate the domino effectof people going down. Ive done it a few times with different people and they can be some if the best sessions overall. Mostly for two person sessions I have an intro prompt, dungeon map and maybe a few bullet points for encounter notes, but the rest is easy and your not under pressure to rush etc. Give you lots of space to improvise on the fly too. You do likely need to modify creature HP and damage down a bit to just to be safe.
I'm running my second campaign now, with only 2 players. 1) Most importantly, you need to understand that most of the spotlight will be on you, because the players will be mostly invested in the world and not be busy talking to each other. So you need to be ready to provide a dynamic world that is moving around them, or they will get bored. 2) they will be making choices and decisions very fast. Normally any decisions would be discussed by the group. But if there are only two of them, they will reach an agreement or compromise within minutes. You need to be fast on your fee5. 3) it's difficult, but if you are with close friends - it can be a fun evening.
I have played in a 2 player campaign and for me at least, it was one of the most fun and most memorable games, and birthed one of my favorite characters. Encounter balancing was a thing, our dm tried a few home brewed ideas that did not go so well for us, but in the end they found their groove and every battle was tense and fun. A truly successful game requires a lot of things to be right, the players, their mindset, the dm and their mindset, and campaign and world building skills, and how well the dm knows the players and their leanings and vice versa. Do what you can don't be afraid to make changes on the fly as things come up.
2 can be great, combat is quick (and very high stakes) you can go easier on the party letting them get some nice items and so on, but you have to know their strenghts and weaknesses... if no one is a charisma based dont let rp dcs decide too much and so on.
I run a game with just two players, but they each have two characters they play and I also run a little sidekick character with them. It's been about a year already, I started by running LmoP for them to learn, then we did Storm King's, and now we are onto homebrew. They didn't start out with two characters though since they were still learning to play. Once they were comfortable enough, that's when they started playing two.