So, you’ve successfully adopted a goblin/gray render/hot enemy NPC/grung—what do you do now? Here are some tips.
At some point in any given D&D adventure, you’re bound to adopt an NPC. We’re just driven to it. Whether it’s finding the little grung assassin that keeps trying to poison everyone with it’s slick, venomous coating adorable; or being forced to spend time around your hot enemy not trying to kill each other—for many reasons, across many variations of the term, every party has the potential to “adopt” an NPC. But once you do, what then? How do you keep your lil bud alive? And more importantly, meaningful to your adventures?
Take Some Time Between Adventures
Sometimes you just gotta spend time with your NPC allies. Whether you’ve adopted an NPC into your party as its mascot or maitre’d you gotta take some time with your friends. And one way to do that is to spend a little of the downtime between adventures with them.
You can just go check in with them, and see how they’re doing. Sure, you might have to make the occasional save as the Intellect Devourer tries to feast on your brain – but no relationship is without conflict. And a little check-in scene is a great way to let the DM frame the NPCs journey with your party. Especially since there typically aren’t going to be a lot of stakes during downtime.
New Opportunities Stimulate Growth
Of course, you gotta change things up, too. Sometimes you have to bring your little guy along on a dangerous adventure. Or even just to a new place. I mean, imagine a grung assassin, who has never left the swamps of misery, suddenly striding through the open markets of Waterdeep. It can be dizzying—and one of the best ways to get a sense of an NPC is when they confront something unexpected, be it a city, or the arcane tides glittering off of the crystalline dome at the edge of your world’s Wildspace zone.
Like Leto Atreides says: “Without change, something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.” And you can awaken the sleeper within your adopted NPC by seeking out change for them.
Give Them Something Important To Do
Another approach can be giving your NPC companion something vitally important to do. Now, qualifier. Vitally important can vary. Sometimes it can be vitally important that someone maintain the arcane wards around the magical anomaly that you’ve temporarily kept from devouring the world. Other times it can be vitally important that someone cook a nice meal because you need to take a long rest.
But giving your NPC an important task and seeing how they do, is a great way to stimulate their own advancement in the world. Maybe that goblin thief learns to share with the party—like the artifact fragment it stole from the villain whom you THOUGHT was getting away. Or maybe the murderous pixie you’ve rescued from certain doom manages to fight off the cultists for a round or two, enabling you to stop their nefarious ritual. And then it goes back to biting your shins.
Either way, giving your NPC a task is how friendships can blossom.
Trust Trust Trust
And you gotta trust ’em. Even if it’s only as far as you can throw them. Or even if it’s just “to be themselves” you gotta meet people where they are. If it’s your hot enemy, you gotta know they might just try and betray you even if you have a moment of vulnerability together.
But that’s the whole point of adopting an NPC. It’s a chance for you to grow too. You can survive a betrayal—but your hot enemy’s whole world will come crumbling down when you let your guard down enough to reveal your weakness. And maybe a little more…
The point is, you can’t make anyne choose to trust you—but you can choose to trust them.
Protect Them With Overwhelming Violence
And then most importantly, you have to let everyone know—the NPC especially—that you would burn down the world to save them. If they’re in danger, even a little bit, you kill the threat extra dead. Like horrifyingly dead. Overkill is an understatement in a situation like this.
It’s the only way to protect the monster you’ve taken into your confidence, and realized was just misunderstood; sometimes you need the power of overwhelming violence to let friendship and care truly blossom.
Happy adventuring!
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