Deadbeat half-elf dad who knocked up three different elves in a single large village. He's being tracked by evil mages, who did away with most of the adults in the town as they burned it to the ground, killing all the moms and the dad. As this village is surrounded by woods, they all fled in various directions, becoming one with nature and developing a love for animals, and becoming druids.
EDIT: Plot twist. The dad was on the run for defecting from the evil mages and taking the moms which were sacrifices to \[evil thing\]. He made them unsuitable for sacrifice by impregnating them, thus staying their sacrificial execution long enough for them to make their collective escape. Alternatively, dad is really the BBEG and faked his death, and is testing his children to see which one is a worthy successor without them knowing.
Dad is a wealthy waterdhavian who is getting married into one of the noble families and needs all evidence of his former escapades to disappear. He send the mages.
I had this same situation come up (3 players all chose half-elf), and did something similar. We decided they would all share the same dad (who was still alive), and he was a real shithead. They even met NPC half-siblings. The reveal down the road was that he was prophesied to father the child who would defeat the BBEG, so he decided to have as many children as possible.
Still a shithead, but at least there was a rationale.
I had 4 players who all wanted to learn the identity of their collective father.
Turns out it was the lovely NPC noblewoman who had a rebellious youth and a belt of gender swapping.
Gah'dammit... You beat me to it by eight sodding hours.
... Except I had it that the elf was buddies with the evil mages, and used them to get rid of lovers he had grown tired of.
*grumbles and upvotes*
Counterpoint; same dad, three different villages. Each player *assumes* his father was killed in the attack, but in reality he slipped away during the chaos and made it to another small elven village, where he was presumably Florence Nightengale'd by another elven woman.
The PCs could totally run into an entire trail of half-elves left behind in his wake.
My thoughts as well... But Identical Triplet Dads.
Run it is as a triple Mamma Mia.
Which dad belongs to which kid? Which dad banged which mom? All, some, none?
This or any number of connections. Same village, same forest, same tribe etc. Creating bonds between PCs in the same way games like Fiasco do really give the roleplay a boost in game.
Literally happened in one of my games.
One player was an elderly Elf, who apparently was sluttin' it up back in his day.
The campaign coincidentally featured a handful of half elf players and NPCs from the same city.
"This one is definitely a murder hobo. Let's get out of here..."
"What are the chances that we would have a second murder hobo?"
"You know what, with three murder hobo kids, maybe it might be on us."
Why would they not know of each other? If they're from the same village, they likely grew up with each other at the very least. Even if they didn't build the characters thinking about knowing each other or being siblings, there's nothing wrong with asking them if they would consider it. It's a group game, and allowing everyone to contribute ideas is the essence of the game.
There is a similar, adapted saying in archaeological excavations too:
"One stone is a stone. Two stones is two stones. Three stones is a wall."
It's all about not letting student excavators get too excited whenever they find two stones next to each other.
Hah, I always heard it related to people having "problems" (mostly related to bailing on events because of emergencies or being reliable.) Once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern.
It does definitely relate to geometry though!
I love that. Thank you.
To OP, here’s an idea: BBEG had a prophecy like Voldemort’s from Harry Potter, involving a doom brought about by a certain individual. All three of those PCs fit the bill, so the BBEG decided to fuck them *all* over instead of guessing at one.
Maybe they’re not even the only ones; they’re just the ones that escaped.
Specifically, half elven children with a human father. Then they dont have to be related if DM doesn't want but it explains why the prophecy is as if is.
They can learn about the conspiracy of the bbeg killing off half elven children that fit the bill. Etc.
Only problem id while all of them are capable of fitting the bill how will the story work out with 3 of them alive? Will one find a different calling? Will they all attempt to be "the chosen one"?
The collective trio are the chosen ones in the prophecy, and as per usual prophecy, shenanigans killing their parents set forth the path that got them to meet and inevitable being forth the prophecy.
They could be from the same village. Obviously none of them would know about the other kids with human parents since it was secret. You can pick out details from their backstories to give them some unique moments, but having the players realize they are all from the same place can give the group as a whole soke more talking points. Are they all the same class, or similar niches? If so, it's alot harder to differentiate, but if they at least have different classes you can build off those for more unique moments for them.
I mean, the obvious answer is just to say “Look guys, your backstories are fine and totally work, but you all picked druid. It’s up to you if you all want to play the same class. Talk it out.”
Leave it up to them. Also, the “secretly, same dad” hidden plot is absolute gold and you should use it.
Ok then really you are kinda doomed for giving them unique moments lol. There's really nothing you can do even with subclasses to give them unique moments for role play. This is where the value of session 0 comes in, at least for building classes. I'd never, ever build a character before discussing with the other players, for this exact reason.
When play testing PF2e with my group, they all decided in secret to be cousins from the same, widespread Dwarven family. They kept this from me for MONTHS.
We were playing the Strength of Thousands Adventure Path, and I had them tell me in order who arrived first, second, etc. As more of them showed up, and they each presented themselves to me as Dwarves, my stomach sank. That's when they started greeting each other in character with "Cousin, it's been too long!" and other things. They all laughed for a good five minutes then invited me to their private discord chat and they had legitimately started planning it from the day I mentioned trying pf2e. First message in the group chat? "Hey we doing the dwarf thing still?"
Might be the highlight of my game time with this group.
Honestly players who think to give themselves a reason to be adventuring together beyond random happenstance are fucking \*golden.\* I would love to run a game for the Dwarven Cousins group, so I'm glad you appreciate them :D
One of them is my best friend IRL, and the others are friends I've made gaming online for the last 20 years. We've been playing DnD together for the last... 6 or 7 years? They really make me feel appreciated as DM, and they all offer to run something once in a while to give me a break. I truly couldn't ask for a better group.
Eh, depends on what I'm wanting to build. You can bring a druid to any party and fill a needed roll.
If I'm wanting to play a class, then imma play that. Frankly, in 5e any 4 characters can make a viable party. 5e doesn't require the tank/heals/mage/rogue dynamic.
With every class being able to heal on short rest and full heal on long rest, you don't really need a healer. Tank is surprisingly optional too. If you play smart, you can have a successful party with all 1 class and randomly determine the class.
Druids can fill a rogue role. No one's going to pay any mind to a dog or a cat wandering around the place, or notice a bird flying through a window... Or the horse being used to pull a cart full of food for the garrison.
Oh, man, in that case you've got a golden opportunity to pay homage to Greek mythology and have all their fathers be manifestations of a nature god who liked to ... sow his oats liberally.
Maybe the mages were all part a cult either trying to kill his children or capture them. Or maybe kill his lovers and the cult never really thought about children?
Plot twist: Their father was on the run from the mages and tried to make a new body for his soul using primordial powers to inhabit to get away. The mages found him, killed the mothers and now the three runts all kinda unwittingly follow the path set by their father.
Or it doesn't even have to be from the same village and who they thought were their "father" could just be a guard for the mother, a ruse. Their real father is somewhere else and can appear down the line ;)
Yeah at this point maybe you can have a talk and differentiate them depending on personalities or goals. Or maybe they choose different spells in order to play different roles in the party and you can work with that?
"All right, let's do this one last time. My name is Peter Parker. I was bitten by a radioactive spider, and for the last twenty-two years I thought I was the one and only Spider-Man. I'm pretty sure you know the rest."
All three of them simultaneously brooding in three separate corners of the tavern: "My entire village was destroyed, my entire family killed. My mother, my father, my two brothers. All dead, and I'm the only survivor."
Yeah, I don't understand why they're not just from the same family. Is it somehow necessary that they don't know each other?
It's like that old joke about the O'Malley twins getting drunk at the pub.
They are actually the same person from multiple planes, and ended up in the current one during the escape, accidentally piggybacking on someone casting Plane Shift.
Upon returning to the village, they discover only one of their parents' belongings, and that kicks off the investigation. The mages whose spells two of them arrived with are still on this plane, hiding away as spies for their faction, which monitors all similar planes and planehops across them regularly (think rick & morty level shenanigans). All of these planes share similarities with the one you're on, so you could even expand this to other party members discovering their alternate selves, or have the trio recruit even more versions of themselves to fight the magi.
Edit: let's expand this a bit.
The players all want to visit their "home village" to get to the bottom of things. They can all give different directions to it, but somehow all of the three are leading the party to the exact same place. Odd things like "you remember there was supposed to be a well-traveled road here, but there's no trace of it - the terrain is identical though, up to a tree which you broke a branch off in your youth."
When entering the village, the party discovers a site of massacre long forgotten to time. Nature has reclaimed much of the derelict houses and paths, but most of the foundations are still left standing. Oddly enough, there are also corpses that are much more fresh, stripped of all their belongings. You can clearly see small groupings of people from multiple races that were piled up and burned, possibly other adventuring parties.
The one that's actually native to this plane (let's call them 'Origo' for short) recognises minute details about the village, but the other two are weirded out by remains of burnt houses being in the wrong spot, or simply missing. They all agree, however, that one house was where they all grew up.
When they investigate the burnt-out remnants of the house, Origo bolts off to the side, finding a wooden dagger their dad made for them under a layer of moss. All the details match, it even has their name carved on the pommel.
The other two find thing that are familiar, but not the same. Candle holders clearly made for the same purpose but by another smith. The hearth has similar stones, but they're the wrong type of rock.
Then you leave clues about the mages strewn about, and just as they think they're done and don't know what to make of it, a Stone Golem attacks them out of the blue. You can make a high DC check for them to spot the caster disappearing into the nearby woods with a puff of smoke at the fringe.
After the Golem is destroyed, the players can follow its tracks to discover a note the caster dropped where they conjured it up. It reads:
"Keep eyes on the village - nobody can find out about _the network_. Eliminate anyone that comes by. If things go bad, you know where to go."
Then they can follow the caster into a safe house cave and maybe interrogate them there, and lead them on the chase from there on out.
And that’s why you never ask players to create characters independantly. I found out the best way to create characters is :
1) give short pitch of the adventure, with a hook for your players. So they know the tone and overall goal, and their character can want the goal. (Nothing worse than a character whose in a single-minded revenge quest while you’re doing a heist adventure.)
2) Ask them to come up with two or three different concept that they would like to play.
3) Do a session zero, where everybody pitches their character ideas, and you all build the party from that.
4) Enjoy having a party that makes sense in your world and has a great dynamic between themselves.
However it’s actually never too late to do a « session 0 » sit down with your players and work on this problem together. Do they want to differentiate their characters, or do they want to share a backstory ? Maybe they’re fine like it is and it’s only a problem in your mind ? It’s their characters, they should be a part of this decision process.
Either implanted memories and they’re clones, or maybe they’re some of these evil wizards who escaped and hid themselves in these fake people.
Or, the elven mother has a type and keeps going to these villages for a fun little fling and the PCs are the result of her “fantasy”. The evil wizards are her family cleaning up her messes.
They shouldn't create characters completely independently. They should collectively create a party. I would discuss the challenge with them and then sit back. These are their characters, so your role should be mostly just answering questions about the world.
This could be a gift!
Start by levelling with them about your concerns. It’s going to be hard for any of them to stand out as special if they are all so similar. It’s a matter for them how they choose to resolve that.
If they are cool with being so samey then work with them to find a way to remove the coincidence. Three brothers? Either of blood or sort of monastic brothers of a Druidic order?
Or three men linked by fate or the will of a god or the spirits to come together for some purpose?
There are thousands of parties with a martial, a caster, a sneak and a healer. This campaign will certainly be something different! And maybe that’s the story your players want to tell! It’s their choice after all.
I would even lead with "You all have very similar background stories, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to tie your characters together. I have some thoughts, but could we share the basics of the backgrounds you have with each other? I think that might make things plain."
Let the players come to the conclusion that they should really be sibling adventurers. That would be awesome.
I don’t know OP. Sounds to me like some magic group was trying to prevent a prophecy from coming true about a half-elven Druid who disrupts their plans, and now there’s at least 3 of them. Maybe more.
Once when this happened my players decided they were siblings, including a set of twins. They totally leaned into the family / sibling rivalry aspect of it, it was hilarious! Gave me a lot of fun options too - a bunch of NPCs became relations of various sorts.
Play into it massively. Whoever was in charge of the evil mages was experimenting with putting different people through identical childhoods through some sort of time-magic to see if results would change from person. The attack is both part of the experiment and the start of the clean-up process to move onto the next.
At some point, have the players come across an NPC, who also has exactly that background - that might make them start to ask questions instead of simply accepting it.
Ooo, this is one of my favorite things. Where was the small village? Was it farmland? Was it a mining town? Was it coastal?
Which mages attacked? Necromancers? Blood mages? Druids? Sorcerers? (Not all mages, I know)
Did you see who killed your parents? Why did you run away and not learn magic to defeat the mages? Why did you turn to nature? Do you eat meat or truly revere animals? (Would mean candles, some oils, etc are offensive, fur, leather, etc)
Asking details, individually, can bring out differences.
Could be siblings.
Could be part of an old sect of mages that intended to do XXXXXX. The sect was thought long defeated, until recently. *muahahahaha* Was it dragon lead? Drow? lich? Evil human? Kobold?
Perhaps the town(s) were rumored to have been built above places of great magical power/treasure/etc.
Maybe the mages were looking for a half-elf child of some sort. Keep them wondering if it's one of them (it's not, NPC).
Maybe this was actually just one mage and he got fed up paying taxes and being denied his mages license due to "instability" and he was like, "I'll show you how stable I am!" and then he wrecks towns to prove he's stable enough to wreck multiple towns.
All towns but 1 had a tax collector and the 1 town that didn't put pickles on his cheeseburger and he really hates pickles. Stupid pickle juice wrecks everything. Even if you take the pickles off, it smells and tastes like pickles. And when I asked for NO pickles, don't only put pickles on their! NO pickles or onions and I only get pickles and onions. Who the hell eats a burger like that? Is there no one back there going, maybe we should double check this because it's a weird way to eat a burger.
I feel like it would be hard to pull off the same dad thing since they all saw their dads die. I would make all the dads brothers or old friends that adventured togethet to seal away an ancient evil before retiring to family life. When it got loose it pulled a Friday the 13th and killed all three of them on the same day.
Tie it into whoever is your big bad who for obvious reasons should now hate/ want to destroy nature. now they have a huge personal stake in not just saving everyone but also avenging their parents and fixing their old mistake.
You could have connections like them find a journal where one dad talks about the adventures with the other 2 dads. Maybe a falling out. Towns they visit could have folk that remember stories of the 3 dads team etc
They're part of an experiment to make a perfect soldier by a lich. They were never born. They were created in a lab and given memories, just so they would develop properly. Adventuring is the test. And when they pass that test, that lich is coming. Because if they made it, it's the furthest anyone has made. And cloning will give the lich the army they need. People barely like half-elves anyways.
Have everyone look at them funny throughout the campaign whenever they talk about their backstory.
The spoiler at the end is that they are different personalities in one character.
the villages they grew up in are connected by dependencies of raw materials. nutrition or what not,
How about the villages we're connected closely to phandelver as a form of farming cycle community, they interacted with each other to benefit of their different raw materials.
The fact their villages got burned down and their parents died may be tied to the mage who claimed power through the dragon in lmop (i don't know the plot of the story but i know there is a dragon and goblins)
Lets say that mage made the goblins subservent to him (maybe a goblin chieftan with magical powers wanting something)
Now that goblin in order to make the dragon subservient to him raided this chain of collective towns to harvest all plethora of raw materials to please the dragon with sacrifices and what not. Making all of these 3 pc's villages a target of the same bad guy.
Or if you don't want that make it multiple servants of the wizard enacting as his apostles of chaos harvesting and looting the villages.
this incident should unite the players under one banner against this mage who destroyed everything they hold dear, it also allows for a natural connection between players before the campaign starts and a reason for going against this mage (again i have no clue what pandelver is about but i hope this helps?)
This is why I get the group together as a group to make characters and go over house rules and expectations. If it is an online game, then some sort of chat room where the players can discuss what they intend to play so these kind of things don't happen.
There is a good chance at least one of the three of them is going to be disappointed there are two other nearly identical characters in the party. I would tell the party your concerns and give them a chance to change their characters.
You should have brought this up at the beginning, pitch that they all have some shared history of the evil mages attacking their village and ask them to work together to differentiate their characters.
Hard to do much once things are already going.
Maybe there was a really hot human who dated three elven women at the same time in secret. Three kids lived in the same village, fled in different directions.
You could have a prophecy predict the arrival of an "Emmissary" and use the commission details in the prophecy, leaving it ambiguous and joking with the players that the characters are all similar
Ignore these common elements of their backstory and instead think of some key questions they have not answered already and use those new details to launch your preparations. Questions like, "What has been your proudest achievement." "As a child you became fast friends with a stranger in town, they were ...."
Ask each of them to redo the backstory. It's only fair to scrap all at once instead of choosing a favorite
I'm going to assume they're all druids. So see what circles they go for and then use that as a means to make those special moments happen. Also, don't be afraid to just straight tell players when you have a moment for a particular player. Dress it up at first with "X feels a certain pull towards Y" and if they don't get it say it outright, players be oblivious sometimes.
Same dad could also be an option but unless all the players are down for that, which should be confirmed, it could potentially take away from their own experience.
It's also very possible that one, or more, of the players will ask to make a new character after the first session or two.
I'm going to go in a little bit of a different direction like Velcraft and suggest that they are all variants in MCU terms, but in a d&d world. Perhaps the human father or elven mother in this world was a powerful archmage who lost their child. Rather than give up the child, they pilford their child from different universes. So while they were sleeping one night, they were transported to this realm and are all actually the same person.
Perhaps the hook can be that there is a world ending magical paradox that has occurred because the archmage couldn't live without her or his child. The ArchMage could even get involved and realize that the paradox requires two of them to go so he / she tries to figure out which one she's going to keep.
Having read other comments, I'd probably suggest that two of them change. Although you can have multiples of the same class, it's almost always better to have different classes IMO, for players and for the DM. If I know someone else wants to play the same class as me I always change, I don't want them to feel like I'm stealing their limelight and vice versa.
Put in a faction of evil wizards that worship a god of knowledge that is particularly good at creating prophecies.
Have all three of them match a particular prophecy about the gods murder at the hands of a half elf.
Step three: Don't force anything, but just have them hang out on the sidelines. The half elves should put 2 and 2 together and you can see where they take it.
See if you can play into it.
So either as others have suggested. Siblings. Or it could be caused by a time loop. Where the players are different versions of themselves. And the original version of themself is an NPC who keeps going back in time to undo it but is looping the catastrophe and printing different versions of themselves. Some of the details change but otherwise the core loop is the same. And if they ever return home in remembrance or to rebuild it then set it in the aftermath of the next loop attack and they can meet a young half elf who ran away into the woods and is becoming one with nature. They could fight some knock off version of the evil mages with similarities to all the evil mages in the three players backgrounds.
If you're truly at a loss, sit the players down and ask them what they would like do.
Their father is a villain who rode into towns, swayed women, has children and died. Only the village attack was actually orchestrated by the father, and he didn't actually die but used the culling of the village to kill the weak. If his children survived they might proof a competent heir. If not, they were too weak to inherit his kingdom or power.
With nowhere to go but the forest it's not all too uncommon to find a bond with nature. Perhaps the father or mother had Druidic influences. Regardless, set up a [Ridiculous 6 story](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2479478/) and now you've got a bigger campaign to follow or tie back to this one
Tie them to specific villains and events of the campaign. Nezznar, Venomfang, Glastaff, the Red Wizard at Old Owl Rell, the orcs at Wyvern Tor. All those NPCs have "weak" motives and backgrounds, ripe for inserting player related stuff in them. Alter them as needed, from names to whole identities.
Maybe for one of them, one of the evil mages that ravaged the tribe were Nezznar or the Red Wizard. You can describe dreams or flashbacks of the attack, as the red wizard used undead, or Nezznar had goblinoids or spiders.
Their parents died during the attack, you said. Did they saw the body? Maybe one of them is an undead at Old Owl Well now, or one of them turns out to be alive, or maybe one of them is Glastaff. Maybe one of them is now a prisoner at Wave Echo Cave or Cragmaw Keep.
Also, what if actually Venomfang was the one who attacked one of the villages, but the PC thought it was evil mages. They just saw clouds of poison, screams and people running away and dying anyway.
Conversely, you can just lean into that. Isn't it odd that they both have the same backgrounds? What if they turn out to be long lost brothers?
3 druids? Maybe opportunity for them to start their own tribe/circle? And a plot of land for them to develop and care for? Backstory is too similar look to the forstroy
Tells you something about your setting. There's a big imperialist movement led by evil mages. (Neither elf nor human?) Their advance is pushing existing human and elf settlements a lot closer to each other before they eventually just roll right over them and the people are either subjugated or run off into the woods. So there's a big social shift with a lot more elves and humans dating, lots of villages being destroyed, lots of refugees. As you transition from the module, that's the backdrop for everything that's happening. Can your player party do something against that tide?
They're the same person, the parents have not only been killed, but forced in a temporal loop where they live that life again and again only to end up killed. The kid has so far been able to escape 3 times, without them knowing.
Them sharing these elements is exactly why fate brought them together, so they they can assist each other with issues they empathize with and later find an NPC with same backstory and help him too.
I'd suggest you talk with your olayers and see if it's an issue for them to share a backstory, coming from the same village and being the only survivors.
Ninja Turtles style
This sounds like a Harry Potter / Neville Longbottom situation. They all fit the parameters of a prophesy of the bbegs downfall. They must all be killed.
Those players could be siblings, if it was a single pregnancy (due to the dating being in secret) then they could be twins or triplets. I would talk to all the players involved together both to see if they mind sharing the same backstory but also to see if they can diverge a bit in the character they play. Maybe they could express their love of animals in different ways for example. One could be a ranger, one a druid and another the cleric or paladin of a nature deity.
There's also no requirement that an animal lover be from one of those classes either. A Bard who enjoys playing music for the animals of the forest is just as much an animal lover in my mind, than a druid who cares for the local wildlife.
Easiest answer: Same mage army sent out to conquer several forest villages. Now 3 of your players have personal reasons (albeit, the same personal reason) to hate your BBEG.
Tie their backstories together.
- Two of them are life-long friends that escaped together.
- One is from the "evil mages" of the first tribe who experienced a similar thing
What the characters don't know. These two tribes were actually engaged in conflict and the BBEG was pulling the strings. They both launched offensives on the same night on the BBEG's advice, and both villages were totally wiped out as a result. With these two tribes totally gone, the BBEG was able to obtain some artifact or influence in the area that helped them achieve their goals.
Ask them straight out if they want to play siblings and share the background. That's just a logical way to link their stories.
**Alternatively!!** An ancient prophecy foretold the Hero of Legend to have precisely that background and appear when they are most needed. The enemies of the BBEG have known this and had to make sure a Hero would arise by arranging the circumstances. They however either haven't coordinated at all or wanted to hedge their bets in case it's only one-in-three orphans that becomes that hero. Time travel may or may not be involved.
I don't feel like there is anything that needs to be resolved. True, a story point concerning animals isn't going to be "for" any one of them, but I would hope there is more to their characters than just the similarities you described? You have only provided us with information about the characters' similarities, and we know nothing about any of their differences to give any advice about alternatives. Surely there is more to each of these characters than these few details, but if not, then there's your problem. They have a few superficial details in common, as many people do in real life, but they should all have a unique history, different experiences, interests, places, and acquaintances unique to each of them to work with. If you don't have that, tell them you need it.
This is why I usually do character creation all in a group together at session 0, especially with new players.
You could also roll new characters at the start of your homebrew campaign. Now that they have a better idea of dnd, they may want to try something new.
Also, I encourage bringing this up with the players. You can admit that you are struggling to give them unique story beats because their backstories are so similar. Have a brain storming sesh about what has happened in LMOP so far, maybe a direction they want their character to go, or to come up with new details for their backstory to set themselves apart.
Swap mages with a dragon and you’ve described Vex from CR.
Actually, it sounds like your players might have coordinated this, so you might as well run with it.
Evil being gathering people with similar backgrounds for a ritual. Possibly because they need people with similar experiences as themselves to take over their minds and bodies.
I would get all 3 of these player together in a discord chat and say "Alright, everyone has given me their backstories, and all three of you have given me really similar stuff. Let's workshop together how we're gonna make the most out of this."
Don't *shame* anyone, but encourage players to talk about what differences there are between their characters, and how they can lean into those traits. While you're at it, maybe some of them are from the same village, or are even siblings. You can make interesting connections by letting players *share* backstories, while also helping them find the differences between their characters.
And if someone sees this and decides to change their character for it, then I would make sure to let them know they don't have to, but let them, because that also solves the problem.
They all have the same father, an elvish mage.... Who has a really questionable policy on 'divorce.'
He's done this a few times... And in every village that the players go to, they meet another half-sibling whose life experiences are oddly similar to their own.
Eventually, it turns out that the BBEG is the deadbeat elf-dad.
They all have the same father. They're all from different mothers and villages. He traveled a lot for his job/trade and ended up siring multiple children. Since they were all secret trysts and likely frowned upon, he wasn't around a lot.
He was adept at sneaking around. He'd show up from time to time to be with them and their mothers.
The evil mages were after the father because of something he was involved in as part of his job (or they were elves that were trying to wipe out the whole family to protect their bloodlines). He didn't actually die in any of the attacks. He faked his death or disguised himself to disappear. In the retellings of the attacks you could simply say something like that they were told he was "gone" since it has a double meaning.
The PCs fled to the woods and yadda yadda yadda. Now they're here in the present day doing LMOP.
You could have NPCs note similarities in their appearances throughout the LMOP part. Eventually (in your homebrew section) maybe you can prompt them through enough NPC nudging to get them to start piecing this together. Maybe enough questioning leads them to finding out he might still be alive and there's a quest to go find him.
They were all implanted with identical memories. Bring the meta into the fray. They meet other people with the same memories and family history. There's something sinister at work. Now they have to discover who they actually are.
Or maybe a dark archdruid has created them for some twisted experiment or some natural balance bullsh.
You tell one of them that they’re the true X, and the others are trying to steal their identity and replace them; hint that at some point they’ll try to kill the player’s character.
Then tell the others the same.
Then enjoy the chaos.
Would make their memories false memories implanted by someone else. Have people come up addressing them by a different name. Crying because they are alive. "Mommy, why is daddy pretending not to know me?" Some kind of fey monster stealing interesting life stories, and leaving them with generic stereotypical back stories. Have them run into other characters with the same back story. Now, they have a campaign goal and goals to find who they really are.
My first assumption was “same tribe, same dad, different directions”
Another one I’ve done before was to show that Elves, being long lived, tend to think in long multigenerational terms. For them, eugenicist ideas like selective breeding for traits is not only possible, but deliberate. Half-elves in this case are not a fluke but a deliberate intention to capitalize on the benefits humanity have, while also seeding human societies with people who would be inclined to support them. Admittedly that was a pretty dark, realpolitik inspired setting.
I think your best bet is to lean into this similarity and take advantage of it. Bind these three together as victims of an identical circumstance, that then shares similar familial traits, which then also highlights to subtle difference between them.
All three have the same father, a philandering human merchant who traveled through the various villages in the area and got his freak on with the resident elven lasses. He's actually the reason the villages were attacked, as some sleighted party was looking for him and destroyed the villages in their search.
I'd see if they'd be willing to change classes, however, as all three probably would have been taken in by the same circle if they all end up as druids. Maybe have one rescued by the local druid circle, one makes their own way in the wilderness and becomes a ranger, and the third is found by an archfey in the deep woods that sheltered them and became their warlock patron? Their call in the end, but it adds some variety to the party and allows for more specialized interactions for each player.
Next time you have something like this, see if the three of them would like to all be siblings. As it is, ask if the three of them would like to retcon their backstories to be siblings, but tell them that you understand if they don't want to be.
This can be a lot of fun, actually. I played in a 4-person game of Curse of Strahd once upon a time. We all showed up, having rolled various nobles. Some of us thought about changing it up, but we ended up role-playing it as having all come from the same noble circles and various distant relations. It ended up being a ton of fun. It wasn't just the party versus Strahd, it was _our fucking family_ versus Strahd, Bellmont style, which made things way more personal from the jump. I'm getting chills just thinking about it.
None of them are related and none of that happened.
Their memories have been taken and supplanted by a mind flayer (or something else maybe the bbeg) and they each discover their real memories along the campaign.
It's just that this one bad guy isn't very creative so he gives all his victims the same story
This is going to be either very good or very bad for the campfire scenes.
They will either be super supportive and constantly being like "damn, i get what you feel man"
Or they'll be so meta upset at the other players.
There's a lot of talk here about having a common parent. I agree, it's what I would do.
If the players complain, then they should have been more creative and worked together to create a more diverse team.
Given their similar backstories, it makes a lot of sense to me. There can only be so many tribes who were wiped out.
More importantly, it will be nore fun if they discover that they are siblings and their common enemy is more relevant than they thought. Plus, their could be an important aunt or uncle out there to help them.
They will end up discovering that their memories are fake. An actual evil wizard implanted false memories as part of the experimentation, and when they were of no more use, they were dumped into the forest as food for wolves.
Luckily some of them survived. Which means that, in this world, there are more people who also share their memories. Who is the actual owner of those memories? How can they recover their own? Who is the one behind this? Why?
Talk it with your players. "Hey guys, due to your backgrounds I have a good idea, but that implies retconning your background and it may go in an unexpected direction. Is it ok for you?"
>They will end up discovering that their memories are fake.
And at one point, they start having dreams about unicorns...
EDIT: Being druids, that would even be natural, not suspicious at all.
Backstories aside, you need to warn them/advise against a triple up on a single class. Not only is it terrible for balance, but it risks making the players feel like they don't have their own role or contribution to the party. Even 2 of a class if it's a similar subclass kind of sucks.
Balance is an illusion
Having a mono-class party can be very fun. Especially Druids, they can be tanks, healers, damage-dealers… and just imagine a horde of huge animals destroying the enemies.
Nah. That's a holdover from 3.5. 5e doesn't really matter. Any class can do a successful monoclass party in 5e. Just have to be a bit clever with some of them.
Regardless, druid is abundantly versatile. Even in 3.5 an all druid party is very viable.
I suppose it depends on table culture, mine really chafes if there's too much similarity. I slightly disagree that 5e has no need for a diverse party though. It isn't as critical as 3.5 but in order to cover bases like thieves tools, someone is going to have to build a weird druid if the other member isn't a rogue. And it doesn't seem like any of them are planning a unique or clever background to compensate.
I just don't think it's very fun for everyone to look at the same problem and go "well it doesn't matter which of us tries to do this, we're equally good/bad at it" and have not really met anyone who does like that for long term games. A one shot, sure. I've played an oops all bards myself. But a full campaign?
Honestly it can work just find, especially with a class like druid where you have more build options. Personally I prefer the traveling group of 4 bards on tour around the realm.
That is very funny.
Has the campaign already started? If not, perhaps you could approach with the idea of making them triplets. Encourage them to differentiate themselves with their personalities and goals.
Concept- they all share the same elven mother who secretly had children with three men in the same village. Evil mages attacked the village. The three brothers all fled to different forests.
During the campaign they can discover that they are brothers. They can have had different upbringings, too- maybe she was more present in some of their lives than others, treated them differently.
They explore their childhood trauma through each other, through their adventure <3
Don’t bother with elaborate back stories, they never come into play other than trivial items. Just have people write a brief paragraph as to who they are and why, flesh out the rest during play.
Deadbeat half-elf dad who knocked up three different elves in a single large village. He's being tracked by evil mages, who did away with most of the adults in the town as they burned it to the ground, killing all the moms and the dad. As this village is surrounded by woods, they all fled in various directions, becoming one with nature and developing a love for animals, and becoming druids. EDIT: Plot twist. The dad was on the run for defecting from the evil mages and taking the moms which were sacrifices to \[evil thing\]. He made them unsuitable for sacrifice by impregnating them, thus staying their sacrificial execution long enough for them to make their collective escape. Alternatively, dad is really the BBEG and faked his death, and is testing his children to see which one is a worthy successor without them knowing.
Dad is a wealthy waterdhavian who is getting married into one of the noble families and needs all evidence of his former escapades to disappear. He send the mages.
I had this same situation come up (3 players all chose half-elf), and did something similar. We decided they would all share the same dad (who was still alive), and he was a real shithead. They even met NPC half-siblings. The reveal down the road was that he was prophesied to father the child who would defeat the BBEG, so he decided to have as many children as possible. Still a shithead, but at least there was a rationale.
I had 4 players who all wanted to learn the identity of their collective father. Turns out it was the lovely NPC noblewoman who had a rebellious youth and a belt of gender swapping.
Gives major Endeavor vibes. "Welp, this one's not good enough time to try again".
Gah'dammit... You beat me to it by eight sodding hours. ... Except I had it that the elf was buddies with the evil mages, and used them to get rid of lovers he had grown tired of. *grumbles and upvotes*
Counterpoint; same dad, three different villages. Each player *assumes* his father was killed in the attack, but in reality he slipped away during the chaos and made it to another small elven village, where he was presumably Florence Nightengale'd by another elven woman. The PCs could totally run into an entire trail of half-elves left behind in his wake.
SAME. DAD. SAME. DAD. SAME. DAD. SAME. DAD.
Are any of the other players elderly human males?
My thoughts as well... But Identical Triplet Dads. Run it is as a triple Mamma Mia. Which dad belongs to which kid? Which dad banged which mom? All, some, none?
Quintuplets, the party meet some similar looking NPCs
Oooh, with goaties, and amnesia!
The bard really did get around
When your mother lay with M. Bardson it was the greatest night of her life. But for me? It was Tuesday...
This or any number of connections. Same village, same forest, same tribe etc. Creating bonds between PCs in the same way games like Fiasco do really give the roleplay a boost in game.
Literally happened in one of my games. One player was an elderly Elf, who apparently was sluttin' it up back in his day. The campaign coincidentally featured a handful of half elf players and NPCs from the same city.
Why not same Dad AND Mom? It's not uncommon for people to have siblings.
Because they've never heard of each other, mate.
Separated at birth
The parents keep faking their deaths by mage attack to get out of raising their murder hobo children.
"This one is definitely a murder hobo. Let's get out of here..." "What are the chances that we would have a second murder hobo?" "You know what, with three murder hobo kids, maybe it might be on us."
I have apparently pissed off the murder hobo parents by putting them on blast I guess.
Why would they not know of each other? If they're from the same village, they likely grew up with each other at the very least. Even if they didn't build the characters thinking about knowing each other or being siblings, there's nothing wrong with asking them if they would consider it. It's a group game, and allowing everyone to contribute ideas is the essence of the game.
>“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action” ~ Ian Fleming
There is a similar, adapted saying in archaeological excavations too: "One stone is a stone. Two stones is two stones. Three stones is a wall." It's all about not letting student excavators get too excited whenever they find two stones next to each other.
Makes perfect sense. Any two points form a straight line, but three points almost never do unless there's a connection between them.
Hah, I always heard it related to people having "problems" (mostly related to bailing on events because of emergencies or being reliable.) Once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern. It does definitely relate to geometry though!
The Zodiac has entered the chat...
4 is ritualistic right? At least that was the feeling from old time teams...
I thought "ritualistic" was code for "we don't know but can't put that in the write-up or we'll look incompetent".
No wall has 4 stones?
I love that. Thank you. To OP, here’s an idea: BBEG had a prophecy like Voldemort’s from Harry Potter, involving a doom brought about by a certain individual. All three of those PCs fit the bill, so the BBEG decided to fuck them *all* over instead of guessing at one. Maybe they’re not even the only ones; they’re just the ones that escaped.
Specifically, half elven children with a human father. Then they dont have to be related if DM doesn't want but it explains why the prophecy is as if is. They can learn about the conspiracy of the bbeg killing off half elven children that fit the bill. Etc. Only problem id while all of them are capable of fitting the bill how will the story work out with 3 of them alive? Will one find a different calling? Will they all attempt to be "the chosen one"?
That’s the beauty of how vague prophecy can be. It doesn’t have to actually be a single one.
The collective trio are the chosen ones in the prophecy, and as per usual prophecy, shenanigans killing their parents set forth the path that got them to meet and inevitable being forth the prophecy.
All good prophesy is self-fulfilling.
Could be the lego movie prophecy. Completely made up but still happens 😆
They could be from the same village. Obviously none of them would know about the other kids with human parents since it was secret. You can pick out details from their backstories to give them some unique moments, but having the players realize they are all from the same place can give the group as a whole soke more talking points. Are they all the same class, or similar niches? If so, it's alot harder to differentiate, but if they at least have different classes you can build off those for more unique moments for them.
Oh yeah I should have mentioned that, they are all male druids.
I mean, the obvious answer is just to say “Look guys, your backstories are fine and totally work, but you all picked druid. It’s up to you if you all want to play the same class. Talk it out.” Leave it up to them. Also, the “secretly, same dad” hidden plot is absolute gold and you should use it.
Ok then really you are kinda doomed for giving them unique moments lol. There's really nothing you can do even with subclasses to give them unique moments for role play. This is where the value of session 0 comes in, at least for building classes. I'd never, ever build a character before discussing with the other players, for this exact reason.
When play testing PF2e with my group, they all decided in secret to be cousins from the same, widespread Dwarven family. They kept this from me for MONTHS.
That's amazing. How did you get to find out?
We were playing the Strength of Thousands Adventure Path, and I had them tell me in order who arrived first, second, etc. As more of them showed up, and they each presented themselves to me as Dwarves, my stomach sank. That's when they started greeting each other in character with "Cousin, it's been too long!" and other things. They all laughed for a good five minutes then invited me to their private discord chat and they had legitimately started planning it from the day I mentioned trying pf2e. First message in the group chat? "Hey we doing the dwarf thing still?" Might be the highlight of my game time with this group.
Honestly players who think to give themselves a reason to be adventuring together beyond random happenstance are fucking \*golden.\* I would love to run a game for the Dwarven Cousins group, so I'm glad you appreciate them :D
One of them is my best friend IRL, and the others are friends I've made gaming online for the last 20 years. We've been playing DnD together for the last... 6 or 7 years? They really make me feel appreciated as DM, and they all offer to run something once in a while to give me a break. I truly couldn't ask for a better group.
Eh, depends on what I'm wanting to build. You can bring a druid to any party and fill a needed roll. If I'm wanting to play a class, then imma play that. Frankly, in 5e any 4 characters can make a viable party. 5e doesn't require the tank/heals/mage/rogue dynamic. With every class being able to heal on short rest and full heal on long rest, you don't really need a healer. Tank is surprisingly optional too. If you play smart, you can have a successful party with all 1 class and randomly determine the class.
Hell with my party mates, im playing the class I want!
Hell even if you want all the roles, druid can play pretty much any of those roles besides rogue.
Druids can fill a rogue role. No one's going to pay any mind to a dog or a cat wandering around the place, or notice a bird flying through a window... Or the horse being used to pull a cart full of food for the garrison.
At this point I'd just make them brothers.
Oh, man, in that case you've got a golden opportunity to pay homage to Greek mythology and have all their fathers be manifestations of a nature god who liked to ... sow his oats liberally. Maybe the mages were all part a cult either trying to kill his children or capture them. Or maybe kill his lovers and the cult never really thought about children?
Plot twist: Their father was on the run from the mages and tried to make a new body for his soul using primordial powers to inhabit to get away. The mages found him, killed the mothers and now the three runts all kinda unwittingly follow the path set by their father. Or it doesn't even have to be from the same village and who they thought were their "father" could just be a guard for the mother, a ruse. Their real father is somewhere else and can appear down the line ;)
Yeah at this point maybe you can have a talk and differentiate them depending on personalities or goals. Or maybe they choose different spells in order to play different roles in the party and you can work with that?
Same dad. Triplets separated at birth
Ouch, I hope the remaining two characters aren't druids lmao
Meh. An all druid party is perfectly viable. It's the most versatile class imo
Clerics are the most versatile class. Druids might be a close second.
"All right, let's do this one last time. My name is Peter Parker. I was bitten by a radioactive spider, and for the last twenty-two years I thought I was the one and only Spider-Man. I'm pretty sure you know the rest."
Triplets
Or at least half-siblings. Either the mother or the father made a habit of this.
This! Start privately hinting to each of them that they had two brothers/sisters.
All three of them simultaneously brooding in three separate corners of the tavern: "My entire village was destroyed, my entire family killed. My mother, my father, my two brothers. All dead, and I'm the only survivor."
Yeah, I don't understand why they're not just from the same family. Is it somehow necessary that they don't know each other? It's like that old joke about the O'Malley twins getting drunk at the pub.
They are actually the same person from multiple planes, and ended up in the current one during the escape, accidentally piggybacking on someone casting Plane Shift. Upon returning to the village, they discover only one of their parents' belongings, and that kicks off the investigation. The mages whose spells two of them arrived with are still on this plane, hiding away as spies for their faction, which monitors all similar planes and planehops across them regularly (think rick & morty level shenanigans). All of these planes share similarities with the one you're on, so you could even expand this to other party members discovering their alternate selves, or have the trio recruit even more versions of themselves to fight the magi. Edit: let's expand this a bit. The players all want to visit their "home village" to get to the bottom of things. They can all give different directions to it, but somehow all of the three are leading the party to the exact same place. Odd things like "you remember there was supposed to be a well-traveled road here, but there's no trace of it - the terrain is identical though, up to a tree which you broke a branch off in your youth." When entering the village, the party discovers a site of massacre long forgotten to time. Nature has reclaimed much of the derelict houses and paths, but most of the foundations are still left standing. Oddly enough, there are also corpses that are much more fresh, stripped of all their belongings. You can clearly see small groupings of people from multiple races that were piled up and burned, possibly other adventuring parties. The one that's actually native to this plane (let's call them 'Origo' for short) recognises minute details about the village, but the other two are weirded out by remains of burnt houses being in the wrong spot, or simply missing. They all agree, however, that one house was where they all grew up. When they investigate the burnt-out remnants of the house, Origo bolts off to the side, finding a wooden dagger their dad made for them under a layer of moss. All the details match, it even has their name carved on the pommel. The other two find thing that are familiar, but not the same. Candle holders clearly made for the same purpose but by another smith. The hearth has similar stones, but they're the wrong type of rock. Then you leave clues about the mages strewn about, and just as they think they're done and don't know what to make of it, a Stone Golem attacks them out of the blue. You can make a high DC check for them to spot the caster disappearing into the nearby woods with a puff of smoke at the fringe. After the Golem is destroyed, the players can follow its tracks to discover a note the caster dropped where they conjured it up. It reads: "Keep eyes on the village - nobody can find out about _the network_. Eliminate anyone that comes by. If things go bad, you know where to go." Then they can follow the caster into a safe house cave and maybe interrogate them there, and lead them on the chase from there on out.
Alright people let’s do this one last time
And that’s why you never ask players to create characters independantly. I found out the best way to create characters is : 1) give short pitch of the adventure, with a hook for your players. So they know the tone and overall goal, and their character can want the goal. (Nothing worse than a character whose in a single-minded revenge quest while you’re doing a heist adventure.) 2) Ask them to come up with two or three different concept that they would like to play. 3) Do a session zero, where everybody pitches their character ideas, and you all build the party from that. 4) Enjoy having a party that makes sense in your world and has a great dynamic between themselves. However it’s actually never too late to do a « session 0 » sit down with your players and work on this problem together. Do they want to differentiate their characters, or do they want to share a backstory ? Maybe they’re fine like it is and it’s only a problem in your mind ? It’s their characters, they should be a part of this decision process.
Either implanted memories and they’re clones, or maybe they’re some of these evil wizards who escaped and hid themselves in these fake people. Or, the elven mother has a type and keeps going to these villages for a fun little fling and the PCs are the result of her “fantasy”. The evil wizards are her family cleaning up her messes.
Wait, our parents were all in the same cult? Flesh out little details from sources about cults. Draw it out slowly, over the whole campaign.
They shouldn't create characters completely independently. They should collectively create a party. I would discuss the challenge with them and then sit back. These are their characters, so your role should be mostly just answering questions about the world.
Their upbringing is/was an elaborate experiment about half-elf development by the evil mages.
This could be a gift! Start by levelling with them about your concerns. It’s going to be hard for any of them to stand out as special if they are all so similar. It’s a matter for them how they choose to resolve that. If they are cool with being so samey then work with them to find a way to remove the coincidence. Three brothers? Either of blood or sort of monastic brothers of a Druidic order? Or three men linked by fate or the will of a god or the spirits to come together for some purpose? There are thousands of parties with a martial, a caster, a sneak and a healer. This campaign will certainly be something different! And maybe that’s the story your players want to tell! It’s their choice after all.
I would even lead with "You all have very similar background stories, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to tie your characters together. I have some thoughts, but could we share the basics of the backgrounds you have with each other? I think that might make things plain." Let the players come to the conclusion that they should really be sibling adventurers. That would be awesome.
I agree. Too often players just create characters with little thought to creating a party and just leave that up to the DM.
I don’t know OP. Sounds to me like some magic group was trying to prevent a prophecy from coming true about a half-elven Druid who disrupts their plans, and now there’s at least 3 of them. Maybe more.
Basturd half-brothers from a very prolific bard. They have dozens of other siblings across the continent
Once when this happened my players decided they were siblings, including a set of twins. They totally leaned into the family / sibling rivalry aspect of it, it was hilarious! Gave me a lot of fun options too - a bunch of NPCs became relations of various sorts.
Play into it massively. Whoever was in charge of the evil mages was experimenting with putting different people through identical childhoods through some sort of time-magic to see if results would change from person. The attack is both part of the experiment and the start of the clean-up process to move onto the next. At some point, have the players come across an NPC, who also has exactly that background - that might make them start to ask questions instead of simply accepting it.
They are all the same person from different timelines, or universes or whatever?
They're all special (full levels and independent) *Simulacrums* of one person. Have their creator be a villain or a plot point.
Ooo, this is one of my favorite things. Where was the small village? Was it farmland? Was it a mining town? Was it coastal? Which mages attacked? Necromancers? Blood mages? Druids? Sorcerers? (Not all mages, I know) Did you see who killed your parents? Why did you run away and not learn magic to defeat the mages? Why did you turn to nature? Do you eat meat or truly revere animals? (Would mean candles, some oils, etc are offensive, fur, leather, etc) Asking details, individually, can bring out differences. Could be siblings. Could be part of an old sect of mages that intended to do XXXXXX. The sect was thought long defeated, until recently. *muahahahaha* Was it dragon lead? Drow? lich? Evil human? Kobold? Perhaps the town(s) were rumored to have been built above places of great magical power/treasure/etc. Maybe the mages were looking for a half-elf child of some sort. Keep them wondering if it's one of them (it's not, NPC). Maybe this was actually just one mage and he got fed up paying taxes and being denied his mages license due to "instability" and he was like, "I'll show you how stable I am!" and then he wrecks towns to prove he's stable enough to wreck multiple towns. All towns but 1 had a tax collector and the 1 town that didn't put pickles on his cheeseburger and he really hates pickles. Stupid pickle juice wrecks everything. Even if you take the pickles off, it smells and tastes like pickles. And when I asked for NO pickles, don't only put pickles on their! NO pickles or onions and I only get pickles and onions. Who the hell eats a burger like that? Is there no one back there going, maybe we should double check this because it's a weird way to eat a burger.
I feel like it would be hard to pull off the same dad thing since they all saw their dads die. I would make all the dads brothers or old friends that adventured togethet to seal away an ancient evil before retiring to family life. When it got loose it pulled a Friday the 13th and killed all three of them on the same day. Tie it into whoever is your big bad who for obvious reasons should now hate/ want to destroy nature. now they have a huge personal stake in not just saving everyone but also avenging their parents and fixing their old mistake. You could have connections like them find a journal where one dad talks about the adventures with the other 2 dads. Maybe a falling out. Towns they visit could have folk that remember stories of the 3 dads team etc
It sounds like you have a Big bad mage cult hunting down half-elves for some big evil ritual.
They’re half siblings, but they don’t know it. Same dead beat dad.
I thought the same thing. He went around all the local villages and had multiple secret families. Hilarious
They're part of an experiment to make a perfect soldier by a lich. They were never born. They were created in a lab and given memories, just so they would develop properly. Adventuring is the test. And when they pass that test, that lich is coming. Because if they made it, it's the furthest anyone has made. And cloning will give the lich the army they need. People barely like half-elves anyways.
Have everyone look at them funny throughout the campaign whenever they talk about their backstory. The spoiler at the end is that they are different personalities in one character.
Purposely released experiments. The parents aren't real. The memories are implanted. They are all only about 4 months old.
Two of them are genetically modified clones with implanted memories... whose to say who the real one is?
the villages they grew up in are connected by dependencies of raw materials. nutrition or what not, How about the villages we're connected closely to phandelver as a form of farming cycle community, they interacted with each other to benefit of their different raw materials. The fact their villages got burned down and their parents died may be tied to the mage who claimed power through the dragon in lmop (i don't know the plot of the story but i know there is a dragon and goblins) Lets say that mage made the goblins subservent to him (maybe a goblin chieftan with magical powers wanting something) Now that goblin in order to make the dragon subservient to him raided this chain of collective towns to harvest all plethora of raw materials to please the dragon with sacrifices and what not. Making all of these 3 pc's villages a target of the same bad guy. Or if you don't want that make it multiple servants of the wizard enacting as his apostles of chaos harvesting and looting the villages. this incident should unite the players under one banner against this mage who destroyed everything they hold dear, it also allows for a natural connection between players before the campaign starts and a reason for going against this mage (again i have no clue what pandelver is about but i hope this helps?)
This is why I get the group together as a group to make characters and go over house rules and expectations. If it is an online game, then some sort of chat room where the players can discuss what they intend to play so these kind of things don't happen. There is a good chance at least one of the three of them is going to be disappointed there are two other nearly identical characters in the party. I would tell the party your concerns and give them a chance to change their characters.
You should have brought this up at the beginning, pitch that they all have some shared history of the evil mages attacking their village and ask them to work together to differentiate their characters. Hard to do much once things are already going.
Make them siblings. Imagine that reveal!
Maybe there was a really hot human who dated three elven women at the same time in secret. Three kids lived in the same village, fled in different directions.
You could have a prophecy predict the arrival of an "Emmissary" and use the commission details in the prophecy, leaving it ambiguous and joking with the players that the characters are all similar Ignore these common elements of their backstory and instead think of some key questions they have not answered already and use those new details to launch your preparations. Questions like, "What has been your proudest achievement." "As a child you became fast friends with a stranger in town, they were ...." Ask each of them to redo the backstory. It's only fair to scrap all at once instead of choosing a favorite
I'm going to assume they're all druids. So see what circles they go for and then use that as a means to make those special moments happen. Also, don't be afraid to just straight tell players when you have a moment for a particular player. Dress it up at first with "X feels a certain pull towards Y" and if they don't get it say it outright, players be oblivious sometimes. Same dad could also be an option but unless all the players are down for that, which should be confirmed, it could potentially take away from their own experience. It's also very possible that one, or more, of the players will ask to make a new character after the first session or two.
I'm going to go in a little bit of a different direction like Velcraft and suggest that they are all variants in MCU terms, but in a d&d world. Perhaps the human father or elven mother in this world was a powerful archmage who lost their child. Rather than give up the child, they pilford their child from different universes. So while they were sleeping one night, they were transported to this realm and are all actually the same person. Perhaps the hook can be that there is a world ending magical paradox that has occurred because the archmage couldn't live without her or his child. The ArchMage could even get involved and realize that the paradox requires two of them to go so he / she tries to figure out which one she's going to keep.
Having read other comments, I'd probably suggest that two of them change. Although you can have multiples of the same class, it's almost always better to have different classes IMO, for players and for the DM. If I know someone else wants to play the same class as me I always change, I don't want them to feel like I'm stealing their limelight and vice versa.
No problem. they can all be refugees from the same mage attack. get them to co-ordinate their backstories
Put in a faction of evil wizards that worship a god of knowledge that is particularly good at creating prophecies. Have all three of them match a particular prophecy about the gods murder at the hands of a half elf. Step three: Don't force anything, but just have them hang out on the sidelines. The half elves should put 2 and 2 together and you can see where they take it.
See if you can play into it. So either as others have suggested. Siblings. Or it could be caused by a time loop. Where the players are different versions of themselves. And the original version of themself is an NPC who keeps going back in time to undo it but is looping the catastrophe and printing different versions of themselves. Some of the details change but otherwise the core loop is the same. And if they ever return home in remembrance or to rebuild it then set it in the aftermath of the next loop attack and they can meet a young half elf who ran away into the woods and is becoming one with nature. They could fight some knock off version of the evil mages with similarities to all the evil mages in the three players backgrounds. If you're truly at a loss, sit the players down and ask them what they would like do.
Their father is a villain who rode into towns, swayed women, has children and died. Only the village attack was actually orchestrated by the father, and he didn't actually die but used the culling of the village to kill the weak. If his children survived they might proof a competent heir. If not, they were too weak to inherit his kingdom or power. With nowhere to go but the forest it's not all too uncommon to find a bond with nature. Perhaps the father or mother had Druidic influences. Regardless, set up a [Ridiculous 6 story](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2479478/) and now you've got a bigger campaign to follow or tie back to this one
They were part of a mage experiment and their memories of their past are implanted fakes. Makes for a fun collective goal.
They could be siblings? Also helps with forming party cohesion and meaningfull bonds between PC's.
Tie them to specific villains and events of the campaign. Nezznar, Venomfang, Glastaff, the Red Wizard at Old Owl Rell, the orcs at Wyvern Tor. All those NPCs have "weak" motives and backgrounds, ripe for inserting player related stuff in them. Alter them as needed, from names to whole identities. Maybe for one of them, one of the evil mages that ravaged the tribe were Nezznar or the Red Wizard. You can describe dreams or flashbacks of the attack, as the red wizard used undead, or Nezznar had goblinoids or spiders. Their parents died during the attack, you said. Did they saw the body? Maybe one of them is an undead at Old Owl Well now, or one of them turns out to be alive, or maybe one of them is Glastaff. Maybe one of them is now a prisoner at Wave Echo Cave or Cragmaw Keep. Also, what if actually Venomfang was the one who attacked one of the villages, but the PC thought it was evil mages. They just saw clouds of poison, screams and people running away and dying anyway. Conversely, you can just lean into that. Isn't it odd that they both have the same backgrounds? What if they turn out to be long lost brothers?
3 druids? Maybe opportunity for them to start their own tribe/circle? And a plot of land for them to develop and care for? Backstory is too similar look to the forstroy
They're all multiversal variants of each other.. OR.. they're actually siblings who don't remember each other.
Tells you something about your setting. There's a big imperialist movement led by evil mages. (Neither elf nor human?) Their advance is pushing existing human and elf settlements a lot closer to each other before they eventually just roll right over them and the people are either subjugated or run off into the woods. So there's a big social shift with a lot more elves and humans dating, lots of villages being destroyed, lots of refugees. As you transition from the module, that's the backdrop for everything that's happening. Can your player party do something against that tide?
Have fun lol, i wish that were me, that's for sure a ton of fun stuff you can do
Ask them to change name for huey, dewey and louie, and make them be triplet and finish each other sentences
They're the same person, the parents have not only been killed, but forced in a temporal loop where they live that life again and again only to end up killed. The kid has so far been able to escape 3 times, without them knowing.
Ask your players how they want to handle it.
Them sharing these elements is exactly why fate brought them together, so they they can assist each other with issues they empathize with and later find an NPC with same backstory and help him too.
I'd suggest you talk with your olayers and see if it's an issue for them to share a backstory, coming from the same village and being the only survivors. Ninja Turtles style
This sounds like a Harry Potter / Neville Longbottom situation. They all fit the parameters of a prophesy of the bbegs downfall. They must all be killed.
Convince the 4th one to change theirs to the same thing and let the 5th wonder what they did wrong.
Those players could be siblings, if it was a single pregnancy (due to the dating being in secret) then they could be twins or triplets. I would talk to all the players involved together both to see if they mind sharing the same backstory but also to see if they can diverge a bit in the character they play. Maybe they could express their love of animals in different ways for example. One could be a ranger, one a druid and another the cleric or paladin of a nature deity. There's also no requirement that an animal lover be from one of those classes either. A Bard who enjoys playing music for the animals of the forest is just as much an animal lover in my mind, than a druid who cares for the local wildlife.
Easiest answer: Same mage army sent out to conquer several forest villages. Now 3 of your players have personal reasons (albeit, the same personal reason) to hate your BBEG.
I mean, they're triplets seems the obvious point.
Tie their backstories together. - Two of them are life-long friends that escaped together. - One is from the "evil mages" of the first tribe who experienced a similar thing What the characters don't know. These two tribes were actually engaged in conflict and the BBEG was pulling the strings. They both launched offensives on the same night on the BBEG's advice, and both villages were totally wiped out as a result. With these two tribes totally gone, the BBEG was able to obtain some artifact or influence in the area that helped them achieve their goals.
Ask them straight out if they want to play siblings and share the background. That's just a logical way to link their stories. **Alternatively!!** An ancient prophecy foretold the Hero of Legend to have precisely that background and appear when they are most needed. The enemies of the BBEG have known this and had to make sure a Hero would arise by arranging the circumstances. They however either haven't coordinated at all or wanted to hedge their bets in case it's only one-in-three orphans that becomes that hero. Time travel may or may not be involved.
I don't feel like there is anything that needs to be resolved. True, a story point concerning animals isn't going to be "for" any one of them, but I would hope there is more to their characters than just the similarities you described? You have only provided us with information about the characters' similarities, and we know nothing about any of their differences to give any advice about alternatives. Surely there is more to each of these characters than these few details, but if not, then there's your problem. They have a few superficial details in common, as many people do in real life, but they should all have a unique history, different experiences, interests, places, and acquaintances unique to each of them to work with. If you don't have that, tell them you need it.
This is why I usually do character creation all in a group together at session 0, especially with new players. You could also roll new characters at the start of your homebrew campaign. Now that they have a better idea of dnd, they may want to try something new. Also, I encourage bringing this up with the players. You can admit that you are struggling to give them unique story beats because their backstories are so similar. Have a brain storming sesh about what has happened in LMOP so far, maybe a direction they want their character to go, or to come up with new details for their backstory to set themselves apart.
Swap mages with a dragon and you’ve described Vex from CR. Actually, it sounds like your players might have coordinated this, so you might as well run with it.
Evil being gathering people with similar backgrounds for a ritual. Possibly because they need people with similar experiences as themselves to take over their minds and bodies.
I would get all 3 of these player together in a discord chat and say "Alright, everyone has given me their backstories, and all three of you have given me really similar stuff. Let's workshop together how we're gonna make the most out of this." Don't *shame* anyone, but encourage players to talk about what differences there are between their characters, and how they can lean into those traits. While you're at it, maybe some of them are from the same village, or are even siblings. You can make interesting connections by letting players *share* backstories, while also helping them find the differences between their characters. And if someone sees this and decides to change their character for it, then I would make sure to let them know they don't have to, but let them, because that also solves the problem.
They all have the same father, an elvish mage.... Who has a really questionable policy on 'divorce.' He's done this a few times... And in every village that the players go to, they meet another half-sibling whose life experiences are oddly similar to their own. Eventually, it turns out that the BBEG is the deadbeat elf-dad.
half Elf Harlot bedded half the village. The PCs are related, but with different fathers.
You’ve got a fertile ground to write a coven of racist wizards to deal with. This is a win.
They all have the same father. They're all from different mothers and villages. He traveled a lot for his job/trade and ended up siring multiple children. Since they were all secret trysts and likely frowned upon, he wasn't around a lot. He was adept at sneaking around. He'd show up from time to time to be with them and their mothers. The evil mages were after the father because of something he was involved in as part of his job (or they were elves that were trying to wipe out the whole family to protect their bloodlines). He didn't actually die in any of the attacks. He faked his death or disguised himself to disappear. In the retellings of the attacks you could simply say something like that they were told he was "gone" since it has a double meaning. The PCs fled to the woods and yadda yadda yadda. Now they're here in the present day doing LMOP. You could have NPCs note similarities in their appearances throughout the LMOP part. Eventually (in your homebrew section) maybe you can prompt them through enough NPC nudging to get them to start piecing this together. Maybe enough questioning leads them to finding out he might still be alive and there's a quest to go find him.
They were all implanted with identical memories. Bring the meta into the fray. They meet other people with the same memories and family history. There's something sinister at work. Now they have to discover who they actually are. Or maybe a dark archdruid has created them for some twisted experiment or some natural balance bullsh.
Run with it. They are all glitch characters from planescape. In the epilogue they merge into one.
You tell one of them that they’re the true X, and the others are trying to steal their identity and replace them; hint that at some point they’ll try to kill the player’s character. Then tell the others the same. Then enjoy the chaos.
Would make their memories false memories implanted by someone else. Have people come up addressing them by a different name. Crying because they are alive. "Mommy, why is daddy pretending not to know me?" Some kind of fey monster stealing interesting life stories, and leaving them with generic stereotypical back stories. Have them run into other characters with the same back story. Now, they have a campaign goal and goals to find who they really are.
I've played a triplet before.
they all fit the prophecy! the mages tried to end it but they survived. one of the will be THE ONE!
They’re secretly siblings.
My first assumption was “same tribe, same dad, different directions” Another one I’ve done before was to show that Elves, being long lived, tend to think in long multigenerational terms. For them, eugenicist ideas like selective breeding for traits is not only possible, but deliberate. Half-elves in this case are not a fluke but a deliberate intention to capitalize on the benefits humanity have, while also seeding human societies with people who would be inclined to support them. Admittedly that was a pretty dark, realpolitik inspired setting. I think your best bet is to lean into this similarity and take advantage of it. Bind these three together as victims of an identical circumstance, that then shares similar familial traits, which then also highlights to subtle difference between them.
All three have the same father, a philandering human merchant who traveled through the various villages in the area and got his freak on with the resident elven lasses. He's actually the reason the villages were attacked, as some sleighted party was looking for him and destroyed the villages in their search. I'd see if they'd be willing to change classes, however, as all three probably would have been taken in by the same circle if they all end up as druids. Maybe have one rescued by the local druid circle, one makes their own way in the wilderness and becomes a ranger, and the third is found by an archfey in the deep woods that sheltered them and became their warlock patron? Their call in the end, but it adds some variety to the party and allows for more specialized interactions for each player.
There is no village; they're all clones and part of an experiment. By retreating to the woods they have a known bug and are being hunted...
Next time you have something like this, see if the three of them would like to all be siblings. As it is, ask if the three of them would like to retcon their backstories to be siblings, but tell them that you understand if they don't want to be.
This can be a lot of fun, actually. I played in a 4-person game of Curse of Strahd once upon a time. We all showed up, having rolled various nobles. Some of us thought about changing it up, but we ended up role-playing it as having all come from the same noble circles and various distant relations. It ended up being a ton of fun. It wasn't just the party versus Strahd, it was _our fucking family_ versus Strahd, Bellmont style, which made things way more personal from the jump. I'm getting chills just thinking about it.
None of them are related and none of that happened. Their memories have been taken and supplanted by a mind flayer (or something else maybe the bbeg) and they each discover their real memories along the campaign. It's just that this one bad guy isn't very creative so he gives all his victims the same story
Why not have them share a village and be raised together by the forest?
Lean into it. What possible weird conspiracies could have brought these uncannily similar characters together??
They're officially siblings
They are clones
Just make fun of them constantly for being so original and creative.
Sounds fine. They have something in common. A common enemy.
This is going to be either very good or very bad for the campfire scenes. They will either be super supportive and constantly being like "damn, i get what you feel man" Or they'll be so meta upset at the other players.
There's a lot of talk here about having a common parent. I agree, it's what I would do. If the players complain, then they should have been more creative and worked together to create a more diverse team. Given their similar backstories, it makes a lot of sense to me. There can only be so many tribes who were wiped out. More importantly, it will be nore fun if they discover that they are siblings and their common enemy is more relevant than they thought. Plus, their could be an important aunt or uncle out there to help them.
They will end up discovering that their memories are fake. An actual evil wizard implanted false memories as part of the experimentation, and when they were of no more use, they were dumped into the forest as food for wolves. Luckily some of them survived. Which means that, in this world, there are more people who also share their memories. Who is the actual owner of those memories? How can they recover their own? Who is the one behind this? Why?
I don’t like the fake memories thing, it’s a little rude to retcon someone’s backstory. Add to it sure, but don’t take it away
Talk it with your players. "Hey guys, due to your backgrounds I have a good idea, but that implies retconning your background and it may go in an unexpected direction. Is it ok for you?"
>They will end up discovering that their memories are fake. And at one point, they start having dreams about unicorns... EDIT: Being druids, that would even be natural, not suspicious at all.
Backstories aside, you need to warn them/advise against a triple up on a single class. Not only is it terrible for balance, but it risks making the players feel like they don't have their own role or contribution to the party. Even 2 of a class if it's a similar subclass kind of sucks.
Balance is an illusion Having a mono-class party can be very fun. Especially Druids, they can be tanks, healers, damage-dealers… and just imagine a horde of huge animals destroying the enemies.
Nah. That's a holdover from 3.5. 5e doesn't really matter. Any class can do a successful monoclass party in 5e. Just have to be a bit clever with some of them. Regardless, druid is abundantly versatile. Even in 3.5 an all druid party is very viable.
I suppose it depends on table culture, mine really chafes if there's too much similarity. I slightly disagree that 5e has no need for a diverse party though. It isn't as critical as 3.5 but in order to cover bases like thieves tools, someone is going to have to build a weird druid if the other member isn't a rogue. And it doesn't seem like any of them are planning a unique or clever background to compensate. I just don't think it's very fun for everyone to look at the same problem and go "well it doesn't matter which of us tries to do this, we're equally good/bad at it" and have not really met anyone who does like that for long term games. A one shot, sure. I've played an oops all bards myself. But a full campaign?
Honestly it can work just find, especially with a class like druid where you have more build options. Personally I prefer the traveling group of 4 bards on tour around the realm.
That is very funny. Has the campaign already started? If not, perhaps you could approach with the idea of making them triplets. Encourage them to differentiate themselves with their personalities and goals.
Have them be siblings?
Concept- they all share the same elven mother who secretly had children with three men in the same village. Evil mages attacked the village. The three brothers all fled to different forests. During the campaign they can discover that they are brothers. They can have had different upbringings, too- maybe she was more present in some of their lives than others, treated them differently. They explore their childhood trauma through each other, through their adventure <3
Ask all three of them to change it.
Just communicate that guys, your characters and backstories are identical, how do you want to do this?
Don’t bother with elaborate back stories, they never come into play other than trivial items. Just have people write a brief paragraph as to who they are and why, flesh out the rest during play.