Don’t split the party: an oft-repeated maxim in D&D groups. Whether as a guideline or hard rule, the sentence gets thrown around frequently when it comes to tabletop advice! And not without good reason, I think. There are a lot of perfectly good reasons to keep the party together, either as a DM or as a player.

When the party is split, depending on your situation, the individual members can find themselves at a disadvantage.

In combat, front-line fighters need the support of back-line combatants, and vice-versa. Challenge Ratings (CR) of monsters assumes a party of around four PCs, and fewer characters means fewer hits. Your support characters can’t heal or buff other characters when those characters are missing, and there’s more pressure to deal damage when you’re one of two instead of one of five.

This extends outside combat, as well. Dungeons & Dragons assumes that you’re working with a group of diverse individuals, each possessing certain abilities and filling a certain “niche,” so to speak. And I’m not just talking about parties that have a traditional composition, either! Each player character has their own backstory that gives them a unique connection to the campaign world.

Even broader than that, each class and subclass give a character abilities unlike any other character in the party. The pact of the fiend warlock interacts with the world differently from the evocation wizard or the battlemaster fighter. They have different tools in their toolboxes– spells, proficiencies, equipment, even.

I prefer keeping the party together. But, sometimes stuff happens, and it makes more sense in-fiction for the party to split off from each other for a while.

My experience with party splits—two in my own campaign, two in the one I play in.

It was fairly early on in the campaign I’d started. The adventurers were about level 3, and they had returned to the city after a successful first adventure, where they’d successfully slain two dragon wyrmlings and an unconscionable number of kobolds. They split up around the city to spend their loot and pursue their own ends.

The sorcerer wanted to research for a few days, and the rest of the party wanted to do a quest for the local blacksmith in exchange for some goods. Since everyone was okay with leaving the sorcerer behind, including him, I figured it wouldn’t harm much. We ended the session, and I started thinking about what he could find out while the rest were away.

I sketched out a few NPCs he could interact with and some information he could find, both relating to the party’s interests and to another quest I wanted to start hinting at. The latter was intended for them to face head-on at a later level. I imagined that I could drop a few hints here and there that would ultimately lead them to confront this evil mage in his tower, defeat him, and take his cursed magical item.

But if everything had gone as planned, I wouldn’t be telling this story!

While the rest of the party traveled to another town, went deep into a mine infested with rust monsters, cleared out the rust monsters, and started their journey back, the sorcerer went to challenge the CR 12 Archmage you can find on page 342 of the Monster Manual.

You know, as you do.

I didn’t want him to die, of course, we were still in the early stages of the game, and as a new DM, I wasn’t yet comfortable with that idea. I put some things in the mage’s tower that the sorcerer could use to his advantage (or that could be used to deter him), like an anti-magic zone and a few NPCs. I started the session with a reminder that fleeing was always an option.

He didn’t flee—rather, through a mix of luck and ingenuity on his part, and a mix of misfortune and missteps on my part, he walked out of that tower with magical items, money, and a good bit more XP than he walked in with. The only damage he took was from the curse of the magic item.

So after he returned to the party, I was pretty set on not letting the party split up again (and I was also pretty set on getting better at running villainous characters).

But as we know, things can happen that the DM does not plan for!

Some time later, the party travels north in an attempt to escape the forces pursuing them. Most of the way through their journey, the monk and the paladin decide that they should head back the way they came, to solve some unfinished business. The players knew that I was unsure about splitting the party, but they made their case well.

The paladin believed she could help the adventurer’s guild back in their starting city. The monk didn’t want to leave without ensuring the safety of his parents, who he had been searching for since the start of the campaign and had only recently learned the location of. After agreeing to a meeting place once they returned, the paladin and monk set off.

So while the fighter, rogue, and sorcerer got into trouble with political plots and at least one vampire, the paladin and the monk traveled south and pursued their own interests.

The times we split up in the good squad

In the campaign I play in, with the good squad, we split up a couple times. We’re in the middle of a pretty big split right now, actually, but I’ll start chronologically.

In this campaign, each of our characters were introduced separately—that is, the party came together as a result of events that happened in the first few sessions. Our characters formed an alliance because of the circumstances surrounding us. We began in the capital city, Alame’a, and our own individual stories brought us together.

Our mission this time was to rescue a tiefling from the clutches of the Coven of Eternal Light, a nefarious group intent on purging the world of darkness. They see humanoids like tieflings as emblems of that darkness, regardless of their actual character, and consider the sun elves to be the people closest to the light. (That’s why they’re the bad guys.)

We had until midnight. At midnight, the Coven would burn their captive in front of an anonymous crowd. Some friendly NPCs had located the entrance into their hideout. Our plan was to sneak in, rescue the tiefling, and sneak out.

Except Finnith had booked a performance that night. Finnith was prepared to cancel or reschedule the gig, but the rest of the party had another idea. Because my character had incurred the Coven’s malice earlier that day by causing a bit of a scene, the performance could draw their attention away while the rest of the party snuck in.

That seemed like a good element to add to the plan, so that’s what we did. While the ranger, rogue, and NPC warlock infiltrated the Coven base, Finnith did his thing. The initial phase of this mission was the last part of that session. Our DM picked up with an individual session with yours truly to determine what was going on with Finnith.

The performance was a success, in that it distracted the Coven’s members, but Finnith also succeeded in inciting one of their agents into drawing his weapon and dragging him off the stage… and then knocked Finnith out… and then dragged him off to who knows where. My bard was tied up, blindfolded, and gagged somewhere with his equipment gone.

I figured that if I was lucky, the party would find me during their investigation, and then I’d get to rejoin the group. And Finnith, on the whole, was a pretty lucky elf.

That was… not what happened.

In fact, as the subsequent session played out, the party reached the tiefling before Finnith was there, missing him by a margin of ten minutes. They freed her and got out, only returning when they sought to regroup and found Finnith missing. And how that resolved is a whole ‘nother story, honestly.

Let’s talk about the second, bigger party split that happened.

This one happened in two parts—first one party member left, then the other.

As I mentioned when I first started talking about this campaign, the rogue is a princess whose family drama followed her. She’s the heir to the throne, and her parents—the current monarchs—have been kidnapped (along with her young sibling) by her uncle. Said uncle has also sent agents after her.

So, as the campaign went on towards the end of “Season 1,” she became anxious to return to her home country and save her parents. Soon after we began the journey west to the dragonborn lands, the ranger said her goodbyes and left the party, leaving me and the rogue. Soon after that, the rogue determined that it would be best if she also left, making her exit during the night and leaving a letter for my bard to find the next morning.

We’ve had several good squad sessions after that, with the DM dealing with each of us separate from one another. Since the party split, Finnith has:

  • taken on a quest meant for the whole party on his own
  • almost died in combat while attempting to complete said quest
  • been dragged down into the Underdark, saved from an unfortunate end by a mysterious benefactor’s agents
  • agreed to help said mysterious benefactor
  • returned to the surface and almost died in combat again
  • made his way back through a magically-dark cave to complete the quest
  • received a message from NPCs back in the capital, where we started out
  • got a cool metal bird
  • returned to Alame’a to assist these NPCs
  • returned to his hometown to find another NPC to help them
  • undertook a mission to help these NPCs fight the Coven, almost dying once more

And the other two have gone through a lot of stuff as well! All this to say, though, that splitting up isn’t necessarily bad, but it does tend to result in unusual circumstances.

The longer you’re split up, the longer you’ll stay split up

It’s a matter of momentum—especially when your party don’t have an agreed rendezvous place/time. Once the team has split up, getting the team back together is going to take a lot of effort. The Good Squad is spread out in entirely different areas! It’s only through the dream spell that my character is able to get in contact with them to talk about, well, getting the band back together.

Even a few sessions out from the initial split, my character had picked up information and quests that drew him further out into the world. For a session or two there, I was actually closer to the Evil Squad, since I was in the Underdark!

For a long time, it seemed like it would take nothing short of a miracle to bring us back together, since we were lower level and had no way of contacting each other. Mundane modes of long-distance communication is impossible if none of us are staying in one place. Spells like sending limit the message length, too. And I was lucky that the other characters aren’t elves, since those can’t be reached through dream.

You’re at a disadvantage alone

Even when, in my campaign, the monk and paladin split off, the three others felt the hit. They got themselves into situations where the monk’s martial prowess or the paladin’s healing/Divine Sense would have been really helpful!

In the current campaign, Finnith is a support character. His combat capabilities are oriented towards healing and helping out other characters. I’ve got limited damage-dealing spells, a low AC, and 54 HP. That’s not nothing, but it’s also not a good solo-combat build, because that’s not what he’s built for.

Without the rest of the party, he can’t do a lot in combat—the first time, he got captured, the second time, he got dropped, and the third time, he got dropped and almost beheaded. Out of spell slots, out of Cutting Words, out of Luck Points, out of HP.

You also don’t have access to the other party members’ capabilities outside of combat. Finnith can’t benefit from the investigative perks that the inquisitive rogue gets, or the exploration utility the ranger offers.

But, there are unique advantages in these sorts of situations, as well.

Characters often act differently on their own. When their course of action is entirely at their own discretion, each character’s point of view comes through quite strong. As a DM, I find these scenes especially rewarding when a player is very invested in their character. As a player, I’m super curious to see how other characters act when put on the spot.

When decisions aren’t being filtered through the opinion of the group, you get a different style of play. Even moving from a large group to a smaller group can have that same shift in party priorities.

So, while there’s certainly disadvantages to splitting up the party, or going off on your own, it’s not all bad! I wouldn’t recommend it unless the Dungeon Master is comfortable running it—preparing for split-location adventuring doubles the prep load—and you might find yourself in a situation that absolutely calls for such a thing.

It’s not a decision to be made lightly, especially in a scenario where you don’t know when or how you and the group will meet back up. But, you might be surprised at the interesting scenarios and drama that arises.

So, did I miss anything?

Do you have stories about splitting the party and the chaos (or order, I guess) that ensued?

Let me know! You can drop a comment below!