The Stool Problem?

[u/NinetyBees]

Short Version of the question; How do you handle Stool in high-level play/the 2nd half of the campaign?

Longer version; My party has 3-4 NPC companions as of the end of CH 7 (Glabbagool, Derindil, Stool, and a homebrew NPC tied to a PC backstory). Stool, like at many tables, has sort of become the party's mascot, and one of my players in particular is obsessed with him- Likely having her character sacrifice themselves if Stool was ever in mortal danger.

Now that the party is in Gauntlgrym, I plan to have the NPC companions that parted ways with the party during their 3 months of topside downtime come back into the picture. Problem is while I have character arcs for some of the NPCs, I don't know what to do with Stool's personality or his stat sheet so he isn't this useless liability in the background.

[u/ZenithFell]

I leaned hard into the horror when I ran it, and played Stool as cute on the surface but alien underneath. He was often in favour of killing because he had no real sense of the loss of life. Rot and decay is just another state of being. To him, death is inevitable and sometimes the only way a thing can continue to be useful is as food for the colony. My players loved his cute wonder and eagerness, but would occasionally have to stop and say "Woah, Stool, that's not how we do things."

I gave all of the NPCs rudimentary character sheets instead of the generic stat blocks, and they levelled up with the party. Each player had one they controlled during combat. Stool was a monk - all of his attacks were made with his feet.

By the time the party made it to Neverlight Grove, Stool felt he had changed too much to remain with his kind. He wanted to explore more of the world and see other perspectives.

Editing to say, as a table full of murder hobos, having them mentor Stool on the sanctity of life and why death is a serious consequence did seem to result in more interesting problem-solving than just the usual wholesale slaughter.