Depends on where its happening imo. If its underground in a dungeoncrawl style situation, simply warn him that the dungeon is scaled for a party of size X and that you're not going to GM fiat the encounters to save his character's life. Then keep an eye on how much time you're spending on his exclusive sub-content be careful not to let him get more than 1/Xth of you time, as that's being unfair on your other players. If he lives, he lives. There will be some encounters where you'll want to prevent crossover of information between the two groups. For getting private information to groups of only 1-2 players, a piece of paper can be effective. For large groups, its often best to ask the other player to leave the room briefly.
For walk + talk encounters in civilised areas its less of an issue as you dont have to fiddle with encounter scaling so much. Again, keep an eye on how much time you're spending on his character vs the others'.
Tools for encouraging party cohesion:
- Jigsaw puzzle plot maguffins.
Have your lone wolf and your main party seperately come into possession of a piece of something that needs to be put together to advance the quest. Fragments of a keystone, torn parts of a treasure map, bits of an amulet with a riddle inscribed around it.
- Patient, intelligent foes.
When your heroes start to complete quests, they gain the attention of villains. A mastermind style villain would start looking into what the heroes are doing, and researching their weaknesses. Your lonewolf is such a weakness. You can foreshadow this villain's intervention as a sub-plot to your campaign. Little snippets like an NPC the party is on good terms with mentioning someone asking lots of questions about the party. Dont forget the hugely powerful tool that divination magic provides to villains. "When will 'lonewolf' next be seperated from the party" and "where will he be" are the sorts of questions that provide great RP justification for a villain being in the right place at the right time. Even a non magic using villain can access divination magic by carefully allying with a spellcaster that can.
Example:
NPCs are low-level and have just hack and slashed their way through a local crypt that was infested with a skellie or two. A local vampire learns of this through a minion. The party are small-fry at this point. He has a minion or two keep an eye on them to see who they talk to. He's probably mostly interested in who's paying the heroes than the heroes themselves at this point and he's assuming that said heroes will die heroicly soon. In a quest or two's time, the heroes have started proving to be "lucky heroes", and worth getting rid of. Vampy arranges an attack on the party when they are split. One distraction group on the main party, and a second capture group on the lonewolf. Lonewolf probably gets captured and taken prisoner. Party eventually get around to rescuing lonewolf. While party are doing their rescue, vampire is "doing something very bad" elsewhere. Maybe a naughty ritual, maybe killing off an NPC that was well liked that the party where finding very useful.
Your lonewolf is now invested into the story. He owes his party members a favour for the rescue, and he has an emnity towards an enemy NPC. You can thread your NPC baddy into the campaign as a sub-plot, and use him to fuel the party's paranoia about splitting up with occasional reminders that they're being watched physically and magically.
Eventually they'll be high enough level to challenge the NPC directly. At that point let them if they want to, you can always thread in the rest of the vampire coven in neighbouring regions.
For walk + talk encounters in civilised areas its less of an issue as you dont have to fiddle with encounter scaling so much. Again, keep an eye on how much time you're spending on his character vs the others'.
Tools for encouraging party cohesion:
- Jigsaw puzzle plot maguffins.
Have your lone wolf and your main party seperately come into possession of a piece of something that needs to be put together to advance the quest. Fragments of a keystone, torn parts of a treasure map, bits of an amulet with a riddle inscribed around it.
- Patient, intelligent foes.
When your heroes start to complete quests, they gain the attention of villains. A mastermind style villain would start looking into what the heroes are doing, and researching their weaknesses. Your lonewolf is such a weakness. You can foreshadow this villain's intervention as a sub-plot to your campaign. Little snippets like an NPC the party is on good terms with mentioning someone asking lots of questions about the party. Dont forget the hugely powerful tool that divination magic provides to villains. "When will 'lonewolf' next be seperated from the party" and "where will he be" are the sorts of questions that provide great RP justification for a villain being in the right place at the right time. Even a non magic using villain can access divination magic by carefully allying with a spellcaster that can.
Example:
NPCs are low-level and have just hack and slashed their way through a local crypt that was infested with a skellie or two. A local vampire learns of this through a minion. The party are small-fry at this point. He has a minion or two keep an eye on them to see who they talk to. He's probably mostly interested in who's paying the heroes than the heroes themselves at this point and he's assuming that said heroes will die heroicly soon. In a quest or two's time, the heroes have started proving to be "lucky heroes", and worth getting rid of. Vampy arranges an attack on the party when they are split. One distraction group on the main party, and a second capture group on the lonewolf. Lonewolf probably gets captured and taken prisoner. Party eventually get around to rescuing lonewolf. While party are doing their rescue, vampire is "doing something very bad" elsewhere. Maybe a naughty ritual, maybe killing off an NPC that was well liked that the party where finding very useful.
Your lonewolf is now invested into the story. He owes his party members a favour for the rescue, and he has an emnity towards an enemy NPC. You can thread your NPC baddy into the campaign as a sub-plot, and use him to fuel the party's paranoia about splitting up with occasional reminders that they're being watched physically and magically.
Eventually they'll be high enough level to challenge the NPC directly. At that point let them if they want to, you can always thread in the rest of the vampire coven in neighbouring regions.
