How many missed sessions is to many? I have a player that has missed quite a few and it’s starting to slow down the story. Also, at what point do you start debuffing a monster? My characters haven’t been rolling very well on hp rolls and I’m afraid that the tomb of the nine gods in tomb of annihilation is going to kill all of them. This is the first time any of them have played and I don’t want it to be a bad end
The thing about rolling blind as a DM is you can lie.
You don’t have to play it straight, roll a hit that would outright kill a player, the attacked missed. Rolled max damage, it was all 2’s.
Ultimately your task is to make sure everyone has a good time, if you think going against a full scale threat will ruin that then improvise rebuffs as you play
As far as missed sessions, that’s going to vary from group to group. And even then, they reason why matters a lot. If some gets sick and misses a lot, I don’t think anyone would hold that against them. And if they just have a string of life events, sometimes that happens. If someone just decides not to come because they don’t want to, each group needs to decide it’s own level of tolerance. If it’s getting to be a problem and the player just isn’t interested any more, you should just ask them if they want to keep playing or if you should start recruiting to fill the open seat. No need to be hostile about it or anything, just a friendly check in.
The thing about rolling blind as a DM is you can lie.
You don’t have to play it straight, roll a hit that would outright kill a player, the attacked missed. Rolled max damage, it was all 2’s.
Ultimately your task is to make sure everyone has a good time, if you think going against a full scale threat will ruin that then improvise rebuffs as you play
As far as missed sessions, that’s going to vary from group to group. And even then, they reason why matters a lot. If some gets sick and misses a lot, I don’t think anyone would hold that against them. And if they just have a string of life events, sometimes that happens. If someone just decides not to come because they don’t want to, each group needs to decide it’s own level of tolerance. If it’s getting to be a problem and the player just isn’t interested any more, you should just ask them if they want to keep playing or if you should start recruiting to fill the open seat. No need to be hostile about it or anything, just a friendly check in.
Also, you dont have to roll behind a screen to adjust difficulty of an encounter on the fly. You can decide that this bad guy, who the book says has 10d8+20 (45) hp rolled low and actually has 35 hp. Or, you can decide that the bad guy decides to flee. Perhaps random other things enter the encounter.
Personal opinion is that rolling in the open is one of the best things a DM can do to make the game feel more like a co-operative story telling versus DM versus players.
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How many missed sessions is to many? I have a player that has missed quite a few and it’s starting to slow down the story. Also, at what point do you start debuffing a monster? My characters haven’t been rolling very well on hp rolls and I’m afraid that the tomb of the nine gods in tomb of annihilation is going to kill all of them. This is the first time any of them have played and I don’t want it to be a bad end
The thing about rolling blind as a DM is you can lie.
You don’t have to play it straight, roll a hit that would outright kill a player, the attacked missed. Rolled max damage, it was all 2’s.
Ultimately your task is to make sure everyone has a good time, if you think going against a full scale threat will ruin that then improvise rebuffs as you play
As far as missed sessions, that’s going to vary from group to group. And even then, they reason why matters a lot. If some gets sick and misses a lot, I don’t think anyone would hold that against them. And if they just have a string of life events, sometimes that happens. If someone just decides not to come because they don’t want to, each group needs to decide it’s own level of tolerance.
If it’s getting to be a problem and the player just isn’t interested any more, you should just ask them if they want to keep playing or if you should start recruiting to fill the open seat. No need to be hostile about it or anything, just a friendly check in.
Thanks guys! As a first time dm, this helps a lot
Also, you dont have to roll behind a screen to adjust difficulty of an encounter on the fly. You can decide that this bad guy, who the book says has 10d8+20 (45) hp rolled low and actually has 35 hp. Or, you can decide that the bad guy decides to flee. Perhaps random other things enter the encounter.
Personal opinion is that rolling in the open is one of the best things a DM can do to make the game feel more like a co-operative story telling versus DM versus players.