I'm running a weekly game, and now that we've got a few sessions under our belts now, we're beginning to run into scheduling issues. We've got a party of six, so this was somewhat expected. I've already set expectations that we are running the game no matter what, because I want to avoid going long stretches of not playing. I'm looking for ideas on how to handle the characters for whom the players are absent. Since I'm running an adventure with a town that acts like a quest hub, I've got some mitigation built-in, where I can allow an absent player to just stay in town for that night's side-quest. They miss out on XP, but I'm not sure there's much I can do about that. However, our play sessions are short and it's possible some of the longer side-quests will take more than one session, so if Player X is there the night they take the mission, but absent the following week, my plan is foiled.
I figure there are a couple ways of dealing with this:
1. They just disappear for the session I give out XP by story milestone, and as long as the player hasn't missed a large amount of time, I'll still give them the necessary XP when it comes time. But for all intents and purposes, that character is not with the party.
2. I run the character like a NPC I won't RP the character much, I'll basically just do attack rolls and skill checks
3. I let another player run the absent player's character in addition to their own This takes some pressure off me, but I feel a little nervous about allowing someone to play someone else's character. I'd hate for the absent person to feel like they got a bum rap in some way
If you do run him, I wouldn't have death saving throws, he just becomes unconscious. And no consumables can be used.
Also his inventory items are not usuable by the party or if they do, the automatically revert back to him at the end of the session.
I like the idea of keeping his inventory off-limits. If I go the route of running his character for him, this way the party can't take advantage and have him use up all his health potions or something.
One approach would be to have the character be absent, apparently just staying in town (as far as the rest of the party is aware). Then, when the absent player returns the next week, have him/her come up with the 'real' reason why they were absent. Award inspiration if they have a particularly good excuse.
Or, have the player roll on one of the tables in the DM's guide for downtime activities. I especially like the carousing one!
One approach would be to have the character be absent, apparently just staying in town (as far as the rest of the party is aware). Then, when the absent player returns the next week, have him/her come up with the 'real' reason why they were absent. Award inspiration if they have a particularly good excuse.
Or, have the player roll on one of the tables in the DM's guide for downtime activities. I especially like the carousing one!
The carousing table is awesome, especially if you roll a 91 or higher and "your carousing becomes the stuff of legends."
How I do it is the PC is effectively rolling all 2s. They fail at pretty much everything they attempt except the most basic things. I take over for them RP-wise if necessary (my players trust me and know I do this). But they're doing so poorly in combat that no one attacks them, so they can't die or anything dramatic.
Yeah, the only problem would be if the absent character ends up in jail and the party gets side tracked trying to get him out!
I love that they can end up in jail, and that they can basically have a fling that ends badly. I would love to have a situation where every time the party is in town the PC gets into a fight with the jilted lover lol.
I had one absence so far in my current campaign, and thankfully it wasn't in the middle of a mission/dungeon, it was during a time that the group was resting in town. I worked with the player to come up with a reason somewhat background related, that he went off with an NPC investigating something else, unrelated to the rest of the group. He just told the group it was a personal matter, and since they don't know each other well yet in game, the others accepted it and went on.
I then gave him some information that was not given to the other PC's that he "discovered" during his time away from the group. It was nothing game-changing and I told him it was up to him if he wanted to share that info with the group or not (he is kind of out for himself, so it was fun watching him RP some of the details out, but left out certain things on purpose).
If they were mid-dungeon/away from a town/rest point then a player had to miss a session, I would likely control the player and maybe have them fall ill -- not so ill as to be a distraction or slow the party down, but ill enough that he cannot contribute to combat and the NPC's would ignore him for all intents and purposes.
If a player were absent following a session where the players finished in town, and came back the following session with the rest of the group in the middle of a dungeon, I'm not sure how I would handle it, but maybe the missing player (and possibly an NPC who is helping him out) "catch up" to the rest of the group, or maybe he found a "secret path" that led him to the group, or maybe he would just pop in to the group out of nowhere and we just play if I can't come up with a good reason why he's there (I wouldn't leave him out for long).
I give amounts of XP at certain points (usually when the players get to rest), so that player would get the XP for which he was present for.
Yeah, the only problem would be if the absent character ends up in jail and the party gets side tracked trying to get him out!
That is not a problem, that is a great way to spend a game session! And has a bonus that you don't have to rework the adventure you had planned to compensate for the non-existent player.
I don't understand how including an absent player's character is ever a good idea. Players should always have agency over their own character. Plus, my players can barely keep up with their own characters, much less book-keeping someone else's.
Send the absent PC on a sidequest and have them make a few rolls next game (or via email). That way they have a reason to keep up in XP, and a way to keep tied into the game world.
If you need to round out the party (e.g., if the Cleric is missing), add in an NPC who hides in the background (out of the limelight) for that game to provide buffs or healing when needed. Functions equivalently to some of the other suggestions here, but this way nobody gets stepped on in the process.
I don't understand how including an absent player's character is ever a good idea. Players should always have agency over their own character. Plus, my players can barely keep up with their own characters, much less book-keeping someone else's.
Send the absent PC on a sidequest and have them make a few rolls next game (or via email). That way they have a reason to keep up in XP, and a way to keep tied into the game world.
If you need to round out the party (e.g., if the Cleric is missing), add in an NPC who hides in the background (out of the limelight) for that game to provide buffs or healing when needed. Functions equivalently to some of the other suggestions here, but this way nobody gets stepped on in the process.
I can understand that point of view. It seems like every solution here has upside and downside to it. I could see an option where I as the DM would take over the missing player's character as an NPC, then when the player returns to the game, their inventory/HP status would be the same as when they left. I don't think I'd allow an absent PC's character to die except under pretty extreme circumstances, and I wouldn't make any changes on the player's behalf, unless they said something like "Hey, if we get enough to level up tonight, I want to spend my ability points on STR and CON," or something like that.
Whatever the method, you're trying to make dinner with dog food. There is no good solution.
I don't understand how including an absent player's character is ever a good idea. Players should always have agency over their own character. Plus, my players can barely keep up with their own characters, much less book-keeping someone else's.
Send the absent PC on a sidequest and have them make a few rolls next game (or via email). That way they have a reason to keep up in XP, and a way to keep tied into the game world.
If you need to round out the party (e.g., if the Cleric is missing), add in an NPC who hides in the background (out of the limelight) for that game to provide buffs or healing when needed. Functions equivalently to some of the other suggestions here, but this way nobody gets stepped on in the process.
You can't really minus the PC cleric mid dungeon and add in an NPC cleric mid dungeon. At that point you might as well play the PC character as an NPC. At some point its like, "we need the immovable rod" that you as a DM planned on the PCs having so that is literally the only way they can overcome this obstacle....its why you gave it to them six sessions prior. But then its like, the Cleric who was there two seconds ago, has it, but he isn't there any more so you can't get it. You either have to rewrite the adventure on the fly to account for him not being there, or NPC the Cleric for a couple of seconds to hand the Immovable rod to another player.
Which I would automatically DM that the immovable rod returns to that player. Unless it was really party loot and not the players and he just happened to be the guy holding it last game session because he was the last one to go. (Or was the one who could fly and could retrieve the rod).
Think of each session like it's a TV show. Just because the character has a billing in the opening credits doesn't mean they participate in every episode. This is especially easy to pull off with Milestone XP. Missing PCs can have others "roleplay a little, tell a joke, say a one-liner" for them, but they contribute nothing of substance to the session which they miss. Characters whose player is missing can't die or disagree with the party in any but the most trivial, throw-away-line-of-dialogue sense. My Friday night group is 5-8 people in their early 30s, so yeah, we've always got someone missing. The TV method is the best solution we've come up with, but it does require everyone to be OK with the DM's arbitration, and a DM who understands that life happens.
Think of each session like it's a TV show. Just because the character has a billing in the opening credits doesn't mean they participate in every episode. This is especially easy to pull off with Milestone XP. Missing PCs can have others "roleplay a little, tell a joke, say a one-liner" for them, but they contribute nothing of substance to the session which they miss. Characters whose player is missing can't die or disagree with the party in any but the most trivial, throw-away-line-of-dialogue sense. My Friday night group is 5-8 people in their early 30s, so yeah, we've always got someone missing. The TV method is the best solution we've come up with, but it does require everyone to be OK with the DM's arbitration, and a DM who understands that life happens.
Dang, 8 people when everyone shows up? That's a big party. I thought my party of 6 was big. You make a good point though, it's important to have communication and clear expectations with the group about how things will go down if they can't make a session.
In my current games I use milestone XP so nobody ever falls behind (the party advances when they solve any major event in the story.).
When people are absent, especially if inside a dungeon, etc. that they can't come in/out of like a town hub I just rule that they are "There, but off camera." dealing with other related issues. Imagine a combat where the missing character is actually there, fighting other enemies that don't make it on screen with the active players. Then when they return and someone says "Hey, where's Feldspar? We could really use a fireball right now." I can pull back the camera angle and suddenly they are on screen, fighting a few enemies and can respond "Where's Feldspar??? If I had anyone helping me over here I'd be glad to burn your problems, in the meantime I'm going to burn mine!"
I don't bother consuming their resources, technically giving that player a slight edge if they come back in the middle of something, but that also gives the party a slight resource edge as well and I can adapt encounter difficulty to match.
I do this because it's easy and simple, which is my favorite answer in almost all things DM'ing.
In the next game I'm working on, characters who are not present get no XP (going with normal XP vs milestone), and people can have more than one character in the campaign (but only one in each session). That will allow them to alter party composition based on who's there and what they are doing.
I feel like the no XP thing can get missing players way behind everyone else. Especially if the player has a legit reason for missing.
I've seen it happen. I've also seen that happening cause players to choose to just bow out of the campaign and wait for a new one to start up so they don't have to play a character that is behind the others.
That is actually a significant part of why I ended up going with my current policy on character advancement and player absence; All characters are given equal advancement in whatever form that takes for the game in question, including for things that happened while the player was absent (or not yet part of the group). And characters whose players aren't present remain "off screen" but assumed to be active doing something relevant, gain all positive benefits the present characters gain, and are not subject to any negative effects unless the entire present party shares their fate (i.e. the character gets paid even if the player wasn't present for the job, but an absent player's character can't get thrown in jail unless the entire present party all get thrown in jail).
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I'm running a weekly game, and now that we've got a few sessions under our belts now, we're beginning to run into scheduling issues. We've got a party of six, so this was somewhat expected. I've already set expectations that we are running the game no matter what, because I want to avoid going long stretches of not playing. I'm looking for ideas on how to handle the characters for whom the players are absent. Since I'm running an adventure with a town that acts like a quest hub, I've got some mitigation built-in, where I can allow an absent player to just stay in town for that night's side-quest. They miss out on XP, but I'm not sure there's much I can do about that. However, our play sessions are short and it's possible some of the longer side-quests will take more than one session, so if Player X is there the night they take the mission, but absent the following week, my plan is foiled.
I figure there are a couple ways of dealing with this:
1. They just disappear for the session
I give out XP by story milestone, and as long as the player hasn't missed a large amount of time, I'll still give them the necessary XP when it comes time. But for all intents and purposes, that character is not with the party.
2. I run the character like a NPC
I won't RP the character much, I'll basically just do attack rolls and skill checks
3. I let another player run the absent player's character in addition to their own
This takes some pressure off me, but I feel a little nervous about allowing someone to play someone else's character. I'd hate for the absent person to feel like they got a bum rap in some way
Is there anything else I'm missing?
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
Usually best to just let the player be gone.
If you do run him, I wouldn't have death saving throws, he just becomes unconscious. And no consumables can be used.
Also his inventory items are not usuable by the party or if they do, the automatically revert back to him at the end of the session.
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
One approach would be to have the character be absent, apparently just staying in town (as far as the rest of the party is aware). Then, when the absent player returns the next week, have him/her come up with the 'real' reason why they were absent. Award inspiration if they have a particularly good excuse.
Or, have the player roll on one of the tables in the DM's guide for downtime activities. I especially like the carousing one!
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
Yeah, the only problem would be if the absent character ends up in jail and the party gets side tracked trying to get him out!
How I do it is the PC is effectively rolling all 2s. They fail at pretty much everything they attempt except the most basic things. I take over for them RP-wise if necessary (my players trust me and know I do this). But they're doing so poorly in combat that no one attacks them, so they can't die or anything dramatic.
It's not a perfect solution, but it works for us!
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
I had one absence so far in my current campaign, and thankfully it wasn't in the middle of a mission/dungeon, it was during a time that the group was resting in town. I worked with the player to come up with a reason somewhat background related, that he went off with an NPC investigating something else, unrelated to the rest of the group. He just told the group it was a personal matter, and since they don't know each other well yet in game, the others accepted it and went on.
I then gave him some information that was not given to the other PC's that he "discovered" during his time away from the group. It was nothing game-changing and I told him it was up to him if he wanted to share that info with the group or not (he is kind of out for himself, so it was fun watching him RP some of the details out, but left out certain things on purpose).
If they were mid-dungeon/away from a town/rest point then a player had to miss a session, I would likely control the player and maybe have them fall ill -- not so ill as to be a distraction or slow the party down, but ill enough that he cannot contribute to combat and the NPC's would ignore him for all intents and purposes.
If a player were absent following a session where the players finished in town, and came back the following session with the rest of the group in the middle of a dungeon, I'm not sure how I would handle it, but maybe the missing player (and possibly an NPC who is helping him out) "catch up" to the rest of the group, or maybe he found a "secret path" that led him to the group, or maybe he would just pop in to the group out of nowhere and we just play if I can't come up with a good reason why he's there (I wouldn't leave him out for long).
I give amounts of XP at certain points (usually when the players get to rest), so that player would get the XP for which he was present for.
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
exactly, not a problem at all, just wrote yourself a whole session (or at least part of one) without much work!
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
Boom! Now where might I find an "escape from jail" module???
I don't understand how including an absent player's character is ever a good idea. Players should always have agency over their own character. Plus, my players can barely keep up with their own characters, much less book-keeping someone else's.
Send the absent PC on a sidequest and have them make a few rolls next game (or via email). That way they have a reason to keep up in XP, and a way to keep tied into the game world.
If you need to round out the party (e.g., if the Cleric is missing), add in an NPC who hides in the background (out of the limelight) for that game to provide buffs or healing when needed. Functions equivalently to some of the other suggestions here, but this way nobody gets stepped on in the process.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
Think of each session like it's a TV show. Just because the character has a billing in the opening credits doesn't mean they participate in every episode. This is especially easy to pull off with Milestone XP. Missing PCs can have others "roleplay a little, tell a joke, say a one-liner" for them, but they contribute nothing of substance to the session which they miss. Characters whose player is missing can't die or disagree with the party in any but the most trivial, throw-away-line-of-dialogue sense. My Friday night group is 5-8 people in their early 30s, so yeah, we've always got someone missing. The TV method is the best solution we've come up with, but it does require everyone to be OK with the DM's arbitration, and a DM who understands that life happens.
https://dreadweasel.blogspot.com/
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
In my current games I use milestone XP so nobody ever falls behind (the party advances when they solve any major event in the story.).
When people are absent, especially if inside a dungeon, etc. that they can't come in/out of like a town hub I just rule that they are "There, but off camera." dealing with other related issues. Imagine a combat where the missing character is actually there, fighting other enemies that don't make it on screen with the active players. Then when they return and someone says "Hey, where's Feldspar? We could really use a fireball right now." I can pull back the camera angle and suddenly they are on screen, fighting a few enemies and can respond "Where's Feldspar??? If I had anyone helping me over here I'd be glad to burn your problems, in the meantime I'm going to burn mine!"
I don't bother consuming their resources, technically giving that player a slight edge if they come back in the middle of something, but that also gives the party a slight resource edge as well and I can adapt encounter difficulty to match.
I do this because it's easy and simple, which is my favorite answer in almost all things DM'ing.
In the next game I'm working on, characters who are not present get no XP (going with normal XP vs milestone), and people can have more than one character in the campaign (but only one in each session). That will allow them to alter party composition based on who's there and what they are doing.
I feel like the no XP thing can get missing players way behind everyone else. Especially if the player has a legit reason for missing.
Its all fine until you end up 3-4 levels behind.
Id also imagine few players willing to switch characters because their primary character is going to end up weaker than everyone else.
I've seen it happen. I've also seen that happening cause players to choose to just bow out of the campaign and wait for a new one to start up so they don't have to play a character that is behind the others.
That is actually a significant part of why I ended up going with my current policy on character advancement and player absence; All characters are given equal advancement in whatever form that takes for the game in question, including for things that happened while the player was absent (or not yet part of the group). And characters whose players aren't present remain "off screen" but assumed to be active doing something relevant, gain all positive benefits the present characters gain, and are not subject to any negative effects unless the entire present party shares their fate (i.e. the character gets paid even if the player wasn't present for the job, but an absent player's character can't get thrown in jail unless the entire present party all get thrown in jail).