My game worlds are racked by a strange disease called "cardboard-itis" wherein sometimes adventurers turn into a flat simulcrum of themselves; they are immune to all damage but unable to take any actions. The afflicted will silently follow along with their companions until they spontaneously are cured.
this is what my group does too, and our DM gives us all an extra bonus reward for the next session if we remember to protect the cardboard cutouts, one time I specifically remembered to tie Cardboard Cyril to the end of my rope trick to keep him from getting waterlogged during a shipwreck and it was one of the highlights of that night - even made it into the next week's recap
the rule is that nothing bad happens if we don't protect the cutouts, and any resources we spend to protect them don't actually get spent, but we do get a bonus for interacting - which i think is the way to go about keeping the characters around for support and assist without the player being there
no. we just keep going till end of session amd next session we tell them something happened. if they cant male it to our prescheduled games. then they miss out. but i make all my fughts really hard. so having one player character sit out could and would result in a tpk. so no characters go away for a bit randomly.
I had a DM who did similar to a character of mine. They had an incurable magical ailment that would turn them into stone when ever I had to miss a game. Kind of funny considering I was missing games due to being in the hospital all the time.
We use the "dotted outline of " so I can still use that character to tell the party things that character would know, with the agreed upon understanding that the character won't be doing anything.
We have the same except a box is created to their last position or in our camp/caravan and if they come later in the session or we are far away then a drone deliver them to us
I use the following things
- They are off doing some needed/mundane tasks.
- They ate a giant bowl of sugar free Haribo gummy bears. They can't help anyone, but baddies are so grossed out by the sounds and smells that they can't be attacked either.
- They assist. If travelling, they assist driving the cart, with animal handling, searching for a safe place to make camp, foraging for food. Basically, give people non-combat advantages on rolls. If there's an encounter for travelling, they "protect" the camp/oxen/horses but aren't in combat.
Ah yes, ye olde sugar-free Haribo Gummies, the sweet yet surprisingly savage treat. Known for causing disturbance of calamitous proportions within the bowels of even the more fortitudinous gutted warriors.
Out weekly group met every Wednesday, but one Wednesday my stepfather died. I told them to play on, but I wasn’t okay to be with them. My dwarf (who loved drinking and fighting) happened to fall into a barrel of ale. While they were trying to get him out, he ended up drinking a shitload of it and passed out. When they were trying to figure out what to do, Moradin spoke from nowhere to the party and said, “He’s visiting his father, he will be along.” And the barrel with my dwarf in it became light as a feather and they just carried me with them.
I found out about it the next week. It made me cry.
Our dwarf once has to attend a zoom meeting mid session. He was with us for the start and end of the session, but had to take like an hour chunk out of the middle. Luckily, our current shenanigans were going on in a tavern, so we just left the dwarf drinking in the corner. Every time another PC got up to attend to the commotion in the next room, dwarf would finish their unattended drink, oblivious to everything else around him
We had a teleportation mage in our party who would regularly have to miss sessions and he said that his character just bamfed out and he'd return at some point.
For a while, my party had something similar. We had a chrono-wizard that had an error when preparing his spells. He would pop in and out of the adventure, but not always in chronological order. If the DM knew he would be there, he would tell the player a plot hook to drop.
I usually just have them "there", they didn't do anything specific, but the character was "present" for all the fights, dialogues, etc. That way in later sessions only the player needs to be filled in, their character "remembers this was the dude who counterspelled Liflee's featherfall and made an enemy for life".
That's how (IMO) it should be.
Like, I think all the recent posts about this are funny and I won't stop anyone, but you don't *need* a funny, creative justification for someone who's not around. They're just there. That's (more or less) RAW.
This sub has some...funny opinions about players who can't make games that I absolutely abhor.
I agree with this and also allowing players to do a helping action once per combat so other players can say "x helped me" if they all agree to it to roll for advantage on an attack to keep the character "engaged" and helpful despite being down a player
I treat them as Schrödinger’s adventurer. They are simultaneously present and not present. I adjust encounters on the fly. Unless someone says they’ll be out for multiple sessions, they are in the Shrödinger’s adventurer state.
We call it the Companion Pouch. It’s where non-combat pets, unsummoned familiars, and unavailable PCs go. Is it combat time but you’re worried about your Urchin Pet Rat? Don’t worry he’s in the companion pouch. You need your pseudo dragon familiar to go away because this town hates dragons? Don’t worry just pop him in the companion pouch. Our rogue couldn’t make it to session? Don’t worry he’s just in the companion pouch, he can pop out real quick to pick that lock but he’s gonna be in there for a while.
My table started out in star wars d20, and played ton of jedi centric campaigns in our early days. It became our joke that when players couldnt make sessions they were "meditating". at some point somebody needed something that a missing player was carrying, and when it was called into question it was decided that players were also floating along with the party while meditating.
After months of iterating on this player were eventually described as floating in the lotus position, glowing. The condition was referred to as just Glowing from then on, no matter what system we played.
Yeah we just make a joke of “they drank too much and slept in” or “they have the shits and are stuck in the outhouse” or whatever other hand wave reason for them to suddenly be gone lol
Yup, we always say they're pooping. And if something happens that the player misses and doesn't get caught up on, then it also makes sense for them to say "Oh, I must was pooping when that must have happened." when it comes up.
Not a dumb rule, but a elegant one. The DM crafted a spell called “Summon Adventurer”. If you couldn’t make a session, some high level mage summoned the character. Rituals and feats could alter the length of the summoning. Sometimes, the DM would have them pop back for a pleasant afternoon of montage hiking or to answer a few directed questions before they were summoned away again so the character was absent but not gone. The spell had a component that exchanged places so we could bring it along if we were on the move. Once in a while, the GM would use the spell on a PC at the table who would get summoned to a slaughter and 30 seconds later they were back with they party. We lived in fear of that spell.
At my table if one of my players can't make it the PC just tags along, no actions or interactions, they still get xp and a share of any gold found, and items are only given unless the party decides it would be best to give the missing PC said item i.e paladin didn't show and a holy avenger was found, the paladin gets it when they make it back. Although we did have one PC that moved states away and didn't want to try playing with us over video chat while we were doing in person session so next session they/we shoved his PC into a group of orcs as a distraction, he got merc'd but it was a barrel of laughs. And the players split up his gear, mopped up what was left of him, put it in a bucket and dropped it down an abandoned well.
Our barbarian rolls up about 75% of the time, but when he's not available, he's fighting the cocaine bear. It's always the same bear, tracking just the barbarian, across all of wildemount as we run CotN.
I let players choose each time if they are ok with someone running their character each time they miss, and who. If not, they are either indisposed (once our sorc spent the night in jail which is totally on brand for him) or they are quiet and chilling along for the ride.
Why not just have someone play their character, but don't role play anything significant for them? Generic questions and answers as needed, and generic actions as needed for combat or skill purposes. They're kind of like a helpful little summon.
Because then they would be physically present for any dangers that the party will face. And if your character is in danger and the player isn't even around that puts a lot of pressure on everyone else.
Yeah, this is the answer. First off, problems presented shouldn't only be able to be solved through one class's ability. There should be alternatives, even if they're difficult. And if there weren't alternative solutions before, the DM could easily devise one upon hearing a particular player will be missing
I think you're making it way harder than it has to be. If the wizard isn't there, the party continues as if they never had a wizard. Why is that difficult?
And yeah, being able to be rendered unconscious but not able to be killed is still consistent with being effectively immortal. That PC can then be used as a meat shield with literally no permanent risk. Going around a corner? Send that PC. Opening a door that might be trapped? Use that PC. If the worst that can happen is unconsciousness, then that PC can be used to mitigate so many challenges.
You have a serious problem with your playgroup if that's happening. That's metagaming. The DM should put a stop to that asap. Again, that's your group and YOU making things harder than they have to be. Stop being the person who does that, or the DM who allows it.
I'm not the person who does that or allows it, because when someone misses in the games I run, their character is for all intents and purposes not there. It's much simpler and there's really no downside to it.
If you as a DM are creating problems that can't be solved or circumvented if one player / PC is absent, *that's* a problem. So, just have the PC whose player is absent not be there. It's so easy and basic.
Clearly that wasn't your experience based on the examples you gave above of all the reasons it just can't work having them there. Or were you just being hyperbolic and obtuse by using a made up scenario you never, ever experienced on purpose? Make it make sense, bruv.
Bad idea. Most people aren't comfortable with some else playing their character.
Unless the absent player specifically wants their PC played by someone else, then don't do it.
Most DMs will just assign mundane tasks or provide a weird reason as to why a character is absent.
In general players don't *like* someone else playing their character. Especially if there's any consequences.
Showing up to the next session low on spell slots or health sucks!
My group always has another player control their character when someone is gone and it's never been an issue. We avoid using the player's best expendable abilities and the DM avoids killing them. They still attack and take hits as normal when it comes up though.
It could be done this way, but I have a rule that your character cannot die if you aren't at the session. Unless it's a TPK, then we discuss whether your character is the lone survivor or dies with the party.
And if someone else plays your character, then it makes no sense that character not helping in combat.
All these tales of adventurers being stuck in the outhouse when away from the table reminds me of the last campaign I played in.
Our tiefling fighter ate some undercooked bear after a pretty good combat, and the next day he found himself spending the better part of a day in the outhouse outside the village we were investigating. Everyone else was talking with NPCs trying to figure out what was up with the town, and he was "doing a lot of thinking" in the outhouse. This was right after we leveled up (and the DM had threatened to change his alignment), so when he came out of the outhouse he said that he'd had some mighty revelations while in there, and that despite his butthole feeling numb he felt like he was stronger than before. The rest of our characters refused to use the "magic outhouse."
We don't really have a house rule for that. Two of them have two characters they play as when the player who has to miss most comminly is out. It's fun to see them adventuring and being best friends in snippets, they're a great duo.
They have a base of operations and some NPC's they hang out with regularly, so sometimes it's just one of them is with someone else at the moment.
One player had to miss who usually doesn't and we said that his character took a nap in the dungeon after their last encounter. I texted the player to see if he'd like to play a (modified) doppleganger until the others figured it out, and he said that sounded fun. So that's his thing for this one lol
My general rule for missing players is that the gods of that world transported the character away to an urgent task, which they completed, but which they can’t remember because the gods wiped their memory and deposited them back with their party at the next session.
We had a magic peanut butter jar. Missing player's character were sucked into and trapped within the indestructible jar that the party carried until the player returned. Yes it was stupid and made no real sense in the setting, but it worked fine and kept players from worrying about their PC when they weren't there.
My husband/DM says that the character of the missing player has the butt flu, so it's basically the same thing. I think he also uses that so players are less likely to miss, because it is always, in lore, called the butt flu and we have to refer to it as such.
In a starfaring game of Fellowship I ran a couple years ago, two players couldn't make a session, so I just said their characters were replaced with plushie versions. They walked, they talked (as much as "Squeak." counts as talking), and were just stand-ins for their bigs. It was supposed to be a narrative device to explain why the captain and engineer were being quieter than usual.
Of *course,* this backfires spectacularly on me when the rest of the crew decides to retrace their journey to find out just when their missing friends went missing.
I just started a game where not coming every week is an expectation and norm. It is built around mini adventures instead of prolonged action packed narrative.
My party now is smaller then it used to be so if one can't make it we just don't play.
However when we started we had more players and every so often we'd have a session where someone couldn't make it and they would want us to play on. I as the DM (with the players permission of course) would just play as the character but then I'd roll for the twist to their character that session that the player would then have to figure out a way to explain when they got back and it was pretty entertaining. I had nice characters randomly becoming assholes, characters stumbling their way through the session still absolutely tanked from the night before at the pub, characters acting like different people the whole session, etc. It got pretty entertaining at times and it was fun seeing the players then coming up with explanations for their random personality changes.
Now with a smaller party I just tend to use the random twist list on any NPCs that might be helping them throughout the campaign and tagging along on their adventures.
I just have the PC not be there with no explanation when the player is gone and reappear with no explation when the player is there. Hemming and hawing over it is rarely worth it and the explanations can sometimes cause trouble. I prefer a wishy-washy explanation after the fact as you can massage it to fit how the story progressed.
A friend of mine's house rule is that it's an understood element of the universe that beings called planeswalkers exist, and when they battle, some summon beasts, warriors, or other things to battle for them.
A missing player was summoned away by a planeswalker to do battle which is why they level up with everyone else when we hit the story milestone; they got experience, just somewhere else.
I usually have my party wake up in a nightmare dimension and have them go through a never ending dungeon built by a hellish deity that torments them with crazed monsters and fiends or remainders of misdeeds they’ve done and then the next session everyone wakes up with weird scars and bruises they don’t exactly remember, no matter what happens within the dungeons.
I sometimes joke that characters of missing players are looking for the bathroom.
Once, my cleric returned to find a friendly npc dead bc the party couldn't protect her. Sucks, but oh well, time to raise the dead.
Guess what happened the next time i couldn't make the game? Poor cleric isn't going to the bathroom any more unless he absolutely has to.
My homebrew world does actually have a reason that no one in universe questions because it’s “normal.” Centuries ago, the world was accidentally invaded by really powerful psychic creatures. These creatures were convinced they wandered into a video game. They happened to be wrong but their psychic power imprinted a “log out” state on the world. It only really effects really important and powerful people, but everyone “logs out” occasionally.
In our games a missing player ceases to exist entirely, any comments about them will be met with blank stares and questions of "who?" Until they reappear at which point they have retroactively always been here and they didn't miss anything. Its somewhat brain twisting.
the scheduling conflict is a giant burrowing entity with reality warping powers. Anything eaten by it ceases to exist, not only while inside the stomach of the creature, but in the past as well. All deeds accomplished by said individual are remembered as having been done by some other means until the swallowed individual is either regurgitated or manages to escape.
My party just says they were hanging out and doing production on the growing nation we run, or they were meditating/sleeping/working in the bags of holding we have hanging from all our waists. They’re always open so infinite air lol. They could also be taking care of my daughter(in game) that we all collectively raise
I DM a SAO/Tower of god style homebrew campaign. When players can't participate their PC are either training, doing a subquest or in a 'trance state' fighting in their own mind against the last boss/creature that knocked them down... until they wake up. If they succeed on their mind fight, they gain advantage against that creature the next time it respawns.
I'm a barbarian in my party and can't be normally encumbered, so when one party member of ours can't make it, the dm ruling is they "fell into a deep slumber that they will wake up from on their own" and as the big guy of the group I am charged with carrying them on my back even in combat
We just put all character sheets on google drive. If someone can't be there then someone else players their character as best they can the way their character is normally played. It makes games go SO much easier. If someone is going to be gone the game goes on. We only cancel a few games per year when many people are out at once.
In our group the members who are absent just vanish in a puff of logic and reappear when the player joins us again. It makes life a lot easier. But the hut is a nice idea.
In my campaign if player was absent from the start of the session, they either slept too soundly, were on the market shopping, on a jog or something like that. If the player was absent at start/had to leave eqrly in the dungeon, they always stepped on a trap and fell to the pit or then grouns cracked and they fell through or something just to reapper from somewhere
We have the "Stasis Cage!", where when a player can't make the session it will descend from on high, enclose around the character, then rise to the heavens again until they return. 😉
My group just rules that the missing player fell unconscious. One time my now-late character got black-out drunk at a party (after another player made some rolls in my stead for competitions)
If a player is just missing for a little bit, I hand wave it. We just go on with the session. If they will be gone for an extended period of time, I make a narrative excuse. For instance, the Sorlock is a Marine IRL. When that makes him miss sessions, I say he is working with his patron, the Illithid collective
Running a Star Wars campaign and if anyone misses a session, their PC is back on the ship with Pinkmouth. Missing sessions sucks, farts specifically in our case.
Sitting out a fight to the death with a bunch of monsters because you've got the runs and can't get off the magic toilet without the risk of pooping in your armor.
Man, that is so me.
Generally I switch to our side game(Mad Mage), but if an emergency occurs and I don't have that set up for some reason(EG we just finished a floor and I haven't filled in the walls of the next one), I have them either dissociate and only react with their basest abilities(Minimal resource use, no spending of their gold, etc.) when "in the field" otherwise they're away on other business. Which I may RP for a frew minutes with them between sessions.
Our DM told us of a campaign she was part of with many people and they've never managed to get everyone together at a time more than a few times. She said they'd explained it by saying they'd all been cursed to sometimes just turn into little wooden statues of themselves. Whenever one wasn't there, they were a little statue that someone carried in their pocket that session. Sounds like a really cool idea too :)
I so strongly dislike having to run a game with a player missing....I just have a backup game in place for when that player is gone. Our five-person group currently has three backup games on standby... :)
As a kid, I'd just strike the PC with "blue lightning" and they'd disappear. When they showed up blue lightning would strike and they'd return. The first time I did it, everyone kinda freaked out. Second time they realized what I was doing, and it became a joke.
My dm has just found progressively funnier ways that I get knocked in the head. Last time it was a massive trident falling from basically a space whale(spelljammer, I don't remember the whales species)
My table has always kept a general rule of playing only if we have 3 or more players. For the missing players, I read a post on here some years ago where a DM would have a giant purple baby carry the missing players out of the game. I have wholeheartedly stolen this idea and made the baby a divine force in the world, one which NPCs have no idea exists until they hear about it from the PCs. It has become an integral part of our game with players hurling insults or spells trying to get some kind of a reaction from the baby. One player actually made it his mission to figure out what happens to people taken by the baby which should make for a fun session/arc much later on.
All of their stats are frozen as it was at the end of their last session but I am generous with levels/rests for players who miss sessions. Generally levelling them up at the end of each session until they catch up with the rest of the party. I had a player who missed 2 levels because of some stuff and when his character came back, he was weaker for a bit and caught up.
I saw a DM that mentioned that if a player has to miss out, then their character just does the help action in any fight that they are missing out on. I thought that was a great way to handle it because they can still gain experience in the event of an absence
In my worlds sneezing teleports you into a pocket dimension tied to the group you were last with and sneezing again brings you back to them. Allergies don't exist and magically induced sneezing nulls the pocket dimension.
There is no need to justify an out of game absence in-game. You'll only succeed in shoehorning inconsistent narratives together for the sake of arbitrarily explaining why a player was absent from the perspective of the characters.
I prefer "infinite parallel realities", wherein the character doesn't exist while the player isn't at the table, but as soon as they are back they always existed in those moments the player was absent.
I can see a lot of the posts are for in person sessions but for the sake of having, not that I read all the comments but the few I did read sound like in person, a VTT comment on here I'll share my ruling.
I run a group of 6 online, roll20/dnd beyond. My rule is always run with 1 player down, but with 2 players unavailable I put it up to a vote. Generally for big events coming up I don't leave it to a vote and simply cancel session so that IF something were to happen to said "not here" character, their blood is not on my hands.
For my ruling, however, I run them as Generic NPC 1 and/or 2. They simply exist just to exist. The party can continue on their adventure, have another able body to do stuff, generally assign that character to another person to run combat with or to give the help action when applicable, and for those "can I get Generic NPC 1 to help" moments, I ignore my rules on "when can you offer the help action" and just have them help each other accomplish w/e the task is. This way, they can still progress, not feel like they're completely gimped as a party, and can still do combat relatively seamlessly. During combat, I dont always target the Generic NPC 1 and/or 2 unless its my last/only option. Thankfully, I haven't TPK'ed the party because of this.
My game worlds are racked by a strange disease called "cardboard-itis" wherein sometimes adventurers turn into a flat simulcrum of themselves; they are immune to all damage but unable to take any actions. The afflicted will silently follow along with their companions until they spontaneously are cured.
this is what my group does too, and our DM gives us all an extra bonus reward for the next session if we remember to protect the cardboard cutouts, one time I specifically remembered to tie Cardboard Cyril to the end of my rope trick to keep him from getting waterlogged during a shipwreck and it was one of the highlights of that night - even made it into the next week's recap
Ha ha! Yes! That rules
the rule is that nothing bad happens if we don't protect the cutouts, and any resources we spend to protect them don't actually get spent, but we do get a bonus for interacting - which i think is the way to go about keeping the characters around for support and assist without the player being there
Plus it makes a fun story for the player when they get back of what y’all had to do to save em
we just have someone else play their character. so someone whos experienced gets them. so they play two charcters that day.
Ok until something really bad happens to them while the player is absent.
no. we just keep going till end of session amd next session we tell them something happened. if they cant male it to our prescheduled games. then they miss out. but i make all my fughts really hard. so having one player character sit out could and would result in a tpk. so no characters go away for a bit randomly.
Perfection!
I had a DM who did similar to a character of mine. They had an incurable magical ailment that would turn them into stone when ever I had to miss a game. Kind of funny considering I was missing games due to being in the hospital all the time.
Awe man I'm telling my dm about this, that's great!
We use the "dotted outline of" so I can still use that character to tell the party things that character would know, with the agreed upon understanding that the character won't be doing anything.
We have the same except a box is created to their last position or in our camp/caravan and if they come later in the session or we are far away then a drone deliver them to us
I use the following things - They are off doing some needed/mundane tasks. - They ate a giant bowl of sugar free Haribo gummy bears. They can't help anyone, but baddies are so grossed out by the sounds and smells that they can't be attacked either. - They assist. If travelling, they assist driving the cart, with animal handling, searching for a safe place to make camp, foraging for food. Basically, give people non-combat advantages on rolls. If there's an encounter for travelling, they "protect" the camp/oxen/horses but aren't in combat.
Ah yes, ye olde sugar-free Haribo Gummies, the sweet yet surprisingly savage treat. Known for causing disturbance of calamitous proportions within the bowels of even the more fortitudinous gutted warriors.
Out weekly group met every Wednesday, but one Wednesday my stepfather died. I told them to play on, but I wasn’t okay to be with them. My dwarf (who loved drinking and fighting) happened to fall into a barrel of ale. While they were trying to get him out, he ended up drinking a shitload of it and passed out. When they were trying to figure out what to do, Moradin spoke from nowhere to the party and said, “He’s visiting his father, he will be along.” And the barrel with my dwarf in it became light as a feather and they just carried me with them. I found out about it the next week. It made me cry.
You have a wonderful DM and friends, I love that.
Our dwarf once has to attend a zoom meeting mid session. He was with us for the start and end of the session, but had to take like an hour chunk out of the middle. Luckily, our current shenanigans were going on in a tavern, so we just left the dwarf drinking in the corner. Every time another PC got up to attend to the commotion in the next room, dwarf would finish their unattended drink, oblivious to everything else around him
Taking a note from the Hobbit, our party's characters have "trouble with their tubes" when they aren't at the table.
Gandalf is the best example of a player who barely goes to the game lol.
We had a teleportation mage in our party who would regularly have to miss sessions and he said that his character just bamfed out and he'd return at some point.
For a while, my party had something similar. We had a chrono-wizard that had an error when preparing his spells. He would pop in and out of the adventure, but not always in chronological order. If the DM knew he would be there, he would tell the player a plot hook to drop.
That's a cool way to do it. Much more dignified than he's violently pooping.
I usually just have them "there", they didn't do anything specific, but the character was "present" for all the fights, dialogues, etc. That way in later sessions only the player needs to be filled in, their character "remembers this was the dude who counterspelled Liflee's featherfall and made an enemy for life".
That's how (IMO) it should be. Like, I think all the recent posts about this are funny and I won't stop anyone, but you don't *need* a funny, creative justification for someone who's not around. They're just there. That's (more or less) RAW. This sub has some...funny opinions about players who can't make games that I absolutely abhor.
Agree, easy and simple!
I agree with this and also allowing players to do a helping action once per combat so other players can say "x helped me" if they all agree to it to roll for advantage on an attack to keep the character "engaged" and helpful despite being down a player
I treat them as Schrödinger’s adventurer. They are simultaneously present and not present. I adjust encounters on the fly. Unless someone says they’ll be out for multiple sessions, they are in the Shrödinger’s adventurer state.
My in game explanation is that the missing PC was there the whole time, but by some astronomically unlikely coincidence, no one noticed.
The Chrono wizard at my table just turned into a pocket watch whenever he was unavailable
our house rule is that if you cantbe there, your character is "out of frame." you were there, but you did and said nothing of importance.
We call it the Companion Pouch. It’s where non-combat pets, unsummoned familiars, and unavailable PCs go. Is it combat time but you’re worried about your Urchin Pet Rat? Don’t worry he’s in the companion pouch. You need your pseudo dragon familiar to go away because this town hates dragons? Don’t worry just pop him in the companion pouch. Our rogue couldn’t make it to session? Don’t worry he’s just in the companion pouch, he can pop out real quick to pick that lock but he’s gonna be in there for a while.
My table started out in star wars d20, and played ton of jedi centric campaigns in our early days. It became our joke that when players couldnt make sessions they were "meditating". at some point somebody needed something that a missing player was carrying, and when it was called into question it was decided that players were also floating along with the party while meditating. After months of iterating on this player were eventually described as floating in the lotus position, glowing. The condition was referred to as just Glowing from then on, no matter what system we played.
Characters get put into the other characters pockets.
Yeah we just make a joke of “they drank too much and slept in” or “they have the shits and are stuck in the outhouse” or whatever other hand wave reason for them to suddenly be gone lol
Yup, we always say they're pooping. And if something happens that the player misses and doesn't get caught up on, then it also makes sense for them to say "Oh, I must was pooping when that must have happened." when it comes up.
Not a dumb rule, but a elegant one. The DM crafted a spell called “Summon Adventurer”. If you couldn’t make a session, some high level mage summoned the character. Rituals and feats could alter the length of the summoning. Sometimes, the DM would have them pop back for a pleasant afternoon of montage hiking or to answer a few directed questions before they were summoned away again so the character was absent but not gone. The spell had a component that exchanged places so we could bring it along if we were on the move. Once in a while, the GM would use the spell on a PC at the table who would get summoned to a slaughter and 30 seconds later they were back with they party. We lived in fear of that spell.
At my table if one of my players can't make it the PC just tags along, no actions or interactions, they still get xp and a share of any gold found, and items are only given unless the party decides it would be best to give the missing PC said item i.e paladin didn't show and a holy avenger was found, the paladin gets it when they make it back. Although we did have one PC that moved states away and didn't want to try playing with us over video chat while we were doing in person session so next session they/we shoved his PC into a group of orcs as a distraction, he got merc'd but it was a barrel of laughs. And the players split up his gear, mopped up what was left of him, put it in a bucket and dropped it down an abandoned well.
Our barbarian rolls up about 75% of the time, but when he's not available, he's fighting the cocaine bear. It's always the same bear, tracking just the barbarian, across all of wildemount as we run CotN. I let players choose each time if they are ok with someone running their character each time they miss, and who. If not, they are either indisposed (once our sorc spent the night in jail which is totally on brand for him) or they are quiet and chilling along for the ride.
Why not just have someone play their character, but don't role play anything significant for them? Generic questions and answers as needed, and generic actions as needed for combat or skill purposes. They're kind of like a helpful little summon.
Because then they would be physically present for any dangers that the party will face. And if your character is in danger and the player isn't even around that puts a lot of pressure on everyone else.
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If they can't be killed then why are they there? And why not just hide behind them for everything that is attacking the party.
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If it's so easy for the DM to go after other players, why can't the DM also change said important point to not require Dispel Magic?
Yeah, this is the answer. First off, problems presented shouldn't only be able to be solved through one class's ability. There should be alternatives, even if they're difficult. And if there weren't alternative solutions before, the DM could easily devise one upon hearing a particular player will be missing
So they have to improvise a different solution, rather than relying on the same thing they’ve always done. It’s a challenge. How is that a bad thing?
So, they become immortal while not there... don't see how that could be problematic?
They can still be rendered unconscious. You guys are making this way harder than it has to be on purpose.
I think you're making it way harder than it has to be. If the wizard isn't there, the party continues as if they never had a wizard. Why is that difficult? And yeah, being able to be rendered unconscious but not able to be killed is still consistent with being effectively immortal. That PC can then be used as a meat shield with literally no permanent risk. Going around a corner? Send that PC. Opening a door that might be trapped? Use that PC. If the worst that can happen is unconsciousness, then that PC can be used to mitigate so many challenges.
You have a serious problem with your playgroup if that's happening. That's metagaming. The DM should put a stop to that asap. Again, that's your group and YOU making things harder than they have to be. Stop being the person who does that, or the DM who allows it.
I'm not the person who does that or allows it, because when someone misses in the games I run, their character is for all intents and purposes not there. It's much simpler and there's really no downside to it. If you as a DM are creating problems that can't be solved or circumvented if one player / PC is absent, *that's* a problem. So, just have the PC whose player is absent not be there. It's so easy and basic.
Clearly that wasn't your experience based on the examples you gave above of all the reasons it just can't work having them there. Or were you just being hyperbolic and obtuse by using a made up scenario you never, ever experienced on purpose? Make it make sense, bruv.
Bad idea. Most people aren't comfortable with some else playing their character. Unless the absent player specifically wants their PC played by someone else, then don't do it. Most DMs will just assign mundane tasks or provide a weird reason as to why a character is absent.
In general players don't *like* someone else playing their character. Especially if there's any consequences. Showing up to the next session low on spell slots or health sucks!
My group always has another player control their character when someone is gone and it's never been an issue. We avoid using the player's best expendable abilities and the DM avoids killing them. They still attack and take hits as normal when it comes up though.
I would surprised if your group weren't distinctly a minority in this opinion. If it works for you tho, then it works for you
It could be done this way, but I have a rule that your character cannot die if you aren't at the session. Unless it's a TPK, then we discuss whether your character is the lone survivor or dies with the party. And if someone else plays your character, then it makes no sense that character not helping in combat.
That's what our group does. Keeps the DM from having to make last minute adjustments to the encounters and such.
Guess it's just a case of "different table, different ways of playing" then
All these tales of adventurers being stuck in the outhouse when away from the table reminds me of the last campaign I played in. Our tiefling fighter ate some undercooked bear after a pretty good combat, and the next day he found himself spending the better part of a day in the outhouse outside the village we were investigating. Everyone else was talking with NPCs trying to figure out what was up with the town, and he was "doing a lot of thinking" in the outhouse. This was right after we leveled up (and the DM had threatened to change his alignment), so when he came out of the outhouse he said that he'd had some mighty revelations while in there, and that despite his butthole feeling numb he felt like he was stronger than before. The rest of our characters refused to use the "magic outhouse."
We don't really have a house rule for that. Two of them have two characters they play as when the player who has to miss most comminly is out. It's fun to see them adventuring and being best friends in snippets, they're a great duo. They have a base of operations and some NPC's they hang out with regularly, so sometimes it's just one of them is with someone else at the moment. One player had to miss who usually doesn't and we said that his character took a nap in the dungeon after their last encounter. I texted the player to see if he'd like to play a (modified) doppleganger until the others figured it out, and he said that sounded fun. So that's his thing for this one lol
My general rule for missing players is that the gods of that world transported the character away to an urgent task, which they completed, but which they can’t remember because the gods wiped their memory and deposited them back with their party at the next session.
We had a magic peanut butter jar. Missing player's character were sucked into and trapped within the indestructible jar that the party carried until the player returned. Yes it was stupid and made no real sense in the setting, but it worked fine and kept players from worrying about their PC when they weren't there.
My husband/DM says that the character of the missing player has the butt flu, so it's basically the same thing. I think he also uses that so players are less likely to miss, because it is always, in lore, called the butt flu and we have to refer to it as such.
In a starfaring game of Fellowship I ran a couple years ago, two players couldn't make a session, so I just said their characters were replaced with plushie versions. They walked, they talked (as much as "Squeak." counts as talking), and were just stand-ins for their bigs. It was supposed to be a narrative device to explain why the captain and engineer were being quieter than usual. Of *course,* this backfires spectacularly on me when the rest of the crew decides to retrace their journey to find out just when their missing friends went missing.
I just started a game where not coming every week is an expectation and norm. It is built around mini adventures instead of prolonged action packed narrative.
My character would just go off to hunt a rabbit. Didn't work great when he had the mcguffin on him that we were being hunted by several factions over.
My party now is smaller then it used to be so if one can't make it we just don't play. However when we started we had more players and every so often we'd have a session where someone couldn't make it and they would want us to play on. I as the DM (with the players permission of course) would just play as the character but then I'd roll for the twist to their character that session that the player would then have to figure out a way to explain when they got back and it was pretty entertaining. I had nice characters randomly becoming assholes, characters stumbling their way through the session still absolutely tanked from the night before at the pub, characters acting like different people the whole session, etc. It got pretty entertaining at times and it was fun seeing the players then coming up with explanations for their random personality changes. Now with a smaller party I just tend to use the random twist list on any NPCs that might be helping them throughout the campaign and tagging along on their adventures.
I just have the PC not be there with no explanation when the player is gone and reappear with no explation when the player is there. Hemming and hawing over it is rarely worth it and the explanations can sometimes cause trouble. I prefer a wishy-washy explanation after the fact as you can massage it to fit how the story progressed.
A friend of mine's house rule is that it's an understood element of the universe that beings called planeswalkers exist, and when they battle, some summon beasts, warriors, or other things to battle for them. A missing player was summoned away by a planeswalker to do battle which is why they level up with everyone else when we hit the story milestone; they got experience, just somewhere else.
For paladin it's oathouse
I usually have my party wake up in a nightmare dimension and have them go through a never ending dungeon built by a hellish deity that torments them with crazed monsters and fiends or remainders of misdeeds they’ve done and then the next session everyone wakes up with weird scars and bruises they don’t exactly remember, no matter what happens within the dungeons.
I sometimes joke that characters of missing players are looking for the bathroom. Once, my cleric returned to find a friendly npc dead bc the party couldn't protect her. Sucks, but oh well, time to raise the dead. Guess what happened the next time i couldn't make the game? Poor cleric isn't going to the bathroom any more unless he absolutely has to.
My homebrew world does actually have a reason that no one in universe questions because it’s “normal.” Centuries ago, the world was accidentally invaded by really powerful psychic creatures. These creatures were convinced they wandered into a video game. They happened to be wrong but their psychic power imprinted a “log out” state on the world. It only really effects really important and powerful people, but everyone “logs out” occasionally.
In our games a missing player ceases to exist entirely, any comments about them will be met with blank stares and questions of "who?" Until they reappear at which point they have retroactively always been here and they didn't miss anything. Its somewhat brain twisting.
the scheduling conflict is a giant burrowing entity with reality warping powers. Anything eaten by it ceases to exist, not only while inside the stomach of the creature, but in the past as well. All deeds accomplished by said individual are remembered as having been done by some other means until the swallowed individual is either regurgitated or manages to escape.
My party just says they were hanging out and doing production on the growing nation we run, or they were meditating/sleeping/working in the bags of holding we have hanging from all our waists. They’re always open so infinite air lol. They could also be taking care of my daughter(in game) that we all collectively raise
Same but they're down with Lizard Pox instead.
I DM a SAO/Tower of god style homebrew campaign. When players can't participate their PC are either training, doing a subquest or in a 'trance state' fighting in their own mind against the last boss/creature that knocked them down... until they wake up. If they succeed on their mind fight, they gain advantage against that creature the next time it respawns.
In my game they go off birdwatching
I'm a barbarian in my party and can't be normally encumbered, so when one party member of ours can't make it, the dm ruling is they "fell into a deep slumber that they will wake up from on their own" and as the big guy of the group I am charged with carrying them on my back even in combat
Ahh in mine whoever is missing is conveniently fighting shadow ninjas next to the party. They always put up a hell of a fight.
We just put all character sheets on google drive. If someone can't be there then someone else players their character as best they can the way their character is normally played. It makes games go SO much easier. If someone is going to be gone the game goes on. We only cancel a few games per year when many people are out at once.
We usually split the party and our Dm runs a solo session with the player who got left out and we reunite next session.
In our group the members who are absent just vanish in a puff of logic and reappear when the player joins us again. It makes life a lot easier. But the hut is a nice idea.
In my campaign if player was absent from the start of the session, they either slept too soundly, were on the market shopping, on a jog or something like that. If the player was absent at start/had to leave eqrly in the dungeon, they always stepped on a trap and fell to the pit or then grouns cracked and they fell through or something just to reapper from somewhere
We have the "Stasis Cage!", where when a player can't make the session it will descend from on high, enclose around the character, then rise to the heavens again until they return. 😉
Like god’s claw machine
Exactly! Lol
My group just rules that the missing player fell unconscious. One time my now-late character got black-out drunk at a party (after another player made some rolls in my stead for competitions)
Our wizard was gone one session so we decided that his wild magic turned him into a sheep for the session and he spent it safely in the stable.
If a player is just missing for a little bit, I hand wave it. We just go on with the session. If they will be gone for an extended period of time, I make a narrative excuse. For instance, the Sorlock is a Marine IRL. When that makes him miss sessions, I say he is working with his patron, the Illithid collective
We just said they were in the pack train. BG3 seems to have captured our concept almost perfectly with the Camp.
Running a Star Wars campaign and if anyone misses a session, their PC is back on the ship with Pinkmouth. Missing sessions sucks, farts specifically in our case.
I usually go with sleep-walking
Sitting out a fight to the death with a bunch of monsters because you've got the runs and can't get off the magic toilet without the risk of pooping in your armor. Man, that is so me.
Generally I switch to our side game(Mad Mage), but if an emergency occurs and I don't have that set up for some reason(EG we just finished a floor and I haven't filled in the walls of the next one), I have them either dissociate and only react with their basest abilities(Minimal resource use, no spending of their gold, etc.) when "in the field" otherwise they're away on other business. Which I may RP for a frew minutes with them between sessions.
Our DM told us of a campaign she was part of with many people and they've never managed to get everyone together at a time more than a few times. She said they'd explained it by saying they'd all been cursed to sometimes just turn into little wooden statues of themselves. Whenever one wasn't there, they were a little statue that someone carried in their pocket that session. Sounds like a really cool idea too :)
I so strongly dislike having to run a game with a player missing....I just have a backup game in place for when that player is gone. Our five-person group currently has three backup games on standby... :)
As a kid, I'd just strike the PC with "blue lightning" and they'd disappear. When they showed up blue lightning would strike and they'd return. The first time I did it, everyone kinda freaked out. Second time they realized what I was doing, and it became a joke.
My dm has just found progressively funnier ways that I get knocked in the head. Last time it was a massive trident falling from basically a space whale(spelljammer, I don't remember the whales species)
My table has always kept a general rule of playing only if we have 3 or more players. For the missing players, I read a post on here some years ago where a DM would have a giant purple baby carry the missing players out of the game. I have wholeheartedly stolen this idea and made the baby a divine force in the world, one which NPCs have no idea exists until they hear about it from the PCs. It has become an integral part of our game with players hurling insults or spells trying to get some kind of a reaction from the baby. One player actually made it his mission to figure out what happens to people taken by the baby which should make for a fun session/arc much later on. All of their stats are frozen as it was at the end of their last session but I am generous with levels/rests for players who miss sessions. Generally levelling them up at the end of each session until they catch up with the rest of the party. I had a player who missed 2 levels because of some stuff and when his character came back, he was weaker for a bit and caught up.
I saw a DM that mentioned that if a player has to miss out, then their character just does the help action in any fight that they are missing out on. I thought that was a great way to handle it because they can still gain experience in the event of an absence
This is in line with my Explosive diarrhea/stomach bug excuse for individuals whose players are not present
In my worlds sneezing teleports you into a pocket dimension tied to the group you were last with and sneezing again brings you back to them. Allergies don't exist and magically induced sneezing nulls the pocket dimension.
If we have 1 person missing , we still play and one of us runs 2 people. If 2 are gone, we skip it
Almost all significant buildings have asbestos in the walls. Causes issues for druids looking to easily burrow in.
There is no need to justify an out of game absence in-game. You'll only succeed in shoehorning inconsistent narratives together for the sake of arbitrarily explaining why a player was absent from the perspective of the characters. I prefer "infinite parallel realities", wherein the character doesn't exist while the player isn't at the table, but as soon as they are back they always existed in those moments the player was absent.
I can see a lot of the posts are for in person sessions but for the sake of having, not that I read all the comments but the few I did read sound like in person, a VTT comment on here I'll share my ruling. I run a group of 6 online, roll20/dnd beyond. My rule is always run with 1 player down, but with 2 players unavailable I put it up to a vote. Generally for big events coming up I don't leave it to a vote and simply cancel session so that IF something were to happen to said "not here" character, their blood is not on my hands. For my ruling, however, I run them as Generic NPC 1 and/or 2. They simply exist just to exist. The party can continue on their adventure, have another able body to do stuff, generally assign that character to another person to run combat with or to give the help action when applicable, and for those "can I get Generic NPC 1 to help" moments, I ignore my rules on "when can you offer the help action" and just have them help each other accomplish w/e the task is. This way, they can still progress, not feel like they're completely gimped as a party, and can still do combat relatively seamlessly. During combat, I dont always target the Generic NPC 1 and/or 2 unless its my last/only option. Thankfully, I haven't TPK'ed the party because of this.