PC Death when the player isn't there

In the last session I DMed a PC was killed. The player of the PC hasn't been to the game since last November but has recently said he would like to come back. I didn't go out of my way to kill the character and rarely kill characters in general (but there have been 2 PC deaths in this campaign 3 including this one). I run challenging but fair encounters. In this case the party (7 members plus an NPC cleric)attacked a group of sleeping Taer. Little did they know that there was a starving Remorhaz nearby (hp reduced to the mid forties) who was attacted by the sounds of combat. It snatched up the (N)PC in its jaws and despite some truly heroic efforts on the party to save him was swallowed and killed.

Has this happend to you as either a player or a DM? Any advice? There is the possiblity of riencarnation but no one the party knows (or can get to) has a Rasie Dead handy.

Can't happen in my games as I generally let PCs of missing players fade into the background or go elsewhere, whatever's more useful.
My advice would be to do just that in the future but if you insist on your method, more power to you.

If one of our players misses a session, another person plays his character. If he ends up dying during the game, it's an accepted loss. Players who don't show up for months, however, have their pc's removed from play. It's just what we do.

Darkness said:

Can't happen in my games as I generally let PCs of missing players fade into the background or go elsewhere, whatever's more useful.
My advice would be to do just that in the future but if you insist on your method, more power to you.

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Well I didn't think the player would be gone for so long now. At first he said he would take a 'couple' of weeks off as he was seeing someone new. I should have realized right away that he would most likely be gone from the game for longer. 2 other players also had to (mostly) leave due to family commitments and I did just as you suggest - their characters are not with the party currently.

I guess the main reason is that the party is on a ocean voyage expected to take upwards of a year to complete (this could be much longer in real time) so I didn't want his character to not be with the party if he suddenly decided to show up again.

Yep, we also keep the characters of missing players in the background, so they cannot die.

Bye
Thanee

Once, about ten years ago, a character died when his player wasn't there. It was a fairly hack-and-slash game and we had found a Deck of Many Things. We assumed his character would have wanted to draw from it and drew the Death card for him. He wasn't especially happy to hear his character had died, but it was that kind of game anyways, so he just kinda shrugged his shoulders and made a new one. That character died too, only he was there that time.

More recently, while playing in a meat-grinder/dungeon-crawl game, a character whose player was absent (and was being controlled by another player in addition to his regular character) stepped into a magic circle and became trapped on another plane. We were able to get him back easily enough, though, and his player agreed that it was what he would have done had he been there, so there were no problems there.

Most games that I play in, any character whose player is missing is either NPC'd or is simply out of the action for the night (present but inactive and invulnerable to injury within reason). When I run games, I usually try to make up good excuses that take the playerless character out of the action for the duration.

It's never happened to me, but I can say that I would be rather upset if a character of mine died when I wasn't there to control him. Then again, if it was a game I hadn't shown up to in 2 months, I wouldn't be terribly surprised or upset.

Hmm. I could see how this could abused (not killing characters if the player isn't there). Just before a major confrontation a player who doesn't want his PC to have any chance of dying could just not show up to the next game be assured of invulnerability. Heck just leave saying you have an 'important' meeting.

That just doesn't sit well with me. Do these invulnerable PCs earn XP? Why? Would this still be the case if, as I stated here, the player hadn't been there for 2 months?

Psychic Warrior said:

Well I didn't think the player would be gone for so long now. ... I guess the main reason is that the party is on a ocean voyage expected to take upwards of a year to complete (this could be much longer in real time) so I didn't want his character to not be with the party if he suddenly decided to show up again.

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I see. I would have had him around off-screen, scouting, cooking, preparing a camp - whatever's needed at the time.

If you want to let him continue with this character, you could turn it into some undead. Probably an incorporeal one. If the player wants that, that is.

There's an article on the WotC page that details how a character can buy the ghost template in level-sized chunks. You could reduce his level by 1 and give him the first level of ghost abilities as outlined in the article. Thereafter, he must continuing to advance as a ghost until he has the entire template.

Psychic Warrior said:

Do these invulnerable PCs earn XP?

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Not IMC. However, if you want him to return some day, a missing character should never fall behind so much that he's weaker than a new character would be. Assuming he trains or adventures enough off-screen to keep this minimum is useful here.

Darkness said:

I see. I would have had him around off-screen, scouting, cooking, preparing a camp - whatever's needed at the time.

If you want to let him continue with this character, you could turn it into some undead. Probably an incorporeal one. If the player wants that, that is.

There's an article[/i] on the WotC page that details how a character can buy the ghost template in level-sized chunks. You could reduce his level by 1 and give him the first level of ghost abilities as outlined in the article. Thereafter, he must continuing to advance as a ghost until he has the entire template.

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Oooo that would just be mean as he was a Ranger who not only had undead as a favoured enemy but had it written in his backstory about how much he hated them (undead, vampires to be percise) for killing most of his family.

Mean, but funny!

One of the other players told him about his characters death. Apparently it went along the lines of "Hands up who here has a healthy D&D character - not so fast there Dan". My players are a cruel bunch it seems.