D&D 5E Involving players whose PCs have been killed/sidelined

[sheridanwilde]

Oh, another traditional approach is to have the character-less player 'monster', i.e. roleplay the antagonists for a change.

 

[Draegn]

I give my players a minor NPC to run. If they do an exceptional role play and have the other players commenting on how well they did I move the NPC up to the level of retainer/hireling.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's not good when a PC dies an hour in to a 4 hour session and player has nothing to do.

What are some good approaches to dealing with this?

13th Age (I am /not/ shilling for 13A, it just happens to have addressed a lot of little issues with D&D, 'love letter' though it may be) has some sort of 'with you in spirit' rule, where the dead player still gets a turn, and can offer a flash-back scene or other RP idea to grant another player a bonus.
In 5e, it could be inspiration or advantage.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

A few options. One is to see if the dead PC can be raised in context of the story in a relatively short amount of time. Another one is to have player bring in a new PC, either permanent or temporary. Temp PCs of this type make good future NPCs if the player wants to go back to their main character if given the ability. Then there's the option where the player sits out and kibbutz's or hangs out or helps the DM or the like for the session.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I offer them the opportunity to run NOCs & other antagonists, but the decisions are theirs. If they wanna leave, it's cool. If they wanna make new PCs, that's cool. Heckling is also cool.

As long as they don't actually disrupt stuff or become too much of a distraction.

 

[WhosAChaoticGoodBoy]

In a one-shot I was running, a PC outright died (went unconscious, failed their death saves) and I determined there was no conceivable circumstance where he’d be revived in time for the player to continue playing that character.

Shortly after the PC died, I told its player to build a new one and continued running the game with the remaining characters. When the player had finished making a new character, I on-the-fly introduced him into the story, putting the onus on him to describe who the PCs were encountering. A nice-to-have would’ve been to take the player aside during the next break to get some additional info on the character, but we were already towards the end of the session by the time he was introduced, so I figured there’d be minimal impact to me being ignorant of that character’s specific motivations/quirks.

Some specifics for the curious:

- The player died while the group was fighting some bandits; the bandits ended up routing the players and they rested before going back in
- by the time the players re-engaged the group they’d retreated from, the new character was ready and I’d written him in as noticing the hullabaloo and joining the fray on the side of the PC’s.
- The player himself is an experienced in 5e, and I trusted him to be able to quickly create a character independently of any assistance from me. I also trusted him to have motivations inline with what the party was doing.

 

[S'mon]

I usually keep a few unused NPCs in a folder for such situations. So if the party already has an NPC with them then the player can take over. If not, and the party is in a location to stumble across an NPC who may be lost, a captive, or whatever, then I can introduce one of the inactive NPCs.

I particularly like the idea of the GM keeping one or two pregen characters in a folder, who can be dropped into the game if one of the PCs dies early in a session.