D&D 5E My group wants to access the cleric spells whenever the healer is absent from the session...

[Blue]

This really depends on the social contract of your group.

My general guideline when discussing it with a group is either we write you out for the session and you can't participate but also can't die, or you're there and played by the people who showed.

It sounds like you've had a long running "they aren't here, can't use their stuff" and my guess is that you're not assigning damage to them or having people attack them. So you stuck with what you've been doing - that sounds right to me.

EDIT: And YES, I've been in a group that the PCs were still there and a player came back after a mid-adventure absence to find his character had died. He was mighty annoyed.

 

[Mercule]

My preference in this kind of situation is that the absent player's character fades to the background and is there and helping, but not in any way that interacts with the game mechanics. As with a party that lacks a particular role or resource, it's then on the players to adapt their approach knowing that they might not have easy access to healing (or someone to deal handily with traps or whatever).

This is my general preference: Narratively, the absent player's character is still there. He may be guarding the party's six, there might be another foe or three that have him pinned down (but that he dispatches), or any other excuse people want to have -- sometimes it's explicit, sometimes it isn't.

Nevertheless, there are times when it actually breaks the narrative or grossly changes the flow of the game (from routine to a planning ordeal) to have a particular resource absent. The healer is the most obvious one, but there have been a few others. This is where I turn it back on the players....

I will allow character resources to be used only so far as I have access to an up to date character sheet. For the Cleric example, if you gave me a sheet when you leveled up, I'll assume you have half your spells available, at any given time and they are available as healing. If you give me a "standard" list of prepared spells, I'll work with that, but still assume you'd cast some (half) last session. Give me a list every time you prepare spells and I'll do whatever I can that seems in character.

You can also choose how active your character gets to be. I can handle playing another character, mechanically/tactically. I won't have your character talk, but I'll let someone else use your face-character's Persuasion skill for what the group deems appropriate. If you're willing to have your character contribute fully, though, I open the character up to the natural consequences of such -- including death.

Basically, I leave it to the players to determine what happens when they aren't there. The risk/rewards are balanced and fair. If the player doesn't step up as the rest of he group would like (whether intentionally or because he keeps "forgetting" to give me info) then the other players can take it up with him, not me.

 

[Waterbizkit]

I do what makes sense for the narrative and it's really as simple as that. I've never understood this fairly black & white approach so many groups use where it's either the player is there so the character is or the player isn't so the character is now suddenly missing or incapacitated. And don't get me wrong, I understand that's probably how the vast majority of groups do things, but that's never stopped it rubbing me the wrong way. I like to keep things flexible and adapt to what makes sense at the time.

So sometimes the party will be without a particular character, though honestly this won't often be the case. I simply refuse to have the character suddenly disappear or go mad or get sick or get lost just because Billy couldn't make it to the game. Not unless one of those options makes actual sense. Play of the missing players character is handed over to other players because I try to avoid DMPC-ing in all but the most extreme cases.

I don't know, just my opinion and how I prefer to run things. In the situation presented in the OP I'd have had the Cleric there and fully-functioning... not conveniently stuck by a fever or madness just because. But every group is different and people need to do what works for them.

 

[WarpedAcorn]

Our group has run into this issue as one of the players is taking college courses, so she has missed a few sessions due to needing to work to meet a deadline. Her character (in both campaigns) is a Sorcereress, so her missing has not been crucial. Our group's damage drops, but she is not the main damage dealer in either group so it doesn't force a change in tactics.

Typically if she is not present then her character is "jokingly" referred to as a Cardboard-Cutout that we carry around...and I have used this Cutout to reserve our table the Tavern before, so its more a 4th Wall meta joke we run with because it makes us all laugh. When she is there, then she pops back into the 3rd dimension and joins us. However, I have given the players the choice to either play without her character or to have her boyfriend play the character. The difference is that I mention if her character is on the table then she gets a cut of the treasure and XP as if she were there. Her boyfriend plays the character cautiously, and as the DM I tend to ignore the character in combat because of this (because as harsh of a DM as I have a reputation of being, I won't kill a character when the player isn't at the table without overwhelming justification). The decision to use her character has to have her consent, and the group has to decide at the beginning of the session whether she is a Cardboard-Cutout or a silent (N)PC for that game.

As for the OP's situation, I think what has previously been mentioned is the way to go. If the player of the Cleric is willing then he (or anyone else's) character can be handled as an NPC by the DM or another player. If they do not consent to this then it is up to the party to adapt and change their playstyle (with the DM maybe changing some things if they feel mercyful).

 

[Klaudius Rex]

You all got good points.

My cleric missed one lousy session, and his attendance is for the most part great, but this one time was just a bit more inconvienient for the rest of the group because they were low on all consumable healing.

They were actually traveling home from a demonically-possessed boss beholder's lair who killed one player, and in a supernatural poltergeist sort of way, shattered all glassware that the players carried including healing potions, poisons, holy water, and the like. They did have their healers kits intact, though. Regardless, they came away from that fight victorious, but definitely licking wounds. That was last session, which by the way, the healer was killed by the beholder, but resurrected shortly thereafter by a guardian angel that the players had rescued.

In this session, the cleric was absent as i mentioned before. In the game, its a 10 day trip from the beholder's lair to the Underdark outpost, and i wanted to have a planned encounter that would setup the next quest. So they felt strong about taking a "long rest" on the way home, until they had pretty much back to back encounters with some wizards followed by some oozes. They of course, unloaded all thier best spells and such on the high level wizards and won decisively without the healer. The oozes came withot them even being able to take short rest, and they panicked. I didnt nerf the black puddings because i thought that these mighty 13th-14th level characters could handle two back to back battles with no short rest, no consumable healing, and without the healer at the table.

I still think they could have beat the oozes, but they panicked, which i didnt expect. And in thier haste, they fumbled more than usual in fleeing the battle scene...and well...it caused me to rethink the policy of allowing absent character resources to be used.

I just felt so bad for these poor saps...

However, i think that generally, i dont think that the group can get help from an absent character...even if its the heal bot.

 

[MrHotter]

As long as you've adjusted the combat to account for the fact that a player is missing then you should stick with your 'the cleric is suffering from a bout of madness and can not cast spells' narrative.

I've made the mistake of letting the rest of the players control the character of a missing person before and the first thing they tried to do was hand out his gear to their characters and then use him as a trap springer. I also don't want to devote more of my own bandwidth to play the character as a DMPC if I can just adjust the encounters.

Now I just do my best to come up with a plausible excuse as to why the character is not around. Sometimes it's as simple as 'he's watching the horses', and the rest of the players know they are on their own.

 

[iserith]

In this session, the cleric was absent as i mentioned before. In the game, its a 10 day trip from the beholder's lair to the Underdark outpost, and i wanted to have a planned encounter that would setup the next quest. So they felt strong about taking a "long rest" on the way home, until they had pretty much back to back encounters with some wizards followed by some oozes. They of course, unloaded all thier best spells and such on the high level wizards and won decisively without the healer. The oozes came withot them even being able to take short rest, and they panicked. I didnt nerf the black puddings because i thought that these mighty 13th-14th level characters could handle two back to back battles with no short rest, no consumable healing, and without the healer at the table.

How many black puddings was it?

My party of four 4th- to 6th-level characters mopped the floor with three of them in one fight on Saturday night. I felt bad for the puddings.

 

[Satyrn]

I'm taking pudding to my next game session so that the players get to mop it up. I mean, why should our characters get the tasty dessert?

 

[bgbarcus]

It looks all options have been endorsed by at least one person so far so - what you do should be a consistent rule based on group consensus.

In my game, by playing online (using Roll20), we have the advantage of always having the character sheets easily available. If someone can't make a session, I ask them to designate another player to run the character or tell me the character will sit out. If I think the session will be more dangerous than normal, I warn them about that before they name a proxy.

Proxy players try to play the character as close to the way the owner usually does and the owner accepts the risk of something bad happening. This works because everyone trusts the other players to do their best with borrowed characters.

 

[Lanefan]

The difference between what the OP does and what our crew does is one of realism. The OP sacrifices some realism to meta-game concerns, however we go with the idea that the in game-reality would say a character is still present in the party and capable of fully functioning whether it happens to have a player attached or not; thus if a player doesn't make the game that character just keeps on keepin' on as a party NPC. If the missing player gave any instructions for their character(s) those are followed as best as possible/practical; if not, it's just played as normal for its established characterizations with another player taking care of its dice rolls, etc. And if bad - or good - things happen to said character while the player isn't there, them's the breaks. The character also gets its share of xp etc. for what it does, no differently than had its player been present.

Also, all character sheets stay with the DM between sessions in part to allow for just this.

The only other option which preserves the in-game realism is to have the session sink if anyone is absent; a pain for all involved, and not in the least bit recommended.

Lanefan