I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
So here's a thing that has been a bugaboo of every table, sooner or later:
You're playing your game, and it's going swimmingly, but then, early in combat, one of your characters drops dead. Or falls asleep. Or becomes paralyzed. Or otherwise gets the ol' "You're Useless" button put on 'em. Usually, you'd heal them or get them up on their feet somehow, but, for whatever reason, you're unable to.
So what does the player do for the rest of the combat?
I'm trying to see how different tables deal with the problem, across editions and games. 4e tries to address the problem by adding saves (including "death saves"), but there does seem to be some issue with the save mechanic in 4e, mostly relating to the comic-book style of it ("I'm only mostly dead!"). But even in 4e, if a death happens early enough in the combat, you can stabilize or just die and still have the same problem. In 3e and earlier, you'd usually just have a bored player on your hands right away, but that seems even less desirable.
How do you counteract the problem of a player whose character can't do anything being bored or frustrated or disengaged from the game, since she can't do anything to affect the situation?
Share your rules, your house rules, your table tricks, your habits, whatever else you've got.
(For context, this is coming as I'm playtesting FFZ, and finding that KO's occur pretty quickly, leaving one player with nothing to contribute for the rest of the combat, and I want to find some way to engage that player, so they don't wander off and play Xbox until the combat is over).
You're playing your game, and it's going swimmingly, but then, early in combat, one of your characters drops dead. Or falls asleep. Or becomes paralyzed. Or otherwise gets the ol' "You're Useless" button put on 'em. Usually, you'd heal them or get them up on their feet somehow, but, for whatever reason, you're unable to.
So what does the player do for the rest of the combat?
I'm trying to see how different tables deal with the problem, across editions and games. 4e tries to address the problem by adding saves (including "death saves"), but there does seem to be some issue with the save mechanic in 4e, mostly relating to the comic-book style of it ("I'm only mostly dead!"). But even in 4e, if a death happens early enough in the combat, you can stabilize or just die and still have the same problem. In 3e and earlier, you'd usually just have a bored player on your hands right away, but that seems even less desirable.
How do you counteract the problem of a player whose character can't do anything being bored or frustrated or disengaged from the game, since she can't do anything to affect the situation?
Share your rules, your house rules, your table tricks, your habits, whatever else you've got.
(For context, this is coming as I'm playtesting FFZ, and finding that KO's occur pretty quickly, leaving one player with nothing to contribute for the rest of the combat, and I want to find some way to engage that player, so they don't wander off and play Xbox until the combat is over).
