Characters coming and going (your opinion)

[prospero63]

It's just a character. Sheesh.

Tell him if his character was so important to him, he wouldn't have left. heh

 

[Lanefan]

You've got lots of "outs" here; a few follow:

1. Run him as a QPC (quasi-player character) until the first reasonable opportunity for him to leave, then retire him.

2. As he's the stealth guy anyway, have him sneak off on his own and not come back. You can keep it completely "behind the scenes" what happens to him (and dream up something suitable for if they ever meet him again; you'll have lots of time for this); all the party know is he went out scouting and disappeared without a trace. This leaves your party without a stealth guy, but that's no different than if he'd been killed...they'll just have to suck it up and soldier on.

3. (as mentioned by others) Have him possessed, cloned, dopplegangered, or whatever such that it looks and walks and talks like him but it's not him. (though you'll later have to explain where the real him went...)

4. See if there's anyone out there not normally in that game willing to temp as that character's player.

In any case, it's completely your call. If it was up to me I'd go with option 1 above, but 2 could provide all kinds of fun if done right.

Lanefan

 

[S'mon]

I think I'd be really angry at this guy. If he's no longer a player he has no rights over his PC anyway. You were being really generous to him and he pretty much spat in your face. The most reasonable thing to do would be just what you said - his PC leaves after current adventure. If he can't handle that he can bugger off.

 

[sniffles]

As a player, I can empathize with him. It's his character; he took the time to create this character and bring it to the table. He has a certain investment in this character. He thought he'd be comfortable with letting everyone else take care of his baby while he was gone, but now he's having second thoughts. I wouldn't punish him for changing his mind.

I'd suggest one of two options:

1) You run the character as an NPC and keep him out of the front lines until this adventure is over and he can safely leave the party.

2) Retcon the adventure to say that the character was never there in the first place. Replace him with another similar NPC if you're worried about depriving the party of a rogue-type character.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I have a question. What will the other players do if his PC leaves the party? Will one of them create a new PC to have the stealthy skills? Will they hire an NPC? Will they just play on without him?

If they will play on without him, just pluck the PC out of the adventure and if you feel it to be necessary make some adjustments to the adventure to compensate for the loss of one PC. Ultimately losing a PC in the middle of an adventure is always a possibility via dying.

I would make the PC suddenly vanish in a mysterious burst of light. If the player comes back from time to time, the PC can mysteriously reappear and vanish again at the end of the session (did you watch the show Journeyman this season?). Eventually if the player returns full time, you can create an adventure where the rest of the party finds out what exactly was going on and saving the PC from whatever is happening to him.

 

[Relique du Madde]

You could always rail road the group a little and have the group get into a huge fierce battle which they are forced to flee only to discover that the PC was captured by the main BBG (who then sells the PC into slavery from which the player eventually escapes from before the player returns)..

 

[DonTadow]

Wow, 3 hours, 37 reads, and not a single reply...

Where is the community feedback and support we all have come to expect around here?

Isn't this really just spilled milk.

He's leaving and will be overseas for a year, why should he care what happened to him. I have a standing policy in my game. If a player leaves the game their character is left in the hands of the DM. When you leave, you are essentially unclicking the player option on your character and selecting NPC.

Now, if a character wants to give me ideas I"m more than welcome to take them and more than likely I will incorporate them (IF its good terms). There is no reason you can't have the NPC shadow the PCs and participate. If the pc dies, he does not receive a mortal blow but one that knocks him out. After he recovers he leaves the party realizing that his wound was too much to recover from.

If he survives he retires for some reason.

 

[PolletteIrieska]

I completely understand your frustration. About ten years ago, my group was down in the Underdark playing through an adventure and our cleric disappeared on us. We got an email a week later stating that he'd moved out of state and wanted our DM to mail his character sheet back to him so that he could join another group with the character. He was our only healer. Our group took a two week break while we figured out what to do about it. As I had a long history of playing various clerics within the group, the DM approached me about a week later with the possibility of playing the group healer and either playing both the cleric and my fighter or turning the fighter into a DM's PC. When I was more than willing to play the healer and the fighter both, he had our cleric stumble upon a drow-created magic item (his own, I wish I had the info for it, it turned out to be a great little toy) that could trap not only the soul of the victim, but also their physical forms. One little catch... Only their physical forms. Not their clothes, not their equipment, not their money. Not even their holy symbol. It only took a touch to trigger the trapped/cursed gem.
I got the fun of playing a character that had been 'out of the loop' for 3 centuries, and we all got the fun of sending him a character stripped of equipment, coins and clothes in return for his lack of consideration. You may not want to go that far, but there is a precedent for necromantic items that have that capability in the fiction, at least. Just a suggestion.

 

[Doug Sundseth]

Absent an explicit license, a character is the intellectual property of its creator. Use of that character in contravention of the wishes of its creator is a violation of copyright law*.

It's also pretty slimy.

* No, I don't think a lawsuit is appropriate. As I'm not a lawyer, I'm the wrong person to listen to, but I also think that a court would laugh at any such lawsuit as the damage is de minimis. The ethical issue still exists, though.

 

[Darrell]

And I find your solution even stranger. Why hasn't the bad guy found this mirror and made better use of it?

Maybe because the BBEG didn't build the dungeon; he's just the one who's living there now. The mirror might be in a secret room he's never found.

(As a side note: I lived in an apartment for three years in my college days, and found out about a veritable 'secret compartment' previous tenants had made to hide drugs three days before I moved out. How do I know they used it to hide drugs? There was still a small plastic bag of marijuana in it.)

Who made the mirror? How many other folks has it found?

If it's a one-shot plot device, this info is irrelevant.

What happens if the party fully maps the dungeon and encounter the mirror?

Possibly the 'switched' PC was whisked away by another BBEG (the original builder of the dungeon, maybe?), and the mirror needs both 'switched' parties to reverse the effect. Until then, it's just a mirror.

Conversely, what happens if the 'stealth guy' that got 'switched in' deliberately keeps them from finding it?

What if my campaign doesn't have this alternate dimension from which his equivalent can be from?

Alternate dimensions aren't necessary. It can switch him with some kind of critter from the Nine Hells, or a something the original builder planted there to mess with anybody who ever found the mirror. There can be any number of explanations as to what happened to the 'switched' character.

Again, a converse question: What if my campaign doesn't have dopplegangers to switch with him before he enters the dungeon?

Why didn't my 75 on a Gather Information roll not find Bard's tales about this strange mirror in the dungeon?

A.) You rolled a 75 on a Gather Information check? [Looks at d20] Ya must have a helluva modifier.

B.) Maybe because the Bard's tales never mentioned the mirror, because the bards who composed said tales didn't know about it.

Point is: Old Drew Id's idea about a 'mirror' switching the character after he enters the dungeon is no more or less plausible than your suggestion that the 'switch' happened before entering the dungeon. It's a game; moreover, it's a game where odd stuff happens with great regularity. Sometimes you just have ta wing it.

Regards,
Darrell