D&D General How do you explain PC absences when a player has to miss a session?

[Sword of Spirit]

On experience, I base it on the character, not the player, so it's the PCs presence that determines XP. And while it has almost never come up, my group would like to keep the whole party with the same XP total, so I'm probably going to say that as long as the party has the chance to get back together and "share what they learned" and we aren't dealing with large amounts of XP, I can probably keep everyone on the XP without breaking my immersion.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Handwave it as well. Maybe next session I'll let the player work in where they were last time and how they show up this time, but generally the default is that they just weren't there and are there now. I don't want to spend the extra time at a session working them back into the adventure. I've known GMs that do that, but too often it involves the rest of the table that showed up last time just stuck sitting around while everything happens with the person who didn't, until they somehow meet up again. I can think of a time where we spent an hour doing nothing but watching while the one PC played through the explanation of why they weren't there last time.

 

[Odysseus]

Its a mixed bag.
Generally I avoid situations where they leave a PC behind only to have him magically appear next session.
If the players send my his character sheet , either me or one of the players can control him for a session. And occasionally there is some handwaving.

 

[Weiley31]

Well for my Raven Queen Patron PC, she has to "attend" conference summons with the Raven Queen every now and then for business purposes/meetings at the office.(said player absences)

My one bud and I also had a character once that was basically a "Planeswalker" whose planar jumping abilities would randomly fritz at moments he had no control over. So at the end of sessions/during absences, said character would bamf out of the setting.

 

[the Jester]

Generally, we handwave it. Maybe the character is sick, or scouting ahead, or guarding the camp, or watching the mounts, or having a really long poop. It doesn't matter- he or she is not available for the moment, but is assumed to be 'there' in the background.

 

[Longspeak]

I generally try to find an excuse to have the PC separate. If there's no plausible way, Auto-Pilot, and if there's a significant choice to be made, I generally make it provisional, then ask the player later.

 

[Lanefan]

The player may be absent but the character is still with the party and will be played as such, usually with its actions kinda determined by committee and one player handing any dice rolling that may be needed.

The character earns xp as it otherwise would, is subject to the same risks as it otherwise would be, etc.

If the absent player has left any specific instructions those are followed where practical, provided they agree with the character's established patterns. (thus if the player of a normally brave and daring combat-first character instructed that his character would hang back and not get involved in combat, eyebrows would go up; but we rarely if ever see anything like that)

Character sheets stay with the DM between sessions for just this reason: so the game can be played even if someone can't make it.

 

[atanakar]

Handwave. The character is suddenly a tertiary silent persona hanging in the background. We don't use XPs. We split the treasure with him because if a different player is not there another week we do the same for him.

Sometimes, if the absentee agrees another players runs his character as if he was there but doesn't take any chances or make meaningful decisions.

 

[ad_hoc]

We hand wave it.

The PC is not there. They are doing something else related to their character.

If we cancelled the game when someone wasn't able to show up we'd never play. Our group is DM + 5 players. My ideal game is 4 players. The extra player is there so we still have a good game if someone can't make it.

 

[Bacon Bits]

We ignore it. The PC is phased out. They exist. They're in the party. They're with the party. But they're treated like they don't exist and don't interact with anybody unless they were last in possession of the MacGuffin or some other critical item that the party needs.

People are going to be absent. At my age, usually because somebody's family needs them and that takes precedence. The story is cool, but the game needs to accommodate the lives of the people playing it. Ain't nobody got time for anything else.

I've even added a new character to a campaign in this way because where the PCs were would have meant the new player had to sit there and do nothing. [The PCs were on a "plane" whose whole schtick was that it was totally devoid of life and the PCs were the first to get there since mortal creatures came to exist. The PCs had the only "key" in existence, and only the key was capable of keeping mortals alive there longer than about a minute.]

I just said, "You know how sometimes one of you guys isn't around for a session or two?"

"Sure," one of them replied.

"Well, just treat <new guy> like he rolled up a PC at the first session and has been out of town ever since. His character has been adventuring with you all along and has always been there."

I ended up being really glad I did that because the party got stuck and on the "plane" for like two months.