D&D 5E How Do You Reward Attendance and Participation?

[Lanefan]

It's been the standard convention in my group. It has problems, but far less than you'd expect. In fights, it's usually not a problem: we just assume the camera was on the heroes and PCs in the gray zone were fighting their own ennemies at the same time.

OK, but if those PCs are fighting their own enemies that means, due to the vagaries of dice, they have a chance of dying or some other bad outcome, right?

If yes, then why not just have them in the main fight as usual, with another player doing their dice rolls?

It's only problematic when (a) the absent PC is the only one in the group to possess a specific ability (if we can afford 3 days to get back to town to get this item identified, why can't we just camp and have Will the Wizard cast Identify?) (b) when the story implicates the absent PC specifically.

The first problem can be glossed over, the second irks me a little as a GM...

If the missing player runs your main front-line fighter and the party finds a combat - or vice versa - you've got trouble.

Never mind that sometimes due to real-world time constraints we'll end a session in mid-combat and pick up right at that point next week; kind of hard to explain Tanky McTankerson's sudden disappearance between one round (or segment!) and the next, and that his two Orc foes are suddenly now free to engage other targets...

 

[uzirath]

Until recently I was always put off by the idea of PCs vanishing in the midst of the game story. I've always taken the in-game reality quite seriously. I was grudgingly willing to give it a shot with one of my current groups. Turns out that it works better than I expected and doesn't knock me out of the fiction the way I thought it would.

OK, but if those PCs are fighting their own enemies that means, due to the vagaries of dice, they have a chance of dying or some other bad outcome, right?

If we assume the characters are there at all, then we assume that they come out ok if the party comes out ok. Maybe they took some knocks, but they get patched up. Basically, the assumption is that the camera ignores them. They've become extras in the background making it look like more is happening. They don't get the same glory but they don't risk permanent injury or setbacks.

If the missing player runs your main front-line fighter and the party finds a combat - or vice versa - you've got trouble.

Yeah, that can be tough. But tough can be fun for the remaining players. They need to work with their own character resources and not depend on Tanky to plow through the opposition. As a player, I kinda love it when this happens.

Honestly, even if you have PCs actually vanish, poof, into thin air, it's not really harder to explain than many of the other elements of a high-octane fantasy game. Maybe it's the thing that links the party together: they're all Plane Touched or Dimensionally Diffuse or whatnot. Every once in a while they slip between the threads of reality and vanish for a time.

 

[Lanefan]

Honestly, even if you have PCs actually vanish, poof, into thin air, it's not really harder to explain than many of the other elements of a high-octane fantasy game. Maybe it's the thing that links the party together: they're all Plane Touched or Dimensionally Diffuse or whatnot. Every once in a while they slip between the threads of reality and vanish for a time.

OK, that's a good in-fiction explanation. It'd need to be something established as a fact of life in the setting at the start of the campaign, but I might be able to work with that.

It'd sure encourage people to show up for the otherwise-often-boring treasury division sessions!

 

[Jd Smith1]

If I'm Falstaff the Thief, I'd be asking why Harry the Fighter - who was just marching in front of me - suddenly disappeared for the last three rooms and two combats, then just as suddenly reappeared...

On the rare occasions that a player can't attend, his PCs are noted as stricken with food poisoning, and remaining at the rear of the party.

If a TPK occurs, they die; if not, they recover at the next session, having earned no xp.

A player missing a session only happens once or twice a year; given that the PCs spend a lot of time in filthy ruins eating travel rations purchased from strangers with no quality control standards, an occasional case of the clenched-teeth quick-step is hardly surprising.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Maybe it's the thing that links the party together: they're all Plane Touched or Dimensionally Diffuse or whatnot. Every once in a while they slip between the threads of reality and vanish for a time.

That's so totally stolen as a premise for the next campaign. "Dimensionally Diffuse" Even if the more mundane explanation about food poisoning is more likely to work.