Lanefan
Victoria Rules
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?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.
If yes, then why not just have them in the main fight as usual, with another player doing their dice rolls?
If the missing player runs your main front-line fighter and the party finds a combat - or vice versa - you've got trouble.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...
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...