I had a ball playing another guy's character!

[EricNoah]

Last night I got to run the party's halfling wizard (13th level) in addition to my own dwarven rogue/fighter. What a blast!

Instead of just lamely running away from spellcasting vampires and spectres as my pathetic rogue would normally do (he's great against the living; against the dead he sucks), I got to also run a hasted flying spellcasting guy! I slung prismatic spray at a vampire and sent him to the Positive Energy Plane -- bye-bye DM's favorite NPC! I was just about to do a really cool move (cast Acid Fog followed by a hemispherical Wall of Force around one bad guy), but unfortunately an enemy spellcaster Feebleminded the wizard. And turned my rogue into a newt. Ah well, it was still fun. (The wizard was also dominated for a few seconds -- I was really looking forward to anihilating my own party, but he got another save from being ordered to do that and suceeded, darn it!)

Even more fun was earlier in the game when the wizard teleported half of the group partway around the world -- I rolled poorly on my "error" check and we ended up in the ocean for a while. Good stuff!

So, do you mind running absent PCs in your games?

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Yeah. My group runs up more on the character aspects than the tactical aspects, and having to run other peoples' characters detracts from that-- both characters behave a little uncharacteristic, the original PC from neglect and the absent one from being played by someone else.

Hell, we even try to avoid using each other's NPCs because they come out different. Even "canon" NPCs don't play the same way under each of us, so we try to avoid the overlap.

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Cool story Eric!


It's come up with my group once or twice, the most memorable time involve a dual wielding ranger that myself and a friend handled for an absent player. In combat we each took a hand. The cool part is when the player wasn't there, we'd roll great and the character would be massively successful, but when he was there the character would just have the worst luck.

 

[arwink]

WE rarely play if people are absent, but in general I'm more than happy to throw PC's to another player if the original player isn't there and I can't drop them out of the game for continuity reasons.

 

[EricNoah]

Well what really seems to help is good recordkeeping and especially for spellcasters, a nice neat spellsheet. It was a breeze playing this high-level wizard because all of the stats were laid out in a table, with DCs etc. calculated. And I typically do spell sheets for NPCs, too, when I'm DMing. I have no time to try to figure out a DC on the fly. If you haven't downloaded Steve Mulhern's spellsheet it's well worth it.

 

[d20Dwarf]

What's the URL for that spellsheet?

The gnome loves to run spellcasters and she makes a spreadsheet for every character, of course she's also fond of using spells from Spells & Spellcraft and Magic of Faerun, but it still might help her. Maybe I'll get her to work on an additional sheet with her favorite products.

 

[alsih2o]

So, do you mind running absent PCs in your games?

we do this a good bit in my sunday game, i have been left running various n.p.c.s and i always have a blast.

my fovorite was a fighter/rogue gnome, where i normally play a sorcerer druid, seems eric and i have had nearly opposite experiences and enjoyed it greatly

 

[EricNoah]

The one I use is Steve Mulhern's, looks like you can download a version here:

http://home.wi.rr.com/dndsheet/v230beta7.zip

Lots of sources in that besides core rules.

 

[d20Dwarf]

Weird, I don't see any spells in here.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

This occurred in our game two sessions back, and the missing player returned to find his character was now hairless, thanks to a little incautious examination of a bottle of alchemist's fire. It was funny during the session, and even funnier the next session when he found out. Teach him not to miss a game!