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<blockquote data-quote="sheridanwilde" data-source="post: 7157562" data-attributes="member: 6873426">I've had a similar situation crop up, though fortunately I'd prepared for it through necessity.When we started the campaign we knew that two of our players wouldn't be able to make it for the first few sessions (one would arrive in week three, the other was packing for a month-long holiday in the US on the day of the first session) so I included a few NPCs so that I wouldn't have to throw very low CR creatures at them for the first four sessions.&nbsp; We're also all adults with adult-lives and spread around our region of the country.&nbsp; One player has a one-year old daughter and another baby on the way, one player has been badly affected by engineering works on their rail route and has to take a break (the alternative is to face three or four hour rail replacement services and night buses home each week) and another player has just started a new job working different shift patterns each week, so I've known from the start that it'd be quite usual to have players missing (if we only played when we could all make it we'd probably only play ten times a year).So that I'm not constantly RPGing one of these NPCs against myself I'd been handing the NPC's character sheet to one of the players to RP each session until the full complement of players was present, and allotting XP accordingly (NPC started as a 0th-level commoner and is now a 3rd-level fighter).Now that they've left 1st level behind them tailoring CR isn't such an issue, but they're on a long journey so the NPCs are still around.&nbsp; One of the two starting PCs has just this week gone been petrified for 24 hours, so the player has been given the NPC stats to fully charsheet up and play.&nbsp; By the time the paralysed PC can move again they should be in a city.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="sheridanwilde, post: 7157562, member: 6873426"] I've had a similar situation crop up, though fortunately I'd prepared for it through necessity. When we started the campaign we knew that two of our players wouldn't be able to make it for the first few sessions (one would arrive in week three, the other was packing for a month-long holiday in the US on the day of the first session) so I included a few NPCs so that I wouldn't have to throw very low CR creatures at them for the first four sessions. We're also all adults with adult-lives and spread around our region of the country. One player has a one-year old daughter and another baby on the way, one player has been badly affected by engineering works on their rail route and has to take a break (the alternative is to face three or four hour rail replacement services and night buses home each week) and another player has just started a new job working different shift patterns each week, so I've known from the start that it'd be quite usual to have players missing (if we only played when we could all make it we'd probably only play ten times a year). So that I'm not constantly RPGing one of these NPCs against myself I'd been handing the NPC's character sheet to one of the players to RP each session until the full complement of players was present, and allotting XP accordingly (NPC started as a 0th-level commoner and is now a 3rd-level fighter). Now that they've left 1st level behind them tailoring CR isn't such an issue, but they're on a long journey so the NPCs are still around. One of the two starting PCs has just this week gone been petrified for 24 hours, so the player has been given the NPC stats to fully charsheet up and play. By the time the paralysed PC can move again they should be in a city. [/QUOTE]

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