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<blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 7158673" data-attributes="member: 6796661">This just came up at my last game. Actually surprised that it is the first time is was an issue in a campaign that has been running over 2 years. I try hard as a GM to avoid a situation where a player has nothing to do and has to make a choice of staying as an observer or leaving. My game sessions are eight hours long and some folks drive quite a ways to come. I would feel awful to have them in a position where there character is dead in the first few hours and I can't work in an NPC or new character for them to play.So I work very hard to ensure that there are ready characters they can take on, especially in the lower levels. In my last session, however, just before the party meets the final boss battle, the rogue makes some very bad rolls and gets a door open for the rest of the party but fails to disarm the trap and then is the only one in the party that fails the saving throw and he ends up in a powerful magical state of suspended animation and no one in the party had spells necessary to get him out of it.&nbsp; The party also chose to continue with their exploration of the chamber and triggered the boss fight. So he had to spend the last hour as an observer. He was okay with it. Basically played on his phone while listening to the game. But I wonder if I should have changed the challenge. Let him succeed but with a number level of exhaustion or something else that would have weakened him but not taken him out of the game.&nbsp; If he would have left politely, I would have understood, but I'm glad he stayed. Again, this was &quot;only&quot; for an hour and modern smart phones make passing an hour's time easy enough.&nbsp; But I hate it when someone is knocked out of the game.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MNblockhead, post: 7158673, member: 6796661"] This just came up at my last game. Actually surprised that it is the first time is was an issue in a campaign that has been running over 2 years. I try hard as a GM to avoid a situation where a player has nothing to do and has to make a choice of staying as an observer or leaving. My game sessions are eight hours long and some folks drive quite a ways to come. I would feel awful to have them in a position where there character is dead in the first few hours and I can't work in an NPC or new character for them to play. So I work very hard to ensure that there are ready characters they can take on, especially in the lower levels. In my last session, however, just before the party meets the final boss battle, the rogue makes some very bad rolls and gets a door open for the rest of the party but fails to disarm the trap and then is the only one in the party that fails the saving throw and he ends up in a powerful magical state of suspended animation and no one in the party had spells necessary to get him out of it. The party also chose to continue with their exploration of the chamber and triggered the boss fight. So he had to spend the last hour as an observer. He was okay with it. Basically played on his phone while listening to the game. But I wonder if I should have changed the challenge. Let him succeed but with a number level of exhaustion or something else that would have weakened him but not taken him out of the game. If he would have left politely, I would have understood, but I'm glad he stayed. Again, this was "only" for an hour and modern smart phones make passing an hour's time easy enough. But I hate it when someone is knocked out of the game. [/QUOTE]

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