what does your DM do with your character when your gone?

[diaglo]

i ask the player. and let them decide. they can have someone else roleplay their PC. they can have me do it. or they can guard the horses/collect firewood/go get drunk in town.

if they don't know they are going to miss and still miss.

then the PC fades into the background.

each PC has something that is motivating them. so they go off to do that thing. and tell the party they will meet them when and if their paths cross again.

 

[Barak]

Since we went to the trouble of recruiting an extra player for the express purpose of not having to miss out playing a session due to a missing player, it made sense for us as a group to discuss what to do when it happens. What we came up with is that each player chose another player to play his character in his absence. Unless, obviously, the host can't play, or me, the DM. When the host can't play, we skip a week. To this day, I have no clue what they do when I can't make it. I think they play board games.

 

[WhimsyTheFae]

My DM will play the PC in the missing player's stead. There are some advantages and disadvantages to it. the advantage is that while the player is away for whatever reason, the DM will not let the character die. The downside is that character's XP for the sessions he/she misses will be drastically reduced.

I had been doing that, but since a PC died once while I was running him I am leaning toward a method of removing the character from play.

The problem is that my groups are usually small (3 players) and a missing player hurts the flexibility of the party. I think that a 'pinch hitter' will start 'showing up' during the times that a PC has to be 'away from the party' and that particular toolset is required. Granted, the 'pinch hitter' may not be as powerful or dynamic, but should at least fill the role.

 

[Uder]

In my game, you get two choices if you tell me ahead of time: plot-immunity (no permanent damage/death) and no xp or full xp and full consequences. Either way one of the other players "gets" to run the character.

If a player just no-shows, I go with full consequences/full xp by default, and encourage the other players to treat the character as cannon fodder. Potions, scrolls, and charged items are also fair game.

 

[Chimera]

Run as an NPC "by the group, but with GM veto", earning only 1/2 experience.

If killed, can be raised at no loss of level or other personal consequences, for slightly cheaper than normal. Although you still have to find someone willing to do it, within the normal time frame.


Added the whole group thing and GM veto clause after someone in a previous group tried to completely bonehead someone elses PC in their absence, then abandon them to unrecoverable death.

No, I will NOT allow you to do that to someone elses PC!

 

[Aeric]

One of the players missed a session because of work, so one of the other players controlled his character that night (for combat, mainly). The party found a Deck of Many Things that night. The player controlling the character decided to draw for the character. He drew the Death card and was killed. Thankfully, the player wasn't all that satisfied with his character anyways and was happy to roll up a new one.

The weirdest thing that ever happened to one of my characters while I was gone: I had to take a leave of absence from a campaign due to schedule conflicts. For the entirety of my absence, the party was in Ravenloft (don't ask me how we/they got back; I never found out). My character was a paladin, and was NPCd during my absence. Apparently he acted pretty strangely while I was gone, which made perfect sense as he was in Ravenloft.

 

[shilsen]

I NPC the character based on the way the player normally runs it. The PC gets the same XP that everybody else does and has the same chance of getting killed as at any other time.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

My only DM-controlled-PC story occurred after I quit a long-running Planescape campaign (my first Third Edition game). I had quit because the DM's solution to my character's unwillingness to follow the railroad plot was to pull out the metaphorical steam engine to get us moving: he tried to have his pet NPC magically dominate my character.

I almost walked away from the game after that session, but heard after the next (which I skipped) that the DM had declared my character had "crazily" leaped into the River Styx and, of course, lost his memory.

I came back, promptly ignored any suggestion that my character had forgotten anything, and played a few more sessions until his blatant unwillingness to allow anything other than the big climax he'd scripted to occur got the better of my stubbornness.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Run 'by committee' by the other players.

Generally in a style of 'What would the real player do?', though the character tends to be rather more selfless and... cooperative than normal. Frequently volunteering to pay the tab at the bar, to open the spooky door, to play rear-guard while everyone escapes the vampire, etc

There was one notable exception. We'd been getting frustrated by the paladin player's refusal to be valiant and heroic The paladin dithered, and was hesitant to confront evil, etc, etc. Which was a real waste of a 20 Str Half-Orc!

So the day the player was away, the paladin ditched the wussy shield, swapped his longsword for the magic greatsword we'd just picked up, and started two-handed Power Attacking (like half-orcs are made to do! ). He saved the day when we fought the Bearded Devil - we didn't have anything to bypass the DR, and only the high strength Greatsword work was making a dent in it.

So the paladin finally became a useful memeber of society, but only when his player wasn't there...!

-Hyp.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

We had one DM who had a pre-agreed to rule that if you weren't there, or if you had to leave during a session, your character fell unconscious right where he was, no matter what was happening, and it was the responsibility of the other PCs to take care of that character. This was pretty easily explainable, as there was an evil mystical event that was going on in the world at the time which was turning everyone into undead of various sorts. So when a character fell unconscious, it was explained as the undeath curse trying to murderate the character, and the character having to expend all of his energy fighting it off...

Well, one day, we were in the middle of a combat that was taking considerably longer than anyone had guessed or intended it to take. One of the players had to go to work... so he did. His character, predictably, fell out... right in the middle of the fight (we were fighting some demon-tigers). That was okay, though. Things were going fine, and we had the demon-tigers on the run (the two remaining of the five original critters took off in the round after the character fell out).

Because we were pretty torked off at these critters (I believe that they had been stalking us for a few days, making hit and run attacks, etc... before this) and because we weren't thinking... at all... we gave chase. Well demon-tigers are faster than people, and one of them managed to get away from us in the jungle. So... we trekked off back to where our good friend (remember him?) lay inconscious and helpless.

Lo and behold (of course) he was nowhere to be found when we got back to where we had left him. The remaining demon-tiger had circled around and dragged him off while we were chasing him and his buddy through the jungle. Fortunately, our unconscious comrade was pretty heavy, and that slowed the demon-tiger down enough so that by the time we found him and his tasty snack (our comrade), he was only partially eaten, and was, miraculously, still alive, though missing a leg.

It was about fifteen sessions after that, that we finally reached a level where someone could cast regenerate on him...

Later
silver