When PCs Die When the Player's Not There

[ThirdWizard]

ThirdWizard, you're having Wrong Fun! More than 6% combat? Unspeakable!

I'll be better. I don't want to have Wrong Fun. It sounds dangerous!

On the upside, I just got word that a player who was going to miss can make it! Woohoo! The brothel scenario is going to be sooo much more fun with the female player there. Yes indeed!!

 

[Endur]

Never Kill PCs when the Player Is Not There

I follow the rule of never killing PCs when the Player is not there.

If the player can't play that night, then their PC wanders off and is not with the party that night.

 

[DonTadow]

Actually, the liklihood that the PCs will come into a battle that will be a live or die situation is quite rare. If a PC misses a session, odds are, they won't get a scratch on them.

I have two players missing a game this Saturday, and the only planned (combat) encounters are in a brothel with some mooks or in an alleyway with a bunch of thugs, who are all well below the PCs' power. Well except the sewer creature, but they should run from that one. All they'll see are the giant tentacles and shaking ground as it approaches. They're smart like that.

And, this is an eight hour session. I suppose 30 minutes of combat is a bit much for a "true" roleplayer, though.

Okay now I'm just confused. SOrry for assuming your campaign was a hack and slash, but I figured if you have the need to "have to have" every player their statstically and played in game then it was combat oriented. Why do players have to be there if your game is mostly role playing???? Role playing is such an individual thing with way more options and ways to get into trouble than combat. I don't even understand the concept of someone role playing someone else's character. An extra player in a mostly role playing game would be insignificant. Just seems like a way to screw with someone's character while they're not there. In my mostly RPG sessions its so easy for people not to be there because they easily can be doing something else or fade into the background.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Two reasons:

1) Skills. Heavy use of skills. If the rogue is missing, an entire side-quest might not be very feasable. Diplolacy/Bluff are heavy. If the character that is usually the front-man isn't present, then it isn't fair to the others to have to blunder through things. Knowlege checks are important, too. If you need to research how portals work and the guy with Knowlege (Planes) is missing, you're screwed.

2) When battles do occur, they can be very deadly. If I were to not require the PC to be played most of the time, then saw a big battle coming up and require the PC to be played, then they would know. They wouldn't meta-game it because they're cool like that, but it wouldn't be nearly as fun. So, if I've got an assassin ambush coming, and I took into consideration the ranger's battle prowess for this scenario (not to mention her Spot/Listen skills) then she's going to have to be there. And, I don't want the players' surprise to be ruined.

So, a missing PC can really hurt a good game. I like to give everyone their moment to shine. If they arn't there, it can make things harder on the others. Not impossible, but I don't want to have to either change the scenario because someone isn't there, nor do I want to inconvenience the others in what was supposed to be a fun moment.

And when they die, they die, because they're getting full XP for the situations. I suppose I would relax that if they got no XP, but... well... it hasn't ever come up.

EDIT: The PC being nice in terms of doing dangerous things is mostly just in fun. We arn't putting the PC in more danger than normal. It's not like the wizard is the one opening doors, but if its a choce between the fighter and barbarian, and the barbarian's player isn't present, well, the barbarian is the one doing the door opening.

 

[STARP_JVP]

The rule is iron clad in my campaigns. If you're not there, no harm can befall your character. My players have learned this now, and often don't show up with the aim of keeping their characters alive. Often we have entire sessions consisting of just me - all my players stay away to keep their PCs going.
Nobody talks to me at parties, either...

 

[DonTadow]

Two reasons:

1) Skills. Heavy use of skills. If the rogue is missing, an entire side-quest might not be very feasable. Diplolacy/Bluff are heavy. If the character that is usually the front-man isn't present, then it isn't fair to the others to have to blunder through things. Knowlege checks are important, too. If you need to research how portals work and the guy with Knowlege (Planes) is missing, you're screwed.

2) When battles do occur, they can be very deadly. If I were to not require the PC to be played most of the time, then saw a big battle coming up and require the PC to be played, then they would know. They wouldn't meta-game it because they're cool like that, but it wouldn't be nearly as fun. So, if I've got an assassin ambush coming, and I took into consideration the ranger's battle prowess for this scenario (not to mention her Spot/Listen skills) then she's going to have to be there. And, I don't want the players' surprise to be ruined.

So, a missing PC can really hurt a good game. I like to give everyone their moment to shine. If they arn't there, it can make things harder on the others. Not impossible, but I don't want to have to either change the scenario because someone isn't there, nor do I want to inconvenience the others in what was supposed to be a fun moment.

And when they die, they die, because they're getting full XP for the situations. I suppose I would relax that if they got no XP, but... well... it hasn't ever come up.

EDIT: The PC being nice in terms of doing dangerous things is mostly just in fun. We arn't putting the PC in more danger than normal. It's not like the wizard is the one opening doors, but if its a choce between the fighter and barbarian, and the barbarian's player isn't present, well, the barbarian is the one doing the door opening.

1.Any skill can be bypassed by another skill and smart play. My rogue missed two weeks due to family reasons and the players made due by just being extra careful. As a DM I was more linient on the traps those sessions and balanced it out by increasing the cr of the combat. The pcs there knew nothing about alchemy so i rolled the absent pcs alchemy roll and provided it to the player. As a DM, you can always make minor tweaks on the story and rolls for absent players without anyone playing their characters.

2. Battles are easier, lower the CR to adjust for the absent player.

Sure its easier for a DM to avoid an extra 20 minutes of preperation work in lue of allowing someone else to play the person's character ,but if something happens to that players character (not just death but ability damage, lower gold count ect) then (if that player cares about his character) he's going to be pretty ticked at you.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I think that you have to have a table rule that covers what happens to an absent PC.
Personally I think a good guide is

either
a) The character is absent
b) The character is present, and will be assigned to a player or to the DM. The character will be played in a defensive manner, and the DM will intervene if this doesn't happen.

I really don't like "the character is present but invulnerable" and "the character is off-camera". It leads to some nasty complications.

In the situation described, I would have asked what was up with the "5' step, shoot" routine when the PC KNOWS that the next hit will most likely put him down. Most likely the player was not used to the character in question and simply made a mistake. It's at the point of the mistake that the DM should intervene, not after the crit.

 

[theodinheadbasher]

Does the party not have enough money to simply get him ressurected? You could simply give them a discount, and negate the con loss, seeing as how he was not the party to blame, and neither were you. It's not your fault the die fell where they did. A DM shouldn't forced to fudge a roll simply to save a character from death.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I empathize.

I recently killed a PC in similar circumstances last December. The scenario was a little different though. The PC was not fighting and was running a gauntlet (a ford) along with the rest of the party. Due to horse movement and the timing of swings and itnitiative, the PC was the logical and only available target of the Ogre armed with a great axe when it was the Ogres turn to swing. The Ogre swung.

He criticalled with 48 points and the 4th level PC Ranger died. The first time I have ever killed a PC in absentia.

The consequences are more serious in my campaign. I don't really allow raise dead for anybody - and it certainly isn't available in my current campaign (War of the Lance - prior to the return of good clercial magic).

So the PC died. I felt that the player could be justifiably angry with me, but I don't regret the decision and I would do it again.

I run a campaign where the story drives the game. IMC, we've had 15 sessions so far over the poast 10 months. Only ONCE have the players had a chance to rest and go shopping, as it were, without pressure on them to make great haste as part of their quest.

It is not possible to logically have a character depart or return to the party given the quest they are on. I don't have players BAMF away and BAMF back. That may be a compromise that some DMs here will make in their games for the sake of fun - but I'm not one of them.

As well, the encounters and the campaign are crafted ahead of time and some of them cannot be easily changed on the fly. The Ogre and the rest of the bad guys guarding the ford were one such obstacle that was central to the plot.

I also consider it unfair for the party to be deprived of a PCs vital skills/spells because the player cannot make it to the session. I run a game where "for the good of the party" is expected and a balanced party is an inherent part of the campaign.

Accordingly, the PC is given to another player to play and the other players will play him appropriately. If I think a player is causing an absent PC to unnecessarily take inappropriate risks, I will overrule the contemplated action for the absent PC. From time to time if it is a critical point and a borderline decision, a phone call is made to the absent player to get his input (if possible).

Using this approach, only once in over 26 years of being a DM has a PC ever died in absentia. While the PC does not actually fade from the scene, in most cases, they effectively fade as the players present concentrate on their own characters - not playing someone else's. This is not true when there is no choice and the party is in battle.

Sometimes bad things happen to good people. While I don't think the PC in this specific example was being played all that well from what I have read so far - I wasn't there and I can't be sure.

I do think that the hallmark of being prepared to kill PCs who are absent is for the DM to ensure they are being appropriately played and not made to face unnecessary risks.

If the risks are reasonable and the player controlling the PC is playing him or her reasonably, it can be appropriate to kill the PC.

To this I would add a gloss: provided that this rule and the risks associated with it are well known to the group as a whole.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

Eh, you've already made a decision. That's cool. I will point out that you're making a rule to fudge if this happens in the future, so I find it hard to see why you wouldn't apply that decision retroactively to the reason for the rule in the first place.

And as for your question abou the impartiality of the dice, it depends on why you play. We don't have many fights, don't give a fig about balance or fairness, and our primary concern is to have some interesting shared made-up experiences. Hell, forget killing a PC when their player isn't there -- I won't kill a PC unless the player tells me this is how they want to "wrap up" their character arc. So we're playing very different games, and you're right to take your own advice over mine.

Like I said, it's a matter of priorities: Perceived fairness vs. player empowerment. We fall into different camps, and that's cool.