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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arc" data-source="post: 2356626" data-attributes="member: 12184">I generally prefer, both as a player and a DM, to have absent player's PCs be either off-camera, or there, but non-participatory. Generally, nobody is going to willingly miss a session, and adding on a PC-death to a string of what's already likely bad-news hardly helps make the game fun.One of our players in an old campaign was constantly absent. Enough to the point where the likelyhood of her showing up to a session was about 50%. Still, she was a lot of fun when she did show up, and had a lot of fun playing. So, her cleric character stayed off-scene, and did the occasional post-battle healing (or mid-battle healing, if we really needed it). We had a running gag of how her character would appear from the ethereal, shout "Heeeeaaal!", and dissappear. A little suspension of disbelief, but a lot more fun for everyone involved.In the last session I DM'd, one of the players was absent, so I had the boss enemy drop him down to 0hp in one hit (rolled it just in case, but I would have fudged it so he stayed concious, regardless). The character slinked off camera, clutching his wounds and giving him a good reason to stay back for the session, and gave the rest of the party good reason to take the bad guy seriously. Of course, when the player suddenly decided to show up halway through combat... well, that took some explaining, but it definitely helped the cinematic appeal of the combat (The wounded rogue comes back from the brink of death to aid his friends, just in their time of greatest need!), and it didn't detract from the enjoyment of any of the participants.I suppose that it depends a lot on the feel of the campaign, and the game. If you're playing a grim 'n gritty style game where death looms around every corner, and characters die even in the best of circumstances, then an absent player's character death might add to the enjoyment of the game. Otherwise, if it's not fun, then don't do it.</blockquote>

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