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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ptolemy18" data-source="post: 2364638" data-attributes="member: 24970">Here's an update... Do you want to know the final outcome?The final outcome was, the player decided to quit.He called me up and said he'd considered making a new character (or getting reincarnated, or my other 'temporary character who accrues XP for you until the original character can get raised' option I'd proposed) but he decided that he was going to "cut his losses" and spend his Wednesday nights doing something else. And no hard feelings, he said. :/ During the phone conversation, I hinted "Well, part of me wants to just take it back..." but at this point he didn't take the bait and/or was already firm about quitting."Curses," I thought. So I e-mailed the whole group and sent them this e-mail (names deleted to protect the innocent):******Hello everybody,Player A has told me that (despite what I previously reported) he can, in fact, make it to D&D tomorrow.Unfortunately, as Players C & D already know, Player B has decided (with no animosity, at least not judging from his phone conversation with me) to leave the campaign. From now on, his Wednesday nights will be spent rehearsing in a trombone band.I can't blame him, since having your character die when you're away is pretty indecent. I gave him several resurrection/new character options but, after briefly considering a new character, he ultimately decided that this would be a good time to cut his losses. Obviously this is the result of several errors of judgment on my part, which could've ensured that Character B wasn't an immediate target of murderous, non-punches-pulling, greataxe-wielding troglodytes while Player B was away. (If Player B was *present*, of course, the brutal 27-point critical death blow would've been *totally* fair game.... he'd have joined the ranks of Character G (fell off his horse), Character H (disemboweled by halberd, but got better) and Character J (eaten by caterpillars).)I'm not necessarily committed to sticking to a rash decision merely because I made it -- the important thing is that everybody feels that they've been treated consistently and without favoritism -- but in any case, Player B has chosen to withdraw. I'll miss him, and I hope he gets lots of new points in his trombone skills.If anyone has anybody they'd like to invite to the game, lemme know and feel free. Or if you'd like to e-mail me about anything else, feel free.  On that note, I'll see y'all on Wednesday....******So, at this point, it seems to be too late to 'fix things' to get the guy whose character died back in the campaign. Frankly, the way I feel is, if all the players -- or even just a few, or even just the dead PC's player -- rose up en masse and e-mailed me and said "I think this is unfair..." then I'd probably go back and retcon the whole situation and put him at -9. But this hasn't happened, whether because (A) the other players don't really care what happened to this guy or (B) the players figure it's pointless to argue. (They have occasionally argued for more XP and things like that, and sometimes I've granted it.)Anyway, it seems to be too late to offer to do this now, 'cause the player whose character died has already quit the game, without arguing about the ruling. I'm not gonna chase after him going "Yoo-hoo! I changed my mind! You can have your character back, just pleeeez don't quit! :/ I did privately e-mail a few of the players and ask what they felt about the situation, and these are the responses I got:(A) allow him to be raised but not lose any XP(B) "I don't have an answer to that"(C) "normally when *I'm* DMing I have the monsters preferentially attack the players who are present, but after a certain point it becomes implausible that all the monsters would gang up on the people who are present and ignore the ones who aren't.... so, in my campaign people did die once or twice when they weren't there." (I didn't specifically ask him what he felt I should do in this particular situation.)Oh, well. I feel bad, but it wasn't the first time that I'd made a rash decision in the heat of DMing. (Frankly, the whole reason I rolled the dice out in the open -- "Will the troglodyte attack the PC or the NPC? Odd or even" -- was because tactically, in that moment, it made much more sense for the troglodyte to attack the absent player rather than run 30' in the other direction to attack some NPC dude, but I wanted to leave a *chance* that the troglodyte would do something stupid just for the absent player's benefit.) If this ends the campaign, che sera, sera. I'd rather it didn't, of course, but at this point it seems to be too late for a retcon.And now, on behalf of all the people on this thread who have said "You were a MEAN DM!", I'm going to "role-play" you and tell myself "I told you so!!!" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Jason</blockquote>

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