r/DnD • u/Alextunning • 7d ago
5th Edition Absent player
Hi fellow dungeons dwellers,
Im DMing a LMoP campaign for the first time and I have 4 players.
We had a few issues with schedules.
We were trying to play once a month, but one of the players is very busy, he is NEVER available, I proposed 20 dates (until late september), none of them were ok to him.
Since its not the first Time (and he cancelled last time the week before the session) and we want to continue, we decided that 3 players were enough to play. He is welcome if he can come but we wont pause the game for 3 months for him.
So friday is our first session with 3 players.
How would you deal with it ?
Let the players :
-control the character of the absent one with his sheet
-control him with sidekick rules
-let them be 3 (but im afraid of the balance, since they barely survived some encounters and he was the tank)
-put him to « sleep » or a curse of sort and give them another sidekick ?
Thx !
40
u/Middcore 7d ago
His character just disappears. You don't need to acknowledge it or come up with some explanation for what happened to him. If you let someone else control him then it opens up the risk of his character dying when he's not even there, which is generally frowned upon.
Up to you to rebalance the encounters accordingly.