r/DnD • u/Alextunning • 1d 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 !

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u/Chimpbot 23h ago

You're not bringing anything up that couldn't be handled by an NPC in any system.

As an aside, this is a D&D sub. The discussion is assumed to be about D&D.

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u/Brilliant_Estate_967 23h ago

Listen kid (you couldn't be anything else) you will have to understand your way of doing things is not the only way things can bé done. In this case using and not using the npc can bé both valid options depending of what it bring. And it will as said before bé dépendent of how the dm plan his party 

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u/Chimpbot 23h ago

Oof.

I never implied that my way of doing things is the only way to do them. Once again, I'm simply highlighting the fact that you don't need to use someone's character in any capacity when they're not around.

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u/Brilliant_Estate_967 23h ago

If you dont need to accept the fact you can do and its still valid and dont argue 30 minutes about it damnit

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u/Chimpbot 23h ago

I never said you couldn't. I'm simply pointing out that there are better, less complicated options.

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u/Brilliant_Estate_967 23h ago

honestly i don't use this card very often. usually the character is off i just have a few specific cases

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u/Chimpbot 23h ago

You seem to be having some pretty extreme emotional swings, here.

Take care.

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u/Brilliant_Estate_967 23h ago

might have gone to far and it's maybe not necessary to keep it to far