How do you treat absent players?

[thebuda]

Our play style is simply, their characters are not there. If I delete them from the CT, they lose all their effects, and have to remember to turn them back on (e.g. dwarven resilience). If I leave them in, I constantly have to remember "they aren't here", and skip them. Is there a way to automatically skip an inactive pc in the CT?

[GunnarGreybeard]

I usually set them to 'Faction' or 'Neutral' in the Combat Tracker and then toggle them hidden. It will then skip them when their turn comes up.

[Zacchaeus]

If someone can't make a session someone else plays their character for them.

[SilentRuin]

I usually put off game week when everyone can't make it. But if someone truly drops out and we continue for some reason I just drop them off the combat tracker.

I don't suffer from what you describe in doing this because of extensions that will simply add in their feature/feat/trait/spells/powers/items that are active when I drop them back into combat tracker when they come back.

But really, as we are all friends, the weekly game usually turns into a bi-monthly game as we wait for an all "yes" for game day. Which I just got for today's game ;)

[DrakePD]

We usually try and run the character. As far as the combat tracker goes, I use the Advanced Effects Extension that celestian has on the forums. You apply the effect to the character sheet, and when they are re-added to the CT, the effect apply automatically.
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?40833-5E-Advanced-Effects-(items-npcs-characters)

[Griogre]

If someone can't make a session someone else plays their character for them.

This in my non open table games... It's too disruptive to pull characters if they are in the middle of a combat or something. One advantage of FG is you can stop in mid combat and I do - so I'm not going to pull characters out in the middle of a fight and kill the rest of the party. Or if the rogue can't make it take every trap out of the dungeon... etc. You can get very imbalanced parties which in some RPGs is really bad.

That said, I have run open table games where I have the party leave the dungeon every session so each session can have different party makeup.

[thebuda]

I usually set them to 'Faction' or 'Neutral' in the Combat Tracker and then toggle them hidden. It will then skip them when their turn comes up.

Thank you for a solution to my problem without judgement over how we play our game.

[thebuda]

If someone can't make a session someone else plays their character for them.

That's nice, but this isn't a forum to dictate the merits of play style. It's where we talk about technology's ability to enable us to play our own way when separated by distance.

[esmdev]

That's nice, but this isn't a forum to dictate the merits of play style. It's where we talk about technology's ability to enable us to play our own way when separated by distance.

To be honest you never specified a technology solution was all you were looking for, your forum title was pretty open to interpretation.

Incidentally, as Zacchaeus is the principle developer for 5E content on Fantasy Grounds, I'm pretty sure he knows what the forums are for. Some people look for tech solutions but others look for general gaming suggestions. People try to be helpful.

[Griogre]

I took the question as a survey of how groups handled a player not being able to make a session, personally. I really don't believe there is a bad way to play as long as the group buys into it. *shrug*

For the technical merits, if you don't want to give XP or treasure to the missing player you should also remove the character from the party sheet if you give out XP or treasure after each encounter since the split is done to everyone on the party sheet.

[Zacchaeus]

That's nice, but this isn't a forum to dictate the merits of play style. It's where we talk about technology's ability to enable us to play our own way when separated by distance.

Indeed. Your question was how do you treat absent players. My answer was simply stating what we do in my group.

[TXCBoy36]

Dictate the merits of play style? I will look over everything again, I must have missed something. I though the original thread was about getting advise on how to handle a particular situation, whether it involved what to do with the Player who could not make the session or how to resolve it on the CT....and read some really good ideas...some that I will use in the game that I am running. In my opinion, this is why we come here, to get multiple points of views and/or suggestions and then make up your own mind.

Did not see anyone dictate a course of action.....but have a great day and thanks again for the great advise everyone!!