player leaves

[j!nx]

so I just wanted to hear the awesome tales that DMs have told other players characters when a player leaves the campaign, for example I was running a game with 4 friends one left due to not having rides or the time to play due to events in life, well after 3 levels of gaming together he left so long story short they are at sea and there coming to a island the ship gets stuck in a wall of sea weed that is so thick and dense players can walk on it, after battling the monster under the seaweed the players character who was a half red dragon fighter "accidently rolled a Nat 1" fell through a weak spot and became trapped under the seaweed where he became entangled and drowned, I figured it was a good kill off of a character

[Flickerdart]

trapped under the seaweed where he became entangled and drowned, I figured it was a good kill off of a character
Being killed by the scenery is not a particularly satisfying ending to a character's story.

[j!nx]

I see your point I honestly had no idea what to do him he left mid game and players beat sea monster before I could have done something pivotal or self worth, so that was my only thought in the moment

[ksbsnowowl]

Being killed by the scenery is not a particularly satisfying ending to a character's story.

Then you're going to hate this story...

After a year-long hiatus, my 5e group got back together last week. We were only two sessions into Out of the Abyss (minor spoiler to follow). In the intervening year, my cousin's (we're both PC's) girlfriend and he broke up, so we were down one player. Before our long break, we had just broken out of jail, killed some drow, gotten our equipment back, and were fleeing the drow outpost just as it came under attack by some demons. Our path out had taken us down a cliff, so the demon/drow fight was above us.

We picked up last week with the DM recapping the events from a year ago... and then an explosion from the fight overhead knocked loose a rock... Literally "rock falls, she dies." We raced out of there without looking back.

[flappeercraft]

Well so in the campaign I'm running a player left for a couple of months and we had absolutely no idea of what happened as we do the game online and he had not connected a single time in months. So I decided to make a bit of a rushed move as I had to change a bit the story to make it fit. So I get the god Erytnul involved with the players as the player who had left was playing a human sorcerer and a aasimar cleric of erythnul (we were short on players back then) and when another player joined as a replacement I made the god come for common interests for which they are working for even to this very moment in the campaign and have the group of 6 split into 2, the god lets the other 4 characters (2 players playing 2 characters each because they wanted to) where the characters of the previous player left with the god for some separate quest and the others of the players went on an artifact recovery quest. After that 2 characters died and the player rejoined but with only one of his characters (we filled the other as if he was a casualty on the quest) and now its a group of 3 with a new player who has not been able to join us yet.

[SpamCreateWater]

The PC in question left with the party's employer on a job. Unfortunately they got ambushed and captured. The party found out and raced to rescue them. They fought there way to the cells and found a heap of "skin" where the PC was kept (the employer had been moved). On top of it lay a note from the master of disguise mocking their (now ex-)jailers.

Serendipitously the master of disguise was a PC created for a one shot only weeks earlier so existed in the world. They also existed at the correct time and worked for the same employer as the PCs. :smallbiggrin:

[j!nx]

not every time character dies either for example had a fighter/barbarian vampire that left the party he was a amazing character that I honestly grew attatched to (I always enjoyed meeting that character when we went to play) so he is living his life on his estate with his business hunting orcs around the property and helping orphans in the near area while feasting on spell casters, figured hey let him live his days out sometimes not necessary to have to kill everyone, another character that I had amazing times with was a ivelious the elven rouge/ uncanny trickster that sarcastic lucky sum B who always found a way to get out of everything he was the type that when you thought it was rock bottom hed pick the rock up and find a way to sneak attack you with it he was a awesome character, havnt seen the player in 3 years so I decided to stick ivelious in carceri where all the wizards he F'D over in his 14 levels so we ever get the chance to play again we will pick up there... miss those two

[Fizban]

When I ran Red Hand of Doom I had two players leave:

The second was the Were-Dire-Puma. The character didn't have much in the way of motivation and disagreed with their handling of the phylactery, so he just walked off into the desert.

The first was the Warlock. The evil Warlock. Now, the player had no problems working in a group and mostly just wanted evil so he could take the Branded feats from FC2, but with no-one to run the character he had to go, and the obvious thing for an evil character to do is screw over the party. So while they were in mid-flight he blasted the other guy on the giant owl and took off. Oh, and he was carrying the loot at the time. They tracked him as best they could, which was not very well, and he got away.

And naturally he had to return for the final battle, after selling the loot and buying all the perfect items to counter the party (I actually gave him way more than he could have sold it for, but he didn't use most of it anyway). He shows up at the final battle with Giant Zombie Crocodiles (giant crocs nearly ate the wizard in his sleep) and, instead of fighting Koth+Ogres they fight Koth and GZC's. They ended up split somehow, half taking down Koth just fine, and the other half burning all the way down to the last potion holding the GZC's at the temple doors. But the Warlock didn't actually show his face until after all that, appearing at a nearby building to taunt them.

And for some reason they actually went charging after him, in spite of being completely out of resources against a completely fresh opponent (only the wizard ever paid any attention to that). They chase him into a building where he can use Flee the Scene with impunity, shoot arrows into his Stoneskin effect, then the Wizard walks into a room he thinks is clear, eats a crit blast to the face and dies. Then I had the Warlock bounce on the grounds that too many people survived the free for all outside for him to pretend he was helping, which was pretty hollow considering that was no plan in the first place and the only point was to have him return with zombie crocs and the fruits of the stolen loot. Didn't really want to end the campaign there with everyone dying for doing something stupid when I'd only brought him back for the lulz.

Naturally the game still managed to fall apart without reaching the end, as non-casters continued pushing forward when the cleric and wizard ran dry, the late joiner continued to choose suicide over trying to win or run (or casting his own spells), and the wizard lost his second wizard to getting killed once again by an invisible foe when he had no spells and no one to cover him. Not a happy ending.

[Professor Chimp]

Well, one ex-player in our current campaign had a character addicted to hallucinogenic mushrooms. When that player had to leave, the DM wrote in that he basically overdosed on them, frying his brain. He had to be administered into a sanitarium.

That character later made a cameo as an NPC, apparently having escaped the sanitarium and becoming a Gollum-like hermit living in a cave. A cave with lots of mushrooms of course.

[j!nx]

Well, one ex-player in our current campaign had a character addicted to hallucinogenic mushrooms. When that player had to leave, the DM wrote in that he basically overdosed on them, frying his brain. He had to be administered into a sanitarium.

That character later made a cameo as an NPC, apparently having escaped the sanitarium and becoming a Gollum-like hermit living in a cave. A cave with lots of mushrooms of course.

what a awesome way to keep him a NPC and give him character still

[flappeercraft]

what a awesome way to keep him a NPC and give him character still

I agree with this, would do the same

[ComaVision]

My roommate had two characters in one of my current campaigns, and he recently quit leaving them both as NPCs. (As an aside, this is extra weird because the rest of the group are his friends. So now his friends all come over to my house and play in my game while he doesn't participate.)

He tends to play characters that screw over the rest of the group. One of the characters is a smooth-talking face character (named Atticus) manipulating things behind the scenes in a powerful evil cult, the other character (named JP, for short) is a short-tempered maniac abusing explosive runes in a different evil cult.

Now, Atticus had access to divinations and a large information network, so he was already aware of JP and the threat he was. When the player left, JP disappeared on one of his homicidal jaunts without the rest of the group (which he has a history of) and was stealthily eliminated by an assassin working for Atticus's cult. The rest of the group did not go looking for him (and problem won't because they've metagamed that player gone = character gone). Atticus continues his work identifying major threats to his cult. The group is entirely unaware of Atticus's cult but they potentially have some large clues coming up and will definitely end up facing him near the campaign's climax.

[Jay R]

Michael decided that he no longer had time to play the game. So Guntherford became an NPC until the next town, where he went off on his own business.

But Michael's wife was still in the game. A few weeks, he was cooking sausages for the gaming group, and came up with an interesting idea. He put them on sticks, and shaped them to look like rat bodies. That session, our gaming group ate rat-on-a-stick.