Absentee Gamer Rules for 4th Edition D&D

It's always tough to figure out what to do when a player can't make it to the game (or is coming, but will be late) but his character cannot be removed from the game without really stretching credibility. Many times, someone ends up running the absentee character as well as his own, which slows things down and makes it less fun. Sometimes you don't even have the absentee character's sheet, which makes this an impossible situation.

So here's how I solved it last night. When a character is expected to be in a session, but the player cannot, the reset of the player characters gain the following Encounter Power:

Encounter Power:
Put a "Hell to Pay" token on the table and select one of the following:

• Immediate interrupt (free action). Trigger: when you are hit by a melee or ranged attack. Effect: You don't take any damage.
• Minor action: make a basic melee or basic ranged attack
• Minor action: make a skill check in which the absentee character is trained. You are considered trained in this skill for this check only.
• Minor action: One adjacent enemy grants combat advantage to you and all allies adjacent to the enemy.

When the absentee player returns to the game, all characters lose this power and the absentee character loses a healing surge for every "Hell to Pay" token on the table. If he has no more healing surges, he takes damage equal to one quarter his total hit points for every remaining tokens. Remove all "Hell to Pay" tokens from the table.