The absentee player's PC falls into a coma

>the absentee player's PC falls into a coma
Is this ever justified?

Yes, With magic.

or roofies

my group uses Plot Convenience Portals

In our current campaign the absentee guy just has debilitating diareah.

We usually call them "zombified", meaning they don't do anything in combat, nobody targets them for attacks, and we can push them off a cliff we're trying to climb down and they'll be fine once we reach the bottom.

Realistic? Absolutely not.

Convenient? Definitely.

In my games they're assumed to have been called away by a wizard from an alternate dimension casting Summon Humanoid. The wizard's name is Ar El.

>called away by a wizard from an alternate dimension casting Summon Humanoid
This is actually a published adventure for Planescape.

If its appropriate to keep them out of trouble for a single adventure.

Our medic "accidentally" messed up giving our street sam his usual drug cocktail, knocking him out for the session he was going to miss.

The rest of the party went to commit atrocities, since the sammy was our moral compass. He never found out in-character, and still blames a rival runner group.

Now I need to find that module and run it sometime. Been thinking about letting them meet the guy eventually, though my plan was some sort of slaadi for the wizard.

This world is full of conveniently placed plot holes. Everyone's used to people falling in from time to time, and it takes a wildly varying time to climb out.

(Followers and animal companions also often fall victim to this menace. My players have poor memories.)

>entire group consists of narcoleptics

>Now I need to find that module and run it sometime. Been thinking about letting them meet the guy eventually, though my plan was some sort of slaadi for the wizard.
I think it's the introductory adventure in Well of Worlds.

The character is there and is acting more or less normally, but the camera seems to ignore them.

Player's choice. Either the character goes torpid for the session or the control is handed over to another player. Both has it's downsides though. I've seen people gets each other characters killed. And I've seen parties wipe against moderately difficult encounter because two characters were missing.

>Is this ever justified?
Sure, it a convenient way to deal with absent players. There is your justification. In universe? Some dick-ass magic user/misc. magic creature cast a sleeping spell on them. Fey would be a good candidate, could totally see one of them following a party around for years randomly knocking people out for no reason other than they thought it was a good running joke.

Well what would you prefer they do? Anything else will be met with complaints of stealing the character and making them do something they wouldn't otherwise, or else will utterly break immersion. My game isn't an mmo, when you stop playing you don't dissapear from the world, so try not to miss sessions, or your character quickly developes some clearly serious medical issues.

I had a guy need to bow out for entirely justifiable reasons in a roll20 gurps game. He got a sweet job, but couldn't make the night's work anymore.

His character at the time was the party healer and wizard and loremaster and translator. He conveniently succumbed to a magical artifact of near-ultimate darkness that last day, so I had him literally fall into a coma.

Weeks later in and out of game, he comes back as an NPC, stripped of his magic. It was a fun reveal.

Session to session tho, I just run a PC for a player if they're absent. A bit more bookkeeping for me, but better for versimilitude and suspension of disbelief

Mithrandelf; we miss ya dawg. Grimwyrd hasn't been the same

I once hat an absentee player's character discover they were a Narcolptic

Using this

The DM for one of my early groups came up with a magic necklace that one player in the party wore. If someone couldn't make it or was coming late, their character was sucked into the necklace and then spit back out whenever they came back. If the person designated to wear the necklace couldn't come, someone else would randomly get it.

Been such a success other people from the group that have started their own games are doing the same. It just makes it easier to explain why someone randomly disappeared in the middle of a fight or dungeon.