I dread hearing as a DM that one of the players is going to go off on their own and try something.
This isn’t because it’s hard to run their actions – this will rarely be the case. But it’s because it suddenly turns the game from a group endeavour into something where we’ve got players waiting around for others to finish what they’re doing.
There’s already a lot of waiting in D&D, adding to that wait doesn’t appeal to me. (In fact, because I don’t like waiting, I mostly DM, so I’m not waiting for my turn – I’m always active).
When it does make sense for a character to scout ahead on their own, I try to get it out of the way as quickly as possibly.
But then there are times when it goes so badly for the character that you wonder what they’re doing!
Such happened tonight. The party discovered a part of the dungeon that was underwater. So, the bard – the only character with a ring of water breathing, scouted out on his own.
He was first attacked by a giant electric eel, but he was swift enough to slay it. He did this by casting a shatter spell, and in doing discovered how I go 1E on people and change the effects of spells cast underwater.
So, I doubled the area of effect of the spell, which meant he was caught in it… but so were the monsters creeping up on him and who were all slain as a result!
He continued on, without healing himself first.
He found another room with a great clam-coffin. He chose to ignore it, thus avoiding a very dangerous fight.
But in the next room was a Water Elemental, invisible to the eye. It surprised him, and a couple of hits later, he was unconscious. And basically dead – as the rest of the party didn’t even realise he was missing. He’d long ago left their line of sight!
So that was the end of the bard.
After a bit, the party realised he wasn’t coming back, so the wizard polymorphed the fighter into a giant shark, and he went scouting himself.
Due to the shark’s superior senses underwater, I let him know about the water elemental, and he grabbed the bard’s body and brought it back to the group (though not before the elemental got a hit or two in).
We joked that the shark would eat the bard, and regurgitate the body later!
A quick visit to the temple, and the bard was raised.
No-one died tonight permanently… and the elemental is still there!
My current campaign (sadly) lends itself to this so I’ve implemented the “how long do you wait and what do you do next” policy before the solo agent takes off. It’s worked quite well actually! But in general I too despise the activity.
In my current campaign, an urban uprising with a lot of social play, the group often likes to do 3-5 different things, sometimes with only four players. It’s a lot of pressure on me to come up with all those different environments, NPCs and more.
I try to push back regularly, because it is difficult, but also it ignores that the game is supposed to be a group exercise.
The way I would’ve handled this is that when the bard first encountered the giant eel I would say “roll for suprise”, take note of the player’s roll .. and then switch attention back to the other group. Maybe they want to check for secret doors, maybe they hear a strange noise, maybe they have their own random encounter roll to deal with.
I wouldn’t even say “it’s a giant eel”, it would remain a mystery. The divergent player would have to wait until the suprise check is resolved.
Same again with the clam-coffin and the water elemental. If anyone is going to have to wait due to someone splitting the party, it’s going to be the player that split the party.
(Of course I’d read the table though — sometimes the other players 100% play along with this, other times they’re happy to wait).