Balancing game time.

[Endency]

So in a home brew I'm running with some friends we have a party of four and one of the players recently died. He's wanting to reroll a hunter and go really heavy on the scouting. Now I'm 100% all for him doing this. However in my experience stealth missions like this tend to take time. A lot of back and forth between the DM and the PC. What I don't want to happen is this player get significantly more game time than the rest of my other players. So my question is, how can I keep the scouting missions fun/useful but also keep the rest of the party of sitting around doing nothing for extended periods of time?

Sorry for typos and such posting from phone.

[JamesNorse]

1) You could run one on one with him between sessions. (If you did that, I'd open to the rest of the party to do something from character journal, cartography, etc.. for the same bonus xp you'd give him.) That or offer a similar one on one...like the barbarian being challenged to a drinking contest, the wizard being initiated into a secretive order, etc...

2) If you're an experienced GM...you could split the party. You'd have to be able to manage what's going on in two different places. This isn't too hard if they're both battling, turn order takes care of that, but for stealth and something else it gets more tricky.
a) Maybe if you did turn order for them doing movement to avoid the guards like video games (maybe with some knock out item) OR you go back and forth between them scaling walls and other stealthy actions....while the rest of the party encountered something else.
b) There's a version of chase scenes that are done out in stages with skill challenges to overcome (like d&d tiny adventures or 4e). Skill roles don't take too much time, with added description of actions. This would just involved two different sets of skill checks for two different goals. Maybe the rest of the party is trying to bribe a guard or convince/train goblins/monsters to attack as a distraction.

[Ascalaphus]

Make it obvious when he's scouting when enemies are too many to take on his own - but that the info he's bringing back to the party about what they're facing is good to everyone for choosing the right buffs.

Also, discourage him from going very deep behind enemy lines by making it obvious that the deeper he goes the bigger risk he'll be in. That he's better off scouting ahead a short bit, to spot enemies and report back to the PCs, than to try doing whole missions by himself.

Secondly, have an OOC talk with the player about your concerns; that you'll let scouting be useful but don't want it to become a solo adventure while the other players are watching. Be nice but make sure he gets it.

[MageHunter]

I like the idea of solo adventures, which can be done by e-mail or something, like personal sidequests. Everyone gets something special.

[Dastis]

Solo adventures are a nice solution. During a full session a good rule of thumb make sure that solo time is at most 1/2x#ofplayers of session time. Splitting the group is fine and all but a player shouldn't expect to much session time while solo. Making sure he understands that for every enemy he goes by gets a perception check when he goes through and when he comes back is a good way to accomplish this. Also make sure to give the other players something to do while hes off scouting. This can last up to 3x as long as the scouting. Might make the scout a bit bored but it will discourage long scouting trips in the middle of a session.