I Feel Like My DM Took Away My Character’s Moment
Hey, I just wanted to share a situation that recently happened in my campaign, as I wanted to hear some outside perspectives. I hope you find it interesting, and I’d love to hear your take on it.
In my character’s backstory, one of the most important events was that her village was attacked by a Remorhaz (a CR11 monster), which she personally witnessed. It had never come up in the campaign before because my character didn’t want to burden the party with the possibility that she might eventually need their help fighting such a dangerous and extremely rare creature. It’s also worth mentioning that the campaign has been running for about 26 online sessions so far, and I’ve participated in most of them until May, only rarely missing sessions.
Over a month ago, I informed the DM that I would sadly have to miss most of the sessions in May because I’m finishing my studies and writing my bachelor’s thesis. He said it was no problem and wished me luck.
As time passed, after the fourth session I missed, the DM texted me saying, “Just so you know, the party will fight the Remorhaz at the start of the next session.” I was really confused, so I asked for more details. After a few messages, he explained that he thought a fight with a Remorhaz was such a cool idea that he introduced the same monster during that day’s session, and the rest of the party decided to fight it.
He also told me that this was technically a different Remorhaz than the one that destroyed my character’s village, even though, as far as I know, they are considered extremely rare. However, it would look exactly the same and use the same stat block, meaning the monster from the recent session would essentially fight identically to the one from my backstory.
This left me really confused, and I started asking questions like: Why does it have to be the exact same monster from my backstory? Why introduce it now, when I’m gone for just a few sessions? Won’t this make the future encounter tied to my village feel less special, regardless of whether the circumstances or stat block change later?
What annoyed me most is that I feel this is deeply tied to my character’s story. My character could have recognized the monster’s resistances, fighting style, and general behavior. I also could have used the encounter as an opportunity to finally tell the party that she had seen one before and explain what it had done. But I can’t do any of that, because I’m absent and my character simply isn’t there.
After I raised these concerns, the DM only replied with things like, “Well, hopefully you’ll be able to show up next session,” and, “The players could have ignored it, they chose to fight it, so it wasn’t really up to me.”
I’m a DM myself, and honestly, I find this pretty frustrating. It’s made me lose motivation to even return once I’m able to. I understand that, even if Remorhazes are very rare, there can still be more than one in the world. But why did it have to be this specific monster? There are countless monsters in DnD with all kinds of variety. And why now, specifically when I had to step away for only a month?
At this point, I’m not really sure what to do. The monster has already been introduced, the fight has been announced, and everyone has already rolled initiative. I’d really appreciate hearing other perspectives besides just “leave the table.” I know outcomes like this can sometimes be unavoidable, but I’m hoping there might be a better solution.