Part II - A Meditation on a Monk

Welcome back adventurers, to Part II of my Icewind Dale Campaign that went awry. If you haven’t read Part I, I recommend you do so. The link can be found here.

Soon after we dealt with the Cult of Levistus, but before we moved on to dealing with the main Duergar fortress, our Rogue left the group due to scheduling conflicts. They were replaced by a friend of the DM and Artificer, who we are going to call The Problem. I understood that this player was originally invited to the campaign, but had not started with us due to scheduling and equipment conflicts, and that these circumstances had changed by this point. They rolled up an Air Genasi Wizard. My first impression of them was that they knew the game really well, as they seemed to have the entire PHB memorized.

The first few sessions with this player were fine. It was clear that they played them as being a little aloof and mysterious, and that their goals may not be aligned with the party. Cool. It was obvious that there was some morality tension between them and the Barbarian even early on, but what’s a little party tension, right?

We did some side quests, learned more about strange happenings in the Dale, and things were mostly fine. When we got to Sunblight, things started falling apart again.

We chose to sneak into the fortress, which went well until we were faced with an impossible challenge: determining how to descend a 100-foot shaft.

This discussion TOOK NEARLY AN HOUR. I was staying with my boyfriend (now-fiancé) in a trial cohabitation at the time. He is also a DM, and has heard me in several D&D sessions, and he was pretty appalled. This kind of thing actually happened a lot, where the other players would argue over the solution to a problem for longer than it would take to solve the problem. I didn’t typically participate that much beyond stating my preference or urging the players to just come to a decision.

Now, since we were online, I usually used two devices to participate in the game. My laptop would be running Talespire (which is by far the most fiddly, ridiculous thing I’ve ever used for D&D), and my iPad would be running the Discord voice chat, and my character sheet on D&D Beyond. I usually also had my character sheet available on my laptop, but there would always be some amount of switching involved. My iPad at the time was having some microphone feedback issues, and it’s always been my habit to mute myself unless I’m actively participating in a scene. Everyone else at the table knew this was my practice, and some of them also muted themselves. However, it felt like I was constantly getting talked over. The Monk, and later the Paladin, made a point to sometimes call out when I was trying to speak, or would repeat my points so that they would be heard. This happened a lot, and honestly I kind of just zoned out of a lot of the discussion about descending down to the lower level, except to assert that I was carrying a lot of rope.

This argument goes on for nearly an hour. I can see my fiancé visibly uncomfortable. Finally, the Problem says that they could just cast Featherfall on everyone… and then proceeds to basically scold the party by saying that they had proposed this from the start. They supposedly stated this was something they could do, and had resources to do, and then just waited an hour before bringing it up again? That was the solution we ended up going with, I guess.

So we descend, there’s combat, it goes okay. I’m going to pause here to talk a little bit about the Monk. The Monk was, what I considered, a relatively chill player who valued measured approaches and tactical perspectives. They said from the beginning that they do tend to ask a lot of questions, particularly clarifying rules. They did this, in a way I did not see as a problem. I DM a group of players who are playing 5E for the first time and ask a lot of clarifying questions, so maybe I’m just desensitized to it. Their main issue, as I saw it, was that the Monk was pretty squishy. They went down often, sometimes it felt like they went down every session. I could see why they would feel a little targeted at times.

I’m not sure if this was the DM trying to mitigate this, but the Monk eventually got a magical dagger that dealt psychic damage. I THINK it was the Mind-Poison Dagger carried by one of the Duergar in Sunblight, but I never saw the stats of the item, so I can’t confirm. However, it did make the Monk a lot stronger.

We leave Sunblight, and by now tension is rising with the Problem Player. I’m assuming that now he was adjusted to our group, they became more confident with their playstyle, which was to be controlling and judgmental. I noticed the Problem Player starting to make calls that are usually the DMs to make. They seemed to take a great deal of pride in asking other players for concentration checks. And whenever the players had a question about how the DM would rule in a situation, or how a specific ability would apply in circumstances, even questions about the lore and the party’s knowledge… The Problem Player would answer, and the DM would usually sit silent.

At different points, both the Monk and I and the Paladin and I talked about this. We thought that maybe it was a little bit of a confidence issue since the Problem Player seemed to have all the rules memorized. We agreed that maybe we could ease the problem by asking the DM a second time, after the Problem had answered, addressing the DM directly to either confirm or further explain what the Problem had said. We thought, foolishly, that this would either perk up the DM to be more proactive in how they handled in-game questions, or make the Problem Player back off a little bit. We were trying to do this without direct conflict since the Problem Player was pretty abrasive.

How abrasive? They argued about everything, and my recording of this argumentative streak starts with Sunblight. The earliest argument I can remember, besides the descent into Sunblight, was over the party’s decision to forgo a long rest in order to reach Bryn Shander before the Chardalyn Dragon. We knew that doing so would incur a point of exhaustion, but we were all okay with this as a consequence. However, the Problem decided to argue the point by saying that it would be impossible to make it to Bryn Shander, asking “have any of you hiked a full day before?” And… yes…. the Barbarian, Paladin, and I have all hiked full days or even multiple days carrying varying levels of kit… and we’re… you know… not fantasy characters in peak physical condition. Keep in mind that the Problem was arguing this out of character, as far as anyone could tell, so it was not them trying to cover for their own character’s physical weakness or anything like that. Furthermore, this entire argument was just asinine because… this is exactly what the rules are for? It ended up not even being a relevant point because we made it to Bryn Shander in time to assist the town in making preparations, with time for a long rest.

The Problem Player questioned every aspect of our preparations for the Dragon attack, mostly out of character, and often in a manner where they seemed to be wanting to show off some tidbit or factoid of real-world knowledge. Our Barbarian had acquired an Axebeak mount at some point, and at one point saddled them up to try to do recon on one of the surrounding towns. It was meant as a bit of a dramatic moment where the Barbarian is trying to help as many people as possible, but the rest of the party has to talk him down. The part the Problem Player got stuck on was how long it should take to put a saddle on an Axebeak, and that it would take more than ten minutes (the time allotted by the DM). The Barbarian has my gratitude forever for responding “Problem, I didn’t know that you knew so much about putting saddles on Axebeaks.”

An example that I personally found a little ridiculous was during our final positions before the dragon attack. The Monk states that he is going to take position “on the battlements” around the town. The Problem Player replies “actually, those are ramparts.” They were met by awkward silence, and the party moved on. I did not say anything, but I have an MA in Medieval Studies, and one of my areas of focus is warfare and tactics. Outside of a technical context, the difference between battlements and ramparts is really pedantic to point out, especially in a context like this, where we can visually see where the Monk has placed his character, and the map is more of just an artistic representation anyway.

The session comes to an end with us about to be attacked by the Chardalyn Dragon. We’ve set up defenses on the walls, and have picked our starting positions for the combat. Despite the Problem Player being just generally a downer, we’re all pretty hyped.

The next week, the DM is running a little late due to work, so the party has a chance to chat for a bit. We discuss what our actions are going to be in the first round, which is sensible and something the characters would probably also have discussed, though not in game terms, obviously. I state very clearly that, as soon as the Dragon is in longbow range, I am going to cast Hail of Thorns (bonus action) and take my three attacks (two attacks at my level, plus an extra attack for Dread Ambusher).

The Problem Player scoffs at this and says that “your first round is only to cast Faerie Fire”. I point out that we’re fighting a dragon, which presumably has good stats, legendary resistances, and high movement speed. Because of my longbow range with the Sharpshooter feat, I’m going to be able to take shots at it long before it’s in Faerie Fire range, and I don’t think that a spell that might only be effective for part of a round, if at all, is the best use of my concentration when I have things like Hail of Thorns, Zephyr Strike, Hunter’s Mark and Favored Foe that also use concentration. (I’m not sure if I had Lightning Arrow or Elemental Weapon yet, but as you can see, my build was very DPS-focused).

DM arrives and we role initiative. As predicted, the dragon is in my longbow range long before it would even be in Faerie Fire range, and does have a large movement speed. I say “Okay, I’m going to take my three shots with Hail of Thorns on the first one that hits.”

Problem Player interrupts to say “Hail of Thorns has to be cast on a bonus action.”

Which absolutely was just said to be passive-aggressive. This group had never been in the habit of saying “For my action X, and my bonus action Y” unless requested by the DM. I have also cast this spell in the same manner in other sessions. I only replied to Problem Player by saying, in a polite but firm tone, “yes, I know that. I do not need a reminder unless the DM has a question.”

The combat encounter continued normally, and I noticed that the Problem Player did back off for the rest of the session. They would actually back off of me for several sessions. And here is where the focus of the story turns back to the Monk.

The Monk, understandably, had a hard time with this combat because it’s not easy to fight something in the air when you’re almost exclusively a melee fighter. He had a short bow, but it definitely did not have the benefits of Monk unarmed strikes or the dagger that did psychic damage. The dragon was eventually accompanied by duergar combatants who began to assault the townsfolk. Well this was the Monk’s time to shine.

The Barbarian, Artificer and I focus on finishing off the Dragon, while the others move on to protect the townsfolk. The Monk went down a street to finish off an enemy, separated from the group, where he was confronted by a Doppelgänger, who got a surprise round. Now, the Monk had the Sentinel feat, which states that he could not be surprised. I think he was so flustered in the moment, that he did not remember this in the moment.

The Monk goes down, and there are three characters with healing spells or abilities: Me, the Paladin, and the Artificer. Artificer and I are still on the wall, and the Paladin is on the ground. Paladin tries to go in and help and the DM says that he cannot go that way, because it would be metagaming to know where his downed teammate was. The Paladin asked if there was some kind of roll he could make to locate the Monk - accepting that he could fail and essentially waste his turn unable to help or participate in combat.

Now, while this exact situation had happened before, it had never been an issue that we would follow our comrades down the same hallways, even if they were out of sight, without so much as a roll involved. Recall the Barbarian from the first part, who would dash away on his own without the party. We were always allowed to find him.

A round goes by, with the Monk rolling death saves. The DM describes the doppelgänger rifling through the Monk’s possessions, taking the Mind-Poison dagger. The players are still not allowed to search for the Monk. We had Earrings of Message, so we could definitely tell in-character that the Monk was not responding, but we were basically not allowed to move in that direction.

Another round. The DM tells the Monk, “your boots are gone”. The Monk, who was flavored to come from Marquet in Exandria, was the only character really poorly equipped to deal with cold. He also lost a cloak of Elvenkind in this encounter.

The Monk rolls well enough on death saves to go unconscious instead of dead. We end the combat and we get the Monk back up. The Monk’s first priority is hunting down the doppelgänger to get his equipment back, and the DM tells them that they just can’t. No roll. No flavor about how the tracks become impossible to follow after they join a major thoroughfare. No promise of a quest to find the stolen items.

Understandably, the Monk lost his cool a little bit. I did not interpret him as yelling, though he did raise his voice. He wanted an explanation, mechanically, for how this happened, and why he had no way of pursuing. Really, I think what he wanted to ask is why he was being targeted in this way.

In some post-game chatter, after the DM had disconnected, a few of us discussed what had happened, myself, Monk, Paladin and Barbarian. We agreed that this probably happened because the dagger was over-powered, and the DM wanted to take it out of play. While we assured the Monk that it was okay, and that we would help him get powered up again, we thought that there were better ways for the DM to have dealt with the situation. The item could have just been nerfed, or the DM could have admitted the mistake and just taken the dagger out of play without a narrative reason. And we all agreed that we would have found those more acceptable.

Now that the campaign has ended, I looked back on the chapter and there is a doppelgänger as a random encounter that can occur during the battle against the Chardalyn Dragon, to increase the tension and feelings of chaos during the battle, but I think this was specifically chosen by the DM to handle this situation, but was not handled very well. Maybe it’s a new DM mistake, but they really just sat silent when asked for additional information or details about what was happening.

The next day, we all get a message in the group chat from the DM stating that the Monk has been removed from the game for his outburst. The DM message stated that this had happened before, though I don’t recall any specific incident (which may just be because I was absent from the table a few times).

I considered, again, leaving the campaign. The DM clearly needed to work on resolving conflict in game in a way that doesn’t make a player feel like they’re being targeted. I was also starting to feel like the overall quality of the game was decreasing, largely because in lieu of description or information, we were playing in Talespire, which is nice in theory, but I personally find the controls difficult to deal with. Instead of interacting with the world or RPing, I felt more like I was spending all of my time trying to find my character token after it had gotten stuck in some random part of the map, adjusting the draw height, or just trying to force the camera angle to show me relevant information. This, coupled with how the Monk was treated, really made me consider leaving the game. I talked to the Paladin about this, and he convinced me to stick it out a bit longer, though I wasn’t particularly hopeful.

Join me next time for the exciting finale!

Tl;Dr: DM invites The Problem to the game. He is a bossy rules lawyer who tells other people how to play their class. The DM mistakenly gives an overpowered item to a player, and uses a random encounter to take it away and uses an invisible wall to prevent other players from assisting. DM kicks Monk when he protests.