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Calling for Cases! (Patreon)

Published:
2024-03-22 11:49:21
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Heya! Bailiff Jake here to let you know that the Supreme Crit is convening this afternoon! Please submit your brief (I do beg!) case on this thread and we will bring you SWIFT justice.

Comments

Xavior

Dear almighty and powerful justices and the swift hand of punishment Jake. I bring to you the case of the discord Prince. My group were playing every Saturday but some wanted to play during the week (small things here and there) so we started a discord channel. I couldn't join in because of work. Well two weeks later one of the other players turns out to be a prince. Wouldn't be bad if when faced with a challenge he tries to use his wealth or army to get out of it. Mighty judges I ask what do I do?

Lord Of Zoinks

May it please the court and anger the bailiff: I was part of a sinful Pathfinder 2e campaign with a maniac GM. When I agreed to join, he explained it would be a dungeon crawl and we would start at level 0. When I got to the first session, it was me and 1 other player, and we were both told to roll 8 characters each that we would have to play simultaneously. To make it worse, it was 3d6 roll straight through abilities. Was I in the wrong to stay for 3 sessions to see if it got better (it didn't), or should I have voiced my concern and left immediately?

JakesRamenShop

Honorable, beautiful, and inspiring judges, and I believe that’s everyone, I stand before you to present a grievance involving my former Dungeon Master, who attempted to disrupt the climax of my inaugural one-shot adventure. For roughly two years, my D&D group engaged in a campaign until our Dungeon Master expressed burnout from the role and ceased operations. Seizing the opportunity, I volunteered to assume the mantle and host thematic one-shots coinciding with holidays such as Christmas and Easter. During my very first one-shot, themed around Mrs. Claus kidnapping Santa in an attempt to cancel Christmas, the players had just vanquished Mrs. Claus. As I described her frantic and manic state, screaming at the party, a perception check revealed a mysterious black shroud, which Mrs. Claus recognized and began to plead with. It was at this critical juncture that my predecessor interrupted, suggesting he perform a 'funny' to shoot Mrs. Claus in the middle of my explanation, thereby undermining the narrative's tension in the moment. I said no and they looked upset that they couldn’t do the “funny” and then the shroud promptly “disposed” of Mrs. Clause. I seek your esteemed opinion: Is my frustration with my former DM's interjection during this pivotal moment of my one-shot reasonable, or am I acting like a little whiny piss baby? Your judgment is eagerly anticipated.

Ally

Dear justices on high, the most noble, fair, and honest practitioners of the law...and the guy who watched one episode of Naruto. I come to you with the case of the railroaded DM. My friends and I have been playing D&D together for 3 years, in that time we ran one campaign which I DMd. We have recently started a new campaign, which I am also DMing. I always check in with players to hear what they think and to build a more collaborative game. Including asking what themes players want in their character's narrative, which is also how I ran our previous game. However, a player is giving such specific feedback about where they want their character to go, even saying how specific NPC interactions should go. Obviously, with the dice and player decisions, there's no way to guarantee an outcome and when the story has deviated from the player's fixed idea they have given me negative feedback, even saying things like 'I wouldn't have run it that way'. This is making me feel insecure in my DMing because I'm always dreading the inevitable text message from this player post-session about how the story isn't going right. Am I right to feel like this is overstepping or am I being too sensitive and I should just DM the book this player wants to write?

PawPaw’s Overalls

To the Juicy Justices and Bland Baliff, I present the case of the annoying DM Husband NPC. I’m in a relatively long running in person game ran by a good friend of mine. This has started to change as the DM’s Husband has begun to sit in on our games and voice or play as one of the DM’s NPCs of monsters. I have zero issue with this, and it’s led to some fun moments. However, things have taken a turn recently when he has started making NPCs that are directly combative to the party, specifically me. His most recent character was a high level rouge who had several magical items that took him to 30AC, meaning I really couldn’t even fight him back during combat, resulting in me going unconscious twice during the battle. He literally was only going after me, and didn’t even “arrive” to the battle until I was somewhat separated from the party on the back line (I’m playing an evocation wizard). About half way through the battle, I asked if he could at least roll to see who he attacked in our party because it felt like he was only targeting me. He agreed, but after rolling behind his wife’s DM screen, and getting “another 4” to attack me for a 3rd straight time, I stood up to look over the screen and saw a 6 facing up on the die. I got extremely frustrated and just dropped it as the DM finally made him stop when she realized he was faking the rolls, but I’m just not sure it’s worth it to continue playing in this campaign. So I ask, should I quit this campaign? Raise a bigger issue with my friend (the DM)? Or how should I proceed? Thanks for everything!

Brokennoodles

To the honorable judges, and other I submit the case of the Nat 20 that cut the campaign in half. I was playing a wizard in a magical school style campaign and we had finished the intro portion: chosen classes, got to know each other, etc. Following a few mystery threads led me to a clock that seemed to be a prison for something, so I took the clock, performed some magical investigation, and finally decided to try a dispel magic on it, understanding out of character that it was likely evil, but would pribably fail and maybe give me more info. Nat 20. What followed involved the trapped demon escaping, tearing apart the ground and unleashing the armies of hell into the school, killing all of us. The campaign then shifted to our characters trying to climb out of hell after dying in the fight, and get back to the school. This has been a lot of fun, but the issue is this. It turns out that by succeeding in that dispel magic, I essentially skipped the entire 2nd act of the story, which was meant to be the school based social mystery/intrigue part, which is how the campaign was initially pitched, and would've included a lot of key backstory and character moments that ended up getting skipped. Now I feel bad for skipping over such a big part of the campaign Justices, should my DM have allowed the natural 20 to be so successful that it auto succeeds on something that should've taken weeks at least. Or should I have not attempted this dispel magic in the first place? Or is it all in order and to be expected from a game like dnd? I await your judgement (ps. It's worth noting my dm also ran another group in the same 'world', so this also affected their story similarly)

Erika Lee

To the Puzzle Mistress and her Loyal Retinue, I seek justice for a murder most heinous- unintentional player v. player homicide. Several years ago, I was playing as a wizard in my very first campaign, with all new players and a slightly more seasoned DM. During our third session, the party was tasked with slaying a giant sewer snake that was terrorizing a nearby village. While the encounter started off well, it quickly became apparent that the snake was beefier than anticipated and we were in real danger of a TPK. Despite our cleric’s valiant attempts to keep everyone alive, she went down after only a few rounds of combat and had rolled one failed death saving throw. Hearing the DM’s hints that the snake was close to death and wanting to end the encounter quickly, I attempted to cast Ray of Frost in a last ditch attempt to avoid the dreaded TPK. I rolled a nat one. The table then listened in horror as the DM described my Ray of Frost missing the snake entirely, and instead hitting the nearby downed cleric, killing her with no chance for further saving throws. I tried to argue my case that critical failures in combat, especially on a cantrip, shouldn’t have such dire consequences on innocent party members, but the DM insisted that a critical failure could impact the entire party, not just the person who rolled it. The campaign dissolved shortly thereafter due to the fallout from the DM's ruling, but the question still haunts me: should my critically catastrophic cantrip have resulted in such dire consequences to the cleric? I lay myself before the mercy of the court and await your judgement.

emilythecoffeewench

To the righteous Crit Justices and the venerable Bailiff, I present my a case with my beloved DM's permission. At 5th level, we battled some tweens and one of them crit on my vampire party member with guiding bolt. She dropped, no death saves, taking double because it was radiant. She was also our cleric so no one could bring her back. She was eventually brought back through Frankenstein fuckery though. However! During another battle, my dm tried to kill a beloved npc but had the insta-kill rules slightly wrong. He thought you needed negative half their max HP instead of negative their total max HP. I spoke up, but my dm and the player behind the vampire disagreed. I did not think I was wrong so I looked it up, spoke up again, and sent a quote explaining the rule. It was awkward as we realized that our vampire shouldn't have died all those months ago. The npc lives on, but I feel bad correcting my dm. Am I in the wrong? I await your judgement.

Blue Bee

To the clergy of Dice Christ, I bring a confession half a decade in the making. I recently concluded a 5e campaign lasting the better part of 6 years, playing a halfling barbarian. A running joke throughout the campaign was how useless the halfling luck feature was to my character, as I seemed to never roll nat 1s on roll20, which we were using to play the game. Once, after a session, I rolled 200 d20s just to see if any would come up as a 1, and none did. As I was going over my final character sheet after the final session, I went into the options and discovered that there was an option to toggle on "halfling luck" that I had turned on at some point and forgotten about. Every time would have rolled a nat 1 the entire campaign, roll20 had rerolled it for me automatically, so every nat 1 I saw (and subsequently rerolled manually) was actually a double nat 1 roll. Please forgive this grievous sin on my part, and if I never get to play a lucky little guy again in penance, I will understand.

curlyfriesanddnd

Righteous Justices and Dependable Bailiff I bring to you a request for a sentencing hearing, the case having been settled. My group has been playing a game set in our DMs world for well over five years. We are, at this point, family. Recently, our characters came in to conflict with a villain who has been antagonizing us - and my character in particular - since the beginning of the campaign. Our goal was to acquire a dangerous magical object before the cultists and this BBEG could. She managed to escape, using her staff of frost to cast wall of ice (a concentration spell), while also concentrating on banishment to hide the object. When my Druid rolled well to recognize the spell and I added that both were concentration, I saw the fear in my DMs eyes as her whole strategy for her carefully planned boss battle teetered on the edge of disaster (having not realized this fact). I ceased my arguments quickly and the DM ruled that the spell does not require concentration when the it is cast from this staff. A homebrew ruling(citation: To cast an actual spell from an item, it requires your concentration. This is specified on page 141 of the DMG). We’re now in pursuit of the BBEG again, having barely escaped with our lives and failed to stop this crucial stage of the cult’s plan. My question is this: when (and it will be when) I finally kill this winter priestess and take her staff, should it retain this extra concentration property? I request that it should and await your verdict humbly.

Axel Andrade

I have a confession to make to dice God, on a night of terrible rolls on a grave yard, a member of our party started a dance off against the zombies and skeletons that were following us. Everyone got good rolls to dance like MJ in Thriller, except for me I just needed to get a 15 and I got a 12. I did not want to be the cause of the fun bit to be over and start running away or fight them to risk someone dying because the dance was proposed out of desperation since we did not have any way of healing ourselves after scapping a dungeon filled with traps and a NPC out for revenge. I will accept any punishment from Dice God.

Michael K

Dear honorable justices and little guy Dan: I write to you to request an analysis of the Actor Feat. The feat reads: "You have advantage on Charisma (Deception) and Charisma (Performance) checks when trying to pass yourself off as a different person." The bard in the game that I DM tries to use this advantage at every opprotunity. He goes out of his way to put on costumes so he can state "but I'm pretending to be a mailman," for example, and get advantage on his deception checks. He tries to use this advantage for an entire conversation - regardless of whether or not he's telling a mailman based lie. But stand by the fact that he would get advantage on only the check to convince someone that he's someone else - either a specific person or occupation, like a guard. But when he continues the conversation and lies about other things (like pretending the rest of the party is prisoners so they can infiltrate a prison) those deception checks should be made flat, without the advantage. Maybe with an easier DC, since the guards believe he is another guard. Technically he's still trying to pass himself off as a different person, but I think it would make sense that an NPC could believe that he's who he says to be but does NOT believe whatever else he tries to lie about. I leave the fate of our game and this potentially game breaking actor bard in you hands. Thank you.

Matt

To the Nobel Sovereign Justices and the possibly alright bailiff “Jake Last of his name”; I bring you the case of the In character Pronouns. I’m the forever DM and one of my players is running a character with they/them pronouns (which does not match their out of game pronouns). I have no issues with this. As the DM I do alright, but I’m having one of my villains (in a southern accent) is using the wrong pronouns on purpose. When I got corrected I pointed out the DM cares and uses They/Then but the NPC does not (they are an evil Fae that hates humans). No one has objected but the party is correcting me both in game and out; am I wrong to make the racist Fae miss-pronoun a character? I submit myself to the courts judgement and any ruling against the NPC or characters will be carried out in game with respect to the court.

Chandler Farmer

Dear justices (and the guy named after the adventure time dog), I bring you the case of the sticky finger bandits. I'm running a group of 4 campaign, where every time they fight, they want to loot the bodies and steal the weapons of those they fight. I've been more than willing to gift other objects that the bad guys may have been using to supplement other abilities(a bonus action teleport item with charges for example), but worry about handing my gunslinger aarakocra and feral tiefling rogue the big powerful weapons, even though they've made it clear they want the weapons. I don't want to curse an item, but what should I do, and am I in the wrong for not giving into the wants of my party?

Nick G

Honourable supreme justices and the presumably pathetic bailiff Gerard. I present the case of the 30 year old child player. I have DMd for a group of players for a few years now and things have being going well with a new campaign coming up every year or so. One of my players practically begs to play children, specifically Goblin children or Possessed children. The man’s well into adulthood and I just don’t feel comfortable running a game where a potential fictional 8 year old can get mauled by an owlbear. I have let him play as a child once and it lasted a few sessions before the group became uncomfortable and eventually that character “moved on” via the child character being zombified by a lich and enslaved. Am I right to put my foot down and not let them play children in my games, or should I let them live their RP life? Should I call the police!? I humbly await your judgement.

Star The Mutt

May it behoove the venerable clergy, I have not a confession to admit to Dice Christ but I beseech him to rid me of a terrible curse. For the last decade of my life I have tried and failed to play not just Dungeons and Dragons, but any tabletop game. This is not for a lack of effort, but circumstances out of my control. Every game I have been invited to fizzles out after the first session either due to player disagreements, scheduling, or lack of interest from the DM. I have tried both online and in person, and both have failed in spectacular fashion. I even tried to DM only to find my players having a falling out over the first conflict that came up in the story. At this point I am too afraid to accept any invites for fear of failure. Justices, I ask: can I be rid of this curse and embrace Dice Christ's light or am I doomed to play Balder's Gate 3 by myself until the end of time?

Leanne Crawford

To the magnanimous judges Murphy, Axford and Tanner and the illustrious bailiff Jeff, I bring to you the case of the Wild Magic Murder. This occurred back in the days before NADDPOD, while I was relatively new and and still finding my feet playing DND. I played a wild magic sorcerer and in a relatively high stakes battle, I rolled a 1 and got to roll the wild magic surge table. Luck was with me, I summoned a unicorn! A little back story, in previous sessions, it had come up that our DM did not agree with how fall damage was calculated in 5e and had mentioned making the damage higher, a couple of the other players agreed but I and another had stayed silent, I was too new to DND and the mechanics still felt complex enough that I was not ready to have any input. Also, my DM, knowing my glass cannon status, had recently gifted me a flying broom. I'm sure you can see where this is going. I was 90ft in the air on the fateful day when I summoned a unicorn to a space within 5 feet of me. It was briefly, a truly magical moment which became suddenly horrifying when we realized that no, unicorns cannot fly (or cast fly) and it suddenly plummeted. This is when my DM announced that he had decided that fall damage will be doubled starting now and going forward. My unicorn was mercilessly splattered on the stones below. So I ask you, the wonderful, compassionate, clever judges, and Jeff, should I still be suffering from splattered Unicorn PTSD, or did my DM do me dirty? P.S. please do a dungeon court in Toronto when you tour again! P.P.S. Jeff have you considered being a guest on 8 bit book club? You might be funny.

Haasenater

To the benevolent bailiff, and honorable justices... and Murphy. A while ago I was a half orc named Borrow Bonechewer. I made a basic barbarian bc i was new while other players made crazy strong characters. I didn't know i didnt make my character right so it was hard to do things. I failed most of the time but still had fun as comic relief. Hell my bones turned to dust because a failed dex check. We were playing 3.5 E and I finally crit. AND confirmed crit roll. But because we were in this God's realm or whatever, my awesome anime style attack was denied. It still upsets me to this day. Was my DM right? Can a God just deny without a roll? I await your judgment.

Elizabeth Quartarone

To the most important regal court and I suppose the bailiff of whatever regards today, My case is against my ex fiancé, who I am players with about three sessions ago. My player killed their player character by switching my soul for theirs when I asked if I was ready to die, which I was not the DM my ex, if that was OK with them and they said yeah I don’t really care . So they died Now last session that same character was going to die she had one chance to make a save or try shenanigans to live and rolled a Nat 20 succeeding in the only way possible. However my ex then got very upset like crying upset and when asked was angry they didn’t get a save for their last PC to try and save against dying. To rectify and try to please my ex the DM cut my PC down to lvl 4 (party is 8) which caused her to die that session. So was my ex correct to be petty About not getting a chance to save even though they agreed to be killed by a god? Forever salty at my ex Enoki PS bailiff I do love you

Ryan Janes

To the honest and all-powerful Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Tanner and Axford and Jake or James, however we’re feeling today ; I present to you the case of the Deceptive Decedent. My son is 7 and has watched D&D from afar; collecting dice and remaining infinitely curious about the game. I recently got him a small mini dice tray at New York Comic-Con and he keeps it in his car seat cup holder so he can “roll on the go.” While I drive, I will make up a “D&D lite” sort of game; simplified checks, no modifiers etc. He will battle things we see on our drive such as trees, other cars, and of course, the BBEG; the dreaded bridge overpass. But being that my hands are safely 10 and 2 and my son is the only one in possession of a dice tray in the backseat, I have to trust his rolls. He’s young, and we’ve discussed how the fun of the game comes from the honesty of the dice and how we react to said dice, but things seem to always edge in his favor. A perfect 24 points of damage on a 4d6 roll of damage in our latest battle with a gas station pump comes to mind. But soon, he will be able to sit down and play for real seeing that we recently acquired his first mini for actual play. As his future DM, I am planning to introduce him to full rules with soft hands and some minor fibbing behind the screen in his favor to allow his interest in the game to flourish. His mother however thinks it is high time to learn the harsh reality of dice christ and TPK this kid. Am I wrong to edge wins his way to encourage his love for the game at his young age? P.S. we usually assume lvl 2 Fighter stats for my son because Fighters are easy for children to understand James.

Casey Alexander

To the honest and true judges and bailiff jam. I present the case of the case of the chowder incident. I play dnd with my partner and large group of friends. We always have a super great time and we play about once a week. If it’s not dnd it’s for board games or drinks. One evening near the end of session our Dm, who’s house we play at, wonder up stairs and returned with a mystery mug. It was a mug of cold fish chowder. Instantly I become nauseous from the smell. My partner is a vegetarian snd was also very uncomfortable and sick . However the rest of the party did not agree. His brother and partner vouching that the chowder smelt good and they wished to partake. The session end very shortly after as the smell began to circulate through the air conditioning. Fish oder filling the room. Me and my partner went home honestly a little unwell after everything went down. However my dm refuses to believe that a mug of cold chowder is a weird choice of snack for a dnd. It still gets brought up. Even insisting he’d probably do it again. Was he wrong to drink this at the table? Am I wrong for reacting so much to his strange choice? I await your decision.

Mr. Baggins

To the supreme justices on high, and their fearless leader Jake, oh wait, no, sorry, that’s Jake from Animorphs, this is just the lowly bailiff, who shouldn’t be fearless because Tucker is so awesome, I bring the case the damage-avoiding players. I have two players, a Druid and a Paladin, who despite having a variety of weapon or damage dealing spells, prefer to only use neutralizing effect spells, like charm, banishment, paralyze, polymorph, etc. they are very high level and are fighting a variety of boss-esque creatures. When there are minions, they won’t use these effects, only on the bosses. The players are often upset that several turns in a row are wasted because saving throw bonuses are so high for these boss monsters. However, I do not want combat devolving to everyone burns a legendary resistance round one, then round two they paralyze the boss and beat them to death over and over again. Am I wrong for having demon lords and archdukes have high saves? The players typically have a 25-40% chance of success, and bosses normally have 3 legendary resistances. One other player focuses on party defense, leaving one player to do damage. Should I just say bosses are immune to more conditions so players know to focus on damage? P.S. Love the show, the Orlando live show was my wife’s introduction to Naddpod and she often quotes Paw-Paw now.

Rebecca N

To the Jesties (Justice Besties) and the Baliff Jakesis (Jake Nemisis), I bring to you a civil case of Fire Safety Violations in a scary old Lighthouse, may it please the court. In a Pathfinder game, our party was exploring a classic scary old lighthouse. At one point, we were inside a nearby building, and as part of a recurring bit my character (a grippli (frog person) fighter) rammed into a door to try and open it. The check failed, and our Druid (who I'd been having a playfully antagonistic relationship with) made a comment about how the door said "PULL" on it (meaning it would open by swinging INTO the building). So I made a joke that my character yelled "Fire Hazard!" As she ran into the door, as public doors opening to the outside should swing outwards so that in the event of a fire, they don't get blocked by people trying to evacuate. The DM took this into consideration, and said that the door should in fact open by swinging outwards. When I said I was just doing a bit, he reasoned that since the building was by the sea, it should open outwards so it wouldn't get blown in by strong winds. While this is a very small thing, I felt bad for negating our Druid's joke like this. Am I wrong for throwing in a joke on top of our Druid's that ended up being taken seriously? Should this scary old lighthouse be investigated for Health and Safety violations? I lay myself at the mercy of the court

Jay Dragonborn, Guardian of the Vibe, Honoring the Cock

Hello to the authentic, brilliant, and charming Justices Axford and Tanner, and to the awe-inspiring, brave, and cunning Bailiff Jacob Herwitz. Oh, and that fourth guy, Bradley Munchy, I guess. I present to you, the case of the stolen Nat20 that went forever unnoticed. So, my DnD group, comprised of people from all across the globe, had just begun to play Dragonlance with a brand new DM. I was his first DM, and I was excited to, as Bradley and the prolific Brennan Lee Mulligan once called it, "69" with him. This case stems from a moment when I was sparring with an NPC who viewed my Dragonborn barbarian as his better, but, mechanically he was much stronger than me (To note, I had a +2 in STR, and was level 3, and this character had 2 attacks). During said spar, I was missing most of my attacks when, low and behold, I finally rolled a Nat20! I was elated! I finally got a hit in, and a crit to boot! But then, our party sorcerer cast silvery barbs, and, while I still hit, the sting of losing a Nat20 still stung. But this is not where my issue lies. My issue lies in that, later, when I role played having noticed the sorcerer cast the spell on me, so that losing my Nat20 wouldn't go in vain, and there could be a nice story moment about it later, the DM claimed I hadn't noticed it! I protested, saying that she hadn't casted it secretly, nor did she use subtle spell. The DM then made me retroactively roll to notice the spell be cast on me, and of course I failed, leaving my Nat20 to be absolutely useless, combat- or story-wise. Was I wrong to think my character would have noticed a flash of silvery sparkles, and that it could be a good bonding moment later to reconcile over the slight PvP? Or is my DM correct that the spell was cast discreetly and my barbarian was just a dunce in the heat of combat, leaving the Nat20 wasted? I humbly await your verdict, and if I am found guilty, am ready to accept my punishment.

yumehop (no. 1 ol' cobb fan)

Dear justices and dearest Jake, I joined an online dnd group of strangers over the pandemic, playing Curse of Strahd with some modifications. It has been a lovely group, becoming some of my closest friends and I met my partner there too. My pc, Rafi, is a half elf soul knife rogue with a dip in raven's queen warlock, and is the little scamp gambler with a gold tooth smile who has played games for his life and now made it to the (near) end of the campaign. The game ends in one session, so the DM asked us what we think our characters' epilogues should be. My PC is currently married to another PC named Kira (played by my dear friend), who is a dhampir Sun soul monk, the daughter of strahd. Theoretically, once I beat up my father in law, I will become king of barovia and her the queen. The player for Kira has expressed this idea that after the campaign, they think that our characters would have had 8 children. An eldest, middle, and then sextuplets. As someone who identifies as a woman, I feel like 6 kids at once is a little excessive, and tried to argue for 13 (one for each dnd class) instead. So I ask you justices, do I (as the father) have a right to say how many kids we have, or not?

KennyH

To the Honorable Justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, and that other guy whose name is Joesh, I think? I bring you the case of the Pissed Priest, and the Cowardly Cohorts. In the first long term campaign I ever played, we completed a massive arc, and narratively, it led to two characters retiring, and the PCs rolled new ones for arc 2. The game and overall party energy of the campaign for the past year was great until these player's new PC's joined. Both new PC's have evil alignments (unknown to us OOC) and their backstory/lore makes them cowards and/or selfish as fuck (ALSO UNKOWN TO US OOC). So that started the pattern of these two fleeing or hiding at ANY combat that shows any signs getting rough. This pattern of behavior in combat left my character and the party's cleric in countless bad situations where we almost died. Eventually the cleric gets pissed, and a pretty nasty argument happens between him and the two evil PCs. The DM and I tried to keep things civil, but lines were crossed in the argument, and that campaign died. The question I put to you Justices, who is at fault here? Not for the argument, but rather; The two players who decided to make evil PCs who will roleplay counter to group cohesion, or the DM who allowed them to make characters like this without talking with the group about it first? I await your fair and just ruling.

Bungeon Dastard

I have a confessional I bow before the Dice Deacons and nod to Bell Ringer James. I'm the forever DM in our group and in our year long Strahd campaign my party was truly cursed by the mists of Barovia, I could count the number of times they rolled a nat 20 on one hand for the entire campaign while I consistently rolled high and crit often the entire campaign. It got to the point with so many close calls on TPKs and everyone switching dice that I began to lie about my rolls just to avoid wiping the party. Was Dice Christ blessing me through Strahd by making a challenging campaign setting even harder or was I right for not wanting to kill my players after spending months in the same world?

Jon Snider

To the dogmatic church and dungeon docent herself, High Priestess Axford I bring to you today not a confession, but a grievance. I have held my tongue for as long as possible, but with High Priestess Axford's recent advice, I contain myself no more. I am a forever dm and had the first chance to play in years when one of my PCs decided to run Dark Dice's Domain of the Nameless God for us. Spelljammer had recently come out so I created a lunar dragonborn (so sick) as a twilight domain cleric who was completely moon themed, his holy symbol a moon rock, little spectral floating moon rocks for the light cantrip, etc. After a few sessions of poor rolls, I decided to take High Priestess Axford’s advice and cleanse my dice in the moonlight of the first full moon of 2023. My character being moon themed, everything was perfect. I set my dice out when the moon was brightest, highest value facing up so they can learn. Reinvigorated with celestial grace, I felt Atrus ready to take on anything. The hubris.. The first session after the full moon, I did not roll a single check or saving throw above a 10. Over the next few sessions, Atrus slipped into insanity via the madness rules from the DMG, and ultimately succumbed to the horror of the Nameless God being birthed into the world. While fleeing the sight of a ritual to bring the God back, my dm gave us a choice: do you flee or do you turn back to look? After everything that led to this, Atrus could only turn back. The dm asked for a wisdom saving throw and i rolled a natural 1 with wisdom being my highest stat as a cleric. Completely broken, Atrus sat down and laughed at the inevitably of everything as the rest of the party fled. This also led to another PC death where the bard of our group tried to drag Atrus with him but also rolled a natural 1 on his wisdom save. In the end, it was a beautiful scene in which the bard and I and passed on from the material plane and into another, where Atrus met his lunar dragon mother who he had only seen in visions. I lost my own mother in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic so this scene was especially heart wrenching and cathartic for me. Years later my faith in dice christ is still shaken and I am cursed by that which inspired what was my favorite character of all time. Can I ever heal? Can I ever trust again? Has dice christ truly forsaken me or am I another Job or Jonah or that one monk who rolled 7 nat 20 dex saves?

Deadstar1146

Judges Murphy, Axford, Tanner, and Bailiff Joris. I bring to you the case of Elves v. Dm. I Dm a game for my brothers, my girlfriend, and 4 of our friends as I was writing story (note pad and paper) I was going to put my players to sleep and forgot that 2 of them were elves and can't be magically put to sleep so I wasted time writing story and had to skip that part of backstory setup for them we finished the session and at the end I said to my elven players that I'll just have to bring them to death's door to get them to see what I wanted them to see. My brother argues that I could make them have a fever dream to tell their back story and the night proceeded with both elves continuing to tell me they were elves long after the game has ended. I await my fate for your judgment

Jamjam

If it may please the justices of the high court, I present the case of the “accidental” murder hobos: I dm a modified wild beyond the witchlight campaign with four wonderful friends and it’s a lot of fun! It’s all of our first time playing and we had played 10 sessions so far. recently, the party of 4 had crossed over from the material plane to the feywild, where they met a band of 6 brigands. two members hid while the others approached the band and the band announced their intention to rob the players and told them not to resist. that prompted our rogue to pop up from the foliage with knives and I had everybody roll initiative. In the insuing fight, almost all the players were downed at some point though they managed to murder all brigands but Derrin whom they later questioned. During the fight I had the leader the brigands ask them to stand down twice, but the players wouldn’t budge. when a player downed a brigand, I asked them if they wanted to do lethal damage, they explicitly said yes. when they questioned Derrin, he was terrified, called the pcs killers, claimed they would have just stolen a memory, not all their loot, and if they hadn’t been ambushed by the rogue, the fight would not have started. the players disagree, claiming the brigands were the aggressors and they were forced to kill them. Judges, who was right? did I as the dm force them to become murder hobos or did they choose violence? I humbly kneel before your judgement!

Felix Principe-gillespie

To the holy and righteous crit justices and the unholy tyrant bailiff I come to you with the case of the cruel cameo A friend and I were invited to cameo in another friends DnD game as guest twist villains in a mini circus themed arc, session one went great, but when the second session rolled around and it was revealed that our two characters were the villains, my friends character instantly fled, avoiding the final fight. Largely thanks to this my character was then absolutely flatted and killed by the hero’s with no real fight. I ask you judges, was I wronged, should the DM have prevented my evil companion from fleeing? I await your judgment. (For context, the friend had never played DnD before)

Kuzco's Poison

May Dice Christ forgive me through its agents:  That funny couple with the Netflix show, the guy from Cartoon Hell who loves butts, and that other guy who sounds just like Hardwon.  There is a great bar / restaurant near me where you can roll a d20 to receive a random shot.  Most are just tasty shots but two are special.  A nat 20 will get you a double shot and a glass you can take home.  A nat 1 gets you a purposefully nasty concoction consisting of tequila, hot sauce, and Tiamat's Bile. Like anyone who has played D&D long enough, I can very quickly process when I have just screwed myself by rolling a nat 1.  The first time I did this at the bar I yelped and immediately scooped the die up to re-roll.  That got me some kind of banana liquor (shoutout to the 2 crew).  On another trip I rolled a one and gave it a quick flick which ended up being a (I guess not technically) natural 20.  Both times the waitstaff smirked and allowed my chicanery.  I tipped extra generously for their kindness but does that mean I just bribed them to join me in a life of sin?  Did Dice Christ already show their forgiveness with the 20 or is this the Dodecahedron Devil leading me further down its twisted path? Please help. PS-  If you're ever in town the bar is the Stormcrow Manor in Toronto and honestly rolled drinks are on me.

Kiera Walshe-Urbancic

Hello loves, I’ve been DMing a game with my friends, all of us were new to playing D&D. In the game there was a cult who had cast a mysterious sickness over a city, the players were spying on the cult and found them meeting with the devil they worshipped who opened a portal to Hell. I had planned for them to follow through the portal to try and end the cult, but a few of my players decided that since the devil and cult had left, the problem was solved and hell seemed scary and they didn’t want to go. I am a huge procrastinator and had been up until 4am the night before writing the sessions that would be in Hell. When they decided not to go through I narrated a little bit but then said I hadn’t planned for that and we’d need to call it there so I could have time to plan how it would all work in the next session. I was on the verge of tears (overtired) thinking all my hard work had gone to waste because I’d planned really cool stuff I knew they’d love. My boyfriend noticed I was upset and hinted that maybe it would be a cool idea to go through the portal, and eventually they all agreed. I feel like I emotionally manipulated them into going to Hell (which they did love in the end), am I in the wrong for getting upset or are they wieners for not wanting to take a cool holiday to Hell?

DMCharbie

To the dominant judges Murphy, Axford and Tanner and to the submissive Baliff Jake I come here to confess in front of the church the case of the bad DM? Recently over the past few years I was introduced to the wonderful game that is dnd, through a close friend of mine, however because of schedule conflicts and infrequent sessions I was always left wanting more, ( this is when I found NADDPOD) after listening to thousands of hours of dnd podcasts I decided that if I wanted to play I would just need to be the DM, This brings me to the crime… I don’t know what to do, I’ve tryed for hours to come up with creative ideas for campaigns but whenever I think of a cool idea I realize that a lot of the elements I accidentally steel from the showes I listen to, how do I go forward knowing that I won’t be able to give my players a fun and new kind of game Sincerely yours Charlie

Joy

Honorable justices and what’s his face, I present to you the case of The Players Who Don’t Want to Play. Two years ago I was getting into D&D and my friends found it interesting, if a little nerdy. They knew about the game from watching Stranger Things but wanted me to teach them how to play. So for the next few months I spent hours building a campaign I thought would keep their interest as well as spending time walking them through the character creation process. We decided the perfect day to begin playing would be when we gathered at my house for my birthday. Within five minutes of us starting my friends didn’t even try to pay attention. One even getting up from the table to look for snacks while an NPC was talking to the group, there were already snacks on the table but my friend said she didn’t want them. I was getting frustrated but tried not to let it show as I knew my friends got distracted easily. We kept having to stop to regroup but eventually they agreed they wanted to stop not even halfway through what I had planned for the first session. I feel my friends should have tried harder to stay focused because they knew how important this was to me. So Justices, am I in the wrong for being upset my friends didn’t care to play after all the hard work I put in, or should I accept that they just have the attention span of toddlers? I am at the mercy of the court.

Phil B

Judge, Jury, Executioner, and Jake: I'm submitting a formal complaint about My First DM for prematurely killing my hobby as a DnD player. Following the early hype around 5e, a friend group decided to give DnD a shot. I offered to DM, but a friend pulled in their coworker's boyfriend instead. He had DMed for some game con circuits like 15 years prior, but hadn't played any recent editions. Some vignettes from our first few sessions: • My friend introduced their rogue who had scars all over their face. The DM replied, "What are the scars from? You have 0 xp so you've never been in a fight." • I min/maxed as a tanky paladin - but all attacks were handled as flat opposing rolls from attacker and defender. Everyone essentially had a 50/50 chance to hit. The DM hasn't read 5e rules yet and was just winging it "for now" • 15 minutes after our first battle, the DM told us what items we missed out on since we didn't explicitly ask to check the corpse for loot • For Lore Reasons, the DM let us look at the stat sheet for some monsters we fought. He was using a 1.5e monster stat sheets. I let him borrow all of my DnD books, and he never bothered learning the basics. You're probably imagining several other Nightmare DM tropes, and yes, half of those happened too. After struggling with a puzzle that involved NPC history and timelines we had no way to know for a full 2-hour session, I quit that group, and I gave up on playing tabletop games. Is it fair to demand the death sentence for this crime and the emotional toll it's taken over the years? Or do I need to seek forgiveness from Dice Christ for these dark thoughts? Hoping for the guillotine, Phil (Follow up: I recently moved to a new city and finally decided to give DnD another shot. I joined a two-shot at a friendly neighborhood game store and had a blast playing a scenario from Keys from the Golden Vault!)

Timothy Stoner

To the holy trinity of Justice, the murph, the ax, and the man of tan himself, I prostrate myself. To the stinky lil baby man bailiff I ask, how do you sleep at night now that you’re a few months old? Have you started on solid foods yet? I run a game for my entire extended family every year on thanksgiving. I am DMing for 9 people around one table with the only experienced player being my wife. I have tried suggesting that we split into two groups but everyone wants to be together because thanksgiving is the one time a year we all see each other. During the game last year the party traveled to shadowfell to save an old companion of theirs. While I was speaking in character, I had a low intelligence npc describe magic as “some sort of swirly hand shit”. The room fell silent and my mom went “ahhh. Excuse me, your nieces and nephews are here.” Seeing the shift in mood I apologized for swearing, but my nieces and nephews are in high school, and I’m 23. My mother was so upset she didn’t talk to me for the rest of the night. Justices, I sip from the slippery pawpaw nipple of your wisdom. When will I be able to swear in front of my ultra-religious evangelical parents? (I know you all have your own experiences with religious families and I hope one day they can learn to accept that I’m just not like them.)

Dave 3D Art

To the honourable justices of the house of the dragon, and the slightly less honourable Joffrey. Is it wrong for my players to impose a different game system to the one I planned on using, three days before the campaign starts. So my Cyberpunk Red group is taking a break for the campaign, and I volunteered to run a short campaign in one of a handful of new games. Those games being: Fabula Ultima, Blades in the Dark, Monster of the Week, and Street Fighter the Storytelling game. My players chose Fabula Ultima. So I have spent the last few weeks reading up, and preparing. Yesterday I talked to the players, and they changed their minds to Blades in the Dark. I am not uninterested in playing Blades but three days is short notice. Are my players correct in wanting a system change with so little notice? I am at the mercy of the court.

Artificialflavors

Hey Bailiff Jnco and the high beautiful judges. I bring you the case of dimension dooring gone too far? During a game of 5e that I am the DM for my party came upon a thick stone door in a cliff face that had a caesar cypher on it to speak a code word to open the door. (Opa Lord of The Rings style) The rogue (who I gave a magic item with 2 uses of dimension door a day) declared, I’LL USE DIMENSION DOOR!! We argued back and forth about whether you could or couldn’t teleport through locked doors for about 10 minutes, with the entire table ganging up on me telling me that you can. I conceded, and have not put a locked door in my game since. Please tell me oh great judges. Was I wrong to say you can’t dimension door through thick stone doors in cliff faces? I await your ruling with bated breath

Jamjam

Some clarifications, in case it’s needed: the players were level 2 and while the encounter was balanced as a tough fight, I didn’t expect it to escalate cause they had mostly solved conflict nonviolently in the past I didn’t have the brigands do non-lethal damage cause I thought it would be unfair to have them just be knocked out with no chance of rolling a 20 to pop back up. The brigands would have stabilized them all and just actually taken all of their stuff. alternatively, they might have been captured. Since this was also the first proper fight, I wanted to guve them some experience with dnd’s death mechanics the party composition is bard, rogue, ranger and warlock.

Jamjam

also, hi jake *waves*

The angry cat

To the honorable cat parent judges, human parent judge, and the bird bailiff who somehow has a human child I think. I bring to you the case of the power word stun and the hairy monks. I was playing a one-shot DMed by my long time DM and friend and decided to play a way of mercy monk. We’ve played together for about 10 years, and this one shot was to introduce the new partners of a few of the usual players to D&D. In total we had 3 new players and two experienced players (me and another friend also playing a monk). During character creation my DM was joking saying that all monks should be bald and thus we should have no hair, we said absolutely not and he said ‘ we will see how that goes during the game’. This was all in good fun, however, comes final fight on this very long game (8 pm until 4 am) on the first round the villain, a very OP warlock casts power word stun on me. For the rest of the battle I did nothing, I failed my save every time (the DC was very high). The BBEG then goes on the water and ‘hovers’ above it, the other monk tries to walk on the water and hit her, but the DM said she was flying way above and he could not reach her. The two experienced players end up not doing anything during the whole fight which ends with both of us dead (the two monks). I, not being able to lend a single hit on a 10 round fight, ended the night sleepy and kinda mad, to which the DM said ‘If you were bald maybe you would have survived’. So I ask the judges am I in the right to be kinda of resentful or was this all fair play, since I failed all checks and the DM warned us against having hair? Ps sorry for my bad English shout out from Brazil

hexcat

Most honoured judges and the sad little sea slug they call a bailiff, I present to you the case of the dragon ex. Years ago, my group was between campaigns and dms, and our brand new baby DM ran the Icewind Dale module for us. He gave each of us a game ability that we could use at any time. My character, a rogue with the voice of Moira Rose, had the ability "you have a deep past relationship with an NPC of your choosing" We were wandering through the woods when we came across a huge shape in the snow. By the time our party realized it was a dragon, it had noticed us. As we rolled initiative, I declared "I know her! This dragon is my ex wife!" The DM took a couple moments, could find no reason why I couldn't use my ability in this way, and then sighed and allowed me to roll persuasion to check on our relationship. I rolled well. My ex wife then gave us a ride to our destination, skipping days of travel and encounters, for the low cost of bickering about the divorce and the effect it had on the children. I ask the court -- did I misuse my game ability and rob us and the DM of a cool dragon and necromancer fight? Or was I right to use this loophole to roleplay marital drama?

IVthatGuy

To the Honorable Justices and Baliff Brand Flakes, I bring the case of the Wasted Smite. I am currently playing in a homebrew campaign and among the party is our hornorable Palidin and while being a palidin, he tends to be frugal with his divine smites. I joined the campaign late so I didn't understand why until recently. In the midst of battle he called out that he would be applying a smite to his next attack which missed horribly and he marked off the spell slot. I questioned this as in the description of divine smite that the spell slot is only used if you actually hit. The DM piped up and said that it is actually treated like a spell and the spellslot is lost no matter what. I tried to read the actual description of divine smite but it was shot down. This was months ago now and I want to bring it up again as we are about to face a horrible creature soon. What should be done here? Do I meantion it again or is the DM in her right in her decision?

Brogan

To the other worldly judges, bringers of justice in this noble court and Jort, today I bring you the case of the money laundering rogue Last year I had a huge falling out with my friend group which meant I lost my dnd party. I decided to join a dnd club at my university to. Be able to continue to play and to work on my social skills. The first few sessions went great, but I noticed throughout the session our rogue character would roll anytime we rested and would tell the DM the number. I thought it could just be an ability thing and didn’t think much of it. Over the next few sessions, characters would have their weapons or items go missing in the night, which would result in us having to acquire more through various means. Our rogue would often offer to buy some, most of the party assuming he had a secret noble background or something that would let him afford them. It wasn’t until I asked the dm to stay up one night on lookout that we realized the rogue was stealing our items at night and selling them, something they orchestrated with the DM. I asked if he was trying to insight pvp, but the dm said no, he just thought the bit was funny. We had lost multiple battles by not being able to have the proper weapons, and any pvp that was attempted against the rogue was thwarted by the DM. Judges, were we the players right to be mad at our dm and rogue for this thievery, or was this a fair play. (To add detail, we found out the rogue would roll a slight of hand every night, and if he passed, the dm would pick one of our items at random and then tell him what gold he’d received during breaks.)

Nick Neverman

To the honorable duckling justices and the ugly duckling bailiff, I bring to you the “why does it hurt me and not him?!” case. In my home brew campaign, the party just finished exploring a myriad of cavernous dungeons hidden deep within a dangerous forest, and as they exited, they were met by a reoccurring enemy force hoping to steal the artifact they found. To properly capture the feeling of a larger battle, I used the mechanics from the recent Toybox battle (Murph you rule) as the party also had a retinue of friendly villagers fighting on their side. The issue began when one of my NPC’s, our barbarians best childhood friend/foster brother, called to the barbarian and had him rush into an opening he created into a tree. The NPC is a home brewed class called Natures Muse, essentially a nature themed bard, that can manipulate nature through music. With this ability, he brought the barbarian into the trunk of the tree, sealed it back up and then shot up to the top around 100 feet high, with the intention of launching the barbarian at the largest bad guy like a sling shot for an extra chunky attack; which was also a move the barbarian specifically came up with as something he used in his backstory and asked to ensure he could try it in session if there was a fight. While this was happening, the end of the round came and it was time for the PC’s to make their roll to see which side would receive damage from the masses. The PC’s lost by 10 so as I rolled the 10D8, I stated since the NPC & our barbarian were up in the tree, the damage would be split amongst the remaining two party members on the actual field of battle and not all four of them like it had been. The resulting damage knocked our fighter unconscious, with the fighter vehemently arguing that the damage should’ve been split to the two characters in the tree & that the barbs decision to run over basically killed the party. He settled down momentarily but then continued to take jabs at the barbarian from time to time throughout the remainder of the session. They ended up surviving by the skin of their teeth, partially thanks to the damage from the massive attack and then also a natural 20 death save by the aforementioned fighter, but I ask the justices, was I wrong to exclude the two people in the tree from taking damage? Or should everyone have been subject to the harsh realities of the battle field? I humbly await your decision.

sam orchard

To the honorable judges and that little guy over there. I come to you with the case of the invisible shadow puppets. Me and my party were travelling through a cave infested with kobolds. As we stealthed through, our DM mentioned that there was a kobold around a corner performing a shadow puppet show that we could see. Before we could do anything, the DM asked who in the party had dark vision. The DM then went on to explain that those of us with dark vision could not see shadows, or any differences in light at all and therefore not see the performance. A debate ensured that the rest of the party thought was hilarious. As the DM explained that dark vision worked like night vision goggles and, and I quote "you can't see shadows with night vision goggles". The debate turned heated when I, a drow shadow monk asked if I instinctivly knew where shadows are. The DM said, no, you have dark vision and can't see shadows. My point was that I needed to know where it was dark so that I could use my level 6 feature that I would be getting in a few level. The DM said I would just have to guess, or make checks to see if there where other signs of shadows. We argued back and forth for so long, with some party members (the ones without dark vision) started agreeing with the DM. We had to cut short as there was a combat planned that would have gone to long otherwise. So I leave it to you judges, should my shadow monk be able to discern the locations of shadows or will I have to live a life of bright colours and unshaded faces?

Colby Greer

To the illustrious Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the guy who invited Jugo. I bring you the case of the game breaking therapist. I am running a campaign in which my brother plays a kindly warforged paladin/sorcerer who became an oathbreaker when he betrayed the evil scientist that created him, and joined the party as their therapist. This is not the problem however, the problem comes from his ac of 22 and ability to deal 100 points of damage a round (2 attacks with smite, quicken spell inflict wounds, reaction Hellish rebuke) Every boss I throw at him is demolished in a couple rounds. It would be one thing if I could just build harder encounters, but the problem is that the rest of the party is not on his level,, and the one time that i went all out to build an extra difficult encounter for him i unintentionally killed another party member and a beloved npc. The worst part is that I (a notorious min-maxer) gave him tips on optimization when building his character. I don't want to kill him, as the party would be devastated to lose their therapist but would it be inappropriate for me to give everything resistance to radiant damage, or do I deserve punishment for helping my brother min-max in the first place

Alex T

Honorable Jake and the Judges (good band name), I present the case of the saved campaign and the angry paladin. I was DMing LMoP for a new group of players. The Paladin asked for a Talisman of Pure Good as a fail safe. We were at the BBEG’s hideout so with the campaign coming to an end, I had no issue with it. Adjusted the stats of the talisman a little to make it more level appropriate. The Paladin went first in initiative and instantly used the Talisman on the BBEG. He failed the save and instantly fell into a fissure that appeared and died. We stopped for the night because the rest of the party was clearly upset. I came up with the idea to use a doppelganger that was in the battle as a fake BBEG that the Paladin actually killed (the doppelganger was actually a higher CR). The Paladin was livid when they saw the BBEG alive in the next room. The Paladin didn’t say anything all night. The rest of the party had an absolute blast fighting the BBEG. The player never came back. Did I steal the BBEG kill from the Paladin or did I save the BBEG fight for the rest of the party?

Logan Stock

If it pleases the Court and the shining golden judges and the dull bronze bailiff, I bring to you the case of Merty Chlap. My friend and longtime DM got some dice as a gift that you could use to roll a race and a class so we thought it would be fun to run a one shot by rolling a d20 for level. One quick character building session later enter Merty Chlap my level 14 Warlock with the Undead Patron. We were tasked with exploring a magical extra dimensional mansion with a two hour time limit before it disappeared forever. Each room had a gimmick or puzzle to solve and we were all having a lot of fun. Right before the boss door I described Merty using his 14th level class ability to assume a spectral form, ready to take on the boss with my body hiding in a bag of holding. As I opened the boss door, my DM described my form as entering an extra dimensional door that my spirit without a physical body could not handle. I was shunted from the door, dealt 8d10 psychic damage, and lost my 14th level ability. I didn’t mind the damage but the loss of the ability made me rather upset since I would likely never play this character again. So I ask judges, was I wrong to try to pre buff before the boss fight or was Merty wronged by never being allowed to go all out but just this once? I humbly await your judgement.

Dr. Bearkele

UPDATE from the Dice Christ Apostate: As a follower of Murph's Law (which states that all bad shit will happen to you playing TTRPGs regardless of rolls), it occurred to me that I was perhaps failing incessantly because I was in the wrong roll (hurr hurr) and possibly the wrong game, as I've heard that DnD is more left up to the luck of the D20 than other systems. As such, I took up GMing and gathered a group of 12 players to play a hop-on hop-off Zweihänder campaign set in the world of the Kingdom Death: Monster board game, since the game had a cool world and no mechanic to explore it. Unfortunately, because the minis for KDM were so horrendously sexist to both genders, my players steered into that and took my grim, dark, horror survival game but at least half of them are playing horny weirdos. I still roll like absolute trash, but my garbage is their glorious victory. For example, when our barber surgeon decided to attack a hobgoblin during barter negotiations, she was very lucky that only 5/8 goblins swung anywhere near her, while only 3 of them actually hit (one was a crit though!). In the end, my dogshit rolls are their sweet savior when they act maniacal. In short, GMing is a lot of fun, especially when all of your players are unhinged lunatics! I highly recommend the Zweihänder system as well, because it feels less focused on luck of the due and more on how you upgrade your character. Overall a decent change of pace from constantly rolling and failing at everything I do. So perhaps the dice are simply telling me to give my players a thrill by letting them beat the hell out of me every session. PS - my DnD friends, however, did not appreciate me peeing in their hot-tub, so I blamed you guys for giving me the suggestion. You are not invited to the next pool party, sorry. Maybe next time?

RebeccaC

To the honorable judges and Jack the bailiff, I bring to you the case of the forced marriage. It was my first time playing DnD, so of course my character was Skylark, a half-orc barbarian with a pretty thin backstory. I wanted to play someone tall and buff, and honestly, I was intimidated by all the spellcasting rules. The first few sessions were really fun, and at one point, we were trying to rescue an NPC from a tribe of hobgoblins. This culminated in a 1 v 1 fight with the chief’s daughter, which I won. Right afterwards, the hobgoblins took us to a small cottage in the middle of the forest, and to my surprise, they announced that this was my honeymoon suite. I was told that since I had defeated the chief’s daughter in combat, she was my wife. I was deeply uncomfortable and outright said I would turn down the proposal. However, the DM said that it was too late, I was already married according to their customs. We didnt end up staying at the cottage, but the DM warned me that I couldn’t annul the marriage because it would break the truce we had with the hobgoblins. My “wife” only stayed one session before the dm dropped the storyline completely, and I could tell he was kind of disappointed. I have a lot more experience with DnD now, and feel like maybe my backstory didn’t give the DM enough material to work with. Judges, was I wrong for not playing along with the DM’s idea? I humbly await your judgement.

Rain

To the Holy church of Dice Christ, and that Deacon trying to weasel his way into the confessional booth, I beg forgiveness for my transgressions against my party. During COVID, I dragged about a dozen of my friends (some from different countries) into playing D&D remotely. I DM'ed a campaign that lasted most of the pandemic, with our party dwindling until only four consistent players were left: a grandmother (not irl) cleric, a halfling bard taking a break from uni and her twin, a burnout artificer, and a teenage paladin half-orc reconnecting with her human side. One year, the paladin very kindly sent me a beautiful custom deck of many things. As we were still remote, I didn't use it, waiting for the perfect moment to have us physically draw. Well, years later, restrictions were down enough for our international bard to fly home for a summer, and we decided to play our penultimate session irl. Of course, I brought the deck of many things, as well as treats, to the session. As the characters entered a mysterious train running through a wasteland of toxic magical energy, they encountered in the first-class cabins a casino, strangely still running. There were various games set up, almost all of which incorporated the deck of many things. The players initially were hesitant to play, as they were on a time-sensitive contract, but the paladin, sensing my excitement, stepped forward to draw a card. The card they drew? Talons, the card that disintegrates every magical item in a player's possession. Every. Single. One. These were level sixteen players right before their battle with the BBEG, and this PLAYER was a paladin, so you can imagine the amount of magical items they were decked out with. There was a moment of pure horror at the table as every player imagined going to the final battle against a CORRUPTED SYNTHETIC GOD with their main bruiser without even a magical sword! I did end up allowing the artificer to roll sleight of hand to see if she had taken any of the items beforehand, as they were technically not allowed weapons on the train and snuck them on. She barely passed the DC20 check, even with inspiration AND flash of genius AND bless AND advantage, which felt like Dice Christ telling us to let go of our earthly desires. She managed to save our paladin's sword and shield, but everything else was destroyed. Everyone seemed to mostly laugh at this incident, but I still feel guilty when I think about it - oh holy priests of fortune, please absolve me of putting my own earthly desires above my players and making them lose their items, and forgive me for giving some of those items back despite the dice's unwillingness. I put myself at the mercy of the courts. PS: our cleric also decided to draw, and she drew the knight card, which was more of a burden to such a high level team. In the end, instead of Balnor, they got a quasi-grandchild squire who mostly hid and gave help actions.

SmoothTurtle

To the justices most high, and the tallest bailiff with the thickest of quads. I lay my dice at your feet, please hear my plea. I started a campaign with my wife and 3 other good friends. Only one of the friends has played a campaign prior, and I am the DM after only doing a 1 shot previously. I play with very creative people and asked them all to write their own backstories and to send them to me so I can do my best to incorporate something for everyone in the story. I even provided prompt questions to give them something to go from. The player who was the only one who played DnD prior, gave me the bare minimum on their character and absolutely nothing about the characters past or secrets (which were both prompts). When I asked the player why they didn’t provide that when the rest did, they said that’s for them to keep secret. I said I understand why you’d want to, and it’s probably cool, but I’m the DM and if I don’t know I can’t work with them to incorporate it. They still refused. After listening to Nad Pod extensively to get the hang of DnD I created our first quest where the crew had to rescue a town from a crypt of animated skeletons. They did very well and after beating the boss of the crypt I had a phantom apparition appear and claim to know the player that refused to give me their backstory. I made the phantom make a vague statement about how they have a history with the player and how they will pay for what they’ve done. My thought was this would force this player to then have to cough up some information on their past through conversation, either with the enemy or their party. I thought, this being the only veteran player, they shouldn’t be that caught off guard and it was my attempt at holding their feet to the fire for refusing my earlier request. WRONG. The player froze, didn’t know what to do, and the party IMMEDIATELY turned on them and had them at knife point worried they were a traitor. I’m proud to say after a lot of in game trust exercises the party is still together and happily playing, but they player in question thinks I was wrong for putting them on the spot for not giving me their backstory. Did I do them dirty, or should they do better to work with the DM in the future. Honorable justices, I leave my dice in your capable hands.

Courtney F.

Bless me Dice Disciples for I have sinned. It has been 20 tepidly tormented years since the events of this confession. At the tender age of 15, I inadvertently ended a campaign when I quit because....well, essentially because my fighter wasn't cool enough. I can recall neither the rolls nor the reasons leading up to my leaving, but I remember the breaking point well: when MY strength check failed to save an ally teetering on the edge of a cliff but the FUCKING WIZARD pulled it off. I couldn't take the embarrassment. I left and the campaign ended. Dice Christ has walked beside me through these past 20 years when I have played any other class but a fighter. In my most recent campaign when we hit level 16, I - a full Life Cleric - briefly contemplated multiclassing into Fighter...and then the DM abruptly ended the campaign citing familial duties. Oh wise Disciples of Dice Christ herself, please, tell me, when will I have paid my dues for my 15 year old table flippin' 'tude? When do I get to be.. A super bad ass fighter in a D&D campaign?

Conifer

Dearest Deacons of the Dice, Divine Distributors of Dice Christ's Grace and Mercy, I prostrate myself before thine altar of forgiveness. For three whole years between 2015 and 2018, me and three good highschool friends played eight-hour-long sessions every single sunday at the DM's house. We laughed and played and spent many long hours enjoying our DM's incredibly hard and passionate work. Well, it's 2024 now and I don't remember a single thing that happened in the entire campaign. I think I played a monk lady? I'm not really sure, and I feel awful. The DM is still one of my closest companions, and a bolt of guilt and anguish strikes my heart whenever he references in-game events and I just have to nod and pretend I know what he's talking about. Forgive me for this heinous and damnable sin against all of his passion and hard DM work, and may Dice Christ have mercy on my soul.

Tdiet

May it please the supreme crit justices Axford, Murph and Tanner and the barely tolerable excuse for a bailiff whose name I currently can't remember: I present to you the case of the "Glorified roof lath". A few years ago I dm'ed a high level campaign in which at the start of the campaign a pc-mage crafted a flying and invisible wooden board which he hid from prying eyes in the town the heroes ruled. Over the course of the adventure one of the campaign's several big bad evil people took over the town they earned at the last campaign's end and the campaign's big finale was the reconquista of "their" town. During the all-out battle all over town (the amazon warrior killed the warchief who killed her whole tribe in the throne room of her town's keep, the death god's cleric became a living avatar of death sowing destruction amongst the enemy forces, etc. ) the mage slipped out, turned invisible and started flying over the city on his invisible wooden board to coordinate his buddies and sling a few fireballs. He noticed that in the pit, that once housed the subterranean dark temple that poisoned the landscape in the earlier campaign, a BBEG, who escaped them in an even earlier campaign and resurfaced a few in-game months before, was conducting a ritual. The ritual's specifics were unknown, but it could be assumed it would be to their detriment, since he was trying to coopt a McGuffin called the "soul of the land". The mage flew up about 300 ft. into the air, still invisible, still on his invisible wooden board and decided to turn himself to stone to drop on the BBEG. He passed several checks to do this (about 12 d20 were rolled involving a lot of math, this was not dnd), hit the BBEG and instantly killed him. Because that's what about 200 pounds of stone and a large wooden board hitting you on the head from a height of 300 ft. does to people. To this day a good friend of mine is slightly pissed, that they didn't get to fight him, but that he instead was killed by "a glorified roof lath" and from time to time brings it up. Was I wrong to reward creative problem solving to "spare" them an additional boss fight at the end of a session already going for about 6 hours? Since I'm all the way across the Atlantic and basically don't fall under your jurisdiction I feel quite safe, but nevertheless I humbly await your judgement. Jake! The bailiff's name is Jake, I just remembered.

Ferniliar

Greetings benevolent, gracious, handsome justices and... Yea. So my case is a clusterfuck of chaos so I will do my best to sum up the injustices perpetrated. I was the only one in my friend group with any interest in D&D, when one day my friends Brother In Law, expressed interest in playing so that roused some interest in everyone. He chose to DM and the rest of us would be players. In total 5 players including his wife/my friends sister. Our first session begins and it has become abundantly clear, BOL has no familiarity with D&D at all but still wanted to DM. I applauded his bravery, I was just happy to be a player so I went along for the ride and tried to offer any help if he asked (he never did) One of my friends showed up with a Pathfinder character sheet, and the DMs wife had a homebrew character/class he made involving spells with several turn cooldowns instead of spell slots. Again, no experience with D&D, don't even think he's listened to a podcast. Going to go through the rest of what happened as briefly as I can. -Another player rolled a nat 1 throwing a lantern. DM ruled he fucked up so bad he threw it backwards, hit me, and set me on fire. -Another PC and I were teleported into a cave and lost, rolled several times for any sort of help on what direction to go. Rolling between 13-18 each time, that still wasn't good enough to get an idea of where to go. This took about 2 REAL TIME HOURS of just saying "we wander this way I guess" until we reached an exit. - Lastly, and the most egregious offense, me and that PC find some sort of crab mech suits, and managed to roll high enough to get them working. Each one with 50hp (this is important), being low level this was a boon. Until we get to our first encounter. First attack, the other PC rolled a nat 1 on his first attack and the DM ruled he whiffed so bad, he not only destroyed his mech but mine as well with that attack. At this point I had to interject. Arguing that even with a crit these things are incapable of dealing 100hp worth of damage in one attack. The DMs compromise was, only one mech was destroyed, and the other was left functional with 1hp... Justices, even Jack, yea I knew you were here too. I am begging you! Was this new DM in the wrong or am I just a D&D snob who listens to too many beautifully crafted epochs, setting my expectations for fairness too high?

Josh Zellers

Dear esteemed crit justices and the wonderful bailiff hurtwitz. Since it is my 21st birthday I ask of the single request that you help with my court case. We have been playing in an online session for a long time and only until recently has one of the players roommates been talking to my player while the game was going on. She doesn’t even mute herself . This also takes away her attention and distracts her from the game more than she already is. I’ve asked the roommate if he wanted to play and he says no. Any advice would be humbly appreciated.

Gabriel Felix

To the cute judges and Bailiff Jork. I bring you the case of the Stolen Pc. I played in a friends 3 shot over a year ago, along with a married couple, my sister, and one of the couples father. We decended beneath the sewers of Waterdeep and was confronted after a bit with intellect devoures. As lvl 2 pc’s this combat was tough. We won the fight but the wife of the couple was downed with an unknown amount of death saves or fails. One of the Devourers vanished, and soon after our downed pc woke up. But it was no long her talking. It was the dm speaking through her and later we found she had been taken over by the creature. She quit before the next session began because she felt her losing character agency was crossing a line. When the dm heard this, he shut down the game. I talked to him a few days later and he was so upset that hurt her feelings that he was going to quit dnd all together. After talking with him for a few hours and talking to the couple separately, I was able to get him to feel good enough to continue playing. We’ve played together in several one shots since then. Justices and Jork, was the pc right to feel like a line was crossed? Is there a better way the dm could’ve handled it? I leave the righteous decision in your capable hands.

Varenum_The_Cleric

May it please the court, the illustrious crit judges, and that Jeb dude who can't even finish a whole rotisserie chicken. I submit to you today the case of the Shady Gnomish Dogpile. A year ago in my first session of a Strahd campaign, I was playing as a level 8 Gnomish GOO warlock/trickery cleric named Peek. Through a series of poor choices and cowardly companions, Peek became embroiled in a one vs seven throwdown with some weakling 1HP guards. At our table, non-lethal damage had to be melee damage. So to avoid killing them I did the ol' "cast Darkness while using Devils Sight" trick, thinking I could bonk them all on the head with advantage before they could get too many hits in. After 1 round of bonks, the guards opted to grapple attack instead, which the DM said did not require an attack roll, just a contested strength check with no disadvantage. My tricksy little gnome (tee hee) got overpowered by a tidal wave of goons, all rolling straight. I managed to escape with some illusionary shenanigans, and the party managed to negotiate with the guards and their captain, but I still feel like I was robbed of my John Wick-esque fight scene. Am I right to feel this way and that the DM should have imposed disadvantage due to the darkness, or did this gnome get exactly what all gnomes deserve? I await the honour of your judgement and will take my punishment with all the grace of a city pigeon.

Stephen Burns

Dear honorable Justices and Joe. I present the case of the pregnant character. In our last session the cleric was captured by our current BBEG. Causing the player to need a temporary character for the rescue. She wants to bring back a previous character she played during our initial beginners box adventure. My character (A Goliath Barbarian) and hers somewhat jokingly had goodbye sex. Don't worry it was tasteful fade to black style. I'm sure you can see where this is going, but she wants to bring back this character, but pregnant. My DM is not thrilled by this idea. I think it would be fun and the other three players are on board/neutral. I feel the DM wouldn't mind if we weren't about to face this BBEG. So is our cleric crazy for wanting to bring along a pregnant character or is it a fun story beat for my barbarian who has no other living relatives.

Tristan Belzer

To the Honorable Justices, Guest Bailiff Jake, you should really have him on more. I’m the DM of a long running 5e campaign where the players are in the middle of a pirate arc. I had planned a session I was really excited about, where the party would go to a roaming Riverboat Pirate Casino and go on an Oceans 11 style heist to steal a MacGuffin from the brutal pirate casino owner. For flavor, I planned a bunch of fun dnd casino games and drinks with crazy effects, hoping to let my players have a little fun with the casino before engaging with the plot. While running the actual session, I narrated what the players saw as they stepped out on the casino floor, including descriptions of my dramatic fantasy games, the crazy drinks that were obviously magic, as well as briefly mentioning some normal casino games to fill out the description. The players immediately asked to play Black Jack, which I was surprised by, so I improvised some black Jack rules using dice, hoping they would move on quickly. They didn’t, 5 “hands” later, one of the players got up and got a real deck of cards, turning the session into just normal black Jack. Hoping to have my players interact with literally anything else, I had NPCs mention how good the drinks were, mention how much they love other fantasy games, or even try to mention the reason they were there in the first place (which was to find an item to locate a PC who had just been kidnapped 2 sessions ago). Nothing worked, all attempts were ignored until I straight up asked if they wanted to continue playing dnd or just play Black Jack. They opted to play Black Jack. Justices, am I correct in being upset with my players choosing to play Black Jack rather than interact with any of my carefully built session? Or should I simply learn when to fold em?

CallSomeone

Greetings to this panel of correct and qualified justices, and the brittle barren balding bailiff Jake. I come to court today with a case of fictional-fact finding. I am a first time GM running a warhammer 40K RPG, following a group of interplanetary pirates navigating the politics and violent conflicts scattered across the stars. In our third session, two of my players leapt in to correct me as I was describing an interaction, stating that the two factions in the scene weren’t known to get along, and that canonically they wouldn’t be associated with each other. I gave them a kind of wink and agreed that it was strange, as it’s part of a larger mystery that contributes to the campaign story. But the following session after another one of these interruptions the player confirmed that in the tabletop wargame the setting is based on, this sort of story would never be happening. Judges, I’m running a campaign module, I’m not improvising this story. Should I modify the NPCs in the campaign to better accommodate the setting’s larger narrative? Or should my players accept that the individuals within the factions might operate on a more personalized level than the rigid military hierarchies they subscribe to? I patiently await your judgement.

Haybale

To the ephemeral judges and that other guy in the corner, I present to you a case of dis-alignment. I'm a player in a cyberpunk-flavored campaign that started with the party crash-landing on a foreign planet after losing a fight with the bbeg in session zero. I play a lawful neutral cyborg warlock, who is a scientist and thus whose whole thing is logic and reason. Our first goal was to find a way off this planet and obtain a new ship while avoiding detection, because we were wanted for the destruction caused by the bbeg fight. The party decided to go to a mid-tier used ship dealer, so we wouldn't get scammed. It turned out that the rest of the party had decided they wanted to rob the dealership when the prices were higher than they liked. I had told them in character that I was not a fan of what they were trying to do and listed the reasons why. This fell on deaf ears as the fighter pulled out a gun and shot the sales bot, thinking he could kill it in one shot. He didn't and the bot pressed an alarm, which sent authorities after us, the thing we wanted to avoid. My character did not participate in this, and I expressed out of character that I have no idea how to get my character on board with wildly enacting violence until they get their way. They then got mad that my character managed to avoid getting arrested, when the rest of them did for doubling down on their failed robbery plan. So I ask you fair judges (and jorts), was I wrong to follow my character's morals and reasoning? Or should I have sucked it up and followed the party, whom my character had only briefly met prior to this? I await your judgment with sweaty palms. PS my amazing DM managed to bring us all back together in the next session and get us on a mission that will hopefully end in us obtaining a ship, so all hope is not lost.

Teo Tamashiro-Harris

To the ever honourable justices and the kind of shady bailiff, I bring you a case of how far is too far when putting a twist on a player's backstory. When I first started playing DND, a group of my friends and I found a DM willing to do a campaign for us. He walked us through character creation and making backstories. For some reason, I was really drawn to the idea of a character who had a really peaceful home life and a future working in the family business already planned out but going on an adventure before settling down. Basically a bored surbanite taking a gap year to be an adventurer. I explained it all to my DM and he said that was great and had some ideas. Once we started the campaign, a couple sessions in it became clear that my character's family's business was actually a mafia style organisation doing all kinds of bad that I didn't know about and my father was the BBEG of the campaign. This was so different from the concept I was excited to play that I lost enthusiasm for the character and eventually worked with my DM to put the character on a hiatus while I played a different character before the campaign eventually fizzled out. People I've told this story to have been divided on whether my DM went too far or if that's a normal part of putting twists on a backstory, so I beseech you to answer this question for me once and for all! Thank you for your time

Juztin Bello

To the resplendent justices, who judge with an ire that is both tantalizing and profound. And Jake, you know what you did, on Saturday June 7th, 2014, 9:30pm. I bring to you the case of “Busting the Bard’s Busted Rhymes”. I’m DM-ing a campaign for my cousins who are all first-time dnd players. I myself have played for years, invested countless dollars towards this podcast since its inception and thus have imbibed from your fountain of knowledge, and have DM’d occasional one-shots. My younger cousin has opted for playing a high-elf bard named Smu’Lunky, who supplies their own physical recorder to blow gauche melodies into during roleplay and insists on their lore being that if they don’t speak in rhymes, they’ll die. I will pause for Murph to groan, Emily and Caldwell to make sounds of simultaneous intrigue and displeasure, and for Jake to reflect. Acknowledging my error in trying to accommodate this new player, I created a mechanic where Smu'Lunky doesn’t need to rhyme when speaking out of character, but in character if I don’t find their rhymes sufficient, he'll roll a charisma save and take 2d6 psychic damage on a failure. Well, I’ve sat here and watched this bard bumble through the most egregious rhymes I’ve ever heard in my life, even going so far as to making the whisper of a slant rhyme to the resounding applause of the table. My table has elected to offer rhymes any time Smu’Lunky has wavered, while I’ve shaken my eager 2d6 in my fist, taunting them, longing for them to fail. And yet, I’ve seldom gotten the chance to unleash my hungry die, starved by the injustice of camaraderie amidst these people I share blood with. Also, he's ass at the recorder. Should I rule with a heavier fist and disallow the table to assist, or should Smu’Lunky have a sublime rhyme time in his prime? Much love, from me and mine to you and yours. Jake, we’ll never forget.

Doug Davis

Greeting o great justices of of the court and rumored possible future guest to 8bit book club, Jeff. I bring forth the case of the replacement replacement PC. I am running a PF2e campaign of the module Abomination Vaults, 3 sesssions after having killed 2 of my PCs the session begins with the new dwarven thaumaturge(mirror implement) player asking if Landfill rules are still in effect (citation:Beerfest, Landfill's funeral) I acquiesce and the session begins. He goes on to roll the worst rolls Ive ever seen, like this character is cursed. In a fight with the ghost of a green hag in a room of cryogenically frozen monsters she casts Phantasmal Killer (https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=219&NoRedirect=1) on him which he crit fails, followed by a fail, leading to his death. Since I agreed to Landfill rules, I quickly mention they notice a small figure in one of the previously empty vats. In the stillgoing battle, the Ratfolk Champion works to break this figure out and this is where I start meddling with misfortune. The Vats with the monsters are supposed to only survive being broken out on a 1 or 2, which I explained to the group, and since this was a player, to keep some risk, I would reverse it, he would roll a dice and if he rolled a 1 or 2, some malfunction with the Vat would occur causing his character death. He asked to roll blind for suspense and rolled. I stared at the dice, only I could see it. I asked what are the first words his character speaks as they break open the glass vat. He quickly yells "get me out of here, hurry!" at which point I interrupt and lean in to say "and that was the last thing he said as his body slumped to the ground dead." He had rolled a 2, which at this point I showed them all the blind roll. Justices, was I wrong to have their be any risk at all to his 2nd character since I offered Landfill fights for that session? Or is a 10% risk allowed to give the game stakes and because the only immediate space for him to come from was somewhat dangerous. P.S. He messaged me on the side during the looting and asked if he could still keep playing his character, to which I obviously agreed and quickly made up how the reflection in his mirror implement was actually the real him who was stuck and when the other PCs picked up his mirror he could escape since the imposter was dead.

Spencer Clark

Greetings to the legal luminaries of the D&D domain and employee #5, Today, I bring forth the case of the DM Betrayal. I play a redneck ranger, Draken, in a high seas homebrewed campaign. Recently we discovered and rescued a group of shipwrecked survivors from a deserted island. In a random twist of fate, Draken discovered the survivors were secretly vampires. Draken was presented with a choice—embrace vampirism and join the cult or become their meal. I chose to keep living.. ish. A subsequent session saw the unmasking of the vampiric threat by fellow party members and a theater of violence resulting in their demise, all while Draken was able to keep his secret from the rest of the crew as they swore to kill off any vampires. As we continued with the campaign, I was able to sneak off at night killing off whatever ocean life possible instead of feeding off of the crew through a bunch of secret rolls asked by the DM. All was well until we arrived at a new island. Draken, cursed to need fresh blood but trying to stay good, snuck off and killed a random goat that first night before meeting the locals. Turns out we landed in a realm that hasn’t seen any violence for the past 100 years. All of the wildlife and inhabitants lived in perfect harmony. We were immediately asked by the chieftain to slay the monster that had killed the town’s beloved pet. No one was the wiser that it was yours truly as we began our detective work. The session continued on as we began to explore the town. During our next session, a fellow player, perhaps guided by divine intervention, declared at the gaming table, "You are the one everyone is looking for!" A revelation that caught everyone off guard, including our mirthful DM whose laughter immediately gave away my character's secret before I had a chance to respond. The session continued with the entire party privy to a clandestine truth obtained outside of our game. Now, I stand before this illustrious court seeking guidance on how to navigate these treacherous waters. Can the blood spilled be returned to the body, or must the blood remain on the floor? I beseech the wisdom of the assembly to advise on the course of action for a character now defensively regarded, caught in the web of secrets that demand revelation.

Fraax

Oh divine clerics of Dice Christ, I need your holy guidance for I am facing temptation. I do not know how to stay true to both Dice Christ and my wife at the same time. My wife, who does NOT play D&D, got me some sweet dice for my birthday. They are translucent amber with steampunk-y gears and other chunks of metal embedded in them. My first thought when I saw them was "damn these are awesome!" My second thought was "wow, those chunks of metal are not even close to the middle. There's no way these dice are fair." I've played twice since getting them, but since I know in my heart they are not fair I have avoided using them. After both sessions, my wife excitedly asked if I used them, and I lied to her, saying I had (which feels awful). Do I continue to lie to my wife, despite her being so supportive of my hobby and getting me this awesome gift, or do I sin and use dice that I know aren't fair? Or do I just have to have faith that through Dice Christ even questionable dice can be fair? I await your heavenly wisdom.

Megaroni

To the honorable and immaculate judges and the bailiff who gets a “hey”. I present: The Case of the Chaos Defense: This is a by proxy case and it has been vented to me by my roommate over the past few months. The warlock targeted my friend’s monk under the excuse of, “I’m a chaotic neutral! It’s what I do!” This includes but not limited to stealing from them, injuring them in battle, and setting their bed on fire, which forced their PC to sleep on the floor of the inn. They were prepping for a battle my friend was convinced they wouldn’t survive because of the warlock. The session before the battle, they announced to the other players that if their monk died by any fault of the party, that their next character would be chaotic evil and would play accordingly to their new alignment. The warlock complained to the DM and the DM said my roommate was free to create any character they wanted, just as the warlock had been allowed to do. The party argued the threat was unreasonable. Is it unreasonable or just desserts? P.S. I have played with them in a one shot, but declined this campaign myself because they felt mean spirited the time before. While Justice Murphy may argue to get new friends, I need to add that unfortunately the DM is their sister and they felt obligated to play.

T-Dawg

Honourable Justices. Jill’s husband. I ask that you temporarily convene the court in Australia to help arbitrate a dispute between me and one of my players. (I think I can authorise that, two of our party are lawyers….) For your arbitration, I present the case of the “wrongly” imprisoned rogue. I DM a weekly home game set in a Dwarven city, it’s currently at war with some denizens of the Underdark. The party consists of, a loveable half-orc barbarian, a dwarven cleric, a gnome wizard and an edgy and flirty half-elf rogue named Alaya. She constantly tests our boundaries. In a recent game, I’d planned out a mini adventure about sounds of burrowing and digging in the city’s mines/oreworks. Before they could even finish negotiating a price, Alaya managed to cause a major disagreement/disturbance that ultimately landed her in the city’s prison. I’ll let Alaya explain it from here… “Alaya was exploring while the rest of the party discussed 💰 and some wannabe tough guys approached and told Alaya she was trespassing (there are no signs) and Alaya responded saying she didn’t see any signs and she hasn’t done anything wrong so when they said they were gonna call the guard Alaya was all for it because she had nothing to hide. Then the guard arrived and gave Alaya nothing but a hard time (not even the fun kind) and immediately handcuffed Alaya (not even in the fun way) and then tried to say she could avoid jail if she paid 20 gold. That’s bullshit” Alaya put her foot down, refused to pay. Refused the clerics attempts to smooth things over. Refused to let the barbarian apologise on her behalf and pay. Then demanded that the city guard take her to prison. I maintain that snooping uninvited at an industrial site during a time of war is incredibly suss and being belligerent from the get go didn’t help her case, regardless of how many glasses of red wine she consumed during the evening. She maintains that the city guard was power tripping punk. Was I too hard on Alaya, or do I accept that our game is now Prison Break meets Orange is the New Black? I humbly prostrate myself before the court. P.s. please come back to Melbourne.

Katrina Dagenais

Dearest justices and literate bailiff, I appeal to the worm wife in all of you with this case. My boyfriend is DMing a homebrew campaign for our long term group, and has told me that my character isn’t allowed to have a crush on every NPC! I wouldn’t say it’s every NPC, but often when he introduces a character, I declare them “my bride.” I think this is funny, and also fully my right as his girlfriend. Justices, we’re currently in a place called “the Frog Kingdom” where NPCs include a short knight named Wortimer and the beautiful Princess Ribbibecca. Our group doesn’t like to seriously RP romance, but we’ve all joked about romanceable NPCs and the other players think it’s funny. So I ask you, should I relent and keep my opinions of these characters to myself, or is it my right to fall for my partner as as many people (or frogs) as possible?

Gianni Pappas

For the members of the Cloth, I must confess my sins to dice Christ. In a recent homebrew game of two newer players and two experienced players I fudged rolls to prevent a Lvl 3 TPK. In the start of a 3rd round at a tournament my players were in a hellhound which wasn’t like the other rounds (vs people) was released. My players had basically full HP due to sweeping through the previous rounds. I thought ok this shouldn’t be that bad. Nope breath weapon downed 2 players on the first turn. For the rest of the fight I rolled the breath weapon in front of the table saying it came back on a 6 (it was supposed to on 5-6). I rolled 3 5s which would have killed the party 100%. One player did fully die but he has an unknown background with a god so I was able to add elements which make sense why he was brought back. But I cannot deny I betrayed Dice Christ, please absolve me of my sins.

Tom’s Clam Shack

May it please the “judges” and the esteemed and talented bailiff jake. I’m a DM running a campaign for a group of 8, 10th level PCs. The group warlock has decided that he only wants to use the banishment spell and has used it to take out some really high level enemies (Whenever my bad guys have to make a charisma save against it I end up with Murph rolls). The warlock had to miss last session and the party ended up fighting a massive demon worm along with a few other purple worms. The fight is continuing into next session and the party wants to wait for the warlock to come back just so he can use his banishment spells. I talked to the warlock about maybe using some other spells besides banishment but he loves his “get out of jail free” card. Because of the massive party size, I don’t want to throw in a ton of minions to target the warlock to try and break his concentration because the combats already run slow with how many people we already have in the initiative order. I’ve tried prerolling attacks and damage which has sped things up a bit but I feel like it comes off as suspicious to my players when I don’t roll anything during the session and suddenly they get crit on. How can I try and keep my fights interesting and moving quickly when I have a player who won’t stop using banishment? I humbly wait your advice.

Bryn Parker

Greetings Honorable Bailiff and pretty rad Justices. I bring you the case of min maxed character creation. I’m in a group where we all built our characters with the standard point buy system, 27 total. One of our players used the werebear template to get themselves a massive bonus to str and get a 20 str at level 3. This seemed unfair to the rest of the party and it was brought up to the DM. The werebear player threatened to leave the game or make another character who would be “far more broken” if we pressed the issue. I humbly await the courts ruling.

Darkrisky

To the incredibly badass judges and the plain bad bailiff Jared, I give you the case of the patron-less daddy killer. There’s a lot to this case so I will keep it as brief as possible. I played a sea elf fathomless warlock of a noble background with a surfer/stoner vibe and a distrust of authority. She’s at a school to get away from her overprotective parents who sent her there with a necklace of sending. (I have explicitly said to my DM I am excited to play this class and that I did not want an evil patron.) During their adventures, my character was given a flute by an evil entity. Not wanting the responsibility, she destroyed it. As she did, her patron began to scream into her head something about freedom and “destroying all the sea elves”. Concerned, my character decides to use her necklace of sending to call her dad to ask if he knows anything about her patron. When she contacts her dad in a FaceTime-y way, her dad screams at her that she has doomed her whole city by destroying this flute. Turns out that destroying the flute resulted in her patron being released from the plane her city elders were keeping it. A tentacle then rose from the water and skewered her father. (Keep in mind my character saw all this in a “Facetime”.) My character ran to the headmaster of the school to get help and he opened a portal to her home city which was being destroyed by my character’s patron. Suddenly, my patron got sucked into the sky without any explanation. My DM then turns to me and says I’ve lost all my warlock levels and had to choose a new class! He stood there smiling at me waiting for my answer. He was surprised when I said my character killed herself and then I quit the campaign. He quit DMing this campaign after this because he “got bored”. So I ask this of you judges, was I wrong to be miffed and should have waited to see where the cool storyline he supposedly had planned went or did I have every right to be upset? I await your humble ruling. PS sorry if this confusing. I had to condense a lot.

Polyphemess

To the most honorable Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and Jasper if he really needs to be involved i guess. A few years ago I was running my first campaign. Two of my players had been caught trying to sneak into a hotel via fire escape by the front desk manager while then rest of the players decided to hide and observe. A few hijinks involving self immolation and a failed intimidation roll later, the hotel manager turned to run away and call the cops. That's when one of my hidden players tried to cast Charm Person on the fleeing hotelier, who succeeded the saving throw. I began to narrate the hotel manager turning to look at where the spell came from, but the player interrupted me to remind me they were hidden. I responded that while they *had* been hidden, they had revealed themselves by casting a spell. They argued, saying that since the spell failed, it should have gone unnoticed and that the whole point of "social spells" is to be able to cast them unnoticed. An argument and a few clenched asshole DM decisions later and I ended up refunding them the spellslot and resetting the scene back to before the spell was cast, informing the table that in the future NPCs would notice if they were targeted by spells unless something like subtle spell was used. The player was still not satisfied and continued to argue for the rest of the evening until we had to pack up for the evening. Years later and with better friends, I look back on that night and worry, should NPCs notice when someone tries to enchant them, or was my player right to say that the whole point of "social spells" is to be able to subtly manipulate people without them noticing. I humbly accept what ever verdict the court decides to levy, I only ask that you allow me to be aware if it even happened at all

Dan Healey

To the Hot Supreme Crit Justices and the not so bad himself Bailiff Josh, I present the Case of the Blue balls PVP My DM told us a while back that he had a fun PVP idea for our group of 6 PCs. He told us we should come up with lvl 20 characters for "coleseum style" PVP, not our actual characters so we could be any race and any class we want. In the following months, he hounded us to finish our character builds and be ready. The day of it, we started at noon and finally at 5:30pm, he had our avatars enter the arena and introduce ourselves and then he revealed a Tiamat figure on the table and said, " I don't think PVP really works well in 5e and I didn't have time to really prep so you guys are going to fight Tiamat instead." No one was stat'd out for a legendary CR 30 fight, we prepped for PVP. It went poorly, and worse, the whole time, he was shit talking us about how bad we were doing and about our character choices. After 45 gruelling minutes, he said, "Ok, Tiamat disappears and I guess you can fight each other now. Half the party was either already dead or almost dead. The guy who won only won because he was farthest away and rarely got attacked. Once it was over everyone pretty much got their stuff and said, "well, it's getting late..." And bolted. Judges, were we wronged for not getting our satisfied PVP or should we have planned better for a Tiamat fight we didn't know about. I thank and trust your judgement. PS we were in person because it was the DMs birthday, so no one wanted to complain but no one stayed for cake.

CARGO REAPER

Case of the ghosting dm. May it please the esteemed judges and Jake the Dawg. I was a first time player a couple years ago and found a group on roll 20 to play a curse of strahd campaign. With the dm’s own “special changes”. He promised that it would be super fun and a good first campaign for me. Then we started and let me tell you, it was a horrible experience. We had a kid in the party who didn’t know how to use either discord or roll 20 or how any type of combat proceeded. Which is fine I’m a new player too. But if you still don’t know a single thing about it by the third session that’s a problem. We also had someone who would constantly be on their phone and we’d have to wait for them to catch up to what we’d been doing when not their turn. Not just in combat but for everything. One time we even got on and he was playing another video game during the session and told us he had to wait to do his turn in combat after his game ended. After that session we planned another. The morning of the session, I woke up to find that the dm kicked everyone out of the discord and disbanded the roll 20 campaign and blocked everyone from messaging him on discord and roll 20. He then posted in the official dnd discord looking for a group for curse of strahd campaign. Should the dm have told us that our group wasn’t working out and that our party needed to end or was he right to ghost this insane player group? Ps. I joined another group playing a Star Wars campaign and am having a blast. So this first experience didn’t ruin dnd for me :)

MissDeBear

To the Honorable Justices Murphy, Axford and Tanner. And to the Honor-status-pending Bailiff Jake. I bring to you the case of “The Fun Idea Players Won't Let Die.” I'm going to start this off by saying I don't DM often and have mad respect for anyone that does it regularly. However the one game a year I do DM is a NADDPOD inspired FeyChella game. Think Trinyvale modern-magic setting at a FeyWild music festival. The players play the security for the festival and have to deal with the whacky scenarios that would arise during such an event. It's been a big hit since the first time I've done it and my friends look forward to it every year. I've even run it for several groups since everyone loves the idea. This year would be the 5th annual game. However the initial group I wrote it for disbanded this year (people moving away and schedule conflicts) and I'm feeling more and more like my FeyChella run is officially over. This has not stopped anyone from asking me about it. When I say I might not do it this year the reactions range from understanding to indignant. One person in particular, who I'll call M, tried to guilt me because they already had a character concept nailed down for this year. After being bombarded by M with questions that ultimately summed up to “why would you ruin this fun thing for us?” I offered the idea to him. If they wanted to write their own game in this scenario I created, I'd love to see what they came up with! I was greeted with more upset and how he couldn't just “steal my idea like that” and how “I should just get over it and run it again this year.” When I mentioned it wasn't truly my idea in the first place, I had you guys to thank, he just ghosted me. So: Should I have not offered the idea at all? Not engaged and let the game end quietly? Or should I just push through? Because while M was the most vocal, I know others will be disappointed as well.

Dench Judy

To the pantheon of the court and their humble little champion, I bring you the dilemma of the “intermittent main character”. I have been playing d&d with my friends since Covid. I originally played but have taken to being the forever DM and I am loving it. However, my first DM moved several hours drive away and said he won’t be able to play the campaign anymore. No issue, we had a great climax for his story where the party saved his mother, beat the bad guy and had some tearful goodbyes. However, he has since started doing this thing where a day before or even the morning of the session, he will announce his triumphant return. He will make an incredibly strong one shot character with a huge backstory or bring his old character back which is always awkward to put into the sessions I already have planned. My players are also annoyed by this as they don’t get the chance to tell their stories, due to him steamrolling his own narrative and surprise lore into the plot. I need your help justices, I try to keep it loose and let everyone have fun. But is accommodating for this main character syndrome too much? I humbly await your judgement.

Jurriaan Los

Hello your honors, great justices Axford, Tanner and Murphy. Also hi there, somehow necessary Bailiff. I humbly present the case of the scared npc. Our party of three are in a campaign that's been steadily going for years. Recently the party has been thrown forward in time and found themselves in a world of overgrown skyscrapers and in a ruined version of the Saudi Arabian 'Mirror Line City' (very cool indeed). On our arrival there we met a friendly npc that helped us on the way for a while until we encountered a group of velociraptors in a 'jungled street' of mostly difficult terrain. The npc was scared and was not prepared to fight. Me as the party cleric felt bad and thought of a way to give him an out before combat ensued. I cast freedom of movement on him and explained that it was okay to run and we would look out for him, I thanked him for his help. Our DM then narrated the npc running straight INTO the pack of feral dinosaurs resulting in him getting attacks of opportunity to the point of near death. My fellow players stared at me in disbelief as if I had meant to do this, and the DM shrugged and said he thought it was strange but let me do it. In my rebuttle a tried to defend myself and had to explain that my assumption was that every sain person would have run back and away from, not towards, certain death. This happened a year ago to this day my table still razzes me over this 'weird call'. Dear judges, was my assuming wrong and should I have been clearer to the npc or has my DM murdered an innocent bystander and skillfuly passed the blame onto the well meaning cleric. I humbly await your judgement.

Kyle Reyes

1 in 400 Dear esteemed crit Justices, and the pretty cool bailiff Jake. I humbly request an audience to try myself before the court. Was I wrong? At the beginning of my campaign, one of my players teamed up with a powerful NPC to fight a revenant, becoming one of its targets as they vanquished him. Time passes, they are level 5, and I wanted to bring this antagonist back to scare him. I run a homebrew forward campaign where my players get extra booms, and I wanted to set some extra stakes in this combat. The stakes: every time the fighter was reduced to 0 HP, the revenant took 1d4 HP off the fighters max HP. The fighter then returned to half HP and continued fighting. The fight started. The revenant took down the fighter and his max HP reduced by 3. My players were astonished, but the vibes were good. Cut to the next round, and a different player disguised himself as the powerful NPC that took him down at the beginning of the campaign. I ruled that the revenant would keep attacking the fighter, but would make those attacks at disadvantage. And then it happened. I rolled, and what did I see? Two shining 20s staring back at me. Never have I been more distressed at seeing a crit. This attack ended up slashing 4 more HP from the fighters total, bringing him down 7 all told. They quickly dispatched the revenant after that, but I can't shake a subtle feeling of unease. Was I wrong to make such a harsh combat? Should I lock those dice away? I lay myself before the court.

Austin Gordon

I humbly beseech the justices and that bay leaf jerk y'all keep mentioning. I present the case of "The on the Clock Cleric". I've been DMing an online game for almost 3 years now. The players all have busy schedules, so we try to make time for a game on average every 2 weeks. Recently we've been going through a big wizard's tower dungeon for the end of an arc. However, sessions have been infrequent lately, largely because our cleric is a new lawyer and works long hours irl. Everyone has times when their schedule gets busy and makes planning a session hard. The issue is, he (the cleric player) will mute himself and not have his webcam on for stretches, and when it's his turn he unmutes and says "sorry, I was getting some work done". There was a particular time a couple sessions ago when he said he had to respond to a work email and he'd brb, and he proceeded to go afk for 45 minutes or more. I tried to confront the busy player and said "Hey man, if work has you slammed lately we can figure out a side quest for your Cleric to do" but he just responded "No, it's fine, I can keep playing!" For reference, our sessions start at 7:30pm and run for about 3 hours, so I don't think I'm asking for much. I know online games are harder to keep focus on since everyone has their own computer, so I try to be forgiving if people are distracted or don't fully pay attention during other players turns in combat. It's been an issue for a few months now. Should I be grateful that our cleric can make time at all, or have a more serious talk about his commitment to the campaign? I await your ruling (just lemme finish this email real fast)

Wagsdude

To the resplendent judges and the janitor Jake, I bring forth the case of Mold Earth and cube sizes. I was sharing DM stories with a fellow DM friend who is currently running an Eberron-inspired homebrew campaign with other players. The DM told me a story about how one of his players used the Mold Earth cantrip to destroy the thick stone walls surrounding his jail cell to move into another cell where a powerful monk was being kept in isolation. He did not expect them to meet this monk so soon, and it drastically changed the trajectory of the plot. We both agreed this was awesome and were excited to see how the story would change as a result. I did however ask if a simple cantrip like Mold Earth was capable of performing such a feat. What is stopping someone from just excavating new tunnels through your dungeon crawl with a level 0 spell? As we dug deeper (no pun intended) into this conversation, I asked what the heck does 5-foot cube mean. Does it mean a 5x5x5ft cube which is 125 feet cubed, or a cube whose volume comes out to 5 feet cubed? The first is drastically larger than the other. Neither of us are mad and we both think the use of Mold Earth was cool in this situation. We are just curious now, so I decided screw it let the experts figure it out for us. Thank you, kind judges and thank you Jake for keeping the courtroom spotless.

gab

may it please the effervescent judges and the hold on spider monkey coded baliff. playing a one shot with my long-term party. after our ranger was hit by some sort of curse of madness by another pc (because murder mystery where we were told by the DM that there would be no pvp and we could trust the other PCs but that was just a lie tee hee) he started attacking us. To contain the situation, I cast polymorph on him, he failed the save and turned into a rabbit. On his next turn, he asked if my player would have any weapons in sight. I said yes, my dagger at my side, so he ran at the dagger (as a rabbit), took enough damage to break the polymorph, and continued his turn as the ranger again. Judges I beg - is this not b a n a n a s bananas???? I argued that as a rabbit he would not know that taking damage would break the spell, but as he's our regular DM and the one shot DM isn't as experienced, she said it was a fine way to break the polymorph. I contained my sulk for the rest of the session but hold a grudge to this day!!!!

Charmie

To the righteous justices, and that guy who I think was on 8 Bit Book Club once? I submit to you this case from an online campaign I was involved in a few years ago, which still frustrates me to this day. I was playing Path of the Totem Warrior Barbarian, which includes the ability to cast Speak with Animals as a ritual at level 3. At one point on our travels, we encountered some horses at the roadside that were freaking out. I decided to cast Speak with Animals to ask the horses what was going on, however the DM ruled that "animals can't speak" and that all I could get was a sense of how they felt. He then said I could tell that they were very scared - this was pretty obvious without the spell. We ended up being attacked by harpies, which were what had scared the horses. I pointed out that having Speak with Animals was a subclass feature, that there had been no mention of it not working in this world, and that I would have created my character differently if I had known this ability would be rendered useless. The DM would not relent, and I spent the rest of the campaign never trying to talk to animals again. Eventually I left the campaign for a number of reasons, including my nerfed character. However, I still wonder if the DM had any standing to rule that a spell did not work in his world, especially AFTER character creation? Should I have tried to negotiate something to replace my lost class feature, or was my only recourse to do as I did and silently steam while my ability went to waste? I await your judgement.

JC

To the pretty cool justices and the bailiff cake, I bring to you the case of the surprise player. I was running a fairy tale campaign inspired by Eldermourne and Never After with 5 players. However, one session, the last session had six players. My friend, let's call him Jake, arrived to my house, uninvited, unannounced, with a character sheet and minis. Not wanting to turn him away, I invited him in and he joined. His character did not fit the vibe at all, solely attempted to flirt with and hook up with NPCs, and also when he got bored, he began loudly dropping his metal water bottle on my soft wood table, nearly denting it. I finally had to ask to leave which he did sulkily. Justices... Please tell me what I did was ok. PS. We are all adults... Including Jake

Extremely High Elf

To the honorable Justices and Murph's very best friend, Jake. Today I lay my case at your door to ask for judgment. I'm DM'ing an 80's Las Vegas biker gang themed campaign. My PC's are undercover with a biker gang who are determined to summon an elder God. Recently, they were taken to the summoning circle and one of my players (a changeling Sorcerer) decided to use prestidigitation to destroy part of this ritual. I had them make a sleight of hand check which they failed. They were caught and got into a huge fight with the biker cultists, nearly dying. I was pulled aside by this players spouse later and told I was railroading the story and should have made the DC lower. It was DC 25 to alter a summoning circle in front of a bunch of fanatics. I dunno. I accept all punishments. Please. Punish me Murph. I'll beg.

Siobhan

Justices of the highest crit in the land and Suffolk County’s disbarred superior crit judge Jack, I come to seek the crit’s verdict on a potential capital punishment case: should my campaign receive the death penalty? I DM a homebrew for a group of friends and recently their hunt for a merchant who’d been peddling cursed, mind-altering artifacts led them to a secret night market beneath an ancient shipyard. Our druid insisted on splitting off to follow the ranger’s wolf companion on her scout of the market’s perimeter— anticipating that any investigation of the market would trigger some plot events, I decided to first resolve the rest of the group’s decision to go do some light shopping.* When we returned to the druid, who’d sat silently through the other scenes, he launched into a narration about how he, still in elf form, fucked the wolf next to one of the stalls in the market and, upon finishing, pulled out with such flourish that he knocked a potion of growth off a nearby table which hit him and caused him to become nine feet tall. He was immediately upset when I told him he actually had to roll for any of that to successfully happen and began to argue passionately when I set some relatively high DCs (the ranger is the druid's real life partner and gave him permission to try to fuck their wolf but left setting difficulty to me). I tried to explain that the wolf, though smarter than a wild animal, was not awakened, was in an unfamiliar space, had explicitly been put on alert for danger, and did not know the druid (the ranger had switched to beastmaster at the start of the session, this was the wolf’s first 5 minutes of game time) but when voices started to get raised I relented and lowered the DC to a 15 animal handling check so we could just move on. At this point I clearly communicated that none of this was fun for me, this is something I wasn’t comfortable narrating, and that I wasn’t having a good time. Nonetheless the druid persisted, getting a 3 on a luck check for a precariously perched potion of growth to be in bumping distance, and subsequently failing stealth and persuasion checks to a) not get caught fucking the wolf in the middle of a crowded market and b) not piss off everyone around them by fucking the wolf in the middle of a crowded market. Market security came and rather than engaging in combat the druid chose to spend 3 rounds fucking the wolf to completion— by the time the ranger came and was able to diffuse things, security had taken the druid below 10HP. Shortly thereafter when the rest of the party attempted to detain a shady man who they’d seen speaking with the suspect merchant (triggering the combat I had originally intended for the session) the druid then spent 4/6 rounds wildshaped as a rat and trying to “hide in the wolf’s pussy or asshole.” This unbalanced combat as he didn’t do any damage until the last few rounds and never healed himself or any of his party; I had to cut a second round of security guards to avoid a TPK. The session ended soon after and while the table as a whole found the beastiality really funny and were supportive of the druid, I really didn’t have much fun. I don’t want to be a buzzkill DM that doesn’t let players do things that they think are funny or entertaining & I want everyone to be able to tell the story that they are inclined towards, but I was genuinely really sad that none of the plot progression I was excited about happened because we spent 3.5 hours on wolffucking and resulting combat. We don’t get to play that often and I’d been really looking forward to having some narrative payoff to propel us into the next phase of the plot. A lot of these players (druid and ranger included) are pretty new to TTRPGs and have that fresh goofy goober energy which I think is a big factor in what they find fun at the table, but it doesn't feel like it's worth me doing hours and hours of homework and homebrewing with the goal of collaborative storytelling if the only story my friends want to collaborate on is furry erotica. I've already put a lot of work into this setting and would hate to see it go to waste, especially because my friends do seem to enjoy it, but I feel like I don’t want to keep going if I’m just going to get steamrolled by bits. So I ask the crit: has Dice Christ sent me these horny noobs to make me lighten up and accept that sometimes a campaign is just going to be about wolf (or dragon) pussies? Or is he trying to teach me that sometimes quitters do win because that's the only way to escape from the sunk cost fallacy? I eagerly await your judgement. *The druid wasn’t the only issue I had that session; when the other players were shopping they found a bunch of items I had homebrewed for them based on stuff they’d mentioned wanting (ie hybrid boxing glove/brass knuckles, a vest made of jewel beads that had dex and charisma buffs, a seeker dart with clockwork beetle attributes)— but they mainly just complained that they didn’t like the physical descriptions or thought items were too expensive (nothing cost more than the players had on them and several players and NPCs are WEALTHY wealthy with money in the bank). Just kind of sucks to build magic items someone specifically asks for and then have them at best react with indifference and call it overpriced.

Cadimilius The Consumed

May it please the courts and the grossly indifferent bailiff: the case of the feral fucking dog I DM for a homebrew 5e game set in a post apocalyptic wasteland. One player, Mark (who’s only real character trait 7+ sessions in is DERAILING the game) had encountered an eyeless, skinless mutant dog. I described the dog as feral. Mark wanted to roll an animal handling check to see if he could “tame” this mutant, to which I reminded him that it was “feral and also an abomination”. He persisted, and I let him roll, he rolled a Nat 20. Before I could tell him that instead of the beast attacking him, it simply runs off, he approached and attempted to PET the damn thing. I then narrated how it bit his hand off and the rest if the party had to do several rolls to keep him stable until they got back home. This caused mark to freak the fuck out, arguing that his Nat 20 should have earned him a pet. This argument ultimately ended the session early. Esteemed judges, was I wrong to deny his Nat 20, or was he a pissbaby? I await your judgement

LonkRonk

To the honorable and simply gorgeous justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and the pretty-cool-I-suppose bailiff Jace, I present the case of firm resurrection. I am running my first 5e campaign set in my own world where the seasons are locations and every god is a super rad dragon. In my last session, one of my players’ characters died due to a death ray from a beholder. Another player tried to make a deal with a potentially evil patron to bring her back, and I tried to steer her in that direction as well. After a Nat 20 roll on a religion check in the afterlife limbo, her god sent their missing cleric to revive her. This was all good and fine in the moment, and ultimately the player (also my wife) decided to have her character come back. After the session as we were driving home, she brought up that she was a bit unhappy with her character coming back and had a new character lined up already, and mildly and lovingly accused me of railroading the story and the players. I told her that the other players wanted her to come back, she rolled a Nat 20 religion to contact her god, and most of all I didn’t want to have to introduce her FOURTH new character this campaign (keep in mind they just hit level 10, and her other characters did not die). Ultimately it all worked out and she’s changing directions for her character, but I still feel guilty. Judges, was I too firm in bringing her character back to life, thus doing the dreaded DM action of railroading the story? Or was I right to not want to bring in a new character again? I humbly await your judgement.

Daniel B

If it may please the court! To the honourable justices and the equally honourable bailiff, I bring you the case of the undersold risk of death. I play in a game with my 3 siblings. My older brother is the DM. Over 2 years ago, at the start of the campaign he told us outside of city walls at night is dangerous and full of horrors. That first year of the campaign the focus on my character was trying to free an NPC comrade, Sir Aiden, from prison before he was executed. Our party pulled off a lot of challenges and we successfully freed him! Shortly after, our party was forced to temporarily part from Sir Aiden, due to an urgent side quest, with him leaving to another town just 10 miles away and him setting out in the morning. We planned for us to catch-up. Once the side quest was completed I asked if we could make our way to meet with Sir Aiden and my brother DM said "yeah... If he made it there alive." He then said that he told us at the start of the campaign that anywhere outside of the walls are dangerous. I protested and said he described the journey as low risk and didn't elude at all about a risk to Sir Aiden. Also Sir Aiden voiced no concern with splitting up. My DM was unmoved and said "it will come down to the rolls". I ask the honourable justices, was I wrong to forget the warning given over a year prior or was my brother wrong to fail to elude to the risk to Sir Aiden? Does Sir Aiden deserve an off screen death after a year of trials to save his life? I humbly await your verdict. P.S. we still don't know the fate of sir Aiden!

Erin H.

To the honorable and deserving judges Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and also nepo baby Jake, I bring to you the case of the totally avoidable TPK. In my debut campaign set in a classic fantasy world with a zombie apocalypse twist caused by a powerful necromancer villain, one player secretly served the villain and planned to betray the party. Despite dropping hints along the way, the betrayal wasn't revealed until a brutal battle left only the traitor and one other player standing. The traitor held an unconscious PC hostage, demanding the remaining conscious player accompany them to the villain's lair. Unexpectedly, the conscious player refused, accepting the consequences. The traitor proceeded to kill each unconscious player one by one, with the conscious player and affected players accepting their fate. When only the traitor and one conscious player remained, the latter opted to confront the traitor despite being severely weakened. Despite a truly valiant effort on the part of the remaining PC, the encounter ended predictably, with the last standing player meeting their demise at the hands of the traitor. I felt horrible, as did the turncoat, who hadn't intended to bring about a TPK at all, but simply move the story along. Despite the other players' assurances that the twist was fun and satisfying and they didn't mind rolling new characters, after a bit of discussion we all agreed to retcon the entire thing as it was very late in the campaign and I did not think all new characters 2 sessions from the final battle would be very narratively satisfying. I feel like I went wrong somewhere, and to this day I find myself wondering if there is something I could have done differently. Justices, should I have stuck with the grim TPK path, or was I right to chock it up to my own inexperience and go with the retcon?

Craig

May it please the esteemed Justices and J$, I bring you a case of wrongful death. I ran a campaign for my friends of 15+ years, one player was a warforged warlock who had escaped a mind flayer ship. He was disguiseing himself as a human while on the lamb, the party was suspicious but unaware of the truth. The mind flayer threat loomed in the campaign and after a tough combat things came to a head. While traveling on a 15ft tall elk the party demanded the truth. The warforged, rather than do a classic reveal, instead cast disguise self to look like a mind flayer. The party immediately attacked and I called for initiative to keep things orderly. The warforged was knocked out in one hit. I asked if they stopped his body from falling off the elk, they said no. He fell and lost a death save from the damage, his turn was next and he rolled a nat 1 instantly dying. The player feels this death was unjustified, the rest of us feel he should not have made himself look like a mind flayer and then roll a nat 1. Where does justice fall on the matter?

Conn Eremon

To the tripartite vox fortuna of Dice Christ:. I have been branded with a most terrible curse because of my sin. I can never succeed on a death save. This started in 2020, when a player in my game began running their own game. I very excitedly rolled up a tiefling bard named Watcher. At level 2, a bold action on my part left Watcher unconscious. We all rationalized that I could survive one round before rescuing. It is then that I uttered the offending words: "What I'm hearing is, I cannot die." A single successful attack from an enemy and a Nat 1 death save later, Watcher breathed his last breath. It was merely the beginning of a curse that has not wavered since. My PCs all must be saved immediately. If I roll enough death saves, they will die. I am now on my third PC since Watcher, and even she has died. The rest of the party had to fulfill a quest for Elminster himself to bring her back. I never used to believe in dice superstitions, but that certainty has been shaken. I don't want my PCs to live forever, I just want them to have a chance. I throw myself upon your tender mercies, and give my oath that I shall complete the penitence you deem necessary.

Nyx

To the honorable justices and the bailiff who probably deserve a break from razzing but won’t ever get one. I present to you the case of the stabby not so bard, bard. I run a post apocalyptic, hombrewed 5e game in a cyberpunk future inspired by Horizon Zero Dawn, and Fallout with several of my close friends. This game has been incredible and they are now level 10 with wonderfully overpowered items leading to epic encounters with massive mechanical monstrosities. Here lies the problem. One of my friends is playing a an eloquence bard named Jeb. He does not use any of his abilities and almost exclusively stabs things. He doesn’t use bardic inspiration, he has cast maybe 10 spells throughout the campaign, he has no healing spells (admittedly fair), he doesn’t use his poisoner feat or any of his items. I made a minor feats system, that works like pathfinder, with over 150 feats, and he’s hasn’t even chosen feats. He is severely underpowered. If Jeb hits in a fight he is doing 1d8+3 a turn at level 10 making him not super effective next to the monk, ranger, and cleric turning enemies in to scrap metal. Noticing his play style, I asked if he would like to change class and be a fighter, paladin, hex blade, swords bard, swashbuckler or any class that’s charismatic and stabby and he responded with a “nah I’m good” I even hombrewed a powerful a sword that incentivizes him to use bardic inspiration and spells to so that he can be better at stabbing and he still doesn’t do any bard stuff. He has even died because he rushed a boxing robot that lies to drown people (and was later revivified) because of this play style! I feel bad for not balancing encounters taking him into account, and it’s difficult to give him cool moments when he does 4 damage, but I don’t want to kill the party by balancing for Jeb because he doesn’t use his abilities. I also don’t want to make my friend feel bad when everyone else is making big cool moves and he isn’t. Im not going to tell him how to have fun and I love having him around but this hurts my brain! I ask the court is this wild or am I just not on Jebs level? Ps. Some extra details out of game details : I ran a previous campaign with this same friend where he played a paladin and he used all his spells in class features This campaign has been going on for a year and a half and I taught him how to play over two years ago Out of game he still chooses spells on his level ups and is excited about new abilities he gets

Cas Marie

Honorable justices and Mr. Crabster himself, I bring to you the case of the wizard vs the dm. I play a bladesinger wizard in my good friend’s campaign. In our recent game we fought an Aboleth that has the ability to charm creatures. Our dm was able to charm me and had me drop my bladesong, mage armor, and my concentration on haste that I had on our monk. I can’t see anything that says the dm can’t make me drop all of my buffs… but it took rounds to get all of those effects up, and it feels meta that this beast would know I had all of these effects up. I didn’t argue it in game, but I was bummed once the session ended as I wasn’t able to do much for the rest of the combat. Am I being a salty wizard? Is this worth bringing up? Or is my dm just pissed I can get my AC to 21.

Jack M

Dear Justices this one is simple. How punishable is asking to have the following things on my character while attending a party disguised as a servant: My shield, I was chastised A Rapier, Also Chastised Immovable Rod?

Marmot

Feyr justices of the most just court in all the planes, and also j-a-u-n-k (let's spell his name so he doesn't know we're talking about him), I submit to you a crunchy tale of the player who wished to break the game. Our party is now around level 17, which already is replete with potentially game breaking mechanics, but one of our usual problem players keeps trying to assert that there legendary item (dm gave us all early on, then they level up as we go) casts a counter spell that can't be counterspelled. They'd often talk about it after a session, bragging how they could combine all of these spells and counter spell anything that came at them in a way that they could just steal our quest item and break the whole game and end our campaign. Eventually, the PCs and our DM had to make clear that that's not how it works, both in Jeremy Crawford's ruling on items and at this DM's table. Ruling was that counterspell could be counterspelled even if from an item. But they keep bringing it up as if it's still a feature that it never was, seemingly trying to reassert this nonpower. Who may the justices favor in this matter? The needling PC gilding their own lily, the DM wrangling PCs they've enabled to be OP all along, and / or we along them, the folks just here to have fun, to quote (or misquote) Mavrus?

Brandon

Dearest Supreme crit justices and the lowly yet awesome bearded man toy, Jake, I humbly beseech your wisdom and ruling for a case most toxic. I played in a campaign with two new players, boyfriend and girlfriend, and the DM who was a long time friend. The boyfriend, let's call him Chad, played a rogue and went all-in for the stereotypical "not team-oriented and I can just sneak and stab my way through the game solo" type of rogue. We were in a series of caves, and Chad split from the party to scout ahead. He proceeded to the next room, then the next, and then next, far beyond the party's ability to hear or see or provide any support. Chad was then ambushed by a swarm of small flying predatory creatures and he died. From what I understand, the DM privately told Chad he might not be a good fit for the campaign and naturally, he dragged me into the mix to rule on whether my DM (and long time friend) had screwed him and unfairly targeted him. I tried to remain neutral but point out some of the things he did that led to his untimely demise. Ultimately, both Chad and his girlfriend rage quit and the campaign ended right there. I beseech thee, oh wise and voluptuous justices and Jake, please bring closure to my mind on this topic. Was it wrong for Chad to have died so abruptly? Should I have sided with the DM or even Chad? How does one curtail that particular brand of rogue? I shall except any verdict so long as I can get closure. Thank you <3

Greg D

Esteemed Justices and the meddling bailiff Joc I want to say. My friends and I play a bi weekly 5e campaign. One week I knew I was not going to be able to make the next session. We have a rule that if you can’t make it the DM turns you into a NPC and plays for you so you still get experience and you stay at the same level as everyone else. (The dm is my bff) At the end of the session I (what I thought was joking) told the DM to use me as a meat shield for everyone to use so we could get out of the fight we were about to get into. Well I come to find out he took me seriously and my character full on died while taking the majority of the damage for everyone. While not truly upset should I have clarified that I was being sarcastic and not serious. It was early in the campaign I just made a new character and that was this guys cousin.

Gabriel Mauch

To the most honorable justices and conniving bailiff Jafar. I played in an Aladdin one shot as an orc sword bard named Bludwig. The party wqs sent into a cave to retrieve a Genie's lamp. During a difficult final fight, our Kobold pizza chef sorcerer Pep Patoni was killed. When the genie came out of the lamp and offered us a single wish, (having just watched the movie with my toddler) I said I didn't think he was powerful enough to get us out of the cave that was now crumbling down upon us. So leaving Pep Patoni dead, the genie transported us to safety. Then, the DM said that I used the party's one wish. I tried to argue that I didn't wish it and that I was going to wish for Pep Patoni to be revived upon tricking the Genie. I'm not mad because it kicked of Bludwig's villain arc when he stole Pep Patoni's grandmother's meatball recipe, but still was I wronged? Am I owed a wish?

Lou

To the refined Justices of the Supreme Crit and also the bestial bailiff jake, I submit the case of the Thunderwave Heard Within 10 Feet . A while back I was inspired by this show to finally get into playing D&D. I gathered my girlfriend and two of our friends to run the starter set Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. I was chosen to DM and we went about the process of choosing characters and prepping for our wondrous adventure. It's important to mention that this was not the group's first combat encounter. With that in mind, I present to you my problem: a stubborn friend whose bard was packed in a small hallway with his other two party members. On his turn, he wanted to cast Thunderwave on a Fume Drake that was giving his party the business. I took a look at the spell description and let him know that the creature was out of the spell's range, but if he did it anyway he would definitely hit both of his party members. I informed him that he could move to try and get the Fume Drake from a safer place, but he insisted that as a bard he would be able to extend the reach of any sound effect. I made it clear that this was not the case and reiterated that if he cast the spell where he was standing he would certainly miss his target and his fellow adventurers could very well perish. He cast the spell. The other two party members failed their saves and went down. The Fume Drake promptly womped the already injured bard and my entire party was down. Furtnately, this module has a failsafe for bards who get their party killed. An important npc is supposed to come and save the party. This felt a little out of left field to me because our player characters didn't care about this NPC yet, so I had a little Kobold named Blepp drag them into a druid circle that had been healing Myconids when the party first walked in. It was getting late so we decided to end the session there, but as we were wrapping up my party said they didn't like that the bard killed them and wanted to retcon that the bard never did anything wrong. I told them that I did not like the idea but would consider it because we were all new. We haven't had a chance to get back into this campaign yet, so my question is: should I retcon away the bard's horrible decision because I was in the wrong for not better guiding my Player Children, or should they be forced to sleep in the bed made by the bashful bard.

Ev Schmev ✨️

To the honorable and blessed Dice Christ Chosen; to those that roll Initiative on High: I have a confession 😔🙏🎲 It was my first long-form campaign and we were due to wrap up just before the holidays. Everyone had VERY tight schedules going into the holiday season, and we were to have our last two sessions just before everyone was busy for about 3 months. I had some plot stuff to wrap up, and of course the epic BBEG battle, but I had it all planned to fit perfectly in two sessions. That's when disaster struck: someone had a conflict come up and we had to cancel one of the last two sessions. I had only one session to wrap everything up, and run the epic BBEG battle. I went to work cutting out what I could but I knew I was still way too pressed for time. In the end, it was like our gnarly arch-devil BBEG was on fast-forward. I was even delivering his lines sped up, and I doubled the player's damage so the combat would go faster 😭 In my haste, I didn't think to double the BBEG'S damage to the players (but some players did still go down). In the end, all my friends appreciated the flexibility to accommodate their schedules, and they said they had fun. But I hate that we had to speed-run the BBEG battle finale, and wonder if it would've been worth it to wait three months to do just one battle. The doubling damage thing especially haunts me; do you think Dice Christ can ever forgive me? P.S. I hate the show and I'm not a fan (remember that bit? How far back is too far back for a callback...?)

doctor worm

to the benevolent and forgiving cardinals and the little mouse living in the pipe organ who keeps eating all the communion wafers - did i commit an egregious sin against dice christ in rejecting a blessing?? a couple months back we were doing character creation for a new campaign im in (im playing a dex based moon elf twilight cleric!) we went back and forth for a while on what method to use for making stats - some people had gripes with manual rolling (like 4d6, reroll ones and drop the lowest), but others HATED point buy and personally standard array is my least favorite. we talked about some unconventional methods too, but we ended up settling on manual rolled. my dm was honestly the biggest hater, since he said that it always makes some players feel underpowered and he knows that in other campaigns, some of our friends have just rerolled until they got what they wanted. it was totally fine with me though, because i love the chance of getting a really shitty low number somewhere in my stats! i think it’s more fun that way! anyway, character creation day came around and we were all rolling stats together at the table, just so none of us were sneaky about it. i asked if i would be allowed, for one of my stats, to drop the highest instead of the lowest number, & my dm looked baffled and appalled but said i could do what i wanted. i rolled my first few normally, since i definitely didn’t want to end up with 8s across the board and a 6. around my 4th roll, i rolled pretty shitty (even with the reroll ones method) and i thought it would be fun to just drop that one’s highest number. so my total for that stat ended up being 5! and then.. i rolled really, really bad for my last two stats. i ended up with an eight and a seven, even when i was rerolling ones and dropping the lowest. in the end the stats were fine, i got some decently high ones in the beginning and my bonuses ended up making my character less grim and terrible than i thought it would be, but i do worry that i have put myself in rocky waters with our benevolent d.c! did i lose his favor when i rejected the blessings of my d6 rolls? has he abandoned me forever?!?!

Christina S

May it please the magnanimous Justices, and tickle the snivelling baby Jake, I bring the case of the “Big Bad Ex-Girlfriend”. I was DMing a campaign for my roommates, along with one of said roommates girlfriend at the time. They unfortunately broke up, and we had to take an extended break from playing to figure out what to do. Our path of the grave cleric (who collected kidneys from all his kills) wanted to slaughter and kill her character, as a form of healing for our brokenhearted friend. The barbarian wanted me to make her character the BBEG of the campaign, forgoing all of my frankly epic plans. The ex boyfriend, a rouge, has kept oddly quiet through all these discussions. I obviously shut down all of these ludicrous ideas, because I’m still very good friends with the ex girlfriend and know she would be devastated to hear her elf Druid had been massacred. I come before the glorious crit to ask: was I wrong to deny my Boy the chance to process his feelings through brutal simulated murder??? I kneel before the bench with utmost reverence, and accept whatever ruling may come.

Ollie

To the Honourable Judges Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and the bailiff Easy-Jake Oven I am a very new DM and I've just started DM-ing for some friends who have either never played dnd before or only played once. As a new DM I asked my players if they could choose races and classes from the base game, as I was more familiar with them and could help the new players understand their abilities and make sure they were using them correctly. To cut a long story short, I have ended up with a party that has an Aarakocra, a Tabaxi, a Drow-Elf reskinned as a vampire, and a half-Orc barbarian. Basically, the more experienced player wasn't happy playing only base-game races and wanted more 'creative freedom,' setting a bad example for the less experienced players who suddenly decided they also wanted 'creative freedom'. I allowed this because my players seemed so excited about their new options, but it was done on the proviso that the PCs all had to be on top of their own feats and abilities because I wasn't super familiar with the races they picked. However, during our first combat, the Tabaxi forgot that she had 'Feline Agility' and did not use it to get into striking range of a spider who later dealt her some damage. After the combat, she realised her mistake and (angrily) told me that I should have known what abilities she had because I was the DM and that I should have reminded her to use her feline agility. I kind of see where she's coming from, as dnd can be a very overwhelming when you first start, but I did specifically say that everyone needed to be on top of their own shit. So I ask the court, am I as the DM supposed to help my PCs use their abilities? And should I have put my foot down during character creation and insisted everyone play elves. I humbly await your learned judgment. - Ollie

Ace Faeth

To the ever gracious and righteous justices, and that little bearded fellow in the corner, Juben. I present the case of the DM hungry player. Several years ago when I was first getting into D&D I dragged several friends along in the process, and as the only person with any experience became the DM. This wasn't my own decision, but I fell into it and wrote my own campaign and I was really proud of it. However a couple sessions in, one of my players jokes that we could switch, and HE could DM, taking over the story I had worked on. I awkwardly laughed it off but was a bit uncomfortable with it. He then went on to create a different campaign, without talking to anyone, that he expected everyone to be part of, which he would DM. We played a couple sessions, and I'll admit I had fun getting to play, but I was hurt by this as it felt that he was dismissing my campaign to be able to tell his story. I was not alone in my frustration, and in the end both campaigns fizzled out. Was I overly sensitive or was my player rude in creating a different campaign, five sessions into mine? I humbly await your call.

Ashen

To the honorable justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and I guess also to Murph’s DMPC “Jaek.” I present to you the case of the Difficult Druid and the Bleeding Bard. My partner and I have been in a campaign for over two and a half years with four level 8 PCs: a wizard, a monk, a druid, and me, a bard. I should say up top that we are all great friends and there is no bad blood here. Anyway, our dragonborn druid refuses to wild shape, and instead hangs back to use her acid breath or spellcast. Of course, the wizard stays out of melee range and the monk, with over 50 movement, moves out of range each turn, leaving me, the bard, as the easy target. The druid never wild shapes and only uses her acid breath or the spell Wind Wall in every situation. ONLY Wind Wall, every time. To encourage the druid to wild shape, the DM created a home-brew ability for her to wild shape into a young dragon, which the druid has only used once since getting it a year and a half ago. As the only PC up in the mix, I get absolutely rocked. The wizard sometimes takes hits so I don’t have to, and the monk has stopped using evasion to draw hits away. To add insult to injury, we all watched the DND movie together and when the druid in the movie wild shaped, our druid said, “that’s so cool, I wish we had someone in our party who can do that,” to which I responded, “you can turn into a fucking bear.” I prostrate myself before the court and ask if we should get over our tank not tanking or if we should trap our tank in a wild shape a la Tobias from Animorphs. P.S. don’t play, hate the show

2fastBicurious

To the most honorable justices and my burpless brethren the baby bailiff. . . Brad? May it please the court and give you all the most supreme crit. ;) I'd like to submit the case of the quiet Kenku. My table was running a home brew campaign and we were getting close to finding and fighting our BBEG. Our party included a kenku, Crowbar, who played by the mimic rules that he could only repeat words and sounds he had heard before. The BBEG was hidden away on another plane and to get to him, we had to enter a cave full of grueling puzzles and traps to reach a portal. We barely made it through alive. At the end of the cave, our DM announced that we would be silent and communicate only in written form or telepathically, (though no one one in our crew had the message cantrip). We were presented with a written riddle (think "speak friend and enter" style puzzle). Part of the riddle was solving for the answer, the other part was determining who could say the answer. If we answered wrong, or the wrong person spoke we were told the reaction would be TPK bad, and we were very weak already from the cave. We sat around the table passing notes, and determined the answer to the riddle was "Onomotopoeia" and the person to give the answer was a choice between either the youngest member of our party, or the physically smallest member of our party. The problem? Crowbar was both. Crowbar vehemently insisted there was no way he would have heard the word onomotopoeia before and therefore could not speak it. Our DM knew going into this that Crowbar was both the smallest and youngest and seemed to be gleeful about our predicament. After several pleas to both the DM and Crowbar to try to find a loophole we conceded we could not solve the puzzle currently. I suggested we take a long rest, exit the cave, teach Crowbar onomotopoeia, rest again, and come back, as it seemed the only solution. In the process, we ran out of potions on the way out, and on the way back our cleric, the party's only healer, went down, and she failed her death saves. My hexblade warlock attempted to call upon my patron for help without success. In the end only 3 party members of our 6 member crew, including myself and Crowbar made it to the end concious. Crowbar triumphantly said Onomotopoeia and the gate opened. Our session ended feeling empty and hollow. In real life there was a fight after the session. The players expressed we were upset at Crowbar for being so stubborn and at the DM for intentionally putting us in this situation. Crowbar argued that's how his character has always been and we shouldn't expect him to change because of a bad in game situation. The DM argued that we could have been teaching Crowbar words throughout the campaign before this so we wouldn't be here. I said it was an intentionally obscure word and we had no reason to teach it. Our DM laughed at me for being so upset, so I got up and left with the cleric, saying we were going to start a new campaign. Later, Crowbar texted me and said I had overreacted to a simple difficult scenario, and that if that's how I reacted when things didn't go my way, then no one would ever want me in their dnd party. I feel justified in being mad, but wonder if I didn't react too strongly. So I come to the mercy of the court asking, was I wrong to take the Murph response of "find new friends" or was my DM being unreasonable? I humbly await your judgement and accept whatever punishment I may receive.

Jon DNA Music

To the bussin’ justices Waxboard, Trophy, and Chandler, and to Baliff Bubbles, long may he live; I present to you the case of The Boy Who Would Be ‘Elf’. May it please the court: I run a dnd campaign for a friend group of 5 13 year old boys over zoom (I am employed by their parents). We have been playing together once a week for about 7 months in an original world built to match what they find most exciting about fantasy and fiction. We completed the first part of this campaign, ending with their city in the sky falling to the abandoned earth, gracefully setting up the next chapter of the campaign where they would make new characters. Enter (let’s call him) Alex. Alex, once the most mature, helpful, and focused of the boys, comes to our session 0 with an idea. He wanted to play a human who accidentally ended up as one of Santa’s elves, who then moves to Boston Massachusetts to find his biological father after spending time in Hawaii. He wanted to play Buddy the Elf from Elf. At first I thought he was joking, but when I insinuated that I wasn’t taking his idea super seriously, he got very upset. I, as kindly as I could, tried to adapt this character to make sense in any way for our story, but he insisted that his character be buddy the elf to a tee. After about 40 minutes of conversation and being thoroughly perplexed, I call for a break. I then see a what is the most alarming and confusing texts from one of the other boys father. It says, I quote: “I hope you feel good about yourself not letting these kids do what they want on their own dime.” “I mean time. Haha.” We resumed the session and ironed out the other kids characters, all of whom were enthusiastically built into the world. We are scheduled to meet again next week and figure out Alex’s character, so I ask you: What the heck do I do? How can I accommodate Alex while looking out for the experience of the rest of the group? They care so deeply for the story they started. Also, am I misreading this dad’s text? Is he furious at me? Dear god, please help. Thanks!

Kuzon

A CHURCH CONFESSION I prostrate myself before Dice Christ and make this holy confession: For the last few months I have been playing a Warhammer 40k game, a game that primarily uses D100s as opposed to D20s for most rolls. It's my first time playing 40k, and it's also the DM's first time DMing a 40k game, so there have been plenty of mistakes made and learned from. In the last game, I was making an attack roll with my new physical dice as opposed to the discord dice bot that we had all been using previously. My D10 landed on a 3, and my D100 landed on 00, and after a moment of confusion my table (including the DM) determined that I had rolled a 3, a VERY high success in Warhammer terms. The thing is, just an hour earlier the DM rolled for something with his own physical dice, landed on 00, and counted it as 100- a critical failure. No one else brought it up, so I didn't either and I just took the success, but it didn't feel like one and the guilt gnawed at me for the rest of the game.

Mr.Dead

May it please the Great and Terrible Justices and the just a little bit terrible, I guess, Bailiff Jake A while ago in the campaign I run the players went to the Barbarians abandoned home town to collect some residual wild magic from where he unlocked his rage. During this mission they were able to recover and bury his mother's body, and during this impromptu funeral the Paladin asked if he could use the spells Mold Earth (from his druid initiate feat) to make a nice tomb, and Ceremony to give a bit more power to the ritual. I said no because he had prepared different spells than those. He argued that he hadn't cast any new spells since he last switched them around, so it wouldn't really affect anything. I stuck to my gut and we moved on, he seemed a bit disappointed but accepted the ruling right away. Now I find myself wishing I had let him as it would have been a nice roleplay moment at our relatively roleplay light table. Judges, should I have let the paladin cast two spells he technically didn't have prepared for a cool moment, or was I correct in saying he really should stick to his prepared list despite the fact it wouldn't really have broken his spellcasting rules to say he had them the whole time. (PS: He listens to the show and his paladin is inspired by Beverly, also he's my older brother)

ann_the_mann

To the high and mighty justices and the lowly (and lowlier) bailiff, Jaque. I'm currently playing in a campaign with a few friends as Tilda, a gnome circle of stars druid. Last session, our party found themselves trying to save Tilda's mom (a commoner) from a soul shaker. During my party's fight against the soul shaker, my friend who plays an aberrant mind sorcerer name Brain, got frustrated that his mostly psychic powers were not useful against a creature with no mind. So, a bit bored and determined to use his powers he cast suggestion on my character's mom to "be useful and join the fight". I, and everyone else, protested this action, but he did it anyways. My character's mom (a commoner I remind you) was at this moment having a panic attack in the corner of the room, and failed the saving throw against the spell. As such, she got up, with no weapons, no shield, and 6 HP and tried to attack the monster with an unarmed strike (she missed). The monster's turn was immediately after, and it INSTANTLY perma-killed her and trapped her soul. Our battle ended soon after, and so did our session. I, of course, was insanely upset at my friend for killing my character's mom. He, annoyingly, claimed that "he didn't actually kill her, the monster did". I told him that wasn't how that worked, and to roll a new character before our next session because Tilda was going to kill Brain. (Side note- earlier this session Tilda was gaesed into attacking her own team and managed to kill Brain in a single turn, with very little difficulty. So, I'm pretty confident that if it came to PVP Tilda could kick Brain's ass). This happened about a week ago, and my friend still claims that he wasn't to blame for Tilda's mom's death, and should be granted clemency in game. I wholeheartedly disagree. So, justices, I humbly turn to you and ask for your ruling in this matter. Did Brain kill Tilda's mom, and do I have the right to absolutely curbstomp his character next session? Or, should I grant him the mercy he seeks.

Stig

Ahoy to their holinesses and the wee spaniel, Jackson. I have a confession: I was kept late at work (I work at a non-profit, please don't let my selflessness color your judgement), and so joined a virtual session in a bit of a scramble. In doing so (being on the toilet and without any of my play materials), I forgot how a magic item I have worked (Oathbow). I did not give myself advantage on either of my first two attacks against a purple worm. In round 2 of combat - having remembered how the item worked - I decided to give myself eleven accuracy-style double advantage on one of my attacks after regular advantage wasn't enough to hit. I crit. I dealt some mean-ass damage to this worm which we were destined to womp within the round anyway. I don't feel bad. I knew it wasn't going to make a meaningful difference and took the nat 20 as a sign that Dice Christ approved of me letting myself have a little more fun after a really long day at work (at a non-profit). Open to other opinions tho lol. What's He whispering down to y'all?

WhistlePig

Greetings to the most convivial and, might I say, captivating Supreme Crit Justices, as well as Mr. Jacob Penn Cooper Hurwitz, For the consideration of the crit-night society, I present a case of the Misinterpreted Spell: I play a lvl 14 Goliath Barbarian (So unique and exotic, I know….) in our current campaign. The DM is a close work friend from years ago and the other players are his wife and 2 adult children. I haven’t actually played before this campaign but have listened to D&D podcasts for over a decade, so I’ve picked up on a few things. My DM does a great job a lot of the time, but I had an issue one night when we were running “Giants of the Starforge”. During this, our party was taking part in some Tests of Strength in a Monastery to see if we were worthy of their help when we went up against some Fire Giants. During this, was an arena battle against their strongest fighters. In Round 2 of the fight, I found myself trapped in a bubble with an invisible dog, that I couldn’t attack, hitting me for an average of 18 dmg per round. After a couple rounds of this, my DM said “This is an awesome spell combo. I read it online and some guy took a dragon down with it.” He told me the spells were Globe of Invulnerability and Faithful Hound. Having some knowledge of Globe of Invulnerability, I thought that it didn’t seem right. So I looked it up and, to my reading, it doesn’t stop anything physical from entering/exiting it, but only blocks spells. Kind of like the bubble shield from Halo. I quietly waited until my turn came around again and politely brought this up. Even after reading, my DM said “No, it’s a globe of INVULNERABILITY. Nothing can penetrate it.” The other players laughed and called me a Meta-Gaming Rules Lawyer who couldn’t just accept the L. I also think, to spite me, none of them attempted to dispel it. Since it was a fight of no real consequence, I begrudgingly let it go. We got our asses handed to us and we even went an hour over-time. I pretty much did nothing the entire session. So, Supreme Justices, I do beseech thee, was my DM wrong in his interpretation of the spell or am I a pansy ass bitch of a Barbarian who deserved my L and to have my haters feast upon my folly? I graciously accept your judgement on this matter. P.S. Come to find out that the instance of the guy defeating a dragon with the spell combo actually used Wall of Force and not Globe of Invulnerability.

Devin Awe

Oh you who are Immaculately Conceived of Dice Christ himself, I come begging for forgiveness. This incident happened a few years ago and it has haunted me ever since. My players were fighting a crew of mini ghost pirates inside a ship in a bottle. One of the PCs, an Aasimar wizard, was down to zero hp. The ghost captain tried to do a show of force to intimidate the PCs and attacked the wizard. I only wanted to do the two death failures to scare them a little bit, but when I announced the damage, the player announced that he was instantly dead. But I later realized something: I hadn’t announced the type of damage of the ghost’s blow (necrotic) and it was something the Aasimar was resistant to, so he shouldn’t have died from that one hit. Maybe he would have been able to survive the next death save and the party could have healed him. I did tell the player and we were able to agree to move on with a new PC since there was quite a bit that happened in the session after his PC death. On a scale of shoplifting to Sodom and Gomorrah, how egregious was my sin and what must I do for restitution?

Ivy Stocking

I don’t have a case but I wanna say I’m in the same camp as the bemoanably relatable bailiff, I’ve only ever had lucid dreams. I have never had a dream I can’t control, even nightmares.

Matty H

To the Honorable Justices and the (insert # of highlys to mirror Murph's lowlys) Baliff Jake I present the case of The Boss Battle Revivify. Background: My players had an NPC companion who was their boss/friend in their crime syndicate. While trying to take down a rival faction (lead by the industrialist mayor) they took a lot of pulls from the Deck of Many Things. One of the cards, Rogue, causes a NPC of the DM's choice to become hostile towards the character that can't be ended except by anything less than a wish spell or divine intervention. Me, an asshole, decided to make their boss/friend the hostile NPC. Issue: The players went to fight the mayor (Emil), and their former friend/boss (Lorrel) had joined forces with Emil. During the battle, Lorrel was slain (and attacked while down to take any death saves away) but was brought back up by Emil mid battle by Revivify. The players argued that he should have flipped back to their side, but my ruling was death wasn't as strong as Wish or a Divine intervention, so party on. I humbly await your decision on if I was wrong to continue my player's struggle/strife in the boss battle and the aftermath in the campaign.

alpalcolypse

To the funkalicious justices and the frumpy bailiff, Jorbis. I present this case of a possible crime. In one of our many campaigns, my friends and I are all (3 of us) level 4 characters, all spellcasters and all squishy (with my draconic sorcerer being the beefiest). In this session, one of our players (who has endo) had to leave early due to a particularly bad pain day. We will call her Eve. Eve always tells us to keep playing without her, and I usually take on playing as her character as well as my own. Our characters had been traveling and encountered 3 different fights that day when they stumbled upon a house to crash in as we were all pretty injured and low on spells. It should be noted my character had assassins after her, another had members of her church after her for unknown reasons, and Eve’s had 2 levels of exhaustion from a previous encounter. When it was time to take turns resting, every hour wraiths would enter the house and attack us, therefore not letting anyone get even a short rest. This went on for 3 hours before we discovered someone sitting outside at a distance with an hourglass. We devised a plan where my pc would go out and talk with them and the two others would hide at windows ready to strike. After talking with this NPC, I found out all they wanted were a pair of pretty dope magic swords that Eve had found a few sessions before. The NPC then said if they were not given willingly, wraiths would keep attacking us every hour and that they could clearly see both other pc’s in the windows “hiding”. Taking on Eve’s character, I rationalized that she had been downed 2 times, hadn’t slept in 18 hours and was exhausted (x2) and just wanted to go to bed. I had her step away from her hiding spot at the window, take the swords, throw them so they stabbed into the ground by the npc’s feet, and walk inside to pass tf out without a word. The mysterious foe then walked off, dismissing the wraiths and letting us all get some needed rest. Next session I told her about the swords. She jokingly gave me shit, but wasn’t actually upset, however now I’m wondering if I was wrong. I know for a fact we all would’ve died if we had to fight even one more round of wraiths, but does that justify my choice? I await your judgement, and if necessary, your punishment.

Mason N.

May it please the Grand Court of Crit and that guy who plays Jake from Jake and Amir. I bring you the case of the Killer Life Domain Cleric. I played in a 10 person campaign and am playing the party's healer, a Life Domain Cleric named Coach Hawke Barski. As part of his backstory, he was always bullied during school and thus became a coach to put an end to bullying. While the party was exploring, Coach Hawke Barski noticed a group of teens bullying a kid. He went over to confront the group and ended up getting punched in the nuts and getting table topped by the teens. For flair, the DM put him into a flash back of that exact thing happening to a young Coach Hawke Barski, and in the flashback he retaliated by punching the bully in the face. But in reality, he chose to be doing a 1st level Inflict Wounds uppercut to the teen bully in charge. It immediately killed the teen (who had commoner stats), and as a result, another party member, a Zealot Barbarian, did a reckless attack on Coach Hawke Barski and downed him. Once the tension settled, and Coach Hawke Barski was brought back up, he used all of his money and some of the other PC's money to do a Revivify on the teen and we moved along with the campaign. I get razzed about it from time to time, but I need to ask the court, am I in the wrong for playing along with the DM's flashback scenario and getting triggered by the trauma? Or should I have taken the high road and not retaliated? I await the court's decision in shame.

Novel Holiday

To the intimidatingly hot judges and the beautiful-but-doesn’t-know-it yet bailiff Jake, I run a heavily homebrewed Strixhaven campaign with my friends. It's full of several student characters, social drama, bullies, and will they/won't they relationship plots. My friends and I all met in an improv club, so we're all very into the roleplay between characters, npc or not. It's a great time. The (potential) problem is, I tend to get so sucked into the roleplay that I almost never have my players roll charisma based checks. I pretty much always just have my NPCs react to what my PCs say in a way that makes sense for their character, forgetting to prompt any sort of roll. Judges, my question is this: Am I robbing my players of more interesting outcomes by letting my improv brain take over, or is it more acceptable than i realize to just act scenes out? No one has voiced any issues, it's just something I wonder. I await your supreme judgment, and if I am not to be punished, please punish my player Parker who also listens to the show :)

Ziv like Steve

May it please the Crit and burden the Bailiff, I present the case of the NPC Affair and IRL Marriage. I run a homebrew campaign for my partner and three of our friends, in a horror setting where the party's home town was claimed by a Lich in session 1. One player wanted their character to have a wife -- no problem. When they escaped the town from the Lich, most of the civilians were left behind, including (determined by the dice) the wife. Months passed as the party accumulates power, with this player having one driving goal: I must rescue my wife. Lo and behold, last session, they heisted the town and freed all of the villagers, including the wife. Gently foreshadowed in scrys over the time were some hints -- the wife was not wearing the ring. The wife was spending a lot of time with the incredibly old and weak village wizard (also a captee). And on an insight check from the party cleric, it was revealed: the wife has been having a strictly-emotional nonphysical affair with the wizard, and the marital relationship with the player's character is over. The player, who happens to be my wife IRL, is upset that I did this without consulting her. I did not want the NPC to become a docile and loving follower for me to have to juggle once rescued and thought it would be a fun and edgy twist. I come before you now: Did I have a duty to consult my player(wife) before having her NPC partner (her wife) cheat on her? (P.S. For the avoidance of doubt, no IRL marital issues--purely tabletop!)

Scary Cary

To the illustrious judges, you really should let Tucker on 8bit Book Club sometime. If it may please the court, I present you a case so drama-filled that it has crossed over from our table to another table. I was playing a Jason Bourne-inspired (shoutout Emily, my queen) rogue-barbarian multiclass in an online game loosely inspired by Everything Everywhere All at Once. Our DM will throw TPK encounters at us regularly, but every time our characters die, they are transported to another weirder reality. The campaign is centered around relationship-building with NPCs, so there are still high stakes, and we have even survived some of the TPK encounters which makes for really exciting gameplay. This is not the case I bring to you. A month ago, our party was facing a league of ghost assassins. The encounter lasted nearly a day in game time with my character being possessed multiple times over the course of the encounter. The boss of the fight had a home-brewed vorpal sword, and after a lucky roll of two nat 20s that got past our chronurgy wizard, perma-killed my unkillable character. This is not the case I bring to you. After this tense encounter that saw my character dead and another character leaving the party, we all decided to have a light session and accepted a quest from a cheese maker to retrieve some milk from a sphinx. My new character, an inquisitive beat reporter moleperson, of course, asked the cheese maker where to retrieve milk from a sphinx. And yes, this is the case I bring to you. The question caught our DM flat-footed, and after an hour-long hot discussion about where sphinx milk would come from, the human half or the lion half, the DM ultimately went the coward’s route and decided sphinx secrete milk from their fur ala the platypus precedent. After the session, I posed the question to my boyfriend, who brought it to his table, sparking another hot discussion and bringing up the point that a sphinx wouldn’t produce milk as the 5e version has the top half as a bird. Judges, who is in the wrong here? The DM for posing the quest without considering player shenanigans or me for posing a cursed question that would inevitably come up in gameplay anyways? I humbly and eagerly accept any punishment you see fit.

Dingo

May it please the Supreme Crit Justices Hammer, Waxford and Nurphy and the Humble Bailiff Jake, I bring to you The Case of The Fat Babies Cantrip. I have recently started up a campaign featuring a great deal of my own home brew, as well as home brew from sources such as WBN's Witch and Benjamin Huffman's Scholar. Two of my players had no experience, two had very little experience, and my fifth player has loads of experience. A few hours before our second session I decided to see if any of my players had the "mending" cantrip, because I wanted to work in a couple of opportunities to mend a busted up clue and have it be a learning experience for my newer players. Looking through DnDbeyond to see what spells they had chosen, I saw that one of my players had a very peculiar cantrip that had not been ran by me. "Big Fat Babies Todd and Malchomoore." Dumbfounded, I opened it up to discover the most unhinged spell I have ever seen. It is a CANTRIP that takes 5 BONUS ACTIONS to summon two "Big Fat Babies" that are "Like sumo wrestlers" and have 15 HP each. It is not a concentration spell. I message the player and tell them I took the liberty of deleting the cantrip, and asked them to choose a different one. They proceeded to defend the cantrip and said that it was not their own creation, but in fact MY homebrew and that they were in the right to choose it. Of course that was not true, I lol'd their gaslighting away and urged them again to choose a different cantrip. But what I ask of you all today is this; Was I too quick to shoot down these Babies? Should I have instead tried to work with the player to have a balanced baby spell? Am I the asshole? I prostrate myself before the court and patiently await your justice.

House of the blessed zest

Bless up to the Justices, and bless down on the bailiff. I would like to place myself on the stand as a DM who does not think they've done as well as they could have. I'm somewhat new to dnd, and have DM'd a game for about 14 sessions. In an effort to make the game compelling to the players, I have thrown as many "how to be a good DM" Youtube-learnings at my players as I can. However, in my efforts to try create a setting and story that are compelling to the players, I feel that I have ended up railroading them down a path that doesn't feel organic, and has left them in an awkward place as to *why* they are doing what they're doing. My question is, what are your thoughts on retcon-ing some of what I have established in order to let the players explore their characters more naturally, and shape the world in a way thatthey are more invested in? And lastly and most importantly, how shalt I be punished? Justices, I kiss thy feet, and sneeze on the hands of the bailiff.

Olivia A

May it please the court and maybe that bailiff Jack who I think is supposed to guest star on 8-bit Book Club but never seems to follow through. I present the case of Darkness Defined. I play a tiefling warlock in a long-standing Curse of Strahd campaign, and I recently picked up the invocation Devil's Sight, which allows you to see through magical and nomagical darkness up to 120ft. I mostly picked it up to see through our enemies' magical darknesses. However, I also have the spell Hunger of Hadar, which is an AOE that creates an inky void with some yucky disgusting slurpy noises and even yuckier disgustinger acidic tendrils. My DM and I have run into some controversy over whether or not the "void" described in the spell counts as "darkness" and whether or not I should be able to see through it with my new warlock invocation. The spell doesn't ever say "darkness" though it describes the "dark between the stars" and "void". My DM and I are stuck in a definitional quandary and we ask the court, is darkness an absence of light, or is the void a new condition entirely?

LastStandGaming

To the Fae-Queen of Chaos Axford, the Trickster Tanner, Grand Arbiter Murph, and the hopefully continued to be desrespected bailiff: I present the case of The Vanishing DM. About a decade ago I ran a game for a trio of co-workers, who played an Elf Fighter, Half-Orc Sorcerer, and an Artillerist Aarakocra. One of these things are important. I quickly realized running a game for these people was a huge mistake on my part. Eventually every session was filled with inebriation: Alcohol or Weed (both of which I don't mind in moderation), but justices it got ridiculous. Drunken arguments and being too turnt to be productive and a one point one of them screaming "Because I'm the fucking Americokra". I had brought it up a quite times, but was met with resistance and told "it's not a big deal", which is bullshit. Fast forward about 3 months and I am 4 days away from starting a new job, and only the owner and general manager were aware that I was leaving, this was all part of my plan since I told the concerning people I preferred an Irish goodbye. Additionally I was on my last shift. After I had clocked out rather than run a session at the co-worker's house, I simply went home and blocked all relevant numbers. So I ask Justices AITA for creating such an elaborate plan to vanish into this world's ethereal plane to avoid ever running a game with those idiots again? I humbly await judgement. P.S. There is a lot so if more elaboration is required I will happily provide.

Michael

To the honorable justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the funky bailiff jimk, I give you the case of the impenetrable disguise self. I have been dming for a wonderful group of friends for over two years now, but all of us are lawyers, which leads to the rule debates you might expect from said group. The groups was infiltrating a blockaded elven city in which they were highly wanted, but they are not great at group stealth. Even with several disguise selfs and pass without trace, the group stealth check was only an 18. The group needed assistance making it to the top half of the city, so they sought the assistance of an elven mob boss to get there. Here’s where I may have fucked up: the mob boss rolled a perception check on the party and got a nat 20, which I determined let him figure out exactly who the party was. The party wizard (who listens to this podcast) contended that the text of disguise self requires an investigation check, not a perception check. I argued that not all of the party was disguised, and that a nat 20 perception was more than enough to realize the 6 weirdos in his office were the wanted party! It didn’t matter anyway, as the mob boss was on their side, and they had already been sussed out and betrayed by the femme fatale they were working with! Please let me know honorable justices, am I in the right here, or is the wizard right to bring this up at every session?

Philip LaLone

To the justices and the buff bailiff Jake, I bring to you The Case of the Disappearing Enemy. In my first campaign, we got into an encounter with a couple of seemingly-important NPCs that attacked us on the road. It was a very hard-fought battle where we started it outnumbered, but slowly chipped away at their numbers. As the fight finally shifted into our favor, we downed the ringleader of the attack, moving on to engage the other attackers under the assumption he was dead, as most NPCs are if they lose their HP. However, on the following turn, another NPC came over and healed the leader, helped him up, and then used their movement to move both characters two spaces and effectively off the battle map. Having enough movement to chase them down with a dash action, I went to pursue them on my next turn, only to be told by the DM that they were gone. They had left the battle area, so therefore they could not be found, even with an Investigation or Perception check. This became a contentious event between the players and the DM, and with the illusion of stakes and weight in combat stripped away, the campaign ultimately fizzled. Was the DM within his right to do this, or was this a blatant shifting of the rules for something that did not go his way? I lay my fate at your feet and await your judgment.

Wings of Silver

To the honorable justices and that other guy, I present to you the case of the nobleman who took his backstory too seriously. In an online game with friends, I was playing a human noble with the lofty name of Lawrence Lerlous Von Einswald. I wanted him to be a bit of an annoyance to the party, and I gave him my most insufferable English accent. After a few mistakes that I played off as Lawrence being Lawrence, I abandoned the party during a pretty tough fight saying that I had to return to my home town to stop my evil cousin. I had IRL reasons to leave as I was going on holiday, and I didn't want my character I cared so much about to become an NPC controlled by the DM. Justices, I ask you, was I wrong to care for my character so? I humbly await your judgement

Sam Ross

To the honorable and wise justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the serviceable Baliff who probably has a name. I present the case of the child metagamers. I DM for an after-school program, kids aged 12-14, and have run them through a dozen sessions this school year. Our last session, the party faced the boss of the current arc, a young White Dragon backed by Kobold sorcerors. A tough, but not insurmountable fight for 5th Level characters, and one I had hoped would be suitably epic to cap the Winter series. Unfortunately, between some clever tactics and absurdly good rolls/crits, the Dragon was on the ropes just one round into the fight. That's when one of the PCs asked 'how bad is the dragon looking', and before I could answer one of the kids answered 'it has 30hp left'. This floored me, because yeah, the Dragon had 30hp left. Those little bastards had pulled up a White Dragon statblock and were sharing it with eachother. It was less good strategy they were using, and more blatant open book cheating. This meant I wasn't able to surreptitiously 'pad' the dragon health a bit and let all the kids get in hits before it went down, making for a quick and rather unceremoniously brief final battle. Justices, what punishment is appropriate for these players? Is it wrong for me to do nothing but homebrew monsters here on in, all hellbent on murdering these children?

Ben Kullerd

To the effortlessly cool Justices and the sufficiently literate Bailiff, I present the Case of the Unwarranted Whomping. I'm playing in an online campaign, and in our last session, the party attended a rooftop auction where we had to check our gear at the door. My gnome wizard - completely out of spell slots and feeling spicy - outbid the wrong people, and as our DM set the scene for combat, he had some connectivity issues and wasn't able to share the battle map like he normally does. His description was as follows: two fully armored dwarves with greataxes squared off with us while the last two auction attendees descended through the center of the rooftop on a floating platform. Somehow, we knocked out the dwarves with only cantrips and improvised weapons, but before we could celebrate, the people on the floating platform reappeared out of invisibility, even though we'd dropped items down the center shaft and hit nothing. One was a witch in disguise who was resistant to all damage. The other was untouchable, as the floating platform moved out of range anytime we tried to approach or attack. We had our asses handed to us and were a little salty about the TPKO, especially when the DM implied that this is just what happens when you run your mouth. Did our DM do us dirty by taking our gear, but not the enemies'? Should he have painted a clearer image of the battlefield? Or are we being a big bunch of babies?

Austin Beasley

To the esteemed judges and the nearly adequate bailiff, I bring the story that got me deemed "TPK Extraordinaire". We had just started the campaign and I had warned my players that I was playing this campaign purely by the book, and after days of dino races and jewel market heists, the party braved the jungle and rolled a velociraptor ambush on the random encounter table. 2d6 raptors ended up being 11 raptors to fight, who nat 20'ed the stealth check for the surprise round and rolled higher initiative than the players. Adding in pack tactics and multiattacks resulted I'm the players taking 44 attacks at advantage before they even had a round to respond. The party was immediately eviscerated and replaced with new, more serious PCs. The Loxodon assassin never even got the opportunity to say his catchphrase (guess you didn't see the elephant in the room) The campaign ended up being super fun, but this still gets brought up regularly. Was I right to play by the book and let the TPK happen, or should i have added DM shenanigans to give them a chance? I await your judgement and sentence.

Juniper

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and Jake Hurwitz (so great to finally have you on the Pod!), I bring you the case of the Fog Cloud. While exploring some abandoned catacombs, my party was ambushed by a group of elves. One of the baddies was able to cast Cloudkill and caught everyone in our party in the spells area of affect, and most of us were not able to save out of it taking a lot of damage. Our party’s ranger decided on his turn to cast Fog Cloud saying that his spell should diffuse the Cloudkill. When our DM said the ranger could cast Fog Cloud but it would not get rid of the Cloudkill, our ranger said that diffusion was basic science and his plan should have worked. This resulted in some light razzing towards the ranger player because he was homeschooled and towards the DM for rejecting science and then we moved on with the battle. I know science doesn’t always have much of a place in DND, but it should be noted that later in the session our DM let our Sorcerer use their familiar (a swam of bees) to stop a weapon from hurting another player. The sorcerer cited the science of momentum as to why they thought the swarm of bees should be able to stop or at least slow down the weapon flying through air and the DM allowed it. Justices, was my DM in the wrong for not being consistent with their ruling on science? Should our rangers Fog Cloud plan have worked? We humbly accept your ruling.

The Fun Yaunt

To the Supreme Crit Justices Axford and Murphy, the Sweetest of Blue Holes, and the deeply mediocre bailiff, May it please the court, I present the case of the bardic imposter. Last October I DM’d my first session, a one-shot for my regular D&D group. I planned a spooky adventure in which a group of cousins entered the mansion of their great-aunt, a witch that left them all a generous inheritance (should they successfully pass her trials). I asked each of my players to text me about their characters in preparation. To my surprise, one player told me she’d like to play a Changeling Warlock named Scylla who likes to take on the appearance of her friend, a sea-elf bard. I thought this was a strange detail, but didn’t think it was particularly important what appearance the Changeling chose. However, I soon learned that I’d okayed her character before fulling understanding it— this player intended to play a Changeling Warlock that was fully impersonating a dead Sea-Elf Bard (and the real niece of the witch). The character would also carry a necklace containing the soul of the deceased friend in hopes she could revive her one day. Her backstory seemed too complex for a one-shot, but she was excited about the character and I’d technically already okayed it. I asked her what her plan was for when other players asked why she wasn’t casting bardic spells— she said she doubted it would come up. Unfortunately my concern was merited— during the session one of the other players became increasingly frustrated that the “bard” refused to give bardic inspiration and heal. This other player, a rogue, stole the imposter’s necklace out of annoyance, derailing the session for a time while the imposter disregarded the mission to look for her necklace because “it’s what her character would do.” The rogue eventually dropped the necklace in a trashcan for her to find once he realized that the “bard” wouldn’t continue the one-shot without it. The players and I had fun overall (and I incorporated revivify into the witch’s inheritance), but I ask you— was I in the wrong to allow my player to play a character with such a complicated backstory? I humbly await your judgment.

West Russell

To the honorable and exhaulted justices, and the balif of indeterminable admiration, I present the case of the Unsavable Necromancer. I play in a campaign with 3 other friends and my DM (party composition is not terribly important). My character, a monk, has a sad backstory of his step-dad dying shortly before the campaign started (another player plays his estranged father). In the first leg of our campaign, we have to stop a necromancer who is trying to resurrect her dead brother, and is killing somoene else in the process. My character empathises with her, and during the confrontation, convinced the group to spare her, and turn her in for her crimes as opposed to killing her. The next day, the Queen gathered us, and told us that the prisoner was to be executed that day in a public tournament. I tried to reason with the Queen that this isn't necessary, and was told that this was the law of the land. My DM was kind enough to plan something for me to interfere with the execution before the next session, but then created a conflict with enemies WAY too strong for my character to face (even if the party had been involved), and still had the Necromancer executed, and my character exiled from the city. Justices, am I right to have wanted a chance to save this character through a persuasion check or performance check, or is the punishment for these sins death? I await your judgement. Note: my DM is great, and I love that he plans these intriguing plots, this has been a mostly laughable point of contention

Noah Muruve

To the corrupt judges and golden mic winner, THE big daddy bailiff Jake: I DM a campaign where recently one of the players wanted to approach an encounter via stealth. He proceeded to role-play his elf making a game plan, but the encounter wasn’t really built for it; I can tell you right now his plan would not have worked. Meanwhile our gnome big boom artificer, read the situation correctly, and ran in blowing people up, ignoring the elf’s plan. This pissed off the elf’s player, but we had a healthy discussion about it the next session and decided that I need to make more stealth encounters as my encounters thus far have been pretty one dimensional, the gnome has to consider other players’ wants and inputs in the game, and the elf’s player can’t will a plan into existence from nothing. But, we want blood. Who was wrong?

OboTolken

To the gloriously exalted judges and the other guy, I present to you the case of the accidental massacre. In a one-shot level 1 campaign I did back in college I was playing as an asimar monk (flavored to be a boxer). We were working our way through a dungeon filled with goblins when we opted to take a short rest. We were ambushed and two of our party nearly died. Later we found a goblin encampment and needed to long rest, but all 4 of us failed our insight checks to see if the civilians would find guards to attack us in the night. All of us players were unfamiliar with DND and did not know that "explorers pack" included rope that we could have used to tie up the civilians. I decided that I would try to knock out a goblin by punching them in the head. I rolled a nat20 and my DM described as I right-hooked the guy so hard that he flew through the air and punched a hole through another goblin. I had assumed that "knocking someone out" was a non-lethal action, but my mistake lead the rest of the party to "clear out" the rest of the goblins. To this day I am blamed for this heinous massacre. Your honors, I beseech you. Was I wrong for being overly suspicious and not vocally specifying the non-lethality of my actions, or was my DM and party simply too bloodthirsty. I humbly accept whatever judgement you see fit. (I subbed on Pateron just so I can finally have outside opinion on this event, lol)

Yuncle Vanya

To the honorable justices and the wily lil guy Jake, I present the case of the Unwanted DnD Retreat: I have been playing in a 5e campaign virtually since the pandemic with a group of four that was united by one mutual friend at the center. Though I would not typically be friends with these people outside of the context of the game - they are slightly older and in the case of two of them, religious scholars - they have been good company for our biweekly 2 hour sessions. Our mutual friend has been pushing hard to meet in person for a DnD retreat which I desperately do not wish to join. I don’t know if this group will mesh well in person, let alone at our venue of choice: the middle of nowhere childhood home of one of the players where the parents will be present and expect us to join them for Easter mass. Normally I would say no, but the mutual friend is currently very pregnant and has negotiated this with her husband as a “last solo trip” before having her kid. I know I can’t bail on this trip, but is my friend wrong for dragging the rest of the group along for a DnD retreat? Am I wrong for thinking this is a nightmare trip?

HHH

may it please the auspicious court, and the suspicious bailiff Jeak. I bring to you the case of "Am I crazy or is it insane to be playing D&D on your phone while in the middle of a real-life session?" Me and other students from my university just recently formed a new D&D group, for which ive been DMing. Despite how anxious I was, I feel blessed by how terrifically its been going: all the players are super bought in, involved in the world and story and are all around just chill and cool. All but one. We've had three sessions so far. He's been on his phone for THE whole session, all three sessions so far. These are four hour sessions each time, meaning 12 whole hours in which he only looks up when it's his turn in combat, or if we're not fighting, to ask "what's going on?" Then roll whatever check i asked for with someone else's die and not even bother to add his modifier. I ignored it so far, in part due to shyness, and also since hes so ignorable anyway, Ghost in the session that he is, but things come to a head when another player messages the group saying he can't make the next session since he has a big project to finish, and I respond "just come work next to us, [player] is on his phone the whole time anyway". [player] in question responds "yeah haha the struggle of juggling two campaigns." What follows is a surreal half hour inquiry in which I and everyone else finds out that whenever he was on his phone he was running combat for a different group on discord, to "playtest a statblock" he's created. In his words, he "can't say no to playtesting" so whenever they call him (usually before our session) he comes running. I try to be charitable and say it's fine if he's busy, he can tell us and we can move the session, but he responds saying he's not: They call him in the morning and the combat lasts ALL day, into the night when we play. Meaning weve only glimpsed the tip of the iceberg that is this guy's insane life, in which his whole Saturday is 12 hours of text based D&D combat strictly. NO RP or story to speak of, just raw legendary actions and dealing 5d10 poison damage or whatever. Thus, I leave you with the question with which we began: Am I crazy or is it insane to be playing D&D on your phone while in the middle of a real-life session? Is he in the wrong or do I simply not love D&D Enough and thus do not see his vision? I do sincerely believe that if in the middle of dimension 20, Murph and Emily just whipped out their phones and started rolling initiative with Jake and Caldwell on Slack neither show would continue, but I still eagerly await your perspective on this madness regardless of where you sway.

polyglottal cracker

To the Sagacious Justices and the guy who just had to look up "sagacious," I bring you the case of the Cool Overruled. My players were investigating a demonic monastery (a demonastery, if you will) when they happened, undetected, upon a group of demonks in a room they needed to pass. One of my players, who we will call Herb because that's his name and he'd get a thrill out of hearing it on the air, came up with a plan to scare them out of the room by pretending to be a dragon. Specifically, he'd use Thaumaturgy in the antechamber to loose a dragon's roar, then leap through the curtain — Disguise Self'd as a Dragonborn — and attack someone with a Potion of Fire Breathing breath attack, hoping that a combined Deception roll would convince them he was a real dragon and send them running. I gave him the attack but pushed back that a group of trained demonks wasn't going to believe a dragon was loose in their magical extraplanar monastery and run away; at best it might startle them on a failed save and give him surprise. A discussion was had, but Herb's cool and soon acquiesced. Most the monks passed their saves, but the fight still went well enough — if minus a goofy opening salvo. Though Herb says he was fine with my decision, he's brought up the incident more than a few times since. It's supposedly in good humor and no hard feelings, but clearly while he respects my call, he still disagrees with it. Herb loves the show and will honor any judgment (especially if it's rendered by Justice Axford), so I'm hoping an official ruling might help us put the matter to bed once and for all. Is he right to (repeatedly) maintain his Deception check should've worked? Or did he overestimate the power of a cantrip + Disguise Self + successful Deception check, and should perhaps move on? I humbly and eagerly await your wisdom.

dat_rogue_baddie

May it Please the Noble Justices and the kind of ok bailiff Josh: I present the case of the Zephyr Sike. I have been playing in my first ever campaign for about two years now via discord. Eight months into the campaign we added two additional players to our party (bringing the total to 7 players), one of which is swiftly turning into a problem player. He is now a level 10 Paladin and has switched his subclass 2 times but has not fully learned his character sheet and this causes him to he take 5-10mins during his turn in combat every time. As a relatively new player, I sometimes research on my fellow players' builds to learn more about the system. A few weeks ago he used Zephyr Strike in combat even though his subclass changed and that was a spell from his old subclass (or so we thought). During session, I texted the DM and two other veteran players about it and after the session we asked him about this spell. We learned he should have never had the spell since it is a RANGER spell and he is strictly a Paladin. He said he isn't sure how he got it but would remove it. Well, last week during combat we had all 7 players present and on just the second round of combat we were over an hour into session. His turn came around and he once again took over 5 mins looking through his sheet. At the END of his turn he announced he casts Zephyr Strike AGAIN, when asked he said it was from a feat he took. When it wasn't my turn in combat I looked up what feats might give him this spell: the answer was none of them. After session we once again asked him what feat, he stumbled over his words and didn't have an answer until another player said "Is it Magic Initiate?" to which he replied "Yea! That one!". I interjected that Magic Initiate does not give you access to Ranger Spells and that Zephyr Strike is only on the ranger spell list. The group kind of moved past it but I texted the DM about it and he removed it from the player's sheet himself. I ask the court: did I overstep as a player or do I have a duty to hold my fellow players to a certain level of integrity? I await your judgement.

TayJulia

To the honorable justices and the bailiff I guess, I present the case of the Mercer Rules. I joined a new party being hosted at a local game shop and it was players I had never met before. We were told to come in with level 10 characters and there was no session 0. After making a ruling about an outcome of a roll which the party questioned, the dm said with great enthusiasm and a little too loudly “Matt Mercer Rules Baby!” With his arms thrown up and offered no further explanation. I was familiar with critical role, but had never watched an episode, so I was a bit thrown off by that choice. In further sessions, he would say he played by “Mercer Rules” and one time scoffed at me “Vex’halia much?” after I made a character choice in a role play session—which through googling later I learned is a PC from the first season. He did shout “Matt Mercer Rules” at least three mores times when a ruling was questioned. The campaign only lasted a few months and disbanded, for a number of reasons you can probably predict, but after doing some more research, I realized that the DM was trying to have a campaign that was very similar in style and tone to CR. I suppose one could argue there is nothing wrong with that but also I ask the Humble Justices, it’s odd right?

Alex Schafer

To the "holier than me" high priests of dice Christ. (And whoever else might be there with them) Is my campaign cursed? One of my players brought a bag of starburst to our game, and chipped their tooth while eating it. And I can't help but feel like my group is cursed now. Our schedules have not lined up and we've only had 3 sessions in the 5 months since this happened. Is this a curse? Or is this just adult schedules being hard to plan around? I would appreciate your blessings or suggestions on a ritual for me to perform to rid my group of this curse.

A Spicy Lad of the Shadowkeep

To the All-knowing Judges and The Pinch, I bring to you the case of Fighting Fudge with Fudge. I was running a two-shot that revolved around a heist on a mind flayer bank, with the players trying to get their memories back from it's vaults. Now, one of the players is an infamous roll fudger; we're talking never rolling below a 15 (even before modifiers). He was playing as a Barbarian, albeit one that boiled down to a pretty offensive interpretation of a mentally disabled person. So, from the get-go, wasn't a fan of this player, but hey, I still aimed to be an impartial and fair DM. It was only after their third or fourth miraculously successful WIS/INT save that I decided enough was enough, and when his choices resulted in pissing off a dragon and being flung from a tower, I asked him to roll a d100. Naturally, it was a pretty high roll, above 70. I then revealed that was actually the height in which he'd be flung, and began rolling damage for the fall. Asked for his HP, was given it, and essentially fudged the rolls to ensure it did enough to end the session with his player hitting the ground hard enough to finish them off. I ask you, while fudging rolls is a cardinal sin, would the cardinals of the Church of Dice Christ consider this a punishment to fit the crime? I humbly await your judgement.

MC

May it please the honorable justices and the beautiful baby boy bailiff Jake, I present the case of the (Attempted) Pulled Punch. Near the end of a one-shot I was DMing for a group of friends, the party was fighting my BBEG, a mind-controlled adult red dragon. Near the end of a very long fight, the dragon used their breath weapon and all the players passed their dexterity savings throws except for one, my friend who was a brand new player. I knew she was low on health and didn’t want to kill her in her first adventure, so after I rolled the damage, I lied and said the damage was much lower than I actually rolled. She was thrilled that she was going to survive the encounter! Unfortunately, one of the other players could apparently see around my DM screen and blabbed that I was pulling my punch and lying about the damage. This sucked the energy out of the table and eventually led to the player taking the full damage and dying in her first adventure. The other player stood firm that I should be fair about dice rolls and not play favorites, or else what’s the point of the game. Fair justices, was it unfair to the other players for me to lie about a damage roll, or was I right to try and get that player through her first adventure?

Cameron Davis

MAY IT PLEASE THE OMNIPOTENT, OMNISCIENT, AND OMNIPRESENT JUDGES and jake I present a simple question: Should one have to BEAT the AC of a creature rather than hitting it exactly to hit? My first time playing D&D was with a DM I am still dear friends with. And I loved everything about her campaign—except one thing. Let’s say a creature’s AC is 15. In normal games, one would only have to roll a 15 to hit, but in her campaign one would have to roll a 16 or higher. It seems innocuous, and she even made the argument that “it benefits all of you too”. But when you take into consideration that I was playing an archery-based fighter who rarely got hit in combat, the passive +1 to AC I got did not counteract the passive -1 to hit that I got consistently from this rule. And I missed by 1 at least four or five times that I could count over the course of that campaign. Judges, does the idea that you should have to actively BEAT the AC of a creature hold up? Or was this unbalanced in a way that I am right to be upset about? I await your judgment. P.S. this also worked the same way for skill checks. Meaning if you rolled a 15 on a Stealth check, rather than having to roll a 15 on Perception to find you, I had to actively beat your Stealth instead. Not sure if this sways opinion but felt worth sharing!

Nikolaus Cox

I'm not a High Crit Justice, nor even a revolting bailiff. I am but a humble peasant passing through the vale, and yet, though I have no authority to make such declarations, may I just say: you did the right thing. Kill their ass. They're not only cheating, which ruins the technical gameplay for everyone, but they sound pretty gross and offensive with their character choices, which ruins the roleplay aspect for everyone. I think if someone is fudging rolls but is an earnest and well-intentioned role-player, there is some room for forgiveness in DnD. But when they're just treating the whole thing like it's a poor taste joke and doing whatever they want... yeah... You did the right thing. And I salute you, with my peasant arms, for killing them in-story and with gameplay (albeit fudged gameplay). I know someone who was behaving similarly at a table (basically roleplaying a sexual predator because it was somehow 'dark comedy'), and the session ended with another player standing up and threatening to beat the shit out of them in real life, which everyone supported but it obviously stopped the narrative dead. You managed to give your other players their full game (and a mind flayer bank full of memories sounds like SUCH A COOL two-shot to explore!) while disposing of a problem. I applaud.

asog98

May it please the honorable justices and the lil baby bailiff jonk. I bring to the case of the “Dirty 31 vs the passive intimidation of 28”. I run a 5e campaign for a bunch of friends and set them up for a tough encounter against a group of assassins raised and trained by one of my PC’s evil and neglectful parents. The battle was going poorly for my party but they were able to slay one of the three assassins sent to kill them, a goblin sorcerer. Our kenku assassin rogue used her magic item, a dagger that allows her to disguise as the last person she killed, to become the sorcerer and tried to persuade the other assassins that “she had them”. I let her roll persuasion and add the sorcerers charisma modifier (+5) to it since she was disguised. The roll ended up being a 31. The other two assassins, who were ready to kill two of the PC’s, listened but I had the big barbarian/paladin grapple one of the near fallen PC’s. I made this call thinking about the fear that these assassins have of the evil leaders that sent them (+18 to intimidation) and wanting to make sure not to fail their mission. I thought grappling was a good middle ground because I would have killed the PC on my assassins next turn prior to this roll. Everyone made it out of the encounter alive and they have since gone back and slayed the assassins. So I plead the court to hear my case. Was I wrong have my paladin grapple the PC or should I have let 31 slide and had the encounter end there? I will take any punishment the court sees fit to bestow.

Armis

May it please the ever so honorable judges, and that one guy who kind of reminds me of a weird kid I knew in middle school, I think his name was Joey. I bring to you the case of the "one man show". I'm playing in a campaign with some friends of mine. We're currently on a quest to stop a cult from summoning the god Orcus, and the quest has led us to the hometown of one of the PCs, a fighter barbarian named Ajax. Noteably, he was very concerned about his parents, and decided to ride ahead to check on them. We tried to stop him, but he insisted, so we had a PC who didn't need sleep follow after him to make sure he was okay. One of our players was vocally against it, saying it pulled away a lot of time from the rest of the party, and would make it a one man show for most of the next session. The story doesn't quite end there. A couple sessions later, we entered the lair of the cultists and had a big biss fight against a grey dragon, and a spawn of Orcus who was going to sacrifice Ajax's mother. Unfortunately, Ajax didn't get to do much in the fight, as the dragon frightened him and put up a wall between him and the rest of the fight. The player who was against his leaving, named Dussel, was able to dimension door his mother out, and turned them both invisible to hide and wait. Once the fight was over, Ajax left for the entrance to try and find them, hoping he could get a scene with Dussel and his mom. But, Dussel stayed invisible, and didn't give him that scene. When pressed about it, the player made the mom uninvisible, said "Enjoy your one man show", and left the discord call to go to bed, as he had work in the morning and we ran a bit long. Justices, I ask you this. I understand why the player was frustrated about Ajax going by himself. The next session was rather focused on him, but did he take it too far when Ajax wanted to have that scene? Or should Ajax have listened in the first place and stayed with the party? I patiently await your decision.

Jason Rodriguez

The the elite justices and bailiff and all hail the encounter master Justice Murphy. My players have either been damned by Dice Christ, or have lost their mojo I Dm a home game with 5 players and we had just had a harrowing session recently. Two of the players, a bardlock and rogue/bloodhunter have met their end against a gluttonous torpid dragon. The problem I'm seeing is that the players spent the whole combat against different enemies and not a single buff or healing spell was cast during combat. The rogue in the party kept attacking an enemy without sneak attack. He had eyes on other enemies and all the other players were engaged in combat, yet he did not deal sneak attack damage. They have experienced 2 close calls and the encounters have been gradually more challenging, but their tactics haven't changed. Please help me understand who's at fault and how to deal with this in the future.

MC

May it please the honorable justices and the beautiful baby boy bailiff Jake, I present the case of the (Attempted) Pulled Punch. Near the end of a one-shot I was DMing for a group of friends, the party was fighting my BBEG, a mind-controlled adult red dragon. Near the end of a very long fight, the dragon used their breath weapon and all the players passed their dexterity savings throws except for one, my friend who was a brand new player. I knew she was low on health and didn’t want to kill her in her first adventure, so after I rolled the damage, I lied and said the damage was much lower than I actually rolled. She was thrilled that she was going to survive the encounter! Unfortunately, one of the other players could apparently see around my DM screen and blabbed that I was pulling my punch and lying about the damage. This sucked the energy out of the table and eventually led to the player taking the full damage and dying in her first adventure. The other player stood firm that I should be fair about dice rolls and not play favorites, or else what’s the point of the game. Fair justices, was it unfair to the other players for me to lie about a damage roll, or was I right to try and get that player through her first adventure?

Noah Kozel

Humble Justices and that guy Juice who I think is Just Okay, I come to you with more of a dice Christ confessional than a court case today. Awhile ago I was playing in my first ever campaign over Discord with a few irl friends. I had never played before so my DM had offered to make my character sheet for me if I provided her with a basic guideline for stats and spells (i was playing a level 5 rogue). We had our first session and everything was going well or so I thought. The DM would suggest I use weapons or spells I didn't have on my sheet, and since I was new I figured this was just what it was supposed to be like. Come to find out mid battle when I supposedly failed a roll that I (according to the DM) should have succeeded with my modifier. We did a little investigating and to my horror I had been using the template sheet I had made that had insanely broken stats that were meant as placeholders and none of the equipment or spells my DM had helped me pick. I also discovered that because of these broken stats I was succeeding on rolls I otherwise should have failed. If I had been using the correct sheet, not only would I have failed some crucial rolls but my character would have been down during our current fight. We were able to get the right sheet and the session continued as normal but the guilt still weighs heavy on my soul! I beg for mercy from Dice Christ and the Court and hope that I can be forgiven..

Chris S.

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the Big Buttery Baliff, I bring you the case of The Recounted Trauma Under Duress. In the 5e campaign I currently DM, my party (5 level lvl 7 PCs) has recently come across two elven ranger NPCs (a twin brother and sister) while traveling to a kingdom known as Bewylndir. The party proceeded to have a goofy conversation with them and eventually said goodbye, but shortly after found out that the elves had lied when asked if they’d ever been to Bewyldnir. Although this lie had no significant implications for the party, they took it upon them selves to chase after the elves on horseback. They easily caught up to and encircled them. The party’s paladin immediately casted Zone of Truth on them, with the rest demanding they tell the truth. The brother was only able to stutter, and with a successful insight check I revealed to my players the elves were lying to themselves more than to the party, and was indicative of past trauma. After attempting good-cop bad-cops for 20 seconds, the party insisted they couldn’t leave until they get answers. The sister asked if her brother could wait out of earshot so he didn’t have to relive their past, and the party said no. Having no other choice, she revealed that they worked at a morgue as children and witnessed atrocities that caused them to leave their hometown in Bewyldnir and never acknowledge it ever again. They party valiantly told the elves that they’d investigate the town even though the elves didn’t ask them too, and our blood hunter gave them a handful of gold as recompense. When I told them that the elves looked at them with disdain and anger after the encounter, my party was largely surprised. I thus, humbly await your decision: Were my NPC elves were ungrateful for the party’s ‘help’, or are my players a bunch of psychotic lunatics?

Magerdamage

To the magnanimous justices and the lower than worm wife food bailiff I think his name is Blake. I don't have a case but I wanted to write a Jake insult. Here is my backup one I also liked. To the dominant and virile justices and the submissive but not breedable bailiff I think his name is Jerk. Just felt fun to write one. I'll increase my patron level if Jake reads either one out loud on the episode.

frogwithhumanhands

May it please the awesome, larger-than-life supreme crit justices and the most-average bailiff Jake, I present the case of the Criminal Investigator. I was DMing a one-shot, Masque of the Worms, for my family, all new players. If you're unfamiliar, it is a murder mystery and players go through a mansion trying to solve the mystery. The issue was this: My mom is a retired criminal investigator and kept asking me very in-depth questions about the crime scene, even asking to collect samples and take them to a lab. I had to keep telling her that didn't exist in this world. She seemed kind of disappointed but still ended up having a lot of fun and wants to play more mystery games, but I can't keep up with her knowledge. Should I have just gone off books and let her play around a little more within her expertise? Should I get a criminal justice degree for DND? I humbly await your judgment.

Axle

May it please the most honorable justices, who grace us with their wisdom and guidance, and jake. During my first campaign ever, I had joined a group who’d been playing together for a year. Since they didn’t have a Cleric, and this was pathfinder where you really needed one, I created Gorgio Ironbelly, a dwarven cleric to the forge god Torag, who brewed his own beer and was a bit bashful around the ladies. We came across a city devastated by dragons, and I said that Gorgio runs up to the nearest injured civilian and casts Cure Wounds, which he did, but sadly rolled very low on the die. Rather than thank him, the NPC looked up at him and sarcastically said “that’s it?” Despite still restoring at least a few hit points to this NPC, I was told that I’d have to use another spell slot if I wanted to help him, and I chose to save my heals for my party. For the rest of our time in this city, other NPCs would roll their eyes when they saw Gorgio and say “oh, it’s THAT guy,” and he’d overhear NPCs talking about him behind his back as the guy who didn’t help during the dragon crisis. I didn’t argue it at the table because it was only my third session of dnd ever, but thinking back on it a decade later, I realize I’ve been wronged, and seek the court’s judgement on the matter.

Darrius Davis, the guy from that one thing.

To the effervescent and immaculate Baliff Jake and the bench warmers he sits with, I come before you with a case of forced kidnapping. I run a campaign with some good friends and since I've played dnd the longest, I'm the assigned DM. I don't mind DMing. I actually love it. However, I have one rule that I think most DMs support, which is "no lone wolf activity." I expressed this to my players before we first started playing because it's difficult to plan separate encounters for everyone to be involved it at the same time. Well, their initial starting quest had then departing a boat to a medium sized town, in which they all immediately separated to do their own thing. I allowed them to walk away from each other ("yes and" tactics, you know) but had each one of them encounter someone that would then try to abduct them, so I could have them imprisoned (in the same location). During their own encounters, each players rolled relatively high, but I said the despite their good rolls, they were still overpowered and taken. My players said it wasn't fair, and that I was forcing them to lose. They were absolutely correct. Your benevolent honors, was I right to kidnap my players to force them to be a team, or should I have tried to coax them to hang out with each other without it being forced?

Daveman

To the deific justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy: May your L’s be small and your haters malnourished. And to you Joke: if you don’t have haters, I’m dead. I bring you the case of the DM vs The Mindfreak. I have been running a low magic political campaign where anything fantastical comes from different strains of fungus and how they interact with bloodlines. All spells and class abilities have been reflavored to fit this world. But one of my players is using the novelty of these powers to “mindfreak” my NPCs. He is a changling rogue/bard multiclass with the actor and telepathic feat and claims due to these abilities he can perfectly mimic the NPC’s own voice telepathically and scream “NIGHTMARE! NIGHTMARE! NIGHTMARE!” or “I’M GONNA DIE!” over and over in their head. When he sprung this on me the first time, I thought it was hilarious and so rewarded the creativity, but now he does it to at least 3 people every session. and with his +12 to deception at advantage, not a single insight check to figure out it is a trick has passed so far. I am trying to tie in his backstory but he just can’t stop freaking the minds of important NPCs. I’ve talked to him about it and he built his whole character around this, so I am implimenting a whole second mental HP pool for all NPCs that he has to whittle down. But it is just a lot of work to keep track of. I humbly ask you for advice and/or punishment.

Dylan C

To the Most Honorable Justices and the Cool Cool Bailiff Jeff (Geoff?), I have been playing dnd with the same group for about four years. Our usual set up is three players and a DMPC to help balance the party. One of our players was really new to dnd when we started so we tried to go out of our way to cater to them. We let them drive the party choices most of the time, we regularly bent rules that were too complicated for them, and we had to institute a no pc death policy since they found the idea of their character dying really upsetting. This special treatment has persisted to this day. Recently we finished a campaign, and that player asked if he could try DMing a one shot before our usual DM started a new campaign. We agreed, and he told us all to roll level 7 characters. As soon as we started playing it became clear that our Interim DM had not prepared. We were supposed to spend five nights in a haunted hotel, fighting the monsters. Instead we were subjected to a long, incoherent, and confusing shopping episode in the town around the hotel. This happened multiple times and stretched the “one shot” into six sessions. When we tried to go back to the hotel at night to fight the monsters, we were not allowed to fight them. They instead made idle threats but ran away and vanished once the party tried to fight them. And we got the feeling that the Interim DM didn’t have any stat blocks prepped. We tried to be patient since this was the first time he was DMing, but then came the final fight. Despite telling us to roll level 7 characters, he had us fight: a bone devil, two nagas, four skeletons, and four ghasts all at the same time. He kept targeting my Paladin because I was the only one with healing abilities. He never attacked his own DMPC, claiming that he “forgot he could do that”. The fight resulted in a TPK where only his DMPC survived, and the DM was both smug and gleeful about killing all of our characters. Judges, I know that DMing is difficult, but was this unreasonable? He literally cackled when our characters went down. I humbly await your verdict. [Jake, please wait until the moment you think it’s funniest to reveal this] PS: Our Interim DM is my 10 year old nephew.

Crash Griffin

To the honorable judges and the (little l) lowly bailiff Jamiroquai, I bring to you the case of the Butthurt Invisible Autognome. To preface: I am in a game group that plays board games weekly, but in one of our d&d campaigns time between sessions is very long. I created an Autognome hedge wizard and instantly fell in love with my character and all the shenanigans he could get up to. Toward the beginning of this campaign we met a giant in a floating tower that was then besieged by a dragon. During battle on my turn I cast the Rope Trick spell to try and give myself and my party members a safe place to hide from battle…except I was the only one that ended up in the extra-dimensional space. The tower ended up plummeting to the ground below and everyone else was graciously knocked out instead of dying. I assume the DM intended for the entire party to end up knocked out, but there my character was…fully conscious. Instead of rousing my party members, I decided that my character was more interested in learning a bunch of spells from tomes littered among the wreckage. The DM then described how my character heard many footsteps approaching the area, so I cast invisibility on myself…naturally. The footsteps were from a group of soldiers sent to retrieve my party and throw us in the dungeon of a nearby prison. The session ended with this idea, and I had a brilliant idea that my character could break them out of prison at the start of the next session, because I was invisible and therefore safe. The next session started in medias res and everyone was locked up in prison without their belongings…including my character. After much protesting on my part, the DM said that my character had all of his belongings but he was still locked up with the other party members. I played through the session grumbling the whole time, but I was amenable and didn’t throw a *huge* fit. Now, was I just being too salty to a newish DM that didn’t have a plan for anyone to be left out of the prison, or am I justified in my butthurtedness and the thought that my character was robbed of this big heroic moment? I graciously await your judgment, Crash and R.O.L.F. The Autognome

Nev Altan

To the absolute, powerful, and radiant Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the overworked bailiff Jim. Today I bring you the case of the bs trickster rouge ability. On Thursdays my friend runs a feywild campaign for our DnD group. During one of our missions, we were tasked with retrieving a crystalline flower in order to cure a flower cocoon curse a wild witch had put on a field of soldiers. When we arrived at the flower’s location, an Arcane Trickster Rouge NPC we’d met a few times before was also there for the same flower. After some brief talking, we entered combat. During combat, our pact of the chain warlock used her familiar to play an excellent game of keep away while the rouge flew after it. With more movement than the rouge though, the familiar greatly outpaced them. Later on in the fight, the warlock decided to bring the flower to us so that we may defend it better. The closest the familiar and the rouge ever got were 80 feet, but by the time it had landed with us again, the flower was gone. When asking what had happened, our DM said that the rouge had rolled a 28 on sleight of hand check using a mage hand. When we said that spell (for an arcane trickster) only had a range of 30 ft, he paused before saying he had a Magic ability that extended the range. In the end, we got half of the flower, and our characters spirits were heavily shook. So I ask you great judges, are we wrong to be upset by the seemingly out of nowhere ability of this rouge? Or should we accept what the DM has told us? We humbly await your response.

Prevail

To the Most Absolute Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the stumblechump bailiff Chake. This has eaten at me for years so I'm coming to you to to try and get some closure. I joined an open game that advertised itself as a rescue mission to save our loved ones from a circus. I assumed it would be a pretty standard adventure, so asked if I could play a silly child character I had recently come up with. The DM was enthusiastic about this idea. The problem was that the game turned out to be a murder gauntlet. Our characters had to fight through multiple rings of a circus city, killing their opponents to proceed. At one point they were even put through their own personal hells. Never once were we given a warning about this. Am I right to think the DM should have at the very least mentioned the game might not be the best for a child character? Did this not warrant a warning to all the players that the characters would be put through a death gauntlet? Or am I being too hard on the DM? I await your learned perspective.

LeCurve52

To the illustrious justices of the Supreme Court as well as the Bailiff that I’m mostly, but not completely sure isn’t the guy from Judge Judy, may It please the court. My character has been wronged and so has his penis. I recently started a campaign with a new group and I’m playing the reanimated corpse of a half-orc. He’s covered in Two-Face style burn scars and he doesn’t know who he was, how he died, or why he’s alive again. Our party has a sorcerer and, obviously, he’s throwing an orgy with all the NPCs we’ve met so far. For some reason, the entire party began debating whether or not my character should be invited, since he has to be asexual because he’s a zombie. I argued that he wasn’t asexual when he was alive, so why would he be asexual now? Also, because of rigor mortis, he’s constantly erect, so arousal isn’t even necessary for participation. My party didn’t accept this, and the DM ruled that i would have to role for my sexuality. Of course, i ended up rolling asexual. The party decided that my character will have to sit outside the orgy with his pet gecko Dylan and just wait. I ask you, was my party right to make me roll bones for my character’s boner? And even if he is asexual, does that mean that he should be forced to suffer this FOMO? I leave it in your hands.

Potatochip Jenkins

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the “overdue for a nice intro” Baliff Jack. I bring to you the case of “The Surprise DM” This was the first time myself and my friends were playing D&D together and also MY first time playing D&D ever. (I listen to SO MANY D&D podcasts but have never found the time to play) My friend (let’s call him Fryin Murphy) was all set to DM the game but when his girlfriend (Gemily) heard about it she decided to join the game as well. None of us really like her for our own various reasons but we’ve all wanted to play for awhile now and the sessions were taking place at Fryin and Gemily’s apartment, so we didn’t have a choice, she’s in. The day comes for the first session and we walk in to find out that Gemily is now the DM. Our hearts sink. We asked “why?” But weren’t given an actual reason, only to find out later that she basically bullied Fryin into making her the DM. The first session went surprisingly smooth but SHE disregarded our back stories and gave us new ones. Cool start. 2nd session, one friend didn’t even show up and, in the game, we were being railroaded the whole time. After bringing up our concern of railroading, Gemily gave us the impression that she didn’t know what that term meant and, while rolling her eyes, assured us it was “worth it” for her story. Cut to 3rd session, we couldn’t play because Gemily had to work. We discussed the game’s future while she wasn’t there and decided it would be best to end it. Fryin told this to Gemily later on that night while giving her the excuse of “everyone’s schedules changed, sorry”. He said she seemed skeptical but didn’t pry any further. Justices, were we in the wrong of ending this teeth-grinding campaign early? Or should we have seen if this campaign was “worth it”? I humbly await your ruling. Thank you.

Audrey McCLure

Dear Members of the Church and the Deacon Jackknife: I have a dire confession I must make for the good of my eternal soul- I DM for a group of three close friends and I. It’s a homebrew campaign, and all of the characters have extensive and well thought out backstories. They love their characters very much, and I had so much fun building them together. I love my friends and I love playing dnd, but my confession is this: I hate DMing. I would never tell them, because i truly am so lucky to have such a funny group, but I often feel myself not having fun while running combat or roleplaying NPCs. Luckily it seems I’m not bad at it as they havent noticed, and they often tell me how interested they are in the setting, so I will take this confession to my grave. I hope Dice christ and the clergy can forgive me for such a sinful feeling.

Kelsey Kautzsch

Oh honorable and just justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner — and also that guy who stole my name, John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt — I have been playing a Spelljammer campaign with a group of my husband’s work friends (who had never played DnD before) over the last year, for which my husband is the DM. We recently came back together from a two-month break during which our DM prepared to launch us into the “real” campaign. When we finally got together again, the three of us were presented with a tremendous whomping in which the two main enemies compassionately left the fight before it even started. Our characters were unable to rest and proceeded through two more battle encounters over the next two sessions. Note that as a Druid, I am the only healer in the group. While we were enjoying the game and trying to learn better survival strategy, I noticed something felt a little off. Every enemy was doing the same amount of damage every time they hit. Our squishy level six characters were being knocked down and revived with Goodberries over and over and over. That’s when I realized my hubby-DM wasn’t rolling the damage for his enemies; he was dealing the average damage every time an enemy hit. When we asked about this, he said “It’s just easier for me.” But we claimed it was taking away the randomness of the dice, and that there was a chance we might get killed even more quickly, sure, but it could also leave us standing bloodied but victorious on the battlefield, and would be more rewarding. Thus, I leave it to you: should damage dice be rolled for enemies’ hits every time, or are we just being whiny little babies who need to learn to take a hit?

Ryan A

To the Supreme Crit Justices and jake. I present the case of Saint Patrick's Rat Trap. For Saint Patrick's Day, I ran a themed one shot where the bbeg was Saint Patrick himself. The players stormed his bar, the Clover, and confronted Saint Patrick for his crime of banishing the Yuan-Ti from his Island. During the fight, the Tabaxi Bard, Shanks, ran up the wall and hit Saint Patrick and his Rum Gremlins with a Cone of Cold from across the room before diving behind the bar for cover. Sick move. But Saint Patrick is a prick of a wizard and trapped the place with glyphs. Shanks just activated two glyphs of "Enlarge/Reduce" behind the bar both set to reduce. He failed both saves and was shrunk down to the size of the average tavern rat he found himself now facing. Well, he realized after the fact that he miscounted the range of his next spell and said if he realized, he wouldn't have dove behind the bar, not triggering the trap. I didn't want to let him take back the dive, but some other players agreed and I let him retcon it. Your honors, the double-shrink-rat-trap is not my idea, but it's the best Idea. And I was so excited to see someone fail both saves since one would just be a normal Reduce spell. I couldn't use the trap after that, and had to pretend it didn't happen. Your honors, was Shanks wrong to back down from the rat trap or am I just upset I didn't get to have a rat fight behind the bar? I humbly await your decision.

Kelsey McNeil

To the honorable supreme crit justices and the equally honorable Baliff Jason, I present my case. A while back I was running an Acquisitions Incorporated campaign, and the party consisted of an half orc barbarian, an elven warlock, a dwarven Druid, and an owlin wizard, with a DM PC of a goblin wizard/monk (essentially their Balnor, I kept this character a level behind the rest of the party). While the party was at level 6, they visited a casino owned by a powerful lich to try to find info about a magical artifact they were looking for. While poking around the casino, they encounter a mechanical behir, and a fight ensues. The party almost got the behir down, but then on what was most likely the behirs last turn, it got its breath weapon back, and rolled incredibly well on damage (70+ on 12d10). I would’ve fudged these numbers some if I hadn’t been rolling in front of the DM screen, but since everyone could see it, I let the dice stand. This unfortunately auto killed 4 of the characters (the warlock, the Druid, the wizard, and the DM PC) since they had squishy builds. Since one party member was left, I was starting to DM panic spinning ideas in my head of what to do next and how to proceed while trying to continue the session, when the person playing the wizard started immediately packing up his stuff, accused me of cheating, and left. The person who played the Druid also gathered up their stuff and left the room without saying anything, which was especially weird cause we were playing at their house. Then the person playing the barbarian, whos character lived, said they were glad it played out this way because they actually hated the campaign the whole time and were glad it was over. I quietly packed up my stuff and left. Was there a better way to handle this near TPK? When I saw the damage total, should I have done anything different? Were the players right to be frustrated and not want to play the campaign anymore? this monster fight is written into the module for them to fight at level 6, so it’s not like I threw in an extra hard fight on my own. The experience really threw me off DMing, and I hope I can learn from your wise judgement. Sorry if this is too long.

Lauryn

To the Supreme Crit Justices and the bailiff who honestly does a great job reading these cases in an engaging way, I come to you with a case regarding the division of assets. After a tough battle with a cult, myself and a fellow PC stumbled on a cave nearby piled with treasure. We disturbed and defeated the Displacer Beast guarding the loot while the other two PCs looked through the cult's documents in a nearby building. Our DM called for a short break, and when we came back, we discovered that the two party members who had focused on the documents had already split up everything we found in the loot cave, laid claim to some of the magic items, and set aside a cloak to give to an NPC because "they'd like it." I said that the loot should be split two ways per Finders Keepers, not four. This did not go over well with the players who had done the splitting, and it went even worse when I opened my notebook and listed the items and money that had been looted so far and who had held onto them. Up until this point, the defendants had not shared any of what they had found with the rest of the group. The defendants claimed this list was inaccurate but had no evidence to support their argument, and were in fact equipped with much of the proof they denied. Normally I’d be all for party sharing, but we’re using a mechanic where we pay to upgrade our gear and weapons, so individual funds are very important. Are we wrong to deny the division of assets, or should we rescind our claim in the name of party cohesion? We humbly await your decision.

A Gross Infection

To the Honorable Justices and the, honestly a bit overly flirty, bailiff. I submit the case of losing your head. While playing, a beloved NPC was killed and beheaded. Our DM told us that because he was beheaded, we could not use the revivify spell. Because the spell states that "This spell can't return to life a creature that has died of old age, nor can it restore any missing body parts." However, we argued that his head was not missing, only removed. We had the head right there. He asked for a medicine check. Of course, being the chaotic god they are, Dice Christ blessed us with a nat 20. He did allow us to cast the spell, but this was entirely because of the peer pressure and hype of the nat 20. Were we wrong to lawyer our DM in this way? Or, were we rightfully rewarded for our clever work around and Dice Christ blessing? We patiently await your ruling.

Elias Roessler

To the fantabulous Supreme Crit Justices and the bailiff who is sorta meh, I come to you with a case from my days as a newer player in the sunlit times of 4 years ago. I was in a campaign with some people where I was playing a street urchin artificer-rogue who had a bone to pick with a warden of a prison who had captured our party and had sent him to solitary confinement leading to 5 levels of exhaustion before release. In the escape battle I attempted to have my character fight the warden. This is where things went wrong. See one of the other members of the campaign was playing a character from another dimension and recognized the warden as a “variant” of an enemy from his reality. It was now that we learned that the warden was in reality a variant of the character’s enemy in another campaign that the DM and player were involved in. My character was then told by the warden and the PC to “step aside”. Was this wrong? Should I have been sidelined from a big character moment because of a cross-campaign beef? I leave myself at your mercy.

Slippery Pete

To the efficacious Supreme crit justices and the little bean Jabe, who needs to tread SO carefully, I submit the case of the requested re-neg. Several years ago, during my second-ever campaign, I was DMing for some old high school friends. The party had just defeated a Necromancer and saved a community of ratfolk when they accidentally triggered a wild magic nexus and got plane shifted to the Feywild. During the plane shift, one of my players, (a fey bard named Baste) was intercepted by their Satyr God Pan in his magnificent mansion. The scene played out with the PC being ‘God-Struck’ and very agreeable to the entity's prophetic influence. The session ended a little while after with the party realizing they were in the Feywild and trying to figure out how they would get home. After the session, Baste’s Player pulled me aside and said he wasn’t very happy about how HE role-played in that scene and asked me if we could run it again next session. I thought about it for a moment, taken off guard by the strangeness of the request, and then said no. I’ve never had a player make this request since, but I think about it often. Should I have acquiesced and retconned what happened at the table to let a PC feel better and redo their role play? I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Trevor

To the legendary Supreme Court Justices and Bailiff Jed, I bring to you the case of the Sliver Rule. In a game where I dm for 4 very new players. They all have been heavily influenced by playing Baldur's Gate 3, which closely mirrors 5th edition rules. They've been improving rapidly until my samurai character used a lightning bolt scroll. The party was dominating a dungeon, and with the last goblin attempting to flee for his life, he ran through a doorway 60 feet away. The samurai then used his lightning bolt scroll, and although he had the range, I ruled it as a miss because the goblin miniature had only a tiny target, his elbow, visible through the door. This sparked a debate, as even in Baldur's Gate 3, if there's even a sliver of visibility, it still hits. This debate has been ongoing for a month now.

The one they call Barlo

To the esteemed justices Urphy, Worm and Tanny, and The LBJ. I bring the case of the scripted murder. Our level 5 party found ourselves in a mine inhabited by a red dragon; it was very clear the DM wanted us to go to the mine as we were coerced into it by no subtle means. Despite our obvious reluctance I said I trust the DM and they had mentioned there was a powerful artefact that would likely let us defeat the red dragon. Oh Justices, how wrong I was! Fast forward to the final hour of the session, and our whole party finds itself in a tense stand-off with the dragon. We do not have the artefact and we were not able to flee before the dragon arrived - these were both denied us by the DM who just stated ‘this was not possible’ without further elaboration. ‘’OK, he’s clearly got a sweet scene planned. Let’s play ball,’’ my tragically naive past-self thinks. The DM narrates how, mid-parlay with the dragon, it uses its breath weapon as a surprise round held action and all roll initiative. I asked the DM if a surprise round is possible as we are all present and all waiting for someone to make a move, or if we could also use our previously described held actions as well. Both these requests fell on deaf merciless ears. Needless to say my level 5 goblin wizard-ass was fried along with another party member. I was revived in time to see a PC be devoured by the dragon as the rest of the party fled. I narrated how I would be prepared to die trying to save my goblin brother but the DM took us out of initiative and narrated how we all got away accept my now wholly eaten goblin brother. I ask if this is all fair in interesting narrative or a step too far? I humbly await your judgement. P.S. before Justice Murph hunts for the whiff of DM sweat I can tell you this homicidal loon was as cool as a cucumber and stated after the session how pleased they are with how it all went; how it is good someone died so we can learn how dangerous the island is; and, all he knew was that no matter what we did or where we went we were facing the dragon this session. P.P.S. Hate the show

A Gross Infection

To the Supreme Crit Justices and the, honestly a bit overly flirty, bailiff. I submit to you the case of "Losing your head." While playing, a beloved NPC was killed and beheaded. After the battle, we attempted to cast the revivify spell. However, our DM said that because he was beheaded, and the revivify spell states "This spell can't return to life a creature that has died of old age, nor can it restore any missing body parts." he would not be brought back to life. We argued that his head was not missing, only removed. "We have the head right here". Our DM allowed us to make a medicine check. Dice Christ, being the chaotic god they are, rewarded us with a nat 20. This, alongside the peer pressure of the players, convinced our DM to allow it. Were we wrong to lawyer our way into bringing our NPC back, or were we rightfully rewarded for our clever outside of the box interpretation of the spell? We humbly await your decision.

Doctor Ransom

To the sangfroid Crit Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the apprehensive little mouse bailiff Jorsh, I offer the case of the Retaliating Drow. I was DMing a oneshot online with some friends involving drow bounty hunters chasing after their party of four cursed adventurers. They previously had whomped my earlier baddies that is until a high-powered Drow Mage sent his yeth-hound after them and one of the players mercilessly butchered it without further thought. Half of the party decided to flee instead of fight the Mage, resulting in two players being 100’s of feet from battle while the other half were getting taught a brutal lesson in not killing someone’s dog John Wick style. After the Drow Mage downed the houndslaying player with a legendary action, one of the fleeing players inadvertently drops from our voice chat saying the fight was unfair and there’s no hope of winning even though they were four overpowered 14th-level characters, and he chose to leave his allies to die. Who was in the wrong justices? Was I being a big meanie retaliating too hard against my players or was this player just crying yeth-hound tears? I await your most just of judgements.

Garrett Myers

To the most esteemed justices and the oft sullied baliff chark, I bring you the case of the Inescapable Moron I (DM) am starting a new campaign after my year-long previous fizzled out (at my behest) partially because of a dice rolling cheater amongst other reasons...my predicament is that one of the people who annoyed me soooo goddamn much is my boss's husband...and there is nearly no way to escape him being in my game. A coworker of mine is joining as well and she and I agree that this dude sucks. He's a bad roleplayer, worse in combat, begrudging, complainy, and gets super worked up about my rulings (even when he's wrong). Sweet justices, am I to social engineer his demise from my group, or suffer an eternity of the Inescapable Moron because this is my fate? I nervously await your decision.

an_isabelle

For the Crit I have a case and rebuttal: Dear honorable justices and that new guy on 8-bit Book Club?, I present the case of “A Good Tiefling is Bard to Find”: Some years ago in a 2-year long campaign with my high school friends and sister (a 7 person party), my sister and I had to leave a session early but it was during an important battle and we agreed to let some of our fellow party members pilot our characters until next session. After we left my sister’s Bard was killed by the BBEG Jr (the BBEGJ if you will) and our DM feeling bad since she was not in control of her character at the time, instead made her character captured by the BBEGJ. Unfortunately due to scheduling conflicts the party had to be split up for any of us to play. Our DM hosted small party sessions for whomever could meet on those days. During one of these sessions my friend and I attempted to find and rescue my sister’s Bard. We rolled so poorly on SEVERAL checks that our DM told us that the trail had gone cold. We did not know at the time that we were the only group that had attempted to rescue her. At the next big party session our DM announced that the Bard had died in captivity because no one was able to find her. My sister was furious that her character had died and that she was even captured in the first place and now had to roll a new character. My question is this judges, was my sister unjustly wronged by the DM or should we as a party have tried harder to find her character? P.S. her Bard ended up becoming an important BBEGJ and it was really compelling and fun until half of the party quit the campaign due to internal relationship drama ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dear most honorable judges, I beseech you and your lowely bailiff to recognize this slander of my DMing name. While I do not disagree with the result of the story, some key details are missing. It was young in my DMing career about 2 years into this highschool campaign, and I was still learning how to balance combats when people suddenly drop out. Upon the Bard leaving she entrusted the party to pilot her character and the combat ensued. And I, like a good true believer of Dice Christ did not dishonor the rolls presented. But when it came time to kill the absentee character I relented, saying she was instead captured and that it was upon the party to save her. In the scheduling dilemma of 2018, multiple small sessions did indeed happen. Yet only one group out of 5 cared about the missing party member, rather they chose to pursue their own whimsies or play into the city wide war. When pressed and asked whether they'd go investigate the Bard's location, they showed no interest, saying there were more important matters at hand. And through the bystandard effect all the other groups neglected to attempt to find the Bard. Your honors I even reached out to the Bard player asking the her if she would want to RP a breakout mission before the first proper session back as a group and she was disinterested to say the least. And not only in saving her character but playing the game in general. This also wasn't the first instance of this, the player had routinely got up from the table and went to the couch to fall asleep saying she had a headache each session. So I interpreted it as a sign she was leaving the campaign and foolishly aluded to the character's untimely end due to the party's failure to find her at the beginning of the full group session, which the Bard player did not attend. So it came to my surprise, when she told me that she was enraged that her character died and blamed it on me, rather than the party's apathy or her own disinterest in saving her character and the campaign. We talked it through, I apologized, and we moved pass it. She played other characters in the campaign until her departure due to relationship complications, but I've been informed that I was never forgiven for killing her first character. So I prostrate myself to you judges, do I deserve to be burned at the stake for my crimes against the player or was it simply a communication learning experience between player and DM?

CamSmall

To the Supremest of Crits and the Bailiff that Prevents It From Falling into Chaos, I humbly present the case of the unlucky TRex. I am DMing a game of Curse of Strahd, and my players characters are of the mind they need to destroy Strahd's coffin before him to prevent vampire regeneration. In THE FIGHT with Strahd in Ravenloft at the end of the game, the druid of my party who was out of wildshapes for the day decided to polymorph themselves into a TRex. I think this is cool as hell, and we move on, after a minor "no, you don't get to turn yourself into a TRex AND attack on the same turn" discussion. On their next turn, the druid TRex makes a bite attack against the coffin, which I had told players had a higher than usual coffin AC because it is the coffin of Strahd. They understood, and decided to attack it anyway. They rolled a natural 2, and even with a TRex's bonus were unable to meet the AC. Then the player asked if they could use their Lucky feat to reroll. I looked at the language of polymorph, and initial gut reaction was no. It specifies mental abilities and the target of polymorph are now those of the chosen beast--essentiallu being the beast themselves. My players argued that a feat isn't a mental ability. I argued that a the druid was not the druid anymore but a TRex, who doesn't have the lucky feat. I also thought it rad as heck that a player--who, for the first two and a half years asked what die to roll every time I called for a skill check, attack roll, or saving throw--wanted to use a feat they took and hadn't really used before. I ultimately decided to let Dice Christ decide. I said "Roll a d20. On a 15 or higher, you can use a luck point and reroll the bite attack." They rolled a 7. I narrated how the TRex leaned close to the burning coffin (because the party wizard was a little fireball crazy), but the heat caused it to turn away before it could do any meaningful damage. I now turn to the court: was I wrong to deny my player the ability to use their feat as a polymorphed TRex? Or was I, as I feel, generous to allow them the opportunity to be lucky and the dice simply didn't want to tell that story?

The CPawx Centre for People Who Can't D&D Good and Who Wanna Learn to do Other TTRPG Stuff Good Too

To the honoured Judges Tanner, Axford, and Murphy (as well as any guests), and the naughty boy Jacob, I bring before you the case of the Fanny Pack: Several years ago, in a homebrew campaign, our characters acquired a Bag of Holding. Visually, it looked like a regular sack (thing, easy to compress, etc.). Later, our group was attempting to infiltrate a prison where we would need to check our weapons. My character, a 6'11" Dragonborn with a huge butt named Bumkrum Peters, decided to try to stuff the Bag of Holding into the aforementioned gaping maw of an ass, leaving the opening hanging out. The bag would then be filled with weapons which we could use later. Judges, after some lighthearted discussion, the DM agreed to allow this. Success! However, once inside the jail and beginning to remove the bag, the DM required a saving throw so as to not rip open Bumkrum's bum and/or the Bag. I'm sure you can see where this is going. The roll was low, the bag ripped, and dozens of swords suddenly appearing ended Bumkrum's adventure early and gruesomely. Questions, I have two: In your wisdom, is a Bag of Holding/Fanny Pack combo a thing that should/could exist? And the second: once the DM allowed the anal cavity extra storage option, was it right of them to demand a roll to drop the load? Many, many thanks. RIP Bumkrum.

Kate G

Dear honorable judges, and the cool dude they make read all the stuff, I bring the case of the 2nd rate DND group. We had a DM who was running a DND group on Tuesdays and a separate one on Fridays. Both games were told they need to take a "brief intermission" due to our DM's work schedule being hectic (everybody was ok with this.) That was three months ago. We have been very patient and recently asked when he was going to restart our game. There has been 0 reply for about two months now and everybody is getting a little impatient. It turns out, the Tuesday game started back up over a month ago! When we asked our DM about our game, he told us, he'll get to it when he gets to it, and the other group will ALWAYS be his DND priority. The Friday group has all since left the discord server (online game) and quit. Our DM (a real life friend) is pissed! He called us sore losers and impatient. While we just think our game will never come back and he clearly isn't interested in it as much as the other group. His comments rubbed us wrong. So dear judges, I ask, we were wrong to quit his game? Or should we grovel and plead at his feet for forgiveness? Thank you, I yield my time.

Anthon Morgan

To my favorite little darlings and Joscar Jissac, I have the case of a canine airstrike, I DM for some of my friends in a cowboy western setting I have established (unfortunately) that this world is not like earth at all changing things like the weather patterns and wildlife. I made the mistake of saying that dogs aren't real but then constantly trying to compare animals by saying "it's kinda like if a dog had _____" always being met with a swift "a what" by my players. I finally had enough and said that dogs were real but they were all in space (whenever people try to fight the god of my world he turns them into dogs and they orbit the planet)This escalated to all of my players asking constantly to be given a spell that would allow them to airstrike their enemies with dogs. I beg them to stop and am met with cold looks of determination. Please justices am I in the wrong for wanting an easy way to describe canine animals or should my players be punished for desiring Doberman demolishion. (All in good fun no fights have been had)

Rachael Lovely

To the Supreme Crit Justices and the Honorable Baliff Jeff, I present the case of Oops! Character Bleed to the Court, I have been playing with same group of friends online for the last several years. It has only been in the last nine months that I have had a long term weekly game. Most notable thing about this game is that my character, in the very first session fell in love with the first plot related NPC we ran across, to the shock of myself and everyone involved. It has become a long running bit now of the campaign and has really influenced the course of the campaign. I recently realized that I have a little bit of a crush on our GM. Looking back a surprising amount of my PCs have had crushes on his PCs or NPCs but this is the first time that I have played a game long enough to have it become a part of the story (and also it wasn't so disastrously obvious from the get go.) Now I'm feeling a little bit weird about playing out a romance with my GM because of what I think might have been character bleed? At the same time it has brought a lot of joy and fun within my friends and my PC and the NPC have finally gotten together after months of build up. I really don't know what the best move is here? My friends and I have made a bit about my PC falling for the first NPC that they stubbled across and now I realize stemmed from my crush on my GM, but it feels too late to back out without explaining why. Would I be a complete jerk to continue the romantic relationship in game when I have real feelings for my GM? ~Rachael (they/them)

abfg616

Dear most honorable justices of the supreme crit, and itty-bitty uberbaby bailiff of questionable shelf-life Jelq, I present to you, most deferentially, The Curious Case of the Rogue Eggmonger. First, lets set the scene. I, not-so-recently, ran a heist one-shit in the roll for shoes system, for a friend and their partner (also a friend). The one shot was organized thusly- my players would have one day to scope the joint, an orb-themed casino, interacting with a number of colorful characters, the night to plan, and another day to put there plans into action and steal the orb. On the first day, one of my players seduced a nameless guard and brought them home. This was, of course, a bit difficult to manage, but not the reason why I write in today. You see, dear justices and other, my player saw fit to cook for this guard a wonderful egg breakfast in the morning, rolling all sixes in the attempt. As you may well know, rolling all sixes in Roll for Shoes means you gain a new skill of greater specificity with regards to the task critted on. So I, in my infinite, magnanimous wisdom, decided so graciously to grant my player the boon of the skill “eggmonger”, an ever-so-clever play on cheesemongers, fishmongers, and the like (I was going through a phase). However, my players, the dastardly bunch that they are, broke out a whole ass original cipher from middle school to encrypt their communications before me. The next day (in game), the newly minted Eggmonger and his partner in crime raided the casino, but used the Eggmonger skill to impregnate all of my npcs! Should I have worded the skill differently? Should my players have better appreciated the subtle wit of my genius wordplay? Or perhaps I ought not have opened the Pandora’s box of allowing my PCs to impregnate from range. I await ever-so-goodly your surely just ruling and certainly cruel punishment, and bid yinz adieu.

Science the rat

To the holy priests of Dice Christ and the humble altar boy, Jim. I have a confession I have kept secret for the last four years. I was playing a tiefling sorcerer in a campaign with 5 players. We had just reached level 5. Our DM was talking big game about how our next encounter was going to be incredibly tough. I’d just taken the haste spell and used sorcery points to twin cast it on our barbarian and our fighter. Our barbarian excitedly read the card and said, “this is awesome, since I have the extra attack now, this spell means I can attack four times!” I knew for a fact that this was not how the spell worked, as I had researched that exact scenario before taking it. I tried to explain that it would only let her attack three times, but she held out the spell card to our dm and insisted it would let her do her both her attacks twice. Our dm looked at the spell card, shrugged, and said “yeah, that sounds right.” Despite knowing this was incorrect, instead of trying to explain again, I just went along with it. Ladies and gentlemen of the esteemed dice church, we demolished that encounter so fast. Our barbarian frenzied, giving her five attacks! When action surging, our fighter could attack 8 times. The trolls stood no chance against us. After that session, our dm expressed shock at how easily we’d gotten through what she thought would be a very difficult encounter and said she’d have to raise the challenge rating of future encounters. For the rest of the campaign we were fighting monsters at a way higher CR than made sense for our levels because of how broken the way we used haste was. I continued to twin cast haste for every single combat for the rest of the campaign. I even took the war caster feat because I was worried that if I ever lost concentration on haste we would all die. Nobody ever found out that we were using the spell wrong. Please guide me on how to absolve my sins of breaking this campaign.

goleminthegearz

Dear [insert your own honorifics here]. I have a pathfinder game going with some long time friends. We've been playing different campaigns off and on for probably 12 years now. Recently, one of our players who has only DMed a handful of times years ago, took over as our fulltime DM. He's been running a good campaign for the most part, and in some ways is more fun than our previous DM, the only thing is... well, while he does his best to keep track of rules, he is used to 5e, and pathfinder is a lot more complex, and he tends to not want to question things or drag things down by talking rules. One of our players though (we'll call him Tyler) often fudges his characters a bit (extra feats that he shouldn't have, extra spells per day, etc) that he always writes off as 'oops, pathfinder is just sooo complex, I make these little mistakes sometimes' (but has never made a mistake that hindered himself, coincidentally). Shortly into our new campaign with our less experienced DM however, Tyler starting cheating, but to the point where it's _comically_ obvious, and nobody else seems to want to point it out. His current character is a druid that wildshapes into a bear, and he has told us he has a special archetype he took that gives him faster/bigger wildshape progressions but only as a bear, and that as of our current level (level 12), he now has the ability to wildshape into a Colossal size bear (the same size category as a tarrasque), instead of the 'lowly' gargantuan size bear of last level. This makes his bear wildshape form now minimum 60ft tall and he makes jokes about it being a kaiju, and quips that he just minmaxed well, and 'while it's OP, the balance is I have to choose a smaller bear when we go into dungeons and stuff'. And our DM just goes 'oh, that makes sense, mhm, mhm, Tyler said he has an archetype after all, that all checks out', because druid is the class he knows the least, since none of us have really played one before. But, I cannot get over the fact that there is definitely no way Tyler just casually turns into a SIXTY FOOT plus tall bear. I don't think it's actively hurting the game though for the most part, and Tyler seems to be having a lot more fun than he has had with his previous characters. Do I become a killjoy and point out to my DM that he's being taken advantage of, and possibly cause some drama/tension in what is otherwise a longterm friendgroup? Or do I just continue playing and ignore the bear-that's-larger-than-an-elephant in the room? Would it be wrong to just invent a spell called 'greater enlarge person' and have my wizard cast it on the rest of the party so we're all kaiju together? What ground do I stand on here, legally speaking? -Dean

Maxwell Johnson

To the utmost holy and fair Supreme Crit Justices: Sweet, Blue, and Hole; and the honorable, indispensable, bailiff Jake. I present to you the case of the problem player rogue. I had been DMing a campaign for my girlfriend, her cousin, and a friend of ours online for a couple years by this point. The rogue (my gf’s cousin) had been arrested by guards for attacking them after being asked to leave the private university library. Despite knowing her history of acting out against players, acting selfish, and occasional derailing, I had not planned for this. So, I planned out an entire court session, with mechanics for swaying the decision of the jury, the fighter (my gf) volunteering as defense attorney, and I even got another friend of ours to surprise guest as the prosecutor. Everyone was excited; except the Rogue. Day of the session, she acted belligerent, uncaring, and coldly in character and out of character. I had even set up a story beat about her backstory with a witness, but she ignored it. She was proven guilty but only sentenced to community service thanks to a great defense and some good rolls, but she soured the whole mood at the session attempting to derail it. Myself and the players have tried to talk to her before about her behavior, but she was never cooperative. Eventually we temporarily banned her from the table. After joining again for a couple sessions, she ended up quitting abruptly, and that same guest friend has permanently joined the party in her stead with much success since. Despite how much fun we have now, I still feel as though maybe I could have handled the rogue player better. So I prostrate myself before you humble justices, is there any other way I should have gone about this, Or did I make the right calls? I await your decision.

Jess

To the honorable justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, oh and that bailiff guy who sometimes babysits Gemma: I submit to thee the case of the barbarian who refused to fight. I had a very new acquaintance offer to DM for some friends and me as he had experience being a dm and we were all brand new to the game. Knowing very little of how to actually play at the time, I made myself a young Dragonborn barbarian, named Vala. Her parents had died when she was young and she spent much of her time alone, except for the one person Vala had any love for, her best friend. One day Vala came home to find her clan members dead and her best friend missing. The only clue was a symbol which, in the first session connected to a group of demon worshippers identifiable by their hooded cloaks. Fast forward to our third session and somehow Vala comes across a person in a hooded cloak. I was excited to question or fight someone connected to the murder of my people. Then the DM revealed the cloaked figure was Vala’s best friend! Vala attempted to talk to her but it was clear she was somehow corrupted and not capable of being reasoned with. Again, being new to playing the game I simply channeled the “what would my character do” energy. I made the decision that Vala simply couldn’t bring herself to fight the only person who had loved and cared for her throughout her life. My character being in too much shock and distress to simply fight and kill her friend, even if she was in an altered state, felt like the correct response. My DM made it very clear that if she didn’t fight, Vala would simply die at the hands of her best friend. I’d like to stress, this was the only sort of motivation my character was given: to fight or to die. Not wanting to hold up the session any longer, I begrudgingly fought and killed my character’s best friend and I vaguely remember obtaining some lead from a note on her person. I mentally checked out for the rest of the session and did not return for any future sessions. I ask you, honorable justices, was it wrong of me as a player to attempt sticking to the “what my character would do” mindset so rigidly?

JesterHat

To the Supreme Crit justices, physical incarnations of a big W, may your haters never snack, and to Bailiff Tate, may all your L's be big, you untrustworthy fart. I present the oft experienced case of "that 1 chaotic player." We are a table of 6, 3 new players, 3 experienced. 1 of the experienced PC's is a sex-crazed warlock tiefling who calls her patron "demon daddy," and she just wants a "murder hobo" campaign. For example, an NPC recently was charmed and was leaving our party. As he started walking away, she said "I shoot him with my crossbow. I don't trust him." We convinced her not to, and so she began questioning him. It became clear through high rolls that he was charmed and didn't know what was happening to him. We let him go, and when he tried to wander away again she threw a rock at his head. etcetera etcetera Obviously we want everyone to play the game their way and have fun, but she's bringing everyone else down (except her fiancee, 1 of the other experienced players.) She's not having fun... every time we play she gets morose because we don't play the way she does. BUT SHE KEEPS COMING BACK. Is this our fault, for not pulling her aside and having an out-of-game conversation about what we want? Is this her fault, for being oblivious to the table (and people) dynamics? Please punish someone, we crave your discipline.

Brandon McLaughlin

To the Augustus judges and he who shall be shunned . I submit to you the case of being forced to play somebody else. I had been a DM for about a year and half at this point and while I loved being that role, I dreamed of returning to be a simply player. Luckily for me I finally found a group to play with that I met through a coworker, the group consisted of the coworker's Dad (player), the coworker's step brother (player), and the step brother's friend (the DM). I was excited to show up for my first game and to create my PC, but instead I was told by the whole group that I would be playing a dropped player’s PC turned DMPC High elf bladesinger. Extremely put off by playing someone else’s PC after the session I messaged the DM asking to play my Firbolg Spores druid/swarmkeeper Ranger. His response flabbergasted me with him stating that I was being to Meta with my PC creation. I ended up leaving the group after other strange incidents, but should I have played a dropped player’s PC or was my PC too meta? I await your responses

Cactus

To the wise and kind Justices and Bailiff jockstrap, I bring to you the case of the forgotten museum. Please bear in mind that this happened two years ago, and my DM still tells this story. Most recently at my now husbands stag party. I am part of a 4 year campaign with my DM, one of our best friends and my husband. As we entered a new city, our DM described all of the things we could go see, the palace, the shops and even a museum. At the time our quest was to gather some artificers left behind by a long dead Demi-god, so we think that the museum might hold some useful information. So we pop along to the museum only to find that it’s closed! We didn’t know this at the time but our DM hadn’t actually prepared the museum, but we know a closed door when we see one and continued on. The next week, unbeknownst to us, our DM has now created the whole museum and is waiting for us to go. Being the ADHD gremlins we are, we have completely forgotten its existence. So while pursuing the city some more, our DM gets us to an insight check while in the town square to and guides us into the museum. It was a great museum but our DM is still (jokingly) salty that he made a whole museum for us and we forgotten about it. So justices, were we wrong in forgetting the museum? Or is our DM is wrong in giving us far too many interesting things to do. He says in his defence he hadn’t actually prepared the place we chose to go to and was ‘ad-libbing like fuck’ when we went to the continent he wasn’t expecting P.s. My husband and I recently got married on Saturday and our first dance was to ‘One Big Bed’

A Spicy Lad of the Shadowkeep

Thanks, man! Glad to hear it wasn't considered a dick move. Never a fan of fudging but yeah, this player has been hampering things for myself and others in another campaign. I'm sorry to hear about your 'dark comedy' player (sounds like a bunch of red flags there). If the general consensus of the table was to beat the shit out of them, that might have stalled the narrative, but hopefully would have opened the eyes of the player who thought that kind of 'humour' was anywhere near acceptable!

Wrennifer

To the excellent and kind Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and nobody else, I am writing to you seeking vindication for a great wrong I have suffered at the hands of my party. Last year, our party wandered upon a village full of halflings. My character, a gnome, had never met any other small folk in their life, and was very happy and proud when finally encountering these people who resembled them. The next session, I was not able to make it. I tend to serve as a bit of the moral compass of my party, and when I am absent, things generally go... bad. This time was no different. Apparently, while I was gone, the party managed to solicit the services of many of the halflings to fight on their behalf in a dungeon. They fought hard, and won. Simultaneously, they also managed to get themselves caught in a demon contract, and had to go to hell in order to find a way out of it. The party agreed that they needed to open a portal to hell, and "naturally" decided a ritual sacrifice was the way to do it. They charmed the group of halfling, made them strip naked, led them to the top of a nearby volcano, and performed a mass sacrificial ritual by tossing them in the volcano, as it turned out they were all virgins, thus opening a hell portal. When I rejoined next session, I found that my kin has been not simply slain, but sacrificed, leaving my character once again alone in this world. Am I crazy for thinking this is fucked? Okay, yes, I found it hilarious, but also, my character finally finally found their people, only for them to be mercilessly ripped away from me in my absence. I await your divine judgment.

Meapyboy1234567

wait. i swear they covered this in a previous dungeon court. Am i going crazy? i most definitely remember them covering this. If i may ask why are you posting this again? if they already covered it?

Charlie Mitchell

Dear high priests and priestesses of the Church of Dice Christ himself and also that other guy, I come to you this day with a confession that has haunted me for years. Long ago (approximately 3 years ago), I DMed a one shot for my girlfriend at the time, her parents and her little brother. I chose to do the intro to Lost Mines of Phandelver as it was the source book I had to hand. All things were running smoothly until the first encounter with some goblins. They ambushed the party as they passed by a turned over caravan. As the goblins were surprising my party, they attacked before my future family could do anything. Luckily, the goblins rolled low on all of their attacks, allowing for the group to whomp the little green guys. However, this is where my sin lies. I realized, as it had been a while since I played D&D at all, that I had rolled the damage dice (a d6) as opposed to the attack dice (a d20). So even if I had rolled the highest total of an 6+2 for a short bow, it would be nowhere near the AC of even my weakest party member. Everyone enjoyed the game nonetheless but it's weighed on me ever since. As the voice of the Almighty one, I am willing to accept any and all repentance you deem necessary so that I may walk in the light again amongst my fellow adventurers. Thank you.

Geneva Zobrist

To the graceful and harmonious Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the effluviant Bailiff Jak, I come to you with the case of the defensive dragonborn. In our most recent session, while our DM was setting up the second half of the dungeon we all decided to take the opportunity for a short rest to heal up, look through our inventory, and distribute loot. We'd found a set of plate armor in the last room we'd been in, and our druid, a new player and a recent addition to the group, asked if anyone wanted it. We all shook our heads, explaining we didn't have proficiency, except for our dragonborn barbarian, also a new player, who happily said he was already wearing plate armor and didn't need it. Our dm, laughing, chimed in and reminded our dragonborn that his plate armor was very old and rusty and that, as a barbarian, he didn't have proficiency either, and that he (the dm) was being very, VERY nice by not making him roll his attacks with disadvantage every time. This sparked a brief discussion during which the dragonborn was asked what his AC was. He responded, "With plate armor, my ring of protection, and a shield, 21." There was a beat while we all processed what he'd just said. Then, unable to help myself, I asked, "Wait, haven't you been fighting with a greatsword this whole time?" Our dm dropped his head into his hands, before he looked back up at the ceiling and said, "Dude, you cannot have a greatsword, and a shield, AND plate armor. The entire reason I gave you the ring of protection was to work around the shield. I want you to have fun but I simply cannot allow this." "Oh," said the dragonborn. "Ok. I don't know how to remove the shield from my inventory. It'll take too long to figure it out right now, I'll wait until the session is over." "No, it's pretty easy. Here. I'll show you," said the dm. Our dragonborn proceeded to spend the rest of the session unusually quiet and refused to engage in the next three small fights, only joining in the big boss battle at the end. Afterwards, as I was walking out with the dm, he commented that he felt kind of bad and that he worried that he'd really upset our dragonborn. I told him not to worry, it's just a game, and that I personally thought he should be conferred with sainthood. I ask the court: should our dm be be agonizing over making the game infinitesimally less fun for our dragonborn? Or is our dragonborn in the wrong for not knowing the rules and believing he can be superman at level 4? I respectfully await your decision.

OrlaTheOrator

To honorable justices Murphy Axford and Tanner and the abominable bailiff jake I come to you with the case of the off the rails cleric. My friend was DMing for the first time for some of his colleagues, all new to the game. After a few sessions he asked would I join because he was struggling to teach new players while Dming at the same time. As a forever DM I jumped at the chance, he immediately sent me a character sheet; a human fighter. I was disappointed and asked could I not make my own character but he said their party was in need of a fighter and since I was going to spend my time helping the others my character should be simple. I agreed just happy to play. At my first session it was clear the players were very green and I was helping people a lot, so much so I almost missed the cleric saying she was casting a third level spell. We were all level 3 characters so I asked "how do you have a level 3 spell slot?" She says "I'm level 3" I say "but that doesn't mean you have a level 3 spell slot" and she says "what's a spell slot?" I almost choked. After some more questions we learn that for the past 5 sessions she has been playing as though she has unlimited spells and access to all spells up to level 3 at all times, no preparing the spells. Now all other spell casters were using spell slots so this was only the cleric but we had to stop the game so we could go over the basics. Over the next 2 sessions the cleric is clearly not enjoying playing what is now a very limited character in her eyes. Away from the table I suggested she ask the DM to let her change characters but she was told no, that the DM had planned the story around her character. I tried to negotiate and offered to play the cleric but got a frankly nasty message from the DM accusing me of back seat DMing and telling me to know my place. So I suggested to the cleric she simply stop playing like a cleric, so her character could die and the DM would have no choice but to let her roll a new character. Since then she has been throwing her character into danger at every turn and the DM is bending the laws of physics and d&d to try keep her alive. The DM blamed me and tried to kick me out of the game but the other players defended me. I fear I have become my own personal nightmare player but I also think he was being an unfair DM. So I ask the court should I have respected the DMs decision to not let our cleric change characters or was I right to revolt against his totalitarian regime. I humbly await your decision.

Comrade Capybara

May it please the Big Boss Bailiff, Jake "The Break" Hurtwitz, and foil the heelish plans of the Jobbers of Justice, Scryin’ Brian, Demolition Axford, and Tanny Omega. I recently began playing D&D with my cousin, his wife, and her best friend after we were inspired to give it a try by Naddpod. It’s my first time as a DM and everyone else’s first times playing a TTRPG at all. My cousin and I are from American Samoa and are part of the extended Anoa’i family of pro-wrestling fame. He wanted to make a character that honored our family as well as the character that inspired him to make the jump into D&D, Hardwon Surefoot (our clan stans the babyface bailiff). I think he absolutely nailed it when he created Rawberto Rockbottom, a dwarf fighter/hardcore indy wrestler. However, I am concerned that I might have failed Rawberto , thus bringing shame upon the Bloodline and our Tribal Chief. During character creation, we decided that Rawberto’s weapon would be a maul that we flavored as a steel chair. The problem popped up when we entered our first encounter and my cousin said he had chosen two-weapon fighting as his fighting style. I didn’t want to interrupt our very first combat to explain why that didn’t work out while wielding a two-handed heavy weapon, so instead, I let him use the chair to deal an off-hand and main-hand attack. I flavored this as him jabbing the chair into his opponents’ stomach on off-hand attacks, with main hand attacks being big swings of the chair or moves onto it (i.e. Raven's drop toe hold to a seated chair). After the encounter, he realized he had meant to say he had taken Great Weapon Fighting as his style, and we moved on with that as his fighting style from then on. However, I feel like I might have screwed us, because I loved how having a bonus attack and main attack triggered some truly hilarious roleplay. I ask you: was it a botched move to change Rawberto’s fighting style to Great Weapon Fighting? Did my decision to play things out make my lawful good cousin’s PC heel turn against Dice Christ, and must I suffer the consequences? I throw myself at the WWF No Mercy of the court.

Thorbjorn

To the deific judges Axford Tanner Murphy and Jake if he so chooses I have a character that I have had 2 dms buy off on it is a monk draconic sorcerer and with his ac as 20 at level 3. 13 from draconic sorcerer and 3dex +4wis is this within the rules

BabasYagas

I hope they do this one! I’m also playing a barbarian right now and trying to balance the same *fight and rage vs. stay true to my character* scales.

Cayden Rabe

To the grand crit judges Music Mistress Emily Axford, Goof God Caldwal Tanner, and the DM lord Brian Murphy... and uh... bailiff... Jimbo? My DM was session zeroing us on a new homebrew mechanic that they created, which was somewhat sort of an insanity meter. Every time we were introduced to something completely and utterly bizarre, we'd roll a wisdom saving throw against whatever DC the DM decided depending on the scenario. However, he would refuse to tell us what happens when we failed. Fast forward to 5 sessions in, and I fail for the first time. The DM smiles, and asks for my character sheet, which i hand over. He then proceeds TO RIP A CHUNK OFF OF IT!!! I'm appalled, shocked, and angry, I ask him why? He says that's the surprise mechanic, if we fail we lose access to a part of our character sheet (he'd go and describe exactly what that means, and it was actually a decent idea... I'll give them credit for that). To be fair, after each session, he'd scan photocopies of our character sheets, but does this still give them the right to rip my character sheet? I await thy judgment as I humbly plead my case.

Olivia S

To the highly esteemed justices and the talentless hunk John, I have a confession for dice Christ that has being gnawing me with guilt for the past year In the beginning of 2023 I gave birth to my son. I had been playing in a campaign with my best friend, her husband, and my husband. First session back we went to their house to play. I was holding my 2 month old while playing and about halfway through the game he got hungry so I whipped out a tit to start nursing. My DM a few minutes later asked for a perception check, I rolled a 7. I made a mental note that I rolled a 7. But because I had new mom brain and was in the midst of nursing I totally forgot that I rolled and when the DM asked for my roll I had forgotten that I rolled entirely. I re-rolled and got a 15, so I told him 15. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that I realized what I had done but we had already spotted the knights that were hunting us because I hit the DC with my new roll. Can dice Christ forgive me for my sin? I will acceptance any and all punishments you deem necessary for my negligence, I humbly await my sentencing. PS to the Justice Axford, my sons favorite songs and One Big Bed and Riverboat Shanty, it is the songs that I sing to him before bed and the only songs that will help smooth him when he’s upset (no I’m not kidding). I am forever in your debt for the help your music has brought me and the joy it brings my son :)

Resido

To the regal Crit Justices Ashford, Murphey, and Tanner. (Presumably read by some unimportant stooge who shall remain nameless) May it please the court to present the case of "Deus Ex Your Dead". As a long-time DM, I was excited to finally PLAY an Alchemist crafting build in a Pathfinder Kingmaker campaign. One of the side effects of the build is my character ended up with insane knowledge checks. By level 8, even on a natural 1 I would get a 20 (all RAW). One session my DM narrated I was out purchasing alchemical supplies by myself. I stated I would probably have a lackey handle these types of tasks, but could see he was trying to bring in a story arc so offered "perhaps there was something specific nobody was able to find." I entered the shop to find nobody there, so I left a note and went to leave only to find the door locked. After rolling an 20 on the die for a perception check and failing, an assassin dropped down from the rafters and attacked. After getting a 19 on a con save and failing, the attack straight up ended my character. Furthermore, the assassin used disintegration dust on my corpse to prevent me from being able to be revived. I asked to see the character sheet for this assassin and while legit RAW it would straight-up not be functional in society. The DM clearly made this assassin just to end my character, with no vengeance arc or strings available to find. The other PC's at the table were dumbfounded by this sequence. I ask the court: Was I in the wrong for creating a character with an unintended but awesome side effect? Was Cato so damaging that he needed to be removed from the world? Or did I get godsmote for just playing the character of my dreams. I await judgement from the court.

Resido

I like this one!

Dean Rick Sassafrassley Winchester

The the honorable crit justices and Jake too I bring this case I was invited to join an online dnd group by a friend from college. Everyone else knew each other I think and we didn’t use cameras so I’ve never even seen these people. The only person I really knew was really really quiet so sometimes gameplay was a little awkward. One of the other players let’s call them Jake apparently dislikes the spell truestrike and so worked something out with the dm to modify the rules. This was all fine until another player let’s call her Emily was trying to cast the spell as written during combat. Jake interrupted informing everyone that we had decided that was not how the spell was going to work anymore. The thing is, no one except Jake really decided that and it didn’t seem like the dm meant the spell had to be cast this new way every time. Emily tried to move on and say she just wanted to cast the spell and continue combat but Jake kept insisting that this was no longer the spells rules and that the original spell is useless anyways. This went on for about 5 min with Jake sounding confused why we were not on the same page and Emily getting increasingly upset before the dm managed to diffuse the tension and say that we could resolve the issue another time out of combat. The next session the dm informed us that Jake had left the group and felt like he didn’t really fit in. Jake was a bit of a rules lawyer (but wasn’t even very accurate when he was) so I wasn’t too sad about him leaving except that he was the best role player we had and without him there it has been a struggle to get the other players to engage with me other than in combat. It’s made sessions kind of boring. So I ask, should we have tried to get Jake to joint our game again? Could the situation have been handled differently? I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Mario

To The Hono(u)rable Justices Murphy, Axford, Tanner and the low-priority bailiff/friend Jake (I'm a big fan, please chill), I'm from Australia and once a fortnight I play with my coworkers in the office after work (which is legit fine, you can trust me). I play an insecure smartass perfectionist Paladin named Atlas Poosey, who fled from the convent at a young age when he caught his girlfriend Fiona cheating on him. Anyway we're about half a dozen sessions in, and we ran into Atlas' now ex Fiona praying at the Shrine of Luck in Phandalin. Because my character is a vengeful piece of shit (think comic relief Joffrey but smarter and a bit more pathetic), he cast the Command spell at his ex girlfriend, with the command being "Shit!". I was unseen by Fiona and the shrine was mostly empty. I explained to my DM that my character would yell "Shit!" as he pretended to trip on the uneven ground - so I'd be happy to make a performance check on top of the Command spell to avoid being noticed by any townspeople. I rolled a nat 20 on the Command and passed the performance check - so naturally, Fiona indeed shat herself. But my DM said that her god whispered a punishment in my ear and gave me disadvantage on all skills and ability checks for 3 days (basically 3 sessions - 6 weeks in the real world). This seems a little harsh because of the nat20 and this interaction being mostly flavour. Am I wrong for poking the bear or is my DM salty that I told my ex to shit herself and she did it? Our people need to know.