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Cases Please (Patreon)

Published:
2024-04-16 20:38:21
Edited:
2024-04-16 22:02:04
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Heya! Bailiff Jake here to let you know that a very special panel of Supreme Crit justices will be convening this week! Please submit your brief (I beg!) case on this thread and we will bring you very special justice.

Update! - If you've got any cases related to Magic and YuGiOh we will try those as well!

Comments

Dakota Cloud

To my esteemed judges and their strangely attractive, albeit slightly illiterate bailiff: I bring to you the case of the giant frog sphincter. I was DMing Strahd for 6 friends. Due to the party's size I would often alter encounters to make them more challenging. However, I began to notice that even with slightly more monsters, encounters stayed fairly easy. I had a sneaking suspicion that one of the party members was looking at monster stat blocks while we were playing so they could have an advantage. Like any paranoid DM, I began to homebrew monsters and their abilities to see if my theory was correct. The party encountered a group of vampire spawn. Now typically, vampire spawn can only use their “mist” feature when defeated but I decided it would be fun to let them use said ability as a reaction. The player in question wildshaped into a giant toad and proceeded to swallow a vampire spawn. I then used a reaction to mist on out. The player proceeded to become upset saying that vampire spawns couldn’t do that and that giant frogs will only let things go once they are killed. They then proceeded to send me screenshots from Reddit and other rpg websites claiming that nothing could escape from the frog and I was wrong WHILE I WAS STILL DMing the session. So I ask, should I have just made it so the frog couldn’t burp out mist, or was I right to add some dramatic flair to my sweet little vampire spawns?

Lia

To the pantheon of law and their divine messenger of order. I come to you with the case of an interrupting player. I ran the dnd campaign for ravnica module for newer players and an experience one. Krenko was the final boss, but I modified several sections of it. I had a player (who did introduce me to this podcast) who was highly suspicious of most if not all my homebrewed items and original npcs. They interrupted a tense moment of negotiation in the shop several times (to where I had to introduce security to throw them out) by grabbing items, touching a lot of things, and interrupting roleplay moments. During the campaign I had these gauntlets that had spell charges the enemies wore, they could summon mephits using these gauntlets, and almost did a tpk during that fight. In order to balance the final fight (and reduce the risk of a tpk) I modified the npcs, the shop keep followed them to the hideout and claimed stakes in an old fued with Krenko for a shipment that should have been hers. She set an explosive trap which did blow a hole in the hideouts wall, and all three parties fought. The player then exclaimed "I KNEW IT, YOU SHOULD HAVE LISTENED" which kind of felt like diminished call back to the rude behavior the moment a bit since I didn't plan on this originally and felt a little jaded by the interrupt of my description. High council, was I wrong to feel a bit discarded by their reaction after being rude to other players, or should I have let them have the moment and felt good about drawing them in with my twists? (PS this helped me work my confidence into building my own world)

Waddle Bawddle

Hello honorable justices and the guy who’s never been on 8-Bit Bookclub. I come to you with the case of the Stolen Character Moment. I was DMing a campaign for three of my friends. One session, they sieged a city that was once ruled by a PC’s, call him Aragorn, family with the exiled prince. They successfully captured the guy who had taken over the city, “Aragorn’s” half brother. The prince gave “Aragorn” the choice of what to do with him. Right as “Aragorn” was going to decide, another PC, Goliath, stepped in a beheaded the half bro. Everyone tried to stop him including the other player, but Goliath succeeded on all his strength rolls. It’s been 3 years and none of us have forgotten this. Are we right to still never trust Goliath around any big choices? Thank ya sweeties

Hector Ortega

The D20 cast is together in the UK, maybe we’ll get an intrepid heroes panel of justices 😱

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.

iamnotjackblack

No I will not be submitting any cases, screw you john

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.

Dylan

May it please the court and the ultimate baliff, I bring you the case of the PCs who became NPCs. I was DMing an official module in which my PCs got possessed by dead evil gods. The Lich NPC they were allies with warned them this will happen if they were freed, and two of them freed three each, and both failed the wisdom saving throws. I took control of their characters, and they made temporary characters to help the rest of the party save their original characters. When they found them, I had made custom stat blocks with additional powers, and a boss fight against two former PCs began. After they were saved and exorcised of the dark gods, the two players were upset to see the abilities the Boss Fight version of their characters were using weren’t on their character sheets I handed back, and said I should give them back. I did not, and things went on as normal after this side quest, but it’s always tickled at the back. Should I have given them the powers their dark god-possessed characters had at one point? Thank you for your verdict, whatever it may be.

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.

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 :)

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.

Nathan Pittman

To the honorable, venerable justices and the supreme being who humbly refers to themself as the bailiff: I present the case of the explosive bone. I DMd a group of college friends in a high magic setting for several years. About halfway through our campaign our gnomish wizard found a bone wand in the ruins of a wrecked necromancer lab. He made a quick arcana check to see if he could figure out what it was. He passed with a roll well into the 20s so I told him it was indeed a wand that acts as a +2 wand with added necromantic damage, but it was "overcharged" and unstable. (It rolled a D20 on every cast, but would detonate for the damage of the spell plus 3d8 if it went critical) a few levels later he cast meteor shower with it, and sure enough it exploded. In doing so, he downed our ranger who failed all 3 death saving throws and the party couldn't resurrect him due to lack of materials. He blamed me for this, as he said I should have told them more about how dangerous this wand was, I countered saying that no additional investigation or questions were asked. I throw myself at the mercy of the court; was I wrong to not give more information or is it on the party to fully investigate the nature of magical items?

Deadstar1146

May It please the court and the lowly bailiff. Justice Murphy, Axford, and Tanner and Bailiff Joris I bring you the case of Elves v. The dm. I dm a campaign for my brothers and girlfriends and like 4 of our friends and I asked for backstory for my players and I planned on putting 3 of them to sleep and tell a bit of there stories but the two I chose are elves and can't be magically put to sleep so I wasted time writing story (pencil and paper) so I continued as my brother and his girlfriend kept pestering me about both them being elves I was asked after the session if I was going to throw away their stories I said no I would just have to bring them to death's door to get them to see what I wanted them to see and my brother argues with me that an elf only needs 4 hours to sleep land to tell their stories as fever dreams. I will await your justice

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.

Logan Stacey

To the tubular justices who are all invited to my birthday party. Oh, hey Jake, if you could pick them up at 8 that would be awesome. If it pleases the court, I present to you the case of the worthless Crittimidation. 7 years ago, I was playing in my first D&D campaign as a half elf sorcerer geared towards intimidation. The party was higher level, and we ended up running away from a Gnoll army that was hunting us on the prairie of a large wilderness area of the world. To try and scare them off, we decided I should try and intimidate them away into thinking I was a flame god that could easily kill them with fiery vengence. My bard cast Tensor’s floating disc to raise me twenty-five feet into the air, and the druid used control flames behind me, silhouetting my sorcerer, and with the booming voice of a titan (flavor for my spell casting all campaign), my sorcerer then twin cast fireball to destroy two large sections of the army, and cause the Gnolls to panic. Upon rolling the intimidation check, I crit, and with my bonuses, it totaled at a thirty-four. There was much celebration from the party, as we surely got out of this large dangerous fight. Our DM began to narrate how the Gnoll army began to lose morale, and they started to turn and run away in panic. But, before they could run, the warlord stepped forward and yelled, and they immediately lost all their fear and began to charge at us again, the DM stated that the warlord had an ability that made him immune to fear and inspired the rest army to not be afraid. Was this just cool flavor from the DM to keep us into a fight he was planning, or was I a victim to an ability that robbed me of my crit? I was upset, but ultimately let it go to keep the session moving along, but to this day I bring it up in a lot of DnD conversations as a "I was wronged so many years ago" situation. Please give me the peace I’ve been waiting for 7 years for, or the strength to leave it behind. I accept whatever judgement you will deal, oh honored ones and Jake. P.S. We won the combat when the DMPC rogue killed the warlord and that scared the rest of the army off

Court Davies

To the magnanimous and benevolent justices, and... yup, that's it I think... I bring to you the case of the DMs shady potion robbery (working title.) I play in a hardcore campaign with a few close friends. We were fighting a gargantuan Roc and it was dealing tremendous damage to our party. After a few grueling rounds of combat we asked if it looked tired or injured. The DM simply stated it was bleeding a lot, but showed no signs of relenting its onslaught. Our paladin took this as a sign that the fight would continue for a while, so he used his action to chug a greater healing potion. During the very next turn, the DM narrated that the Roc geared up to attack, but then grew faint, and fell to the ground dead from blood loss. It turns out the roc had hit 0 hp several turns ago and would only die during its next turn in initiative. Our paladin asked if he could take back the potion he drank, so he could heal with a short rest instead, but the DM refused, saying he had made his choice. No one argued with the DM, but the paladin fell noticeably quiet after this. After the session, the pally and I agreed that he was cheated out of an expensive resource and the DM has set a dangerous precedent. We are now afraid of wasting our consumables in battle. So I ask, are we right to feel that this ruling oversteps the bounds of fair play, or is this kind of thing justified in a "difficult" campaign?

LonkRonk

To the honorable and simply gorgeous justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and the less honorable but still gorgeous bailiff Jake, 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.

Jeremy D

Listen we don’t deserve to be in court so I don’t want to call anyone anything. My dm let’s kenkus cast vicious mockery back at my bard when I roll a nat 1 the kenkus don’t know magic just because they have mimicry. Can you tell him he’s wrong? Thanks Jake deserves the world

Mason N.

May it please the Grand Court of Crit and that guy who plays Jake from Jake and Amir. I propose to you all 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.

Nnamgork

Honorable Judges and the guy that reads cases (whose name I will not try to remember). I bring to you the case of the tea-bag check. I was running a session with good friends, and in this session they were escaping/robbing a large mushroom factory (mushrooms are potions in this world). During their escape they found themselves in a warehouse and decided to hide amongst the boxes. The rogue rolled stealth easily, then the wizard cleverly cast invisibility on the fighter, and crit on their own stealth. Sensing my surprise and feeling as though they had beat me the wizard shouted “I roll to tea-bag”. Rolling a natural 1. I took this and narrated them tea-bagging knocking something over and subsequently triggering an alarm, which set off a gas trap (which I already had built into the room) forcing them forgo their stealth and run. Justices I ask you: was I wrong to rob this wizard’s clever spell casting and good stealth check because of a nat 1 rolled as an annoying joke, or was this some sort of divine intervention punishing the punk wizard and allowing me to use my cool trap.

Bearnardo

Dearest High Priests/Priestesses/Rabbis and bailiff Jeremy, I bring to you a confession of the Bar Mitzvah Dice. Over the pandemic I was hired to DM for a group of 4 boys over zoom. They’re a fun bunch and somehow we’ve kept the game going all the way to the point where now they’re all celebrating their bar mitzvahs, which has made me very weepy and proud as their DM. However, I sent them all dice as little gifts to celebrate their big days and may be regretting it. We usually have only used virtual dice to keep everyone honest, but now the kids have been rolling their gift dice and have been rolling an unnatural amount of 18s and 19s. Each time they do they say something to the effect of “wow, these dice you got me are SO good!” I can tell they are fudging their rolls, but at the same time it feels kind of nice that the kids are lying to me in a way that makes me out to be this really good gift-giver who gave them all magical dice, so I haven’t pushed back on any of these rolls yet. I ask Dice Christ- is this a sin? Have I helped turn these boys not into men, but big old cheaters? I await his and your judgement.

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. We would try to investigate, but our dm would say we didn’t roll high enough to see anything. 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 (after about 3 sessions of this happening with no plot hook linked to it) 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.)

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.

Adriana B

To the honorable crit justices and the lowly bailiff Jake (Just one lowly to honor the rules of the court). Am I the Asshole? I bring you the case of DM v. Gummy I'm the DM of a campaign about the PC’s entering cursed games. In a past session, PCs managed to rescue the soul of a young dragon (Linda) who was wrongfully killed in the material plane and harnessed as a glitch. To save her, the players put her soul into their pet axolotl, Gummy and took her out of the game. Gummy happens to be a tiny dragon that hatched recently. Next session, I wanted them to find Linda a new body, and to put some urgency in this lead, I decided to make Linda’s soul to be too much for Gummy to handle. At the start of the session, I started to do 1 hp of psychic damage to Gummy every in-game hour. I had the PC’s do perception checks, starting at a DC 25 the first night, and lowered the DC by 5 if they didn’t pass. By the time the party found out, Gummy’s scales had lacked luster and appeared fatigued at 10 HP (27 hp total). My players were DISTRAUGHT at the fact I had the nerve to hurt Gummy. All things considered, I don’t think 1 HP of psych damage per hour was all that much.

Kuzco's Poison

May Dice Christ forgive me through its agents: That funny couple with the dating sketch show, the guy from Cartoon Hell who loves butts, that other guy who sounds just like Hardwon, and today’s guest. Let’s say… Zach maybe? 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 lifelong 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.

james_in_space

Hello, Justices. … Jake. Here’s a case regarding my players’ lack of role play. So I’m DMing for a group of noobs (some old friends, some newly-met friends) and taking them through the Dragons of Stormwreck Isle starter set. It’s my first DnD in years and it’s been fun! Except these players don’t seem interested in role play at all! I do lots of accents and voices as the NPCs, I offer them Inspiration for role playing (and I remind them of this every session), I even straight up tell them that I’d like them to role play a bit more if they’re comfortable… but nothing! Well, the rogue is okay— he keeps trying to steal things, so that’s something— but no voices from anybody, and they almost never even speak as their characters. It gets kind of boring for me and makes me feel like I’m not getting back as much as I’m putting in. They seem to really be enjoying the game in all the other aspects (combat, exploration, puzzle-solving, etc), and they seem to enjoy MY role playing! They say they’re looking forward to more, but honestly I’m starting to think I’m just going to abandon this group after the Starter Set is done. Justices, are these players wrong for not making more of an attempt to role play in a role-playing game? Or am I wrong for trying to make them play the way *I* like?

Felix Müller

To the most honerable Justices and the uh whats his name… this guy with like a performance Baselayer.. ah Blake. I ran a SW5e campain for my friends and everything was fine except one guy kept calling all his abilities like the dnd equivilant to which i thought not much until 4 sessions in he revealed that he homebrewed his own Class without consolidating me BUT his class was fun and not op I throw myself upon the mercy of the most hounrable Court

Zaxbeez

To the adorned and adored Justices and the Bailiff who would probably not mess up too badly if he were allowed to be a guest on 8-Bit Bookclub, I present the Case of the Too Cool Contemptable Character: In a campaign, I created a sad, pathetic man as a character (Mix Gilear and Cuckold Jake). The world was very loose and silly, and my 45 year old divorced man was working the counter at the Mall Burger King, located next to the dojo where he was taking monk classes. His bully, an 11 year old from an actual dojo, took extreme joy in beating him up – particularly in front of his ex-wife (the bully’s new step-mother). I was expecting and discussed with my GM a long-term arc where my monk would adventure around, gain confidence and eventually come back and at least hold his own against the bully (But never really win, because come on, he’s 11). After the first intro arc where the party kinda saved the city, the bully challenged my guy to a fight. I was not expecting to obliterate this child like I did. My ex-wife was impressed and told me we should catch up some time with a wink. Having completed what I had hoped would be a campaign-spanning arc in a few sessions, I grew bored with the character and dropped him off somewhere a few sessions later. Judges, was my GM being kind in giving me a win or being neglectful of my fun by resolving my character’s base desires so quickly? I humbly await your judgement.

Rebecca N

Hello great emissaries of Dice Christ, and the guy that let me in. I realize this is perhaps not a confession for Dice Christ, but it weighs heavily on my soul, and I must confess it somewhere. My party is running through a Pathfinder module where we're investigating a creepy lighthouse. The first time we were there was during the day, and based on the clues we found, we decided to rest and then come back the next night to continue investigating. As soon as we got back, I personally lead our party straight to a room that had a huge bloodstain on the floor, which hadn't had anything going on during the day. At night, the space turned into a Haunt, a special type of encounter that often can't be defeated by typical means. After a series of bad rolls on our part and the ghost dealing a lot of persistent damage, I and one other party member limped out of the lighthouse, Ghost not defeated and our other Two party members dead. I am asking for forgiveness as I feel I have the blood of those two party members on my hands. In my enthusiasm to lead us on in investigating the mystery, I feel I perhaps failed our other party members, and their deaths weighs heavily on my soul. Thank you for your time

CarpeLiam

May it please the court and make the bailiff genuinely smile, I come before the court with a spicy and tragic issue that is equal parts trial and confession- the Rules as Writ V the Rule of Tit. I have been DMing the same game for my wife and a close group of friends for about five years. The transgression in question took place at a cabin we rent every year to eat, drink, make merry, and dive into a weekend long D&D session. This trip, the party was set to infiltrate a fortress in the Shadowfell, with each floor being a challenge based on one of the five stages of grief. As the time to begin the session arrived, we all had a few drinks / mood enhancers in us already. Feeling a little silly and knowing it was going to be a particularly deadly encounter, my wife asked me if she could gain inspiration for her character by flashing me, the DM, in real life. Though I am always humbled and honored whenever my wife offers me a glimpse of her immaculate bosom, I declined, stating it wouldn’t be fair to the other players, and that it goes against the spirit of the adventure. It was then that every other woman in the party stated that, if they were also granted inspiration, they would gleefully lift their shirts in the name of quelling the menace of Shadowfell, dubbing the act “Titspiration.” Again I refused, saying this wouldn’t be fair to the fighter, the only other man in the party. The fighter insisted he didn’t want the inspiration, and endorsed the women’s free spirited gambit. With enthusiastic consent from every person in the room, and being no greater than the sum of my parts, I allowed Titspiration to occur. Laughs were had and the game began. Herein lies my plight. The fighter failed to pass his trial and was lost to the horrors of Shadowfell. Nearly every other player used their inspiration to pass their challenge. Though he took it well and has since made a new character to rescue his fallen fighter, I cannot help but feel crushed when I see the sadness behind his eyes. My question for the court is thus: Was I right to allow my players their silly and rebellious act of body-positive expression, or am I a contemptible pervert that needlessly doomed my friend’s beloved character of five real life years?

Tails with really supple birthing hips

I have a confession for the sexy gexy judges of dice Christ themselves whomever that may be at this exact moment in the media verse, I put the deck of many things in my players path on the second session and two pcs pulled donjon and the abyss and I was on the fly forced to create a bullshit dues ex machina moment in order to continue the story that ended up in an adventure to save the soul of one the party members and signing a contract of the other over to a evil god but I beseech dice Christ that I pulled this bullshit in good faith and the party is happy with the outcome as they are all new players (first campaign first characters) but I have always been blessed with rolls and do not wish to be cursed to rolls of Caldwell and murph. Please cleanse my soul.

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.

Scarlett B

To the venerable and radical judges of the Supreme Crit and mr g.hurzwit. If it pleases the court, I present the case of Otiluke's Resilient death trap. My party and I were helping an NPC escape from politicial instability in her kingdom. We were set upon by assassins on the road, who tried to kill her as we fled in our cart. I cast Otiluke's Resilient Sphere on the NPC, protecting her from harm. My DM argued that, since Otiluke's Resilient Sphere specifies that "nothing – not physical objects, energy, or other spell effects – can pass through the barrier, in or out, though a creature in the sphere can breathe there" that the NPC could only breathe the oxygen that was in the sphere when it was created, after which it would run out, since no new oxygen could pass through the sphere and the NPC would start suffocating. I respectfully called bullshit, but the DM insisted he was correct. This was some time ago but I still maintain that I was right, Justices, I beseech you for a fair ruling (preferably one where you agree with me).

Zaxbeez

To the adorned and adored Justices and the Bailiff who would probably not mess up too badly if he were allowed to be a guest on 8-Bit Bookclub, I present the Case of the World Building Player: A dozen or so sessions into a campaign, I decided to switch up characters. In talking with the GM, he mentioned he was really interested in exploring the conflict between the Old and New Gods, but no one was really taking the bait. Seeing my chance, I created a character who was apart of a secret society dedicated to restoring the old Gods to their former positions of power. After meeting the party and getting along on the adventure, I eventually revealed my position in the society and my goals to eradicate the New Gods. I spun some stuff about how the world was bad because the New Gods were siphoning devotion from the Old and thus the Old couldn’t keep the world as good as it was. I just made it up, because that seemed like a reason to be against the New Gods. I had a fun laugh about it, but My GM told the party that I was right and that was, in fact, the problem with the world. He privately asked me to: build out the pantheon of Old Gods, make some myths about them, figure out what New Gods would replace which Old Gods, create myths about their interactions, build a history of my organization, and explain how the organization hierarchy worked. He was in my regular position as GM so I could take some time to finish up my semester and move states. Justices, is this bogus or did I ask for this by creating a character that was so invested in something the GM wanted to explore? I await your judgement with a little pride.

Josh Zellers

To the honorable justices and the jolly jester jake. I bring the case of the not so friendly player. I introduced my friend to our already existing group. They all seemed to get along until a few months later when he left the group saying “ I just wanted a dnd group where I can come in and leave not sit and talk before and after.” I can’t help but blame myself for this. Am I correct in my blame or is this player perhaps preposterous. I await your judgement and whatever opinion the jolly jester may have.

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 the Aboleth commanded me to drop my bladesong, mage armor, and my concentration on haste that I had on our monk. I can’t find 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 wild that this beast would know exactly what magic I had active. Am I being a salty wizard? Is this worth bringing up? Or is my dm just pissed I can get my AC to 21.

Thorbjorn

To the righteous judges and Jake who I had to look up when I started listening I am burdened. I have built an asimar sorcerer monk with an ac of 20 base 13 from draconic bloodline and +4 dex with my +3 wisdom from monks unarmored defense is this broken for level 3 Ps I have had two dms say it’s ok but I still feel like it could be hard on them.

Dale Durham

To the esteemed justices of the court, and the surprisingly kobold-like bailiff, Junk. May it please the court: I have a potential murder-hobo on my hands and I want to know what to do to keep him on the path of the light. Im running a 5e campaign with me and my 4 roommates in college. We've been having a great time, but my friend "Ben" is playing a "morally gray" character. In the setting I made the elves run the mafia with front business and teleportation pads for handling goods and monetary transactions. He insists on making a ton of bombs and sending them randomly through the teleportation pads. I've expressed to him that he would end up killing a lot of innocent people, but he says that "well it'll take care of the mob at least" It got so bad that I needed a high-level NPC they know to cast geass on him. Hes counting down the days as they pass. How do i stop him from this path of darkness?

Ross Gilliland

May it please the court and the unconventionally handsome bailiff, I present to you the case of the unrepentant player. Once while DMing I introduced my party to a village where everyone had a personal vampire who offered them protection in exchange for a regular blood supply, a la True Blood. My real life best friend and most problematic player decided his character (Hektor) would go to one of these friendly vampires and petition him for his assistance in a personal quest. The vampire told Hektor he would not be helping him since it didn’t concern him, and retreated back into his coffin. Hektor’s next words have lived in infamy ever since: “I light his coffin on fire.” Now for context, I had started this very session with a quick reminder to my players that their decisions will have in-game consequences, as I felt like my party of college friends had been getting a little TOO silly with their words and actions in-game. I felt very challenged in this moment to initiate combat, but I didn’t want my friend’s character to be killed so I just had his character marked by the vampire to be his new thrall, meaning Hektor could be summoned at any point to serve him. Most lawful court, did I make a mistake by showing leniency after my friend so obviously challenged my authority? I humbly await your decision.

IMRYAN

May it please the court The Masterfully Magical Judges And the too big for his britches Bailiff I’m running a campaign with my sister, girlfriend and 3 other friends. In the most recent session after defeating a group of enemies whose bodies morphed into monster creatures one of them was left behind and reverted to his human form but retained a backwards broken elbow. After questioning and killing him my sister decided she wanted to cut his broken arm off and try to use it as a boomerang I told her that if I let you do this you’ll have disadvantage on attacks this upset her and the party as they all thought it would be hilarious. We ended with her using it as a slapping skeleton hand as a strength weapon with 1D4 damage. Should I have let her use it as a boomerang or were they being a group of silly geese. I await a response and a punishment for the sentenced.

Armis

May it please the ever so honorable judges, and the ever so humble bailiff 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.

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.

Christina S

My most elegant and beautiful Justices, and the slightly damp bailiff, I bring you my case. My player wants to recreate Batman as a vengeance paladin named Spruce Payne. I have been playing along as it means this player will have to stop being a murder hobo in order to emulate Batmans code of ethics, but I’m concerned the character will ruin the very intense Curse of Strahd campaign that I am planning with attempts to kidnap and train children to be his sidekick. Should I be punished for daring to question my players intentions??? Or should my player get a little more creative???

DowdMusic

To these absolute knobs, May it challenge the court and upset the power they wield. I bring you the case of "WTF High Crit, you got a problem with me?" I have written in to you in the past for your assistance and all you do is punish me. My players fill up a bag with bombs - my fault. My player brings an OP-roided-out-charisma-laden-God-bird to the scrub match - my fault. My players name them selves all Tyler - not only my fault - but justice Murphy says he must make an example of me and creates the first NADDPOD precedent in my name. Furthermore, Justice Axeford openly stated on record she wished to torment me. I have clearly been targeted and I demand retribution from this kangaroo court. I ask YOU NADDPOLES if this tyranny should continue. Good day. P.S. I don't even like this show.

SemiHuman99

To the honorable justices and the curator of shitposts, Jake. I ask if I was wrong for not letting a player roll to persuade an NPC he just revived to his marriage proposal because he was the one who killed her? I was DMing for a group in a homebrew world where they were visiting the elven hometown of one of the players. One player an Orc from the D&D official Swordcoast world that got magically teleported to my homebrew world, went to the local library trying to find a book the war between elves and orcs (there was no war, nor had I ever given any hints towards a war between the races). When he couldn't find a book he asked the librarian who had no clue what he was talking about, he then promptly killed her and tried to run but the party's elf, who’s hometown they were in, cast web to stop the Orc's escape. When the authorities arrived, the Orc told them he could help the librarian and was allowed to cast revivify on her. Immediately after he revived her, he dropped to one knee and proposed to her, saying that he saved her life. She responded with a slap to his face and ran away from him. The rest of the party showed up, heard the story from the Elf, Orc, and authorities and offered to make amends by executing his character as this wasn't his first incident. Afterwards the player was mainly upset that I had not let him roll to get the librarian to accept his proposal as her “savior”. I ask again, was I wrong for not letting him roll to "persuade" his victim into marrying him?

Evelyn!

This one has been on an episode :) maybe you missed it

Andrew Fournier

The case of the never ending session May it please the oh so honorable and quite fashionable judges, and the sensual bailiff Jake. I am a first time player who wanted to get into the game after watching d20 and NADDPoD, and was excited to start a home brew campaign with my friends of many years through discord. The problem started when they would notify us every single day for a session, where I was the only one with a full time job and therefore couldn't attend a dnd session 7 days a week. It got worse when I missed a session and it turns out it was a session with a real life 10 hour boss fight that lasted until 5:30am. I couldn't commit to playing a session every single day, nor could I commit to 10 hour boss encounters, so Thad to withdraw from the campaign, so l ask you honorable judges, was I in the wrong for leaving my friends dnd game, or are they too hooked on the campaign?

Darkrisky

The Daddy Killing Patron 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.

OrlaTheOrator

To honorable justices Murphy Axford and Tanner and that guy they let hang around with them for some reason I present 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.

Kristina The Sorceress

To the esteemed justices, whoever you may be, and also the meh bailiff: May it please the court, I present the case of Meta-Gaming Versus Party Knowledge. I joined my friends' campaign group mid campaign, and within the confines of character dialogue, they caught me up to the speed of their quest and the BBEG. Not soon after, we encountered a bard accomplice of the BBEG. The rest of the party had encountered this enemy previously and, at the start of the battle, used actions to place magical miniature sandbags in their ears to help resist any charms or spells that utilized sound (an item APPROVED by the DM). I, as the player, had heard of this villain and their previous encounters, but it never came up in character and so he did not allow me to use the magical earplugs! My DM chided me for "metagaming," and so my character took no precautions, failed saving throws, and was left to hear "the saddest song you've ever heard." This homebrewed magical song effect altered my character's stats and disposition for the rest of the entire campaign (even after this npc accomplished perished at our hands). The only way the effect could be undone was through a Greater Restoration or Remove Curse. Judges, I ask you was it right to say that I was metagaming simply because I thought the accomplice would have come up in previous conversations, but technically didn't? I'm at your mercy. P.S. never came across a Greater Restoration or Remove Curse spell, or any NPCs who could cast said spells.

Kevin Alman

Honorable justices and the (insert appropriate adjective here) bailiff. I come to you with a case of possible self robbery? I was DMing a heist at an auction and one of my players decided to cast suggestion on another auction goer, Thaddeus, and asked them to give the party all of his money to help reimburse them for the money they had to spend to win the auction and claim the artifact they were originally there to steal. Long story short a teleportation mishap cause Thaddeus to take force damage twice his hp, killing him before he could give anyone any money. But the question is, can you cast suggestion on someone to make them give you all of their money, about a total of 15,000 gold, or would this be considered a harmful act against themselves? I await your fair and just ruling.

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?

Chloe B

To the justices for whom the sun shines in the morning, and the sweaty and sunburnt bailiff, I present the case of the instant family. A few years ago, a couple online friends and I started playing a game of Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and long story short, our DM had to drop out. The rest of us wanted to keep playing, so I decided to DM a different campaign set in the feywild. As a little nod to the game that got us all playing, I introduced the canonically hot brother of my Witchlight character as an NPC, whom the party quickly adopted. My best friend said that her character found him really attractive, and I told her we could see how their relationship develops as the campaign went on. The next day, she emails me a Google Slides presentation with the names and ages of their five future children and other details about the romantic lives of two characters who just met each other. Justices, should I let my NPC have the five kids, or should I sink the ship before it even begins? I humbly await your ruling.

Elias Roessler

Hello Omniscient Justices and the bailiff who is honestly just kinda meh, today I bring you a tale of drama and incredibly awkward situations. a few years back I was playing in my second ever campaign with a friend and three people I had never met before. There was me a harengon paladin rogue, an elvish bard, a Kenku detective, and an owlin monk. After the late game marred with constant disagreements, primarily between the elf(my friend) and the Owlin over my friend's choice to change characters several times(due to the Owlin PC's treatment of the elf), we were at the final battle where the Owlin monk had rejoined after a month away from the campaign. In the final battle we were presented with a fight against the minor antagonists before facing the big bag. The Owlin was not rolling well. So, using my harengon jump, I flanked her enemy to give her advantage. Together we get the enemy low. However, it quickly became clear that I was going to be the one to land the finishing blow. Upon realizing this the Owlin proceeded to beg me to allow her the final hit saying she'd "never asked me for anything". Irritated by a whole campaign's worth of passive agression my choice was a hard one. Gritting my teeth I held my turn, leading to the Owlin getting the final hit. However, I still wonder if I did the right thing. Justices, was I too kind to this overzealous owlin?

Katherine

May it please the esteemed court and the child prodigy babyliff Jake, I bring the case of Hag Brunch. We are playing Curse of Strahd with my husband (DM), 2 neighbors, and a friend from college. We have a potluck during our games, and at our last game it was brunch. The DM, who had imbibed in several mimosas, attempted to cast ‘sleep’ my half-elf paladin of Tymora while we were ambushing a hag coven. I claimed elf heritage, and the DM took the tiny L. However, on the next turn, the DM did the exact same thing!! He then attempted to take back his decision; when called out, his response was ‘I’m drunk, not the hags!’ He then proceeded to cast the spell on another player (which also failed). Justices, is the DM allowed to take back a failed decision after a few mimosas? Or are Hags into boozy brunch just as much as we are?

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.

PlausiblyPJ

May it please the wise keepers of the holy crit and that guy who stands at the confessional and announces our sins, I come to you with a confession. 3yrs ago, I started playing in a Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign where I met my fellow players for the first time during session 1. It has been fantastic and we are all the best of friends now. However, I made a bold mistake very early on that has weighed in my conscience ever since. During our 3rd session, we were locked in a depate among the party on whether or not to assist a town in need or to allow the town to turn against the mayor which would assist the medieval Mafia that our party was loosely affiliated with. All but 1 of us was on board to become "made men" and helping the criminal organization. This player (lawful good) was threatening to rat us out if we went through with it. So... I casted Sleep on them. We then proceeded to tie them up, lie to the towns people that he was delusional and a danger to others, and left him on the side of the road penniless and alone, kicking the character out of the party and causing the player to create a new one, which they were happy to do as it was very comical. This was the point that I realized my mistake. I was playing a bard, and I didn't realize bards can't prepare spells each day. So, Sleep was not on my original spell list. I added it after a rest for this plan to work... Luckily, the campaign has continued and has been an experience we will remember forever. Our DM even made the abandoned character an ongoing villain hell bent on revenge! But I always wonder what could've happened if I hadn't accidentally broken the rules and changed my spells... I kneel before you hoping for absolution, but accept any punishment you see fit.

Lily Kaufman

To the super cool and illustrious Supreme Crit Justices and that guy Junk. I present the case of No Talking The first game of D&D I ever played was in a campaign where we all had amnesia and our DM essentially operated our character sheets , this part was actually a lot of fun despite how it sounds. Once, my dwarf cleric made an investigation check and learned some information while he was separated from the other party members. Based on the information presented, I said “huh, so it feels like they were forced to leave rather than by choice” and my DM immediately said “you can’t say that, it’s metagaming”. The same could be said for practically any thought that a character would have. This DM also would not jog our memory on anything campaign related and said “you remember what you remember” which felt off considering our characters did not have to go to college for a week in between sessions like us players do. The campaign ended well, but I thought this felt a bit weird. Was I metagaming by thinking out loud? What’s the limit on table talk? Should I be croissanted? I leave these questions humbly at your feet.

WIlliam DeMartino

To the 3 sexy Justices and the AI powered bailiff who certainly replaced the lowly Bailiff Joke. I bring you the case of the Witless Wildshape. I run a homebrew 5e campaign tha has been going for about two years. One of the members, a Circle of the Moon Druid, endlessly frustrates me by choosing unapproved homebrew creatures for his Wildshape, and gets upset when I tell him he can’t change into the creature. The final straw was when he tried to Wildshape into an ACTUAL baby dragon mid-combat, and I ended up targeting and killing his character. I ask the court, was I too brutal in my response to this wild request, or did my player deserve to die for refusing to use approved stat blocks?

Axle

Dear illustrious judges and brave bailiff, I present the case of the inadequate heals This all happened around a decade ago, as I was playing my first game of pathfinder with some more experienced players. As the party didn’t have a cleric and I was joining mid-campaign, I offered to play one (since healing was very important in pathfinder). When we came upon a town ravaged by dragons, I offered to use some of my healing magic on an injured commoner, but unfortunately rolled low. Rather than be grateful that a stranger was magically healing their wounds (since even a low roll should fully heal a commoner) they just coughed expectantly, and demanded more healing. Since we had a full day of adventuring ahead of us and healing cost spell slots, I declined. Lo and behold that the next commoner we spoke to had heard about the stingy cleric, and was cold to our party as a result. Wherever we went in town, NPCs would address my cleric rudely and aggressively, as though he had attacked the town himself, rather than try and heal its wounded. Was my cleric wrong in not spending an additional spell slot on an unnamed NPC? Obviously the answer is no, but I seek vindication from the courts before the statute of limitations expire on this case

Luciana

To Honorable Emily & the other guys, I present the Expeditious Heartbreak. In our home game, our warlock was trying to get back together with their ex who was key to the plot & had been kidnapped by the big bad (a la Princess Peach). We were racing a group of minions to reach her first to save her from the big bad & the warlock cast Expeditious Retreat on himself to move faster than the minions & beat them to his ex. However our DM ruled that since we were moving towards our enemy (the big bad guarding the ex) the warlock could only use that extra movement to retreat, per the spells name, & move away from the big bad instead. While the spells content doesn’t specify that stipulation, does the name of the spell impact how it can be used? Peace out Girl Scouts

MellE

Greetings iridescent justices, and the "outy belly button vibes having" bailiff Jake, I bring you the case of the MTD. I was dm'ing a campaign where the party was all casters and could upcast spells even without the slots to do so with a price. They rolled on a table which had various amounts of damage, exhaustion, and, if you roll a 1, Crabs. A harmless crab that was invisible to anyone who couldn't cast spells, but that was seen as a sign of dishonor amongst casters. Long story short a player got Crabs and, after a few lighthearted jabs from elder mages, got upset at me for my "homebrew bullshit" and left the campaign after a couple minutes of yelling. Was I wrong to have this as a consequence, should I have had the mages not make fun of the pc? I humbly await judgement. P.S. we went over this rule and players had access to the table with all the outcomes and knew about the in world Crabs lore during session 0.

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.

Dean Rick Sassafrassley Winchester

The the honorable crit justices and Jake too I bring the case of the inaccurate rules lawyer and the modified spell 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 join our game again? Could the situation have been handled differently? I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Kay

Hey there Centaurs! About a year ago, I played a bladesinger wizard in a one shot with some friends. The only other notable player was a ranger that he played as being vegan/pro animals and anti humanoids, which made things a little (a lot) awkward between him and all of our humanoid PCs. During the adventure, we encountered a kobold which he decided to start start violently and needlessly torturing to gain a key. I felt that this was a bit too much, and though I knew it was not the best, entered into pvp with him. Justices, I wiped the floor with him, and I have to admit, I liked doing so. After the battle, we agreed it wasn't canon, but for multiple days afterword, he would excuse his loss by saying he "didn't build the character for fighting" and that he didn't deserve the attack. Noble Justices and Gemma's dad, was I right to "put him in his place" in such a taboo way, or was I wrong to fight this vengeful vegan?

Miche St P

To the esteemed justices and guest Cake Shurewitz, I write with more of a plea than a case. I require assistance in helping convince my opposition (my partner) that the letter of the law should be upheld (or RAW). My partner (and future DM) and I have a frequent disagreement over whether or not spells should be flavoured and who it makes sense to have spells. First, he believes spells belong to wizards and sorcerers, not rangers, and second, he dislikes the idea of flavouring spells. For example, I once flavoured eldritch blast as a pistol in a Deep Rock Galactic oneshot. When I told my partner this, he said he wouldn’t have liked that at his table. Please help my Tolkien-purest partner see reason and explain to him why spells can be flavoured and help save our relationship. If you agree with him though, I will eat my humble pie and remain as unflavoured as the non-brown part of the shrimp. I humbly await your support or rebuttal. Thank you.

sam orchard

To the honorable judges and murphs sleep paralysis demon. I come to you with the case of the game changing shadow puppets. Me and my party were travelling through a cave filled with kobolds. As we stealthed through, hoping to get the jump on the next encounter, our DM mentioned that there was a kobold around a corner using a lamp to entertain his fellow kobolds with shadow puppets. Then proceeding to ask who in the party had dark vision. The DM then went on to explain that those of us with dark vision could not see the kobold shadow puppet show or and shadows at all. Claiming that our dark vision prevented it. The DM then went of to explain that dark vision worked like night vision goggles, and I quote "you can't see shadows with night vision goggles". Things got 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) starting to 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 be forced to live in a world that is just to bright

Sam McInturf

Your the knob! Passing the blame on us little players for your missguided DMing stratagy! Nay! This is no kangaroo court! For we are Tyler!

Ros

To the most honorable justices and the bailiff Crepe: I seek your judgement on the subject of mid-combat convos. During my very first DnD campaign, my rouge stole a Medusa head from a powerful third party, to use against the big bad. I wrote it in my inventory and moved forward with our campaign. Fast forward about 3-4 months of regular play and we were finally facing off against the BBEG. We rolled initiative and when it came to my turn, I took my attacks. My party looked at me horrified and confused. DM rushed to silence them as they urgently attempted to tell me something. I forgot about the Medusa head in my inventory. I had no clue why my party was giving me silent death glares. On the next players turn, they tried to talk to me (in character) again. The DM said that we didn't have time to speak during combat and if anyone told me anything, it would be metagaming and we would end the session. We ended up having a TPK and after the session, our DM said he had balanced the encounter assuming we would use the head. We never played another game together. Should I be punished for my innocent forgetfulness? Or should my DM be punished for being evil and stinky? I will accept any punishment you deem fit.

Josh M.

To the honorable justices and the resplendent and handsome bailiff, I bring you the case of the death by bag of holding and flute. I the DM led a party, The Majestic Fools, of 4 through an ongoing campaign. The party consists of a warforged cleric Tom, lizardfolk Warlock Wordless, wildmagic eladrin barbarian Ashe and Arcane Trickster Rogue Kin. While in a city, Kin was bearing a cursed dragon scale necklace that detects others of its kind in 10 miles. It hummed indicating a sign of detection. The rest of the party decided that since they didn't want to accidentally detect the wrong necklace with a locate object spell, they must put the necklace in the bag but the necklace was stuck to the rogue by way of curse, so he too must go inside while they search for 10 min around the city with the spell. Well during that time the rogue while in the bag decided to play his newly acquired flute I asked if he was sure he wanted to start playing a wind instrument in a bag with 10 minutes of air and he did. I had him roll a d10 to subtract the minutes of air he used up, he rolled 5 and subsequently died from suffocation in the bag, has + to con, and since it was more than 1 minute when the party checked in they needed to go to a cleric they knew to raise dead. This was the first campaign death at session 45. Everyone laughed and thought it was incredibly funny. Justices was I wrong to kill my player's character with such an arbitrary decision that I acknowledge was not based in RAW or am I vindicated by the oodles of joy we got from it? I throw myself at your mercy.

Makena

To the wondrous judges and little J, When creating my character (a frankenstein style reborn aarakockra cleric (please have mercy on me i just like drawing wings)) I took inspiration for some features (hair mainly) from lead singer Gerard Way of hit band My Chemical Romance. When it came time I actually got to use this character in campaign, I struggled finding any name that felt right for the character so I decided as a minor ongoing bit to have my character's name be Gerard Way. However, when I pitched this to my dm (and partner) they were immediately flabbgergasted and did not want me to name my character this. Not because they are against slight goof names, but because our emo bard had already chosen the name Gerard Way by complete coincidence. After some light pleading with my dm and the rest of the party finding this very funny and supporting the two Gerards they decided I would be allowed to keep the name for the start of the campaign, but my character would have to change their name within the first two sessions. By the approximate fourth or so session my character decided to take on a new name, Curio, but during this time my dm did have a (mostly joking) ongoing frustration that the confusion of two characters with the same name caused. Justices, should I have relented and changed my character's name immediately upon learning about the twin name situation, or was this a good early campaign goof. (PS in campaign we justified it as my character saw the bard's name on a poster and used it as a fake name because they didn't have one)

Haasenater

To the mighty Axford justicesbof the animals, Tanner of the shenanigans, and the cold hard truth Murphy, and the new baby daddy Sir Baliff Jake, I bring you a case that has weighed heavily upon me. About 8 years ago, I played 3.5 E and made a character who was literally cursed compared to the other players. I would fail nearly every check and attack. My grievance isn't with my failing character but what my DM ruled. Not only did I finally crit but I FINALLY confirmed crit. I was excited I was finally going to use my special attack with great success. His words "Unfortunately you are in their realm and your attack doesn't touch connect." No skill check, no saves, nothing. It still bugs me to this day. Am I right to be miffed for all this time, or was that something that gods or demi gods can do? I humbly await your sentencing. P.S. I played a half orc barbarian who's name was Borrow Bonechewer.

Santa Grinch Hugging HumBaba and two Fairies

The first time i played DnD was 3.5 e and we the party decided to avoide the main plot hook and participate in some murder hobo behavior and catch the ire of a powerful merchant who hired men to ambush us in our sleep and trap us in a demi plane . Personally i felt like the dm was rolling with the punches well but what ultimately lead to the end of campaign was complaining to me at work about how the dm should have guided us back to the main quest instead of rewarding our wanderlust and exercising of our player agency( yes i was a half orc rouge and another player had a catch pharse "Ric Ric Kills People" so did we really deserve to not get railroaded

Kal and her cats Portland, Star, and Berlin

To Jake only and not the court (but maybe other commenters) - I have no case but an idea. My gremlin brain thinks it would be funny if you found a situation that happened on naddpod that warrants a case submission (like the second attempt for Hank to switch places with shank not being allowed after a rules check between sessions or a broken table rule in trinyvale) and see how the court rules on their own actions 😅 just describe a situation in full and then add a ps like this is pulled from episode x of campaign x No hate, people are allowed to grow, learn, and change - i’d just love to see if their opinions about past actions would change if they were objective. Don’t know if that makes sense but someone go off please. If not, I might try and find something but I’m going to be honest, I’m lazy.

Helena

May it please the Supreme Crit, dear Honorable Justices, and the humbly handsome Baliff Hurwitz; I present: the case of the druid who couldn't hit. During a level 20 one-shot, I played a druid and couldn't hit an aspect of Tiamat. I only had +6 to hit with my weapon and her AC was over 26. I rolled multiple natural 20s during the session, but mathematically, I didn't hit the AC, so the DM ruled I wasn't able to do any damage. I believe I should've been able to hit anyways if I rolled a natural 20, because a critical hit is a critical hit; it's doing the near impossible. I even tried to barter, asking if I could hit on a nat20 and not do crit damage, only normal damage; my DM denied this, leaving me with basically nothing to do during the one-shot. This was a few years ago, so I don't remember why I wasn't able to hit with any spells, but regardless, my DM made it impossible for me to hit the BBEG and practically rendered my character useless due to the way they were built.* Should I have been able to hit on a weapon attack with a nat20, even if I didn't technically hit the AC? I humbly wait your ruling and will graciously accept any and all conclusions you reach. *quick note if questions arise: the plot of the one-shot was a complete surprise. We as PCs only knew to make a level 20 character, and to expect a combat that was balanced for a party of 5 level 20 characters. I'm not the most experienced player, so my PC was built for fun, not to min-max my abilities. - Helena (huh-lay-nuh) V.

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

Hunter.osty

To the honorable crit justices and that guy who knows everything about anime I present to you the case of the dm switcharoo I started my own homebrew call of Cthulhu campaign towards the beginning of the year but have recently became very busy due to life and began to not have the time or energy to prep and dm. Due to this me and one of my players spoke and worked closely together on him taking over the campaign and where we’d like it to go. I personally envisioned us going to lvl20 but now that my friend is dm he states he doesn’t want to go that high. Am I in the wrong for being sad we aren’t going to lvl 20 or is my friend in the wrong for not wanting to go to lvl 20 even though he knew that’s what I originally had planned? I await your judgement🙇🏼‍♂️

Kidtruck91

To the incredible judges and that guy thats there sometimes I bring the case of the shrodeingers dungeon. Me and my group of 4 played through Decent into Avernus. We are very tight group and this case is effectively a razzing we give the Dm from time to time. The main problem occured with the Bloodhunter Aarokokra( Sorry Justice Murphy) that my brother played. Through the multiple dungeons that Decent into Avernus had most of the walls were 10ft high with only the occasional room that would be higher. In these 10ft high halls the DM would not allow the Aarokokra to fly, as there "Wasn't enough room for him to spread his wings". This was an anoying but understandable rule. The issue comes when in one dungeon a portal summoning Demons from the Abyss requires us to flee before being over run. During our fleeing the DM says "You here a loud buzzing of wings" and a large bug demon flies down the hall. We found this riddiculous as a medium creature couldnt fly because of wingsize but somehow a large creature could fly via wings and catch up to attack us. I would like to know if our Bird boy Edgar Allen Crow was robbed.

Walt&Pepper

To the talented and funny justices and equally talented and funny bailiff (although it can’t be understated just how lowly he is), I have a dice Christ confessional/question! I have just started dming a game for my roommates. It’s my first time as the DM and all my players are relatively new at D&D. During our very first session, my players were tasked with retrieving an item from a shipwreck. A man at the bar next to them offered to let them ride on his ship in exchange for part of the reward money. My players huddled up and discussed if they could trust this man, and even discussed if they could betray him and take his reward gold. I asked them all to make a group stealth check and they ALL proceeded to roll Nat 1s on the first rolls of the campaign!!! I admit I became a sweaty DM and panicked, I didn’t know what to do since this was less than one hour into me dming for the first time. I ended up having the man roll a perception check, which he got a 4 on. Since the rouge has a plus 3 on stealth I ruled that he almost overheard the party but was distracted by the bartender at the last minute. It was a fun first session, but I can’t shake the feeling that I broke Dice Christs ruling of a natural one. Are all natural ones an auto fail? Or just a really low roll on the dice? Please let me know if I need to spend some time at Sunday Dice Christ School. Thanks for all the laughs!

Lilli of the bog

To the honorable justices and also Jake, who is a little cutie, I present the case of the shiny hunting DM. May it please the court. A while ago I was invited to play a mass effect themed D&D game using star wars 5e. I live in a small city in the middle of nowhere so I had been waiting years to get into a group and was extremely excited, but my enthusiasm was soured by the DM. The DM would have us all assembled and ready to play, but would still spend at least an extra half hour before every game with switch in hand, playing Pokemon. Everyone would be staring at him but he would say "just a second" as our precious Friday evenings dwindled away. Was I wrong for telling him that our time needed more respect than that? I brought it up on week 4 and he got defensive and the game fell apart. Should I have been more patient and let this dude play Pokemon until 8pm every session?

Daveed

I love reading the comments and wondering which cases will be selected

Eric

To our illustrious judges and the bailiff, whose name I don’t remember right now, I bring to you the case of the botched blood-donation butcher. We were playing through a Curse of Straud campaign, with myself a Drow ranger, with a fuzzy adorable spider buddy, a “human” cleric (who was revealed early on To be a vampire pretending to be human), as well as two others. After we learned about her secret I decided to try and bring the party close together that instead of killing someone every few days when the hunger drove her to, every day one of us would donate a pint of blood so she could get by without having to kill anybody. And upon getting consent from the friendly NPC that was traveling with us I lead the two of them to another room to have some privacy while myself, and the rest of the party waited outside. After a few minutes, we went in to check on them to find that she she had killed the friendly NPC’s, because his blood with too hard to resist (according to the DM) which led to a PVP combat ending with the vampire party member dead. To this day occasionally I am razzed for getting a party member killed by suggesting the blood donation. Judges, was I wrong to assume that we could become closer as friends by satisfying her dark urges.

Banana Bread

Good afternoon honorable judges and the lowly baby Jakey-poo, I come to you with the case of the Shadows. I was in a public, West-Marches style D&D server with people who had come to be my friends. This server was run by a friend, once a very prominent player in an older server, who was getting tired of enforcing the server rules. A couple months in, he promoted a friend of his (that he knew in real life) to Mod status to help with the workload. Afterwards, this new DM, let’s call him Dedji, began to be very prevalent in the Text-based RP channel. An organization of shadow monk Owlins called ‘Shadows’ started to stalk every player in the server, making sure they didn’t break any of the obscure rules of the monastic order (occasionally harassing and threatening the PCs with death). This organization did not exist in the server previously, and was something he created in previous games. This, and many other issues caused by Dedji, resulted in me and a few close friends leaving that server and starting our own, but the issue still haunts me. Was it reasonable for these birds to become this world’s secret police suddenly, or was it as absurd as I thought? I await your judgment.

jordy v.

The Same but Different Tabaxi A few years ago my friends and I were running a homebrew campaign. My friend, who we’ll call Tony, joined our campaign mid-way as a Tabaxi Ranger, who was primarily a stealing-hobo. He would steal from notable NPCs, who would then distrust the party by association, and often steal from party members. When he would steal from us, rather than doing a Sleight of Hand check against our passive Perception, he would just say “… but nobody notices.” It was a little annoying but whatever. Fast-forward to a time-skip in-game, and Tony decides to play a new character. A completely different Tabaxi Ranger, same subclass and character sheet. But this time, a murder-hobo. His reasoning was he had forgotten to reroll a new character for the session, and decided to just reuse his sheet with a new character. I was visibly and verbally annoyed at this, and have since jokingly/seriously banned Tony from playing Tabaxis, Rangers, and Tabaxi Rangers. We are still friends and laugh at this situation from time to time, but was he right to recycle his character and play it off as a different one? Am I right to limit his character choices in future games? I await your ruling. P.S. He also listens to this podcast and will ride the high of this tale being said on air.

Omnis

To the Honorable Justices and that guy I either Hate/Love depending on how Justice Murphy is feeling this week, I bring you the case of the unintentional player killer: It was my first time playing D&D with a group of friends from college, in a campaign affectionately dubbed "Kevin's Souls" as the DM was known for making things incredibly hard - all players except for me had played with him before and were bracing themselves for chaos. During our second dungeon diving expedition, we encountered a group of cultists who, alerted to our presence, cast a Dominate Person spell on our Dwarf Warrior. Through a series of errors, failed rolls, and poor insight checks, my character was lead to believe he had been permanently turned and couldn't be saved. Thus, when the time came to choose between fighting our friend or allowing him to harm another, I fought back - and with a Nat 20, I did enough damage that he fell, along with his death saves. My friend insisted I did nothing wrong and the DM later clarified where I had misunderstood, but the campaign soon fell apart just due to adult life taking priority - even so, I have been racked with guilt ever since that my poor thinking caused the end of the campaign as well as my friend's Dwarf And so I submit myself to the mercy of the court - was this a case of an inexperienced player just trying to do his best, or a negligent murderhobo in the making?

Colby Greer

PLEASE SUPREME COURT JUSTICES (and Jugo's friend) I BEG FOR YOUR AID!!!! In a Treasure Planet inspired campaign that I have been running i come to learn that one of my players is CURSED by the dice gods! Her AC is 23 and yet never has an enemy attack missed her! She is crit on at least once almost every combat! Nearly every attack of hers misses its mark! Once she used her protection fighting style to prevent a crit on a beloved npc only for me to reroll and land on a second nat 20! What do I do?! Please help, for i fear she may soon meet her end at the hands of an automaton warrior inhabited by the resurrected soul of the once dead god of disease (aka the next boss battle)

Bugbear OrMiss

To the illustrious justices, bailiff, and Murph who I have a personal vendetta against, I present the case of the Broken Bugbear Promise. As most of you have probably surmised from my username, I really love Bugbears and they are the only character race I play as literally ever. However, due to them being a "monster" race I always make sure to ask any potential dms how they fit into their worlds as I face more than enough prejudice in the real world to be comfortable facing it again during whats suppose to be an escape. At the start of each campaign from my most recent DM, hes assured me each time that fantasy discrimination will not be a major theme in any of his campaigns, but at this point im not so sure. In his first campaign he sprung the lore that Bugbears were all chased out of the nation for being too "savage and murderous" and in fact the name Bugbear is deliberately demeaning as they are all "pests" several sessions in. Quest givers would often go on 10 minute rants against my characters whole species as he awkwardly stood around in the back of the party. I brought these concerns to him for his next campaign and he assured me that again, discrimination would not be a theme in it. And yet, during character creation, he tried to veto my Bugbears family being nobles as Bugbears are again "too savage". He relented, but for the rest of that campaign the only times my family came up was when racists tried to destroy their lovely seafood restaurant, the BearClaw 'n Craw. Now that we are starting to get into the third campaign, Im starting to worry that Im trying to impose a view on Bugbears that he does not want to play out and as DM it is fair for him to decide how his world works. So I beg, am I in the wrong for imposing my own idea of how Bugbears should be treated in the poor innocent Dms world, or has the DM broken his promise of Bugbear equality? (P.S. my vendetta against Murph is for the glaring lack of Bugbears in the Mob Goblin mafia. FOR SHAME!)

Zenorum

Hello Honorable Justices and Lowly Bailiff! I come to you with the Case of DM Spell fuckery! Several years ago I was playing in a 5e campaign with some college friends, as a sorcerer. We were crawling through a ruins of an ancient civilization, long forgotten to the world. While searching the room after fighting some dungeon monsters, my character found some ancient writing on a mural, and an old tattered book, both in a language none of us could read. Knowing we'd be heading to a ruin where we might find things we couldn't read, I took Comprehend Languages on our previous level up. Excited for some lore tidbits, I cast the spell, asking if I could read the words now. Note: I did not cast the spell ritualistically, knowing we had a lot of ground to cover in not much time, thus using the spell slot. To my surprise, The DM said no, and left it at that. Curious, I asked if I could tell why I couldn't read it, and if the spell fizzled, as this hadn't been the first time in the campaign that someone's spell failed without explanation. The Dm immediately became visibly annoyed and handed me some pages from his notes, saying "Here, if you're so sure you can read it, Translate it!" Startled, I looked down at his notes; there was a rough key which assigned various symbols he had drawn to English letters, but did not contain the full 26 letter alphabet, and there was no material that seemed like the contents of the mural or book that I could find; there was nothing to actually translate. At this point; the rest of the table is looking between me and the DM, all of them visibly annoyed by the altercation. I let the matter slide, and we continued on with the session, and campaign fizzled out shortly after due to real life. Justices, was I wrong for showing interest in my DM's world lore, or being curious about the effects of my failed spell? Or was I being pushy about a contentious spell and it's effects? I Humbly await your verdict!

Brendan Tominey

May it please the Justices and the Bailiff (but only if he sings the case instead of reading it normally). I bring you the impatient cleric. I’m running Storm King’s Thunder for 3 friends. There were no issues for 26 sessions, but then they arrived at an ancient temple to seek answers and information. In the original module there was a puzzle where the party just had to figure out 4 symbols through trials and error. If they got a symbol wrong, they would get blasted or summon or earth elemental or something appropriate. After 10 minutes of talking in circles, the cleric said “all right. Enough of this” and started reading out the symbols in perfect order, having very obviously looked up the puzzle. I called him out and the session sort of came to a screeching halt as neither me nor the other players knew how to react. We’re all adults so we talked it out and he apologized, but this moment has been stuck in my head. Your Honors, how can I reconcile being a dm who loves watching players fuck around with traps, with a cleric who reacts this way when something starts taking more than 10 minutes?

Cass Proffitt

To the honorable Justices and Jakey Wakey Eggs and Bo Bakey: I present to you the Case of the Ring of Partial Invisibility. We truly couldn't decide the answer to this (DM included) and figured you all would only have to true solution. My lovely DM of over a decade home brewed a very fun "Ring of Partial Invisibility" for one of my companions, a fairy that's basically a Black Marley / bad car salesman. We loved the idea of him wearing the ring, which makes him invisible - all except the finger he is wearing the ring on. I pose to you our conundrum. If the item works just like the current Ring in the DMG (cited below), but has this one caveat, could this guy say, stick his finger up his butt or in his mouth to be completely invisible? What sort of stipulations or roles or checks should be made if this were to be effective? Your ruling is our ruling. Citation for the normal Ring of Invisibility below: Ring of Invisibility DMG p191 Ring, legendary (requires attunement) Major tier While wearing this ring, you can turn invisible as an action. Anything you are wearing or carrying is invisible with you. You remain invisible until the ring is removed, until you attack or cast a spell, or until you use a bonus action to become visible again. Found On: Magic Item Table I Source: DMG, page 191. Available in the SRD.

Phil Willmarth

To the Esteemed Crit Justices and Amir’s Friend, I present to you the case of Power Word Kill(ed my D&D group) As a new DM, I made a series of errors that led to the unintended conclusion of our Everquest campaign. One of our players had expressed interest in creating a new character. We had spent time working on his new character, coming up with a backstory on how it fits in with our current session. All that was left was to find a way for his current character to bow out gracefully. I did not do that. Due to my inexperience, the way in which eye found us parting ways with this character through the use of Power Word Kill via a future BBEG. This choice, made without sufficient preparation, was poorly received due to its abruptness and finality. Additionally, in the heat of the moment, I incorrectly enforced a rule requiring a diamond for the “Revivify” spell, contrary to our Session 0 agreement to not emphasize spell components. This oversight caused frustration, particularly for our cleric, who felt the game’s integrity was compromised. These missteps resulted in our cleric taking a hiatus, and our campaign has since been paused. I admit my faults in these matters and seek advice on how to effectively reconcile with our cleric to revive the campaign, respecting the group’s preferences and restoring the fun and engagement we initially cherished. Your insights and suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I strive to learn from this experience and improve my DM skills. Sincerely, Guilty

MikeAllenZ (MAZ Presents Personal)

To the wise Justice Murphy, the honorable Justice Tanner, and the almighty Justice Axford. And maybe someone else… I feel like there’s someone else I’m forgetting. I bring to you the Case of TERROR. I was in an insane campaign based on Legends of Tomorrow with a DM who I’d argue likely didn’t know what he was doing. (We were basically time travelers in the Arrowverse, using a Mutants and Masterminds variant that was so homebrewed really badly it was insane). One session it was just me and my friend who played the Captain (we all agreed she should be Captain). But he brought two on two other guest players who played the villains of the session. We were basically transported to a dream sequence (that we didn’t know was a dream sequence) and were slaughtered because these two guest characters had insane builds. And every clever idea that we had to try and deal with their powers were shot down by the GM who seemed like he just wanted this outcome. Afterwards we were met with a 5th Dimensional Imp who went by the name “Terror” who revealed to us that he put us in a dream. This is where my sneaky brain let me have a bit of revenge, my character (A Ray Palmer-esc scientist) went “Sorry? Rorret?” To which the GM replied “Rorret?” In the characters voice. At this point I know my trick had worked and I pointed out the rules that 5th Dimensional Imps have to play by standards (and saying their name backwards means they disappear and return to their homeland). We had a quick discussion where he argued that my character likely wouldn’t know that fact about imps. But I also said that my character did research on supernatural phenomena in a previous session because we had a vampire and two mystics on our crew. I gave in quickly because I was kind of traumatized by the fight and just watched my Captain and friend die. But nowadays I think he was just shutting my ideas down no matter what I did. So what do you think, justices? Should my research had paid off and gave us some time to recover from the fight. Wait… JAKE! Jake is who I forgot! The bailiff right? He’s okay. Tell him I said “sup”.

Ben Ramirez

To the most high justices of the supreme crit, and ME! (Momma's specialist boy, Jakey). I bring you a case of deepest betrayal. I DM a homebrew Western inspired monster hunter campaign. (Think Fringe meets Wild Wild West). We had been running for over a year when one of my players wanted to DM a mini-arc in the same world. He designed an elaborate, plane-hopping train heist that was incredible. At character creation, I privately asked him if I could play a changeling that was secretly in it for himself. The DM agreed to this. What I failed to mention to him was that I decided to play a character he absolutely hates. In the party's first mission they encountered a traveling magic item merchant calling himself Honest John (yes like the fox from Pinocchio). My party didn't catch this little reference and trusted that the salesman was cutting them a deal. When they realized that the bag of holding that they purchased had a hole in it that made all the items they purchased get teleported away, and a huge monster crawled out instead, the party vowed vengeance on the fraud, Honest John. He is still at large. So of course, I was secretly playing as Honest John. At the end of the heist, during the fight with the BBEG, we managed to steal both halves of the maguffin (a magical relic that can grant a wish by sucking in the souls of everyone around it). I convinced the party to give me the pieces so I could hide them. Once I put them together, my DM pulled me aside to ask if I try to resist the pull of the cursed artifact, or complete the ritual. I DID NOT HESITATE. I told him I complete the ritual. He stared at me gobsmacked for a moment before we returned to the table and he described everyone being sucked into the thing. I then described my character morphing back to the form of Honest John and pocketing the relic. The party gasped, and the DM, PACKED HIS THINGS AND LEFT. When I spoke to him he said he was frustrated because he essentially wrote a 50 page module to give the NPC he hates the most a nuke that grants wishes. I told him he wanted to use my world for the heist so I took it as an opportunity to further the story of the main campaign. He told me I should have confirmed with him my idea, (which is fair). I countered that if he knew I was playing as Honest John he would have tried to kill me (which he confirmed). Ultimately we made up and the party is now more inspired than ever to catch the villain and bring him to justice, but my question is, am I the asshole? I accept whatever punishment you deem I may deserve for my trickery.

Cam G

Honorable Justices of the crit and the bailiff, whom I would never bring home to mother, I present the case of a sad riddler fox. I recently DMed my second ever one-shot and during the session my players ran into a talking fox named Bruce. Since they were in the feywild, this fox naturally asked them riddles. A few of the players engaged with the riddles, but half the party decided to mildly bully the fox and jump down the hole he was "guarding" without answering his riddles. Since the fox had no real authority and was simply a dork, I narrated that as they jumped down the hole they saw Bruce slink sadly back into a bush nearby. I made sad puppy eyes and a whimper sound for effect. My fiancée got watery-eyed imagining the pathetic fox and later called me mean for narrating it that way, despite her being one of the ones to bully the fox. I ask the court, am I in the wrong for making the fox pathetic? I humbly await your judgement. (p.s. There are no real hurt feelings involved here, just a goofy argument)

Kieran Rayner

To the greatly venerated Justices, and the lowly Jailiff, Bake: I present the Case of the Backwards Asshole. I was asked to run a game by my friend Lily, because her 11-year-old step-son wanted to get into D&D after seeing Stranger Things. Joining them was another friend, Juan. This was all their first time playing, so I set as a ground rule that they should not fight PVP. The session started well, but perhaps I should have been tipped off when Juan said his character (a cleric) was called Oluc, proudly explaining that it was asshole in Spanish backwards. (He is in his late 20s). After they kill some goblins, Juan says “My character is hiding something, he doesn’t want to help search the bodies.” A bit odd, but not exactly PVP – he had helped to fight and healed his friends. Lily’s character, feeling suspicious, asks Oluc why he’s not helping, but he refuses to say (and I don’t know either, so I can’t tell her). I get her to roll insight against his deception, and he rolls higher, so I tell Lily that while she can still think he’s being odd, her character can’t read him well enough to know his intentions. Later, Oluc gets the killing blow on the final goblin in a group, and I give the party the option of non-lethal damage, for interrogation. The other three insist on this, but Oluc kills the goblin anyway, pretending it was an accident. As it was his finishing hit, I give the party contested athletics checks to stop him, but when they fail, I allow the kill. I grant Lily’s character another insight check, and again Oluc beats her, so I feel bound to let the lie stand – although I can see Lily is getting frustrated at Juan. I found out after the session that Juan wanted Oluc to be secretly working with the enemy, but he hadn’t discussed this with me beforehand! Not knowing this, I wanted to yes-and Juan's creativity in the moment, but I don’t think Lily enjoyed not knowing what was going on. The party went on to win the session, spurred by Lily’s rogue rolling a nat 20 to disguise herself as a goblin, and the 11-year-old's wizard casting sleep on a bunch of wolves – but to this day the group has never played together again. So I ask, fair and noble Justices: was I right to allow the backwards asshole to blindside me and scheme against his friends, given his many successful rolls? Or should I have denied his role-playing freedom for the sake of a smoother first session for beginners? I humbly await your judgement.

Nova

To the lovely justices and the guy I think they gave a job as a favor or something? I have a confession to make, or rather I ask - how do I atone for back seat DMing? Last time I played in person with three friends and as obvious from my question, I was not the DM. It was a very casual session as it was one player's first time, my roommate had played a handful of times and me who has also only played a handful of times but listens to way too many actual play podcasts. And our DM who has been playing for a few years now. My roommate has never been able to stick with a campaign for long and so while she had made at least 4 or 5 characters, has never played them for more than a session or two. This time she was playing a monk and I thought it would be a really good fit for her since she loves to attack! Except, both times we were in combat she complained about "not having any weapons". The first combat she got knocked out too quick to do anything, so the DM didn't explain she didn't *need* weapons to do unarmed strikes. The second combat we had a monster in a pit and didn't want to get too close. When she complained about weapons the DM didn't really say anything. I said "Didn't you get any in your character starter kit?" and she said, "No." I got up and looked at her character sheet and opened the Player's Handbook (we had been building the newest player's character since she had never played) and pointed out the items she should have gotten, including darts. We put the items in her inventory and the DM went to the bathroom, then said we should wrap up anyways since it was getting late (it was). He has often asked me for rules in game and called me his "Assistant to the DM". But I am worried I over stepped this time, I did apologize to him and he said he was glad I was double checking. He hadn't been expecting to play that night and the whole session was off the cuff. My rolls in other campaigns have been so bad ever since! I wonder if I have offended Dice Christ. Other than apologizing and talking to my friends about it, what more can I do?

ant the knee

To the judges that smell oh so good, and the bailiff who also smells, i present the case of An Arm for a Head. I was at the end of session 1 in a new campaign, where the party first meets the BBEG. He had the mayor of the town captive, and said he is willing to let him go if someone brave enough attempts to fight in the mayors stead. This was a fundamentally unwinnable battle for a 1v1, it was supposed to be a humiliating defeat that would make the party get revenge once they leveled up and could fight together. I expected the dwarf barbarian to step up, but my already injured human wizard volunteered. Dwarf tried to tell the wizard no, considering how big and evil BBEG was. Wizard insists, at 4 HP. The BBEG rolls a higher initiative, crits, and rolls max damage on 2 d8s bringing the Wizard, who has 8 max HP, down to -12. This was the first character my member had ever made, and he spent weeks making the wizard and his backstory. He was so excited to roleplay as him, and I knew that if all of that work had been for nothing he would've been so upset. So i opted for a lingering injury, narrating the BBEG cutting off the wizards arm instead of his head. The wizard LOVED this idea. At first. He started talking about how much cooler this makes the character. It wasn't until I got home that I received a text from the player asking if the character should have died instead. I explained lingering injuries to him, and my reasoning for opting for that. He got so mad saying he wanted a DM who was "by the books" and how he wouldn't be returning, despite how excited he was for the one armed wizard. I will remind the court this was his first ever dnd session, so during the session itself he didn't have a firm grasp on the "Massive Damage" mechanics. He called me a coward for not killing the character, and we have not spoken sense. The campaign carried on without him, the party entirely on my side after seeing his texts. All I wanted was for this wizard to not be upset with his first ever dnd character dying in campaign one, but instead he was upset his character lived. However, I DID break the rules, I DID spare him without asking for his permission to do so, and arguably I went against Dice Christ's crit and max damage rolls. So I ask the court, should I just have beheaded the Wizard? I humbly await your decision.

Benwahah

To the rulers. Of dicerealm and jake i suppose My case comes from the very first campaign i played almost 6 years ago. I played a blue dragonborn barbarian. In a great war the enemies agreed to a duel where we sent a champion to fight. I was the one chosen. This gave me mortal kombat vibes so i went with an idea from the original mortal kombat movie. I had accepted the challenge and asked for a bucket of Water, in the initiative i got to go first, so i tosses the water and then use my ice breath to freeze it and hopefully do something cool like the mortal kombat movie but my dm said no and that i just did ice breath damage. I lost the battle. I was fine with it as it was the first time really playing but now that i have years of experience and started dming myself. I can't help but feel i was cheated out of a rule of cool moment. Was i in the wrong for hoping that my creativity would lead to something cool or was it justified that i was denied I await your judgement, thank you

Beav

To the Honorable Justice Caldwell “Strongwell” Tanner, Justice Emily “Worm Wife” Axford, Justice Brian “little L” Murphy, and the slightly less honorable Bailiff Jake “The Cake” Hurwitz, I bring before you THE CASE OF THE NAT TWINKIE. In most campaigns that I DM, when a high stakes roll is about to occur (for either myself or a player) I will announce that the roll should be made in the center of the table for all to bear witness (a fairly common practice with in-person TTRPGs). In one of my campaigns, my players were fighting tooth and nail against an adult white dragon. Several PCs had gone down, the dragon was at death’s door, and the party barbarian was the last PC to act before the dragon’s next turn, thus I called for their attacks to be rolled center stage. The first attack missed, meaning their last attack HAD to be a nat 20 in order to do enough damage to finish off the great monster. They kissed their dice and tossed it with a bit too much gusto. It slid perfectly into another Player’s snack plate and stuck into the cream of a half eaten Twinkie. I started to call for a reroll, but then the player exclaimed “Nat 20!” Sticking out sidewise, the 20 of the dice was indeed visible, and the rest of the players erupted with joy and laughter. I’m not a fuckin buzz kill, and this was such a knock down, drag out fight that I deemed the roll valid/hilarious. The barbarian slew the dragon and the party was saved. However, if I actually think about it, shouldn’t we have read the dice from top of the Twinkie? I dunno, what do yall think? Should rolls that end up inside someone’s food be rerolled or fully canonized? I humbly await your ruling.

Josh McKinley

To the beautiful supreme crit justices and the homely bailiff Jake. I give you the case of Scrump The Awakened Hippo. I am the forever DM for my wife and a group of friends that are pretty busy so we end up playing a lot of one shots which are always a good time and my players like to bring funny characters to the table. Which brings me to Scrump. My wife was flipping through Mordenkainen's tome of foes when she stumbled across a description of a Giff, (militarized astral hippos) she wanted to play as one and I happily agreed, her only stipulation was that she wanted her backstory to be that she started off as an earth Hippo named scrump who was rescued from a zoo. I laughed and agreed, saying the Giff found scrump and awakened her and trained her in some fighting and made her a barbarian. The problem arose when we got to the table. Scrump refused to speak, wandered around the intro tavern trying to eat anything and everything that would fit in her mouth, and when it came time for battle refused to use her greataxe because in the words of my wife "hippos don't have fingers so scrump can't hold it" I was blindsided because she helped me make her character sheet, I responded and said "well if the Giff have the magic to give a Hippo sentience, there is magic available to give you fingers, also your character can for sure talk if you want them to" hoping to just move the session along. But the party ganged up on me in Scrumps defense and Scrump spent the rest of the session being used as a mount for the gnomeish sorcerer and making unarmed strikes that did very little to help all while wearing a bucket on her head. Everyone had fun and Scrump became the mascot of the party. But that flat handed Giff haunts me to this day. Judges: was I right to try and get Scrump to help the party in a meaningful way? Or were the players right to defend the fingerless barbarian?

Grant A

To the Divinely Ordained and honorable Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, as well as our ignoble and condemned Bailiff Jayce; I bring to the case of the perpetually distracted and dissatisfied player. I have been running a weekly 5e campaign for a group of 5 for almost a year. Throughout the adventure one of the party members has been a crash course on chaotic behavior. From arguing on DCs at least 3x per session, blatantly ignoring party plans and RP, yelling at me over the screen at least once a month, to frequently talking over me while I am narrating to the party members… their behavior has become a point of frustration for others at the table. I’ve started to lose passion for DM’ing because each session has 1.5+ hours of down time/distractions often sourcing from this person. This culminated with a recent scenario where said person delayed the session for 2 hours, and later that night completely ignored the party war room planning RP to Leroy Jenkins into the BBEG lair. Resulting in them blaming the others for “not making a plan” The hardest part about all of this is that this player is arguable the best RP’er at the table! They paint a beautiful photo of their characters actions/feelings and often get the who group (as well as my NPCs) engaged. There seems to be no middle ground in their mannerisms. Most esteemed court I ask, what is a DM to do about someone who has so much potential, but can’t get out of their own way?

The-End

May it please the court and their ever-faithful, ever forgotten bailiff: I bring you the case of the Super Soldier Scuffle Years ago I came up with a campaign idea that I still use to this day: a group of adventurers who work for a magical agency that turns them into super soldiers via monster blood. Now: the first time I ran this campaign one of the players wanted to be a halfling mixed with the blood of an orc- I explained to my player that orcs weren't monsters, and mixing humanoid blood into their halfling would be no more effective than a blood transfusion. Regardless: my halfling insisted. Not wanting to fight them on it I agreed and gave the halfling relentless endurance to placate them. Come time of the game and the heroes are assigned to their team together: to learn each other's capabilities they fight a magical projection of a giant. Together the displacer beast elf, Pheonix tiefling, Purple Worm Human, and orc halfling managed to beat the giant, but the halfling player was upset that the other players powers were and I quote "Way too cool." I offered to let them retcon their choice, and they happily picked a Kruthic instead of Orc, but sometimes I wonder if I should have made them stick with their Humanoid+ halfling. Was I wrong for granting mercy after I warned them against their course of action; or is my mercy favorable to dice christ?

Daveed

Justice for Edgar Allan Crow, nevermore!

Dean Rick Sassafrassley Winchester

Greetings to the honorable crit justices and to Jake also. I bring you the case of the murder hobo in denial I have been playing dnd with my family for a few years and occasionally with friends. When I met my now husband I was excited to have him join a family campaign and get to know everyone. It was over zoom and we were on a stealth mission in the middle of the tyranny of dragons campaign. Nearly the first thing he did was sneak off by himself in the middle of a fight and investigate a carriage. Unfortunately he set off a trap causing a massive explosion which resulted in several dragon eggs hatching and escaping the cultists/burning down the camp. However he had high enough stealth he managed to escape without notice and there was no feasible way for our characters to really know it was him plus we were so concerned with trying to maintain our cover/save dragons that we didn’t really have time to address it. He wasn’t even able ti continue joining that campaign because of work conflicts so he just showed up caused massive chaos and then left. His actions have caused some social anxiety for me as I do not want everyone we play with to hate him or me and I am used to a much more … cooperative play style. When I have tried to tactfully address this in private he truly does not seem to comprehend why I would be concerned about his play style or choices and has cited that “those are the decisions my character would make” and “this is how I have always played “ when I asked him if he would be embarrassed about me posting this his only objection was that “I never killed anyone so I’m not a murder hobo if anything I’m a thieving hobo” My question for the court is this, should I take this as an opportunity to be less of a people pleaser or should I accept that our play styles are too different and we might have more fun in seperate games? P.S. even if he is a murder hobo he is the love of my life so I guess you can’t win them all. At least he’s a good cook

brainrockets

Dear Estimable Justices and Jacques? I play in an online game as a Firbolg Sorcadin (Runechild/Redemption). I have Find Steed but have thus far had no opportunity to use it. I had planned for a while to summon a Moose or Elk, a big lad for my big Pal(adin). However, we are nearing the end of the campaign and are about to be in the Ocean. So, while I could still go the Moose route (they are known to swim in the ocean irl) I thought it would be sick to ride an Orca (Orca sometimes hunt Moose when they swim in the Ocean, which is wild.) I asked my DM if an Orca would be okay and they said no, "because Orcas aren't land mounts." The Find Steed spell doesn't say anything about land or sea based mounts, so I am a bit bummed that I won't get to live my 90s Lisa Frank/Ocean Girl dreams riding the back of a Killer Whale. Justices, should my DM let me Free Willy with Find Steed or should I settle for getting a snorkel and some Orca repellent for my Moose?

Liz M

Not a case but an UPDATE! from the don’t roll and drive confessional. We have purged the Mazda of d20s. Thank you for shepherding us out of the crosswalk and into the traffic-law-abiding arms of Dice Christ. - Liz & Corey

Sephiroth Did Nothing Wrong

Intro no more 2024 (Hi Sweet Blue Hole!) My friends and I (party of 5) have been playing in a campaign for a bit shy of a year now, and we have only been knocked unconscious twice. Not "the whole party has been KO'ed twice l", rather we have had 2 players each go down a single time in the last 10 months of weekly sessions (once kind of early on in a boss fight, and another recently in a fight we instigated.) My only problem with this: I made a damn good healer, but I almost never use my spell slots for healing. My Wildfire Druid, Life Cleric Lizardfolk is relegated to Fireball and Scorching Ray duty. Our DM has reached out to us a month or two ago asking how the campaign is going via anonymous survey, and most of us asked for harder combat, but we remain standing on the battlefield, nary a KO in sight. Justices, I ask, is it wrong for me to want to be put through the healer ringer, frantically saving my friends? Or should our DM do what he seemingly fears most; killing his friends. I masochisticly await your judgement.

Marc Delucchi

To the beautiful beacons of Dice Christ, I am at a crossroads and seek your guidance for fear that I am being tempted by great evils. A PC in a campaign I'm running has been developing romantic chemistry with an NPC and the pair went on their first date during our last session. Independent of their budding romance, I had told my PCs that they could always determine how hot their character thought another character was by rolling a D10. This more realistically captures differing attractions and allows me to DM without having to stop every time a new NPC is introduced to answer whether they are hot. However, during our last session, one of the players asked how hot our PC was to the NPC they were on a date with. I rolled behind the board half-jokingly. Despite rolling with advantage, I rolled a 1 and a 2 on the D10. I did not tell the party what I rolled and the session played out in such a way that I wasn't forced to engage in further role play after these rolls. I am now torn between whether I should treat these rolls as cannon or not. I had been playing the character with genuine interest and feel bad about ending a romance because of a roll I wasn't taking seriously. Is my NPC now canonically bound to have been turned off on this first date? Or is there a way to remain in the glowing light of Dice Christ and let this romance continue?

Griffin

Hello to the prestigious court and I think it's just them, there's no-one else there, I bring you the case of the borrowed plot. I DM an online campaign and, because of school and work, I have to choose between interesting encounters, settings and npcs, and having a plot that makes total sense, so sometimes I borrow from tv shows, books and podcasts (thank you NADDPOD). One of my players recently mentioned he was considering starting a show that I am basing some of the plot of our campaign on. I messaged him and asked him not to watch it until we had finished this part of our campaign, only 3 or 4 more sessions. He said I should've told them beforehand and that if I didn't want them to potentially find out my plots, I should've just come up with them myself. I feel it is important to know that in an in-person campaign I also run, everyone is fine with me basing my campaigns off of shows and have no issue not watching something until I'm done using it. What do we think, justices? I trust your judgement. Bonus for drama, said player is also my cousin.

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 was DMing a game of Curse of Strahd, and my players characters decided 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--essentially 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?

Theo Englund

To the Honorable, Ancient, and Beautiful Justices and JT, I come begging for forgiveness from Dice Christ. I am running a Wild West themed dnd campaign for my friends and my girlfriend, who is playing for the very first time! I rolled her stats for her mouse folk rogue Tootaloon Tumbleweed, and I rolled three 8s. Justices, I beg the forgiveness of dice christ, because I changed those 8s to a 12, 15, and 17. Your Holinesses, I love my girlfriend, I hope I can do like seven Hail Dice Christs?

Taylor Manes

To the yassss and slay justices, and the based and baliffpilled Jake, I present the case of the murder hobo Marxist. My first time ever GMing was in a campaign which used the Monster of the Week system, and revolved around a team of monster hunters traveling across Victorian Europe to defeat various one-off supernatural foes. When one of my players pitched his character to me, I loved his ideas, but as the campaign progressed, it became clear that he intended on playing the character as anti-establishment to an absolute fault. He often personally targeting NPCs who were wealthy or royalty, robbing them or otherwise tormenting them, even if I had designed them to be good, if flawed, people. When asked why, he always said, "Nobody that wealthy got their wealth without stepping on some necks to get there," or "Monarchies are inherently corrupt institutions." While we agree politically on these matters in real life, I argued that since tabletop RPGs are fiction, it didn't make sense to view the fictional world that way. After all, do we take characters like Aragorn or King Arthur to task like this? The campaign fell through for other (unrelated) reasons, but I still ponder his choice to stick so ardently to his IRL moral code in a fictional world. Basically, my question is this: Was it right of me to ask my friend to go against his real-life political beliefs? Was my insistence on the moral goodness of fictional royals silly or unjustified? I humbly await your ruling.

ZZ Digital

If it pleases you, lords and lady of the court: I ran a short campaign, the crux of which involved crystals of planes-hopping. I set some rules for it and tasked the PCs to steal one from the villains. One player accidentally activated one and was split from the party, where they started a sidequest to rescue NPCs known to the PCs. The other players encountered one of the villain leaders, who explicitly called themselves evil, and offered them a crystal and told them to use it a different way than they had originally been. Because the separated PC started a dramatic scene with a different PC's husband, the married player rushed the scene with the villain. This lead to them falling into a trap laid by the villain, killing a beloved NPC, and most importantly, missing the entire scene with their husband. They were all furious with me. So I ask, since I did not tell them to check if the villain was lying, or that they could figure out the rules of the crystal if they tried, or that they probably weren't going to get to the scene under the best conditions, as a DM am I not even worthy to lick the lowly (apply as many as needed) bailiff's shoes?

MikeAllenZ (MAZ Presents Personal)

To the wise Justice Murphy, the honorable Justice Tanner, and the almighty Justice Axford. And maybe someone else… I feel like there’s someone else I’m forgetting. I bring to you the case of “Two Dead Mentors”. For you see, I once gave my DM a character in a campaign, an Armourer Artificer/ Gloom Stalker Ranger (my first time as a PC, a build I was proud about, and a campaign we actually finished). However, my character had recently lost a mentor, the man who taught him to be a scientist, but had gained another in a vigilante woman who taught him how to fight. I had made it clear to the DM that I was hoping he’d heal over the death of his first mentor and that’d be his arc. (There was other stuff but I was told to be brief) In the first session there was a scene where the vigilante gave him a device to contact her, but warned to only do it if it was absolutely necessary. Later on in the campaign we had found out that she DIED and when I was upset about it I got a “Well you never called her so you were unable to help her”. But she had directly told me to NOT do it. To this day I keep hearing that her death was my fault for being too prideful to call her for help when I was just trying to be a good student. Am I wrong for feeling upset about this or are my friends right that I am responsible? Wait… JAKE! Jake is who I forgot! The bailiff right? He’s okay. Tell him I said “sup”.

Benjamin Reilly

Dear esteemed judges and the jailif Bake. Three years ago, remember that number, I started a campaign with my friends for my first time ever. During character creation, the dm asked me what I wanted to play, and I told him that all I really care about is dual wielding swords. We eventually decided that I would play a Ranger, but he would “buff my character since rangers are trash.” He proceeded to give me +3 weapons by level 5, and as you can imagine I quickly outpaced the party in damage. He decided to “nerf me” by removing my character’s arm in a cutscene after about a year. To this day I haven’t had the opportunity to get my arm back, and my character is not that fun to play. Was this decision warranted? Or is my DM playing fast and loose with removing limbs? P.s. yes, I have played a one armed dual wielded for two years. Also, yes, I am not getting the AC benefit from the dual wielding fear because of this.

Eric G

To the talented juctices and balif jalif. I bring you the case of floor time. I like to have what my group calls "floor time", where during a session, I will get out of my chair and lay face-down on the floor for 10-15 minutes. During this time I still interact with my group from the floor. My group has banned floor time saying that they want to be able to see me when playing D&D. They have given other options such as breaks. But there is something about floor time that is better. Should floor time be banned, or should I be able to lay down on the ground? I humbly await your response.

so-crates

Dear honorable justices and Jakester the cake sir: I done goofed. I DM a game with my brother and his friends, and between combats I ran an encounter inspired by Plug from D20's Starstruck Odyssey. I wanted my players to get the opportunity to use their gold for some cool new magic items. My intention was to wave a few highly valuable items before them for purchase in the future. My brother, who plays a monk, challenged Plug to an arm wrestling competition for a cloak of displacement. Plug agreed, confident with the +10 strength modifier I decided in my head. We both rolled before the eyes of Dice Christ (a dice tower I was gifted), and my brother rolled a 13. Plug got a Nat 1. I had to step away from the table for a moment, but Plug gave in and gifted the cloak to my brothers character. I feel like his character will be borderline impossible to hit now. Justices, should I honor Dice Christ's judgment, or should I add a wrinkle (a pleat, if you will) that makes the cloak less potent than it should be on paper?

Squinch

Eminent justices and ignoble bailiff, I bring to you the case of Accidental Banishment. A few weeks ago in my long-running campaign, I had my players encounter a Vesiculosa, a kind of monstrous pitcher plant published by kobold press, in an abandoned plant research facility. This particular plant lures adventurers to itself with an enchanting effect, then swallows and digests them. Within the first two rounds of combat, two characters had been swallowed by the monster. One of the characters that had been swallowed was the party's cleric, who tried his generally effective method of casting Banishment on solo monsters. But play quickly ground to a halt as we realized we weren't sure what the effect of Banishment would be when a creature has swallowed another. There didn't seem to be any recourse in the Rules As Written, and after discussing gross questions like "would you leave a tapeworm behind if you were Banished?" We settled on a consensus that the two swallowed characters would also be teleported, still inside the monster (and one of them now drowning in the monster's digestive juices), to the "harmless demiplane" described in the spell. We ended up having a lot of fun with the mechanics of escaping from this monster and observing just what the inside of this demiplane looked like, but I'm left with the feeling that I did something wrong. And so I ask the Court: what happens when a creature with another creature inside of it is Banished?

MikeAllenZ (MAZ Presents Personal)

Dearest Justices To the wise Justice Murphy, the honorable Justice Tanner, and the almighty Justice Axford. And maybe someone else… I feel like there’s someone else I’m forgetting. I bring you the case of “Allergic to Taverns”. I have consistent group of friends who play a bunch of games together. where me and my friend Lily take the brunt of the DMing work. She is running Rime of the Frostmaiden and we all have made her really cool characters. Except for the barbarian (who is a player notorious in our group for lousy if-any backstory). When she introduced all of in a tavern in one of the towns, the player jokingly said “I refuse to start the game in a tavern” and then he proceeded to stick to his guns and wouldn’t enter the tavern, staying outside in the snow. Later on, he complained that his character didn’t feel as connected to the party, but it was clear to us that it was the way he played his character to begin with. Are we right, should he have sucked up his loathing of taverns to join us? (I am arguing on behalf of my DM (and she is unaware), so I feel it only fitting to take any punishment you might give her if she is found guilty. I am nothing if not a loyal DM’s pet when I’m a player.) (if this is relevant info this same player did the same in one of my games but it was far less disruptive in my game) Wait… JAKE! Jake is who I forgot! The bailiff right? He’s okay. Tell him I said “sup”.

Cody Henderson

To the divinely chosen of Dice Christ themself, Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and alter boy Jake. I bring you a dice Christ confession of an intimate nature. My Husband and I have listened to every episode of Dungeon Court, and well everything else. He never played DnD until him and I started dating. He became obsessed with NADDPOD and dungeon court. One day he joking said we should roll to see if we should listen to DnD court while we,do the thing. I agreed as I thought it would be funny, we rolled and he got a 17 and I got a 2, we both rolled a d20 no modifiers. We laughed but ultimately I told him we can’t listen to DnD court while we naughty as I get to invested and can’t concentrate. Well this has come up multiple times now, 5 times to be exact, and he has rolled higher than me everytime single time. I ask, have I angered dice Christ with not respecting the D20 roll and listening to dungeon court while we naughty, or was I the reasonable human for wanting to listen to music that time. I ask for your insight and will repent if you ever so deem.

DowdMusic

Shut up Guardian-Tyler

Calla, Kisser of Lizards

To the deeply gexy justices slash servants of Dice Christ, I come groveling for the forgiveness of the church. I have recently dabbled occasionally with DMing, during a once-a-year-shot for our friend group's vacation, and a oneshot while my fiance's online friend was in town, and my sin is this: I can't seem to allow my players to fail when the dice say they should! In the vacation game, I managed to bungle the CR of the boss monster, and my gnoll paladin player one hundred percent, by dice roll, ABSOLUTELY should have died from the boss's attack. But, because this is supposed to be a vacation game for fun, and bc the setting would have made it SO difficult to introduce a replacement character... and bc i felt terrible and didn't want to, I lied about the damage and just made the monster knock him out instead, falling to death saves and giving him a moment with his god. His player doesn't know, but some of the other players sniffed out my softness. In the other oneshot, at the very very end after the players successfully heisted a poached dragon child and were escaping a riverboat casino, my kenku rogue player managed to get in sight of the casino owner who cast Sleep, and... the dice rolls should have put him under. He would have been abandoned on the ship, and i KNEW we would never play with this group again, so I lied and said that she had rolled ONE hp under what would be needed to knock him out. They all escaped, huzzah! But i still feel AWFUL. Am I taking away from my players' fun? Or am I justified in trying to protect it in certain circumstances? Can I be forgiven, or will Dice Christ now grant me twos when I want twenties, and twenties when I want twos? (they/them)

Lauren Cooper

May it please the court: To the esteemed justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner...and saddest man baliff Jake. I present to you the case of the Stew Scandal. In my current campaign, I am playing a kobold dragon ancestry sorcerer. During one of our very first encounters, we were tasked with rescuing a kidnapped child. We located the child in a cave hideout inhabited by a crew of bandits. Our DM went about describing the space, including boxes, bedrolls, and specifically a BOILING POT OF STEW. We were level one at the time, so I was trying to be crafty with my limited spells and rely on cantrips as much as possible. So I asked the DM, with a shit eating grin on my face, if he would consider the stew to be "water" for the purposes of the cantrip shape water. To my surprise, he said yes! I used the spell to cause the stew to leap out of the pot and right into the face of one of the bandits. Our DM allowed me to do 1d4 of damage, but refused to impose disadvantage on the bandit's next attack. Should I be happy with the damage, or do you think our DM should have done more to reward my creativity? Would YOU be distracted by getting surprised by your dinner scalding your face? I humbly await your judgement.

Gabagooblin

To the venerable justices and their trusty sidekick Bailiff Boy: I humbly present The Case of the Accidental Session Robbery. I recently DMed a one shot where we were joined by one of the player's friends, who had never tried DnD before. The party was tasked with investigating the disappearance of a group of druidic desert farmers who had unknowingly awoken an undead presence. In the initial encounter, some of the missing returned but (unbeknownst to the party at first) were possessed and began attacking the townspeople. Almost immediately, it became clear to me that the friend who joined us was miserable. While the rest of the party were trying to figure out how to stop the farmers without hurting them, she kept saying things like "we have to move on" or "I just can't with these guys anymore," and seemed very anxious to end the combat asap, even choosing to skip her turn to let others attack. After the fight we took a break (during which the players sister, who was also in town for the Easter hogliday arrived and said she was cool just to hang out and watch.) Meanwhile, I was freaking out because there were two more combat encounters in the adventure that didn't make sense to cut, but I also didn't want to make the guest slog through something she hated! I ended up just letting the dinner conversation go for awhile until it was too late for us to get back into the game. Later that week, I apologized to the player and said I hoped her friend didn't feel like she wasted part of her visit playing something she didn't like. To my complete surprise the player said I'd converted her friend to the game, and that she never knew ttrpgs could be so fun! It was of course great to hear, but now I feel guilty that I robbed the party- and especially this new initiate- of a full session. Was I right to do what I thought was best for the players in the moment, or did my DM discouragement do them dirty? I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

ZZ Digital

If it pleases the court: I have a player who always plays as their fursona. I'm actually fine with this, and over the years we've played together a bunch of mini-campaigns, usually games with looser mechanical rules than D&D (usually I DM). The problem is: I don't actually know very much about their character. When I try to write narratives for all the players, I'll ask questions and she'll either give me a very short, non-descriptive answer or even a "don't worry about it." I'm fine bending rules to let my players have the kind of characters they want, but it is getting to me to frequently have to adjust my cosmology to include her world, or the times her fursona changes and I have to come up with a reason her character morphs in the next session. Should I just keep on as I have been?

MONCO

Ineffable justices of the Supreme Crit and affable Bailiff Jacob Penn Cooper Hurtwitz, I humbly request your ruling on the simple case of Maybe Meltable Magical Metal. In the first campaign I ever DMed, one of my players attempted some clever spell work, the ramifications of which still somewhat confound me to this day. The turn after our Party’s bard had cast Crown of Madness on a target who was otherwise not wearing or holding any metal, he asked if he could then cast Heat Metal on the crown. I thought it was a novel idea - and a rad visual - and allowed it, but this began a (cordial and good-natured) debate between myself, the bard, and another more experienced player who wondered if the magical ‘crown’ was actually real enough to be the target of the second spell. Later, we realized that Crown of Madness requires an action every turn, meaning that he couldn’t have maintained it and cast Heat Metal unless the crown remained after the spell ended. However, given the language of the spells, this wasn’t really clear to us, nor was whether or not the literal crown of madness should be taken as flavor or a tangible thing (not to speak of the precedents this might set). Some years and several campaigns later, I still don’t have a clear sense of who was right here. O special-est of judges, I beseech you to shine the clarifying light of your Dice Christ-given wisdom on this dilemma and deliver this weary DM from his uncertainty.

Javier Villa

May it please the court, a while back I was playing in a long running campaign as a character who was built around the "shadow blade" spell (a build i would love to pitch to fellow shadow blade fan Justice Axford). It's basically a spell that summons a weapon that deals psychic damage, and that psychic damage is where the problems arise. See, we were in the lab of a botanist wizard who had all sorts of crazy plants attacking us, but to my surprise, when I swung my trust blade at them, they were unaffected. Now I'd dm'd for years at this point and have used plant monsters here and there so I didn't remember any plants I had used having psychic resistance and when I brought it up my DM said that plants didn't have brains, so it wouldn't make sense for them to take psychic damage. I briefly argued that the spell read that the blade was "solidified gloom" and could therefore still cut them, but he didn't budge. So I accepted the ruling and switched back to my shortsword for the rest of that area. So I ask you, was my DM's ruling sensical? Should more brainless creatures have psychic immunity? Or was he just challenging my character to try something else? I humbly await your ruling.

Danny B.

To Baliff Jake, the one who keeps it all running smoothly, and the judgy justices, I present the case of warlock rest shaniagans. I have been DMing for a group of friends for about 3.5 years now. I played some before DMing but they had no experience other than listening to live play podcasts (thank you all!). It seems they finally have gotten cocky and we had our first rules argument last session. The party managed to find themselves teleported into the middle of an orc city which is actively at war with the Oath of the Crown Paladin's, well, crown. Through some great deception/slight of hand/persuasion they avoid an out right fight and were even offered "accommodation" for the night. The weary warlock decided to take a potion of watchful rest, so he was up and ready when some orcs came to question the paladin a couple hours into the long rest. However, the day before was quite taxing and the warlock was out of all abilities. He asked if the few hours could count as a short rest. I told him yes but then he has to restart his long rest after this interaction. That's when the "that makes no sense in the real world" arguments rained down. I got defensive and dug in. I knew it was unlikely this encounter lead to combat, and that by him restarting his long rest meant that the party would likely have some interactions without him in the morning, but I was right, age advice even agrees. Taking it was late and a few drinks were had by all we decided to call it a night (not a short break). Was I wrong not to just let the warlock have a meaningless short rest in the middle of a long rest, or would it set a precedent for worse shaniagans in the future? Justices, please don't hold my into against me, my dad is a baliff and they deserve love, too.

Alien butt puppet

To the Effervescent Judges and also Amir’s Friend, I present the case of the Rouge gone rouge. I DM a group with my wife and some friends, one of them plays a rouge named Cain. He started out with me and never played before, so he did the typical rouge things, chopping off limbs and keeping them in a bag of holding, screaming at NPCs ect. Recently however it got bad. During an in game 3-year gap, he sent me his backstory for the 3 years, it included the brutal murder of over 700 people and his indoctrination as basically a god by his grandfather. The most recent session he showed up 3 hours late with pizza that he shared with no one. We went on a stealth rescue mission to save a sorcerer from an anti-magic empire, and he said “just let her die”. He then refused to do anything on his turn because he said he had nothing to do, when I pointed out he had thieves’ tools that could pick a lock, he replied “what are thieves’ tools”. I had to remind him that the week before he had bragged about DMing a “no notes, all improv 8-hour session that ran perfectly.” The problem is that he always is so excited to play but when the session rolls around he doesn’t seem to care. My question is should I keep pushing him in the right direction so he can be a good player someday? Or should I cut the cord? I bow myself before the court.

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 AKA R.O.L.F. The Autognome

Ranger Zenith

To the beautiful justices and the just okay bailiff: I wanted to bring to you the case of the dead campaign that I brought back to life. After years of convincing, I finally was able to get my wife to agree to do a campaign. I've done several in the past and was dying to get her involved. I had also involved a good friend of mine and his wife as well. Things were great and I was starting to plan the campaign after we all had a basic understanding of what to expect. When it came time to think about session 0, I made the mistake of inviting my sister in law to play as well. I had mentioned off handedly that I was planning this campaign with my wife and our friends (who just happened to be my SILs friends too) and she mentioned she played DND in college so I was like sure why not. The reason I say it was a mistake is that after we got through our first session of my steampunk campaign which was very successful. Planning the next one became a challenge. I would send out a poll of days that worked for me and ask if they worked for everyone else. She is the only one who would not respond. I tagged her and even messaged her and finally she would say oh that doesn't work or something and we'd need to push the dates back as too much time had passed. (I was aiming for every two weeks). It got to the point where she would completely ignore the message and not respond but whenever I brought it up in person she would mention how excited she was to play again. This went on for a little bit and finally I got fed up and created a separate message group and decided to push forward without her. I feel bad and I'm honestly not even sure how to broach the topic with her in person that we continued on but at this point after months of trying to get something going I was at my limit. I worked hard to create this awesome campaign and FINALLY got my wife involved only for it to get hung up and strung along by one person (everyone else was very good about answering the polls). So I ask, am I right to have kept going without her? Do I need to paladin up and tell her the truth or just pretend the campaign died and we started a new one? (I worked really hard on it and just want to play the damn campaign with whoever will show up 😭)

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 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.

Johny Dude-Kay

To the always incredible Judge Rehka Shankar, Bailiff Jake, and those other 3 that are also there, I humbly present The Case of Bad Friend V Bad Player. I have been DMing the same Pathfinder game for almost 3 years now. While the cast has changed a little bit over time, these players are all among my best friends. The player and friend in question, whom we will call Magus, is one of my oldest and closest friends. We have always leaned on each other for emotional support, as well as play all kinds of video games together and share all of the same interests and hobbies. I even got him into TTRPGs about 10 years ago. I was the best man at his wedding. He is like a younger brother to me. Being a Masshole, I had always kind of ragged on Magus, though admittedly, the harshness would sometimes outshine the playfulness. Over the last few years, I have really dialed back how much I tease him and we have even talked about it and I have apologized for being so hard on him. All of that being said, as a player in my current game, Magus has almost tanked our campaign several times in pursuit of being edgy and "playing his character," with general murder hobo-adjacent behavior and a general lack of care for whether of not his character dies. Despite this campaign being a huge step up from how obnoxiously he has behaved in the past regarding all of these qualities, Magus has almost provoked a TPK on 3 seperate occasions. Each incident was completely avoidable if Magus had been less aggressive and more tactful. During these situations he has a lukewarm support from the party at best, and has been faced with full on "What the FUCK are you doing" at worst. I have tried on more than one occasion to sit Magus down discuss these things with him. We have talked about the behavior being unproductive and unappreciated, that it's affecting everyone else's good times. We even had a heart to heart about how I have actually been stressed out in real life about imposing realistic consequences for his behavior being misinterpreted as singling him out and picking on him. Magus says he understands and that I can always talk to him about these things, but I ask the court, am I wrong for thinking the best course action may be to stop playing TTRPGs with Magus? For my sake and for the sake of players, would i be justified in removing him from the table? Have I done enough to make it clear that this an issue of chemistry at the table, and not a problem that I have with Magus as a person? I still love the guy to death, but it really just seems like is playing a different game than we are, a different one than I am running. I await the court's judgement.

qbull

This is the least enthusiastic notification I have ever received

gazzafizza

To the invaluable arbiters of justice, the justices of the Supreme Crit, and the unjustifiable Bailiff Jake, I humbly present to you the case of Squandered Skill Checks. May it please the court: I am in an online game with several friends. My character is a bard/warlock multiclass who I built to be strong in INT as well as his primary ability, CHA. As part of this build, I put expertise in Investigation checks, giving me a +8 in that skill. However, my DM insists on only having me roll *Perception* checks, never Investigation. I am aware that the line between Perception and Investigation can be murky, and will grant that when getting the lay of the land in a new dungeon room, Perception is the way to go. But even when inspecting for traps and searching through rubble to see what I can find, she only lets me roll Perception! Am I in the wrong in feeling like my Investigation expertise is being wasted? Do I have any recourse to tell my DM that she's wrong?

Tophat Pete

Most Honourable Judges, My party and some NPCs went into a dungeon and faced a tough boss fight, during which all the NPCs died. The party took some items from the fallen NPCs then exited the dungeon, where we found a Crowfolk who asked what happened. I (The Cleric) began explaining, but another PC (The Monk) tried to get me to stop talking. I continued, so the Monk attacked the Crow and knocked him unconscious. A second Crow on the distance noticed this, so the Monk ran off to attack them too. He said we couldn't leave witnesses, I argued for sparing the crows, but the other party members all agreed they had "seen too much". Seeing no other option, I used my last 3rd level spell to Call Lighting. 2/3 pcs went to death saves. The survivor helped me stabilise them, then I dragged off the unconscious crows in search of safety. The session ended there. I ask you to judge. Was I in the wrong?

Joe

Zeno is a Paradox

Greetings Jusctices and the bailiff who is here for emotional support I guess I am a forever DM who after telling their group I needed a break one of my players has taken up the reins. She had been hyping up this campaign for a while and pitched it as a crunch heavy crafting centric campaign with xp leveling set in forgotten relms. While I run milestone and fairly loose in terms of things like carry weight I'm not opposed to crunch and decided to fully embrace the setting by making a kobold artificer that had been adopted by some nobles (mainly because I liked the idea of a tiny dragon in a princess tower) The issue is along with insisting on making a Player Character sheet for all important npcs I have found that I have found the non combat xp she gives out a bit baffling For example I had challenged a guy to a duel with the express conditions (that I managed to set) that no weapons or spells be used and that all he had to do was knock me prone. I ended up winning (gotta love armor of strength) and for this endeavor of getting 1 over on what the DM had warned me was a lv 15 Character that has his own entry on the forgotten relms wiki as a lv2 artificer, I got 25 xp, the same as killing a mule. I feel I have been robbed along with other players at the table who I have also seen have some cool moments that I feel should have been rewarded more than what they got if any. I ask for your judgment to be harsh on me if you find me in the wrong and in the spirit of corrective reform if you agree with my side, I mearly want to play a kobold with a hammer big enough to sit on like a bird perch and a cool metal axolotl mount as a friend

Chazz

Forgive me Dice Christ for I have cringed When I was introduced to table top role playing games about 11 or 12 years ago. I was invited to join in for a session at a game store, since my Warhammer 40k opponent canceled on me. I was like 14 at the time and had never played a TTRPG before but got probably too into it. We were fighting a group of troglodytes who were guarding an evil ritual altar. After killing the Trogs the party was discussing how they can dispel the altar. My dumb teenager brain said without irony, we should all piss on the alter. This got a good laugh as the experienced players then tried to figure out what to do. I however refused to let the matter drop and told the GM I pissed on the altar. He narrated how my dwarf urinated on the altar to no effect. Thinking I was still on the right trail somehow I announced to the group who were still planning I was going to shit on the altar instead. And again the GM had to tell me no amount of piss and shit would solve this issue. Dice Christ bless those patient strangers for taking the time to introduce me to my favorite hobby, and have mercy on my soul.

Nick Lech

To the high justices and their antithesis Jake, I bring the case of the overly romantic ranger. During COVID I joined an online group. Some of the players were already friends in real life but most of us were total strangers, so we were all getting to know each other. We were playing Hoard of the Dragon Queen, we were hired to help protect a caravan as it traveled up the sword coast while tracking down a lead on the dragon cultists. It was during this travel time where the DM introduced a female elf NPCthat our ranger immediately wanted to start investigating . Everything seemed normal while the DM and the player role-played their interactions; but, things started to get a little weird once the Ranger started asking questions about what the NPC’s hair smelled like and how she looked in her clothes. To the DM’s credit he handled the situation well and tried to transition back to the other players, but the ranger kept yanking the spotlight back to his budding romance with the NPC. After multiple attempts to get things back on track by the DM, it was clear that the Ranger really wanted to play Dudes and Damsels. The awkward feeling started to compound when the Ranger continued asking more and more intimate questions about the NPC. I was playing a Kobold artificer and based on some clues knew that the cultists were hiding amongst the caravan occupants. During the night while the DM was trying to “fade to black” like a video game romance scene, I took the opportunity to use my explosives to sneak around and blow up part of the caravan, forcing the story to move from snow plowing pillow talk to combating the exposed cultist. Justices, was I wrong to cock block the Ranger by blowing up the mood?

Andrew Hewitt

To the honorable Murphy, Axford and Tanner, and the assistant John, I present the case of the bailing badger. In a previous campaign our group of adventurers (horizon walker ranger, scribes wizard, moon druid and hexblade warlock) were delving into a icy cave dungeon and were quite weary by the time that we reached the end. Lo and behold, our trials were not yet over, as there was still a young white dragon for us to tackle at the end. While we were all fighting for our life, the druid (last in the initiative) decided that the best course of action would be to wild shape into a badger and start tunneling out to give us an escape route. All of the other players were miffed, to say the least, as he was our only healer and we were already struggling - losing a quarter of our battle strength was surely going to lead to a TPK. The DM even advised the druid player that tunneling out would take far too long and the tunnel would be too narrow for anyone else. Still, they persisted. By the time the combat had finished, the druid had not even made it halfway out, and everyone else was moments from death - only a lucky last minute crit prevented the group from wiping. On returning to the group, the druid was astonished that everyone else was mad at them for leaving them to die. Am I wrong for still holding this against the druid player? They had never done anything quite so boneheaded in any other campaign and at this point had years of experience with our group, so they knew that this was going to rile everyone up. Were they trying to tank the game on purpose? Desperate to hear your judgment, one raging ranger.

RichPanda

Hello lowly lowly bailiff Jake and co. I've been running campaigns with my group for around 3 years now and this is probably my most conflicting moment as a dm. Here's some context in session like 15-20 I planted one of my extra friends as a "new party member" when in reality he was a homunculus created by the devils they were trying to defeat. Well around 10 sessions later Riggle's (Riggle is one of my players character names) adopted goblin son Garbo. Laid claim to a weapon called the Sword of Zariel(real very cool item) and got turned into an archangel. Well my "newest player" didnt like that so he decided it was time to reveal himself by casting power word kill. (I told him he was only allowed to cast that on npcs and not pcs.) This sent my player or Riggle into a depressing revenge filled arc. After my homunculus player ran away because he wasn't ready to take on the party Riggle grabbed onto the sword and I decided that he was worthy. I had ruled that he would grow a second set of wings for becoming an archangel as he already had a pair because he was an aarokocra. I ruled that this would double his flying speed. He then decided to challenge Zeus himself the next session. I told him to roll a d100 and low and behold he rolled a 100. So Zeus came down from the sky lightning bolt in hand ready to fight. My player Riggle then decided to try and convince Zeus to race him instead of fighting because "it would be more entertaining" and proceeded to roll a nat 20 on a persuasion check. I allowed it and they got ready to race in a place not dissimilar to Greek heaven. After being buffed by the druid, bard, wizard his flying speed Stat was almost tripled. He then used a Masochistic sentient Shield and got fireballed by the warlock centered on the Shield to give him an initial speed boost. Before the race started Riggle bet his life and soul on the race and in return he wanted to speak to Garbo one last time. Zeus agreed and they got ready to race. They counted down and the other druid cast windwall to add an extra 5 to his movement speed temporarily. They started the race and after probably 15 minutes of painstaking math they almost beat his flying speed but were short 10. So one of the druids cast guiding bolt at 5th level to distract Zeus and you won't believe it but they rolled a 20 on the attack. I painstakingly agreed that it would distract him just long enough for Riggle to win. Everyone started cheering and when Zeus landed he smote the person who cast guiding bolt immediately putting them into death saves which got them mad at me. (I rolled the damage and it was enough to put them in death saves). Zeus then declared that they cheated and he would be taking his reward and the party started arguing that there were no rules to the race that stated they couldn't. I agreed with this logic and allowed Riggle to see Garbo. It was very emotional for the player and it was probably a highlight of the entire campaign. After their reunion they said their goodbyes and Riggle returned to his party. He then tried to convince Zeus to give him one of his bolts of lightning and after arguing for almost 5 minutes straight I told him to roll a persuasion check and everyone took the help action. He then proceeded to roll a 36(with bardic inspiration and guidance). I gave in and gave them the bolt of lightning. I made it a level 9 one time use lightning bolt. 5 sessions later I had completely forgotten about the lightning bolt and they were about to fight the bbegs. Whilst they were giving their speech Riggle proceeded to ask where are they standing? And I said in a line facing you. So with his speed doubled with Longstrider he ran to the side of them and cast lightning bolt and I rolled saves for all the bbegs and they all failed. This lightning bolt immediately reduced all of their health by like 80%. My players knew what creatures they were so they had an estimate of what their health was so I felt I couldn't lie and increase it. After VERY EASILY beating the bbegs I had the castle start collapsing so it wouldn't just be over like that. This ended up killing one of the fighters and the cleric. I know it's my fault but am I wrong for being upset with how that campaign ended? Sorry for how long that was btw.

Jared

Ahoy there Captains of Crit and Cabin Bailiff Jarrgh: I run a campaign for my Wife, Mom, Sons, Brother and sister in law, their three children, and whatever friends they bring over. All of which have different levels of experience, interest, and natural role play abilities, because of the wild variation in players my world is set on a tiny moon lost in a far plane with "The Story Smith's Tavern" on it. The tavern acts as a Hub for fables that are yet to be told. Allowing me to run one shots, but keep a rotating cast of characters. I use level 9 characters and then balance with magic items and equipment. Sort of a low soul level Dark Souls 1 vibe. The issue is my nephew has recently joined for the first time(He has taken up D&D and plays weekly with 5 friends) I altered all of my characters passive perception to create a sort of initiative for what I call "points of interest" I use this to have players role perception checks and give them small rewards on high roles. This keeps interest up in such a large group. My nephew noticed something amiss and eventually accused me of creating artificial moments that took away from the thrill of actual roles and discovery. Am I in the wrong for home brewing such an innocuous mechanic, or is my nephew correct and I am robbing players of a true experience? I await your swarthy decision.

Jon Snider

To the dogmatic church, 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 and continued advice, I contain myself no more. Putting my dice out in the full moon got me killed I am a forever dm and had the first chance to play in years when my brother decided to run Dark Dice's Domain of the Nameless God for our group. 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. 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?

Andi

Honorable Crit Justices & Crit Justice Adjacents, I present a case that happened so long ago the statute of limitations may have lapsed*, but it's one that has stayed with me for a long time. As a campaign we were already in was was winding down, my brother decided to try his hand at DMing for the 1st time. He didn't give us any parameters on world setting or theme, but when I tried to create a character I'd wanted to play for a while, a psionic pixie**, he shut it down because I had used source materials he was unfamiliar with. Feeling uninspired in character creation, I ended up playing a "gnome with amnesia" for the start of the campaign (which admittedly wound up working out in the "you've all been knocked out and you don't recognize the people you're locked in a cell with" setting he put us in).*** I ask you, oh hallowed Crit Court, should I have been allowed to play my little guy with telekinesis, or was my brother justified in limiting my character options? *this campaign was in like late/2014 or early 2015 & predated 5e **I was really obsessed with the idea of having a small character that could move shit much bigger than her with her mind ***it only ended up lasting a few sessions anyway

ZZ Digital

I present the case of the Session 0.5: I joined a group of people online for a new D&D campaign. The DM pitched to us that our characters were going to be sent back in time to inhabit the bodies of their ancestors. I had mentioned wanting to play a warforged while we were forming up, but upon hearing this pitch I was ready to set it aside and get organic. However, the DM told me not to worry and my character would be a "special circumstance" that makes them inhabit a robot body in the past instead of an actual ancestor. By the time of session 0, I have my half-orc turned warforged cleric statted, but not equipped with items or spells, as when discussing I was told I would be fine without, they belong to the ancestor who wouldn't be important in session 0. Session 0 starts up, and the DM kicks off the story, bringing all of our characters together and having us fight a demon before we get kicked into the past. And I had to scramble to finish my character for the fight. His stats have been taken by everyone above and on the table as how my PC actually was (minus racial traits), my intention was his new body was going to be very different but now I am being forced to have a half-orc who canonically have 9 strength. Was I done dirty? Or did I somehow have a completely wrong idea of what a session 0 is? I await judgement

Joey O'Day

To the lore lords and phat - daddy Jake. I present to you the case of the shirtless zoomer. A few years ago I was running a 3.5 game that started pre covid with my wife my brother and some friends from work. When Covid hit, we moved to Zoom like many other people. One of the players , we will call him Longfinger (who was never really interested in the game, he just liked being around friends) which was fine with us. When we started zooming our sessions, he would keep his camera off and just do audio. I finally asked him to join with video, as it was distracting to everyone else. He would play the game shirtless eating ramen every👏single👏time, and would even play another video game while we were playing our sessions. I finally had to boot him, which I felt bad about because he is the homie. Did I do the right thing? P.S. I ended up running a one shot for him and some other people set in the world of the video game he was playing ( siekiro : shadows die twice) only to find out that while we were playing that game, he was playing Elden Ring in the background.

Heck

To the shagadelic justices and their fat bastard, Jim: I write to you with the case of the Wildcard Player. I was recently the DM, and after about an 8 week arc was playing out the final boss battle with my players. A few sessions earlier, my players had bartered for the Dyslexic Scroll which allowed players to cast any spell with the caveat being they had to change 1 letter (the spell effect was then up to DM discretion). For the scroll, the players had collectively traded the merchant a tiny dragon that traveled on a coin. That dragon was part of their collective payout from finishing the last arc. There was no further discussion of who was in control of the scroll, though everyone was excited by it and joked about Piss Without Trace and Erupting Garth (including a photoshop of Garth Brooks exploding from a volcano). During the final boss battle, one of my players used the dyslexic scroll, casting Fire Wall (in place of Fire Ball) to try to hit the currently invisible BBEG. I waited for a few seconds, allowing the party to react. It was clear one of the players disapproved based on his facial expression and some voiced disappointment, while two others seemed relatively ambivalent. But no debate was sparked, so I let it go. This Fire Wall ended up having some effects on the battleground, spreading in random directions, but didn’t end up having major implications. So I ask the court, should I be punished for letting this player use the scroll without consulting the others? Should my player be punished for his lack of consideration? Or are we without crime, and perhaps should focus our punishment on Jim? I humbly await your judgement.

RightArmUtilizer

To the... *mostly* honorable justices, and Jasmine? That sounds right. I bring you the case of the Electric English major. I was running a homebrew campaign in college with a couple of close friends I shared classes with (most of us were some sort of mathematics major). That being said the person in question was an English major (EM for short) that was a friend of a friend. While fighting the BBEG the EM casts lighting bolt. I narrated how "the streak of lighting hit the BBEG and electrocuted him" dealing massive damage. Then EM started celebrating, much to my confusion. I said "you did a lot of damage, but he's still standing and it's now his turn". The EM turned to me and said "no... you said he was 'electrocuted'. which derives from the combination of the words electricity and execution, so hes dead". After hearing this we had a short back and forth which ended in me asking him to leave, as I think he knew what I meant when narrating and he was just being a little stuck up and wanting to make sure we knew what he was studying. After EM leaving he didnt cone back, slowly causing the rest of the group to fall apart unfortunately. To make a long story short I have taken Murphs usual advice and "found new friends", the computer science guys were pretty cool. But I ask, AITA for asking him to leave after arguing that my BBEG should be dead after a single lightning bolt? Or should I have fallen to my misspeak and ignorance of the English language. I fall to my knees awaiting your judgment.

Doctor Ransom

To the unfeigned Crit Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the mealy-mouthed little mouse bailiff Jayke, I offer you the case of the Drow John Wick. I was DMing a oneshot online with some friends involving a heavy hitting band of drow bounty hunters chasing after their party of four high-level adventurers. They were rolling high and absolutely whomping all of my baddies until a high-powered Drow Mage stepped into battle. He sent his Grandpa-faced yeth-hound after them and one of the players mercilessly butchered it without further hesitation. While one half of the party stayed to fight, the rest of them decided to flee 100’s of feet away from battle. The remaining fighting players got taught a brutal lesson in not killing someone’s dog John Wick style. After the Drow Mage downed the yeth-slaying 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 with legendary actions against my players or was this player just crying yeth-hound tears? I await your forthright judgement.

Corey

To the justices of high esteem, and the third justice of even higher esteem (you know who you are) and of course who could forget Jailiff Bake or whatever. I present to you the case of a bunch of goofballs having a good time. The case is as follows: I run a DnD 5e game that has persisted for just over three years now (running Tyranny of Dragons). We meet on discord, and the group includes my wife, her brother, my own brother and sister, and another couple we’ve been friends with since college. (6 players is a blast but my absolute max!) Basically everything is super cool and very fun. The group has a great energy and everyone plays very well off each other, challenging me in fun and exciting ways! I honestly don’t have a case to present at all, but I’ve secretly hoped one would come up in my game as I’ve listened to you lovely people since before my group even started. Unfortunately, nothing ever seems to go wrong! So I decided I’ll just share how much I enjoy listening to you guys, and how much fun we have at our virtual table every week. Shout out to the Bad Apples, since half of my players listen to you guys too! P.S. Sorry for breaking the form. Maybe sentence me to something bad for being a big dumb doo doo head. Idk.

Matt Gustavson

To the distinguished justices and ummm yeah. I bring the case of unfair classes. My friend is running a campaign that he stated “really low magic” and said to all of us that we can’t play characters who can cast spells or use magic. I wanting to play an artificer called him and asked him if I could play one because they invent stuff and it could be flavored so that they don’t use actual magic, but tech. He reasonably declined my request, and I just played a rogue. I thought that would be the end of the issue but when we arrived for session one, his girlfriend was playing a wizard. No reflavoring, just a wizard. Me and the rest of the party were upset, and when we protested the favoritism he shut us down. Justices, were we wrong for protesting his ruling or was his favoritism unjustified. I humbly await your ruling

JC

To the highest justices in the land, bailiff Jaque. I bring to you the case of the insane metal hating druid. According to the players handbook, it says druids don't wear metal armor. The druid in my group, named Morc, had no problem with this rule and abided by it. However, problems arose when the party and DM began to realize that Morc did not refuse to wear metal armor, but refused to use anything metal, touch anything metal, and even see anything metal (he would simply pretend he could not see it) this lead to multiple important plot hooks being ignored due to them having metal and much difficulty for the DM when describing scenes as the druid would always interrupt to say he couldn't see the metal and ask what he sees. Justices and Jaque, what is this guys deal and should he be punished for playing craven ghost on earth character?

Toni McGowan

To the honorable Crit Justices and Blake, I bring the case of my PC's appearance being hijacked.

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.

Joshua Miller

To the delectable and ambrosial judges, and the “salt is enough spice” bailiff Juice. I come to your court with the case of the gleeful zombie. The date of offense occurring about 3 years ago. My group has been playing together for over 2 years at this point and we had one of the players DM a mini campaign in between sessions of our main campaign to give our forever DM a chance to be a player. We had just made contact with the local Thieve’s Guild but my character (an aarokokra rogue named Bastion, please show mercy Justice Murphy) rolled a 2 on his attempt to prove himself a worthy thief via pickpocketing the diplomat from the guild. This resulted in the release of several zombies from containment by the guild, and our party suddenly needing to prove ourselves with combat against said zombies. Obviously, punishment for my hubris is valid and expected. The trouble started when our cleric fell to the zombies and, as a result, turned into one. The player was sad his character died so the DM had him play the resurrected zombies stat block to keep him involved in the combat rather than sitting out. As the combat continued, the player’s zombie managed to fall not one PC, but three, each time with increased gusto and excitement from the player. This compounded into a TPK that ended the campaign at session 2 and caused the temporary DM to cease DMing for our group to this day. My question is… is the DM wrong for permitting the zombie being controlled by the player? Is the player uncouth for finding glee in our demise? Or am I guilty of playing an aarokokra? Whatever punishment you deal shall be carried out to your exact specifications. Thank you for your consideration.

Rachael Lovely

To the wonderful Judges and the okay Bailiff Jake, I first got into playing DnD after being obsessed with AP media when I stumbled across the DnD club at my college club fair. There on the outdoor walk way I stood with way to many books in my backpack as my future DM with his copy of the players handbook and made my character together, a dragonborn bard named Stacei. At the end he personally invited me to come and play his game that he was running, assuring me that my character would fit right into the campaign. I showed up to the first session, met all the fellow PCs in a tavern as the bard that was preforming a set that night for free room and board. When I got to the end of my set, I got told to roll at disadvantage. When I asked my DM why, he told me that this particular city was very anti-dragonborn but that it changed from city to city. I rolled with it but quickly realized that every single NPC that I was rolling any kind of charisma check against I would be rolling it with disadvantage-- no matter where we when-- in my very social encounter built bard. I sat through the entirety of the campaign through two semesters before I ended up dropping out of school (and therefore, the campaign.) I humbly as the court is, am I wrong for still being a little salty that I got invited into a game personally by the DM with my character being a good fit, only to be subjected to a bunch of microaggressions every single session?

Rob's Wit

To the honorable judges and dreamwalking bailiff,

Maple

To the awaiting blessed, beloved, and robed individuals- I know not if I bring this as a case, or a confession of future crimes against Dice Christ. I'm currently GM for two campaigns in their first couple of sessions. One campaign is for my partner and our friends online. The second, is a solo campaign for just my partner. This is, unfortunately, about the latter. You see, both my partner and I are newer to TTRPGs, so this solo campaign has been an amazing way for us to spend quality time together, and get into the hobby! She's not much of a gamer; not because she doesn't enjoy games, but because they haven't been the most welcoming to her. So we're changing that! But in our most recent session, I- think I made a mistake. It was our first combat of the campaign. She's playing a lv. 3 Soulknife Rogue, with a lv. 4 Beast Master Ranger NPC as her partner (it's kind of Twin Peaks w/ monster of the week vibes and they work for the sheriff's office). I thought to myself, okay, I want to give her a chance to fight some classic 5e monsters, and give myself a chance to run and balance them! So based on a luck roll, there were 4 moster options, of which she would fight one. A nerfed Manticore, a slightly debuffed Owlbear, an Ettercap, and a Griffon. So right in the CR2-3 range. I figured these would provide engaging, but not overly difficult combat. This was not the case. She rolled Owlbear. At first everything was fine! She failed the stealth check to get a surprise round, but hey, both her and the NPC have good dex! She goes first, NPC rolls a Nat1 initiative, Owlbear is in the middle. She misses with her firearm first turn. Owlbear hits NPC twice, takes him to 6HP. After a couple rounds, NPC is down, rogue is low on HP, Owlbear is on death's door. I let my partner command the NPCs animal companion to either attack, or give a help on a death save, she chooses help. (I know, this is already loose, but we're having fun!) Then, my partner misses, 2 on the dice. Owlbear goes, takes out the animal companion first. I'm begging for a miss- Nat 20. My partners character takes around 25 damage in a single swipe. She goes down. "Oh shit, oh no, am I dead?" She exclaims. I tell her no, technically not yet, there's still hope! Roll your death saves! Three failures. In a row. Dead. That's right, in our first ever combat, I killed my partner. Murdered via owlbear. I know the dice tell their story but, I just can't abide by this tale. This is my fault, cr 3 was probably too high. But I'm going to fly in the face of Dice Christ. I'm going to retcon her character's death. The NPC passed their death saves, but didn't pop back up. But he'll be my deus ex machina. My partner was just getting into this character and we were really loving this little town we were building together. Dice be damned, this train is going back on the rails. I just hope I can be forgiven for my sins, and/or punished for my folly. I await absolution at your hands.

Woody

To the magnificent Justices, and the slightly less magnificent Bailiff Jobe, I bring to you the case of the 2nd Phase Shenanigans. May it please the court, I am the DM for an online game with 3 of my friends and recently I had my party infiltrate a military barracks to save an NPC who was being Interrogated for information. The head Interrogator, Pearson, had a 2 phase build, first as a support caster then when enough damage was dealt or his minions died, he became a hands on brawler with a mech arm which I homebrewed from the artificers arcane propulsion armour. During the fight, the party's swords bard, let's call him Steve, took the tactical decision to focus the "support caster". After 3 great rolls, he hit the damage threshold and so I began phase 2. Pearson beat the snot out of Steve but the party eventually made it through the fight without anyone even going down. We finished the session after some role-playing and I thought that was the end. That is until 2 days later I got a message from Steve's player telling me it was cheap that Pearson had a "miraculous and DM Sweaty" second form and that I should have just given him the win for his tactics. I explained that I had always designed Pearson this way but Steve's player is still salty. Am I in the wrong for designing a 2 phase encounter boss, and should I have given some reward for him fighting "tactically"? I humbly await your judgement and will adhere or meter out any punishment.

Zach Dender

To the most Bodacious of Judges and the most Heinous of Bailiffs I give to you the off screen death of a player character. I want to preface this that I DM'd a weekly session for 9 players for 5 years straight and we are all really good friends but occasionally some of my friends still bring up the time I killed a character offscreen. To be as brief as I can, the party was split in a dark forest fighting a demon summoning by a group of Drow. The party had split, 6 at the summoning site fighting a group of Drow and 3 trying to chase down several Dybbuks that escaped to attack the nearby town. The 3 were ambushed in the forest by Drow and 1 stayed behind, the other 2 continued to run down the demons headed to attack the town. The one that stayed behind failed their saving throw against the Drow Poison by more than 5, causing them to fall asleep. Smash cut to the ritual site, the party was winning and the Drow leader received a message saying, "We have captured one of their companions." He relayed that message to the party and told them to "Stand Down or one of their companions would be killed." The party called his bluff and continued to kill the remaining Drow. The leader and some of the rest of the drow escaped. The party waited for 10 minutes in game to continue to investigate the site and then go track down their friend. They failed their investigation/survival checks to track down where their friends had ran into the forest... until they came to their companion, hung upside down from a tree with their throat cut their blood black as ink in the light of the full moon that filtered through the dark forest leaves. In the background I had the player who had fallen asleep make several throws to wake herself before the Drow attacked her unconscious form and then had her make death saving throws once it did enough damage to her. She rolled so many 1s in a row that it is still to this day the worse case of rolling I've ever seen. This was done just between me and the player without the rest of the table's knowledge. The party blames me for killing the character while the player and I blame the party for trying to call the Drow leader's bluff. This was not the 1st time they did this and the previous time it led to the death of an NPC. I ask you, who is in the right here? Will I forever be teased that I killed a character off screen or will me and the killed Player see justice that it was the Party's fault for trying to call a bluff against someone they knew, does not bluff?

SmoothTurtle

To the justices most high, and the tallest bailiff with the thickest of quads. I lay my dice at your feet, I bring you the case of the secret keeping bard. I started a campaign with my wife and 3 other good friends. Only one of the previous 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) that the character may have. 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.

A

Ladies and gentleman of the court I humbly submit the case of in game and out of game Baby Fever. (Please forgive any attitude in this story, I’m still coming off the frustration of the experience). I’ve been DMing for my older sister and her friends for 4 years. About 6 months ago we did a one off storyline so my sister’s husband could join and the group had so much fun we invited him to join full time. This is fine but recently my sister and him had a baby - they are both adamant they can continue playing and it won’t affect anything. Except the first session back since having their baby my sister decided her character wanted to steal a baby. I argued with her for awhile about the logistics of 1) Extremely high chance the baby will die in a battle 2) there will be consequences for stealing someone’s baby. She rolled a Nat 20 and so I allowed her to steal a baby, she hid it from the rest of the party until they were on board a ship and trapped with it. So far everything was fine and the group thought this was a funny choice for her character. However things took a turn when her husband decided he felt left out for the joke, and started narrating how seeing the baby made him realize “his loins burned with parental need” and he was going to be the father to this baby. They both then proceeded to spend the session role playing parental stuff together much to my boredom. As if this wasn’t enough he then got up and woke his in real life baby up to bring him to the table and show him off for the rest of the session, which quickly became annoying for me that everyone in the group was distracted for the next hour effectively causing everything to take twice as long. While I’m not a complete anti-child monster who would ban them from bringing their son to the table, I’m not interested in D&D becoming some boring Sims level roleplay. I know I messed up letting her role for it (although my defense is not expecting her husband to join in so cringely) the only solution I can think of is to kill the baby the next time they are in combat. Am I a jerk for taking away something two of my players are clearly excited to roleplay about?

Katie Wilde

Bring it! Lol is this a case of hitting "enter" too soon?

Crit Press

May it please the Court and take the bailiff on a couple dates before deciding to just be friends. I bring to you the case of the flying machine that never was. We are playing a campaign set in Eberron and after the end of a recent arc, our DM gave us a very cool steampunk style car. As she described it, she mentioned brass pieces that looked like flames coming off of the sides. Our artificer insisted that she knew what this was, that those pieces were wings, and that it could definitely fly. We all got very excited about our flying machine and wanted to test it out. We went to a nearby cliff where the party asked me, as the one with the highest athletics, to push it off the cliff at a running start to get it going, so I did. Our DM then narrated a very heartbreaking description of the car smashing to pieces on the rocks below. She then made us sit in silence and listen to Taylor Swift’s “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” in its entirety. The worst part is that the party blames me for us losing the car and says I shouldn’t push things off of a cliff just because they tell me to, and that I should be more responsible with my strength. Please tell my friends that we are at least equally to blame, and I might even be the more innocent party here.

Jen

Hey justices! I have a quick query! I recently got my wife into Magic and got her a sweet dinosaur deck. She loves her big guys! I play a dog/cat deck and I love my little guys! We have this rule that I’m not allowed to win. If I start killing her big guys, she’ll get sad. Should I let her always kill my little guys? I feel like I should, I just don’t have any arguments against it because she has such a good time! Thanks!!! I’ll probably still let her win regardless of what y’all say! Goodbye!

3 Minions in a trench coat

May it please the most glorious and shining bailiff, without whom this court would fall to chaos, and the little L’s on the bench can weigh in too, I present the case of the cheating cleric. After finishing a 2 year campaign and starting another, one of my players has decided that they want to be a cleric, but just worship money. They are chaotic neutral at best and seem to only want to gamble rather than follow plot hooks, and insist on cheating at every turn, citing “my backstory is as a con artist.” They feel punished when casino security catches them, even when they roll poorly on deception and sleight of hand. I have repeatedly tried in and out of character to nudge them towards being more of a party focus and less insanity but it falls on deaf ears. Am I right to continue to set clear in game boundaries that cheating at gambling will get them into hot water? I will honor the justices and Bailiff John’s verdict.

Tatiana Gromova

Hello friends! and bailiff, I bring a short case of wanting imagination. I am dming a scifi campaign. During a chase scene, a character used an immovable rod, hoping it would wreck the pursuer's car when they drove through the rod. I loved the idea and had the rod deal damage to the vehicle and also blow the front of the vehicle open so the party could see everyone inside. The rod was lost in the process as the cars speeded by. After the session another player mentioned that it was a waste of the immovable rod, and that I should have done more to reward such a fun item getting expended. Are they right? What could I have added to make using the item more fun/rewarding to the player?

Mumpkei Mumpkei

I'd say ask for a break, I wouldn't just end it. Then if you never get back to it, oh well. My dm did that, we went back and he seemed happier and less burnt out.

Katrina

To the esteemed justices and anyone else who happens to be in the room, I ask: should I let my players track damage done to my monsters? In a recent combat session, one of my PCs asked another to repeat how much damage her last attack had done, as he was tracking on his laptop how much damage each monster had taken. I asked him not to do that, as I feel like it detracts from the immersion of battle and can also slow things down when we have to repeat attack details for this secondary tracking. His argument was that he’d seen it done at other tables, and that it was a good backup in case I lost track myself (to date, I never have, knock on wood!). My argument, in addition to the immersion and expediency issues, was that as an experienced DM himself he knows too much about usual monster stats to track this without fully metagaming that knowledge so I’d prefer he just act “in the moment” (I tend to tweak most monster stats I use to make them my own anyways, especially in the current cave crawl where the monsters are all feeding off a fungal network that’s tapped into the arcane ore the party is seeking out, and that power is mutating and strengthening them). He lightly protested but went along with my ruling (my party are all respectful and generous at the table). We vaguely discussed the concession that a less-experienced, more distractible PC could track damage as long as they don’t stop the flow of combat to request repetition, to be closer to the amount of tracking an adventurer could do while in the midst of fighting, but ultimately didn’t want to force the work onto anyone else, so just dropped it for now. But I could tell he was bummed, and since most of us listen to the pod I figured I’d throw it to the mercy of the Court – should I concede and allow this in the future?

Lobbying for another Atlanta Live Show - Mr. Adams

If it please the illustrious justices and the rather dull bailiff, I think his name is Steve: I have DMed for a group for several years. We have had a good time together telling great stories. Sometimes one of the players, well called him Warmwater for anonymity, will lead a campaign to give me a break between story arcs. Another player, we’ll call her Hatchetcrossing, also jumps in and DMs one-shots (some of them turn into three- or four-shots). The other player, we’ll call him Himdimz, only plays. He’s been playing for several years now but hasn’t offered to put on the DM hat. Should Hurwitz, I mean Himdimz, share the DM load? Or should he be left to play his way through all the fighter subclasses? I humbly await your judgment.

WakaWillis

I place myself before the dazzling and radiant justices of the crit court. I have the following confession. I DM a home game with my wife and several friends during a session I drew the party into a meeting with a powerful mage and his rogue advisor. The rogue was hidden and invisible, there to come out and entrap the party if they were to lie. My wifes character, a literal spy for another nation, suspected something and asked to do a perception check. I allowed it, nat 20! But decons of the high crit, I did not honor it. I felt at the time, that a rogue unmoving and invisible would likely be impossible to see. The party lied, the rogue jumped out and while the wife was a little upset it wasnt a big deal and our game continues to this day. Still that Nat20 my wife rolled still haunts me. I should have rewarded the 20 and failing to do so I fear puts me at odds with our lord of icosahedron. So I throw myself before the mercy of dice christ and await my pennance.

James M

To the honourable judges and that Bayliff what is his name? Jeff? I come to the court today with a confession that still makes my skin crawl with regret, I feel it in every fiber of my being. This is the case of the half elf massacre. As a player I was in an awesome campaign DM’ed by a very good friend of mine, It was during Covid that we created some brilliant ongoing characters who we used for a series of 1 to 2 shot games. I had created Karil the half elf fighter whose relationship with his step brother Zylder had built beautifully over these mini campaigns! All of our characters had a great bond! And we had such amazing character development! But…. I may have ruined this when I told the DM I was bored of my character. I wanted a change They said the best possible outcome may be to kill them off and create a new one. So this is what I did. Me and the DM schemed a plot to kill off my character. It was a fateful moment at the end of a campaign where I pretended to roll poorly, I was then held by a terrifying Pirate King (our bbeg) whose strength overtook me, and he slit my characters throat in front of the whole crew. The crew obviously tried to stop this but the DM didn’t allow any rolling or saves they just continued with the killing of Karil! The players were fuming at this and it took a few weeks before we played again and I started with a new character. Court, was I wrong to kill of my character this way? Should I perhaps have put them aside and come to them another day? I did create a Dragonborn named Eden who soon came to be the tank of the group and everyone has since forgotten about Karil! But I ask you was I wrong to do this unlawfully and go along with the DM? Or is it okay to kill off a character if you get bored of them? Please give your verdict .p.s. SWEEEEET BLUE HOLEEEE

Kelso of the Sea

Dearest ethereal justices of the highest court and the matronly bailiff, I come to you not with a confession, but with a request for guidance and spiritual counseling from the much venerated Axford, Murphy, and Tanner. (Jake, I implore you to read my story with a long suffering and anguished tone) I have been humbled by the machinations of some random men at local game store, and beseech the expertise of the followers of Dice Christ, and particularly of Bishop Axford. I got interested in playing dnd because of naddpod, and the pod was an incredible escape from my work as a therapist during the great lockdown of 2020/2021. I’ve been hooked ever since. I finally got up the nerve to play my first game of dnd at a local gaming shop near me a couple weeks ago and the experience left me disheartened. While there was a lot of fun in the process of making my first character on my own, and I will say that between naddpod and d20 I have become pretty familiar with the basic rules which was great, the experience overall was pretty awful. I found myself the only woman in a group of men that just seemed to want to “win” at dnd against me, repeatedly trying to just kill my character in some bizarre PVP situation. I’m proud of myself for trying something new after wanting to play for years, but I left feeling so awful and cried the whole drive home. Please Cardinals of the Crit, how do I work up the nerve to try playing again? Or how do I better stand up for myself as a young(ish) woman in a situation where I’m singled out in a dnd game.

Dakota

Hello, and may my case please the beautifully grimy justices. I hope the disgusting, squeaky clean bailiff Yake chokes on his own spit in a harmless and funny way. I bring today the case of the Baby Owlbear Slaughter. During the beginning of the big pandemic, I ran a home brew dnd game for my family. We wrapped it up after about a year, but had a lot of fun. Since I have less time on my hands, I’ve recently started running a module for them instead. I wrote a short intro, so that their characters felt more tied to the story. During the first few sessions, they killed an adult owlbear and found a cub. I was intending to let them tame the cub, which would have then been a Kenna type support DMPC since they didn’t have a primary healer in the party. However, my 12 year old brother acquired a taste for blood in the battle. After they killed the cub, I gave them a little gnome statue which would come to life and had the same stats as the owlbear ‘squire’. They hate that motherfucking gnome like he’s a goddamn nazi. They hate him so much. Weeks later, when I told my girlfriend about my old plan, she gave me an unreadable look and changed the subject. At the next family dinner, my brother was asking if they had played all the encounters correctly. I mentioned that they could have saved the owlbear. My girlfriend brought up that he would have replaced the gnome, and the silence was deafening. It turns out that my description of owlbears (basically what you find in Monster Manual) was too terrifying. They think I should have told them that they could tame the cub when it came out. Justices, I feel goddam slighted. As soon as I described the cub, it got obliterated by an eldritch blast. This contention has made me the butt of constant family jokes, and I don’t think I deserve it. Please tell me- should I have interrupted my brother’s attack to tell them to tame this monster (that they seemed to WANT to kill)? Should I have given them a less annoying replacement? Please tell me where I went wrong, so that I can finally sleep at night. Ps- Yake, hope you didn’t actually choke big guy. You look strong today btw

Andrew Tello

To the delicious justices and stinky bailiff I present the case of the goody two shoes vs. the tooth collecting fun guy In a campaign there was 4 players all on a pirate ship finally getting to the battle that had been building up for this arc. Player goody two shoes (GTS) and player tooth had a moment. Player GTS was a paladin that was a rule follower in game and definitely out of game. They were downed by the BBEG and was only 1 attack or death saving roll from actually dying. This player caused tension in the group always wanting to follow the rules and being a "parent" to us in game, always talking first in his prestigious voice yatata... My character the tooth collecting chaotic neutral fun cleric had a choice to make. I could cast healing word on GTS or let the dice decide his fate. The other players pressured me to save him even though we all secretly wanted him to die and use his "new character" he had already made and constantly talked about. I saved him BUT Should I have saved him? Or let the fate of the dice decide and for the betterment of everyone use his other character which we would've definitely loved more than his current one. I'd like a little stinky bailiff input, but mostly don't care what he thinks anyway.

Harper Quest

To the right honorable justices and absolutely no one else, I present a case that is over ten years old but occasionally haunts me to this day. While recruiting for a new Changeling game I invited a friend of a friend, "Kyle". Kyle was a retail worker and told me when I invited him that he could work with his manager to not be scheduled at the time of the game. Kyle joined our group and proved to be an excellent player, always engaged, attentive and glad to be there. I got the sense Kyle was a little lonely in general so he was glad to have that social time. He occasionally had to miss sessions because of his work schedule but those kind of things happen to everyone sometimes. The problem came in when I discovered Kyle was never able to get game times off. Every single week Kyle had been begging coworkers to switch shifts with him and had resorted to bribing them $50 or more per week to take his shift! I was uncomfortable with my game being such an expense on someone - especially someone who wasn't in a great financial state already. I reluctantly kicked Kyle from the group. He understood my reasoning but was clearly upset by it. I still wonder, Judges - did I do the right thing?

Deadstar1146

If you want a Yugioh one, my 2 brother and I and one of our friends were doing a 4-way duel and I played the roid deck I knocked out our friend and I summoned a monster with 4000 atk points but using the spell card Power bond I could fusion summon the 4000 atk monster but it doubles its atk to 8000 but at the end of my turn I take 4000 life point damage and the monster can attack twice and can't attack directly so I attacked my twin and attacked my older brother's defense position monster and ended my turn resulting in my older brother winning the duel my twin was mad while everyone else thought it was hilarious was I wrong to defeat 3 players including myself for humor? I await your justice

Kelsey Kautzsch

Oh honorable and just justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner — and also that guy who stole my name — I bring you the case of the Average Damage. I’ve been playing 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 short break during which our DM prepared to launch us into the “real” campaign. Our first session back, the three of us (minus our tank) were presented with a tremendous whomping in which we used the last of our healing abilities. Our characters were unable to rest and proceeded through two more battle encounters over the next two sessions. While we were enjoying the game and trying to learn better battle strategy, 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 was no longer 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, which would be more rewarding. He disagreed. 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?

Fleeting Effigy

intro so short twenty twenty four-t: what’s up judges and bailiff jazzy jake I have a case related to Magic the Gathering. I started playing magic via the commander format in August. I love the environment of friendly competition and politicking that can arise from a good game of commander but there is a line between competitive play and unsportsmanlike advantage. in my second ever game of magic, I played against my neighbor at the time at the LGS’ commander night. we had had many polite interactions in the past but were definitely not friends. judges… he kicked my ass. I did not know what I was doing in the game for the most part and much of what I was trying to do got shut down by removal spells. at first I was quite discouraged. I used that opportunity as a learning experience and now am much more adept at deck building and game mechanics. the problem is, I’ve seen this neighbor of mine pull this stunt on countless newbies at commander nights across the city. he has some sick need to beat down newcomers with proxied decks containing all the most powerful cards. does he need to be punished by the high crit for his misdeeds or is he perhaps helping motivate players like me to get better, and one day beat him in a game of magic I leave the decision to the newly appointed high crit of MtG.

BeBopDias

To the most honorable justices and that dog from that weird cartoon I think, I present the case of the high IQ wyvern. This comes from a now completed campaign that was played from the beggining to the end of the pandemic. All the 4 players in the campaign had at least one level in Fighter, and thus we ended up naming our group Full Fighters (this is somewhat relevant to the full story) In one of our many adventures, we end up retrieving a special item for a dragon, and in return, we get two compannion Wyverns. We aptly name them Jobson Carlos and Omyr. Me and another player are tasked with playing as the wyverns in combat encounters. Now, the actual case: during a particularly gnarly encounter with Mind Flayers, I decided that Jobby C, on his turn, would use his action to grapple one of the monsters and carry them upwards, as I thought just using their Stinger attack was getting pretty old in a campaign where most combat encounters ended up just being fighters hitting at stuff with swords and axes (not a problem; we loved hitting stuff). This is not however, what my fellow players and DM thought: they all were of the same opinion that a creature with 5 Intelligence would not be smart enough to perform a special maneuver like that in combat. I argued that every creature in the game can grapple, and ( I'm wrong on this next argument) that I was pretty sure some real life animals killed this way. This eventually led to the inevitable awakening at the end of the campaign with the wyvern in question becoming an accomplished wizard/librarian. Court, am I wrong for wanting to have a little fun with a CR 6 monster, or should I be punished for comitting the most heinous crime of using an action that was not on his stat table, using real life animal facts in my favor?

gex

Dearest bewitching justices, and the insipid bailiff Geoff, May it please the court! I present the case of the Hypocritical Enthusiast. In my (not-dnd) TTRPG game with some friends, one friend will not stop talking, whether the table is centered on her character or not. She will interrupt other character focus moments to inject her character's goals and development that are often entirely unrelated, or even to just bring up a joke that then leads into her showing us a Youtube video to explain the joke. We also have a player who moved and started joining our sessions remotely, through a combination of Discord and Facetime. Since then, the talker is also constantly interrupting to tell people to quiet down the table talk so our remote player can hear us without crosstalk, which can cut into some critical roleplay moments. She still will interrupt with Youtube videos and her own character moments, but does that alongside shushing all of us. The GM tries his best to keep us on track or redirect, and I do as well, but she really does not take the hint. I do want to include the remote player, but it feels really hypocritical that this one player tells all of us to quiet down when she's always talking. The thing is, the interrupting player is really enthusiastic about the campaign, the lore, and the system we're using, so it's hard to overcome that energy to tell her to bring it down. Should I be more direct with her about this, or leave it up to the GM to handle? Noble justices (and mildly morally upright bailiff), I ask for your judgement and advice.

monstercake

To the honorable justices who contains my hero emily axford, and the bestest goodest boy Jake. The DM introduced a gold dragon wyrmling, claiming it was starving and hadn't eaten in weeks, having cleared the island of small creatures. Hearing this, our party decided to adopt the wyrmling to ensure it never went hungry again. We convinced it to join us by offering the wyrmling two pirate enemies, inciting one to start a fight. During the encounter, the DM ruled that the wyrmling, acting out of hunger, unleashed its fire breath, unintentionally harming our party and killing a pirate lackey while damaging the first mate. In response, our gold dragonborn party member dispatched the first mate, which the DM interpreted as the wyrmling viewing them as a rival stealing its food. When we tried to rationalize that the wyrmling should consume the fallen pirate lackey since it was "starving for weeks," it had agreed to join us, and it responsible for the lackey death, the DM argued that it was in the wyrmling‘s thoughts to want to attack a fellow predator. This left us questioning whether the wyrmling was truly so hungry that it couldn’t think about who it attacked or if the DM kept changing his mind about wild animal instincts because he wanted to attack a party member.

Kristina The Sorceress

To the esteemed justices and the meh bailiff: May it please the court, I present the case of Meta-Gaming Versus Party Knowledge. I joined my friends' campaign group mid campaign, and within the confines of character dialogue, they caught me up to the speed of their quest and the BBEG. Not soon after, we encountered a bard accomplice of the BBEG. The rest of the party had encountered this enemy previously and, at the start of the battle, used actions to place magical miniature sandbags in their ears to help resist any charms or spells that utilized sound (an item APPROVED by the DM). I, as the player, had heard of this villain and their previous encounters, but it never came up in character and so he did not allow me to use the magical earplugs! My DM chided me for "metagaming," and so my character took no precautions, failed saving throws, and was left to hear "the saddest song you've ever heard." This homebrewed magical song effect altered my character's stats and disposition for the rest of the entire campaign (even after this npc accomplished perished at our hands). The only way the effect could be undone was through a Greater Restoration or Remove Curse. Judges, I ask you was it right to say that I was metagaming simply because I thought the accomplice would have come up in previous conversations, but technically didn't? I'm at your mercy. P.S. never came across a Greater Restoration or Remove Curse spell, or any NPCs who could cast said spells.

Deconstructionist

To the beneficent judges and the bashful bailiff, I humble submit to you the case of the halfling, warlock, Tiefling and just some guy with a phone. A few months ago, I started running a campaign with my partner, three of our friends one of their partners. As we are all quite busy people, I put together a cheat sheet of sorts that included: lore about my home brew world, quirks about how the different races operated in my world compared to the PHB and brief class summaries for the less experienced players. I sent this so that people could begin building their characters in-leu of a session 0 which we didn’t have time for. I also asked if I could be sent a brief backstory which tied in with the world a week or so before the first session. I received all but one of the players back stories a week before the first session. All these players had gone to the effort of integrating their characters into the world I had made. The night before the session I received my friends’ partners backstory which was literally him. I’m not talking a thinly veiled self-insert; he was literally playing himself. In his backstory he had accidentally wandered through a portal ending up in my world. He also just so happened to bump into some elves (which are incredibly rare in my world) who gave him a +2 bow and a quiver of infinite arrows. Not having time to tell him to come up with something else I just told him to take away to magic items and it would be fine. In the session though he kept on making references to earth, saying that he was using his phone whilst in the tavern and insulting the less human looking characters because they “looked weird.” This all culminated in me trying to murder his character on the quest they were sent to complete by some villagers. I’m not sure if it was obvious but it did seem like he could tell I was targeting him more than the other players. This put a bit of a dampener on the session, and we never had a second. My partner thinks I was in the right and should have killed him. I’m not sure though as the other players, whilst not thrilled, did just get on with it. Should I have sucked it up and let him play himself phone and all or was I right to try and make him play a new character? I would add that the problem player was supposedly very experienced having played multiple campaigns before. I humbly await your judgment.

Hallie Smith

To the honorable justices and the hard working bailiff, I offer the case of the beast-less Beastmaster. I was dating a guy who wanted to take a turn being the DM for our gaming group, and he decided he wanted to run an Earthdawn game. (I beg your indulgences, your honors, I realize this is D&D Court. I hope the principle of the thing can be examined rather than the rule set.) I thought it would be very fun to play a Pixie, a tiny fae creature, as a Beastmaster so that she could have a huge fuzzy buddy. The visual of a cute pixie riding a tiger was pretty great. According to the rules that was entirely allowed. My boyfriend, however, was VERY worried about running a game with me in it because he did not want to be accused of favoritism. So instead he went the other way and told me I could not have a beast at all! The mechanics for taming one during game were prohibitive, as it essentially involved grinding for reputation with the animal. It would have irritated everyone at the table for me to take up that much game time trying to achieve something the book said I was supposed to start with in the first place. (The mechanic existed in case your beast died.) His in-game reasoning was that civilization had been in exile for several generations and all the beasts would have died out. My response was that Beastmasters going into exile would have taken their beasts with them and created a breeding program. No way would they have just let them all die. So who was in the right, your honors? Should I have refused to play unless he followed the rulebook? Or was he within his rights to decide that the rules didn't make sense and deny me my beast? Full disclosure, in case you feel it may have been a complicating factor: I'm polyamorous, and my husband was also a player in this game. Again, it was our normal gaming group, we had all been playing table top games together for years. But could the anxiety of being the game master with him present overridden his sense?

Corey Brown

To the most humble and incredible bailiff and all powerful judges, I humbly submit the following: My group partakes in alcohol from time to time while playing. During a recent Curse of Strahd campaign the DM forgot not once, not twice but three times that a player was immune to the sleep spell. In his fourth try he cast sleep on our esteemed warlock who was already asleep and when reminded of this he recanted his move and claimed alcohol was the cause of his poor judgment. He then attacked another player and pretended the sleep spell never happened. I ask you, is alcohol a good excuse in this case? I eagerly await your judgement! Jasper Pincushion, Celestial Warlock

Michelle Phelps

To the totally yoked justices and that other guy, Junk I present the case of the supersonic wizard. I was playing a swashbuckler rogue/blade singer wizard pirate muticlass in a one shot (from candlekeep mysteries) with some friends. In our final showdown with a guy named Stonky, we were splitting our actions between fighting stonky and racing back to this arcane rocket to board it before the countdown ended and it blasted off into the Astral sea. There was only one round of combat left before the rocket would take off and I was the furthest in the party from the entrance. I wasn't worried because at the time, I had my blade song active which increased my speed from 30 ft to 40 ft. I had also cast haste on myself, which would double my speed to 80 ft. So in theory, I could take my movement, action dash, hasted action dash, and bonus action dash and move 320 feet in a round. When I explained this to my DM they sighed and told me "that's not that how that works" and that I had made a broken character. I argued that if I had only taken wizard levels (our characters were lv 9), I would have access to dimension door which would let me move even further in a turn and only cost my action. The DM eventually just let me board the rocket with the rest of party, but I felt kind of guilty. Justices, did I do my math wrong or was my character really that broken?

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!

Banananaz

To the esteemed and honorable Supreme Crit justices and the lowly bailiff rotting away in Jill and Tucker’s crawlspace (#SquattersRights), I’m playing a 17 year old halfling girl named Bree in a campaign with three other party members. Early into our campaign, Bree developed a crush on a member of the town guard named Will (also a teenager). In our last session, Will and Bree had their first kiss, and it was a joyful moment for the two teens. However, about ten minutes later, the king gave our party a quest that requires us to leave the country for the foreseeable future. I let my fellow party members know that while Bree isn’t going to ask Will to join, she is going to tell him that the party is leaving the country and let him make that choice if he wants to join the party. My fellow party members vehemently oppose this, saying Will would likely immediately die on our journey, and Bree will just find someone else to crush on later. I countered this by stating that Will has already proven himself in combat, as he joined us in battle once before and held his own. Our DM is open to bringing Will along, and said he would give him some levels of fighter to better his odds. Our DM also said he likes having a DM-PC or two to guide the party when needed (opa-Balnor style). I’m torn - am I in the wrong for wanting to include a DM-PC on a dangerous long-term quest? Should I let Bree’s first love go and just hope to run into him again in the distant future? Or should I have Bree talk with Will and leave it up to our DM to decide if he joins the party? I lay myself at the mercy of the court. PS Rachel dies in Animorphs

Jamison

To the highest crit in the land, Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, I ask for justice. I play in a DND game with some coworkers after work once a week. We do a decent mix of RP and combat sessions and our GM has done a good job of making the story around our backgrounds. Over the course of two different campaigns now, one of the players has just kind of refuses to engage in combat. His only RP seems to be about staying as safe as possible and the GM and I dont know why. In combats, he hides, stays out of the combat zone, or focuses on trying to trick the enemies into not attacking him. In RP, he encourages us to go back to our safe hub town and ignore huge story hooks our GM has in front of us (Like a fucking nation of dragons joining with the would be king of the northern barbarian tribes to go help a society former slaves leading an uprising against a mage nation state that used conjured fiends to do battle! That shit was sick as hell and we just went whelp gotta go!) So yha. . . what do we do? I throw myself at the mercy of the court! Jamison . . . . . OH SHIT I FORGOT JARNK! JAMP? JACK?

Eugenio Velasco

To the supreme justices, and the guy who just reads these, I bring to you the case of the sleeping players. I DM'd a full homebrew, online 5e campaign, wherein the entire continent and surrounding continents were all created by me. Cities, biomes, cultures, everything. Truth be told, it was a lot of work. I began DM'ing this campaign in January of 2022. We played over discord with our webcams and virtual Battle maps for combat. It was going well up until maybe the last year or so, when I noticed a significant increase in most of my players just not caring enough anymore. They would not interact with the world, do any side quests, explore, etc. It got to the point where one player was regularly falling asleep and only on their phone during sessions. Honestly, it really bothered me, and I eventually just stopped world building and would improvise sessions because I knew it wasn't worth it. However, I got so annoyed, I ended up putting the campaign on an indefinite hiatus. Ultimately, was I wrong for ending this campaign, or should I have figured a way to work around this? I plead for your advice.

Byron Brown

To the Holiest of the holy, Axford, Murphy and Tanner and also the Holy Virgin Jake. I come to you with a heartfelt confession for dice Christ, or should I say Card Christ... I'm part of a campaign with new and close friends in which it is our DMs first time DMing. To try and help his workload, I'll help him out with session planning from time to time at the cost of me being spoiled for certain things. He decided he wanted to introduce our party to a deck of many things, which we worked together to modify and homebrew a full 52 card deck all with different effects Here is where we strayed from the light... As I knew what was in the deck there was one card I knew that would be a beautiful story moment for my fairy prince warlock (a card that severed a limb) so the Dm and I agreed that no matter what card I pulled, one card would be this 'cleaver card', the session came and lo and behold my character left one arm lighter with every player at the table astonished and mortified by my "horrible luck"... Please oh sweet cherubs, may I be forgiven for "loading the deck" and will dice or card Christ welcome me back in his good graces!!

Shane Murphy

Supreme Crit Justices and the bailiff whose just doing his job. I present the case of the unseen lockpicker. I'm blessed with a DnD crew that have enjoyed many adventures over 7 years, helmed by my best friend as a wise and sage DM. FYI I am the villain in this story. Our party found themselves awoken in individual cells with thick bars and locks that couldn't be reached. My DM made a point that the rooms seemed to be impenetrable. Thinking quickly, my bard cast unseen servant outside the door, handed it a lockpick and asked to pick the lock. My DM and I argued over whether or not I could talk an unseen servant through picking a lock and we agreed to leave it to dice christ. One Nat20 later I was released and quickly picked the other locks. Crestfallen, my DM told us that he had a dnd escape room planned and ended the session early. I was dismayed and apologised immediately. We're all still friends but I often wonder - did I take the shenanigans too far or did dice christ sanction this. I await your judgement with casual optimism.

Thomas Diblasi

To our beloved justices and (my) beloved Jake, I present to thee the case of the magic-item hungry Hag. We were 3 sessions away from our finale in a Ghosts of Saltmarsh Campaign. Our characters’ ship was stranded and the only way we could escape was to trade 1 magic item to a Hag. One of the PC’s had written a big list of everyone’s magic items, who they belonged to and who they were currently attuned to. We consulted the list, and realised there was a fairly useless awakened pot plant that belonged to one of the other PCs that hadn’t been brought up since the session it was acquired. The first PC offered the Hag this plant, and the PC who owned it refused to give it up, becoming so upset by the offer that she had to leave the table and we took a big group timeout. In the end, we tried to fight the hag but she was too powerful, leaving us alive but demanding a magic item from everyone, instead of just 1 from the group. We lost a few powerful magic items, but that one PC kept her damn plant. She also never brought up her plant in-game ever again. Justices, was this player fair in not wanting to give up her silly little bowl of leaves? The case is in your hands.

Pensulliwen

They did keep it brief as was requested—nay, begged!

Broken Shadows

To the legendary crit justices and the bailiff who's level 5 at best, I bring the case of the meta rival. Some background, this case comes from the a distant cousin of dnd, PTU (Pokemon Tabletop United). Despite the similar concept, the rules are a bit different so I'll be explaining anything important to this case. The incident took place during our tournament ark, an ark that was meant to get our trainer characters some experience since most wild encounters give exp to the pokemon rather than the trainers. Something important to note about this ark is that the DM was bringing in guests to play the other characters in the tournament. However, the dm still built or helped with team and trainer building. It was my second battle in the tournament, and the battle started. The opponent sends out a Scovillian among his options. As the battle goes, I felt as if I was holding my own at the start. That was, of course, until the Scovillian terastylizes. Usually, I'd be able to handle that to at least some extent, however as was reveled later, this Scovillian had an ability that randomly raises one of it's stats every round. By the time I had taken care of the Scovillian, four of my pokemon had gone down and all that was left was my trainer character herself, and her starter, a Talonflame. Because my trainer character has a flying speed thanks to being a flying elementalist, I switched tactics to fly stalling, utilizing the fact I can reach them and they can't reach me. Through this tactic I brought it down to two on three. Eventually my trainer went down and I lost the battle, and while my stall tactics annoyed the dm, I ask the justices, Is it unfair if the PC did everything they could've to win, even resulting to stall tactics, but still lost? Or, am I being petty and a sore loser?

Meghan

To the most honorable justices and that guy Jorjug (sp?) who might make a good 8BBC guest if you’re ever in a pinch, I present to you the case of the poorly designed final battle I DM a campaign where the PCs started off with no memory of anything and a mystery surrounding who they are and what they were doing prior to the memory loss. In what was supposed to be the climactic battle (prior to handing the DM reins over for a little while), I homebrewed a ritual and evil sorcerer who had access to legendary actions that let her regain spell slots and sorcery points, move, and cast spells. Because of this, I was able to give the sorcerer back 8th level spell slots a few times in order to cast Power Word Stun as a way to basically reset their memories and cause them to remember their pasts. My players were not happy with me and argued every time I used a legendary action or stunned them and it left me feeling like I’d done a horrible job with the battle and that I failed at making anything fun. Was I in the wrong to try to make it climactic and dramatic? Or were my players wrong for arguing with me and making me feel like I was hated by my friends? (PS: we’ve played more since that session and I’m still DMing because the Eunuch Paladin Satyr chose to jump into a portal into the Abyss before I could narrate it closing and then willingly without any real prompting taking over a demon prince’s recently vacated Abyssal domain. This forced me to continue DMing for another month and a half, but only after pettily bribing him with a treasury full of cursed treasure that left him at a base Int of 1, but that’s a story for another time….)

LastStandGaming

To the Honorable Crit Justices and that little crabster of a bailiff, I present the case of the Non-Campaign Pursuit. A couple years ago I DMed for a Bi-Weekly group in a homebrew world inspired by Celtic Legends and Myth. Things were going smoothly at first, but after a bit the flare died and even hit a screeching halt. We felt that our inspiration had run out, unfortunate, but they do happen in campaigns from time to time. We decided to give it a couple of weeks and resume with a session zero a bit later as I almost always have different campaigns in the back pocket #4EverGM. However after I put out the question of what people would like to play I received radio silence in return, which was confusing since everyone seemed to be on board. After about three weeks of nothing from the players I decided that perhaps they found different groups and moved on which I was fine with since I was running 3 other games throughout the week. So imagine my surprise 5 months later when I received a fairly confrontational message on discord asking when the campaign would be ready since they had been waiting forever. Obviously I was confused, of course I didn't have anything prepared since I received no feedback and told them as such. I was met with a bit more hostility before I finally told them admittedly pretty harshly "It is not my job to chase after players, but to run and facilitate the rules of a game" We had a few more messages before I decided the effort was not worth my time anymore and simply stopped replying in general. So I ask you Justices was I right to give up on a response so quickly or should I have put more effort into getting feedback? I humbly await judgement.

Haybale

To the silky smooth judges and the guy who gets the coffee, I present to you a case of dis-alignment. I play in a cyberpunk-flavored campaign that started with the party fighting the BBEG in session zero, losing, and crash-landing on a foreign planet as result. My character is a cyborg warlock with an AI patron. She's also scientist, so her whole mindset is based in her logic and reason. Her alignment is lawful neutral. Our first objective was to find a way off this planet and obtain a new ship while avoiding detection, because we were wanted for the destruction caused in the BBEG fight. The party decided to go to a mid-tier used ship dealer to purchase a ship without getting scammed. There, 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 hit. He didn't and the bot pressed an alarm, which sent authorities after us, the exact thing we wanted to avoid. My character did not participate in the shenanigans, 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. The party then got mad that my character managed to avoid getting arrested, while the rest of them did for doubling down on their failed robbery plan. So I ask you fair judges (and JNCOs), was I wrong to follow my character's morals and reasoning? Or should I have sucked it up and followed these absolute murder hobos in their violent crusade? I await your judgment with sweaty palms. PS my amazing DM managed to bring us all back together in the next session and gave us a mission that got us back on the rails, so all hope is not lost.

Lorelei and Kyra Newly Weds

Greeting my esteemed council of judges and the clown king Jeff. I dont usually have a reason to bring this up by my lovely wife Kyra was wronged during our early stages of playing Commander In Magic. We had a 4 person table and we're testing her Markov deck against our friends newer vampire deck with cards from the Ixilan set. The player in question had about 200 vampire tokens out and was about to field wipe with something that would bring his vampires back with flying. Upon declaration and the tapping of mana, she claimed that he was dead. She had a creature called blood artist out that, when another creature dies I clouding itself it pings for 1 damage and heals her. This would have been 200+ damage to spread and most likely win the game, however after hearing what would happen he retracted and untapped everything passing for a different play entirely which led to him winning. So I asked was she wronged? Being forced to take a murph sized L when victory was so close

Lauryn

To the jolly justices and the sweet bean bailiff: I am currently in a homebrew campaign run by my boyfriend/DM, (who is very cute but also very wrong.) At the end of last session, we had defeated an evil cleric with a lovable rat giant companion. As the cleric fell, his control over the rat giant faded, and it panicked and made to run though the town we are currently in. As the rat giant was fleeing, I told my DM I wanted to cast Compelled Duel on it to make it follow me around outside of combat instead of running away. He said that if I cast the spell to keep the rat giant from running amok through town, then it would have to fight my little AC 11 warlock's ass. I argued there's nothing in the language of the spell that says it HAS to fight me, only that it can't move far away from me without making a wisdom save. He said "Compelled Duel would compel it to duel you." I protested vehemently, citing the language of the spell, but he maintained his titular interpretation. When I proposed bringing it to the court, he said fine, and he's resigned to only getting support from the DM leaning Justice Murphy. We throw ourselves to the wisdom of the court: should I be allowed to stop this rat giant from hurting itself and the town's populace, (and perhaps make a new friend along the way ala King Kong,) with my brilliant interpretation of the spell, or is my DM correct in that I should get smacked ala Godzilla? We humbly await your ruling.

Nat

I pledge allegiance to the justices of the honorable court of the dungeon, and to the bailiff, whom we stan, one party, under Dice Christ, un-splitable, with advantage and proficiency for all. I bring to you the case of the Baldur's Gate break-up. I have a group of friends that I've been playing D&D with since we were in grad school, and continued online for almost 5 years afterwards. Our DM and one of the players started dating very early on, and last year they broke up very abruptly and, from our perspective, out of nowhere. It sounds like they ended on extremely bad terms, and both are very hurt, but neither of them seems to be the "bad guy" of the situation. The DM/ex-boyfriend messaged the rest of us, the other three players, to tell us that we wouldn't be able to keep playing. The player/ex-girlfriend then messaged us too, to say that she really wanted to keep playing in some capacity, and since Baldur's Gate 3 had just come out recently, why don't we play that as a group? We all agreed and have been playing together semi-regularly ever since. They're a fun group to play with, but there definitely is much less enthusiasm and we play a lot less frequently. I used to organize my whole week around D&D, but now I'll skip several weeks in a row if there's something more interesting going on. The only one who really seems to be super into it is the player/ex-girlfriend, and I feel kind of bad. That is until recently, when the DM/ex-boyfriend messaged the three of us again, and said he's been missing playing and wondering if we want to start a new campaign, or MAYBE PLAY BALDURS GATE TOGETHER. He has no idea we've been playing with his ex this entire time. And she has no idea he's asked us to play either. The other two players responded saying yes, and specifically avoided saying anything about our other game. I have not responded yet. I messaged both of them saying "hey this feels extremely chaotic, are we really going to have two simultaneous groups going without either of them finding out?" Neither of them seemed concerned, they said that we don't have to hurt anyone's feelings, and we can just play in both groups without telling anyone. And in fact they would be mad at me fkr disrupting the peace if I told either of the exes what was going on. This feels insane to me, because how on earth are we supposed to play in two nearly identical groups without talking about the same weekend plans over and over again, or overlapping any inside jokes? I don't know what to do here, and I have to respond eventually. Are my fellow players criminals for this? Or should I be punished for not just going along with it? I lay my fate at the foot of the court

Nav Dhillon

Hello Emily, Murph, Caldwell and Jake. Am I being problem player or is my group full of simps. I've been part of a D&D group since the pandemic began, and DM had a unique approach to distributing magic items found at end of the session: the character with the fewest magical possessions gets first pick. It was a simple rule that kept things fast when we had a whopping NINE players. However, as our group has slimmed down to a more manageable size of five regular players, with a sporadic sixth member who can only join us once a month, this rule has led to current tension. Recently, during a loot distribution session, the 6th player who joins us once a month, who also happens to be the only female player left in our group, who plays a Sorcerer, was given first choice and she took it. Admittedly, I was eyeing it not just for its healing potential, but also to conserve my spell slots for more offensive magic. (I chose the Light Domain for it's Pew Pew potential) I causally mentioned the Sorcerer claimed the staff without considering its compatibility with her class (only clerics, monks, druids can use it), and because I join every week it would benefit the party more for the weekly player to have it. I was met with indifference from the other players. I decided to forego preparing any healing spells for our next session, which led to some tense moments during combat when my healing abilities were sorely missed. In our post-game discussion, they party light heartedly mention I should have selected better spells, and I in turn light-heartedly mentioned how things might have been different if I had obtained the staff I wanted. This seemed to rub some players the wrong way, with accusations of being a "problem player" thrown my way. So I called them simps. Feeling unsupported and overlooked, I made the difficult decision to step away from the group. Now, I'm left wondering: was I being overly dramatic, or were the dynamics within our group truly simps.

Jacob Peterson

May it please the esteemed judges and uhhh, jorts, I think I have been dming for a party of 4 players for around 3 years and in total we've played 2 different campaigns. In the first campaign the bbeg was juiblex, a slime demon lord that was causing a plague to destroy entire villages. After that campaign fizzled out due to scheduling conflicts, I started up an entire new world with what I thought was a super interesting premise. The BBEG of this new campaign is amassing an army of undead using a ritual that involves a "black tar-like goo." I thought this idea was very interesting and cool, but my players have been razzing me for being a "goo guy" and saying all my campaigns involved goo. Judges do I deserve to be taken through the razzberry patch or should my players let me be a gooey little guy in peace?

Christina Yen

To the most esteemed Justices and Jake, who I hope will eventually be invited onto 8 bit book club. My best friend and I come to you with a case of the mid-combat rule-switching DM. We play in a 5e campaign that, from the start, was set to go to level 30. Our DM and group recognize that higher level combat is very hard to balance, and to our DM’s credit, he’s generally very good about it. In our most recent session, our party was in combat with level 20 adversaries that ambushed our level 24 party. We were not doing so well initially, but the dice began to roll in our favor after a rough first round. That was when we began to notice some changes to the rules, most notably: -the opposition’s assassin Crit on their hit… in the second and third rounds of combat. -changing the teleportation rules on our hexadin’s Force Cage, limiting its efficacy (directly contradicting his own ruling from a previous session) -The opposition’s monk used Deflect missiles on our party’s monk’s melee strikes. When this was contested, our DM said “this is how DnD one rules work.” We later confirmed this is not how Dnd one’s deflect missiles will be working. Also, our group has never discussed incorporating DnD One rules; in fact, most of the players have expressed a preference for sticking with 5E in our group chat. Final note: before the dice and the party’s tactical changes started swinging the fight to our advantage, the assassin was NOT critting on every hit and the monk was NOT deflecting melee attacks. Your honors, what punishment fits the crime for mid-combat rule changes just because our DM didn’t like how the fight was going? We patiently and humbly await your decision.

Kidtruck91

Man, I think this one would go your way. Justice Axford, and Tanner would lean your way on cleverness alone. And Justice Murphy tends to play by the reading of the spell. Best of luck!

ChappyThoughts

To the magnanimous justices and the bailiff who is or isn't lowly at the opening of this episode (Schrodinger's Jake): I present the case of the Dragon Tort. While running a viking-themed, post-apoc, Forgotten Realms game, the party (all experienced DMs) came up against a dragon turtle which they were far too lowly level to actually defeat. I decided that if they fought well enough that it would give up and leave to find easier prey. After 6 rounds, despite taking a beating, they had fought well enough to drive the beast off. One of them however wanted to give chase. I said he couldn't track it through the ocean but he was confident that it could be done. The problem is that he is a real life outdoor survival teacher. That being said, I am a veteran Navy submariner. Neither of us are marine biologist though. Was I right to call it impossible or should I have left them to their own doomed voyage? I await your judgement. P.S. the rest of the party was happy with either option.

Nyx

To the honorable supreme crit justices (also the bailiff I guess) I present to you the case of ‘the stabby not so bard, bard’. I run a post apocalyptic, 5e game in a 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. In these combats lies my particular problem. One of my friends is playing a an eloquence bard named Jeb. Despite being a wonderful roll player, 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 doesn’t use his feats or any of his items, even the ones that incentivize using bard stuff by making him better at stabbing 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 have more fun playing a different class that fits his play style and he responded with a “nah I’m good”. 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 and I don’t want to kill him again (he got better) 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 while 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

Kidtruck91

They definitely did. I remember the answer being Maybe? Depending on if it was smoke and mirrors or actually just killing off for no reason.

Kidtruck91

Totally right and could even be faster with being Tabaxi or Wood Elf.

George TJ

To the Juicy justices and the bearable baliff I bring to you the case of Berries Gone Wild I am a newer DM in a homebrew pirate campaign with my group of four friends. They are all at 3rd level, and it ended up that the only 1 of the four PCs were capable of decent healing: the druid. I decided to homebrew a buff to the druid's goodberry spell, allowing a character to fit as many of the 10 berries in their mouth as an action instead of the 1, with the caveat that if it's more than 5 berries you have to beat a DC 10 Con Save or you cough them all out with no effect. I thought this was a neat and funny idea to buff healing for the party that would rarely come up. However, it came to a head when in the end of the groups toughest fight yet, when the cornered wizard attempted to eat 8 goodberries at once and ended up failing, wasting an action. This lead to a death spiral with the near-dead wizard going unconscious in the next hit in attempting to run away, dropping concentration on an important spell that was protecting another PC, and leading to their death. The party ended up barely winning, and had to jump through some hoops and use resources in the next session to revive their dead PC. But half of the party is still mad at me for being a hardass about the berries, saying that choking on any amount of those 10 berries is unrealistic, and that it can be done "easily" in 6 seconds. The night ended with everyone logging off after a heated argument about goodberry sizes, characters' jaws, and strength scores. It has since been unresolved and I still get razzed for it. To the court I ask: Did I go too far in standing firm with the berry estimation in my homebrew? ie. Is it possible to eat up to 10 berries without it being a choking hazard? Should my party just get good? Or are they reasonable in getting berry mad? I humbly seek judgement

Sido Hikami

To the honorable judges Axford, Murphy, and Hurwitz and the bubble frog boy bailiff Tammy I present the case of “the banned artificer” A few years ago I was playing an Artificer in my “friend’s” campaign since I wanted to try it out and support my friends in their first ever DnD campaign. I wanted to be a big brain type character so I took keen mind, the Sage background, and variant human. When playing my dm was getting frustrated because she wanted the game to be dark souls-like in difficulty but my skills and feat, in her words, “trivialize the experience for the players”. The players said they actually like my character due to her rules. For example, if we, the people forget something in game, she says we don’t know then and have to find that info again, even if it’s crucial story point info we need to move the plot. The final session I attended she said I had to make a new character since she’s banning artificer, sage, and keen mind. So I packed up and left. My friends said the group dissolved after that and I felt bad that their first experience was like this. Judges was I wrong to walk and try to be a big brain anime boy, or was my DM way too into dark souls? I await your fair and righteous judgement

Bud of Boggy

To the most learned Justices and Jake, who's coming along nicely. "The Case of Accidentally Freaking Out Another Party Member" I was a veteran player in a group of new players/DM, and played a Divine Soul Sorcerer of the Goddess of Deception and Illusion, pretending the be a Cleric. I had a lot of fun lying arbitrarily and pursuing a more honest character development, and another player even messaged me privately to tell me how much they enjoyed our in-character interactions/relationship. However, the Monk player disclosed to me that our Ranger was a little scared of me, as she was unsure where the character stopped and I, the person, began. Not wanting to make her uncomfortable, I immediately proposed to change my character to a super earnest and encouraging Paladin of the Crown. This was approved by the DM and my new character was introduced. My new character was very supportive, took opportunities to gas up and compliment the rest of the party, especially the scared Ranger, and I noticed she was more happy, confident and involved. However, before our next session was scheduled the DM messaged me a wall of text expressing the problem was not with my character, but with me as a player, claiming I was targeting and 'ostracising' her. I have never had those kind of accusations after years of playing, and I didn't appreciate how the DM, supposedly my friend, approached me, so I expressed that I really never meant to make anyone uncomfortable, but I didn't think I was a good fit for his table. I later have heard from other players that the group has now fizzled out, and it is unlikely that they will continue the campaign. Esteemed Justices, did I unwittingly kill this group? I super did not mean to

Kidtruck91

Sounds to me like the court was right on the money.

RODRIGO BOTELHO DIAS

To the most honorable Justices and...sir? Could you move? I’m talking to the judges. Thanks. Anyway, I present to you the case of the Valuable Chimera Cake. A short preamble: this was the first actual campaign I was able to DM in a weekly basis, so I was still pretty inexperienced. The party was composed of a Monk, a Cleric, a Bard, a Warlock and a Sorcerer. The players were investigating an attempted murder on the town’s resident Tiefling rockstar, after he was sniped with a Lightning Javelin while playing onstage and almost dying (he survived due to the Cleric’s clutch Healing Word when he had two Death Save fails). The Tiefling was then brought to a temple of the Cleric’s god in order to be protected and properly cared for. In the dead of night, when the players went to do their full rest, the assassin, who had been hired to kill the tiefling, sicced a previously caged Chimera, stolen from the city’s zoo, inside of the temple, in order to stealthly end the Tiefling’s life while the players dealt with the Chimera. Long story short, they were able to kill the Chimera and, eventually, the assassin, saving the Tiefling’s life. All good, right? Here’s the actual issue: after killing the Chimera, the players wondered what to do with the body parts. I suggested they could sell the parts to an alchemist, or even commission equipment using them. The Bard however, had an...unique idea. They wanted to make a cake using the dead body. I thought it was weird, but sure, roll Survival to make a weird but edible meal out of it. They rolled a Nat 1. I described the cake being borderline grotesque, reeked of decompsing, a pure abomination. I thought they would just laugh it off and that would be the end of it. The Sorcerer, however...had an even more unique ideia. The Sorcered tried to cast the 1st level spell Distort Value on the Chimera Cake, and sell it off for some gold. I argued that the spell, as it was written, would only work on something that had actual value to distort, not a horrible, clearly rotten Cake made from the entrails of a monstrosity. I ruled as such for two reasons: a) The Cake, even if it LOOKED more presentable, would still smell like a dead monster and b) This would open up a precedent that Distort Value could be used on pretty much anything and be super abusable. I even mentioned to them there were probably other spells they could use to fashion an illusion or something, but they were unmoved, as I was with my ruling. They still razz me to this day (3 years later) about how much of a “hardass” I was. Judges, I ask of you: was I really in the wrong here? I feel like I was pretty reasonable on my ruling. Was I right to deny this distortion? Or was their chaotic Chimera Cake conundrum kinda cool? I humbly await and expect your cruel and unusual punishment for whomever you see fit.

DowdMusic

Damn. Another Tyler lover.

FregLover

Greetings to justices Murph, Axford, and Tanner. I'm not trying this case in Boston, so I don't really care anyone else who may or may not practice there. If it pleases the court: Rather than seek out punishment I would like to request that the court may offer some form of rehabilitation for whoever is in the wrong in this case, whether it be me, the DM, or the player. I have a player who tries to fudge her rolls whenever she thinks she can get away with it -- even despite the fact we play in person and I can see everything she's doing. Anytime she gets a bad roll for something of consequence, she panics, tries to swiftly snatch up the dice before anyone else can see it, and immediately rerolls again, all in one frantic motion. Sometimes if I don't catch what she rolled, she will even refuse to tell me, or deny having rerolled even though she knows she's been caught red-handed -- almost as if she's doing everyone a favor by brazenly sticking to her lie. I even fear this may be rubbing off on another player, who I once caught frantically rolling like 3 - 4 times in a row before announcing the result, though this seemed to be an isolated incident, and I thus haven't named him as a defendant. This is a group of new players, and I don't have that many friends who are into D&D, so I would prefer not to sever ties with them as friends. Does the court suggest a course of rehabilitation that can fix my unruly player? Or perhaps this is my failure as a DM, whose pleas of "Guys, no, you can only roll once" have gone unheeded? Thank you, and Bahumut bless this court.

Tim

May it please the court and the big baller bailiff himself. I bring to you: The Case of the Cult Leader. This case presides during my first and only dnd campaign, featuring my very own cleric of the Trickery Domain, Jones. Jones was a failed priest without a community after the members of his previous church all mysteriously died. He turned to more unsavoury acts to survive and at the time of the campaign was beginning a quest to rebuild his life and become the head of his own church, flavoured as a Cult. I was extremely excited to play this character and spent the following week giddy with excitement. After pitching this to my DM there were no problems and we were ready to go. Upon playing the game, I was confused to find that the DM would essentially stonewall any attempts that I made towards my character’s goals. For example: Upon arriving to a new city our party all decided to talk to the locals. I had asked to look for any people seeming “down on their luck” as they would be desperate for any sort of community. All of the people my DM presented were either deaf, mute or crazy so I couldn’t properly communicate with them. To remedy this I cast a restoration spell on them, healing their maladies and quickly offering the help and services of my budding church. Despite a good persuasion check and preforming literal messiah like miracles for them I continued to be stonewalled until I eventually just gave up. Upon asking about this. My DM said that creating a cult was evil, and having that much influence over people was far too powerful. I responded that my church could be ultimately good, (No Koolaid here) just as long as I could still flavour it as a cult and continue to play the tricky preacher character. Unfortunately even after this my DM decided they wouldn’t touch my character with a 10 foot retractable pole. I spent the following sessions having no character purpose eventually becoming extremely bored with this PC that I was once so ecstatic to play. Eventually, like a rancher putting down a old horse I decided to kill Jones via Deck of many things so I could just play a new character and have the fun I imagined D&D would be. Jones turned into a flock of bats and flew away only to be used by the DM as a villain in future sessions. So now I ask you. Was I robbed from being able to play Jones in his godly glory, or was my DM right to shut this “evil” character down? I await your wisdom with the most open of arms, thank you

Lucca Emil Rodriguez

May it please the high justice Axford and her Betrothed Bailiff Brian and those other two that loiter around the court room. I come to you with a case of potentially campaign ruining behavior. I started a campaign with some new friends and my girlfriend about a year and a half ago, and everything had been amazing except one player. She frequently gets upset at me (DM), for not letting her use abilities or spells in ways that arent meant to be used. For example a Healing spirit that heals all its d6 in one turn, or using spells she hasnt prepared. This has been mostly manageable but recently shes also been getting upset before sessions, saying things like “You should be grateful im coming because im very busy”. All the while being the player who engages least with roleplay and combat, frequently drawing or being on her phone during the game and then getting upset when shes lost. She also still frequently asks what die to roll for attacks a year and a half in. Justices, what should i do to remedy this situation. Im afraid any confrontation will just lead to her snd her best friend leaving and ending the campaign.

Leah S.

Not a case, but did Emily get a chance to charger her dice in the Solar Eclipse?

Honeycomb

To the highest judges with their jangly dice filled pockets, and the guy who should guest star on 8-Bit book club someday i say, i bring to you the case of the buff wizard and the flimsy fighter. I had been playing in an online campaign, and while I was not one of the two players, it still bugs me about this DMs decision. The party consisted of a war magic wizard who with some feats, racial traits and a 16 strength to actually wear armor, a fighter who used a bow, so high dex, and dumped strength, and myself a rogue. We were traveling through a dungeon, and came across a large boulder blocking a passageway. Because he had the highest strength, our wizard tried to push the boulder. He rolled around a 15, but the DM said that was a failure. The fighter tried to do the same, and only rolled a 10, but the DM said that was a success. When all of the players tried to argue that the Wizard should have been able to move the rock, the DM was firm and claimed “Why would someone who just studies books be able to move the rock and not a trained fighter? DCs should be different for different characters” after a bit of arguing, we gave up but i still hold this question with me. Should our jacked mage been able to move this boulder, or is the DMs idea of different DCs for different PCs the way to go?

Carissa Piercy

To the most auspicious and abundant (whatever we refer to y’all as in the church, sorry I forget). I come to you all with a different kind of confession than you might expect. I’ve been dming my first home game for about 9 months now, and the players recently had their finale battle for the first arc of this campaign. They were fighting a quori and several NPCs they had grown fond of that the quori was possessing, one of which being a player’s NPC girlfriend. On his turn, this player was able to break her out of the possession and got her fighting on their side. She acted on his initiative, hexblade’s cursing the quori then eldritch blasting. I rolled for her attack behind my screen, and she rolled a 19 to hit (a hexblade crit) and then double tens on her 2d10 of eldritch blast damage. The quori only had 10 hit points left. I have felt guilty about this NPC getting the killing blow on the BBEG for weeks now. I strive to use my DM powers of fudging rolls or adjusting combat design behind the screen only for good, such that it would aid the players. I can’t help but feel I should’ve fudged the roll so she missed and a PC would get the ability to finish off the big bad. I come to the church of dice Christ on my knees, asking if I did the right thing by honoring the sanctity of RNJesus and not fudging my rolls, or if my guilt is justified and I have dishonored the church, I humbly ask to be absolved

BardCommander

To the indomitable justices and the now potty-trained bailiff Jake, I bring to you the case of the Post SWORD-em Plot: Several years ago, I was a late addition to a Tomb of Annihilation game that my friends had started the year before. What was initially supposed to be a couple-session guest spot ended up becoming a permanent place at the table as everyone really liked my character, a highland cow-looking Minotaur named Bo. Bo was a Barbarian/bard who entered this campaign with his family heirloom greatsword, which was non-magical but had great sentimental value . Over the course of the adventure, through imposing skill checks , a series of hard won encounters, and a shitload of gold spent, Bo was eventually able to upgrade the sword into an adamantine flametongue (which looked pretty effing rad if I do say so myself, which I do.) Tragedy eventually struck when Bo and another PC were kidnapped and taken to a large Yuan-ti settlement. Upon arrival, everyone was stripped of their belongings and thrown into prison cells, but our confinement didn't last long of course, as we quickly broke out. As we fled, we were able to find the room where the Yuan-ti were keeping our gear, but here's the kicker: instead of letting us collect our things and move on, the DM had us roll investigation checks as the stronghold was on high alert and we were being pursued. We rolled and the other PC was able to find all their gear. Despite rolling similarly however, I was unable to locate my family's great sword in time. Thus Bo was forced to flee unarmed with the rest of the party directly into the Tomb of Annihilation, which is the final and most brutal part of the adventure. Thankfully all of our characters survived the campaign, but in the end, I was never able to get my rad sword back... Years later, when I asked the DM what it would have taken for me to find my sword, he told me with a SMIRK that we would have had to defeat the ENTIRE Yuan-ti settlement. I've seen the book, and for the record that's anywhere from 89 to 137 enemies ranging from the numerous Yuan-ti soldiers to a freaking Hydra! Of course the bard gets to keep the Talisman of Pure FRIKKEN good that she just FOUND, but heaven forbid my character gets to keep the sword I put time and effort into making just a tad more special. Justices, I stand before this court- not for vindication of my plight- but for your aid in retribution. You see, for the past several years I have been the DM for this DM in a campaign that is now also nearly complete and where they TOO have a sword that they care about (it's sentient to boot). I would ask your council on what level of payback is proportionate to the injustice my poor Bo suffered. Let's get creative! Let's get Wild! Let's get EVEN. I humbly await your verdict on this settlement (p.s. the DM also killed bo's dad off camera for some reason. Just wanted you to know).

Sam A.

To the fair & noble justices and the indefatigable bailiff Jarp, I bring you a case of a combat-avoidant DM. May it please the court: I play in several games each week, all pretty standard 5e with plenty of homebrew. One game is run by a friend who insists they are "just bad at" 5e combat, despite playing/DMing for years. Each time we roll initiative, the entire group gets confused by how little the DM sticks to the foundations of 5e rules and seems hesitant to let the party actually fight stuff, preferring to have us run away, talk it out, or be rescued nearly 100% of the time. Last session, a dryad NPC swooped in to save us (unnecessarily) from a pack of werewolves, leaving the whole group feeling unsatisfied & itching for a real fight. We've talked about it and all the players are on the same page about wanting more crunch & punch, but the DM seems unwilling to commit to internalizing the basics of the combat. Besides this major drawback, the game is really fun! How can we help ease our DM into letting us whomp more bad guys? Much love, Sam (he/him)

Andrew Hawthorn

May it please the court, its honourable justices, and 'Joking Joe' Jake the Jailiff, I present the case of PC of Mass Destruction. This occurred during a Heroes Unlimited campaign, which I trust is still within your jurisdiction. One of our party was playing a particularly unlucky alien hero of unknown origin who was rolling poorly and frequently dying. Our party had a wizard who could resurrect him, but it was happening so often the DM ruled that the mental strain would be affecting the character and the player roll for effects which, as the dice decided, was "frightened by loud noises to the point of cowering and wetting one's self." During this campaign I was using an extremely loud gun as my main weapon, so this might have proved a problem until one of the other players argued that since he was an alien, his anatomy in regards to wetting himself could mean anything and after further rolls the DM agreed that what that meant was that the alien peed acid at great force out of his mouth. This led to a new strategy. On encountering enemies, the party would throw the player at them, I would fire my loud gun, and he would cause massive acid damage to all. It worked in our favour, but also reduced the player to little more than a grenade with a nervous disorder.  I ask you, were we right to take advantage of my friend's poor luck?

Frankie J

To the ever honourable justices, and their beloved fool, Jike, I bring you the case of the Autumn Court Kerfuffle. I run an after school D&D club for high schoolers (sixth formers here in the UK). They had a few sessions set in the Feywild, as one of the players was playing a changeling called Ravioli of the Autumn Court. His father had been a general who abandoned his post, leading to the death of many soldiers. Ravioli’s father was later assassinated in the dead of night. In our campaign I decided that an autumn court law is that family members can be tried for the crimes of their family, leading to a court session where they failed their defence miserably and had to fight their way out. The Prince of the autumn court then tracked down Ravioli to confront him, revealing that he had been the one to kill Ravoli’s father. I tried to make it all the more dramatic by having the Prince talk about how he and Ravioli’s father grew up together and were brothers in arms. It was a pivotal moment in Ravioli’s character arc, but the second I mentioned the Prince’s and his father’s history, the rest of the students started yelling out “he definitely fucked your dad!” This completely broke me, and the rest of the scene was me trying to hold my composure and create a satisfying ending for Ravioli’s story while there was a chorus of dad-fucking jokes being thrown around the table. It was funny, but completely destroyed the tension of the scene and I feel guilty that Ravioli’s big character moment was overshadowed by this joke. Justices, should I have told the other players to pipe down and let Ravioli have his moment to shine, or was I justified in letting teens be teens and letting them create their own fun at the table? I humbly await your verdict.

Søren Grøn

To the honoruble Justices and the guy who took off his pants and jacket i bring to you the case of a possible future crime. I run a homebrew campaign and last session the party entered a Medusa's garden in attempt to rescue a girl who had been turned to stone. A great encounter where the rogue was sneaking around invisible to find the statue and put in the bag of holding while the rest of the party kept Medusa and her snakes busy yet trying to avoid her petrifying gaze. At a dire moment the wizard polymorphed the barbarian into a giant ape, and after joking about punching his chest for the entire turn it instead anihilated the two snakes and looked Medusa straight into the eyes getting a nat 20 on the con save. Medusa turned around and dashed out of the garden to flee and the session ended for that night. The wizard then asked if the ape had been petrified would ending the polymorph cancel the petrification? To which i had no answer. The players said they wanted to hunt Medusa down, so next time they will go deeper into her lair and might eventually catch up to her. Dear justices help me prevent a future crime against my players : should ending polymorph on a petrified creature cure it from being turned to stone? I humbly await your judgement. And since we all listen to and love your show my players will know if i go against your judgement.

Adrian Griffin

To the Almighty Judges Axford Tanner and Murphy, and the All-flighty bailiff jake I bring the case of the Redneck Robo-Doctor and the Final Session Fridging. A few years ago I was in a Star Wars campaign run by a friend of mine. I played a medical droid with a thick southern accent (canonically a load-bearing file in his programming) named BR-3 aka Barry, who was engaged to a freight ship’s AI named Petunia. I played for a couple years but eventually had to quit because of work, and the GM and I (I thought) agreed that my final session with them would be Barry and Petunia’s wedding, after which Barry would retire from the party. Cut to the wedding day and the ship is attacked by pirates. We scramble to rescue her and I’m really excited for one last bit of action to save my character’s beloved. But when we get there we’re already too late, the pilot is dead and the AI core is destroyed, with a message from the current BBEG that this was done in revenge. In response, I had Barry completely wipe his own memory in despair, including his accent, since it’s not like I could stick around to avenge her death (though in hindsight I was more just upset about the circumstances). The mood at the table by the end was brought down dramatically, and the talk afterwards was spare. We both apologized afterward and we’re still friends to this day, but I wanna know, was I right to be upset at the circumstances? Was my response appropriate?

Kyle B

To the lively HJs and the sloppy BJ (that's Honorable Justices and Bailiff Jake for short): I bring the case of the Stupidest Kobolds Ever. Fiveish years ago I joined a new DnD group who already had some experience together. We meshed well, and in my second campaign with them I decided to play a Life domain cleric. The DM had difficulty adjusting to this, since apparently before I joined nobody in our party of 5 had ever tried playing a character who healed the party before. Combats that weren't skipped entirely by mediocre stealth checks were suddenly far too easy. In our second dungeon crawl, we came upon a shrine of some sort with three kobolds worshipping in front of a statue. We snuck in through a high (~60 ft) window behind the statue, where the party decided the best course of action was to lower my cleric to the floor with some rope. I was asked to make a stealth check, and I got a nat 3. I was actually a little excited to fail; I was getting kind of sick of sneaking everywhere since my armor forced me to roll every single stealth check with disadvantage. The DM decided, actually, since I was high up in the air and behind their statue, the kobolds thought that their god was speaking to them! Those silly little guys were just so stupid that even though they heard me making noise they wouldn't act on it in any meaningful way. Our party descended from the rafters one by one and then slaughtered them all without any effort. I felt deflated the rest of the session. I didn't feel like my rolls meant anything anymore since apparently any failures I had would be cleaned up by chance and happenstance. Judges, I bring this to you as a cold case. The events in question occurred four years ago, and the DM in question hasn't ran a campaign for two years. Has the statute of limitations run out on this case? Is my DM liable for damages for not punishing my character for his stealth failure? Or am I at fault for not taking it in stride and laughing at a bunch of silly little guys?

Toni Conge

To those guys with the sweet podcast! I'm DMing the Spelljammer Moduel for my friends and they were exploring an abandoned Mind Flayer vessel when a big Mind Flayer spider got the surprise on them. They passed the wisdom save to not get stunned by its surprise so I wanted to have it run away. Using Spiderclimb to run up the walls into another corner of the ship. A player was saying they should still get opportunity attacks because the ceiling of the ship couldn't be that tall and it was a really big spider. Ps. In the end Kobold the Warlock used pushing Eldrich Blast to push it off the ship into space where it cast Invisibility preventung the players from making shots at it and I'm excited to have it return latter since the Stat block says it doesn't need air.

Brandon Terrazas

To the most knowledgeable and honored Judges and to the wimpy bailiff with skinny legs. I bring forward the case of possessing a lethargic host. The other night I was playing in a oneshot set in the Icewind Dale. After breaking a Helm’s Deep like siege, we tracked the leader to her lair. It was a wraith with a young white dragon. Our wizard cast Haste on me, a way of the shadow monk. Through the battle the wraith kept trying to posses me. Eventually, the dragon hit our wizard breaking his concentration on Haste. I immediately became lethargic. The wraith possessed me and started using my body to do some serious damage to a party member. We argued my body is lethargic for the round so the wraith should be too. We had a blast and ended up beating the wraith and dragon. So, was the dm right by ignoring the lethargic condition?

Ben

Greetings Supreme Crit: I am ever humbled and awed by the striking justices. (I place my hand on Jake's(?) shoulder and smile and nod) I approach the court not with a discretion or foul play, but the flustered mind of a worldbuilder and the worried and sweaty palms of a struggling DM. I am a DM, and proposed starting a Campaign to my group of friends, which they ecstatically accepted. At the time, I hadn't yet started building a world or story, so I told them to pitch me characters they thought were interesting. They did, and I will spare details of exact player characters until the end, to be shared at the Balifs discretion. To make a long story short, I wove their backgrounds into a story like I think all Campaigns should do, and we met up to play. Since then, about 4 sessions have been played. We started this campaign about 2 years ago. The last session was over 6 months ago. In those 4 sessions, 1 player joined and dropped (joined at the beginning and left at the end of session) Another player has joined, and one of them has recently informed me that their Fiance would like to join as well. It has been a struggle to keep their stores intertwined as is, with so many plotlines. Here is the crux of my plea Because of these factors, I am considering turning this ‘caterpillar campaign’ into a more fleshed out ‘Butterfly.’ But like a Caterpillar, it must dissolve in order to grow. Am I just in dissolving the campaign to restart and solidify the story, or is it possible to incorporate fluctuating storylines into a campaign that hasn't seen the light of Dice Christ in half a calendar year? I kneel before the court, presenting the fate of my (Homebrewed) World. Balif, here are the character names and races for the record. Navissian, human rogue Kiki, Fairy sorcerer Durrrrrrrrra, Deva Necromancy Wizard with a Homebrewed Necromantic wild magic table Bigferd Mercurussy, Elven Paladin (Yes that is his name, and his family, canonically, is very politically powerful) Nazeth, Orcish Fighter Maximillion Truthbringer, Aarakocra Ranger Rigby the Goblin wild magic sorcerer canonically disintegrated after their session (joined and left) The Fiancé's character is unknown and unbuilt.

Caroline

Benevolent Justices of the Supreme Crit Axford, Murphy, Tanner, and the brilliant Justice Surprise Guest, Wise and Noble Cats & Critters, and of course Jakey. I bring to you the case of the...different moral vibes causing stress at the table. My DM is my partner and the love of my life. He constantly sets our party up with chances to show character growth, but we never take it. Here's the most extreme example: we needed something in a city, and we accidentally awoke an Elder Brain that had been sleeping beneath the city. The rest of my party wanted to peace out after we found the thing we were after. The only reason we stayed and fought the Elder Brain we'd awoken is that the DM eventually said "This is an eldritch horror. If you leave it here, it'll try to take over the world." To be clear, at first he tried to convince us to help by narrating the screams of the helpless townsfolk being slaughtered. I'm a cleric in the game and the only note taker at the table. I always voice my opinion that we should use our strength (level 9) to save the innocent, but the other four players continually vote for whatever option is easiest. They don't want to be murder hobos, they just want to handle our business and move on. I don't want to be a steamroller, so I go along with it. Am I being a huge bummer by gently hinting that we're careening towards being the actual villains in this universe, or am I in the right for trying to play the game in a way that's fun for me, while having my DM's back? Thank you, and please give each of your cats a little scratch behind the ears from me.

Zac smith

Dear Crit-masters and Jerk, I bring you the case of the Xbox Handle names. Our very first DnD campaign any of us had ever played was the dragon of icespire peak. None of us knew the rules or what to do and I said I will DM. We start and every single player comes in with an INSANE name for their character. Dr. Dankenstien, Battleshits, Lord of Puss, and George. Now at first it was very funny but very quickly I got tired of saying, “alright Lord of Puss you are up” or “thank you for saving the village Battleshits, here is some gold” I tried to bake into the story that they had actual names that were lost because their mom died or something similar but the players refused to go along with it. I ended the campaign at a side quest because I couldn’t take it anymore to start a different story. Am I right in trying to change their names in game or should I have just finished the campaign and let my friends and their dumb names continue to save the world one battleshit at a time?

Zac J

O’ magnanimous justices of the high crit, and the wet-socked bailiff, I present the case of the cash-free campaign. I’m a first time dm running a roll20 campaign with a group of friends from college. As such I’ve been hesitant to add any gold/hard cash for fear of a fantasy fiscal faux pa. However, one friend plays a wizard, and so is constantly looking for spicy new spells to whomp me with. I came up with a way for them to gain spells for free from puzzle runes they find along their way (the wizard is archaeologist-themed in a zelda-esque world). They basically have to irl decode the puzzle runes into a normal word like “heat” “pulse” or “open” and let I the wizard pitch whatever spell want they argue fits the meaning of the rune. The conflict comes from the other players at the table, who are absolutely FROTHING for some shiny coins, going so far as to try and pickpocket a swarm of psychic snails—absolutely none of which were wearing tiny bell bottoms. Magic items won’t appease them, only cold hard cash. I want to give my Scrooge-McDuck-lookin-ass party the gold they crave, but am worried I’ll cheapen the fun mechanic the wizard has been loving. Am I wrong for restricting the flow of commerce? Are more spells always better? Should my snails have pockets?

GoldTauros

To the Esteemed Crit Justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy; the Honorable Special Guest Justice; and the mediocre bailiff Jazz: I write in response to your request for additional briefing for Magic the Gathering cases. I was playing a game of Commander with my long-standing playgroup. It was a 3-player game, and each of us had well-developed board states. On my turn, I played a Darksteel Mutation on one of my opponent's commanders, making him unable to benefit from the card until the Darksteel Mutation was removed. He protested, stating that Darksteel Mutation, unlike other removal spells, is especially disruptive and does not allow his deck to "do its thing" because it indefinitely removes the commander, a central piece to his deck, from the game. The thing is that I knew he did not like Darksteel Mutation, and objects when it is used on his cards. But we have had conversations about cards or strategies as a group, and while certain strategies like stax or mass land destruction were banned as a group, Darksteel Mutation-type cards were not because most other members of our play group do not mind it. For additional context, the opponent probably would not have won on his next turn had I not played the Darksteel Mutation, but he was set up to draw something like 8 cards and deal a lot of damage on each of his subsequent turns due to his commander. Also, both of us ultimately lost the game to the third player who won several turns later with an infinite (and not creature based) combo. Was I right in using a card that has not been banned by the group? Or was I a jerk for using a card I knew that specific player did not love and for preventing his deck from "doing its thing"? I submit humbly to your judgment.

Ryan Bullock

To the most esteemed and honorable judges, and also to the guy who reads the cases for said esteemed judges, I bring to you the case of the Giant Farm Equipment. In the campaign that I am currently playing, we, the party of 5, are going through the module Phandelver and Below. All of the players and the DM are good friends, the 5 players, including myself are fairly new players. The DM is more practiced in playing but he is a first time DM. In one of our recent sessions the party was fighting a Fiendish Auger. St the start of the battle the Auger knocked out our half-orc Fighter in one hit. One of our PCs, our human bard, was in another room and needed us to tell him we needed his help before he got into the fight. This left myself, a high elf Druid, my wife, a wood elf Paladin, and another PC, a faerie rogue to fight the Auger. During the battle, our DM made a comment to the effect of, “it seems like some kind of magical effect has possessed this enemy.” So, when it came to my turn the round after that, I asked the DM if my character got the sense that a dispel magic spell would stop this monster from working. The DM told me that I could try. I did so, I cast the spell and knowing that I would probably have to roll as the “spell” that was cast on such an entity would likely be higher than 3rd level. I rolled a NAT 20! After adding my spell casting bonus it was a 24. After looking over the monster’s character sheet, the DM informed me that nothing happened. After this information was told to us, my wife quarter-jokingly in baffled frustration shouts “ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT A PIECE OF OVERSIZED FARM EQUIPMENT… *insert various grunts and guffaws.*” I ask you judges, was I robbed of one of only two 3rd level spells or was the DM in the wrong? I await your punishment and pray your grace shines upon the one you punish. P.S. We are all still friends there are no actual feelings hurt, I am just a little sad that my NAT 20 didn’t go anywhere. P.P.S I started listening to NADDPOD from campaign 1 episode 1 just about 6 months ago and just a few weeks ago, C3 Ep. 57 I caught up. I listened to every main feed episode and watched the Tomb of Horrors one shot. Sadly, I have not the money to listen to the Patreon but thought if I could at least join the 2 crew that I would be happy. I now await anxiously and with bated breath for each week’s episode.

Daniel B

Whoa! Thanks so much for letting me know! I am elated to have my case addressed by the Crit and mortified I missed it! I have been on a year long pilgrimage re-listening from campaign 1 since joining the Patreon to hear all the short rests and mix bags, and never dreamed my case would actually be chosen so I haven't been keeping up to date on new episodes.

Daniel B

I will definitely provide an update once we find out the fate of Sir Aiden! Our DM has brought us to our planned meeting point and just haven't found him yet! I left out some details from the original case to keep it brief, but to address some comments from the Crit, we have been outside the walls many times at night and experienced many monsters and horrors so we know they are there at night! The reason we didn't think Sir Aiden was in peril was that it was a short journey during the start of the day and the DM described many other warriors were traveling in the same direction to join a larger army for an upcoming battle so we really didn't think there was a risk. To me, this was a classic case of DM sweat where my brother realized he didn't set up the stakes properly but didn't want to give up the level of threat he has tried to establish in the world outside the walls. Thanks so much!

Brock

To the Noble Clergy of Dice Christ! i come before yall not with a confession, but with a question because no matter what you decide im still gonna keep doing it. So i have a pretty common learning disability; dyscalculia which makes even the simplest of math problems embarrassingly difficult and uncomfortably long to figure out especially during something you wanna keep fast paced like combat. Unfortunately im also cursed with a pretty bad case of Murphism and can often go through whole 4 hour sessions without rolling above a 10. So to combat my awful math abilities i’ve started using Dnd Beyond to roll my dice which will automatically add up all my damage or proficiency bonuses. However i have also noticed now that im using an online roller im rolling astronomically better, and critting multiple times a session! So i ask the church, do i walk with the dice devil now that i have strayed away from physical dice and prevent the other players from hearing the click clack everyone keeps talking about? or am i just being blessed by dice christ through the power of the internet? or have i finally killed god with my machine? ps hate the show and ive never listened to it and if i did, it probably wouldn’t help me laugh when im at my lowest

Justin Greenberg

To the Subpar Panel of Judges and the Oracle of Orderliness, Bailiff Jed... I bring you the case of the Main Character DM: I played in a west march style campaign where the DM would also bring his characters along for our adventures. His characters were the most powerful sub-classes with very high stat rolls. It became a trend that the players would be getting womped each session only to be rescued by the DM's character. One day my flamboyant blade singing wizard who was hasted and goaded, was stealing the scene, extinguishing bandits with ease until I approached a stairwell and was asked to make a blind strength check in our VTT (this would allow only the DM to see the roll). I was informed that I had rolled a natural 1 and my character was brought to zero HP as he fell down the flight of stairs. This allowed the DM to finish off the remaining bandits and come to my aid. Judges, I ask you this, is it acceptable for a DM who suffers from Main Character Syndrome to play a character in his own campaign. P.S. much love to the judges, but jake needs a tiny w every once in awhile.

Dillan Bradbury

to the Honorable Supreme Justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner, and the Baloney Boy Bailiff Jake i come to you with the Case of the Instakill Gun may it please the court, this happened a few years ago in the first real campaign i ever played, during my junior year of high school. many of us players were semi new to the game, and the DM was all of our first DM ever. the issue is this: it was a pirate themed campaign, we were about 5 sessions into it and facing off against a much higher level pirate lord villain the main weapon he fought with was a blunderbuss with special bullets. the special factor to them? insta kill. whoever they hit would be killed instantly, no save. i believe you still had to roll to hit, but it had a crazy modifier to it, so it was hard to miss. already pretty bad, but it gets worse the battle reaches a climax, and the pirate lord raises his gun. the DM then points to each of us around the table, numbers us off (1, 2, etc). he then rolls a d6 behind the screen, and dramatically reveals our cleric is now dead. now, it is of note that the player who’s character had just died had recently been in a weird fling high school relationship with the DM, and my player friend had broken it off, again semi recently. she mourned the loss of this character for the rest of the campaign, as she had pages and pages of lore about her goddess, prayers and burial rites, etc. she received no opportunity for final words, no last communion with her goddess. just shot, dead, moving on. my friend gets up from the table and stands silently in her kitchen as the rest of the session continues, for another 3 hours. the entire situation seems off to me, but i put it in your hands, and my main query is this: should he have rolled in front of the table? other points of debate include: should this weapon even exist? was this decision made out of scorn? am i justified in still being mad about it? i humbly await your decision, and wanted to let you know i just how much i love and appreciate dungeon court. you’re all amazing!! (my name is anna, she/her :) i’m posting this with my boyfriends account - we’re both big fans of the show!!)

Ivy Stocking

To the most esteemed honors, to whom words fail to honor so I just say sah and to those less than themselves that must read and grovel. My dm is exceedingly kind and generous, taking time to plot out giant arcs for specific characters and giving each player their own npc and generous with levels. They are not why I’m here justices, several of the players in my group do not level their own sheets and instead leave it up to the gm or other players and will wait until the night of and say that someone needs to do it. This behavior is enabled and the gm is fine and so is everyone else, but I demand they be arbitrarily punished for their negligence

aMeanSquirrel

To the Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the bailiff of fluctuating esteem, I present to the court, the case of the purchased party plunder. We were playing Curse of Strahd, I was playing a druid and the accused a rogue. We also had a ranger and a bard in our party. While trying to sneak into a werewolf den to rescue an NPC, our rogue decided to distract the werewolves from his sneaking by throwing a bell to alert them to the rest of the party. Needless to say things didn't go well and I had to sacrifice my druid by transforming into a wolf to lead the pursuing werewolves away from the fleeing NPC and party. Which is why, as my new character, I didn't feel I was able to intervene in the debacle that arose next. Our party had been gifted a powerful sword (before my untimely sacrifice) which the rogue had taken as he was the only character using a short sword. However, our DM was disappointed with the rogue's anti-party actions and decided that the full power of the sword could only be wielded by one displaying a good alignment (less to do with alignment mechanically and more as a prompt to curb his behaviour and get the party working together) Well instead of changing his behavior the rogue decided to sell the sword, which had been gifted to the whole party by a travelling wizard and was crucial to defeating the Dark Lord. Not to an NPC, the town was broke, he sold it to our party, and the ranger actually paid him for it! My new PC, a Barbarian, was not yet part of the party, just another guest at the inn, so I was unable to interact with this party discussion and point out the lunacy of this move. The game came to a premature end a few month later with my DM trying to race to the finale, and to this day I refuse to play with the rogue's player anymore, but I ask you Justices and... Jeff was it? Who was at fault here, the selfish rogue or the ranger that went along with his bs and bought a party item from another member of the party? I await your magnanimous and indisputable ruling

Fredrik V

To the highly esteemed Justices Axford, Murphy and Tanner, and the bailiff Yake who's probably Danish or something. I run a homebred campaign where the world is young and magical items are the outcome of a dark ritual that traps the soul of a living being in an object. As part of a gladiator fight and the stopped Assassination of a queen my heroes earned some magic items that would later be revealed to hold this dark secret. I gave the players 10 objects to choose from in a vault, and our druid picked the Staff of the Woodlands, and I admit that I hadn't read the item card that closely, but it let's you among other things cast Pass without Trace at will and the Awaken spell once a day with no spell components. Now my world is rapidly filling up with intelligent animals and my crew is sneaking away from problems without much effort. I ask the court this, is there a justifiable way for me to either corrupt this staff to make it less efficient, or cause consequences without going back on my word. I have made my bed, and if the court sees fit I am ready to share it with 14 awakened squirrels and a mammoth (his name is Lobo)

Jake Punch

Dear World Heavyweight Champions of Crit, and the Jobber "The Bailif" I bring you the case of the most expensive rag in the world. I DM a homebrew game for almost two years now. I was planning a crazy artificer lab being taken over by living crystals for a dungeon. I decide to roll 2d20 to see what reward they get in a puzzle room. To my shock, I rolled 2 nat 20's. So i was VERY generous. A scarf of Displacement. Cut to game day. They solve the puzzle, claim the scarf. The rogue says "I already have a cape of billowing. I won't look good in it" The Ranger and Druid both say they also don't want it. And shove it into the bag of holding. Later at dinner, I explain what the Scarf did mechanically. I was going to explain it when one of them put it on, but none of them did before they shoved it into the bag. Now, any time they reach into the Bag of holding, as a bit, they pull out "the useless rag we found that time" and shove it back into the bag. And they laugh. Should I be irritated my double nat 20 gift has been relegated to an occasional gag? Should I have explained it before it got surreptitiously thrown into a bag? Should I just be happy my players are happy? I await your most gracious ruling.

Caroline

This is the worst, I'm so sorry that happened to you!!

Rob's Wit

To the illustrious judges and dreamwalking bailiff, I bring to you the case of the Shitty Rogue. The Scene: A group of 6 long time friends who have been playing DND together for over a decade. The issue is one of the players. As a friend of the DM of this table, I have watched the drama unfold, and I must ask for advice and validation for the DM. For anonymity (and sympathy), I shall refer to the DM as Binky and the problem player as The Grinch. Binky is a fantastic DM with a focus on roleplay rather than combat. He is also very focused on incorporating character backstories. The Grinch is also a very experienced player and DM, but built himself the classic "that's just what my character would do" rogue stating that he'd always wanted to try it. Binky worked with the Grinch to incorporate backstory, so the Grinch's PC could still have the rationale to be with the party. Well, cut to three years into this campaign, and the party was still struggling to justify why they were together. This was largely due to the Grinch snubbing every opportunity to forward the narrative and instead focusing on being a loner that stole stuff. Eventually, this caught up with him and his PC was arrested and brought to trial. As the amazing DM he is, Binky consulted actual lawyers and created mechanics to actually run the trial. After all this effort, the Grinch was verbally unappreciative, saying "this is stupid" instead of interacting with the scene. Ultimately, the Grinch was found guilty and charged with the typical punishment for thieves -- a brand which would force the wearer to poo their pants if they ever failed a sleight of hand check to steal something. Though this is objectively hilarious, the Grinch was once more verbally condescending to the DM. IMO this was a light punishment for a PC arrest. Two session later, it happened. The Grinch, fully knowing the consequence of their actions, failed a sleight of hand check about 30 minutes into a 4 hour session. What followed was a full blown adult tantrum which ended the session early, as the rest of the table was unable to move the story onward, as the Grinch continued to berate the DM, refusing to move forward until the moment was retconned. Binky stopped the session and met first with the table, asking their opinion of the situation. Every other player at the table had complaints about the Grinch and in a moment of Fellowship-Style solidarity they each stated that it would be best to remove the Grinch "For the table." Each of them repeating that line. Binky had that tough conversation with the Grinch and ultimately removed him. Their friendship has been tenuous since then and Binky still feels bad. Please grant Binky the peace of mind that he went above and beyond to accommodate and should feel proud of ultimately resolving the drama. Xoxo, love you all!

Hedge

A confession to the magnanimous sages of the church, the mysterious and sensual guest clergy, and the bailiff Jake who definitely has equal status in the church!, The first character I played in a longterm campaign (a gnomish wild magic sorcerer and silversmith) was very dear to me, and as we wrapped up an arc, I knew a fellow group member was going to change characters. In the course of the plot, our group saved a bunch of orphans from a pocket plane Orcus created. My character became attached and it made sense to retire her to take care of the NPC children and start a school to teach safe adventuring and magic use. Seems altruistic, but I confess, I also didn’t want my character to die adventuring because I’d grown attached to her. Plus, it made sense for two new characters to be swapped in at the same time. Weeellll, turns out that the DM was going to base the next arc on a very cool homebrew magic item my character possessed. My DM didn’t want to sway me so he only mentioned later, but I feel bad that he rewrote the entire next arc and that the original campaign fizzled after that new arc. PS: it also probably didn’t help that my new character was a tight elven grandma empty nester monk, but we all make choices. Can Dice Christ forgive me for sheltering my sweet PC from an alternate fate?

Nathan Clem

Dear dearest darling justices and bozo bailiff nate, I am unsure whether this is a case for the court, or better judged by the strong, hunky yet humble dice-christ above. The time I killed my sister’s character on purpose: (Emily please make a flashback sound-effect before nate proceeds) Years ago I DM’s for a unicorn group of found friends and my two sisters, older and younger, I’m the angsty middle boy We met regularly for 4 years, we only missed holidays; everyone roleplayed and people usually brought snacks to share. The final arc took us through the fey-wild, battling against a crusading church (a’la The Chosen) I teased another threat. A vampire queen who had conquered the Spring Court and threw it into darkness hundreds of years prior; which was related to the backstory of a former player, my ex-girlfriend (I made her a villain, in good taste, I’m not bitter) After a big mission, the party returns to their home base, the Summer Court, to find that it’s night-time and this vampire queen and her army are invading The session ends with a faceoff between the party and the queen. I end by saying ‘This fight is no joke, get ready. One of your characters is going to die.’ This was a mistake. I said it to hype up the next session, but also because I meant it Flashback: (Emily please make another flashback sound-effect before nathaniel proceeds) When I was a noob, I had an incredible DM named Jon who I took over for as DM Before that campaign ended, he one-shot my character. 100-nothing, no saves, dead. (encounter with some ghost with a bow, real dumb) I obviously was upset. He played it off as part of the game, but I later formed a hunch that he did it on purpose, to teach me a lesson before I DM’d ..to never do that to a player I needed to know how it felt, so that I would never do it to someone at my table End Flashback: (emily please reverse the flashback noise) With my campaign nearing an end, the group had already decided that my older sister Abby would be taking over for me; and now I was going to teach her the same lesson. Abby’s character, Willow, had draw from the deck of many things prior and had gotten 3 wishes, which she had been sitting on and only the party knew about ..including the character of my ex-girlfriend turned villain. The fight begins with them saying ‘That’s her, she’s the one with the wishes.’ Stakes are set at the table, everyone gets it now The vampire spawn rush my sister’s character and chunk her down. A few turns later the Vampire Queen hits her with a power-word kill and my ex-girlfriend’s character uses her held action to traps the body inside a resilient sphere so nobody can touch to revive it I expected them to run, to move the sphere, to do anything to save the body. But they tried to fight, then left my sister’s character when they eventually had to flee Justices. Jake. I saw my older sister cry. I made her cry. I had only seen her cry twice before. She's one of the smartest, bravest people I know and I love her dearly Justices, she couldn’t even look at me. It broke my heart, I wished that I had never done it The next session she came back with a min-maxed as shit coffee-lock that crushed every encounter for the rest of the campaign, I was so proud of her; and we ended up getting her character back eventually And when she DM’d, one of the first things she did was kill my character, again and again, each session like Kenny from South Park, it was pretty funny, and in good fun I know the lesson worked and she’ll never forget, like I never forgot But justices, cardinals, bailiff; I ask you, was it worth it? Was it right? I beg repentance and maybe a sentence Thanks, Nathan

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.

Old Dirty Blastoise

Dearest Justices and Bailiff Jerk Haywitz, Have you ever been petrified by a Medusa? Neither have I! But it did happen to my Paladin recently, and am looking for adjudication from your esteemed court. Our party is in the midst of a Shattered Obelisk campaign, and as mentioned our Paladin was petrified by a Medusa while my Wizard was outside of the room they were located in. Not knowing what was inside, my Wizard did not shield his eyes upon entering the room and failed my own petrification roll. However, I was in the range of my Paladin’s Aura of Protection, which adds their Charisma modifier bonus to any saves while I am conscious. While my Wizard was conscious, our Paladin had failed their roll so badly that they were already turned to stone. Everyone agreed (including DM) that the Charisma bonus should still be applied which allowed my Wizard to succeed, however I feel like I may have stolen some thunder from my DM. I went on to Polymorph the Medusa into a rat, which completely altered the course of battle in our party’s favor. Our Ranger had the next turn, who scooped the rat up into their bag of ball bearings, and the rest of the encounter was a cakewalk instead of what was likely a TPK. Our Paladin said it felt “cheap” to have his aura still in effect even though they were (and still are) turned to stone. I felt like maybe I had been an unwitting benefactor, as my Wizard went the rest ot combat unscathed. May it please the court, my question is as follows - should paladin auras still work for other party members even if the paladin is effectively “downed/incapacitated” due to Medusa petrification? I humbly await your judgement. Sincerely, Kiffindob

Ivan Kay

To the 6'0" Justices and the 5'11"-and-3-quarters Bailiff, I present the case of the cursed ring. Almost 5 years ago I was playing my first-ever D&D campaign which revolved around delving into ancient ruins to hunt for that sweet, sweet loot. One of the other players in the party was playing as a very greedy warlock. In the first few sessions, we found multiple magic items just to have the warlock swoop in and take most of them first. All of us (including the DM) asked both in-character and out-of-character if he could give any of the magic items to the other players. He refused, claiming that it was what his character would do. Next session, when we were roaming the charred ruins of a city that had been recently destroyed by a dragon, the warlock spotted a totally undamaged ring in the wreckage. He immediately ran to the ring, picked it up, and put it on. It turned out that the ring was cursed and gave him some sort of debuff that I don't remember very well. It could not be taken off until he performed 3 acts of generosity to other people. The warlock's player immediately got angry and began yelling at the DM, claiming that he was being unfairly punished for being in-character. Eventually, after some back-and-forth, the warlock gave away 3 of his magic items and the ring fell right off his hand. My question is as follows: Should the DM have found another way to resolve this issue, or was the ring a fair punishment? I humbly await the court's judgement.

Ethan Caleb

This post has lowly lowly energy

Fonda Yvonne

To the renowned Fates and the ferryman of my soul, I present the case of not knowing how to roll with Detect Thoughts. 5 years ago I was DMing my first ever DnD5e game using the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is an adventure module. My husband (a listener of the show) was playing a bard and had taken the Detect Thoughts spell, and used it on an NPC that had huge connections to one of the players backstories. When I first read the spell, I was SUPER nervous about what to say, not knowing how to handle it at the time so early on in both the campaign and in my DMing career, I gave the bard very lackluster information based on other things the NPC was doing at a party (him thinking about what irrelevant tasks like what food to try). Instead of providing information that could be helpful but not game breaking. My poor handling of the situation and the understanding of the spell, caused my husband, the bard, to never use it again! Expressing disappointment at taking a spell that wasn't useful instead of taking a spell that would have more use in and out of combat. This haunts me, as I feel bad about it to this day! Fearing that if I DM for my husband in the future, he won't want to take the spell. Even though I now realize how the spell could have been more useful to provide clues worthy of investigation and other social encounters, rather than a spell I feared would give away all my secrets in easy answers; only because I didn't know how to make it work. I ask you - is there a way for me to make up for this past wrong or should I forever take the L and the razzing that comes with it? I patiently await for the courts judgement.

Mr_Good feels

To the amazing justices and that one guy who hasn't been on 8-bit book club. I bring to you a case of betrayal. 5 years ago I was in my first campaign playing tyranny of dragons. I played a circle of the moon druid and discussed with my dm in his backstory he was searching for his sister (who has joined the cult of the dragon) so about 8 sessions in he brings in one his friends to play and to my chagrin I find out she's playing my sister with none of this being known to me. He changed my backstory by letting her play my sister and made it so she was actively instead working for the order of the gauntlet. Me and her had no chemistry no matter how hard we tried and then she proceeded to leave the campaign 3 sessions later. Needless to say the wind was taken out of my sails and I felt my character had no purpose. I retired the character but never forgave the dm. He has continued to make these same plays with other players as well. Was I wronged or should I view it from his perspective of wanting to surprise his players. Sincerely, A former circle of the moon druid.

Marge and in charge

To the esteemed Justices and joke I present the case of sneak attack inside a kraken. May it please the court. My party is currently fighting an avatar of the Goddess of the Drowned that I am pretty much just using an adult Kraken stat block for. The party’s rouge has gotten swallowed by said Kraken and as a former DM they know pretty much the only way for them to get out is to cause a bunch of damage from inside the Kraken stomach and get vomited up. Last session we went back and forth over wether or not they should get sneak attack from inside the Kraken. I said that since they are blinded and restrained inside the Kraken it wouldn’t make sense for them to get sneak attack, they argue that literally being in the guts of a monster would give them some kind of advantage on attacks, I said that guts as a mechanic is largely undefined, and so on. However now I am scared that I have made it impossible for them to do enough damage to get out before being digested. This fight will be spanning into our session next week so your swift judgement would be greatly appreciated!

The Royal Court of Princess Donut

If it pleases the highest and righteous court and Great Value Hardwon (in the best way possible). I present to you the case of monkey therapy. I joined my fiancée and his friends in a Christmas one shot in their campaign to see if I could be a good fit when the campaign moves to discord as they all live far away from one another. We were able to go to a pet shop and was shown the animals in the front room and there was a jar of frogs and four different bird species where 3 was claimed by one player but would of all of them if my foancee didnt immediately claim the owls. There was an angry monkey in the back room that I claimed. Casting speak with animals I tried to calm the monkey down and see what its deal was, and got a natural 20. This is where it goes wrong. I then, trying to redirect his anger to the shopkeeper, made the monkey go into an existential crisis. After making the shop keeper run away and freed the other creature that was claimed by the other party member, we discovered his family that was living under the floors and the player with the birds starts attacking them to take the two kids to take care of her birds after me and another player pleaded not to and that we will take care of the birds. She continues attack them which makes the kidnapped anger issues monkey go into a rage and defend them, in which he’s gets blinded by the birds. I then heal the monkey, making him not blind anymore and he just tells us to leave, leaving me with nothing but the jar of frogs that was given to me pitifully. I asked why did the monkey stay with their kidnappers and defended them and was told that my fault as my natural 20 was so well that it made the monkey go through its own story arc and question everything, leaving it with him defending his kidnappers. Judges, am I wrong to be mad about how my natural 20 created a breakthrough in one “therapy” session that made him defend his kidnappers especially with this natural 20 being the only one I’ve rolled in any campaign I’ve played over the years?

Please help me I’ve fallen and I might get up

If it may please the lovely supreme crust Justices and bemuse that guy who may be reading this I think his name is Jork! I present the case of my bathroom waddle My girlfriend has started dming her first campaign recently and as a forever DM I am ecstatic to play! However I am cursed with a bladder similar to baby bailiff Jake. My girlfriend of 3 years every time I walk to the bathroom freaks out and insists I’m trying to see her notes and this past session she has implemented the “blindfold rule” she insists I put on a blindfold and I begrudgingly did. First time I did I tripped and almost hit my head. How do I convince her I won’t look even though she hasn’t believed me even if I use my hand to cover my eyes safely PS I love y’all’s show and if it helps in assigning a “fair punishment” I’ve been attempting to get her to listen to naddpod for a while because she loves Mr Gukgak

Edward Greer

To the most revered, esteemed, and sometimes mysterious Supreme Crit Justices (and the most pleasant Supreme Bailiff Jake), I humbly present the case of Sloppy Joe's massacre. I am part of a campaign that has been going on for about a year and a half now. Our party consists of a chaotic neutral, trickery domain cleric named Sloptimus Joseph (Sloppy Joe for short). Sloppy Joe often engages in hijinks, i.e., trying to pickpocket nearly every NPC we interact with -- friend or foe. A few months into our campaign we were chasing down an assassin that had been terrorizing us. We ran into a farmer in pursuit, who was hesitant to let us onto his land because he was not yet aware of the assassin who had slipped by. Sloppy Joe took it upon himself to unceremoniously extend his coke nail and kill the farmer in cold blood before the rest of the party could catch up (Joe and another member of the party ran ahead). Naturally, everyone was distraught both in and out of character but we hesitantly let it go because we're all still somewhat new to D&D and this random death in the middle of nowhere wouldn't raise much concern. Sometime after this, Sloppy Joe's player went back to write a backstory to explain (or rationalize?) the madness. Cut to today, about a year later. We're trapped in Barovia and had just had a fight with a lot of close calls. In the chaos, our party was split. Left on his own, our paladin left to go capture an enemy who had fled. A few townspeople saw this and were about to fight our paladin, but he managed to convince them to stand down until he could prove his innocence. At that moment, Sloppy Joe saw what was happening and used Thunder Clap from his Staff of Thunder and Lightning despite the paladin telling him to stand down. This, of course, caused an uproar where many townspeople rose up to defend against this cleric, who continued to cast Lighting Strike from the staff, and Inflict Wounds -- thus killing countless villagers for essentially no reason. The paladin was trying to get him to stop both in and out of character, and the mood from the whole table turned sour -- our hard work trying to save this town and convince them to not kill us was about to go to waste. We left off last session with our paladin and Sloppy Joe on deaths door, and our party in a completely different part of town unaware of the massacre that was and might still be happening. Assuming there isn't some kind of retconning before next session, the rest of the party is most likely going to kill Sloppy Joe because of the massacre he has committed, if we aren't killed by the rest of the townsfolk first. A couple of us have approached the DM to also say that we might step away from the campaign if this continues, because this is not what we signed up for. A couple of others (including the paladin) say that Sloppy Joe's behavior isn't an issue because it's all explained in his background. Judges, I ask you, is Sloppy Joe's behavior justified because of his backstory? Should the rest of the party put him to death for his crimes? Are we right to feel like walking away? Thank you for your consideration, and your devotion to upholding justice.

Chuck Mangione's Horn

O great Lord Murf, the esteemed justices, and the withered appendage jordan. I bring before thee the case of the non-committal party! I have been running a homebrew campaign via discord for some friends back home for over a year now. I've based the story on the Warp Riders album by The Sword and have spent countless hours in prep and worldbuilding, creating factions, cities and worlds for these three to play in. After over a year in this campaign, I still have to fight to get the party to commit to doing ANYTHING that will move the story forward. I've set the stakes for them and spelled out that what's happening is so much bigger than just them and their personal belongings. One PC is incredible, he's carrying the team and playing his character like a goddamn star. The other two on the other hand will not help anyone unless a sum of gold (it doesn't even have to be a lot of gold) is involved. I've even tried rewarding them with cool and functional magical items but all they want is gold. It's beginning to feel like the two PC's really just want to play a shopping sim with unlimited funds. I ask, how can I drive the story forward while making it fun for them AND me? Because things are dragging each session, I'm finding it more and more difficult to find the inspiration and motivation to write and continue to create such an in-depth world and storyline.

flypaper13

To the righteous and reasonable justices, and that one weird guy in the corner eating a pickle. I bring you the case of angry hobbit and the over powered doll. Me and a few of my friends decided to start a DnD club in high-school. This was my first campaign ever so i was very excited. Our science teacher ( Who is a long time DnD player) said we could host it in his classroom and if we had any questions we could ask him. A little back story we used to razz this teacher about a few things but mainly his height (aka Hobbit). He would also razz us back so it was all in good fun and nothing serious. So we started our campaign and we were having a good time. I played a half orc barbarian who was not too smart ( who would have guessed). On our 5th or 6th session We were exploring a dungeon below a tavern when I came across a doll in a room. I had to make a perception check and an intelligence check to see if I should mess with the doll or not. A 3 and a 1 respectively. So I touched the doll and it cast banishment on me without a saving throw. Now mind you we were level 2 at the time. which is fine I was the only one in the room so there was no combat. Since we weren't in combat or in initiative I asked if I would just comeback. My dm said no that I was just effectively dead and would never comeback. I protested but there was no give so I stopped going to the club I started. It turns out that the teacher told my dm to kill me off because he didn't want me there anymore. Now I ask you is it my fault for razzing the teacher or the teacher and dms fault for colluding against me instead of just asking me to stop. I beseech your judgment oh great judges

Sebastian Brecht

To the magnanimous and flexible justices and, oh sorry Jake I think you're in my seat could you scooch over a little? I come to you all with the case of the forced betrayal I was recently invited to play a new campaign by a close friend who would be DMing. I was excited for the following weeks, carefully crafting a warlock whose pact with a god had been my character's resurrection and in return had to offer items of increasing value to maintain my new life. At the start of the first session, I met the other players, the DMs brother and sister, and a close friend of the brother. We all hit it off immediately and I was eager for a fun campaign with fast-forming friends. However later, my DM/close friend sent me a text informing me of the next object I had to offer. "A watch belonging to a noble". The session was set in a meeting of nobles, but the first one I saw belonged to the noble artificer AKA the DMs brother. I didn't want to start our potential friendship by stealing from him but after two hours of carefully waiting and copious perception checks, the only watch i could find belonged to the brother's character. I eventually stole it, and after offering it the brothers eyes darkened, and he became quiet as the scene went on. I soon noticed that everyone at the table besides my DM was looking at me like I was Jake. I didn't know the importance of the watch as nothing had come up about it, but the remainder of the session soured. Justices, was I right to steal this player's watch, should I have kept searching for other options? Or is it on my DM for giving me an impossible task? oh justices I dare to pray for your judgement

Kidtruck91

Yeah it seems like a pretty cool setting idea, almost attack on titan ish. From the sounds of it Aiden was being put to death and you guys rescued him? As a Dm i would have totally used that to justify him facing death. The possible death of the wilds vs the certainty of being put to death.

Magic zur

To the high Justice's and ( how ever we are feeling about Jake today) bailiff Jake. This is a Magic case I was playing my five colored dragon deck (Tiamat) and I went to cast her, she is all five plus 2. I was trying to see if I had the right amount and right colors. My friend was trying to help me and I was able to cast her. Then my friend mana drained her ( which is a cancel spell that when it's the other persons turn they get that much mana equal to the thing they counterd) I was flabbergasted, how could he help me then stab me in the back lol. It is to the court to lay the law on who is on the wrong. Should I have trusted my friend?

Mitchell Norman

To the honourable and righteous Justice’s and also that other guy who takes notes and is probably reading this now; I present the case of the intentional accidental PC death. I’ve DM’d a home brew campaign in 5e for the last 12 months with a party that is a Noble wizard that has been framed for murder, a rogue mercenary who was initially hired to protect them and an artificer that has connections to the organisation that framed the noble. Recently, the artificer player told me they were kinda keen to kill off the character because they were bored of them, so we built the mum of the artificer character as their backup. None of the other characters knew this was going to happen. My plan was to try and kill them somewhat in a fulfilling way, but it kinda didn’t go to plan. They were doing a side quest that had them jump off a cliff into water. They all landed in the water safely and were swimming down to collect an underwater plant. They were almost done and were doing so well that they were half way swimming back to land, so I actually secretly messaged the played who was wanting to die “hey, I don’t think I can kill you off this session” However, they got an insane amount of unlucky rolls in a row in the water, a couple Nat 1’s, multiple failed swim checks and the worst luck was on a custom water creature chart (that was HEAVILY skewed towards a harmless encounter) that meant just the artificer was swarmed as the other 2 got further away. (More info below). I truly didn’t think that this encounter would kill any of them. I used some fun swim and breath mechanics. I thought this would be a cool side quest because the cliff jump, (in universe) was like a coming of age moment, if you jumped off and survived, and the artificer was just agin into an adult, an 18yo human. So I thought it would be a fitting thing to do before dying somehow, at a later date. In the end the artificer died to a shark bite and getting dragged underwater. Both the other PC’s tried to do so much to help, but couldn’t save them. The problem: My players were a little annoyed at me for killing off this character to “just a shark” as they didn’t know anything about what the artificer wanted to do. They accused me of not balancing the encounter by adding to many monsters and adjusting their HP to make it harder. I just used normal monster stat blocks from some 5e cards that WotC make. And I did TRY and skew it heavily towards a harmless encounter, but the rolls were so bad… Did I mess up? Should I have chatted to the party and revealed the possible death to them? Or should I have not included monsters in this at all? Throughout the fight I only fudged 1 roll, everything else was 100% the dice rolls, the rules I outlined to them and the mechanics of swimming and being underwater that I used. Did I upset Dice Christ, or were they secretly on my side to make the encounter a deadly one when it was necessary? I throw myself at the mercy of the court. Fun Murph info for context: they had to role a d8 at the end of each round for random creatures. Only a 1 meant that they then rolled a d20 and on that roll a 1-4 were bad creatures, everything else was still very harmless, like CR 1/2 or 1 monsters, and they are a level 5 party. In the second round they rolled a 1 on the d8 and a 2 on the d20 straight away, so the second worst creature, a giant shark, was immediately there. Also the next round they rolled another 1 and then a Nat 1 so a giant crab was also there… I just thought it would be fun to have some creatures instead of just a jump and climb (which was all just rolls) and actually create some stakes to the quest.

Wings of Silver

To the honorable justices and cake the balif who is a cake guy (and in fact, a cake) I present a...magic the gathering case? I got into the game in 2015 and then unfortunately for my wallet, got back into it in 2021. I was playing a game of commander at my local game store and my opponent innocently said that he's fairly new at the game and his deck is average. He proceeded to completely stomp me with his boros red/white spell deck and went as far to use feather the redeemed to never run out of instants and sorcerys to murder me with. Justices, surely this obvious lier who knew very well how the game works deserves punishment? I humbly await your decision.

Tyler W.

To the honourable Court Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and also that guy over there, I present the case of the Almost Un-Beatable Boss Fight. May it please The Court. I play a Tabaxi Archfey Warlock, now turned Storm Sorcerer in a campaign that has been going on since March of 2020. We are now very high level and powerful heroes, but something that happened early on has always stuck with me. At level 3, we were tasked with investigating a dig site. During the search, we got into a few scrapes and burned most of our class abilities, so we decided to take a long rest to heal and recover before delving deeper. Our rest was interrupted by a fight, led by an npc literally named “Boss”. Boss hit us hard, and was almost impossible to hit at our level, so the fight was brutal, and was almost a TPK, but my Tabaxi and the Rogue made it out alive (2/6 players). Our DM later said the campaign’s timeline had shifted from this point, which brings me to my question. I ask the court, was the DM right to have us try to fight this guy, and do the Dark Souls-Like “you must die to progress”, or should they have done something narratively different, if so what would you suggest? I place myself at your benevolent mercy.

DnD Beyond Confused

To the illustrious and fair judges and that guy you picked up at one of your shows to be your bailiff. I present to you the case of the CR 17 vs the level 2’s. In one of the first campaigns I played in that was set in a world of espionage, war, and underhanded tactics between the 2 controlling factions, I played a Changeling Rogue built for deceit and spying. My party and I started the campaign at lvl 2 and on our second session we were making our way out of town to start the trek to our new adventure. As we were collecting supplies and getting ready to leave the DM Narrated that we began hearing screams and explosions behind us, then through a building a CR 17 Death Knight came crashing through the wall ( We found out it was CR 17 after this incident). It targeted my party and started casting what I read later was the hellfire orb. We spaced out and I got its attention as we ran. He threw the orb at me and even with a passed DEX saving throw the half damage was still enough to outright kill my character. After my character died the Death Knight started charging another orb, but suddenly just disappeared having been “teleported away”. Judges, I sat back stunned unable to believe that I had been nuked in only our second session of this campaign. The after it( and I) had calmed down my character had been revived by a NPC Paladin that was with our group at that moment. However, it was ruled that the explosion had scared my Changling as it would be present in some way any time I changed my appearance moving forward. Judges believe it or not this campaign died by the time our characters were level 8 and the Hell Orb still haunts me nearly 3 years later. Justices, was I right to be pert(orb)ed by the orb or should my Changling live with his scars.

Kirsten Bevon

To the honourable justices Axford, Tanner and Murphy, and sweet bailiff Jake. I seek your judgment. I am a humble player in my home game with my non-confrontational bestfriend/housemate as our wonderful DM. The incident in question occurred during play but out of character (other players were shopping and money was being calculated). One of the players at our table had - in the last 2 sessions - made in character comments I deemed racist. For context they are playing a high elf with part of their backstory being that high elves and drow have long been at odds/war. The comments were along the line of all drow are evil and they don't deserve kindness - these were made off handedly and were jokingly called out as being racist. I cannot remember the specifics of what triggered my response today. But I, in front of the whole group, told this player that at my table (it's my house) we do not engage in fantasy racism of any kind, and that calling an entire race evil is exactly what this is. I ended by saying that I would burn the table to the ground first before I would let that happen. While I stand by what I said, was I wrong in my approach? Because the vibes were off the remainder of the game. While I understand this could have been a session zero ground rule - I also don't feel like racism of any kind has a place anywhere so I didn't think it needed to be said for our game. Please share with me your judgement, I am your humble servant.

Katherine

This aligns with my case as well, we are in the same group!

Ian Holden

To the omniscient judges and the deficient baliff, I present the case of the flammable powdered sugar. We started a campaign with two arakokra, one deep gnome, and one sorcerer. Throughout the campaign the one arakokra refused to really engage at all, threatening multiple times to kill the deep gnome, saying “I’m gonna kill the dwarf”. In every building our party stopped at he asked to check for powdered sugar. We thought this was annoying but harmless. Then in one fight (after refusing to fight a dragon that was attacking a town because “I have no beef with him) he flew into the air and threw the powdered sugar and claimed to light it on fire. He claimed that powdered sugar is flammable and this should create and explosive kind of effect. We could not handle the absolute insanity of this, or the DM allowing this, and the party split up shortly after. Were we being dramatic or is this a gross misuse of resources. We humbly await your ruling

tarvis frogfriend

To the ardent, argent arbiters of RPG justice, and to the abiding, awesome, admirable Jake (sometimes you need a win and I got your back brother), may it please the court, I present to you the case of the Dungeon Dress code. I have been playing with a group that I met online for about two years now. We started in a Stars Without Numbers game, where I played a character that I would describe as a shredded himbo LA yoga bro who talked to the universe and tried to shepherd people into their best possible future. He had a unique appearance that included color and shape changing tattoos, which were a tradition of a recording his journey. In cyberpunk fashion he mostly played shirtless with a bomber jacket as his tattoos were supposed to be proudly put on display. Space Himbo ended up being a table favorite as he was everyone's spiritual advisor. He died in that campaign, which ended the game when the GM proudly admitted he bent the rules to kill him as a punishment for the party foiling too many of his combats. When we found a Star Wars game (different GM), everyone encouraged me to reprise him. I played him pretty much the same, trading his jacket for a hooded Jedi poncho. But the second I brought up that he was also tattooed and not wearing a shirt underneath, the players began telling me it was weird because Jedi were not 'shirtless himbo bros'. I admit that there's very little himbo-dom in Star Wars , but the era we were playing was the High Republic, which was thousands of years prior to the movies countless cultures intersected over the Jedi. I thought it was just harmless flavor, but my friends think I should just put a shirt on him and just be a normal. The GM has had no problems with my character's appearance. I throw myself upon your mercy, beknighted and beshirted in the most professional looking suit you can imagine in defense of Space Himbo and his right to bare arms, but I shall abide by your decision: should I put my character in normal Jedi robes, or is it a case of suns out guns out as in space there's always a sunrise around the next planetary system?

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.

Dirt Person

To the Honorable Court Justices along with the handsome and capable bailiff Jake: May it please the court, I present the The 2nd Case of Forced Multiclass. I DM a 5e homebrew scifi game that's been running for over two years. My running policy is that I heavily reward player engagement with their characters, the party, and the setting. One player in particular, the bard, had gone above and beyond many times. They had drawn fanart of her own characters and those of the other players, written a detailed and heartfelt backstory, and we're generally a pleasure to DM for. When it came time for the gang to level up, I decreed that the bard would gain TWO levels, as reward for their service. One level would be of their choosing. (Bard) and one would be in Warlock, with their patron being the ghost of their deceased and estranged mother, who's soul had been trapped in a crystal and then shoved into the character's eye for plot reasons. The player, and the table in general, seemed pleased with this turn of events. I only began to feel unsure about my choice when the Honorable Justices ruled against a DM some time ago who had forced a paladin level on a druid during their deliberations on a previous case. Did I give my bard a fun treat that explored their backstory, or have I taken away a key part of player agency? I thow myself on the mercy of the court, and await your judgement. P.S. Just kidding about the bailiff being handsome and capable. You're a little worm. Also I don't play DnD and hate this show.

Sara Morello

Honorable Justices: I would like to present the case of the Deer/Ent. The party and myself are relatively new players, currently lvl 2 characters, and have somehow found ourselves in an overrun elven town. Survivors have collected into one of the tree-like buildings and we have been tasked with protecting them. A hoard of undead are on the attack lead by this cannibalistic deer creature out DM came up with. As we're defending the Survivors, the Deer charges at the tree in attempts to knock it down. As we're dealing with hoard, and deer, suddenly there were rat assassins coming from the tree tops? Anyways, we manage to kill the deer and the majority of the hoard, as our DM suddenly shapeshifts this deer into a tree ent and successfully knocks the tree over as a second hoard comes rushing out. I'm not super familiar with D&D, but I know each DM runs things a bit differently. Is this unfair to newbies or is this something I should come to expect? Ps: I'm not the only player who thinks the DM is on a power trip...