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Calling for Court Cases! (Patreon)

Published:
2024-07-23 14:27:15
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Hey everyone! Bailiff Jake here to let you know that the Supreme Crit is convening this very eve. Please submit your brief (1-2 paragraphs, I do beg!) case on this thread and we will bring you that good justice.

Comments

Ally

Dear noble justices and Vigo Mortensen's Mini-Me. I have a dice Christ confession. My friends and I started our first campaign at 15. We all still play together 12 years later and have shared many wonderful memories at the table. However, one memory haunts me from when we were 15 and I experienced my first character death, needless to say, I was distraught and much to my shame I did not handle it well. My new character was called Sky and only wanted to quote "be an outlaw" which translated to him stealing openly, attacking anyone who disagreed with him at the drop of a hat, and even killing a saloon owner who wouldn't give him free beer. He was a true maniac, and I was the kind of player I wouldn't let within a mile of my table now. Sky was arrested and eventually executed by a sheriff. This was a fair and good in-world way for the DM to deal with my shithead character. Unfortunately, this was not the end of Sky as 15-year-old me made another character called Sky who was essentially the same person. This started a series of 5 Skys I played, each one more unhinged and unhelpful than the last. All died in a variety of very justified ways, the last two were even killed by the other PCs. After a talk with my DM, I saw the error of my ways and made a reasonable character who engaged with the world and campaign collaboratively but I still think of the Skys sometimes and feel nothing but shame and embarrassment. I hope one day to earn Dice Christ's forgiveness for the session after session I derailed with my series of edge lords

Skillful Ferret

**Nods** Your Honors… jake… Our DM likes to give us really great equipment early and balances it with stronger more interesting monsters. They also use Nat 1’s on attack rolls to be auto crits on allies. Should a Nat 1 be so powerful? Shouldn’t the attack roll still have to beat our player’s AC? It hasn’t caused any TPK or happened in any tragic scenes, but it has steered my character away from being a high AC build. I’m a Sorcerer/Hexblade Warlock and usually attacked from afar with Eldrich Blast and had the high AC to stay safe despite my low health. But I’ve had to change to a glass cannon build since I wasn’t usually taking damage outside of friendly fire.

Darkrisky

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

Banana Bread

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.

wick

Just wanna say these notifications always get me excited before I realize it’s Tuesday

Ross Gilliland

May it please the court and the unconventionally handsome bailiff, I present to you the case of the unrepentant player. Once in a session I was DMing, my most problematic player—a tortle named Hektor—snuck into a friendly vampire’s crypt and beseeched him for his assistance in a very personal quest. The vampire, who had his own obligations and no real motivation to help someone he had just met earlier that day, politely declined and retreated into his coffin for the night. Hektor’s next words have lived in infamy ever since: “I light the coffin on fire.” While the CR 13 vampire easily could have killed my best friend’s level 3 tortle, I (somewhat regrettably) showed mercy by having the vampire simply mark Hektor as a thrall whose service could be called upon at any time. Important context for this is that I started this session by reminding the party—6 of my silliest friends—that D&D is a game about consequences, and going forward if they said that their character did or said something, I wouldn’t be giving them a second chance by asking the classic DM warning: “are you sure you want to do that?” Most lawful court, did I make a mistake by showing leniency after my friend so obviously challenged my authority? I humbly await your decision.

Storybored

To the austere justices and the swagalicious JayJay Herwy, I present my case: The Mask of Zero Faces So a while back I was in a campaign where the DM wanted us to start at level 18, and have our pick at 2 rare and 1 wondrous item so we could immediately get the ball rolling. My wondrous item of choice was the Mask of Many Faces, which would allow me to disguise myself as other characters for an hour at a time. I built my character around this item, hoping to be a charismatic conman with high stealth, who could get one over the NPCs through fun disguise trickery. So needless to say, I was disappointed in session 2 to find my DM had instituted a homebrew magic system in which I could only disguise as those equal to my “Hero Rank” or lower. This mask was kind of my whole character concept. I even worked it into his backstory where he never removes it so he can hide the burns on his face, and enjoys impersonating others because he doesn’t like being himself. Now he just has burns and depression for nothing! We’re 6 sessions deep and I haven’t been able to use it once. I assumed the challenge would revolve around the inherent risk of using this item (getting caught in a lie or running out of time a la Cinderella), not that I’d need to kill 9 more magic turtles if I wanted to impersonate the Rank 4 barkeep. So tell me, is my grievance valid, or should I just mask my salty frustrations and get over it? I humbly await your judgment

Taylor Manes

gentle judges, and yass and slay bailiff: my group and i have been playing dnd together for about a year. we are planning on starting a new campaign. one member of the group wants to play their favorite fictional character as a pc — not based on the character, but the character themself. the other players hate this idea, and have expressed this to me privately. i also really dislike it, as i feel it impedes story (my friend has done it in shorter campaigns with other groups we’ve played with) and roleplay. should i suck it up and let wanda maximoff from marvel comics battle dragons, or tell my friend it’s a non-negotiable no-go at my table? i humbly await your judgement.

Xavior

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

Annika

To the lavender-scented judges and the pea-scented bailiff Jake. I bring forth the case of the illiterate dragon: My boyfriend DMs a campaign with me and my sisters. My pact of the chain warlock was in a trial that involved stealing an egg guarded by a dragon and her magical wards. For my turn, I had my lovely pseudodragon familiar (who can understand common and draconic) fly to the egg and read the draconic glyphs guarding it, then translate the deets to me via our telepathic bond. My dm ruled that my familiar can’t read because “although it understands draconic, it cannot speak”. I lost the argument but have since stayed salty. Judges, am I wrong to be offended on behalf of my son who is a very smart and special boy?! I prostrate myself before your 80 foot tall bench.

Hobbes

The Confession of the Cancelled Crits To the Cool Justices, and my favorite bailiff, Jayk: During lockdown, I was the only person playing on Zoom, while the rest of my former roommates were in the same apartment, so they could keep playing together in person. My DM told me she trusted me to roll without supervision. One day, I rolled a natural 20 on a death saving throw, allowing my character to escape a sticky situation. One of my friends said something along the lines of ‘Wow, that was convenient.’ I don’t think my friend really meant anything by it, but all the same I was hurt that she would suspect, or even joke about me lying. The terrible thing is that after this event I DID start to lie about my rolls. For over a year of remote play, about half the time I rolled a natural 20, I would report a different number. 14s, 11s, 3’s, 1’s, I would choose whatever I fancied in the moment or seemed funny. I was terrified of looking like a cheat, so I became one. These days, I’m the DM, but I am still self-conscious about my dice rolls, so I never use a dm screen. Can I be ever be forgiven for spitting in the face of dozens of crits?

Zach Snyder

To the wonderful justices and the world’s best bailiff, Tucker. May it please the court. I present the case of the One Punch Monk. Nearing the end of our campaign my players have grown powerful. In a baffling turn, our monk used 3 ki points to start vibrations in a kraken with his quivering palm ability. He ended those vibrations next turn to make the kraken make a con save. The kraken succeeded the save and still had to take 10d10 damage. What’s crazy to me is that apparently if you fail the save you automatically drop to 0 hit points. I’m now scared of the party going against the final boss with a move that could potentially drop him instantly. The move only costs 3 ki points and he has 20 to use. My BBEG can’t possibly save every time or take that much damage that quickly. Would I be wrong to alter the rule so it doesn’t kill him outright? Is the evil wizard who started the apocalypse about to be brutally boofed by some bad vibes?

Keanu DRAMAFACE

Today I am brave and will be giving a confession. To the bishops and dandy’s of the church of dice Christ, I beg your forgiveness. I failed to honor the cock. In a home game, we were in an insane battle with a pit fiend, and a portal that would swallow us to the nine hells. We were on the precipice of either escaping or dying. I roll my attack, and it’s cocked on a Nat 20. I yell I crit and the table exploded, my arcane archer deals a devastating blow that takes out the chasing pit fiend. In the chaos I quietly tried to place a D4 on the cocked crit to no avail. It wasn’t true, and it wasn’t fine. I beseech the church for forgiveness.

Muqtadaa Miandara

I present the case of the Game Show of the Floating Lich! Honored justices Murphy, Axford, Tanner, any potential guest justices, and our estimable Bailiff Jank Howitzer, thank you for your time. My players recently faced an undead lich guarding the sarcophagus of a dead god, whose heart my players needed to get to stymie the BBEG from retrieving it for their own purposes. The lich told them they would have little to no luck unsealing the god's sarcophagus, as he'd been attempting the very same for nearly 2000 years. Instead, in his boredom, he engaged them in a game-show style trivia competition I had setup to get the players back into the groove of the campaign. We hadn’t played in months because life is busy, so I wanted to have them actively remember lore and backstory, and thought a trivia gameshow was a fun way to force them to read their damn notes. The players ended up winning some loot, using skill checks and abilities to communicate info to each other for questions that were harder for some players than others, and the lich bid them good luck exploring the tomb. confident they would be unsuccessful. The players found the sarcophagus and were quick to discover with incredibly high investigation and perception checks totaling 30+ (damn reliable talent and bardic inspos) the presence of a pressure plate that, when stepped on, unsealed the casket. The players did so, retrieved the shard of a divine heart, and were confronted by the infuriated lich, who confronted the players and attempted to take the heart for himself. This turned into a fight that my players managed to win. My players began asking how and why the lich had failed to unseal the divine sarcophagus in 2,000 years of investigating it, and I realized I had no good explanation. In all honesty, I didn't have a mechanic for why the lich hadn't stolen the heart, or how the sarcophagus was sealed, I just wanted to run a game show and improvised the rest around that once I had the players in the setting and interacting with things. Then it hit me, he’s a lich, he floats! He never deigned to walk as a lesser mortal would, for 2 millennia he floated over it. My players flipped shit. One player in particular complained that I was destroying their immersion and their suspension of disbelief, and I know it's a stretch, but what do you all think? Do I need to more carefully craft layers of intrigue and puzzle to explain why their enemies are stymied where they succeed? Am I in danger of copyright infringement if I start a show called Yet Another D&D Godcast (a hyper-Christian version of NADDPOD Campaign 1 yes exactly)? Will Jill and Tucker ever tell Jake about their third, Emil? As I look forward to these answers, I also humbly await the judgement of this esteemed crit.

Drucilla Saxton-Wallace

(Additional context at the end, if desired) Honourable judges and dutiful bailiff, I bring to you the case of Dragon God's Avatar v Protection from Evil and Good I DM a heavily homebrew 5e game with a bespoke pantheon. Recently the very anti-god PCs finally talked enough shit to warrant an appearance by the Avatar of the God of the Dead, in the form of a black dragon. Our sorc/wizard cast Protection from Evil and Good on himself and our paladin. Because the dragon was an avatar of a god - and therefore "celestial" - I ruled that this would grant them immunity to the dragon's Frightful Presence. Several turns in, concentration dropped, and the dragon attempted Frightful Presence again. The PC argued that since they had been immune the first time, they could not be frightened for 24 hours per the rules of Frightful Presence. I argued that since they were immune they did not *pass* their check and therefore were still vulnerable to the god-dragon's scary face. They both pushed back and I let them have it rather than tie up combat. I've since read a LOT about this and there doesn't seem to be a strong community consensus. I told my players I would join the Patreon just for the opportunity to have this case heard and ruled on by the Supreme Crit, and so I leave it to you, Justices. Is temporary Immunity to the Frightened condition an auto success, or should my cool dragon have had the chance to spook them again? Further context: we've been playing for three and a half years and while our game is great, I've always been bad at combat. I've been studying and working hard over the last year to challenge my party of SEVEN players, and this was our longest and most fun combat ever at 8 rounds. The table enjoyed the fight, we all got to do cool shit, and ultimately they ended up shoving a bag of holding inside a haversack to suck the dragon and the cleric into our version of the Astral Plane which resulted in the cleric being thrown 100 years into the past and indefinitely separated from his party. I'm generally very pro player and let them do cool stuff all the time. The sorcerer should have let me have this and just rolled his save, but I'm positive that the desperation in his voice when he protested means that I'm getting better at combat so I'll take that as a win.

TayJulia

Dearest Honorable Justices and bailiff, I present the case of the Too Strong Barbarian. Our Party, due to some magical mishaps ended up on two sides of a 30 foot wide trench in combat. Our dwarven cleric needed to get to the other side to heal some party members and asked our Minotaur barbarian NPC to try and throw her across. He crit on the strength throw, and our DM ruled that he was so strong, that he threw the little dwarf so hard and with such force that she crashed into a building on the other side and would have to take a ton of falling and force damage. We players argued that the crit meant he threw her successfully and she should’ve just landed on the other side no problem. He insisted she was thrown so hard and so far she had to take the damage- which he rolled and it was enough to bring her down and she couldn’t heal anyone either. No one died, but it was a bad time. Was our dwarf done dirty by our DM, or was our Minotaur really too strong for our own good?

Fabrizio Moreno

Dear high judges and Jason from accounting, I present you the case of "the Jawa Incident" Some years ago, we began playing Star Wars ttrpg with some friends; we were all new, but I became the GM because it was my idea to play. In our first session, the wookie ranger found a couple of jawas in the backroom of her store, and here is when things started to go south. Because of some anxiety, the tense moment and some wild Wild Rolls (nat1 and nat2 intimidation and nat19 and nat20 on attacks), all the jawas died in two rounds and here I panicked. This wasn't a fight encounter; they were the ones to give them their first mission, and I didn't know what to do, so when the half-human soldier got a Nat20 investigation (WILDS ROLLS), I told them everything. The jawas were a married couple that escaped an illegal slave ring, leaving their kids behind, and were looking for some people to help them. In the end, the players saved the slaves and destroyed the bad guys, but the party was traumatized, especially the ranger and to this day, the "jawa incident" is part of an obscure part of our real lives. So I ask: Could I've done something different? Or was I correct in respecting the rolls?

Michael Beck

Venerable and magnanimous justices and the sexy but reprobate bailiff Jake, I beseech you. I was playing in a game as an evil fighter/cleric and our party came upon a drider, we managed to take this spider man down and when he got to 0 HP I cast spare the dying on him. Now this sparked a long debate as my DM didn't want me to be able to spare the drider and make him our pet, but I argued that even as an NPC he did get death saves, it's just that they would be auto fails under normal circumstances. My DM eventually relented and I rehabilitated the drider, but should I have been able to cast this spell? Or was I bending the rules too far? I await your just judgement

Dean Rick Sassafrassley Winchester

The honorable supreme crit justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the dishonorable bailiff jonk, I bring you the case of the murder hobo in denial. My husband, bless his cute little soul, is a murder hobo. He insists that he has not done a murder yet, only theiving so technically he should be a thieving hobo which really feels like he is missing the point. I want to play dnd with him but I don’t want my friends and family to hate him or me. Am I supposed to do something about this? How does one explain murder hobo? Do I just play with other people for the sake of our marriage? Do I accept that some people might hate playing with him and that’s fine? I await your judgement

The Broox

You excitedly call your father to tell him all about how you were randomly selected to participate in a game show hosted and judged by chefs Gordon Ramsey and Guy Fieri. You explain how you have done well so far and you are on a short break right before final judging. You elaborate that they are clearly leaning into the absolute meanest version of Gordon and that Guy is trying to keep pace but clearly doesn’t have the same levels of rage inside him. They have to do many, many takes of Guy insulting contestants because he keeps messing it up and isn’t convincing. Finally, you tell him that somehow this is all going to air this evening and give him the details about how to find it on the TV. Your dad says “That’s great kiddo…” followed by an awkward laugh, a pregnant pause, and then “Hey, don’t do anything that might make the family look weak”. Confused, you respond “What?” and he vaguely lays out that he has “something cooking with the Yoshi’s” and they are currently vetting him and, by extension, the family. Anything that might make the family look weak could cause the deal to fall through and might possibly endanger the family. Even more confused, you say “The Yoshis?” and he responds “Yeah, the Japanese organized crime guys”. You clarify by asking if he means the Yakuza and he says “Probably, you know those Pokemon words better than me. Got to run, looks like they just pulled up.” Immediately after being hung up on, a nervous Guy Fieri approaches you and says that he really needs this job; that he owes the mob “so, so much money” and they will absolutely make him and his family “sleep with the fishes” if he doesn't repay them. He is afraid the producers are thinking about replacing him for not being mean enough. He would really appreciate it if you could cry when he says harsh things during judging but stay dry eyed when Chef Ramsy chews you out. It would go a long way he claims and, he will totally hook you up with doney sauce for life if you come through for him. Seconds after Guy pitches you on never ending donkey sauce you are approached by Gordon. He is succinct and to the point. He knows what you and Guy just talked about and he won’t stand for it. If you cry for Guy and Guy alone he states that “my friend will ruin your life”. As he says this he gestures over his shoulder with a nod to a porta-potty you hadn’t previously noticed before. Just as you look, out steps a man in a Grinch costume, or hell it is so realistic it could be the Grinch himself. He never breaks eye contact with you while he walks over to craft services, grabs seven individual serving sized bags of Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips, and returns to the porta-potty. No one else seems to take note of a Grinch on set. By the time you look back at Gordon he has already walked off. Instead walking directly towards you is a PA telling you it is time to get back to your position on set as final judging is about to begin. What do you do?

Matthew

To the extremely hot judges and the strange looking bailiff I bring you my case of the campaign ending counter spell. While playing in a pirate campaign we had planned a stealth mission to get some documents for our pirate boss. This compound we are attempting to raid was surrounded by cliffs, we decided to attack from above and target the biggest threat. We were able to successfully sneak to our positions and waited for our bard to cast hold person on a surprise round. When hold person was cast the boss was able to counter spell without knowing the hold person was being cast ruining our plan. We argued that since the enemy had no clue the spell was cast it wouldn’t work but the dm wouldn’t even give his reasoning for counter spell working. This made everyone kind of lose interest in what was happening in the session. After that along with other issues we had with the dm as a person we stopped playing that campaign for good. So I ask you judges who shall have to spend eternity in davy joneses locker me crew or the dm

Amanda M

To the honorable supreme court and middling bailiff Jake, I bring you the case of the invisible kikimora. My players were fighting a kikimora who was first in initiative and went invisible on his turn. My wizard wanted to cast dispel magic on the invisibility, but I wasnt sure if she could since his invisibility was an “action”, not a spell, and she couldn’t “see” the magical effect since he was invisible. I let her choose one of four quadrants where he could have been to cast dispel magic and if he was in the correct one I said the invisibility would be dispelled. She chose the wrong one and, as someone who often plays casters, felt bad for wasting her last 3rd level spell slot since she was only level 6. Was I overtly cruel regarding the language of invisibility and dispel magic? I await my punishment at the foot of the guillotine.

Josh Zellers

Dear esteemed court and Jake “the cake” hurtwitz. I bring fourth the case of me vs my dm. I joined a dnd group a bit ago, a few red flags I’ve ignored have been that the dm has 6 predetermined paths planned that we can’t change. The monsters we fought have made the surrounding area thier domain ( think jjk caldwell), which they can see everything in. I roll very high for my stealth being a rogue but the enemies always see cause of it no matter if they roll or not. Also not to mention he uses AI to help him write his campaign. Dear court am I a character or just another npc in a prewritten book. I beg for your mercy.

Hannah

To the wicked cool crit justices and summer boy Jake. We humbly present this case of the case of the obstinate player and oblivious elf: We’ve been in this campaign for about a year with our friend who’s a bard/sorcerer PC. He was brand new to dnd and made his character with our DM. They made the character as a joke with the bard/sorcerer not believing in magic (even saying he blacked out when he cast spells) and refusing to believe elves were real and that all humans had pointy ears and lived a long time (despite being a full elf and meeting NPC humans). Despite this we’ve enjoyed being in a party with him and want to continue playing. He ADMITS that he doesn’t like his character anymore, but won't leave him behind. Our DM isn’t taking a side and says the player could keep, leave behind, or kill his character if he wants to. The rest of us are getting pretty tired of having to continuously try and convince this PC that magic is real and he’s not human. So we ask the court, ask if we should be punished for not trusting our player and DM to play this oblivious elf, or should he find his unlikely demise at the bottom of a tall tower. We dutifully await your judgement.

jordy v.

Intro no more 2024 except to three out of the four (hi Murph, Emily, and Caldwell) hear the tale of 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,” and our DM wouldn’t even let us roll to see it (this was a very loose rule campaign so I do not fault the DM for this). It was a little annoying but we kept going. Fast-forward to a time-skip in-game, and Tony decides to play a new character. A completely different Tabaxi Ranger, with the same 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.

nandrusin

To the studious judges and the alright bailif, who's a big dragonball fan, I present the case of the Suprise Monk. I was in a game where half way through a session the DM suprised introduced his friend as a type of cowboy/assassin/bounty hunter coming after us, complete with a drawl and 2 Katanas . The Guy was playing a Kensi monk sent to hunt us down. He was level 5, same as the rest of us. He proceded to absolutely beat the shit out of the party dropping 4/5ths of us to death saves in just a couple rounds of combat. He 1v5 us and handedly kicked our asses. He took out my dwarf Fighter Lecha with 49 HP and 18 AC in one round. He then proceded to take some of our key magic items a walk off into the sunrise whistleing a tune, telling us to visit the king to get our stuff back. He also beat the shit our of our NPC, a kid named Charles. To make matters even more interesting, this was a guest appearance, he only showed up to kick our ass and steal our stuff. He ALSO just broke up with his long term girlfriend hours before the session in a reportedly messy break up, so the DM probably felt bad for him. We laughed alot, He seems like a good guy and felt bad about mollywhomping us. But judges, I ask, was this ok for the DM and player to suprise whomp us like this and steal out Key/Quest items?

Sam Ross

Bless me Dice Christ, for I have sinned. I recently finished my After School D&D program for the year (see the case of the ‘Teenage Metagamers’), and as a final encounter the party was being chased through an Eladrin King’s treasure vault to a portal to go home. This was the final encounter of the final session, so when the players would ask what kind of magic items were in the vault, I said ‘the King has any treasure you could imagine stored there’, and let the players grab any magic item they wanted. I mean, this was the last scene of the last adventure, right, so no harm no foul? Well… it turns out that the after school program was such a hit that they’re bringing in a Summer DM who’s running daytime camp DnD sessions. And he’s letting the past players bring back their old characters. I don’t even remember what I said ‘yes’ to the players grabbing; it was a happily chaotic session and these are powergaming murderhobos, so they would just throw out a Legendary item and I would say ‘sure, you grab it’ and the players would cackle. These barely controllable teens have backpacks full of magical nukes and I can’t even properly warn the Summer DM about what to be ready for. Can I be forgiven for this transgression?

Krysha Syrin

Mighty & merciful justices of the court & bailiff, Hank Hogfish, I bring a case of Christmas-based tomfoolery, oppa Naddpod style. Myself & other members of the Naddpod discord played in an online Christmas-themed one-shot during the pandemic. It was in the midst of Campaign One & my Elven Druid, inspired by Moonshine, & our party found ourselves fighting a Sentient Christmas Tree in Santa's workshop. I had cast Flaming Sphere (sorry Murph) & because trees are flammable, it was highly effective. Herein lies the case. On their next turn, the tree used Ice Knife on my Druid. However, at the end of my turn, I had moved the Flaming Sphere in front of me, hoping it would be a shield from any tree-based attacks. I posited to my DM that the Ice Knife spell wouldn't work bc the ice would melt as it passed through the flames but my DM said the tree had just been burnt by the orb & would know to cast the spell in a way that avoided the fiery orb and that the spell isn't actually Ice, just a spell flavored as Ice. Judges, did my Druid pull a Zirk before Zirk existed or did my DM just want his Sentient Tree to get a few swings in while our party continued to be attacked by living Gingerbread Men & Krampus, kidnapper of Santa Claus himself? I humbly await your judgment & also shoutout to DM Nemo & our amazing crew of Naddpoles who came together during a difficult season & brought the joy of D&D to one another with Christmas shenanigans.

Jack Jones

To the the High justices and hmmm I think that's it, I present the case of the longest ending. I've been playing in a home game for three years, and it's been great were level 18 and kicking ass. However, our DM has been trying to wrap up the story for over a year, dragging out the ending. The other players have lost interest some even mentioning theyre tired of there characters, and the finale has stretched on for months, making the experience grueling. Despite bringing up the pacing issue multiple times, the DM insists it will finish soon. I don't dislike the DM, but I want to revive the enthusiasm in our game perhaps by running a fresh née campaign!

SSS Tier Crickwater Enjoyer

May it please the honourable justices and the intriguing bailiff Jaques Cousteau - I submit a historic injustice. During a session with 3 level 5 characters including my Paladin character, the DM introduced a forest encounter with a firbolg Druid who demanded one of us engage in single combat to be granted passage (very cool). My paladin promptly stepped forward to defend our party’s honour in glorious single combat. So I thought… the Druid proceeded to summon multiple allies and I was well and truly whomped. I beseech thy verdict, did I get done dirty or did I misinterpret the fine print of single combat? As the kicker, the DM insisted I could not use my own Find Steed Wolf to help me…

A Gross Infection

A beloved npc was beheaded. We wanted to cast revivify on him. Our dm pointed out it cannot be his head was missing, stating that revivify does not work on missing body parts. We argued, it is not missing, we have it right here! He had us roll for it. My gf at the time, now wife. Rolled a nat 20. He allowed it but was not super happy, but did commend our lawyering. We're we wrong for bullying our dm into allowing us to keep our beloved npc around?

Busydaydreams

Dear Honorable Court and the severely underrated yet equally important Bailiff Hurwitz. I am new to the D&D world as a player, so my cousin who is the DM for her group of friends invited me to play a campaign with them. Everyone was kind and patient with me while playing, but a few months into the campaign my cousin asked to take a break while she finished her last semester of college. A few months after she graduated and was settled in her new job, I asked about continuing the campaign only to find out they put it on permanent hiatus, but they never told me they made that decision! She emphasized it was not me as she was running their other, longer campaign and it was too much for her. So I completely understand. I was still a bit disheartened, and told my friends about this. They said they were interested in playing and we talked about it being a good opportunity for all of us to learn together while taking turns being the DM. They asked me to DM our first game and I want to, however, I am a bit nervous and need a bit of a confidence boost. Overall I must ask, was it wrong of my cousin to cut the campaign short even though she had a good reason? Should I ask her to pick back up on the campaign so I can gain more experience? Maybe I should just say Fuck It and jump right into the DM chair! PS she is still my favorite cousin and we absolutely love each other, this is all in good fun. I hope she listens to this on your podcast and shits herself in laugher - and some regret! HAHA! (Number 2 for poo!!) I humblely await your responses. Thank you for your time! -Julie H.

dustin frasier

I bring you the case of cringe. I am DMing my first ever campaign with my little cousins, I invited a friend of mine I have known for years to play with us as she was an experienced player. A few sessions in her character and my little cousin who at the time was engaged to another woman got mamarried in game for AC reasons so I allowed it to be done in secret like she asked. A few sessions later we all make a spur of the moment plan to get dinner near by. This was brought up by those 2 specifically as well. That night they started "seeing each other" in real life and in " secret". They are now dating, my cousins and his fiance are no more, and I'm left feeling like I was used as a friend and as a family member. Am I wrong for feeling like I should be around either of them anymore? Like this was just gross to me and disrespectful to me.

The Wizard Syndicate

To the judges in their infinite glory and the bailiff in his limited capacity I ask for judgement on the case of “Reasonable Requests” I DM for my 3 friends and when this case came about we had been playing for some 2 years. We played mostly online after work, roughly every other week. The party had been split in a new city because the Rogue wanted to go meet up with his thief friends while the Wizard and the freshly rolled Bard went to a church to do some recon on some holy items they would need to fight a devil that was chasing them, and had recently kidnapped a beloved NPC. Since this was the Bards first time playing a magic user (the player had just sacrificed his first character in an epic last stand to save all his friends and raise an undead army to help in the finale) and we’d just come off of a huge fight last session, I didn’t want to do any combat during the session if possible. So when the wizard and bard went into the church they listened to a sermon about the majesty of these 3 magic items wielded by grand heroes, and how they were laid to rest here at the church as holy relics. They went to talk to the cleric running the sermon after and she showed them the cases holding the items. The wizard then cast mass suggestion and said “give me those”. Above the table I told him that the wording of the spell says you specifically have to make it a reasonable request so what exactly do you want to say? He responded “I tell her ‘give me those’”. I told him that “give me those” was a strange request for 2 complete strangers to ask of this holy woman, so she wouldn’t immediately just hand them over but instead the spell would make her more willing to help and she gave them her signature on a paper and told them that if they showed that to the king he could give them an audience and could be persuaded to help allow them to take the holy relics. (This was a way to allow the players to regroup and would let them meet the kings court which had some people who were important to the wizards backstory although he didn’t know that yet.) The wizard argued this was his first 6th level spell and since the spell worked on 12 people it should be 12 times as effective on 1 person which I disagreed with and said if he wanted to cast regular suggestion that could work but short of dominate person you weren’t going to make someone give you holy relics. The Bard then said that I was taking the fun out of it, and the wizard said he cast cone of cold on the cleric. I stopped everything there and we talked about everything and continued on later, but I’m curious. Judges was I taking the fun out of the wizards spells? Or did my players overreact to my table rulings? We still play to this day and we completed that campaign nearly 3 years ago now, but it still bothers me sometimes.

Ashen

To the honorable justices and I guess also 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 three 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 the spell Wind Wall in every situation. ONLY Wind Wall, every time. Of course, the wizard stays out of melee range and the monk retreats each turn, leaving me, the bard, as the easy target. 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 two years 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 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

Extremely High Elf

To the honorable Justices and Murph's very best friend, Jake. Today I lay my case at your door to ask for judgment. I've been playing DnD for a few years now and my main build is often some variation of a boxer. Recently, I joined a new group and made a Half Orc Drunken Fist monk, but I asked my DM if I could reflavor it so that he's simply a pit fighter instead of a drunkard. The DM said "Yeah, you can call it whatever you want, as long as the mechanics stay the same" so I went through and renamed my abilities to sound more like techniques than alcoholism. (For instance, Drunken Technique was now Bob and Weave.) It was awesome until one player started adamantly "correcting" my ability names while we were playing. I would say I was going to use Slip a Punch and he'll loudly chime in with "No. You don't. You use Tipsy Sway" And then laugh like a little bitch. I've tried to talk to him about it and he refuses to just let it go. I dunno. Maybe I should also let it go. I accept all punishments. Please. Punish me Murph. I'll beg.

Iain Standing

A Dice Christ Confessional: Oh illustrious priests of the high Dice Christ order, please let me feel the warmth of His light upon my face. My DM had set up an encounter within a Vampire’s Manor in Roll20. I decided, while he was prepping, to “stress-test” the dice-rolling function by not rolling 10 or 20 dice at once, but instead rolling 10 trillion d20s at once. This of course cause the entire system to slow down to an impossible crawl, nearly making it impossible to move forward as the site was taking 20 minutes to load. I was finally able to clear the cache and get Roll20 to work again, but my DM was so frustrated that we nearly ended the session entirely. I apologized profusely, but my heart still feels heavy with remorse. I hope that this confession reaches Dice Christ’s divine ears and a just punishment may be rendered unto me.

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?

Sprite, no not the soda

To the Horse loving judges and that guy Joe (Biden?). I bring the case of the stolen ring and sleepy dragon cat. I was playing a game of 5e with other first time players and a first time DM, I was playing a pact of the chain warlock(relevant). We had cleared a tower and my character found a ring which I took to the wizard to try and find out what it does. He rolls and finds out it's a ring that gives +1 dex. He tells my character it is a cursed ring and I should hand it over. My fairy tale hero loving warlock decided he would carry the burden of this curse and put it in his bag(not equipped). I miss the next session, only to be told after that the ring was lifted from my PC while he was sleeping, and that the whole party was fine with that, despite only the wizard knowing it's true power. I argue that my familiar should have intervened, a pseudo dragon, to which one player argued that they are like cats, and one that I trapped as my pet this it would be unwilling to help me. He also stated that all players essentially share an inventory so why does it matter. So I ask the judges, am I wrong to be upset that this role-playing opportunity was taken, and for my cute dragon buddy to be reduced to an unwilling cat that hates me. P.S this argument ended up being a cause of the end of the game, it wasn't the main reason however. I am still friends with all of them

Rob Wes

Sup nerds. I bring to you the confession of the OP Illusionist. I am the Game Master for a Naruto inspired module. It features way more core rule books and is constantly being updated by the lovely folks who made it. Our campaign follows squad 12, which is home to 4 skilled ninja who are building their legends every session. I love this campaign. They womp me all the time and it’s always a great time. Noble justices, I have one player who is a genjutsu specialist (pronounced like Kenjustu but with a g)[that’s for you Jake love you homie]. Her character’s backstory is that she’s self taught. Which I find awesome! I’ve had to homebrew abilities for her a few times to line up with some incredible rolls she made. I have to confess, I’ve forgotten some of the skills I’ve given her. I think she’s on to me…I don’t think it’s a campaign ender, but I do feel bad. Just wanted to get that off my chest. Ps hate the show Pps Jk this show has cured my depression and my doctor has now recommended it for my survival. ❤️

The Story Paladin's Treasury

To the illustrious Court and to the gentile and downright ruggedly handsome bailiff. I submit to you the case of the Overpowered Primordial Barbarian. My best friend was excited to finally try dungeons & dragons and as a DM who is never afraid to homebrew, My best friend wanted me to help him make a barbarian subclass that was essentially like the shamans from world of Warcraft. Lots of elemental themed powers and abilities and cool moments where he got to commune with the primordials. But I didn't realize was he was taking all of these custom Homebrew made abilities I had given him and putting those ON TOP OF choosing the path of totem barbarian subclass. So now he has the best of both worlds and it's honestly made him so overpowered. I can't even wrap my head around some of the numbers sometimes. We are in the last probably 10 sessions of this huge campaign and I don't want to Nerf him right here at the end and throw him off his groove. But I also worry that sometimes the other players might notice the big numbers he's pulling and the cool abilities he has and think they are getting the short end of the stick. Do I stick it out and just let him be overpowered and honestly even feel a little main charactery at times? Or do I talk to him about how we stumbled and need to rebuild his character from the ground up to balance him out? I humbly await your decision and truly appreciate your time and wisdom.

Trevor Rogan

Dear sagacious justices, the witty bailiff, and that guy named Murph who hates dinosaurs. I am a new DM, and I am running a home brew campaign. During the second session, I had a casino game that attempted to simulate a game of Texas hold em. I allowed a player to make insight checks to get information about the NPC’s cards. I also allowed other checks, and the PC frequently rolled persuasion. My player is a bit of a goofball and wanted to persuade the NPC that his cards were bad. The player was ahead in the odds until the river, when he rolled insight, and I said the NPC looked like he had really good cards. I was ready to go to showdown when the player said he wanted to roll intimidation to make the NPC fold, but he only bet a small amount. I reluctantly allowed him to roll, and he rolled an 18, which modified to a 23. I still said the NPC wasn’t going to fold because he had a great hand, and it didn’t make sense for him to fold if you only bet a small amount. He and the other players were mad at me (they’ve gotten over it long since), but I ask you, was I wrong to match the player’s bet instead of folding?

Ebony-Rose Ellis

HELLO ESTEEMED COUNCIL OF JUDGES AND FRAGRANT BAY LEAF JAKE. Enough time has passed for me to bring this case to the stand. Many sessions ago in my current campaign, my party and I were fighting a fearsome white dragon in the sky. A new player was waiting to be introduced on the ground and my party had sights on the dragon from up above on a (Dwayne the) Roc (Johnson). My warlock had turned the party and the Roc invisible as the dragon plummeted towards the people on the ground. The atmosphere was described as cold and cloudy, and we were above a layer the clouds. Using my huge and massive brain, my question to the DM, was... Can I cast shape water the whirlpool the clouds below us to trap the dragon in the sky? I was met with a cold. Hard. NO!!! I was a coward and barely argued, but to this day I still think about how cool this move would have been and my party agree. I know it is not the exact verbiage of the spell but shape water is not a spell I get a lot of use out of, so I was excited to use it in a creative way. And cloud is water is but it no? I would love to hear your thoughts and feelings. Please tell me I was wronged please tell me I was wronged please tell me I was wro-

Jesse Dunlap

Forgive me Supreme Crits and baby bailiff for I have sinned. You see I am the DM from the party that slew Fat Bastard and I am finally getting the chance to play in a campaign myself. I know what a chore it is to work around crazy players so I thought I would use a very basic story based backstory rouge. I’m loving it so far but the problem is that I can’t help but reference the well known and beloved character The Master of Disguise played my Dana Carvey. Every time I need to disguise myself and say. “Become another person”. And my characters life has become like roger from American dad. Constantly adopting personas. Can I be forgiven? I wrote in about one terrible movie character to become an even worse one!

Clint S.

To the SCJs and the WTF, When I was a fledgling D&D player, I played as a half-orc barbarian who was exiled from his tribe. When the campaign eventually required us to return to my village, there was a contest of strength being held there and an opportunity presented itself for me to redeem my worth to the tribe in 1 on 1 combat with another warrior. I was privately messaged by a fellow player, a much more experienced one with a much more optimized monk character, asking what my max damage output was. My build was very vanilla and we were only level 4 or 5, so the number was low. In our next roleplay with the contest’s event coordinator, the monk convinced the coordinator that it should be a team fight instead of a 1 on 1 fight without consulting me or my character first. The fight ended up going well thanks to it being a group effort, and I probably would have gotten my ass kicked in the 1 on 1 fight, (not to mention, it’s more fun for everybody to be in a combat together than just 1 person) but I can’t help feeling a little ripped off all these years later. Was I wronged by my fellow player or was it ultimately better for the group that we participated in the combat together?

Logan Stock

To the Shiny Golden Justices and the Rusty Bronze Bailiff I present the case of Merty Chlap. A friend and DM of mine had gotten some cool dice that you could role to determine a race and class for a character. We rolled a d20 for class level and I ended up with my level 18 Pact of the Undead Warlock Merty Chlap. We were tasked with exploring a mysterious disappearing mansion which dimensional doors to unlock its secrets. The problem comes as we were about to enter the final room with 15 minutes so in preparation Merty activated his 14th level ability and stored his body in a bag of holding since he didn’t need oxygen. Upon entering the doorway the DM narrated how Merty, untethered from form, was nearly torn from reality but escaped back to his body with 6d10 psychic damage, having lost his ability. I accepted the L but was a little peeved to not be able to use the ultimate ability of my character and take a lot of damage as well. So justices I ask was I wrong to attempt to pre buff before the final fight or should I have been allowed to go all out but just this once? I humbly await your decision.

Teive

To the

Kelsey Taylor

Honorable justices and that guy who I [insert emotional response towards Jake based on how Murph is feeling today]— I bring before the court a case of wasted rolls & ship-term-shaming. My druid rolled a Nat 20 on a perception check to see seagulls flying west toward land, so i pointed them out to our warforged wizard who captains the boat with his mind. He asked me what direction to sail in, and when I said “west”, he said he refused to listen to me until I used proper boat terms. I, the player, have never been on a boat, and have only heard sailing terms in movies and TV but still do not know what they mean; so I asked the DM if I could do a roll to see if my character would know the right word to say. After getting a 19 on a history check, the DM said I knew exactly the right word to use to give the wizard directions, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was, so I shrugged and said “starboard”. The DM and the wizard then shamed and laughed me in front of the table for getting it wrong, and when i protested and said that they had told me I knew exactly the right thing to say, the DM said “I just wanted to see if you knew what it was”. This led to lots of irritated looks from my boyfriend, who also plays at our table, and an odd and tense vibe for the next few minutes. We ended up making it to the island okay in the end, but I ask you— am I overreacting? Was I actually wronged here, or was this a harmless bit that I just didn’t think was funny? I humbly place my head upon the guillotine (or whatever other punishment you feel is applicable) and await your judgement <3

Josh Frigo

Dear Justices of the court and my old pal, Jake! I bring you the case of the touring musician: I play in a campaign in Nashville with a group of touring and studio musicians. We have a regular long-running campaign as well as Adventure League style mini arcs we play when folks are on the road and we can’t get the whole group together. One of our players, Amos (who I believe Emily and Bryan have met) has recently been gone on a notably long run of shows and mentioned to me this week his tank is feeling a little low and he’s missing his family here in Nashville. If the justices and my buddy Jake could find it in their hearts to sentence him to keep his head up and keep bringing joy to folks around the world with his playing, I think it’d lift his spirits. P.S. sorry realizing now I don’t know Jake, I guess he just has one of those mistakable faces.

Hank

Hello Glorious Supreme Crit Judges and Johnny! I humbly come to you with a case I think about often. I was playing a necromancer named Tony Ferrari who, at the time, had four loyal zombie minions. We had just arrived at a village that was using the zombified remains of their ancestors to farm crops and we're sent into a dinosaur-infested jungle to find the chief's daughter. There was a large lake in the middle of the island, and boating over it would save us a lot of time. Unfortunately, none of us had wood-workers tools, and the GM had said that if we tried with weapons we would hurt ourselves. After seeing these zombies farm crops perfectly and tirelessly, ai had an idea: what if my zombies could carve a canoe? The GM said they didn't have the manual dexterity to carve a canoe out of a log, so I let it go, but is putting a divot in a log really any different from farming crops? Judges, I humbly await your verdict.

Samuel Ryan

To the top shelf honorable Crit Justices and the “stuff you keep in the fridge in case a guest comes over” Bailiff Jaeger I lay at your feet the case of the Disingenuous Disintegration. We were playing a campaign that was presented as a group of typical Fantasy hero archetypes were transplanted into a gothic horror scenario. The twist: we were supposed to be TKP’d at the end of session one and then create setting appropriate characters to “build stakes.” The second twist: the archetypical Paladin lived. So we go into session 2 with a bunch of edgelords and a shining paragon of light. The players were pumped for this but the DM seemed salty. 10 minutes in the Paladin’s triggers a disintegration trap and takes a bunch of damage - but our death defying hero announced he had two HP left. The DM said “huh,” rolled another dice, and revamped the damage to over the hp total and killed the Paladin because “his existence ruins the vibe.” We were miffed, but ended up backing down because we could tell he had put a lot of work into how he wanted this all to be themed out, but were still upset about how it all went down. Justices: was the DM right to failroad and then railroad to kill this Paladin? Or should have been flexible with his vision of the setting. My life for your judgement

Nathaniel Lopes

To the influential Justice Axford, the prince-stabbing Justice Murphy, the duncle-ish Justice Tanner, and the sticky and jam-covered Bailiff Jyack, I bring to you the case of Himbo Erasure I have been DMing for an underwater campaign where the PCs are attempting to uncover the mysteries of a Lovecraftian cult that is driving the citizens of their subaquatic city insane. All of the players are new to DnD, but our campaign has overall been going very smoothly. The main problem that I have faced in this campaign is that I (a gay guy) have not been able to properly describe a single one of my ostensibly attractive male characters to my (all lesbian) players. Any time that a new male character has been introduced, I have been bullied, berated, and badgered until my sexy male characters have been completely visually redesigned. It certainly does not help that all of the players are artists (two animators and scientific illustrator) who just /have/ to make really cool drawings of the characters (especially the ones that they find particularly attractive). Most recently, after a whole session without even trying to describe a man, I attempted to describe an imposing orca-man barbarian who was covered in scars from single-handedly fighting off sea monster incursions; I had even made a sketch of how I envisioned him. However before I could even finish my description, between a cacophony of fake gagging, threats to leave the session, and one particular comment that I was being “a little piss baby” for not changing the description, I was successfully pestered into basically describing Bayonetta with a whale’s tail to sate my lustful league of lesbians. Honored triplets and mighty Duncle, might I be honored and allowed to preserve at least a small harem of hunks in my world? Or must I be shamed to have all of my himbos turn into bimbos? I lay myself at the mercy of the court and await your judgement

Brandon Maier

Good Afternoon, Illustrious Justices and Jailiff Bake. Today, I bring before you the case of Groom v. Groomsman. Just yesterday I celebrated my 2 year wedding anniversary with my wife (sorry for not sending a Save the Date) but I’m still haunted by something that transpired at my Bachelor Party. The party was a low-key affair with my closest friends and my best man tasked another friend with DMing a one-shot adventure as part of the festivities. The game was great with each of us playing ourselves, having been sent to a fantasy world, a luck-thief BBEG, explaining my lifetime of Murph-esque rolls, and a full suite of drinking rules to give me (the groom) advantage. The trouble, your honors, was with one of the other groomsmen. The game opened with us getting ready for my wedding at the venue and the first thing this groomsman says is, “I try to sleep with the bride.” Cut to later in the game which required us to gather a bunch of keys, the same groomsman refused to let us use his key and instead held onto it until my best man and other groomsmen wrestled it from him with a series of grapple checks. Do I have a right to be miffed in this scenario or should I just let it go as roleplay decision. I throw myself at your mercy.

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.

Kyu C

(I use they/them pronouns! Also my name is pronounced like Q) To the willowy and dextrous judges and their wretched little slugboy bailiff, I bring to you the case of the fireball dodging priest. During Curse of Strahd my party met an NPC priest in the starting town of Vallaki named Father Lucian who my DM chose to play as cowardly and generally unhelpful. As a result of this, we loved to bully him constantly (a la Denny Pebblepot) and grew very fond of him! Cut to a few sessions later, we were following up on a sidequest when the sky suddenly fell dark with ominous clouds swirling around the church. After the party rushed there, my DM narrated Strahd bursting through the stained glass window riding a spectral steed composed of smoke and flame, giving a classic bad guy monologue before turning his attention to the cravenly father. As a show of power and to intimidate us, Strahd cast Fireball on the hapless priest, intending to down him in one fiery blast. At our behest, our DM rolled Father Lucian's saving throw in front of the table, letting us know that she was using the Priest stat block in the MM and he added nothing to the roll. Nat fucking 20. We all started screaming and cheering, only for her to stop us and say she still had to roll damage, which she also agreed to do in full view of everyone. She rolled astronomically low, and with a successful save, the father had survived the encounter against Strahd! However, before we could celebrate too much, our DM then narrated Strahd, looking angry and flustered, casting another Fireball. The priest was not so lucky the second time and failed his save, now taking enough damage to kill him outright, reducing him to a charred corpse. We then initiated combat, fighting off some undead goons while Strahd made a shameful exit. Afterwards, I as the cleric tried to Revivify our beloved fallen punching bag, but as the Fireball had happened before the start of initiative, our DM ruled that too much time had passed. Oh esteemed members of the High Crit, was this an injustice? Was our pathetic priest ripped way from us too soon? Or was his life a fair trade for the titanic hit to Strahd's status and pride? I humbly await your righteous judgment. P.S. I was at the Milwaukee Live Show and it was fucking amazing, I prostrate my wormly self before the almighty court and plead that you bring the gift of Dungeon Court to Cream City!

Jourdan

I have crawled on hands and knees for miles to gaze upon the holy church of dice christ and give this one confession. I got the paw paw dice from the NADDPOD website and I'm pretty sure the d20 is weighted to get higher rolls. After not rolling below 10 for 3 consecutive sessions, I decided to test my theory. I rolled it 20 times and got below at 10 twice... Funny enough, the two bad rolls were a shout-out to the 2-crew. Should I keep using it or do I need to move on from all these great rolls I've been getting? I humbly await judgement. P.S. Shoutout to the greatest bailiff, Dave. He keeps this kangaroo court in check.

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.

shysparrows

I come to the church of Dice Christ with a confession: I am getting bored of our at home campaign. Context, I play in a campaign with three other players and one DM every other Friday. Because we are all adults with lives, sometimes one person isn't able to be there to play. However, we still like to get together on those Friday's and do other things like D&D murder mysteries and battle royale's. It's gotten to the point where in game, we've been in the town for two weeks but it's taken us six out of game months to get there. We all always forget what happened the last time we played and we don't have any real emotional connection to our characters. I would like to float to my group the idea of being a one-shot group with our other fun stuff sprinkled in, but I don't want to hurt the DM's feelings. He works hard on it, but I feel like it doesn't make sense with our groups dynamics and availability. Priests of Dice Christ, what does the scripture say for instances like this? and how do I go about having this conversation. Extra note, I am the youngest member of our group being 24 and the other plays being anywhere from 28-45.

Dave Molnar

To the upstanding judges and the slovenly bailiff jimbob I present the case of the blood bending cantrip I’ve been a DM for my group of friends for a couple of years now and my wife as one of my players refuses to budge on her belief that I’m a big stick in the mud for not allowing her to be able to use the cantrip shape water to be able to have any or all of the following effects on a creature Freeze their eyeballs to blind them Move their body around like a puppet by their blood Forcibly remove all their blood through an open wound Hold an orb of water around their head to drown them Honestly the list goes on. For full disclosure I have offered some degree of compromise to have the target make a save for some improvised damage or a condition but she still insists I’m being unreasonable. Justices, am I right to limit the power of a cantrip to try and maintain some level of decorum at my table or should my wife have a blank cheque for her amazing creativity. We eagerly wait for judgement

Caroline donnelly

May it please the sweeties of the high crit and the unalienable Bailiff. For my first ever DnD session I joined a party of 6. I was so excited to present my lioness tabaxi fighter to the group. During my first interaction with the world I was talking to a bartender to try and gather some information about any suspicious people. I narrated how my character winked at the bartender. I thought maybe it would get me advantage on an insight check. The DM then proclaimed: “I dont want to roleplay this anymore” we all laughed it off and moved on but the cringe still haunts me a year later. I never went back! Beloved justices, was the DM right to end the conversation because I winked or was I being WEIRD?? I will embrace whatever punishment you deem necessary.

Nienor

Most honored and esteemed judges and the bailiff who Knows His Place. I bring before you the case of the helpless heroes. Some friends and I have been working through a run of saltmarsh. We are having a lot of fun being pirates ect. and our dm has been really great about letting us engage in light madness (my character is married to the sea for instance) while also laying down the law when necessary. No complaints. Except for anytime one of us tries to use the help action outside of combat. Our dm maintains that it's only for battle and we are quote "trying to violently abuse it" and that "that's not how the help action works." Our cleric upon taking the spell guidance made a big show "having a help action the dm can't nix." Have we indeed by endeavoring to abuse the help action and wrong our dm, or is he just jealous of our helpful camaraderie? I respectfully await your judgement.

Jensen D

To the totally fair and impartial judges and the cute little bailiff, jerf. I was playing a warlock named Brian in a 5e campaign with 3 other players. When visited by a magical merchant our wizard player asked for “c4 plastic explosives” to which our dm produced via this magic merchant. I found this odd since we play in a high fantasy setting. Fast forward and the wizard decided to blow us all up during a mission to rescue the king because “he was looking at me funny”. My warlock has a planetar patron and I have a short flying speed so with a successful strength check I grabbed the king. However the blast was too big and almost everyone was eviscerated. We rolled about 12d12 for damage (we’re lvl 6). This wasn’t the first time the wizard had screwed around too much and I was honestly pretty bummed so I packed up and left the session. The dm later sent out a text that we would mulligan the whole thing and pick up before the explosion. Should my dm be blown to pieces for giving a problematic player c4? Or should I have taken that 12d12 damage on the chin? I await feverishly for your judgment!

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 tricked me the wizard shouted “I roll to tea-bag”. Rolling a natural 1. I took this and narrated them tea-bagging 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.

SmoothTurtle

To the justices most high, and the tallest bailiff with the thickest of quads. I lay my dice at your feet, please hear my plea. I started a campaign with my wife and 3 other good friends. Only one of the 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.

Marmot

May it please the youthful and simply glowing justices and, I guess, the nevernude bailiff Jort(?), I present to you the case of the anti-magic antagonist. I recently wrapped up in a campaign where we made it all the way to Epic Boon levels above 20, with significant power creep along the way. A big problem arose from abuse of Legacy weapons, a third edition adaptation the DM added early on, and we largely swept aside dragons and gods and all other obstacles along our way. We still had fun and there was a monster of the week type vibe, but one problem player who prides himself on being a character everyone hates (in our new campaign he constantly threatens to steal from the party for example), surprise, refused to accept one small limitation on his overpowered item. The character was an anti-magic build of a sorcerer, and had an anti-magic staff as a legacy weapon. It kept leveling up to have higher and higher free castings of counterspell, which yes the DM should have tempered along the way or earlier on, but the PC would not relent when challenged about that counter spell action being counterspelled itself. He maintained that because the counter spell came from an item it couldn't be countered. The rest of the party in the DM always overruled this and pointed to Jeremy Crawford and others indicating that if it's seen in some way it can be countered, but the PC would always whine and get highly agitated at this reassertion of something that had already been settled, even though he was the one who kept bringing it back up at different points. So I present to you for your judgment, how to treat this player character who also tried to have detect magic Vision at level 1 always running or the party who didn't just kill him off or the DM who let all of us power up to God levels early on. What is an appropriate sentence for the insolent, the omnipotent, or the impotent among us?

Jesse Dunlap

Forgive me Supreme Crits and baby bailiff for I have sinned. You see I am the DM from the party that slew Fat Bastard and I am finally getting the chance to play in a campaign myself. I know what a chore it is to work around crazy players so I thought I would use a very basic story based backstory rouge. I’m loving it so far but the problem is that I can’t help but reference the well known and beloved character The Master of Disguise played my Dana Carvey. Every time I need to disguise myself and say. “Become another person”. And my characters life has become like roger from American dad. Constantly adopting personas. My original character design was an edgy rogue named flip who had a dark past and relied on luck. His kid brother is even involved with the bbeg after years of searching. But all I do is change my appearance and tell guards they have a lil weenie and some tiny nuts. Can I be forgiven? I wrote in about one terrible movie character to become an even worse one!

Teive

To the shining paragons of balance - be it mechanical, between DM and player, or between fun and cool. As well as the imbalanced bailiff Jorf. I am a DM. Swiftheart, the Harengon Ranger, died after an encounter where he was enveloped by a skin zombie and taken away from the rest of the group when the enveloping zombie was turned by the minotaur cleric (thanks Kobold Press!) The cleric had revivify, but lacked the required material components. Fortunately, the Eladrin had a robe of useful items with gems ready to be pulled. With no rules as to what the gems were, we left it up to rolls. Unfortunately, the party only got two hundred gp worth of diamonds, one hundred short. The minotaur cleric had a magic item that plus one to spell attacks and saving throws for his spells, and was flavored to be made of shining gems. He asked if he could smash it to try and roll go more diamonds. I said yes. It worked! He smashed the item, got the diamond, and revived his friend. The Harengon player quit after the next session. In universe, it's still a beautiful moment. Out of universe, I feel bad that the cleric player lost such a great item for a player/character who almost immediately left anyway. I haven't replaced it - but should I have finagled the situation to give the cleric another item of similar power or function?

Shel B Kennas fav SG wishing you a happy Bog-oween

To the honorable and esteemed cool cat collective of judges and dog bailiff Jork, wuff wuff. I ask for a bit of council. We just wrapped our big arc that took about a year to do, and will be picking back up in the fall. During the course of fighting this arc’s BBEG, an avatar of Tiamat, our cleric (whose deity was also Tiamat) lost their powers due to them turning on their deity during battle. Cleric was steamed, especially bc they lost 2 MODIFIER points in ability scores (STR and WIS) which felt weird bc they weren’t enhanced by their agreement and we are only level 6. During battle DM asked our cleric “in this moment do you feel connected more to casting or martial, you can cling to one” they picked casting and as I joke I postured if DM was turning them into a wizard. Apparently he was. Cleric was even more upset, they hate playing wizards & are considering coming back with a new character in the fall & is mad the DM ruined their trajectory. DM argues they broke their deity’s trust when cleric attacked their avatar & thus they turned their back on their cleric. Cleric is silently stewing and won’t talk to DM about this. DM has a history of having cool ideas but being so tunnel visioned on how he foresees them going & sometimes rail roads himself into ideas originated from months earlier that may not have as much relevancy now. Judges, how do I (the person who hosts) navigate those two communicating better, is there any POV’s I can provide that are outside of our group that may help them bridge this gap, or do I need to hire D&D marriage counseling? Do you offer this? We await your recommendations (PS I play a half orc Circle of Spores/Way of the long death multi class and want to say thanks to emily for the build advice she provided me last year. Thanks emily! You rock)

Austin Scarberry

May it please the court and tolerate the bailiff: I was DMing my first campaign, Curse of Strahd, and at one point the party was at a mill where a coven of hags had set up shop. Our warlock snuck inside to scout it out and was subsequently captured, so when he didn’t return the paladin used a grappling hook to scale the building and enter from the third floor, where several dretches attacked her. She used turn undead while standing in the middle of the room in order to affect all of them, they all failed their saves, and I narrated the three monsters skirting the walls of the chamber and jumping out of the window to escape, whereupon the rest of the party outside on the ground floor was able to finish them off. However, a third player became angry at this ruling and insisted that the dretches would instead have run into the wall and helplessly cowered because the window was on the other side of the paladin from where the monsters were located when turned (basically the paladin was the donut hole and the dretches and monsters on opposite sides of the circular chamber). Furthermore, this other player claimed that because of my ruling, “no one would ever know what any of their spells did for the rest of the campaign.” Justices, I beseech thee, was I wrong to have the monsters flee around the paladin, or was my friend being a whiny little baby boy? I await your even-handed judgment. (P.S. this was far from the first time this player had taken it upon themselves to rules lawyer and his behavior had been a source of increasing contention on several prior occasions)

Elana

Oh highest of court judges and the other one with a mic. I come to you with another case this one might be myown fault. In my campaign the party had to go to the feywild to find a relic, and on the way I had them encounter a kind of memory puzzle. The artificer said quickly in character that he "took notes" but none of the players wrote anything down IRL and when the time came to test their memory (same session as when they learned the pattern for the puzzle) they said that Archibald (the artificer) solves it. I felt like it was cheating the encounter and didn't allow them to skip the puzzle. The party all quickly became angry and was saying I was removing agency from them because I didn't allow the character taking note with no effort from the players to work. We got through the session but I've felt bad about that reaction since, can I let it go or should I be punished for denying my players

Christopher Derrick

To the most Honorable justices and the one true bailiff Joe The case I bring to you is not one of miss deeds or wrong doings. My party and I have been in a lot of DND one shots with this one DM. He is an absolute awesome dm he is fair in his rules and everyone has always enjoyed a fun time. Me and the fellow party ask how to convince him to bring us a campaign. He has mentioned how he wants an elder ring campaign that he has made. Is there anything we can do to help him and break his lack of confidence. I ask please help us as I know he will bring us a campaign we all would love.

Jen

Hello justices!! I volunteer for a DnD club for youths at my local school. I have a bunch of great kids playing! Except for one, idk, let’s call them Jake. So far they’ve: -Tried to initiate PvP every session because someone “stole their kill.” (They didn’t). -Rolls constantly without me prompting. I’ll say “Great! You rolled an 20, nothing happens.” They get mad. -Attacked a plot important NPC, which I allowed after the “are you sure,” but behind the screen gave the NPC an AC of 30 and access to high level spell slots. They were then mad their character went unconscious. NPC asked for a truce and revived their character. Attacked the NPC again. Went down again. Prior, NPC had done nothing to cause the fight. -Brought in their favorite monster mini, asked me to use it, and then angrily took it back when I told them I would use different stats so the group wouldn’t what’s going on. I think I’ve got it mostly under control, telling him no, just straight up ignoring him, and the others in the group are also learning to shut his stuff down too which is great. But can we send a kid to jail? Thanks! xoxo go piss girl

Elias Roessler

Hello honorable justices and esteemed bailif Hake Jurwitz. Today I come to you with a story of multiversal shenanigans. Several months ago I was in a campaign in which the party got put in prison, with my character, the artificer/rogue getting singled out by the warden and put in solitary(a literal hole where there was no food or sleep) this scenario led to my character nearly dying from exhaustion. Great, I thought. Now I have a vendetta against the warden and will be able to get revenge in the prison break. See recently one of my fellow players had brought in a new character to replace their old one who they had lost interest in. Little did I know, this character was a copy of one from another campaign she and the DM were in together and that the character had a vendetta against the warden’s duplicate in his old dimension. Cut to the escape fight, I attempt to get my well-deserved vengeance. The player states “this is not your fight” and the DM agrees before using the warden’s spells to send my roguetificer to the other side of the map, effectively removing me from the encounter. Was I wrong to expect some sort of vengeance for my PC, or was this multiversal battle meant to be?

Austin Rosmarin

dear jake, we’re several years into a 5e homebrew campaign in which our dm told us right off the bat that player deaths would be a real threat. however, about two years in almost no one had been so much as downed in combat. cut to the party knees deep in the shit just absolutely brute forcing our way through the temple of a child snatching necromancer priest. Our bard and druid found themselves about 100ft ahead of the other four of us, down in the basement, where an ambush was sprung on the two of them while the rest of us made our way down the ladder. within the first round of combat, before any pc’s had an opportunity to attack, the cultists had downed and then killed our bard, completely ignoring the druid standing next to him who was helpless to take an action. stunned, we all made it down and quickly dispatched the cultists and big bad. the dm ended the session there saying he now needed some time to plan how to resolve everything. no one ever spoke up about the unceremonious and seemingly targeted murder of Sirius Exxem (our bard), and the resolution to his death was honestly very fun and has led to new interesting story lines, but please jake, i have to know, was the dm in the wrong? should we have spoken up? did sirius exxem deserve better? i prostrate myself before you and no other.

dizzy

to the epic justices and cringe baliff: my dm has been late to almost every single game he has run. we have been playing over the summer, and our campaign is scheduled every week, 6 pm on thursdays. this time has never changed and has been consistent even for past campaigns. however, our dm often either cancels sessions last minute to go to parties/work, or is around 30 minutes late to his own sessions. once, he was an hour and a half late because he was shopping in a different city. the rest of my party is also frustrated but most are fine to deal with it as it happens. should i leave the campaign and take back my thursday nights, talk to him about how late hes been, or continue to let him cook? i await your decision with hope for mercy and compassion, thank you.

Michael Fierro

Praises to the DM, the Player, and the Holy Dice Christ, I have a confession to give. When I first started playing DnD, I did not have fun with my character. I played a wizard in 4e and young me was confused why I wasn't doing mad damage like my wow mage. instead of having a talk with my DM about my concerns, I decided I wouldn't have to play anymore if I got my character killed. The night everyone came to my house (I always hosted), I thought it would better sell my bad decisions if I got drunk. I had one too many, forced my wizard to the front of the line, made dumb decisions to try and goad the enemy to attack me. At some point I quite literally got too drunk, left the table to go outside to my bushes and puked in them, then came back to the table. To my surprise (or the DM's mercy), my wizard didn't die in battle and I continued to play for years until I learned to love this hobby. The wizard in question eventually retired in game and lived a long fruitful life. I throw myself at the crock covered feet of dice christ to beg forgiveness for my drunken behavior before the table in my early years.

Ryan Dilks

To the venerable (and cute) justices and the other guy in the tiny chair, I bring you the case of Glenda the Cleric of Cleanliness. I am in a campaign with a few friends, DMed by a first-time DM. After some balancing issues that killed my original character very early, I worked with my DM to craft a new character: Glenda. Glenda is a halfling cleric who worked as a maid for a noble family. She had never formed a connection to the Gods but found herself able to use magic anyway as "cleanliness is next to godliness." This was fine and fun at first, seemingly everyone was on board and Glenda was with the party for three sessions before one of my friends raised a stink. A beloved (by me) NPC had fallen in battle, fully dead. When Glenda came up on this characters corpse after the battle I asked to do a divine intervention roll. My DM allowed it and it succeeded. Before I was able to add flavor or roleplay a bit our human paladin started accusing me of heresy. I played along and responded in character but his player looked me in the eye and said "No, Ryan. That's heresy." And left. We haven't met up since. So I ask you, noble crit justices: is it heresy to revive an NPC without a God? Is Glenda doomed to never know spirituality?

Jake de Medeiros

May it please the almighty bishops of the church and the former cohost of the goat show, I have a confession. Admittedly this is more of a social sin than a game sin, but bear with me. I confess to being “that guy” and smelling awful at a D&D event. Hear me out. I work at a train yard in Saskatoon, and regularly clean fertilizer residue from tank cars. This residue is often high in ammonia, which to the untrained nose, smells like piss. My friend invited me to a D&D event downtown where we would play in a little one shot and shop for some custom dice/mini’s etc. I’ve become completely nose blind to the scent of ammonia and headed there after I got off work in the afternoon, met up with my friend (who said nothing) and went in. Long story short, I was at the event for about half an hour before an employee told me to either deal with my body oder or leave. I didn’t even get a chance to play in the one shot, which looking back was absolutely for the best, because as soon as it was pointed out to me I realized that I indeed smelled pretty awful. To this day I look back completely mortified knowing that everybody there thought I was just some guy who came to a D&D event reeking of piss. Please forgive me, because I don’t think I can forgive myself.

Tucker Anderson

Good Morrow Baliff and friends, I come to you today with the "Forever Barbarian". I've DM for a group of Wonderful Players for about 5 years now, with the exception of one. Out of the 5 Campaigns, One Shots, or Mini Arcs he played in, 4 times he was a Totem Warrior Barbarian ( a la Apple Scrumper ). On the most recent campaign this player once again chose this class to play, I relented because he seemed to be actually planning something with it this time. By the time the reached 3rd level, he had multiclassed into Druid (even though we had one already) and chose the same Circle as the Druid! That was my last straw, and I told him I could no longer DM for him as a Barbarian Totem Warrior and to change classes. He chose to just leave and no one has heard from him since. Am I in the wrong for not wanting to DM for a "Sick Build Totem Barbarian" more then once in a row? Thank you for you consideration.

Casey Fenton

May it please the court and mildly irritate the bailiff, I’ve been DMing a monthly game for about a year. My players are very meticulous and combat avoidant. This has resulted in us only having three combats in roughly 12 sessions. My players have expressed some frustrations in not finding opportunities to use their spells and skills but every time I present them with a combat scenario they use diplomacy and rolls to pacify and avoid the situation. I do not want the party to dwindle out in constant three hour sessions of roleplaying but I also don’t want to railroad them into combat they’re clearly avoidant of despite their out of game desire to experience it. Am I guilty for not making enough punch able enemies? Or should they stop being such pacifists and use some steel?

BarelyAllen

Dice Christ representatives, hear my pleas, as it has led to a breakdown in my table. First time, long time. I’m a new dungeon master, and to get my group ready (virtual game over discord), we started a baby campaign for me to get familiar and them to work on cohesion as a unit (some new players, some only are acquaintances). Over a few sessions, the party managed to get their boon (a tablet that can be used for many arcane purposes, but namely controlling dragons). Once the party retrieved this item, they were nearing the end of the campaign. At this point, the party took a long rest, and one of the party’s Dragonborn’s stole the item and ran away. I can improvise, I had a good pivot in order to make an interesting story, but this move has seemed to lay a divide down in which the party no longer has interest for the campaign. Should I, as their direct messenger, have not allowed this move? Unfortunately, mechanics were on their side as a rogue, and now I feel like I let down the rest of the table trying to foster someone’s creativity. Additionally, moving forward, what kind of restriction should I put in place to prevent, and how can I make this right for my table?

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.

Wren

Dearest Of Judges Noble and True, and Jules Harmworm who I guess is objectively there too, I bring you the case of the Damsel in (Everlasting) Distress. My group is tiny, just me and one other player and the DM. Therefore usually there’s DMPcs to round out the party. This is usually no problem, however in this campaign our DMPc is a child where me and the other player are both in their late 20s dealing with political intrigue and drama and trauma meant to be handled by adults, and our DMPc is 10, who is constantly getting possessed or kidnapped or running away, twice within the same day my character’s biggest backstory hook was revealed, making it hard to focus on what should’ve been my character’s biggest quest. When I tried asking the DM to let us have downbeats to process *our* (the player’s) trauma, the dm responded that the child was *their* PC and has story stuff too. Judges am I wrong to be tired of always rescuing the damsel in distress or is this just the price of only having 2 friends who d&d? I humbly await your judgement.

Sabina Prijic

'Sup you cool cat justices and radical Bailiff Jaeger-maester! A few years ago, I was playing a sea genasi cleric (named Granny Wurthers the Original-- she had some issues with some identity theiving doppelgangers ans needed to specify that where ever she went). She worshipped Umberlee. Her family all did sacrifices to Umberlee in hopes of avoiding her attention and it was a big part of her backstory. Apparently, my DM found the backstory too sad and decided to give her an out. We were in the middle of a quest when our DM rerouted us to an island where we met a Goddess of Gossip who basically renounced Granny's Goddess for her and decided that Granny was now one of her clerics. The DM did this amazing powerful monologue about all her powers and how Umberlee wouldn't dare cross her. It was bonechillingly good. Thinking this was a plot hook, I agreed. Problem is... Nothing happened. Granny switched goddesses and there was no follow up. The quest continued and it was never addressed again. Am I right to feel like this was misleading/anti-climatic? Should I just be happy that Granny and her family no longer have to cower? Thank you for any and all in put!

Everest Conclave

To the recumbent Judges and the bike-bound bailiff, I present to you the case of the Mr Magoo Monk. My first time DMing, I met with my players privately to discuss character ideas. One player who hadn't played before wanted to be a human monk travelling the land in search of his lost master. I liked the idea so I okayed it. When it was time to play and everyone was describing their character, the monk mentioned that he always wore a blindfold to improve his other senses. I was surprised by this and mentioned out of habit that being blind makes a character role with disadvantage on basically everything. The player smiled and said "I like a challenge." He failed nearly every roll he made and didn't hit once during combat. Later, we were discussing the session and he said that he enjoyed it, but was reluctant to continue playing as combat seemed "unbalanced". We thankfully still play a different game today, but he maintains that he was in the right and that the game could have accommodated him. Judges, should I have imposed blindness on this first time player, or should I have simply ignored the blindfold? I accept your visionary judgement.

ZZ Digital

I submit to the court: the case of personal hell: While stealing a plane shift gem from the villains, one player accidentally activated one and was sent to hell, where they started rescuing NPCs. The other players met the villain who offered them a gem, but told them a different way to use it than they had been. They decided the villain was lawful evil and wouldn't lie, despite many people, including the villain herself, calling her a monster. So when they followed her instructions they ended up trapped in Hell, requiring a beloved NPC to sacrifice themself to get them out. My players were extremely upset with me, not only for killing their friend, but for not telling them the villain could be lying, and also not benching the player who went ahead until the rest of the party could join them since they encountered friends and family of the PCs in personalized hells that they wanted to interact with. Were my decisions acceptable, or am i a DM not even worthy to lick the lowly baliff's shoes? I await your decision

Dylan Jackson

To the most renowned justices and the amazing baliff tucker (tell Jill I said wassup!) I bring the case of the secret g-spot. A while back I was in a campaign where one of my fellow players was in an intimate moment with their Romantic interest. (I'm sure you know what I'm talking bout tucker!) The PC wanted to cast locate object on the NPC's g spot. We all laughed, but one of the players jokingly said that they should be using locate creature, since it is technically a bunch of nerves. (aka living cells) This never became an actual problem, but it brings up the question. Would a G-spot require a locate object, or locate creature spell? I await the judgement of the court.

steven eaton

May it please the wise and benevolent court and the (insert how we feel about jake to day) bailiff Jork. I come to you seeking to set precedence for our angry, axe wielding friends the barbarians and their rage. Does rage end if the barbarian does not deal damage? Per the text "your rage lasts for 1 minute. It ends early if you are knocked unconscious or if your turn ends and you haven't attacked a hostile creature or taken damage." I feel this has been misinterpreted for to long as damage must be dealt. If an attack is made, the rage maintains!

Christopher M

To the average-looking Justices and the below-average looking bailiff Jeremy, I bring to you the Case of the Doomed Zoom. It was the pandemic, and a new work colleague invited me to a new campaign his friend was hosting over Zoom. I didn't know anyone else beforehand, and all of his friends except the DM were playing DND for the first time. The DM was self-admittedly out of practice, but had some free time on his hands since he was out of work indefinitely. Justices, it was nothing short of a disaster. The DM spent most of each session setting up his phone as a second camera to point directly at a piece of paper that he was using to hand-draw the dungeons as we went along. Every time we wanted to take a step, we had to tell the DM and he would draw a new part of the map with a pencil, feverishly checking the guide book to ensure that his map looked identical. The dungeon was one body-length wide, so we were all in a single file line, and people in the back were basically unable to do anything. When we entered a new room, if there were enemies, we were all crunched into a hallway as we attempted to do battle. It went along like this for several weeks, and I could tell the newcomers were becoming bored and I was role-playing a bumbling idiot for comedic relief to keep things as fun as possible. It all ended up falling apart when my colleague asked me if I'd be willing to pay the DM $5-10 per session since he was out of work and this was quote "a lot of prep work for him". I ended up making excuses about why I couldn't join and I heard it fell apart shortly afterwards. Justices, was I justified in leaving this doomed campaign? I really liked the other players, and would love any advice on getting them to give DND another chance!

DJ Matty Lil Crits

To the wife guys of the supreme crit and to Jill's side piece, I present the case of bad husband. We were rescuing a cleric DMPC who had been captured by a lich as part of a ritual. Because we were all lv 7, the DM came up with a good mechanic that the cleric had stabbed a sword into the lich that was absorbing his power, so his spells would only do half damage to us. Because the DM narrated that he couldn't remove the sword, my bard cast heat metal on the sword to give the lich disadvantage on attacks and to take fire damage. It worked so well, I wasn't upset when the DM narrated that after 2 rounds of my bullshit, the sword melted and he could now do full damage to us, even though the spell doesn't say it can do that. My actual issue is that after we saved the cleric and we were returning home, her husband arrived, a polymorphed adult white dragon, and was upset that I had melted his sword, and claimed my bard should compensate him for damages. Afraid of having to buy a dragon a new legendary sword, I did not elect to bring my character into the next campaign and made a new character. My query is, should my bard have to buy this dragon a new sword that the DM chose to melt, or should this dragon be thankful that I rescued his wife while he was busy not being there for his wife when she needed him most. PS the dragon is also the DM's pathfinder character, I don't think any amount of leveling up would mean my bard could survive a fight. PPS I am willing to bribe the wife worm of the court by adding more starspawn into a separate game where I am DM.

Brandon R

Esteemed judges of the crit and the fabulously handsome bailiff Jake, I present to you the case of the Disco Duck. I have brought a case to this court before when my mother, who I DM for, kept insisting on recruiting every npc she met. She is stirring up trouble again. Recently we started playing an Old Republic SW5E campaign, and as a lifelong Star Wars fan who spent countless teenage hours learning useless fact on wookieepedia, I’m very excited to run a game in this universe. I’ve been easing my players into the new ruleset with a conversion I found of lost mine of phandelver (lost mine of kessel) and we are at the point where ship combat is coming in to play. I gave my mother a mini of their ship to paint, a dynamic class cruiser. I also said the party could name the ship, showing them a random ship name generator I found online if they needed inspiration. They came up with some fun names brainstorming, mostly playing on the naming convention of the millennium falcon with a noun then a bird name. I became suspicious when I asked my mom if she had decided which colour to paint the ship mini and she refused to tell me that or the name saying, “we discussed it privately and decided we want to surprise you”. Fast forward to our most recent session where they announced the ships name would be the “Disco Duck” and presented a bejewelled ship mini. I enjoy a game that gets a bit silly from time to time but I was hoping our Star Wars campaign could have a slightly more serious tone. I’m torn because I don’t want to stomp on their good time but I also struggle with the idea of, say, a cool Sith villain having to refer to their ship as the “Disco Duck” and still be intimidating. I have already accepted that Caldwell and Emily will be against me on this but please Murph and Jake back me up here (remember when I called you fabulously handsome Jake?) What can I do about this without totally shutting them down? P.S. Murph, I have to listen to my own mother say “honour the cock” at the table because of you. I just want you to know that the words you speak have consequences.

kasey newell

To the most honorable bailiff and the slightly less but not much less judges, I bring the case of the unfriendly pc. It was the session 1 of my first ever campaign as a brand you dm. We ran everything through discord with voice and pictures to help set the scene and owl bear for battle maps. The party went into a kingdom as highered adventures to retrieve a stollen pouch from a theif that contained a power gem. So after a little clue following they found themselves at the lowest parts of town trying to find out where it went come to find out it was in the sewers where I had made a little puzzle to get through the "maze" but there was an encounter or 2 and some traps to make it engaging long story short they go through find a rat king and it's hourd of stuff kill him, each get a cool item as starting gear plus the pouch. But just as they where leaving 1 of the party members wanted to explore one other side of the sewer so they RAN IN ON THERE OWN. Ran into a monster I had just in case it was a giant rat to stay on theme he ends up befriending it bc why not kind of silly fun me planing to have it be like I can't go with you at the mouth of the sewers. They come out to the rest of the party and 1 guy immediately attacks the rat and the other party member! I resolved that but while that went on the other 2 took a bet on who would win. This was the problem they went 25 minutes arguing on who gets the money. But neither party won the fight. This put us over the time the session had to end never letting me get to the plot hook of the game or getting to give anything because they where arguing over 2 gold. Everyone soon after stopped talking because of this and the party disbanded 2 days later. So I ask was I in the wrong for letting one guy make a rat friend for 5 min and then not knowing he to stop the fighting or was it there fault? I awate your judgement.

ZZ Digital

If it pleases the court and the ever-variably lowly baliff, Jake. I have a player who always tries to play as their fursona. When i try to set up a common ground or lore for the world she'll ask for an exception so she can use her characters own lore. I'm usually ok with trying to accommodate my players like this, but after years of playing i still don't know much about her backstory, which makes creating personalized quests difficult. I've tried asking questions, but I'll either get a vague answer at most or just a "don't worry about it"

Dana Aderholdt

Dear honorable judges and no one else, I run a home brew game for several of my friends and I like to give out interesting non-official items to my players. Some examples of this include an all or nothing coin, that, once per day, allows the user to flip a coin instead of rolling to get either a natural 20 or natural 1, and a spelling book, which allows a caster to use charges based on a spells level to change one letter of a spell to change its outcome (cone of cold to cone of mold turning the damage type to poison). My issue is that none of my players seem to want to use these items, instead they seem to only be interested in simple +2 weapons and by the book items. In fact, many times they have completely forgotten about an item that I have given them until I remind them they have it, only for them to talk about using it and then decide not to. Am I wrong to want to add a little uniqueness and chaos into our table? Or are my players not appreciating what they have?

Megan Sheehan

To the fabulous judges and the less than fabulous bailiff Jace, I bring to you the case of the Squirrel Roll. My husband has been DMing a Curse of Strahd campaign for some friends and myself for the past year. I play a half-orc ancestral guardian barbarian who grew up in the woods (this is relevant for what I’ll say later). Recently, my character found a blood spear that was whispering to me. It’s a +2 magical spear that allows me 2d6 temporary hit points if I bring a target to 0 hit points with an attack. Needless to say, I was very excited about this super cool (probably cursed) spear and being able to get a little buff if I kill a target. I decided to immediately test it out but we were not in combat at the time. I asked my DM if I could look for any animals in the woods and rolled a survival check. I passed, and found a squirrel and declared that I was hunting with the spear and killed it. I asked if the spear gave me temp hit points on a small creature and he decided that 2d4 was fair since the wording for the spear does say any target. The problem is that my whole party, and husband, think that I’m crazy for murdering little woodland creatures for only 2d4 hit points, when I’m only doing it each morning we wake, I call it my Squirrel Roll. My DM even made some of the creatures I found while hunting to be little kid’s pet rabbits. I want to keep using my very cool magical blood spear, it’s the only magical weapon I have, but I’m feeling worse and worse each time I ask for my “Squirrel Roll” with the incredulous looks and comments from my husband and friends. My DM gave me the spear to begin with! I come to you and ask if I’m in the wrong for hunting with my cursed blood spear to get a small buff or if I should leave the woodland creatures to their own happy lives. I submit myself humbly to your decision.

Jonathan Shock

To the Honorable Justices and the Pitiful Baliff: I present to you the case of the Wizard that Robbed my Existence. My wife and I joined a campaign. She was a Time Wizard, and I was a Rogue. I got very into the world building of the DM and crafted a character with a backstory that tied into many different storylines that the DM was trying to tell. For my wife, the time Wizard, the DM concocted a “Wild Magic” style chart that had different temporal affects when she utilized her time powers. The first time using this chart in a campaign, she rolled a 100 on a d100. The 100 on this chart was that “One person in the room’s parents never met, so they ceased to exist.” The D8 fell to me and my rogue with deep backstory ties to the campaign blinked out of existence because my parents never met and I was forced to make a new character. Should I have been forced to stop existing because of temporal magic? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Yours, The Rogue Who Never Was

Kristina The Sorceress

To the eloquent and effervescent 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 accomplice 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 in-character 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.

ZZ Digital

To your most holy followers of Dice Christ: i have bought my sister a set of pawpaw dice. When they arrived, she rolled the D20 three times, and got 1, 2, and 3 in that order. Is this a sign of dice Christ's disapproval somehow? What pennance must we do?

ann_the_mann

To the honorable justices and the tolerable baliff, I ask you to impart your ruling on the most heinous of crimes- a murder. I'll keep it brief- a few sessions ago, I was playing in a session where my crew and I were trying to save my character's mother from a soul stealer. A friend of mine, playing an aberrant mind sorcerer named Brain, was feeling frustrated that his character's psychic abilities were not useful in a fight against something against with no mind. As such, on his next turn, he said he was going to use his powers on someone they would actually work on, and cast suggestion on my character's NPC mom (who, at this moment was having a panic attack in the corner of the room AND had commoner stats, which was known by the team). He told her "to be useful and join the fight". She didn't meet the save, and our DM rolled her initiative. She, unfortunately, had the next turn, and tried to unarm attack the monster. She, no surprise, missed. The monster's turn was next and we had to watch in horror as it insta killed her with one attack. To make matters worse, it also trapped her soul. This happened months ago and our party still has arguments about who is to blame for my character's mother's untimely murder. Most of the party believe that Brain killed her via suggestion, but he continues to argue that the monster is truly the one at fault since he ended up landing the killing blow. So, judges, I ask you to rule on the following- who bears the guilt for this crime? The monster that laid the killing blow, or the caster that forced an innocent NPC into a battle that she was clearly not meant to be in?

Michael Hughes

Greetings to the honorable justices and quad god bailiff Jake. I come to you as a DM who killed their first player with splash damage. The party was helping to mediate a peace agreement between two cities that were experiencing political tension, due to the secret influence of an Ancient Green Dragon. To keep things brief, the dragon was exposed as the Elven diplomat in charge of the peace talks, and initiative was rolled. The dragon began to flee the scene due after having taken hefty damage, and her secret identity being exposed. As she fled, the party Sorcerer flipped off the dragon, and she turned around, strafing him with her breath weapon before fully leaving. The party Warlock happened to be in the blast radius, and was killed. Was I wrong in killing the Warlock, who didn't antagonize the dragon? I await your judgement. Addendum: Due to a trait of the Dragon's stat block, the Warlock was transformed into a gibbering mouther.

Matt A

To the honorable Court and bailiff Johnson, I humbly present the case of the non-litigious hags. I’m a player in a 5e campaign run by one of my best friends. I play a Warforged Artificer Alchemist whose entire life is dedicated to making better and better potions. During our most recent adventure, we came across a coven of hags who brought us to their home and pressured us into a deal which would help them take over the factory they were stuck in. I wrote out a deal with the following wording: "I propose a deal: in exchange for receiving favorable treatment and trade deals from you in the future, we will take on the task of clearing out the Xorn, retrieving the item, and confronting Timmy. Neither party of this contract may bring harm upon the other party or any of the other party’s allies. Upon successful completion of these tasks, I agree to relinquish control of the factory to you." This was very carefully written so that we would agree to every one of the hags demands without actually giving them anything. The idea was that we were already going to deal with the Xorns, retrieve the item, and confront Timmy, but we wouldn’t give over the item or fight Timmy. The final line was in reference to my character giving over control of the factory, but he was never going to be in charge of it in the first place, meaning he couldn’t give it away. The use of “we” throughout the contract was referring to my warforged and his docent (sentient magic item) When presented with this deal, the hags argued amongst themselves before agreeing to sign it. Afterwards, 2 of the hags left the building and I had a private conversation with the third. After that brief conversation, I exited the room and we were suddenly accosted by the Hags’ servants. When I asked the hag to have her pets stand down, she made a claw attack against me and I claimed that this would break the contract. The dungeon master said that “hags have a grace period where they can choose to not follow a contract they signed.” I didn’t argue and instead just tuned out for the remainder of the combat. When the DM asked for opinions at the end of the game, I did mention that it was kinda BS that the hags could just ignore what they agreed to and that my character would never again deal with any extraplanar creatures, choosing to shoot first and never ask questions. Humble judges, am I in the wrong to have my character carry a prejudice towards all extraplanar creatures now that he has been robbed of a good deal?

Clay W

O righteous Justices, holy keepers of Law and enforcers of divine edict, and Bailiff Hurwitz, Thane of the Crit and most eminent steward to the judges on high, I beseech thee, hear my petition. So… in one of the very first D&D games I played in, before I listened to NaddPod or watched Dimension 20, our party were attempting to sneak someone out of jail who had been wrongly imprisoned. It was session 1, and I was excited to get to do some roleplay. I had weird vibes from the start, as a friend had asked me to join this new campaign with some of his friends, that took place in the same world, as a direct sequel to the campaign they had just finished. So, references to old characters abound, and I felt a little left out. (Although I don’t blame anyone for this, it was still a pretty good time.) In-references and bloody descriptions of edgy backstories aside, my qualm came when our party’s wizard rolled a natural 20 to hit with Shocking Grasp, while hidden behind a guard of aforementioned jail. The DM described how the damage against this poor commoner guard was so effective that his head exploded, and alerted the rest of the guards to our presence. Now, this led to a chase sequence I suspect had been the DM’s plan, and I’m really not one set on derailing the DM’s plans, especially on the first session. However, my grievance can be stated thusly: I believe now, that a critical success or failure on the die represents the degree of success or failure the character has with their intended action. In this case, the intent was to be sneaky, so blowing a guy’s head off seems more like a failure, if you ask me. Let it not be said that any involved party ought receive harsh punishment, but perhaps a slap on the wrist is in order.

SparkyB

To the Dodeca-Deacons of Dice Christ I ask for absolution of an accidental TPK. On weeks when our full party can't play, I run a monster of the week encounter where the PC's play 13th level versions of their normally level 6 characters. Everything resets after each encounter so my players can play test different spells, feats, and abilities; and I (a new DM) can practice encounter balancing, lair, and legendary actions. During such a recent encounter I had 2 PC’s against 1 Storm Giant Quintessent, and near the very end with the PC’s and giant low (single digits) on HP, I intentionally held the giant at 1 HP so that my newest player could have the satisfaction of killing it next round. They proceeded to miss all their attacks, and the giant crit on a multi-attack killing both PC’s. Everyone had a great time and loved the fight, but I didn’t tell my friends about the added HP. Can I possibly be forgiven?

Laura Balan

May it please the court, the honorable judges, and my favorite bailiff, (yes even more favorite than the one from Judge Judy): I was playing in my first ever campaign with a group of people I met online. We had been playing for months every week on Saturdays for sessions that could go up to 10 hours. In December, there was a real shift in the game. The wild magic barbarian got really angry with the characters in our party. She spent half of the end of our special Christmas session (when we were supposed to exchange gifts and attend a party) screaming at us and telling our characters that we were all bad people. The problem is, this attitude continued every session until March. She would constantly berate the party for things like accepting potions from “needy” NPCs instead of giving them our gold, not talking to town leaders before leaving, and even checking on the child NPC who was traveling with us, telling us to “leave her alone”. She would scream at us until she was at the point of tears. It got so bad that her character abandoned the party and she left the discord. The rest of the party talked at length outside of session about how uncomfortable we were and how it wasn’t fun to play. However, she was the DM’s girlfriend, so none of us felt like we could say anything to the DM since he didn’t seem to have a problem with it as it continued for literal months, and he even praised her for not “metagaming” and “doing what her character would do”. My question is, isn’t there some level of metagaming that has to be involved in playing D&D in order to get along with other PCs? Or am I just a new player and this behavior is normal? I await your judgment in this case.

csolo

To the honorable clergy and their church-baliff (?) Jake, I have to confess my sins. During a weekly game of pathfinder 2e playing The Abomination Vaults pre-written adventure, our party entered into a fight with several of us already injured. My halfling wizard was barely standing at Wounded 2 (out of 3) and just a few HP, but the fight was nearly over. I moved into melee to finish it, but triggered a trap along the way. The trap got a 27 to hit against my wizard's AC of 17, making it a crit. In Pathfinder, get downed by a crit makes you start at Dying 2 rather than Dying 1. With the addition of my Wounded condition, my character started at Dying 4 and died instantly. As I gleefully began making a new character (my favorite part of character death), I noticed something - my wizard had a feat that added to their AC against traps I triggered. It wouldn't have crit in that case (Success by +8 instead of +10) and my character would've likely lived, but by the time I noticed this, we had had a funeral and everything, and I had figured out a fun new character concept I was looking forward to playing. I confess that I kept my original character's survival a secret for the sake of a new one. I seek forgiveness from Dice Christ for this omission of the truth, and pray that this shroud of dishonesty surrounding them does not affect my new character.

KennyH

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

GaiusOrpheus

(My username is pronounced GUY-us OR-fee-us) Bless me Dice Christ for I have sinned. I prostrate myself before the church with the sin of overeagerness and underpreparedness. In my zealous desire to run a 1 man campaign inspired by Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild for my nephew, I did not properly plan out my encounters. My nephew was enjoying the story and seemed quite enthusiastic at first, after completing the starting area across two sessions, the boy seemed beat. He claimed he enjoyed himself but in out attempts to plan a third session, he has been hesitant to commit. I ask for judgement from you, oh holy rollers, did I ruin my nephews first experience with D&D? (Possible needed context: the kid is 12. Hes a huge fan of Breath of The Wild and Tears of The Kingdom. To account for it being a single player, he's beefed up with some customized cantrips as a Ranger so that he doesn't have to worry about spell slots)

jerpent the serpent

Greetings to the most holy crit justices, and to Jake, a little lad of a bailiff who deserves the utmost respect. I come to confess my sins to Dice Christ regarding my most foul assassination of my party. Years ago I played in a Pathfinder 1E game with friends running the Kingmaker adventure path, a story all about running a nascent kingdom. We decided to all play evil characters, but every player took that as "Im in it for me" and most sessions after the founding of the kingdom devolved into multi hour arguments, most egregious of which when we had to ask our Druid to play a different character because he played a violent anarchist druid staunchly against civilization in a game about running a civilization. This came to a head one session at which point I reached out to the DM, my coworker, and orchestrated a full assassination of my entire party, out of game. I faked my death, having the kobolds I had made alliances with burn a body in my bed that matched my build, and then proceeded to use my other connections (I was the one who ended up handling most of the kingdom building) to orchestrate the murder of each other player, all while acting as shocked as them. Once it was all said and done, I stood up, shook the DM's hand, and went home. The party was temporarily mad, but we restarted the campaign with better aligned characters and it turned into a several year story that was quite fun, but I recognize I did the party dirty in that moment, I just could not take the 3 hour arguments anymore. I throw myself humbly upon your judgement.

Emil

May it please the court and also Jake. I bring you the case of the recast wizard. I've DMed a weekly game for a year, and one of my players, our wizard, had to leave the country for work for a few months. Fortunately, his girlfriend, who never played but would often sit in, was willing to play his character while he was gone so I wouldn't have to write him out. He is coming back next week and is excited to play again, and his girlfriend had enough fun that she intends to roll a new character and keep playing. The problem is, I don't want her to stop playing the wizard. Your Honors, she is better in every way than my friend. She understands the mechanics better, her role-playing is sterling, and she is more engaged in the lore. The wizard is an amazing character in her hands. Before, he was fine. She has brought the wizard to life in a way he never has or frankly could. How can I politely ask that my friend allow her to keep the wizard and roll a new character for himself? Is this a reasonable request, or am I a monster for wanting to Henry Cavill my own friend?

Stephy R.

To the honorable justices Axford, Tanner and Murphy and the lowly but lovely balif I present to you the case of the stolen dragon battle. I play a multi-classed barbarian/warlock in a campaign with two other people. One of which is a paladin who plays in the mode of “I will do whatever I want in this game, even if it fucks over my team”. A previous example of this was that he poisoned an entire town of people because they worshipped a different god, killing off the NPC we needed information from and consequently destroying a book we needed to continue our quest. We don’t get to play very often, so I try to ignore his chaotic behavior and enjoy the game. At our most recent session our DM gave us a heads up that there would be a big battle and that we would be leveling up afterwards. We fought our way through a mountain of minor monsters and made it to the top of a tower. Our mission was to collect an orb, remove it from the tower and destroy it (which would also destroy the tower). Upon entering the room, we are met with an ice dragon. This would have been the first dragon we have fought in this campaign, so I was excitedly planning my moves, and organizing my spell cards. Unfortunately, our paladin rolled a nat 20 on initiative and decided to misty step past the dragon, smash the orb, which collapsed the tower with us all inside. We each took 8 d6 of falling damage (probably should have been more, but our DM felt sorry us), with our ranger almost perma-dying. Our DM was shocked and didn’t know how to handle the rest of the session. He decided to allow us to level up, despite not getting to actually gain the experience via a badass dragon battle. I felt really bad for our DM who doesn’t have much time to prepare sessions and had put a lot of effort into planning for the dragon battle. The paladin justified his decision by saying the objective was the destroy the orb, not fight the dragon, and as a lawful good paladin the objective always comes first. Am I wrong for feeling annoyed at our paladin for making us miss out on a really cool battle and almost killing us all? Side note, are we going to be cursed by dice Christ for leveling up without earning it? I humbly await your decision and leave my newly acquired spell slots at your mercy.

Gabriela Sofia

Dearest esteemed judges Axford, Murphy, and Tanner (and guests if applicable) and the other guy, I am a player in a game that our group agreed would have heavy emphasis on role play, building interesting characters and relationships. Recently our DM lead us into battle with some shadow creatures that were sensitive to light, and required a magic weapon to attack. When we asked her how we were supposed to fight them since only one of us had a magic weapon she said there were candles around the room and fireplaces. We proceeded to use the candles as improvised weapons and hurled them at the creatures. She kept saying we should try other things but everything else we tried didn’t work, she didn’t give us any clues at all besides that there were fireplaces we were seriously struggling to understand what we were supposed to do. In total the battle lasted 5 hours! On top of that we were down a player because he had literally fallen asleep (we play remotely). By the time we were done it was 1 am, and our favorite NPC/ town sweetheart had been brutally killed by a creature because we weren’t able to “cover the window in time” despite our efforts and being down one player. I ask you justices, was withholding information from us about how our DM wanted us to face this battle fair? In addition was it fair that once our third party member fell asleep that two of us still had to fight this horde on our own, and then we were punished for not doing enough between the two of us? I humbly await your eloquent and thoughtful judgment.

Gabagooblin

Forgive me, your holy honors, for I have sinned. My sin is one of stupidity. I have played a half-orc dream druid/divination wizard for the past six months or so, and just as Peter thrice betrayed Jesus, I have betrayed my party three times. On three occasions, I wildshaped into something inconspicuous to do recon since we don't have a rogue. All three times, either through triggering a trap or failing a stealth check, I lost my 1 HP animal form and was exposed. The most recent time, I reverted to normal form right on top of the BBEG while the others were off in another part of the building, and my clericless party had to expend our limited healing resources after I narrowly escaped being one shot KO'd. My sin? Forgetting every single time that, as a half-orc, I have Relentless Endurance and could have stayed at 1 HP and thus clung to my wildshape. I prostrate myself before the altar of Dice Christ and beg your forgiveness for the harm my goldfish-like memory has caused my party 🙏🏻

Polyphemess

To the Effervescent Justices and the dream-walker Bailiff, I present the case of Social Spells. A few years ago I was running a game for some friends, the party was attempting to break into a hotel, and due to some failed stealth checks, attracted the attention of the bullywug front desk attendant. At hearing his approach , two party members went to hide whilst the other two stayed and tried to frighten him off. After failing to intimidate him through self-immolation (again bad rolls) one of the hidden PCs tried to cast Charm Person on the hopping hotelier. I succeed on the wisdom save, and began narrating as the froggy frontman turned to face the spellcaster. That's when my player protested, claiming, "He shouldn't know where I am just because I cast a spell on him. It was a social spell and the whole point of social spells is they can't tell they were cast." I denied this claim and after quite a bit of arguing, refunded the spellslot and set the clock back to before the spell was cast, informing everyone that from there on out people would know if you used magic on them unless subtle spell was used or it specifically said otherwise in the spell description. When I asked if this was okay with everyone the player who cast the spell responded with, "Okay man." And the game continued sadly for the short remainder of the night. I ask you oh court of the crit, was I in the wrong for demanding my player face the amphibion they tried to charm, or is it true that "social spells" are completely undetectable, regardless of save results, until the spell effects end. I will submit to whatever sentencing the court decides.

Kal and her cats Portland, Star, and Berlin

I present the case of Aaracockras v Murph To the Crit, its subjects, and all in attendance. Throughout the tenure of this court, we have heard a multitude of cases against our feathered friends, that have painted these bird folk and “nonsensical shenanigan starters” I bring forth the argument, that the idea of flight at first level being “broken” is ludacris (not the rapper). What of a heron healer avoiding opportunity attacks to aid their allies? And have we forgotten that while they can fly up to their movement speed vertically, they can still be hit via reach or ranged weapons? If a dm cannot work around a character who can fly, then they are lacking in creativity. Of course, if you drop any character into a different campaign, they won’t mesh as well, but the idea that it’s simply impossible to play with a passerine pc is a farce. It is a poor craftsman who blames their tools, and I feel that the cases and complaints that have been heard in this court against aaraokras proves this statement. Aarakokras provide a unique and fun challenge for DMs and just because a few bad apples have gravitated towards that race, does not mean the tree is rotten. I would like to see the attitude of this court shift to allow for nuance and compassion when hearing cases for aarakokra. I feel so passionately about this that I forgot to insult Jake. Insert insult here. PS, I actually DMd a campaign with a cleric aaracockra and he was the most buttoned up of the bunch.

Carson Medlin

To the supreme crit justices and. I present the case of the befuddling Bane N’ ‘Brew. I play in a campaign with my brother and a few friends, and I had requested a special cape/mask item as I was playing a rogue for the first time and wanted to become a folk tale in the desert for seemingly shrinking into the shadows, and instead of a plus to my already high stealth, I was given a cape that allows me to automatically succeed a stealth check to hide as a bonus action, once per short rest. The issue lies in combat, where after finally using my pact spell Bane on enemies, and making him fail a handful of rolls with the -1d4 (yay me), he was visibly angry! So, following my turn where I had used my cape to hide at the end of my turn, he sent an enemy soldier to attack my location because “if I saw someone hide in smoke I’d assume they’re still there” which is fair! But after missing not once, twice, or a third time; he swung into this smoke for a 4th time hitting my character and breaking my bane spell and further disheartening me from using said spell in combat. I know that the hide action does not make you invisible, but justices I have to ask, is it fair for a person to swing blindly into smoke to try to hit someone they don’t know is there? Or am I unjustly upset for a bit of balancing on the field! PS there was an ally within 5 feet of both of us and they didn’t swing on them once I humbly await your justice

Gian Bazail

To the effervescent justices of the court and the guy who they let stick around because they feel just a bit sorry for him, I bring you the case of the "Choose-your-own-item shop" I've been playing in a weekly in-person campaign for the last year or so. For the most part, we all met each other through this campaign, with the exception of my best friend who I brought in. The whole thing has been going pretty good so far, except for one thorn that has continually stuck at my side: the act of buying things from shops. My general expectation when entering a shop in a DnD game is you approach the shopkeeper to ask what they have in stock, and the DM then offers things that may or may not interest your character. That is not how it goes in this campaign at all. I'll pose an example, and as a side-note I'll add that the other three PCs are slight power-gamers. We all enter a magic item shop and our custom lineage paladin immediately walks up and starts asking for very specific items, like a pearl of power, or adamantine armor. They all begin doing that, requesting very specific items that benefit their specific builds. This shopkeeper conveniently seems to have anything that they're looking for. Then my artificer friend goes to one of the nearby shelves and asks "what do I see," with the DM replying "what are you looking for?" My friends reiterates "I don't know what I'm looking for, what do I see," and the DM replies with "I can't tell you what you see if you don't tell me what you're looking for." Despite my friend and I being experienced players, we've never actually gotten past level 6 in a campaign before, so we don't have that much knowledge about higher level magic items and what might benefit our builds. This leads to us needing to search up "Best magic items for artificer/bard" and just asking for those. It honestly feels rather inauthetic and immersion-breaking to walk up to a shopkeeper and ask if they have a Ring of Spell-storing, an item which I feel my bard has no business knowing of. What do you all think, am I making a big deal out of nothing or should I raise my concerns to the DM to stop this magic item madness. I leave the ball in your court, literally.

Marcos, PhD...Eventually

Your Honors, and Not Amir, I beseech the court on behalf of my party - we are playing ghosts of saltmarsh and there was an elder vampire trapped in the basement underneath our crab shack hovels (circle of protection bound him). We entrusted an npc whose life we saved with care and feeding of our pets and animal friends, with explicit instructions not to enter the basement while we were off on adventures. Dumb NPC, decided Vampire NPC was bored / sad and would love a game of cards. While we were away, Dumb NPC entered the basement and was brutally slaughtered, used to break the circle (blood and viscera) and facilitate the vampire's escape. Did our DM betray our faith in a sad, dumb village idiot? Did we fail to take the vampire threat seriously? Now, we've got a ghost paladin who insists we stop our piracy to track down a vampire and help him cross over - is the DM mad we may have taunted the vampire instead of engaging on our first meeting? Are we the assholes and deserve this? I mean, probably, but still...

Liam Miller

To the honorable judges and the large and in charge bailiff Jog. I put before you a case of miscalculated homebrew and a randomized instant death ray. As a forever DM, Ive been fortunate to join a campaign, as a player, with some relatively new players and a first time DM. We’ve played two sessions, and I fear that the new DMs desire to homebrew rules has made the game somewhat erratic. During the first session I was surprised to find out that we would be regaining all spell slots and abilities after every encounter, as the DM said that having limited spell options, “doesn’t make any sense” to him. I was puzzled by this choice, as I was a warlock in a party of four rogues and a cleric. Was that not the warlocks main advantage? These issues were intensified when we entered our first combat. To be honest, I really don’t know what we fought. Some sort of avatar of a god of chaos whos armor bled and shot purple crystals at us. The fight began and the monster proceeded to only target my character, so I ran away the whole time, in hopes I could kite it towards the others. The fight dragged on, with our cleric and I dealing most of the damage to the monster. In a last ditch effort my character shot two eldritch blasts, killing the monster. Our DM then began rolling sets of d20s and circling squares on the battlemap. He said he created an ability that would appear randomly and any creature that the beam appeared on top of would die instantly! Unfortunately the only character who was killed was the DM’s partners tabaxi, who upon dying said “i wasnt ready for my character to die!” I looked to my left at their notes with sketches of a beautiful lynx tabaxi. I stared at the DM with a “bro you dont need to do this” face. I saw panic in his eyes. After that the tabaxi randomly resurrected and began attacking only me again. The fight was resolved by my character pleading to a god to teleport away. I ask that judges provide a ruling or advice, Did this new DM go too far in altering the game with homebrew? How should I bring up how erratic these changes can seem? I think I and few other players feel like events are happening that we have little control over because theres no rules basis for the homebrew design. Thanks and much love.

Kaitlyn S

To the Honorable and indomitable Justices and the Little Log Bailiff Jake. I bring you the case of the “Challenging” BBEG Battle. My party was in our final battle of a year and a half long campaign in which we traveled into the weave to bring down an evil wizard attempting to take over the world. The DM had been hyping up how crazy this fight was gonna be FOR MONTHS.The first half of the fight was fun and interesting and we were having a great time. Then the BBEG hit their final form….and only did 3 things every single turn. 1) cast blade ward around himself 2) created a psychic storm and 3) used their “mythic” action (aka 3 legendary actions in 1) The first 2 spells were annoying but easy enough to handle by gritting your teeth and baring the damage or using dispel magic. The mythic action however, was so egregious I had to seek the counsel of this court. The BBEG would target a creature and do massive damage if the creature failed a wisdom save (totally fine) then a shock wave went out from that creature and everyone within 30 feet had to make a Wisdom save DC 25. If they failed they had to give up a spell slot of 3rd level or higher or be stunned until their next turn. And he did this EVERY SINGLE ROUND. This would have been fine if 4 out of the 7 PCs had not been fully martial builds with no spell slots to offer up. They all failed 2 or 3 times and 2 of the PCs could only hit the DC if they rolled a nat 20 and ended up spending the last 5 rounds of combat stunned and out of the fight. After the session our DM asked us how we felt about the session and we did raise our frustration at the stun condition that left our martial friends out of the fight and how repetitive the combat was. His response was that “he wanted this encounter to be challenging”. We informed him that we were all for challenging encounters, but when several of our teammates were out of luck for an entire stage of the fight and the BBEG only did 3 things it wasn’t very fun. Justices I ask you, was our DM justified in his argument that this was a challenging encounter? Or were us players correct in our belief that challenging encounters should be fun and interesting for everyone? Any suggestions on what our DM could do for challenging encounters in the future without rendering multiple characters inactive for rounds on end? I lay myself at your mercy

Amarpal

To the hangry justices tanner, Axford and Murphy and to the just plain angry bailiff Jerk. I bring you the case or Goblin Turned Good. I was running my first session for a bunch of new players. They were attacked at night by a host of goblins. I thought it would be a balanced encounter but the goblins dealt a lot of damage. At the end of the battle the parties bested the goblins and decided to kill their leader, taking his arm off in the process. I thought it would be funny if I then revealed that the goblin was a Robin Hood type figure who stole money to donate to a local orphanage. My players became enraged that I allowed them to cut off the arm of a good goblin. So I ask you, was I wrong to switch the goblins alignment for a bit or are my players just not whimsical enough? I leave the case at your hungry feet.

ZZ Digital

If it pleases the court: we play a written campaign over discord. Allegedly, one of the perks is that it allows side missions to happen very casually. However the DM realized she was very bad at keeping up to date on sidequests if it wasn't the actual session time. So once, when our party was between big missions, she devoted 2 sessions to catching up on side quests. The first session i sat, and waited the entire time for any of mine to update. Afterwards I asked why she didnt work on mine at all and she responded "the other players were more invested in their quests." This was not a great answer for me, but i requested that for the second night please work on mine, or just let me know she wont, and I'll just skip the session and come back for the next main one. She promised she would work on mine, and when session 2 came around my sidequest was the first updated! And then i sat and watched the entire rest of the session as she worked on everyone elses. Am I wrong to be bitter? I know I'm not very good at roleplaying, but i do enjoy trying.

Drew L

To the effervescent priests of Dice Christ (and that acolyte guy who's alright I guess), I proclaim to you my Holy War against the infidels of Dice Christ. Once Upon a Time, I was playing a one shot with my friend who was DMing for the first time. There were 3 veteran players, and we had invited 2 guys who had never played D&D so that we could share the wonders of Dice Christ and his awesomeness to these wayward souls, but we soon regretted it. These 2 guys conspired to not only derail the one-shot as much as possible, but they also actively began to perform blatantly evil deeds in-game out of nowhere such as killing the NPC we had just spent the first 2 hours of playtime rescuing. I also noticed one of them fudging his role so he could pass his check for trying to stealthily kill the NPC. Instead of calling it to everyone's attention, I had my Paladin character discover the treachery in-game, and the session devolved into arguing and PC infighting, much to the dismay of my DM friend. In order to smite these evildoers (both in game and in real life), I myself gave into temptation to fudge my roll so that my Paladin would pass on his attack roll. Because of that choice, my Paladin divinely smote their asses, and the evening ended with everyone being pissed off at one another. I regret nothing. I chose this path out of Love for the Game, and I await for Dice Christ's absolution or execution, whichever verdict his holy priests decide.

John Dean

To the wonderful Court Justices and their side piece Jack, I bring you the case of Strahd vs the Sentient Pudding. A few years ago, I was running Curse of Strahd for some friends. One of whom, was playing the Ooze race which he flavored as being sentient Tapioca. At some point during the campaign, he figured out that he needed to move house to a town about 30 minutes away. He also decided he no longer was going to play and he was going to try to end the campaign. He did not tell us this, however. When Strahd invited the party to dinner, everyone else agreed to dress up and bring some food to really get immersed in the dinner. The party was level five at this point. Tapioca’s player showed in dressed as “a hobo” (his words) because it’s what his character would do (none of the other characters would have had dress clothes either). He did have dress clothes available, he just didn’t want to wear them. After the dinner, Tapioca found Strahd’s crystal heart and tried to destroy it, to which Strahd came to defend it. I decided to have Strahd act more annoyed rather than just killing the character outright, but the player would not relent. Everyone else in the party left the castle which left Tapioca’s alone and throwing a fit that no one came to help him. My question for the wonderful justices is this: Should I have just let Tapioca die? Or was I right to spare him?

TheLonelyKidd

To the Jurisdictive and Jealous judges and the Beautiful, bountiful Bailiff Janice: I present my case of the corrupted spells. Currently, I am a player in a curse of strahd game. I play a purple skinned, green haired, eladrin twizard (twin wizard) as a sibling to another player of the game, although this fact in itself is not related to the point of issue. The flavour of my wizard is that poems and a poetry notebook are the source of her magic, with of course a feywild twist. Her magic presents as words pulled from her pages and slapped/thrown/projected into magic, often of wondrous colours. We are 8 sessions in, and throughout, as people have casted magic, our DM has described the magic taking on an unusual dark and bleak colour (due to the magic that permeates barovia and the region). Now, for the most part this hasn't been an issue. Sometimes the words swap from lively and cheerful to about death and decay, or the colours might fade to grey/black. This normally hasn't bothered me, but the most recent session has left me frustrated! I spent 2 sessions gathering supplies and materials to transcribe find familiar, and finally gathered the incense to cast the spell. I described the hour and a bit long ritual, the magical words used to open a feywild portal and summon my colourful and beautiful parakeet companion, only for the DM to describe as it suddenly grayed and darkened, as if it had been submerged in oil, also affected by the curse of barovia. I was heartbroken! My sweet colourful bird was now a gray soaked mess, and to make matters worse the token he used to represent it is an I credibly sad looking, thin gray bird. Judges, was I wronged, having my colourful friend taken from me? Or is my DM justified in strahdifying even my most trusted little friend. I await your just and true punishment.

Zacharythefish

To the Jazzylicious Justices and the Beat Boxing Baliff Juke, I present the case of the Tattling spectator and the sneaky DM. May it please the court. My brother was DMing a 5e campaign for some of his friends. During which he thought that they were taking out his monsters too fast so he increased their health. One of his friends who was not playing at the time was standing behind him told the players that he was cheating. My family reached out to me to adjudicate, hoping I would back up my brother. However there is only one court in the land who can cast judgement.

Toast Master General

Title: The Case of the “15-Minute TPK” To the Courtly Scholars and Jayliff Bad-Bake, I present to you the case of the “15-Minute TPK.” On a snowy Saturday night in the Midwest, my friends and I gathered for session one of our new campaign, “Curse of Strahd.” Enter Dave, a halfling amnesiac whatever-the-fuck (I don't remember his class didn’t matter because we didn’t live long enough for it to matter). During our introductions, the Aarakocra Bard mentioned a map from his mentor with potential gold. Before he could finish, Dave lunged for it, claiming he needed it since he didn’t know anything else. This led to a tense interaction until Dave, seemingly out of real-world frustration, attacked the Bard, knocking him down in one hit. The Bard, still laughing, rolled a nat 1 on his death save and failed his second one, dying 10 minutes into the game. The rest of the party was thrown into the raptor pits and promptly eaten, all to the sounds of Dave exclaiming, “It’s what my character would have done; he literally didn’t know any better.” So, Justices, I ask you: Is pleading amnesia a justifiable reason for stabbing a party member in cold blood LESS THAN 15 MINUTES INTO THE GAME?! I await your judgment.

Lia

To the formidable judges of this high-octane explosive brawl and the silver baliff who screams "WITNESS ME" before leaping from his scooter. I bring you the case of Drowning Pool: The Mimic Door. In a recent campaign that has since been put on hiatus, I was playing a Thri-Kreen order of the scribes wizard/ cleric of knowledge domain. A well versed seeker of knowledge through any means and had incredible fascination with discovery. During this campaign, my DM got me good with a seemingly unsuspecting door that turned to be a vicious mimic and latched hold of my arm with the tattoo spell focus (which could move across her skin and be "wielded" in the arm it covered). It was during this time that I wanted to cast create or destroy water in an attempt to free her by forcing the mimic to let go and avoid taking 10 gallons of water. It was at this time that we had a lively discussion about if mimics breath let alone if 10 gallons of water would affect it. The ruling was that we skipped since there wasn't a clear answer, but I was in the idea that it was a clever response. I wasn't able to make the next session and learned that she had lost one of her four arms, and before we were able to continue the campaign we had to disband due to life circumstances. Judges, I ask for a ruling on how or if this might have worked, or if this was an incredible reach for the spell. I await your ruling or punishment as I drive 90 miles behind your judges table RV across this desert plain. (PS if any members are listening to this podcast I hope y'all are finding yourselves well, it was a lot of fun)

Sean

May it please the court and the ever changing cabana boy jack-jack. So this was years ago when 3.5 was relatively new. I was a new-ish DM. Session 1 they were meeting the head bishop of the dominate religion in a major city. In reality the bishop was a balrog that used the "holy symbol" as a powerful ward to bypass the churches defenses. This wan't supposed to come up until later but was important for the setting. The idea was that both sides had infiltrated each other and there was going to be a "trust no one" reveal about half way through. Now one player built a character specifically around being a great pickpocket, fair enough I maybe made some rulings that were too permissive. Anyway the first session was supposed to be them meeting the "bishop" and then going on missions for a lesser legit priest. Kinda like meeting the big boss on the first day of work. My player decides to take the holy symbol. After me asking several times "are you sure you want to rob a head bishop in his own church" he said yeah. So we both roll in front of the table, He gets a 20 I get a 1... Anyway as soon as they get a bit away from the bishop his cover is blown, There's a balrog in a church now. Alarms are going off people are going crazy, these players (I think they were level 3 or something) decide to stay and fight, of course one of them gets their head pulled straight off. I had a solar swoop in and save them revive the player, put them in an underground hiding place and was going to shift it to a "hiding from everyone and get the McMuffin to mt doom" type of thing but they said I sucked for killing the player, some said I sucked for revving the player. Anyway it's more than 20 years later and I still get razzed from time to time. Whatchya think?

ketchup packet

To the precog justices and the milky, milky Bailiff, I submit the case of the inconsistent identify. I’m in a 4 year campaign with a group of friends I’ve known for 8 years. I play a divination wizard with a love for new knowledge. However, when I use the identify spell, he asks for a check to detect a curse, or doesn’t give all the details, ie random effect tables. This led to Bahamut betraying the party at lvl 5. Next arc, when I identified a helmet which the dm knew matched the vision I had for my character at higher levels, my pc was cursed by identifying it for a full month, allowing our enemies to possess my pc at any time, and barred from speaking about the possession. This was used to let a major villain get away. Months later, I got another item that fit my character vision. When I asked the dm if this would curse me for identifying it. He said it only happened one time, then when I argued that it set a precedent, he went off saying I argue too much (to be fair I did protest the previous instances, and tend to rule lawyer in accordance to written rules, taking into account his house rules) and muted me. Was I wronged, or should I have tempered my expectations for the wizards staple spell?

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.

Noah Kyle

To the magnificent justices and the balif, I present to you all the case of the Russian Crick Elves. For an in between mini game I decided to run Bahumia for my group until our main DM was ready to run the next real campaign. Everyone was stoked. One player in particular was very interested in being a Crick Elf. She said she wanted to be the daughter of a ranger guard; no problem, I can homebrew them in. She said she wanted to be half orc, half elf; no sweat, we can make a custom race. She said she wanted to have a Russian accent. At this I balked hard. I told her if she wanted a Russian accent she had to be from the Frigid North, people from the Crick have Southern accents. After a fair bit of back and forth she relented and said she’d do a Southern accent, which she was ungodly terrible at. I felt ok about this for a while but thinking back I feel like she talked very little during the game and I’m thinking maybe it’s because I made her do the accent. Justices, should I have thrown the regional dialect out the window for this player or should she have had more hospitality?

Sam Gherrity

To the esteemed justices and the questionable baeliff Jonk, I present to you today the case of the Flirtatiously-Foiled Rogue. I DM a pirate-themed campaign that features six brothers who travel the realm looking for gold to pay off their father’s debts. One of these brothers is Zilbern, a handsome and high-Charisma rogue who spends as much time as he can flirting with every female NPC he meets. While this campaign isn’t really about romance, I didn’t originally take issue with this, as this behavior does sort of fit into the pirate fantasy. To not let the flirting take up too much time at the table, I allowed some brief roleplaying to happen each session while the five other players watched, then moved on. I would only ask for a persuasion roll if I felt Zilbern’s flirtation had a real chance of succeeding, but Zilbern’s player often would fumble the conversation enough that I felt a roll was unnecessary. I thought this was all going fine, but now the player of Zilbern has begun complaining after every session that his attempts at romance have been rebuffed by every woman he talks to. He says that surely some of these attempts should have succeeded, as he is a dashing half-elf, and should at least get a roll or two to see if the NPC would go back to his room at the inn. He is now asserting to the other players that as the “god” of this world, I am foiling his perfectly reasonable attempts at romance and turning the NPCs against him. Last session, he actually completely ignored a new NPC the party met, claiming that “with this DM running things, she’s a waste of my time”. I feel a little bad. I like to think of myself as a generous DM who gives my players what they want, be it a magic sword, a puzzle, or an interesting NPC companion. If my player wants an NPC who will potentially do the deed with them, should I… indulge them? I seek your omniscient guidance on what to do next.

Charles

To the venerated Justices Axford, Murphey, and Tanner, I present to you the case of the… oh hi Jake… the case of the Disadvantaged Disguise. To set the scene: the party was deep within an ancient ruin, tasked with negotiating a truce with a tribe of orcs for a nearby village. We were discussing strategy when our halfling bard, Belmo Tushytickle, decided to pull a Caldwell and – by himself - started operation “Cousin Lad.” He cast ‘disguise self’ to look like an Orc and just walked up to the tribe claiming to be their long-lost cousin returning home. Our DM made him role a deception check with disadvantage because 1. it was crazy and 2. Orcs are about 7 feet tall, halflings are like 3, and ‘disguise self’ only adds about a foot to your appearance. Long story short: Belmo failed, the Orcs attacked, the party defended, and an all-out war started between the Orcs and the village. To this day Belmo insists that he shouldn’t have been given disadvantage because the Orcs should have rolled an intelligence check first to see if he was disguised. We posit this question for your ruling, who wrong: Belmo or DM? Thanks

Jake P

To the illustrious, lusty justices and their Tucker-fluffing bailiff, I present the case of the UNSTOPPABLE GAMER. I've been DM'ing a campaign that's been running for nearly two years without any issues whatsoever. The problem comes up outside of our sessions. You see, most of my party consists of avid gamers, and we'll often (video)game hardcore with each other when not playing DnD. One day, while playing Counter-Strike, a game that requires lots of concentration and communication, we noticed that our friend who controls the party monk was strangely silent. We asked him why, and he said it was because he was currently on another call, playing in another online DnD game he's a part of. As a DM myself, I asked if his DM was cool with that, and he basically said, "It's fine, we're in a combat-heavy portion of the campaign. My combat turns are simple, I just make my attacks and then it moves on, no problem." This has since happened multiple times, but I have no indication that this player is doing any illicit gaming during my own sessions: he's always very engaged with my homebrew universe and is an important member of the party. Justices, I realize I may have no standing here as this does not directly affect my game, but I'm tortured by the idea that one of my players is potentially disrespecting another Dungeon Daddy. Do I have a duty to tell this player off? Do I just let it go because it seems like his explanation is reasonable? Do I have to convert to Dice Christism? I humbly request your guidance. P.S. The player in question is a NADDPOD fan, so he'll hear the judgment himself if one is rendered. I would be forever indebted to the court if it razzed him a bit.

Kal and her cats Portland, Star, and Berlin

I love how we all clearly have cases pre-typed on our notes apps and just copy and paste them when this notification comes through🤣 there’s no other reasonable explanation for over 100 cases in less than 30 minutes, unless every single person just has something that comes to mind and immediately types a coherent case out of it - obsessed with naddpoles🩵🤙

Fuzzboxx

Hello my Honorable Judges and the nubile Bailiff Jack I present the case of the deadbeat Dad My cousin joined my already running campaign and his character's goal was to rescue his kidnapped 6 year old son. In real life he is an incredible father. I had the fun idea of making the boy vital to the main plot of the campaign and meant to travel with them as a fun jokey companion (which they always love). He however never brought his missing son up to the rest of the party. After about 6 months and 25 sessions it finally got brought up. Everyone in the party was obviously shocked that he never mentioned it. He said there was more pressing things to do. There were not. After another 6 months they finally beat the person capturing the son and he was free. My cousins first reaction was to get rid of the kid immediately, he wanted to put him in an orphanage, a school for magic, even a brothel?? The party was obviously shocked by his deadbeat dad behavior. Am I wrong for having made the 6 year old boy a major part of the campaign expecting my cousin to be all for it or should I have waited to find out what kind of relationship with the boy my cousin wanted to have?

Jacob B.

Whats going on Justices and Bailiff who has to change their name because we both showed up with the same name. I present the case of Kevin the feral cat. In my 18th level home game we were having an "anything goes" rp session since a few folks were missing. I asked the DM if I could bring Kevin, the feral cat npc I adopted weeks earlier, to the vet. To me, it seemed like a silly little way to get my character into some trouble because it just always seems to follow him anyway. To my surprise, my party began arguing about how we would arrive at the afformentioned vet as it was a few days travel away. Since we're 18th level, there was myriad of options for us to choose from, I opted to take a pegasus to the vet but I was essentially overruled by the wizard who attempted to teleport me while I was leaving. The resulting roll ended up teleporting my character into the neighborhing woods, covered in the viscera of my cat who was the victim of a mishap in the spell casting resulting in my cat being gibbed and myself taking a bunch of damage aswell since the wizard had never been to the town before. Im sad cause my cat was murdered. Im kind of bitter about it too, its probably justified. Should I get some sweet revenge or perhaps just be happy we could reincarnate the cat in the end anyway?

CC

To the Apostles of Dice Christ and to the blasphemous blasphemer that calls himself Jake Hurwitz, I have a confession. I have been making my way through the Eldermourne campaign, and as a member of Bills Mafia, imagine my delight to hear about tight Josh Allen spirals and the plugging of "Go Bills!" at the end of episodes. But then, imagine my faith in Naddpod being rent asunder when our very own Jake Hurwitz not only suggested, but ENCOURAGED ranch as an acceptable condiment to chicken wings. I confess that hatred has consumed my heart and soul and I don't know how to go on living like this. Apostles of Dice Christ, should I find a way to forgive Jake even though he knows not what he does? Or am I righteous in my fury and should Jake continue his penance for his blasphemous crimes against Bills Mafia everywhere?

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 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 and 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.

Troy Scantamburlo

To the Honorable Supreme Crit Justices, and (depending on how we’re treating the Bailiff) Bailiff Jake/ What’s-his-face. I bring to you the case of the Harengon cavalier, his Tortle mount, and the constantly whomped DM. I’m part of a group of friends who have been getting together for weekly shenanigans for years now where pretty much everyone has had a turn DMing something. Some full year plus long campaigns, and some one shots. Our friend Kevin decided he wanted to finally learn how to DM and was gonna run a Dragon of Icespire Peak campaign for some of us as a side campaign. As this wasn’t a super serious campaign my friend and I decided to make adopted sibling characters. Me as the Tortle Path of the Giants Barbarian, and him as the Harengon Cavalier Fighter. We got the DMs approval for the fighter to be able to use the Barbarian as his mount. Giant Barbarians become large size when raging. What started as a fun play on the Tortoise and the Hare was quickly discovered to be a very overpowering combination. I was able to freely use reckless attack for my Great weapon master feat, while my “rider” was able to defend me in a myriad of ways using his subclass feature. Kevin was having fun and was throwing hordes of enemies larger than the campaign suggested trying to defeat the Kaiju Sized Tortle and his Harengon rider. After many sessions of whomping everything he threw at us we finally ascended the perilous peak to confront the dastardly dragon. We snuck up on it while it was sleeping and got a surprise round off on it. It rolled low in initiative and we killed it before it could even attack the group. After the fight we rolled on a random loot table, and we rolled the Saddle of the Cavelier, which our DM immediately nixed saying it’s too powerful for our already overpowered combo. Even though we had no plans to continue with a new campaign with the same characters. My question for the Supreme Court is: Should our DM have allowed this one final Dice Christ blessed “whomp”? Or was he in the right to curtail our Kaiju threat?

BigSpoon4U

To the most Honorable Justices and that guy who rode Amir's coattails to a decent living. I present the case of the Urgent Sending Spell. I am currently playing a Life Cleric in a Curse of Strahd campaign. I will avoid spoilers as much as I can for anyone who might be planning to play. My party is in a town and we got word that a woman we've befriended has been kidnapped by the head of the town's guard and been brought back to the mayor's home where he resides. We have to figure out how to get into the home and get her out without just rushing in because we are already at odds with the mayor. I decide because we have befriended the mayor's son and he's expressed the want for the head guard to be killed due to his cruelty, that I would get him to let us in. So at the start of the day I cast Sending to message him in his mind that we need his help, it will involve taking care of the guard he hates and to meet us at the church. Once I send that the DM says you wait two hours and nothing happens. He has me roll an insight check and tells me "you feel maybe your message wasn't urgent enough to convey he needed to come right this moment." I just stare at the DM and say "I think someone using magic to directly send a message into your mind shows quite an accurate amount of urgency." and the DM responds "not to an absent minded wizard who mostly spends time in his room." We are only lvl 5 so I have two third level spells slots a day....but I use my second to send "GET HERE NOW!" Fast forward and because our wizard cast mage armor "loudly" my negotiations turned into an all out fight. Int his fight our Barbarian's head was "smashed in" We won, but because I had to use both 3rd level spells just to get the son to us to have a way into the home, I now couldn't Revivify (I had the components) our party member. I ask for your judgement, am I wrong for thinking the first message was enough to have someone come see what is going on right away? Or was my DM correct in basically tricking me to waste my final highest spell slot right before we got into a fight that he even deemed "the boss fight of this arc"?

The Wizard Sound

May it please the right and upstanding supreme crit justices and amuse the tawdry rapscallion of a baliff, Jimmy. I bring to you the case of the lookalike elves and the ill-gotten ambush. My friends and I were playing a campaign over Roll 20, two elves, a halfling, a human, and a tiefling. We were delving into the underdark, when we came upon a small, scared child that told us they were scared and that their sibling was trapped in a nearby room. I was immediately suspicious and used my wand of enemy detection which points in the direction of any hostile creatures and lasts a minute. The DM highlighted a space that was far away from the child and also not in the direction of the room. I asked directly if it was pointing in the direction of the child, and the DM simply highlighted the same area and said “it’s in this direction”. I was confused, so I said that I walked around and moved my character icon and asked where the detection pointed and he pointed to the same spot. This lead us all to assume the enemy was in the walls and wasted a good amount of time before we finally went into the room and were ambushed by several enemies, all masterminded by the little girl who was actually an Oblex. When I protested, the DM said he thought that my character icon was the other elf in the party which is why he pointed the wrong way. Judges, am I right to be suspicious? Was this a DM forcing us into his trap or was it simply a case of mistaken identity? I await your judgement.

Eric Nesser

To the overzealous judges and the buffoonish bailiff, I present to you the case of the rapacious paladin. I have been running a Curse of Strahd campaign for my wife and 4 friends. As we are approaching the end of the campaign I have noticed that my players are pretty down. Numerous setbacks, half victories and just facing overwhelming evil for so long has really sucked the life out of their characters and to some extent the players. To lighten their spirits I decide to give them one final quest not in the module, tracking down a traveling carnival that was trafficking in human children. Imagine their surprise when upon investigating they found that the carnival was not underhanded at all and instead the carnival rescues desperate children from bad situations and finds them new loving homes. The carnival had numerous games and the players could earn tickets and exchange them for very powerful magic items. The games were tailored to every skill in 5e as well as challenges based on luck and combat ability so no one would feel left out. And now the problem. I have one player who does not like to gamble, at all. He likes to play things safe so in basically any game where he could not guarantee a win he backed out, usually with far fewer tickets than the other players. Each player was given the ticket prices of each available item BEFORE the carnival games so they would know what they needed to earn for any item they were interested. There was one item that cost almost 100 tickets, the most expensive item on the list that the players passed on because they weren't sure what it did. My wife wanted it but couldn't afford it plus the other items she wanted so the paladin offered to give her his leftover tickets, around 10, since they were not enough to afford anything else he wanted. Upon receiving the item it was discovered that it would allow a player to gain a second subclass from any class in the game. The paladin immediately asked what my wife, the monk was going to do with the item. Upon thinking my wife named a monk subclass (she is already a way of mercy monk) and the paladin got really huffy. He thought their were a lot better options and kept shitting on all of her choices and then said what he would do and how his choice would benefit the whole party. This went on for a while and my wife who is already more of a meek person started offering the item to the paladin to avoid a conflict. I immediately shut that down, knowing that she didn't want to give it up. I told the paladin to knock it off but he came back with, "we both bought the item, we should both get a say in what is done with it." Trying to be amenable I offered a compromise that would allow them both to use the item simultaneously, both gaining a subclass feature from a subclass but instead of getting features up to their current level (10th) they would both get the first feature of their respective choices. The paladin then began complaining because he need both features from the subclass he wanted or "what's the point?" I told him it was my final offer or I would retcon the item purchase and refund her and him their tickets and let them use them in some other fashion. Finally he relented but is still gruff about it to this day. Judges did I do the right thing or did I make a mistake by intervening between my two players? Whether I agreed with my wife's choice to keep the item or not, it was her choice to make and I more or less made it for her and took away the opportunity for her to resolve this in or out of play. I await your sadistic punishment.

Niclas

To the most honourable Judges and to the Bailiff, who I think I saw throw a lit match at someone in the bathroom. His name is Jake Hurwitz. I bring you the case of the IRL baiting DM. I play a Hexblade Warlock in a campaign run by a good friend. My character's patron is a cursed sword that would occasionally whisper to my character. At one session the sword claimed that to unlock its true power I had to “plunge it through the heart of an innocent”. Despite these persistent whispers, I refrained from doing so, maintaining my character's moral compass. However, my DM took the temptation a step further by bringing it up outside of the game. While at the gym or at the bar, he would casually ask why I hadn't yet taken the plunge, hinting that doing so might be necessary to succeed in an upcoming big fight. Eventually, an in-game situation arose where I could stab an innocent relatively guilt-free. Under the combined pressure of the sword's whispers and my DM's out-of-game hints, I finally did it. My DM then narrated how this act allowed the patron to exert more control over my character, giving the patron the ability to make my warlock take actions during the game, including abandoning my party during said big fight. Was it fair for my DM to bait me into this action outside of the game, only to twist it into a more sinister outcome within the game?

Courtney Miller

What up dog and dogette, my players maybe did a warcrime, what do I do? So I recently ran Lost Mines of Phandelver, upon arriving at the famed goblin camp - the players absolutely creamed these little gobby wobbies. I mean these dudes were toast, but they insisted that they only knocked all of them out. They proceeded to spend the next two hours in real life coming up with a full scale labor camp operation while occasionally rolling an unconscious goblin down a hill to keep themselves amused. How can I punish them for this frankly scary behavior? 😭

Jane Lee

Forgive me merciful priests…? Of the church and the lone alter boy Jacob, I have a confession. In one of my first dnd campaigns I was invited by a friend to join an ongoing home game, one they had been building for months and had clearly put a lot of heart and effort into. When it came time to discuss characters, I joined the group playing an outspoken aarakocra bard named Tooti. He spoke in accent that resembled that of a young German child, his instrument of choice was a neon pink plastic slide whistle he stole from a child’s birthday party. Upon our first tavern interaction Tooti being chaotic evil, was loud, aggressive, and hostile. Admittedly staying that way until he inevitably met his demise, getting killed starting a one on one fight with a NPC. Since then I have learned to play much more reasonable characters and no longer play with the murder hobo ideology in mind. However, years have passed but the ghost of tooti still haunts me to this day. So much so that it makes it almost difficult to listen to some dungeon court cases as they hang over my head as a reminder of everything tooti was and everything that tooti stood for. Please rid me of this haunted past and help me to kill this abominable creature for real this time so that he may never rise again. I ask for your forgiveness and remind you again clergy of the church of your great mercifulness. May dice Christ be with your spirit.

Babbles The Clown

May it please the ever honorable judges & the bailiff jake who's value is dependent on the day. I present the case of the unnecessary epilogue. I recently went to a D&D event at our local Comic Con museum. The event featured a number of DMs running one shots for groups of players, most of which were randomly distributed. At the start of our session we learn that we are all elves in a world where our race is treated as second class citizens. We defeat our evil lord & gain possession of a demon box during the session, & at the end are given a proposition by the DM. Do we join the group of rebels fighting against the oppression of the elven people? We all say yes. So the DM says: "Well unfortunately that was the BBEG of my long running home game. So you all get defeated by my home party." This kinda killed the sense of victory & triumph that I had at the table. I can't speak to how this struck the rest of the table but the energy sure seemed to have died. So I ask the court, was the DM wrong for introducing this last minute "plot stinger"? Or was it all good since we were visiting his world? I humbly await your judgment.

Jonathan Moore

Bless me, bishops of Dice Christ, for I have sinned. In my first ever fully homebrew campaign I DM'd, my players consistently whomped me in every one of my combat encounters. I was too scared to come close to killing my players and so I stuck with the default stat blocks of my monsters but had a party of 5; so combat became very short, non-dramatic ordeals with some players often not getting to take a meaningful turn before the end of combat. When we got to the final battle of the campaign, I thought I'd go a bit more all out: in addition to a lot of bad guys as well as a good variety of bad guys, I had a CR 24 Yeenoghu attempting to escape a prison (my players were all level 5 and I told them if Yeenoghu escaped, they should flee or face a TPK). Yeenoghu had to succeed on 3 strength checks against the bars of the magical prison he was being kept in in order to escape. While I had maybe learned my lesson about composition of bad guys, I hadn't learned about positioning. One fireball from my cleric roasted half of my minions in one turn and the final encounter of the campaign was very quickly turning into a similar non-dramatic dud; additionally, I was rolling very poorly for Yeenoghu so there was no sense of impending doom as the players quickly mopped the floor with my minions. Here is where I sinned: I started fudging the rolls for Yeenoghu to artificially add a sense of drama and urgency to the final battle. Yeenoghu never did escape and the players successfully completed the encounter and seemed to have fun with the end of the campaign. But I have always felt a sense of shame and dual-whomping for getting my butt handed to me by both my party and the dice when I just wanted a dramatic finish to the campaign. I ask the forgiveness of Dice Christ and beg for courage and knowledge to make more dramatic encounters.

Zerolott

To the acceptable judges and the deeply maligned Bailiff, Jape, I present this case. I joined a game my friend was DMing for one session when I was visiting them. I didn't know any of the other players, just my DM friend. It was pretty heavily homebrew; the major brew being that it was like Dark Souls if you died, you just respawned and lost all accumulated experience. Within minutes of introducing my character, I was physically assaulted, and then one of them rolled persuasion to get me to drink a potion they found in their last session. I was only level 1, and of course I lost. The potion turned me to stone and I died instantly. They thought this was hilarious. Later, we encountered a group of monsters that was too tough to deal with, so I decided to drink a polymorph potion and turn into a bird and left them all to die. They did not think this was hilarious. Judges, was my little tit for tat the right choice, or did my lust for revenge blind me?

Andrew Fournier

To the cute and well dressed justices Axford, Murphy and Tanner, I present you the case of the no effort pee-c. I played in a campaign a few years ago with a party of 4 in our DMs homebrew world. About 10 sessions in another of our friends wanted to join, but wanted to play as a homebrew wrestler character. We were all excited but discovered in the first session that he joined that he had assumed the DM would make the class for him and showed up without a character sheet. That session was then turned into us creating his character for him. This character quickly was made to just one-up the other PCs, my character was the big beefy barbarian, his character then had to be 3” taller than mine. His backstory had to be more tragic than the rest, and to make matters worse, every single town we went to, he would unprompted make a history check to see if he can remember which alley way his character had pissed in. I couldn’t take it after 10 more sessions and ended up leaving the campaign, along with the fact that we met every single day and I couldn’t keep up with the schedule. I ask you fair judges, was I in the wrong for wanting to get away from this player, or should I have touched it out and continued the campaign with this low effort pee-c?

sparajoy

I humbly bring a dice Christ confessional, to all those venerable DMs: I play in a home game with both of my moms and our friends. Every game day my moms and I get brunch before our session, and one week my mom who is our DM spent a lot of time at brunch talking about a combat she had prepped that was going to be very fun, totally unique compared to our other combats, and she had spent all week getting ready to run it. Later that day we’re going through the session and walk into a temple. In the center of the temple is a radiant-light arcanotech mechanism powered by mirrors, and my Druid (very cast first ask later) dropped obscuring mist over the entire thing, powering down the tech. My mom just stopped and stared at her notes for a minute, wide eyed, and said “Oh, it’s just off.” I asked about it but she didn’t want to interrupt flow, so we moved on, and had a grueling combat in the middle of the temple where everyone was blind fighting. After the fight, my Druid dropped the mist and the tech powered back on and my party started gently floating off the floor. Turns out, this tech gives everyone a free fly speed, and my mom had spent all week prepping a completely 3 dimensional flying combat for us. This happened months ago but I am still haunted by accidentally ruining what was supposed to be a highlight of the campaign, and certainly was going to be fun to run for my mom. May the Good DM have mercy on my soul.

Cubebot777

To the resplendent justices and the quite-nice-when-you-get-to-know-him-a-bit bailiff Jork, This case concerns an incident that happened around 11 years ago during my first DnD campaign. It was my birthday, which just so happened to fall on the day of our weekly session. My friends know that I’m not much of a birthday guy, so I was looking forward to a nice, typical night of campaign. I arrived at the game store where we play, and we began. Our party started off back in the tavern of the main town in our quest, where we were approached by the owner. He asked if, before we went on any more adventures, we could please help him with an issue in the basement. My DM described the creepy, dusty tavern basement, and then narrated a pair of glowing yellow eyes peering out from the dark. We rolled initiative and had a pretty easy fight with a large rat. However, as the fight was nearing its end, I caught a glimpse of a few of my other friends (not involved with our DnD campaign) entering the game store. My DM then said “Congratulations. You completed the mission! Happy birthday. Let’s go eat.” And, we went to Hibachi. Although I had a good time with my friends, I can’t help feeling disappointed. Was I jipped? Or am I to this day being an unappreciative little birthday boy? I leave this for the court to decide.

B0n3D4ddy

Honorable Justices of the Crit and their lowly ratman bailiff- I bring to you today a case of player vs. DM. I, the DM, will take little efforts to be partial. Sorry. I host a weekly get together at my place with my partner and close friends - I budget and work my ass off to lovingly prepare a large multiple course dinner, storylines, fuckable NPCs, varied encounters, and a fun environment for the people I love and am repaid by having these wild animals screaming at me that I’m a villain and a bastard. It’s the best part of my week. The last year has been a Star Wars 5e campaign, it’s been a blast to run some lost in space/mass effect andromeda style exploration. I love everyone’s characters and dynamic but these absolute buffoons have been ditching every plot line like intergalactic fuckboys. They show up on a planet, cause some well meaning chaos, and roll out before they have to reap any consequences. The second bad vibes hit, they’re using every resource to juke out of conflict and hit the next spot on the horizon, constantly running. Mind you- they love this, every time I ask why they’re not sticking around- they’ll say some absolute horseshit like “seemed scary and it wasn’t our business” I’m relatively fine with this, I try to keep a few throughline NPCs and I’ve taken notes of situations they’ve ditched in the past that I can reasonably escalate to bring back around to tie up storylines But a recent razz went too far - a player complained that combat has been too intense - his character went down twice (in an optional fight they volunteered for and then split the party for despite being forewarned it was a deadly encounter) and despite no PCs deaths, he wants “more easy to kill goons” I replied that to fight goons they either needed to 1. engage with the local goons/easy jobs they usually ignore 2. stop running away from the big bads they’ve pissed off who would sicc goons on them. This is part request for justice - (that if you don’t engage with the plot, I legally get to try to murder you) - part DM advice - (I like tough fights - it challenges people to use their resources and be creative, I crave the high stakes! But I get the want for wish fulfillment and feeling powerful as a player - how can I make low stakes combat still interesting?) Final Note: The player I’m submitting against is getting married in October and I’m his best man. But I submit one or both of us to be croissanted to the highest degree. Optional Detail I feel like y’all would like: His fiancé also plays in the game and plays as a combat lingerie wearing robot who’s in love on a psychic fish alien.

JS

Dear most radiant justices and the pallid bailiff who tries desperately to sun himself in your glow. I come to you today with the Case of The Tome of Puberty. I DM a campaign where one of the players is a Tortle cleric who is very naive, having grown up on an island with only other tortles. In an early session, the players were tasked with saving a noble from an assassination plot at a party. The assassin, a beautiful woman, seduced the noble so she could get him alone to murder him. The tortle player was the first one to realize the noble was missing and intercede. When he found them, the noble was canoodling with the assassin who was secretly preparing to kill him. The player stopped the assassination, but he was shocked and confused by the brief (and PG-13) physical intimacy he witnessed and insisted that he did not understand what was happening. When another player asked him how he had never heard of sex, he replied that back home the female tortles simply laid their eggs to later be fertilized by the males. I let this slide as I had no desire to try and verify the accuracy of his assertion, but that proved to be a mistake. For the next several sessions the player continued to play his tortle as troubled and confused by what he'd witnessed and would bring it up to every NPC he spoke to. I quickly grew tired of having to have every NPC the party knew get cornered into giving his character "the talk" and as a workaround eventually had one give him a copy of a book called The Tome of Puberty that could explain everything. Unfortunately, my solution became the bane of my campaign as both the tortle character and the rest of the party soon became obsessed with the book. Before long, they would find any excuse they could to use or read it, frequently asking me to describe the contents of specific pages. This too got old and eventually I had the errant fireball of an evil wizard they were fighting burn the book into unrecoverable ashes (they had taken the book out to show it to the wizard, believing it could help him get a girlfriend and thereby stop his pursuit of lichdom). Since destroying the book the party has become despondent and they are constantly checking bookstores for another copy. Was I wrong to have the book destroyed, or was the party wrong for turning my campaign into a high school health class? I humbly accept your decision whatever it may be.

el_mathemagician

To the benevolent justices and that guy who lives in the trash can, I think his name is John, I present to you the case of the sleeping dwarf. I was in my very first campaign playing as a dwarven paladin. In one of our sessions, we were in a dungeon crawl and the warlock in our party had found a potion. She drank some and it had healed her. Our DM had told us there was enough for someone else to drink as well and since I needed some health, I took a drink. However, when I drank it, I ended up falling unconscious. My party tried to wake my character up using several checks, spells and potions but my DM said there was no way. The session ended with me being unconscious. At our next session, I was still out as my party continued to fight monsters, find treasure, and trek through the dungeon. I thought I might get a dream sequence or some sort of vision for the session, but no, I literally did not get to do a single thing the entire session! Not only that, this entire dungeon lasted another 2 sessions, which meant that I had 3 sessions where I did not get to do a single thing the entire time. I would argue with my DM that this mechanic doesn’t make sense and I would try and ask if there was anything I could do to come out of consciousness, but he always just said that was his ruling. I almost pulled a Murph and thought about just quitting and getting a new group, but my character was finally awake after we escaped the dungeon. Justices, was my DM wrong for putting my character to sleep for 3 sessions with nothing to do, or am I overreacting. I humbly await your judgment. PS: My DM is a good friend of mine and this seemed like an isolated incident as the rest of the campaign was really fun.

Andrew Fournier

To the most esteemed council of Dice Christ, I lay myself at your feet in the pursuit of forgiveness. A few years ago I was in the tournament arc of our dnd campaign, and I was playing a wild-magic barbarian, battle master fighter multiclass. Our DM said that the breaks in between each round would count as a short rest, so as we were using D&D Beyond, I would press the short rest button between rounds. After 4 rounds of using my battle master maneuvers and rages, my DM asked if I had been regaining my superiority dice and rages between rounds as he didn’t mean “Short Rest” he meant we could roll hit dice, not a full short rest. I then panicked and lied and said I was not and was down to my last dice and rage so as not to get in trouble. So I ask for forgiveness for misinterpreting my DMs use of “Short Rest” and accidentally breaking the rules

Mads

To the most honorable and upstanding justices and the bailiff Junk, I bring you the case of the Smote Ex-Girlfriend. I was playing in a campaign a while ago where a major part of my character’s backstory was that her first love had cheated on her and sailed away on a pirate ship, abandoning her on the docks. Throughout the campaign, we discovered that The Ex was working with one of the Big Bads. My character made it clear that she wanted to find her again and hash it out. On our quest, we always seemed to be one step behind The Ex and never encountered her. Until we found ourselves in a tournament where we would have to track down and kill various other parties, one of which included The Ex. Against my better judgement, we split the party for one session. In that session, the half of the party that I wasn’t in came across The Ex. Immediately, a fight broke out, resulting in the party’s paladin, who HATES PIRTATES, fatally smiting and decapitating The Ex, without my PC ever having interacted with her in-game. I was surprised and pretty disappointed that one of my characters biggest backstory elements was smote before my very eyes and I wasn’t even in the scene. Justices, am I wrong to be bitter that The Ex was killed before I could resolve one of my biggest character beats? Or should I have been grateful she was smote to advance us in the tourney? I humbly await your verdict

Michael Greene

To the honorable judges Murphy, Axford, & Tanner, as well as the esteemed bailiff Hurwit. I was playing in a campaign a few years ago, where we (the players) were tasked with sussing out a vampire among a crowd at a masquerade party. I immediately had suspicions about our host, a tall pale man who kept saying how grateful he was to ‘have us for dinner,’ and made a quick note to be careful with what we ate as our campaign had already had 2 dramatic poisonings. Our DM then, in quick succession, described plates of food being brought out and then described all of our characters devouring it. I thought him narrating our characters actions was odd, but assumed it was nothing. Because if our food was poisoned our DM would have given us a choice of whether or not to eat it right? I was proved wrong a few minutes later when our DM announced we were all feeling nauseous and told us to make Con saves. Despite most of the party rolling above a 25 our DM announced our characters were all knocked out and ended the session with the (vampire) host laughing maniacally. This all came to a head when, seconds later our DM snickered to himself and said “I can’t believe you guys fell for that.” I was furious and argued “We didn’t fall for anything, you didn’t give us a choice.” Our DM looked befuddled for a moment before responding, arguing that ‘I could’ve interrupted him at any time and had my character choose to not eat.’ We went back and forth for a while, but eventually I conceded for the sake of peace. However, I’ve harbored a small grudge ever since. Was my DM correct in that I should’ve spoken up, or was I justified in my assumptions. I eagerly await the court’s verdict whatever it may be.

Keith Simmons

To the opulent justices and that other guy bake? I was playing my first campaign ever with a group I found at a game shop. We played about five sessions and had zero combat (except an unwinnable encounter) and there was a history check that I crit on and the DM said I knew nothing. Was I wrong to expect more or was I given an unjust intro to the most amazing game in the world?

Andy W.

Respected court, I would bring to you the case of DM vs Horny Fey Duck. The regular DM of my group was taking a break for a few weeks and another player was running a module set in the feywild. The game he ran was very fun, however we had an argument at the end of the campaign. The party had received a prophecy that the BBEG could only be killed during a solar eclipse and unfortunately our party did not manage to set up the two specific ways the module wanted us to kill her. Before our last session I did a little research and found that when mallard ducks go into heat they molt, which is called an “eclipse”. I took this back into game and before the final fight my druid summoned a horny fey mallard which the party christened Solar. We held the horny duck above the BBEG as we went for the killing blow. The DM let the entire setup happen but when it came to the end they said our plan “did not satisfy the spirit of the prophecy” and the BBEG turned into mist and floated away. Twenty minutes later we freed a wizard who killed the BBEG off screen. The party was somewhat frustrated at this lackluster ending to the game and would like our disagreement to be mediated and punishment handed down.

humanoidudon

To the esteemed justices and the you figure it out yourself bailiff, I bring before you the case of the non-combatant and their high horse. I play D&D at a local game store. Recently, my DM brought in another player from a different party as they had missed their previous session. We were only told of this addition 5 minutes before we started. At first, I was okay with them as they were friendly and had an interesting high society character. Our goal of that session was to seek revenge on a rival gang which had shot up one of our businesses and theirs was to get home. Despite this, the new player was a good sport (even helped trained the staff we brought along to confront the rival gang) until we got to combat. They had rolled initiative, our cleric had blessed them, but on their turn would only hide. They proceeded to do nothing else for the next 2 hours. My party suggested some possible actions and I tried to incentivize them in character by saying we could loot the rival gang after defeating them to buy their passage home. But they justified it as them being "too above it" and "not on our side", then sat in silence, even though our session overran by an hour. After reflection, I wondered if them staying even though they weren't participating in combat might mean there was a way to convince them to join in. I feel horrible as they had basically paid to sit and watch us. My question is - What could we have done to include them? Or were we right to let them trot home? I humbly await your judgement.

Morgan Pestyk

May it please the honorable justices and the interestingly shaped baby bailiff to hear a story of loss, friendship, and out of character knowledge. My partner and I recently ended our time with a DnD group due to moving out of town. We were relatively new members to the group after replacing a previous member of their party who also left due to moving and had told our party months in advance when we were leaving. During our last session with the party, we had a huge boss battle against a big bad warlock connected to my partner’s half orc barbarian. Near the end of the battle, my partner’s barbarian was downed, and as the rest of the party tried to end the fight, the DM had the big bad warlock continue to pummel our barbarian’s lifeless corpse dealing 2 automatic death fails resulting in their death. After the battle was over, my character, a cleric and childhood friend of the barbarian, was going to revive the barbarian with my last remaining spell slot which I had intentionally saved throughout the fight for this reason, however the rest of the party stood in the way. They wanted me to instead revive a low level NPC who had been traveling with the party for several sessions and had gone down earlier in the fight. They argued that this NPC was more important than the barbarian since they are a messenger from a separate reality that the previous party members had been to long before either my partner or I had joined the campaign. While trying to make my decision, the DM also told me that I received a message from my deity that also urged me to revive the NPC. I feel that they only wanted me to revive the NPC over the barbarian because it was me and my partner’s last session and reviving the barbarian wouldn’t do anything for them. With the session nearing 6 hours and just about every person urging me to instead revive an NPC over a childhood friend, I had my character revive the NPC and then leave the party in anger. Since then the death of my partner’s barbarian has been weighing on me so I ask you, the court: Should I have stuck my ground and revived my partner’s barbarian or was the rest of the party justified in asking me to revive an NPC since we were leaving anyway? I humbly await your judgement.

Gavin French

To the Powerful Judges and Stenographer Tucker. I have been playing in a campaign my friend is running based on a Video game series. The world is fun and interesting but our first few dungeons have been absolute mazes. Every other corridor is a "Left, Right" or "Up, Down" situation. We eventually find our way but not without backtracking or hitting a few dead ends. Am I wrong to think this ruins the pace or causes a bit of frustration? Or is this simply a part of dungeons and am I being a baby? I lay myself before the court.

Sneakers O’Krool

respected court and the court’s jester jamoke. i have been in a campaign for over a year and my rogue is known for stealing a killing rich people who have done bad things to others the cleric in our party made a comment of “turning me in if i keep stealing.” as we entered a new city. i was obviously stunned at this (as a player and a pc) and kind of shut down for the rest of the session. i want my pc to garner some sort of petty revenge. esteemed justices and the other one you keep around: am in the wrong for wanting some revenge for an obvious threat? i respect and refer your future judgement.

Matthew Rudland Barfoot

To the wholly holy justices and their supreme handler Jake. I am running a 5e Homebrew for which I specifically asked my players to be prepared for a TPK and to not hold on to their characters prior to character creation. My intention is my own band of boobs are going to not make it past session 3, as the campaign will involve them waking up in a post acopalyptic Britain Vault (Fallout Style) where they were in cyro sleep and their consciousness was in a video game. Upon which we shall switch to Call of Cthulu with mysteries, monsters and occult afoot, with no option but to leave the vault, the players will ultimately decide whether they want to try to return to Platos D&D Cave (if they can) or brave the wasteland. My players do not know this is my plan; (as why should they), despite caution, they have all been creating the most elaborate, world building backstories for characters that don't truly exist. Is this the best case scenario of mistaken identity, and prepare for game-breaking court, or should I change proceedings for my players at the bench to match their expectations. Your gavel will decide their fate

Clam Clooney

To the honorable and slender Justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy and if that moldy old bay leaf is in the room that's fine I guess, I present the case of the reroll requester. I have played a number of campaigns and one shots with the same group that I've known since middle school. One of the players will declare a roll for something before it is called for by the DM (usually myself) and proceed to roll it. If the roll is low, he will then look up from it and cheekily ask something along the lines of, "So I should roll that now?" High rolls are not followed by this request. I don't believe this to be malicious but I have heard this "joke" at least twice a session for almost 4 years. This is not a terrible trangression. I just find it annoying. I worry addressing it will only cause it to happen more because he will think its funnier if he knows it is not appreciated. Thank you to the court and I humbly accept your judgment.

Tim S.

You never believe you'll be the one asking Dice Christ for forgiveness until you're tested and fail, tumbling down the dice tower of sin and social pressure. Please release my soul of the guilt my well-meaning teleporting pirate duck brought me. I recently started playing in a pirate-themed campaign as a first-time wizard, with about half players I knew and half newcomers to the table. We were in a small rowboat pulled up beside an enemy ship, with the intent to sneak aboard and blow their powder supply. Our two druids turned into cats to sneak aboard, and I warged into the eyes of my duck (owl stats) to follow them. Of course things went wrong and we had to quickly light the powder keg while guards swarmed into the hold. I held my action until the last moment so that I could cast Vortex Warp through the eyes of my familiar to teleport the last druid out of the ship to safety as their flaming sphere ignited the powder in a devastating explosion. It was awesome and a satisfying end to the mission. Herein lies my sin. I used Vortex Warp wrong. I was within range to cast it, being just outside the ship, and could see the druid through the eyes of my familiar -- all good so far. But AFTER I had already suggested using Vortex Warp to save them, I realized I needed to be able to see both the target AND the destination. As they were inside the ship at the time and I was looking through the eyes of my familiar, I could only see the target. But without the warp, this new player to our table would have certainly died in the ensuing explosion, so I kept quiet. I told the party a week later that I'd "reread the rules" and couldn't use it like that again, but this still eats at me. Please razz me as penance and give me absolution. PS. If it helps, my familiar (named Barnacle) necessarily died in the explosion. I resummoned her and gave her many fish.

Rae Weiss

To the kind and benevolent justices and that guy they hang out with, I come to d&d by way of improv. My two favorite things to say while dming are "hell yeah you can!" and "why not?" I love to yes-and and tailor my stories to bits and goofs my players come up with. However, as you all know, just because you're lenient and fun does not mean you have no boundaries. Enter the shah halud scream from Dune (2021). We play over discord, and one of my players uploaded this to our soundboard. Judges, it is LOUD. It is LONG. And it is EASILY SPAMMABLE. So, before session 3 of this game, I disabled the soundboard. My players noticed and immediately started cajoling me for soundboard permissions back. I relented, but with one caveat: you can use the soundboard once, and then you're banned. I was razzed for this rule, but stood my ground. Immediately after getting permissions back, our gunslinger (Charles) pressed the shah halud scream. I told him I was writing down he had used his one, and if he used it again he would get banned. Well, an hour later, in the middle of combat, Charles hit the sad trombone button. I kicked him from the server, described his character vanishing in a puff of smoke, and continued combat. Judges, my players are split on whether I am a fair and just god or a cruel and unforgiving monster. I maintain I was clear about my boundaries (and even relented to allow him back after this arc) but they claim that my original rule was vague and he didn't even do the Dune scream a second time. When I asked Charles about it, he said it was "worth it" and when allowed back, he would "shah halud as soon as [he is] able." I await your ruling with baited breath.

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 my junior year of highschool, with my first DM ever. we were facing off against a much higher level Pirate Lord villain, and the DM dramatically reveals his signature weapon: a magic blunderbuss. The issue? Instakill. no save, your character was just dead. a fun intimidation factor, but when it came time for the pirate lord to attack, the DM pointed to each of us, numbered us off 1-6, and rolled a d6 Behind the screen before declaring our cleric dead. my query is this: justices, should he have rolled this D6 in front of the table? it is also of note that the person playing the cleric was a recent Ex of the DM. i feel this decision may have been influenced by scorn, but i humbly await your judgement. (my name is anna, she / her! PS, you are all amazing and my boyfriend and i love your show!)

BackwaterRed

To the honourable bailiff and the craven justices (am I doing this right?). I am new to the patreon and a big fan of dnd court. This is not a case or confessional. It's just my first time seeing a call for cases, and it was really neat to see! Thanks for what you do; I can't wait to hear the new episode.

ap.cleric

To the honorable judges and the lowly bailiff Cake, I bring to you the case of the 4 Elem. Monk vs. the Soulknife Rouge. During a battle royale, my friend playing a Soulknife Rouge attacked my monk with his psionic blade. It falls under a ranged weapon, so I decided to use the deflect missiles reaction to negate damage and throw it back. However, the dm (my husband) stated that since it is a blade the states on a miss, the blade returns to the rogue. He said that since it would have to make contact with me, I can negate the damage but the weapon disappears and just counts as a missed attack. We debated for a minute or two, but decided to let the issue die since it was just a one shot. I also eventually kicked everyone's ass and won, but was he right or was I wronged?

Hanna

To the supreme crit justices, and the best baliff boy John, I come to you regarding the case of the biggest brown bear. I DM for an after-school group of tweens and teens, where we rotate players between tables and pick new characters every few months. One of our longest term players always picks circle of the moon druid when choosing a class, and has a particular trick that has caused some disagreement among his various DMs (usually adult staff/volunteers). He casts enlarge on himself, then wild shapes into a brown bear. He contends that this should result in him wild shaping into a huge-sized bear, since brown bears are already considered large. More recently, he has teamed up with a sorcerer at his table who casts enlarge on the huge brown bear to transform it into a gargantuan brown bear. Some of the DMs, myself included, find this irritating, but can't really find a good reason to tell him no. You can maintain concentration in wild shape, and there's nothing in enlarge/reduce that says it can't stack. Some of the DMs, however, have insisted that the stats of the bear are the stats of the bear and cannot be affected. I beg the court's assistance in making a final, consistent ruling regarding this thirteen-year-old's shenanigans.

Jon Marcopoulos

To the Supremely Wise Justices and the Supremely In-Attendance Jork, I present to case of the Unseen Cricket Princess Our Party was midway through a rescue of the Princess from a Vampiric Witch Coven's castle, when things started to go sour. I, the cleric, had the polymorphed princess (a cricket) in a bag on my waist, but the vampires caught us before we could leave their castle grounds. Trying to keep the vampires away from her, I cast Spirit Guardians, which states: "When you cast this spell, you can designate any number of creatures you can see to be unaffected by it." I of course wanted to pick the party and the princess, which seemed obvious enough, and I had cast the spell enough times before, that I didn't say it outloud when I cast it. On the princesses turn, our DM said she failed her save against my spell, and takes enough damage to not only end the polymorph, but also outright kill the princess. When I said that I would have picked her to be unaffected by he, he said "she was in a bag and you couldn't see her, so you couldn't designate her to be unaffected." I said well if that's the case, then she couldn't be targeted by the spell. This devolved into arguments about sight, the cover system, and the thickness of bags, among other things. We eventually decided to retract the spell, but the vampires caught the princess and turned her into one of their own. Justices, am I right to think I should have been able to have this spell in effect without it hitting the princess? Or was my DM correct to say I murdered the princess due to my carelessness? I await your judgement.

Nathan Perez

To Justices Murphy, Axford, Tanner and the Baliff of Buffoonery Jake, I present the case of the Spit-Roasted Squire and the Three Knuckleheads Who Let It Happen. Let me set the scene. My party had adopted a junior guard named Kyle to accompany them on adventures, but usually tell him to do stupid and reckless things "for the experience". One of them was to sneak into a cult of Kuo-Toa, fish people for the uninitiated, while they partied at the seaport town. After a day or so, they go to check in on him and run into the leader of the cult with Kyle being spit-roasted (non-sexual) over a fire by his mob of fish cultists. They ended up having an almost 10 minute long debate with the cult leader while I narrated Kyle taking damage and cooking over the open fire. Of course diplomacy has failed and the party wipes the floor with the cult members, however, none of them have taken any action to free Kyle. They are surprised to smell roasted squire and I narrate how he had been roasted to a crisp and needed to make death saves. Justices, should I have put the kibosh on Kyle permanently and roasted him until he was cooked until tender, or should Kyle have been merely kept warm? I seek vindication either for myself or my party.

Jon Marcopoulos

Extra details, if it's important: I think the reason the DM was so adamant about this outcome was because he wanted to make the story about the vampire princess (they would have resurrected her if she had died in the combat). The polymorph was cast by our wizard, and the princess was charmed by the vampires, so we couldn't just run away with her. She had to be counter-kidnapped from the vampires.

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.

Christopher Bryan

To the most excellent and bodacious judges and grodie to the max bailiff John? I bring to you today the case of the dragon and the smoke signals. A few years ago my friends and I were playing a campaign that unfortunately never wound up going anywhere. Our GM was running us in a town that was under attack by a group of bandits and a dragon that they had a contract with. They were using smoke signals to have the dragon use it's breath weapon on targets so I snuck close to a large group on them and used the minor illusion spell to shoot up the same colored smoke and my GM instead chose to have the dragon blast my bardic ass arguing that the dragon was too smart to fall for a basic trick like that without even rolling for it. My character survived the breath (barely) and we haven't ever picked it back up so it's far from the end of the world but I feel cheated on my crispy character's behalf and I bring this to your court in an effort to find retroactive vindication.

CanibalisticPenny

Dear beatific Justices and bailiff Joke. I was Gming a game of honey heist for some of my friends. One of my friends rolled Panda bear which gave him the bear skill: "you can eat anything that looks like bamboo." When confronted with a laser grid my friend said he would like to eat the lasers because it looked like bamboo. I argued that lasers don't look like bamboo and additionally lasers cannot be eaten as they are just focused light. In the end I relented when my other friend threatened to spray me with a hose and my friend successfully ate the lasers. Dear justices please sick hungry bears on my friends or if I was in the wrong punish my crime lightly.

vicky

To the honourable justices Axford and Tanner the salty justice Murphy, and Jake the hot lil stinker. I bring to you the case of that one player I don't like. In our last game with a new DM they consistently interrupted emotional plot points with cumming and your mom jokes. My question is this am I justified in speaking up, or should I let them enjoy the game the way they want to?

Doglord Wetbottle

Desperately crying for dice Christ's divine counsel. I'm a first time DM, and I was running a homebrew world where all the planes got smashed together leading to ruin, where only one island, at the nexus of the world's on the material plane was still in tact. I hadn't even gotten the chance to expose the world to my new players, it was their first encounter and the two of them were killed brutally by a single wolf. I let them die as the dice wanted, but the vibe also died and they both started to be "too busy" to play. Was this dice? Christ stopping us from doing something we shouldn't have or should I have stepped in as the DM to keep the fun alive?

Some guy who likes chicken

To the magnanimous justices I present the case of the surprise squirrel suit, may it please the court. I'm playing in a campaign as a level 6 warlock who mostly sits back and snipes with eldritch blast. The repetitive turns got a bit boring and I wanted to develop the play style a bit, so I decided to multiclass into fighter when we next levelled up. I spoke to my DM and he loved the idea, even asking me if there were any bits of loot I wanted to find to compliment the new build, and I told him I'd love some better armour, since as a warlock I was extremely squishy and wouldn't last long on the front lines. A couple of sessions later, I'm breaking into random rooms at the tavern looking for stuff to steal and my DM told me I'd found a set of armour that looked like it would fit me perfectly! He looked so proud of himself as he described a full squirrel costume, complete with a giant taxidermied head and tail, and told me that this magic item would grant me a climb speed equal to my walking speed. I asked how much AC it gave, and he said it's jusy the same as basic leather armour - which is what I already had. As a level 6 genie warlock, I can fly whenever I want basically for free, so wtf do I need a climb speed for? I raised my concerns after the session and he told me if I was going to be ungrateful then he wouldn't give me what I asked for next time. I understand that deciding what loot to give out is the DM's right, but Justices you must realise that I never asked him for a novelty onesie and provides exactly the same protection as what I'm already wearing! Am I being a spoilt brat or did my DM go nuts for a bad joke? P.S. On a completely unrelated note, I went to visit a chimp sanctuary recently and it was amazing. They're such intelligent creatures, it got me thinking you could probably train one to collect dungeon court cases and then you wouldn't have to deal with Jake any more.

Chaos Goblin

To the beloved apostles of Dice Christ and the slightly less beloved but still a pretty cool guy Jude, I think. I fear I must confess. I was playing a mushroom mage in a non-dnd system, and we got into a fairly tough fight. My GM said that they would roll to see who would be attacked by the robot. In what at the time seemed like a very tactical move - I said the GM didn't have to roll, if they wanted they could hit me. Despite being the main healer, I was the only player on full health, and the only person far enough away from the others to eliminate collateral damage. The attack left me on 1 hp and the session ended. Next session comes and the back up healer doesn't show up. Then through a series of terrible rolls between me and the rest of my party (and five critical injuries from the attack) my character died very quickly. I thought I accepted this fate with grace - for the dice take as well as give to keep things interesting. The rest of the table, however, are upset of the loss of the character. And I have not rolled a success with my new character - despite rolling with very good odds and often. This has left me concerned - have I offended Dice Christ by declaring no dice needed to be rolled?? I humbly accept any repentance for I wish nothing more than to serve the glory of Dice Christ with a clean conscience

Kristina The Sorceress

To the esteemed and effervescent 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 accomplice 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 in-character 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.

Craig

You live in a reality where the grinch never learned a lesson after stealing christmas, instead his rage + 'grinch powers' overtook the organized crime world, making him well known and publicly feared due to chaotic nature. The police can do nothing... One day while driving, you accidentally rear end is car in an intersection. Terrified of his cruel unpredictable nature, you beg the grinch for mercy and he decides to offer you as chance at survival by means of a duel to the death. The catch? He will give you the choice of weapons with no time to prepare. There is no running, there is no hiding, dueling the grinch to the death is the only way to survive. The weapon choices the grinch gives are: nunchucks, 'teeth', and something the grinch calls: 'Santa's sack'. What do you choose?

Marissa Bickford

Honorable Justices and Bailiff of Questionable Standing, Joel. I bring you a case that has haunted me to this day. To set the scene, I'm in one of my first online campaigns and we were playing a combination of mods in a Pirate Town. The City Watch eventually gave us a Keep we had to defend from a militia that overthrew the local Barron. Our Rogue had some connections to get us a ship that would ferry the Barron's son (who had just knighted my character) off to safety. To get the ship we had to clear out an island of pirate bandits. Unfortunately one party member couldn't make it to that session and we found ourselves outmatched. The Rouge was separated from the group and knocked unconscious. On the next turn the DM took two attacks, killing him outright. We were aghast! After some debate, we mourned our friend and went back to the City Watch. My character argued that the watch should give us one of their ships in compensation for the loss of our friend and connection. Here I will say, both me and my character had a -1 in charisma. Alas, this was not a role-play heavy group and I was trying to balance my frustration with the DM and the City Watch. It came across as character bleed and ultimately we were refused a ship. I took my lumps but convinced the group that we could not side with the City Watch or the Revolutionaries. The DM said the only other option was to become outlaws on the run. The party agreed that, honestly, that sounded awesome and we were excited for the next session but I could tell the DM was disappointed. At the next session our former rouge introduced his new ranger character with his companion wolf. The DM's response - "I can't wait to kill your wolf". There was uproar! And the game lasted only a session or two after that before fizzling out. Now, am I a salty sailor or should my DM repent for wanton murder? Please judge us harshly so I may finally rest! xoxo- An Aspiration Outlaw.

Darrius Davis, the guy from that one thing.

To the effervescent Baliff Jake Hurwitz, first of his name (I think), and the rest of the bench jockeys, I bring to your attention the massacre on tutorial island. A couple of years ago, I ran a DnD campaign for my college friends. I wad the only one with any experience at the time, so I happily stepped up to show them the ropes. I started then on a little tutorial island and had some orcs attack a small village they were in for a quick combat scenario to go through. One of the players, a bard, decided that he would inspire the townsfolk to take up arms and defend themselves, so he played a song and all the lvl 0 commoners went out to fight the orcs, but we're immediately cut down. After the party dealt with the orcs, they went to investigate some of the town, and went to the stables. The stables was run by a little boy whose parents were killed by the orcs in the attack. The party spoke with the child and chose to purchase the stable from him, but immediately burned it down to claim insurance on it, since the business was worth more than what they had spent. When they found the little boy again and discovered that not enough time had passed after the purchase to claim their reimbursement, the barbarian punch him in the stomach knocking him to the floor. They soon discovered he was not a little boy, just a little person who was trying to sell his family's business. The little person made an attempt to hide in a small hole where the party couldn't reach him, but the third party member, a rogue, had a blow dart and the bard had a pet monkey. They tranquilized the man, dragged him out of his hole, coveted him and his home in oil, and lit it all on fire, which spread to other houses in the village. Dearest Baliff Jake, and the panel of judges too I guess, but mostly Jake, we're my players to terribly off the rails to be forgiven, or am I at fault for allowed such atrocities to happen? I await your hallowed judgement.

Erin Perry

To the resplendent justices and that guy they let hang around, Jumanji, I think his name was, I present to you the case of the murdered PC and the complicit DM. A few years ago, I, and a few friends who were all very new to DnD, decided to run a series of multiverse oneshots alongside our main campaign where we would keep the same characters session-to-session, but for each oneshot we would be in a new world. The problem occurred in just the second one shot, in which there was a PVP encounter. One of the other players (a ranger) had a wolf that they were also using to attack. In the course of the PVP, my PC was the one to kill the wolf (although others landed hits). Additionally, due to no one at the table knowing that temp HP doesn't stack, my character was also fairly unkillable. This combination of things led to the ranger getting upset at me because not only did I kill her wolf, she couldn't manage to kill me in return. After the encounter, the DM looked up the rules for temp HP, I apologized for not knowing said rules, and all who had died (including the wolf) were brought back to life. I, mistakenly, thought that was the end of that. Oh, how I was wrong. When we touched down in the next world, the other party members ganged up on my character, knocked her out, and took her to a back alley, and proceeded to murder her with no intervention from the DM. When I reacted in shock, the ranger responded, saying that my character had killed her wolf and "what did you think was going to happen?" I was then told to roll a new character by the DM, and that "It's not that serious, it's only some oneshots." Needless to say, I didn't go back to that game. My question to you, oh high justices, is this: Am I right for thinking it was wild that the party killed my character and the DM let it happen? Or did it not matter that much because, after all, they were only oneshots?

Andrew R Chabolla

To the esteemed Justices and just a "solid dude" bailiff Blake, I present you the case of the Accused Nepo Nat 20 and RP gone wrong. Years ago my older brother would DM a homebrew game set in a post apocalypse fantasy world (think Fallout NV meets Skyrim) for a mixed group of my friends, his friends in which I played a gun slinging paladin who followed the god of liberty and freedom. The party was on a salavge mission and had blundered it's way into freeing a group of Lizardmen and kobolds from the tyranny of a young black dragon in an all out slug fest, that left the party alive by the skin of our teeth and me with one smite left. After driving off the very wounded dragon the party elected not take a short rest when asked by my brother the DM and said the lizards were thankful to us and asked us not to kill them and in return they would help us. The other paladin in the group immediately joked about enslaving the lizards and using/selling them to the salvage company we worked for, leading to the rest of the party to jump at the idea. I RPd that my character would be against this and said I readied an action and would fire on the next person who made a move towards the lizards. The other paladin did and I rolled a Nat20 and used my last smite and ended up killing him as we had not taken a short rest. My brother the DM ruled with the Nat20 and smite of my deity he was fully dead and gone reduced to ash and if he did return it would be as an oathbreaker/undead. The next few minutes resulted in 2 more party memebers attacking me and dying and the last 2 alive memebers with no healing or spells to just sit and watch it happen. The three dead party members accused my brother of nepotism because he wouldn't let them retcon taking a short rest and me of RPing too seriously causing them to storm out of the house and refuse to play with us to this day and effectively ending the campaign. Dear Justices was I in the right to hold true to my characters values and defend myself at the cost of the campaign and was there the sin of nepotism. I humble await your judgment.

Bakuraptor

To the jurisprudential justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and to the burbling baliff Honkwitz, I bring you a grave confession of my deceit and humbly seek your judgement, however cruel it may be. For several months, I have been DMing a Wildsea campaign for my players, who are treetop sailors piloting a chainsaw-ship across a world engulfed by giant forests. A big part of Wildsea is the encounter system: the DM creates various encounter tables and the players roll for encounters while they travel. My players absolutely love this system, and have been full of praise for how detailed these "random" encounters are. However, I must confess that this praise is the result of a shameful deceit. For some time, instead of writing a full table of encounters (20-30 of them), I've just written the 3-4 encounters I want to run, and have matched those encounters to whatever my players roll on the table. Even if I'm getting away with it for now, I know that my house of cards is built upon a lie, so I ask the court: should I confess to my players and reveal that my deception has meant their encounter rolls have been irrelevant, or should I confess the horrible truth that I've been imposing my own choices on them instead of letting Dice Christ guide their encounters? I prostrate myself before the court and am ready to accept whatever judgement you see fit.

McSandwich

To the esteemed judges Axford, Tanner and Murphy, and... I think there's a fourth one, oh well if I forgot, they must not be that important. I present the case of the Reluctant Isekai. It was my first time DMing. I was playing with my irl friend group that's been together for nearly 15 years. I was homebrewing a pirate and sailing themed setting, loosely inspired by Zelda: Wind Waker. I had a whole Pantheon and everything. However, only two of the players actually seemed interested in biting the theme. They were a warforged pirate captain and an Aarakocra that was part of his crew. The other players were a half orc samurai, a human cowboy, and a human Bard who all had nothing to do with the setting. But the most difficult one was a halfling Monk. The Monk was actually the same character from our previous campaign. Not just based on her, it was the SAME ONE. I told the player that these two settings are not connected, so there would be no way for them to be from the same world. They came back at me with basically saying "dnd is magic, you can traverse planes and stuff". This playsr and the samurai player (my brother) both told me I was stifling the Monk player's Creativity if I didn't let them play this character from another dimension. I was worried that they would have no connection or stakes in the world, making for a weaker character arc. The Bard and samurai characters were also related to characters from the same campaign as the halfling, but different versions of them, like an alternate universe sort of thing, which I was also hesitant to include, but eventually I relented. It made the whole thing clunky and turned my original pirate adventure into basically a spinoff of our previous adventure. We played for a while before I got burnt out. I ask you, am I wrong to be annoyed at my players for this, or should I have stood my ground mote firmly? I await your decision. Oh wait, the bailiff! Fake Turdshitz, that was his name, right?

Nav Mann

To the resplendent judges and the repellent bailiff, I submit to you the case of the Thunder Step that ended a campaign. I was DMing a Star Wars 5e game and we were nearing the end of the campaign, the players were level 14. At this point in the story, the players had just quite impressively stealthed through a heavily guarded complex to rescue an important NPC. At the end, they found themselves underneath the complex in a sort of maze (we were playing on roll20 and I had dynamic lighting on so the sightlines would be blocked in tight spaces) Here's where the issue comes. One of the players fell for an albeit cheap mimic trap that was designed to attract the loot goblin of the party, and once he triggered it, he used the SW5e version of the spell Thunder Step to escape. I (and another player) gave him one of those classic "are you sure about that?"s and he went ahead with it anyway. The issue comes with the wording of the spell "The thunder can be heard from up to 300 feet away." This lead to a long battle against all of the enemies that they just stealthed past, as well as the final boss monster that was at the end of the maze in this space that they could hardly see each other. This resulted in some character deaths and ultimately the end of the campaign right on it's climax. To this day, the player defends his Thunder Step saying that we either should have ignored the loud noise because "his character wouldn't have done it" (I contend that his loot goblin ass character would have done it) or that all the enemies should not have converged to the location of the sound. But I think that the warning of "are you sure about that?" should have been ample enough warning to reconsider and that the stakes should be so high what was nearly the end of the campaign. We will enact whatever punishment you see fit.

Caisson the Jester Jouster

To the wonderfully optimized Justices of the Supreme Crit and the poorly planned Bailiff Jake, in my first full campaign I originally played a silly green kobold who was the group tank, he was a Rune Knight fighter, with the giant foundling background, and was adopted by giant parents. About halfway through the campaign I felt his story had been told and retired him for a new character. Fast forward a little, and another player retired *his* character. Imagine my surprise when his new character was a dumb green halforc (he took INT as a dump stat and talked like a caveman), path of the giant barbarian, with the giant foundling background, and was adopted by giants! He even bought the same dice I had bought for my kobold to use on his giant abilities! I was so annoyed, I avoided interacting with his character whenever I could, because it felt like I was interacting with a caricature of my first PC! Should I have approached this with more grace and talked to him about how similar these characters were, or did I do the best I could in an absurd situation? I await your judgment and humbly accept any ruling.

GrandmaCurlyFry

To the classy judges and that oh-so-sassy bailiff Geoff. I present to you the case of 16 wolves. I’ve been playing in a DND campaign with this DM for over 5 years and have an absolute blast with him. He is a great DM and an amazing storyteller. The issue occurred in our previous campaign, where I played a 10th-level Circle of Blight Druid. His younger brother reached out and suggested that I maximize my Foul Conjuration and Defile Ground ability by summoning 16 wolves with an upcast of the spell Conjure Animals. Foul Conjuration makes it so when my wolves died, they actually blew up for 1d4 necrotic damage, and if they were in the Defile Ground and got hit, that would be an additional 1d6 damage. He worked it out to be: 32d4+16d6+32 per turn (not a math major so not sure how this all checks out). Also since they were wolves they had pact tactics. When we first pitched this idea in combat to my DM, he chuckled and loved it, but after the 3rd time, got angry and asked me never to summon wolves again. I was a bit saddened by this, as I felt really fuckin powerful in the moment, but understood his frustrations. So I ask you this: Are 16 wolves too many wolves? Should I have followed the advice of the power-hungry meta gamer younger brother or summoned an appropriate amount of wolves? I await your just verdict.

Crispys

To the chilled, sparkling justices and room-temperature, flat bailiff may it please the court. A number of years ago i was playing in a waterdeep dragon heist campaign. We were warned going into the campaign that it would be a social heavy experience and so naturally our party consisted of a rogue, a bard, a paladin and myself a multiclass hexblade warlock/fighter. I think the campaign was very fun and the dm did an excellent job giving us all story hooks that tied into the campaign (for example my pact of the undying warlock was reluctantly bound to the demon-god orcus and was pitted against the azmodius aligned cassalanter family). If you’re not familiar with the dragon heist campaign the PCs run from level 1-5 while most of the npcs around you are legends of the forgotten realms. (we had a lot of fun annoying the lvl 20 drow pirate jarlaxle ) Everyone was having a lot of fun with the RP but our party of martials only rolled initiative for combat like 5 times total over the course a months long campaign. In the final episode of the campaign we had found the gold and were making our escape and it seemed like we’d finally be getting a real combat against a strong opponent with our newly level 5 characters, only to be hard carried by an npc archmage and a handful of other npcs we met along the way appearing for the final confrontation. I get that this was supposed to be a narrative driven campaign but years later i’m still a little bummed that the final combat encounter was more about our party distracting the bbeg’s while stronger npcs did the damage. Ultimately we prevailed and the story was beautifully wrapped up for each character in our party by the DM but am i wrong for wishing we had to stand on our own two feet for the final boss, even if we never stood a chance against the forces aligned against us? Were we all wrong for rolling martial classes when we knew the campaign would be heavily social? I humbly await your judgement.

Sweetest Pea

Dearest Justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, also Bailiff Jake (congrats on *finally* joining the 8-bit book club main show), I present the case of the ghosting dm boyfriend. I play hybrid online/inperson D&D with a group of 6 players that contains several members of my polycule, including my boyfriend (the DM), my girlfriend (the DM’s partner and co parent). We meet twice a month and I regularly drive over an hour (one-way) to join in person as the DM (and 3 players) are in another city. Over the last five years the three of us have discussed moving together, even going so far as to visit (several) potential cities together. At the beginning of a session several months ago, my boyfriend announced to the group that he had quit his job and was moving across the country. This was a total surprise to me and I had to hide my shock for the session. After the session I called him and expressed my surprise and sadness of being left out of this planning and decision. He said he was sorry for not talking to me about it but he just felt like he "had to do it". I asked him to make some time for me before they left and he agreed. Over the next 2 months he proceeded to bail on pretty much every plan we had and I barely got to see him before he left despite multiple offers to come help pack or work on the house. He’s also barely been in touch. My girlfriend (his partner) on the other hand made extra efforts to spend time with me before they left and we chat very often since they’ve been gone. We have not played another session yet, and I am feeling anxious about it because this huge event has barely been addressed. I love this group and the people in it, but I’m not sure how I’ll adjust after such a big loss of trust. Justices, am I wrong to feel ghosted by my boyfriend’s big move or was expecting to be included in this process my mistake? We both listen to this podcast and will certainly hear your judgements.

Joe Lenton

To the esteemed judges and Bailiff Jake #2, I present to you the case of the Salty Shield Spam Bard vs the Deceptive DMPC. On a day where I didn’t have time to DM a full session, my players asked if we could just run a non-canonical PVP in an Arena in two teams. I said I would be happy to adjudicate rather than use my DM PC, a Rogue designed to support the party in combat but my players said I should join in. At the end of the PVP, it came down to me versus a Bard, who I couldn’t hit because he kept using Shield. Looking to get around this, I had my DMPC walk away 10 feet from the bard, at which point he made an attack of opportunity, which missed. I then walked back up to him and made my attack, which hit, but when the bard yelled “Shield!” I reminded him he had already used his reaction. My rogue then did enough damage with sneak [rules note: my ally was within 5ft] to kill the bard and win the fight for my team. Judges, I cannot tell you how livid this made my player. He got so mad he left the voice chat and didn’t come back until the next session, where he scolded me for using my knowledge of the game to my advantage. I argued it wasn’t my knowledge of the game, but rather my knowledge of *him*, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to pass up an opportunity attack even though it wasn’t his characters forte. He eventually left the group for other reasons but I still often wonder if I meta’d too hard, even for a silly non-canon fight? I humbly await your judgement.

Joe Dooley

To the blessed and bountiful justices and most meagre bailiff Jarkx. I present to the court - the case of the drunken DM. I play in a home game with 4 friends, everything is usually great and we have a lot of fun… until our DM cracks open his wine. A shadow falls over the once kind realm and the PCs previously bubbly demeanours become cruel and aggressive. One session in particular my PC had been building up to a tense reunion with his estranged father. My PC had never been old enough to meet his father really so I expected an intense role-playing climax. Instead my PC’s potential father came in hot and ready to kill. After a failed persuasion check he called my PC a ‘dipshit’ then farted and died after. This same session another player’s PC was perma-killed after being cornered in a room by 10 Azer’s and 10 fire mephits (we were level 5). We couldn’t even revivify because they burned the body. Am I right to feel cheated of a heartfelt role play moment or should I appreciate the chaos and steer into the volatility of the realm. I await your most honoured judgement

strawberryfrog

Sup, One time my party and I were fighting a high-level Archfey. He cast disintegrate on my character, who was already at low health, meaning he could have killed her with no hope of resurrection. I cast counterspell in order to save my PC’s life. My DM said “Go ahead and roll”. I got an 18. Knowing I’d passed the check, the DM then decided to cast counterspell on my counterspell. I protested mildly, thinking that it was kind of lame of him to make me roll first before deciding to use counterspell. My DM stuck to his guns, but after a bit, took back his counterspell, therefore allowing my character to live to see another day. My question is this: am I in the wrong for protesting (mildly) or was my DM in the wrong for only casting counterspell after he knew my counterspell was successful?

Holden O

O Wise and Merciful Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner - Oh wow, Jake, I didn't know you worked here. I thought you did, like, a youtube show or something? - sorry, hold on. Justices, we come to you with a quandry as well as a case. We ask for your swift and terrrible punishment as Justices, but we also ask for your *advice* as fellow players and famous yaunts and youncles. My party has been playing very consistently for about 7 years now. In the last year, we have gone from being a mostly in-person group to a mostly virtual group. This has been a little disappointing, but it was not a major impediment. I have been virtual since day one, so it's always been available as fallback for other members, and we've always had good virtual infrastructure. However, in the time that virtual play has become the norm, we've all developed some bad habits that are starting to irk me. Justices: What was once "finishing up the dishes" at 7:30 has become "doing the dishes at 7:30;" what was once "changing over the laundry" has become "doing the laundry;" "playing from the car because I'm running late" has become "planning to play the first 15 from the car, so I can run an errand." These are bigger examples, but we're all guilty of scrolling or trying to answer an email during narration or another players turn, or taking too long to run and grab a snack. When I brought this up, there were complaints that its hard to play online, and that doing the laundry, dishes or having another tab open helps to keep some players locked in; however, this makes me feel like a podcast (no offense) for my own friends. I understand that some tactile tinkering can be helpful, but sometimes it feels like it's gone too far for me. Therefore, we ask you: should I accept that doing their chores helps my friends stay engaged? Am I being unreasonable in pushing to have us all at our seats with cameras on at 7:30pm? If so, is there a line? which chores are light enough to get done during play, and which go too far? Your unworthy servant, Erdin

Zack Murphy

Hello pious justices honorable bailiff Jark. The case lies not during a DND session, but before. I bring you the case of the Mike's Harder. My DND group has been playing for about a year and a half. We play at our DM's house. We will go over there about 2 hours before a session to just hang out and talk. Usually, one of us players (generally myself or my boyfriend) will decide to get snacks or something to drink to have during our session. One day, my boyfriend stated he wanted to go to the gas station and get an ICEE. I decided to come with him. Before we left, I asked everyone, including the DM, if they wanted "anything." The DM stated that he was good and didn't want anything. When I was at the gas station, I walked by a beautiful can of Mike's Harder Lemonade and decided spur of the moment to get one. I hadn't previously known I wanted alcohol until I saw the luscious can of hard lemonade. When we arrived back at the house, our DM saw the Mike's Harder and was upset. He said "a Mike's Lemonade??", which I responded with "No, a Mike's Harder." The DM then said "Well if I knew we were getting alcohol, I would have asked for some." Here's where the case lies justices- our DM states that when we asked if anyone wanted "anything," this did not include alcohol. The other players and myself are on the side that "anything" includes ANYTHING. We are a very happy DND family who still razz our DM about this to this day. But should we let this razzing lay to rest? I wait humbly for your judgement.

Onyxx

To the oh so swanky crit justices and mr jake. I present the case of the pissy pie eating contest. I’m a first time DM for a party of mostly new players with a heavy focus on roleplay. Recently my players found a pie eating contest in town and eagerly signed themselves up. Mechanically I set up the contest as a series of constitution saving throws, as the contestants tried to eat 3 whole pies as fast as possible. Everything was going great until one of the participating NPC’s rolled a nat20 on their saving throw, giving them a winning lead. My party’s bard was in the lead prior to this, and they came up with a plan to cheat in hopes of regaining their lead. She wanted to cast prestidigitation under the contest table to clean her pie tray and make it look like she finished early. Excited about her creative solution, I allowed it but decided to leave it up to a sleight of hand check. My bard rolled unfortunately low, so for flavor I narrated as their spell caused lights to flash under the table, displaying they were cheating and immediately eliminating them without a chance for them to explain themself. However my player was upset by this, as she thought a low roll would mean she would fail to cast the spell properly, not be caught cheating. She became so stuck on being known as a cheater that she later split from the party to track down the NPC who hosted the contest. She claimed she had cast prestidigitation to clean her pants after pissing herself mid contest and had not cheated at all. While everything was solved and we’re still having a great time sessions later, I can’t help but worry my potentially faulty mechanics drove my player to such lengths. Dear judges, am I at fault for having too harsh a ruling or was my player just a smidge too desperate?

Server Rav

Oh Great and Mighty Justices with the Whitneyvillean Bailiff, I bring forth to the court the case of the Conspicuous Cousin. As the DM, I ran a game with my wife, cousin, and several friends. We could play for several hours, and therefore have a break for potluck meals [pause for Justice Axford to comment on how she enjoys that sense of community]. On the day of the alleged offence, my cousin attempted a deception with a local gang of mobsters to infiltrate the organization. Since he presented his plan as everyone was breaking to organize dinner, I heard him out in private, where he rolled a Nat 1. He agreed that he was abducted and held for questioning. I came up with the idea that he should only speak to the table when his character was IG with the party. He sat quietly for 2 games before they realized he was missing. Once this was discovered my wife was livid, despite her not realizing how quiet he was sitting there. She alleges I had wronged my cousin and abused his confidence in me. I counter with he had every opportunity to object and it is more to the point the group of people around the table that truly did him wrong. All mighty Justices, I ask of you, am I the sadistic DM or are my players neglectful party members?

Charles Zipp

To the Esteemed Crit Justice and the Lack-Luster Bailiff Jake...I come to you with the Case of Teflins Gone Wild My group and I (male) were playing 3.5 E campaign, fighting Thw undead and the BBG was Stroud. I was playing a Lawful Good Sameri Tefling. Well during the campaign something happened between the Deities and all but the elder gods we cast from their God Form into Avitars. (This was actully just part of the story so we couldn't ask for Divine miracles.) Well to make a long story short, my lawful good Sameri, heard a Rumer that Paylor was evil and I made a pact with an Old God, for him to find me Paylor's avitar. I made good on my end, then the Old God delivered Paylor to me almost dead. I rolled 3 nat 20's in a row, killed the Avaitar and became the new god.... it derailed my DM's plans and he was upset and we ended that campaign. Also because of this, I helped a party member (Cobalt) become God of the Gnomes. Was I wrong to follow my training to kill evil...or was the DM wrong to end the campaign for the other players?

SiteZero

Hello honorable justices who can not be bought unlike the Supreme court and the Bailff Justin who gives Florida energy (in the bad way). I am a long time DM who has started to introduce friends to the game that haven't had the ability to play before. Recently they have been having such much fun that they are surprising me with their friends (which I take as a compliment) this is not the case I present tho. I have run multiple books (which I alter significantly to kinda make my own campaign and just use the book for assistance with timing) and we were halfway through Out of the Abyss when one of these "new additions" asked if he could DM the next campaign. I was super supportive and excited to be a PC. This is when problems occurred. We have been running combat heavy comedic campaigns for the most part but the more we all keep listening to him planning (which he did very loudly during break times and forced conversations in that direction) he is planning a super serious Warhammer 40K political roleplay campaign and got super defensive anytime we tried to Crack anytype of joke. The other PCs and I had discussions that we didn't want to play that and voiced that to him but he just kept saying trust me yall will have fun. During the final session we all told him that another of the "new additions" wanted to run a Fallout new vegas esc combat heavy comedic campaign and that is the direction the group is deciding to go this was met with a "OH we'll see about that". The epic conclusion I had designed in my campaign was that the Demogorgon offered them a wish if they sabatoged a simple wedding and killed the Groom. What I didn't tell them and they didn't roll high enough to know is that the grom was Graz'zt and the bride was Juiblex (in a human form I made). They hijacked the systems to keep the wedding secure and weaked everything before rushing in the finish the job (kick ass right?). They all formulated the plan to finish off the the bride because she was significantly weaker. This is when "new addition number 1" (let's call him Corey) breaks formation as a monk and uses insane movement to barrel rush the groom way across the castle 1000's of feet away while saying at the table "I'm getting that fucking wish so I can wish us all into my 40K campaign, y'all will have to play it then". While the rest of the party was struggling to finish off the bride he rolls a higher initiative and gets first round of combat against the groom greatly weakening him (putting him on deaths stoop). I see that the rest of my party was about to defeat the bride, so I cheat and use Graz'zt teleport ability and just move him into the room with the rest of my party problem solved. That's when from across the table I hear "Um, Actually his ability only let's him move 120 ft" so I bullshit and say "Correct but he is using the spell which allows him to go anywhere he is very familiar with and since he was planning on getting married in the ballroom he would be very familiar with it". This gets me a sigh and his turns become I run 180ft while the rest of my party are slaying the groom getting the wish and using it to wrap up the campaign where they all either go back home or set themselves up with the life they were seeking. He refused to narriarate his ending and even took a six pack home that wasn't his. I await my sentencing for if my crimes of bending the rules to prevent someone for hoodwinking future campaigns.

nat the neat

May it please the court (especially the illustrious Justice Emily): I'm a wizard that travels with a sorcerer skeleton named Bones. As a wizard, I cast Tiny Hut a lot as we travel. He can split himself up into different (still animate) parts. If Bones is half out of the tiny Hut, can the other half join him inside? I argue he can because he's still the same creature, but my DM disagrees. It hasn't come up yet, but I thought I'd bring it to the crit because it gives me a headache and requires the biggest of brains.

Charles Zipp

Just to clarify. My Tefling Sameri, was a female with 20 Charisma, extremely hot....and a lover of alot of men....Not the best role model for that Godhood!

cplthrawn

Esteemed and revered Supreme Crit Justices and Ignoble Bailiff Jrue, I humbly ask for your ruling on the Rejected Side Quest Conclusion. For some background, I have been DMing a campaign for the last 14 years (currently level 8). To allow players to try out other builds, we occasionally play little adventures I call jump campaigns. It's a few adventures we may or may not go back to that's at different levels and different locations in the same world. It's great as it gives the players and myself a mental stimulation and has let me build out the world more. The incident in question was a one on one story I did with one player who happens to be my wife. The story was done over discord over the course of a month. It helped me understand some of the BBEG strategy more and build out how I wanted interplanar stuff to work. She defeated the villain and I thanked her and told her that's where we would wrap it up. She responded with a simple, “No.” To keep things short for you (though not me), we are now about two years into this campaign. It's not her only private campaign in the same world and I'm afraid that running three long running stories is affecting the quality of each. I do enjoy everything, I just don't want any players to suffer from my growing writers block for all these constant adventures.

LyingConfection

May it please the crit and the honorable bailiff, I present the case of the new DM and the intentional TPK. I recently started a new DND campaign with a friend and some friends of said friend. The DM is a first time DM and home brewed an extensive futuristic cyberpunk world that they have been creating for over four years. The DM wanted our session 0 to be a one shot to explore their world which is a futuristic cyberpunk city. They assigned us characters with randomly generated character sheets and gave each of us a rough backstory, working with each of independently for several hours to flesh out an in depth backstory. While I was initially disappointed to have little input on my character creation, I ended up making a character who I really loved and was really looking forward to session 0. When it came to session 0, we roleplayed our one shot where we were office workers working in an oligarchy government system in a government building, planning an event while dealing with server issues. Our characters were led to the basement of a government building (effectively a dungeon). Inside, we found several guards and a server we needed to access. We were able to distract the guards and stealth to access the information we needed. As soon as we accessed the server, two mysterious monsters descended in an elevator. Our cleric was immediately brutally killed, by being beheaded and eaten in one attack, with 40 points of damage and our DM called it an automatic death with no chance for death saving rolls. While my level 5 sorcerer got one minor attack in for about 10 points of damage, I was immediately attacked and killed with 35 points of damage as the DM described me being ripped apart and eaten, and declared dead immediately with no death saving rolls. What followed was the complete brutal TPK of our party, where one hit killed each party member one by one, as the DM described our gruesome deaths. The one party member who was far enough away and managed to flee on their action, was met with a disabled elevator and then squeezed to death and eaten, dying immediately. Upon ending the session, I asked the DM if there was any way we could have survived. The DM said there was no possible way to leave alive, they intended on TPK’ing us from the start, and finally identified the creatures that killed us, which are level 14 giant sci fi bugs out of a homebrew dnd book with 200 hp each (compared to our party which was level 5 and 14-20 hp range). When I asked why they made us flesh out our backstory so much if we would be killed instantly, The DM said they needed to make us really hate the government in the story, as we’ll be working against the government in the rest of the campaign. While I was disappointed with not having a fair fight, I started to build my character for the next campaign who I decided would be a sibling of my last character, intent on avenging my deceased character. When I told my DM, my DM said I couldn’t do that as no one would even know we were missing, let alone dead and that our deaths were largely insignificant. At this point, I don’t even feel anger towards this fantasy oligarchy, just the DM. Humble court, I throw myself at your mercy to ask: Is my DM in the wrong for a TPK to create an internal motivation for the players against this fantasy government or should I just move on and play the DM’s way? I await your esteemed opinion.

Leopard

I kneel before the Church of Crit, hanging my head low, and bring you the confession of the fudged nat 20. This was a year ago in a campaign that I DM'd, my players pulled off a heist and stole the egg of a chromatic greatwyrm and in the fight that followed, found themselves with multiple players at deaths door. The paladin made the heroic choice to move an unconcious player to a wizard preparing the party out of the combat, but this triggered an opportunity attack. Heralds of the Church, I crit on the opportunity attack. The paladin was on single digit HP. I lied and told the paladin I rolled a nat 1, not wanting to take away their heroic deed. It turns out I forgot about their half-orc Relentless Endurance, and they were planning on being attacked in order use that ability, thus making their choice cooler if they got hit. They expressed disappointment at the attack missing. This campaign has since ended victoriously, and the player hasn't brought it up since, but it eats away at me. Can I be forgiven from stealing my players thunder, or will the lightning above smite me for fudging the attack and dulling the moment. I leave myself before the Church.

JackJack

May it please the lovely justices; Caldwell, Emily, and Murph, as well as the passable bailiff. I bring to you the case of the time crunch. During a recent online game on a Pathfinder server I'm on, I let my GM as well as the other players know that I would have to leave early if the game ran over 3 hours as I had work that evening. The GM and players let me know that was totally okay and that the game probably shouldn't run that long anyway but if it did I was more than welcome to dip. Justices, this is where the incident begins, around 2 hours and 40 minutes I reminded the table that I would probably have to leave soon so I had enough time to get ready for work. The players and the GM all insisted that the game should be over soon and, to be fair, that did seem to be the case. However, during the last few rounds of our final combat encounter players constantly started remarking about unrelated rules interactions (i.e. if I were a fighter I could do this and this and this. Wow! Fighters sure are great let me go into depth on this) and the GM even had the final bad guy heal himself up as he was almost down. I found myself constantly reminding people during the end of this encounter that I was on a time crunch and worried that I may have been acting a bit agitated as I asked if people could save unrelated rules chatter to the end of the game. Justices, should I have just gone with the flow and trusted the process or was I right to be a bit upset at how the others weren't valuing my time needs. P.S. I'm still totally fine with all the players/GM and no one ever seemed to have any hard feelings about it.

Jamie Lyons

To the blindingly beautiful justices and Sweet Blue Joel A few years ago I was playing in my first campaign as sorcerer named Bramblebits. On an early quest we were set to break into a wizards home and steal something, but our DM filled in with interesting things to distract us. I specifically asked in there was a mimic (it was one of the only things I knew about dnd before playing) somewhere in the room and on a successful investigation check there was a mimic disguised as a houseplant. I asked is if I could safely keep it and I rolled a nat 20 on my animal handling check and was allowed to keep it. Fast forward 8 real months later and Bramblebits, with the highest charisma in the group, is in front of an Orc warlord in the middle of his war camp trying to ask for safe passage. I was able to convince him to spare our lives but not to let us pass. As I retreated I offered him the houseplant and it was clear my DM forgotten about it. I had the group retreat and after we left the camp I reminded the DM the plant was a mimic. He narrated that the mimic killed the chief but the number second in charge just took over and there was no change to our situation. I argued that there would have been some infighting and some level of distraction but his retort was “they’re too organized” for that. We ended up finding another way around but one PC did die on the way. I still playfully ask my DM how organized different enemies are before encounters start, but was I wronged? Did my use of a mimic cause too much DM sweat? Or should I have been granted some kind of distraction. I humbly await judgement.

m. white

To the honorable bailiff, and the low-down, dirty Jakes of the court, I present the case of the ultimate stiff-arm. I'm part of a campaign that's been running for the better part of a year. In our most recent session, we finally managed to defeat the BBEG. As he stood bloodied and beaten in front of the altar of the MacGuffin, the DM began to narrate a monologue. We've heard more than enough monologues from this jerk, so I interrupted with "I walk up to him, plant my hand on his face, stiff arm him, and as I'm doing this I cast Power Word: Kill." The already badly injured BBEG dies instantly, and I seize the MacGuffin. Afterwards, I find out that the DM was upset that I had ruined his monologue, which was meant to lead into a new story arc. However, I believe this was completely in character for the pragmatic, neutral sorcerer character I'm playing, and there are other ways to introduce a new arc. Was I wrong to immediately kill this extremely powerful and dangerous wizard, rather than letting him finish his monologue and possibly do some shenanigans to escape yet again? Love, The City of Buffalo, New York

WesKane

I humbly confess to the court and the dude who picks out these pitiful stories Jesk, as a new DM I made the mistake of treating criticals too seriously when it came to attacks. I had a player who was a happy to lucky monk. I had given the character an item for a reward in their last encounter, it was a circlet of blasting which allowed a scorching ray to be cast as an action. Player used it against a necromancer and rolled a 1 to hit. Since I treat 1s for attacks to be a miss and a hit to another player/npc IF they are behind the target. Which unfortunately was a child they were trying to rescue. The monk accidentally killed the child in one hit and the player determined their happy to lucky monk was now scarred and couldn't be reconciled. I feel terrible and don't know why I chose to be that strict with roll of a 1. I leave my fate to the court!

Kyle Ayers

To the all poweful crit justices and that guy Jake from 8-Bit Bookclub, I bring you the case of malicious ignorance. My dnd group had been playing the same campaign together for almost 4 years when we finally got to the final battle. During this time many characters had been killed,ressurected,or traded out,but my dragonborn fighter had survived the entire campaign up to this point. The final battle was hard fought and took place over about 12 sessions. Everything was going well,no one had died but we were on our last legs as we drew towards the end. I myself was fighting from range as i was at low hitpoints and riding on a flying broom. This is were i was sabatoged. A level 20 warlock in our party was grappled by the big bad and had no way to escape until our bard came to his aid. She gave him a scroll of Thunder Step so he could teleport away to safety. My turn came and i used a magic item to succesfully cast Slow on the big bad,greatly reducing the threat he posed at the moment. Then came our warlock’s turn. He asked the bard if she told him in character what the scroll was and she said no as it was too little time with a round being 6 seconds. The warlock then said that because she didn’t tell him,he had no idea what the scroll was and would not be using it. We argued that as a level 20 caster he would be quite familiar with spell scrolls and have an intuitive understanding of what spell it was,to which the DM agreed with us. However the warlock still refused and instead cast a point blank eldritch blast and ended his turn. The big bad then proceeded to hurl the warlock at me,doing enough damage to knock me out. This caused me to lose the Slow spell i had cast and also drop 20ft to the ground taking a failed death save. This event led to my character dying as the fight concluded the next round. Ultimately everyone was ressurected and healed after the fight so there are no hard feelings but i cannot help but feel i was slighted due to our warlock’s willful ignorance. Tell me justices, was I sabatoged by our warlock or was he in the right?

Rainemaker

Intro no more twenty twenty four. What's up gamers. And also Bailiff Jake who Needs No Introduction But Deserves One Anyways. A few years ago, it was my first campaign ever. First session, even (we forewent a session zero. We were all fairly new and didn't realize how important that was) My DM was running a module of some sort- I don't remember which one, and it could have been third party- for a group of us. At one point in this module, the DM mentioned that there was a cave off to the side with a trail of gold coins leading into it. Now, I know an obvious trap when I see one, as would my character, so I said that i'd pick up a few coins and return to the group. However, My DM took that as me entering the cave, where I was immediately 'Hopelessly Lost' in the cave. This devolved into half an hour of panic on my end and confusion, trying to find any way out of this. I did fail a roll to gather my bearings, but I mentioned that my character was an Outlander background, who has "an excellent memory for maps and geography" as in their 'Wanderer' trait. Try as I might, though, my DM had said that my character was lost. And I'd need to roll a new one. As it was my first dnd character ever, I had grown quite attached to her, having purchased an art commission within the first day of finalizing her design. Should My DM have given me mercy? Or should I have waited to get attached to my character? and just in case it sways a Certain Judge in my favor with an interesting character, she was a black-panther tabaxi ranger named Hush who spoke in rough common.

David Pazmino

To the esteemed Justices and that one shadow-dweller, Jog: May it please the court as I present the case of "Feathered Frustration" In a Raveloft campaign, I played an Owlin beastmaster ranger as an archeologist and zoologist dedicated to the study and taming of large avian creatures as companions. Commencing with a Large Toucan, adapted from the stats of a Large Owl within our narrative, the game thrived at the beginning of the campaign as we weren't in Raveloft yet. Yet, the narrative took an abrupt turn upon our party's unwelcome relocation to Ravenloft. The crux of the matter rests in the DM's assertion: birds, by their decree, did not exist in this realm. A realm called Ravenloft did not have a single annoyance species not even a single raven! Moreover, there was an expressed disdain towards avian-like entities such as Owlin and Kenku. Consequently, my character's backstory, deeply rooted in a passion for understanding and befriending large birds, was summarily disregarded. Should the DM have metaphorically clipped my character's wings, or am I perhaps overreacting here?Admittedly, the situation does hold a hint of absurdity – an archeologist stranded in a realm devoid of birds and seemingly harboring a grudge against them.

DaGriz

To the masterful magistrates and that guy who’s supposed to guest on 8-bit book club I think: I️ present the case of the Campaign Coup. I️ have been a player at a table for a weekly campaign for over a year. Recently, our DM decided they needed to step aside due to some burnout. We all totally understood, but this meant that we were dm-less. My boyfriend, who was not apart of this group, had dm-ed before and offered to step in so that the group could keep playing. Everyone was excited, and we all agreed to take a couple weeks off before kicking off with his campaign. Unfortunately, that’s where things get a bit juicy. During the time off, for non-dnd reasons, we decided to break up. It was entirely amicable and he even made it clear that it wouldn’t be an issue that he’d be dm-ing the upcoming campaign that I would be playing in. Low and behold, a couple days before session zero, I️ received a Jake’s-post-show-notes-esque wall of texts at 1am about how he thinks it would be a bad idea for me to play in his campaign and that, if I️ was there, he wouldn’t dm. The texts made it pretty clear that having both of us at the table wouldn’t work. Not wanting to ruin the game for the rest of my friends or make a big deal of things, I️ quietly backed out simply saying to the rest of the table that I️ could no longer play. The rest of the table doesn’t know about my ex’s request to kick me out, and I’m now without anyone to play dnd with. So judges, should I️ have made a bigger deal of things and possibly made us DM-less once more? Or Is the DM right to exclude me from his campaign regardless of the personal nature of his reasons? I️ humbly await your judgement.

Nathaniel F

To the adorable and honorable judges, Madam “Executioner’s Axe”-ford, Sir “I used too much” Tanner, Your Honor “The Cock” Murphy, and to the preciously precocious Jakey Wakey. I present the case of the too generous DM. I messed up. Ok? I love magic items and therefore enjoy giving them out. I’m a therapist who’s been running a D&D social group for a few preteens over the last couple years, and over this time, the remaining 3 players are absolutely loaded. At level 14, there is a total of 11 legendary items, 9 very rare, 11 rare, and 8 uncommon items. It’s crazy. Yet I shudder to tell you about a what I allowed a former player to get away with. Not only did I do this, but because they started playing at a younger age, I wrote off attunement. It’s so bad. They even joke about me being too generous, how they barely remember what they have, and how combat is easy. I recently offered them a witch shop, who can take unused or unwanted magic items and randomly transmute them into new items, even combining several items into one better item. She would have even just purchased them at a good price. Instead, they say “nah, we’re good. Can we go find a magic shop to steal from instead?” I have been creative with puzzles and combat (I promise), but I just can’t find a balance with it all at this point, and we are in end game, close to fighting my world’s Deity of Evil. With most therapy goals achieved, it’s now just time to have fun and kick ass. So Please, any advice on how to give them engaging boss fights for the end game here would be appreciated. I’ve strongly considered reintroducing attunement, but I could use expert advice. And please, punish away. I am at your mercy. Full list of items available upon request.

Sans Zimmer

To the right-honorable justices and the lugubrious fail-iff, Jog the Bounty Hunter: I present the case of the Secret Curse. I've been DMing for a small group for a couple of years now, so I think I have a good grasp on what my players like and what they'll think is fun. Recently they have been exploring a cursed shipwreck on the ocean floor -- very spooky, lots of fiends, classic cursed shipwreck fare. I have hidden some powerful loot which 3 of the 4 players have found and enjoyed, leaving the last one HOUNDING every nook and cranny for "their" item. I had one planned for him, but before they got there the group came across a ritual room full of magical artifacts and trinkets. My player was sure this was his turn for loot so he started grabbing and inspecting items.... in the ritual room of a cursed shipwreck. As he grabbed a particular instrument, I rolled behind my screen using his stats and he failed the saving throw to be cursed by the item he already happily equipped. In the next fight he went down and I told him to make his death saves with disadvantage, per his curse. Judges, he rolled a 7 and then a nat 1 on his next save. He's a good sport but I can tell he thought it wasn't fair since he didn't know he was cursed. Did I wrong my player with evil DMing? Or should he have been wiser about touching all the magic stuff in the evil room?

bingbong

To the delicious justices and stinky smelly bailiff Junk, I present the case of the underwear thief. I am playing in a new campaign with several of my close friends (this campaign is DMed by my partner). During character creation one of my friends, playing a gnome named Glimbo, agreed to be the cleric for our party, however his backstory and character attributes all lean towards him being a sneaky rogue-type. During our first session Glimbo stole gold pieces from the locals in first tavern we entered, causing a brawl to break out. Luckily, we were able to calm the mob and continue on with the story. My character (a gnome wizard named Blek) reprimanded Glimbo for being so foolish, but it didn't seem to stick. Fast-forward to our first fight. Upon vabquishing our foe, Glimbo asked if he could steal the villain's underwear. I asked "why" and my friend said "it just seemed like a gnomish thing to do." This has continued to happen with every foe we come across. My friend has not given a single in-character reason for this behavior, instead insisting that "it's what a gnome would do." This has caused a rift in my party, because Blek doesn't want to work with a pervy underwear thief. Am I right to be annoyed by this bizarre behavior or should I overlook it and see if Glimbo will develop in a satisfying way? I await your verdict

SwagDog85

Intro no more 2024, I bring the case of the secret group chat to kill a player. I am a DM for a group of new plays, I wanted one veteran who could help explain the rules to the new players and as such I gave them free creativity to make any character that they wanted. I didn’t check in with them when they finished. They did not make an over powered build but instead made “Tweety McLovin” a murderous grandma aarakocra who just killed one of the new players familiar in a homemade fireball (by mistake?). So after the session I was added to a new group chat with my players that excluded Tweety player where the group chat title was called “fry that chicken.” Am I in the wrong for not checking over all players character sheet or am I in the wrong for letting a veteran member join a newbie table? Also should I kill Tweety? -Enrique

Matt Gustavson

To the frosty justices and the bailiff Jorts. I present the case of the Co DM’s laptop. I, a new DM have just started my first campaign, which is a dungeon crawl tower. My good friend, who is a much more experienced DM, has been a great help with plot and planning help. During on of his sessions in a separate campaign, one of the party members, our rogue/bloodhunter asked to borrow his laptop to look up some rules. This player got “side tracked” and looked through my notes, learning that my players were actually being trained to be food for the god of hunger! He then spoiled the entire campaign for all the other players who were also at this session. So justices, was I wrong to give another player my notes, or is this rogue wrong for getting his hands on what he shouldn’t have

RecsBecs

To the exceeds expectations justices and average bailiff, I bring you the case of the slacking snacker. Giving the plot twist early: I am the slacker. I attend a weekly Pathfinder 2E game. The GM gives us hero bits (4 bits = 1 hero point) for bringing snacks. The GM lives near where I work, so I usually come straight from the office to the game. I’ve started bringing free snacks from my work’s snack drawer, then throwing leftover snacks back in my bag to bring to the next session and getting another hero bit. This is fine with the GM, but one of the other players brings a brand new snack every week. Even worse, he’s a recent high school graduate with just a summer job as income before he starts college in the fall, and I’ve been salaried for almost a decade. Should I provide my group with better snacks, or am I good if the other player wants to do extra?

J. Diamond

To the fragrant Justices Tanner, Axford und Murphy and the rugged, unwashed bailliff Mr Hurwitz - I humbly present a case before your court, "The Permanently Perplexed Player" I joined a newbie campaign lvl 1-3 with a group of 7 complete strangers. We all had a good time Killing Kobolds and the DM was incredibly patient with everyone - perhaps too patient. One guy, who was playing a fighter, seemed incapable of doing anything for himself. He asked for the DM to roll his stats for him, to pick his equipment and his race, to suggest which monster to hit, to ask which direction he should move, even to roll all his attacks and then roll his damage. This seriously made his turns in combat drag, and most people felt bad for our DM. We decided in a separate discord chat to ask, during some downtime, if the player wanted to keep going - he seemed insulted that we asked but sticked around anyway. The mood soured until the end of the session which was still 1.5hrs away. Despite the mostly fun first half we haven't got back together since. Should we just have let him be? Does he deserve a sentencing ? I lay myself at your anointed feet.

Cain Bowman

To the timeless Honors and seasonal Bay Leaf, I present the case of the returning-to-eternal guest. Two years ago, a core member of my party (the Fantastic Band of Idiots) dropped from the campaign. I used his open spot to host a rotation of friends as guest players, including most recently my sibling. Guests are integral to a story arc, and then leave to reopen the guest spot when their quest is complete. For example, my sibling's PC Foxo, a snarky permanent summon fey spell with the rogue class, helped defeat the evil druid and decided to stay behind to become the new guardian of the forest as the party continued on. The party said their honey-adieu-bees, and that would be the last they saw of Foxo. Until a few sessions later, when the FBI realized they needed to go to the Feywild. They decided to backtrack to Foxo's forest to ask for advice. All of my session material was planned for forward, not backward, and not wanting to puppeteer a player's PC if avoidable, I called my sibling and asked if they could hop on the Discord quick and tell them that what they need is back the way the party came. They agreed enthusiastically,; great! Until our barbarian Wreckit asked Foxo if they'd come along, and they replied "You wouldn't be able to survive without me." I was shocked and did not interrupt the PCs to clarify that I only intended Foxo to give the information and go. That was the start of December. Foxo is still in the party. We all love my sibling and Foxo, and every member of the party has promised mutiny if I remove them from the group, and to me, my sibling is now just as much a party member as anyone else. But I do sometimes miss my smaller, more-manageable party size and the rotating guest spot. Should I have spoken up to my intention more than 7 months ago, or is it okay to let this one slide like a fox into a bush?

Joseph T

To the benevolent judges and the bailiff who keeps order in the court by pitty alone. I bring forth the case of the razzed revivify. Many years ago I was playing my first ever character, a lawful good paladin (I've matured, I swear it!). When our party reached out first large city, my character had decided to split from the party in search of information amongst the people of the streets. After having had a few NPC conversations my DM set bandits on my character in an alleyway. After failed attempts to dissuade them from attacking my paladin I quickly defeated them by using an lightning AOE at my feet. When my DM gave me an opportunity to inspect my surroundings I rolled well, to which he revealed that I had unknowingly struck and killed a small orphan boy hidden in a barrel aswell. There was no mention of small orphan boys before the fight. Racked with guilt over catching this child in the crossfire, my character used his scroll of revivify in that moment (bear in mind we were lvl 4 at the time). My DM subsequently asked me to make a roll for casting the spell. I rolled low so the DM announced that the spell had worked but only enough to restore the urchin to a vegetative state. My character frantically tried resolving the situation by giving all his gold and instructions that his orphanage use the money take care of him. For the rest of the campaign, not only was I razzed by the rest of the table for "wasting" a scroll of revivify, but also for trying to make any decision for my character to do what they thought was the right thing. So I ask of the Justices. Was my DM cruel to thrust such an agregious act upon my character? Or was I deserving of all the razzle dazzle for being a first-time player Paladin?

Victoria Alber

Greetings to my elegant Justices, and to Josh the Jester. Today I come to you with the case of the Heart Broken Hero. For the past year, I have been running my own homebrew campaign with my very closest friends, and my girlfriend. It has been wonderful. However, over the past few months one of my players has grown increasingly obsessed with me. Some examples include: -Not playing at all, but instead choosing to just stare at me -Refusing to leave after the session ends (usually at 8pm) and staying until nearly 2 or 3 am, even after verbally kicking them out of my house on several occasions -This person will sometimes just show up and enter my home unannounced -And, as I just found out, they've confessed they are in love with me to several of my friends. While I consider this person to be one of my closest friends, it has simply gotten too weird. I have since kicked them out of the campaign, and I feel bad for continuing my campaign at all. Did i make a bad decision? I humbly await your verdict.

Logan Stacey

To the justices all invited to my birthday party, and also Jake. I bring you the case of the broken grave cleric. I joined a campaign that had already been running for a while, with characters at about level 8. There were about 6 players and the DM. Myself and 2 of the other players were pretty experienced in DND, and the DM and the other players were still relatively new to the game. Things were going great, until one combat, when the usual group DM now player (one of the experienced people) playing a grave domain cleric used his “path to the grave” feature. He gave the boss we were fighting vulnerability to all damage, stating it’s his favorite that “it’s not concentration and lasts for like 10 minutes.” Essentially he was turning this level 2 ability into the equivalent of a 7th level spell. Upon looking it up, I discovered it should’ve just been vulnerability until the end of the next turn or the next attack. The DM seemed to not know the difference, and trusted this player to know his stuff, so didn’t seem too phased. I off handed mentioned this after the session, to which the player waved his hand, stating “oh I got that off the first printed book, they must have nerfed it since then online.” Being new to the group, and not knowing everyone super well, I moved on saying “oh… well that’s a broken ability so I can see why!” Justices, was I wrong to not become a rules lawyer and argue against this ability being broken? I await your benevolent judgement.

Dave M

Dear honorable crit Justice's and the lowly daddy baby bailiff Jemily. I bring to you the case of the overly curious ranger. Me and my pathfinder group have been playing a campaign that has lasted for about 4 years of twice a month playing. It was fun. We've had players move and kept the game going. We recently allowed a new player into our game a good friend of ours, but he insisted our style.of play was metagaming too much for him, as we would casually out of character discussion possible actions we could take, all before actions were taken. All the while he playing the ranger for no logical reason decided to stalk the party's Tank and became "suspicious" of him when he would in game leave the party during free roam time. Fast forward to end game a few sessions later. Party wiped. Tank had to create 2 new characters, and new player is not attentive. And the Tank no longer wants to play with the new player. In our new western campaign Honerable justices what would be your ruling on this case as most of the party feels we have let the new player target our seasoned player and is trying to creat a rule oriented game play in the name of emersion while trying to compare it to the feeling he gets while playing a MMO, or online rpg. Is the new player in the wrong and should we try to get our tank back Or should we respect the decision of our seasoned tank and continue playing with the new player and allow him to learn how we play at our table. I await your decision.

Devin Awe

Greetings to the supreme justices of the crit and the most vile creature imaginable, Jacob Penn Cooper Hurwitz This was my fourth session ever and a new player joined our table. His character was a drow assassin, covered head to toe in bandages to hide his race. The DM’s hook for the session was having the new PC pretend to be a merchant and ask us to go with him to investigate an attacked merchant caravan in the desert. My response was an emphatic no, because going to secluded locations with people you just met completely covered in bandages seems like a very bad idea, especially in a world where humanoid monsters are plentiful. The rest of the party agreed with me on this and we didn’t go to the desert until the drow took their bandages off since we told the player that none of us cared about him being a drow. Justices, should we have gone along with the DM’s plot hook more easily, or were we right to exercise caution against a sus weirdo?

Hunter Gay

To the Effervescent Justices and the half empty bottle of sprite that's been in the fridge for 3 months bailiff, I present the case of the Communist Cookies. I played in a one-shot with my cousin, his girlfriend (the DM), and some of their friends. We were all playing sentient gingerbread cookies trying to prevent our untimely consumptions by escaping from the house of the family that created us. Our final task was to sneak out past grandpa, who had fallen asleep on the couch watching war documentaries. I decided that my grumpy, grizzled cookie named Moe Lasses would want to watch some war documentaries, and the DM narrated that the one playing was talking about communism. After the rest of the party spent a few minutes arguing about our peaceful plans for escape, I turned to them and, as a joke, delivered a rousing communist speech about how there were 6 of us and 1 of grandpa, and us, the cookies, are really the ones with the power, we just need to seize it. I thought we would all laugh and move on with the session, but the DM told me to roll charisma and I got a nat 20. This led to us executing a six-pronged gingerbread attack that led to the murder of an innocent old man just trying to watch his movies. We all had a great time, and successfully escaped to start our new communist gingerbread society in the walls of the house. We all look back on the session as hilariously chaotic, so there is no conflict here, but I bring this question to the court: whose hands are forever red with the blood of grandpa? Me, who jokingly roused a group of cookies into murder? My DM, for introducing communism and then asking for the charisma check? Or was it all the divine will of Dice Christ? I lay myself at your feet and at your mercy, and expect you to deliver swift justice for this swiftly unjust murder.

Kristina The Sorceress

To the esteemed and effervescent 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 accomplice 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 in-character 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.

CamSmall

To the Supremest of Crits and the Bailiff that Prevents It From Falling into Chaos, I humbly present the case of the unlucky TRex. I am DMing a game of Curse of Strahd, and my players characters are of the mind they need to destroy Strahd's coffin before him to prevent vampire regeneration. In THE FIGHT with Strahd in Ravenloft at the end of the game, the druid of my party who was out of wildshapes for the day decided to polymorph themselves into a TRex. I think this is cool as hell, and we move on, after a minor "no, you don't get to turn yourself into a TRex AND attack on the same turn" discussion. On their next turn, the druid TRex makes a bite attack against the coffin, which I had told players had a higher than usual coffin AC because it is the coffin of Strahd. They understood, and decided to attack it anyway. They rolled a natural 2, and even with a TRex's bonus were unable to meet the AC. Then the player asked if they could use their Lucky feat to reroll. I looked at the language of polymorph, and initial gut reaction was no. It specifies mental abilities and the target of polymorph are now those of the chosen beast--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?

frogwithhumanhands

To the big boy judges and the wittle baby bailiff, I am DMing for my sister and her friends and we were in character creation and planning a session 0. All of the players are super into it and excited about the game and I had one-on-ones with all the players to discuss boundaries and how to make the game fun for all of us. One player, however, kept brushing me off in private but telling the group that she was excited to play. I got the impression that she was only wanting to play bc she needs to be included in everything, but she's not my friend so I didn't say anything. Eventually, however, we were all just waiting on her and I made the decision to just kick her from the group chat and play without her because i didn't want the rest of the players to wait and for me to plan this whole game with a player who was half invested. Where I may have been wrong is that I didn't tell her this, I only told her friends/the rest of the players. Was this fine? Am I being a class A butt? I humbly await your judgement.

Levi Pranke

To the extremely hot and not at all boring justices and the absolutely dreamy bailiff Jakeypooh: May it please the court, I present the case of the child hater. In a campaign I’ve been playing with my friends since our last year of college the 4 of us were tasked with bringing a kidnapped child named Georgey backto his parents in a town a few days travel away. On the trip my character (a champion fighter named Lance) started to grow a bond with this child and I felt like a sort of older brother vibe as we traveled. Our battle master did not like this kid and the threatened him many times including handing him over to kobolds while the rest of us were sleeping and roasting him over the fire. Long story short we saved his parents and village from a vampire lord and we all celebrated in the tavern. I tried to have a wholesome goodbye cutscene with Georgey who Lance saw as a little brother and gave him my sword and instantly our battle master (who earlier said he wasn’t in the tavern cuz he wanted to be alone) started to narrate how after I gave Georgey the sword how he took Georgey outside and taught him techniques and how to fight. I just sat there speechless as this happened. Judges, was I robbed of a wholesome goodbye and have reason to be upset? I accept any decision and/or punishment the court passes.

Laurawr

Dear Honorable Judges and a Stinky Poopy (yes Justice Axford, a toddler did come up with that--you were spot on last time I wrote in), I am playing a Dungeon World campaign with some friends from work (basically a "lite" less crunchy alternative to DND) in which I play an elderly Goblin chieftess turned pagan witch in retirement. Our campaign has been pretty fast and loose with the rules, and contains a fair amount of homebrew (including my pagan witch subclass), all of which was approved by the GM and hasnt been a problem in the months since we've been playing. However, in a recent session I tried to infiltrate an evil wizard's lair. I attempted this by using third level Disfigure curse (basically a spell slot from the approved Pagan homebrew) to disguise myself. The spell "melts and distorts the target's physical features making them UNRECOGNIZABLE to even their closest friends." Please note the wizard has never seen my character. I also have a goblin racial feature called Poison Tongue where "Whenever you tell a lie, you don’t really have a ‘tell’. So long as there isn’t much evidence contradicting the lie, they will believe you. However, if someone has caught you in a lie in the past you’ll have trouble convincing them even when you are telling the truth." I then tried to convince the wizard I was lost in the woods and needed help. However he instantly recognized my character. I argued that the language of my spell and features should have completely disguised me and this is what I had built my character to do, but them GM waved and said "he has wizard eyes idk". I let it drop since we have played pretty loosey goosy with the rules in the past and have gotten away with shenanigans, but I feel strongly that this had tightly buttoned up wording, and the instant dismissal of my efforts was disappointing. They could have at least had me roll a check or something if they didnt want it to just straight up suceed. I was still able to play out a pretty fun scene where my character ignored him and tried to keep up the ruse and ended up getting frozen on a couch, but was I wronged by my handwaved deception fail?

Victoria Gum

To Whom It May Concern, I humbly submit the case of the dwarven genocide. This event happened almost several months into the first campaign I ever played. I was the least experienced player at the table. Three other players and the DM had moderate experience, and one player had been playing for much longer. The most experienced player changed characters multiple times over the course of the campaign, not due to story/plot/character death, just because he wanted to. The DM always said yes, although she expressed frustration to others about it. The player started as a wizard, then changed to a warforged something, then a goblin, then a different warforged, then back to the goblin sorceror. I may have missed one or two. The problem was the goblin, who was a wildly overpowered and barely sentient. He was more like a pet than a party member. The goblin would not participate in any party conversations or planning, let alone follow plans. Again, barely sentient. He would just react to any environmental thing that happened and utterly destroy anything that he thought was an inconvenience. The first session when the goblin character returned was supposed to be the culmination of the previous character's (a warforged artificer raised by a dwarven civilization) storyline. Instead, that character got killed off and then the party continued to avenge the dwarven civilization, all of whose souls had been imprisoned in a giant orb. There was a really well designed battle in which we had to defeat a BBEG before they destroyed the orb which would doom all of the souls to hell. We did it - and then the DM had the goddess Umberlee (our cleric's deity) ask the cleric to destroy the orb for reasons related to a separate storyline. The cleric, of course, refused. Umberlee then reached out to the goblin (who happened to have an amulet of hers because it was shiny) and said that she would give him a fish if he destroyed the orb. The goblin agreed instantly and used an insanely powerful spell to instant-kill the orb, thus dooming an entire civilization of dwarves to hell. It was frankly emotionally devastating as a player, and it was a turning point for my character, who actually left the party because I literally couldn't think of a way to roleplay a reason she (a very lawful good monk) would continue to be in a party with this little fucker anymore. The other players were then mad at me, because my character had been important to the central plot line and they felt that I was abandoning them. I guess my question is - who was wrong? Was it the player for playing a barely sentient force of nature? Was it the DM for allowing it and/or having Umberlee make the request? Was it me for allowing this event to essentially end my character's part in the story? I humbly await a judgement. Thank you!

Mediogre

To the resolute and stalwart justices and the [say something nice about Jake here]. I present the case of "The Whomping DM". I've been DMing a D&D campaign for a little over two years. When we started, everyone was new to the game, including myself. Sometime during year one, the party were all at level 3 and was a large group at 7 players. They were tasked with taking care of a "little lizard" problem for a local druid. This turned out to be a young green dragon. I had plenty of ways prepped for them to "get rid" of the dragon without needing combat, necessarily, although I felt they could handle this. They readily chose a path of violence with no plan, which led to a player death. The party cleric charged up to the dragon and casted blindness. The spell worked, but the player was within the dragon's blindsight range and proceeded on its next turn to hammer the cleric into the ground like a Tom and Jerry bit. He subsequently rolled death saves of an 8 followed by a nat 1. It was dramatic and kind of comical, so nobody was mad. The player had a new character for next session and we were good to go. Now, up to this point the characters were still getting to know each other and were largely not trying to help each other out with heals or medicine checks when down, despite being aware of the rules. They were largely cautious in more intense combat encounters, often erring on the side of self-preservation. So I planned another encounter meant to push them with the primary goal to get them to rely on each other more. Two sessions later we had the encounter and at the beginning of the fight the party druid went down and proceeded over the entire battle to roll death saves. Combat was 6+ rounds and they kept going back and forth on death saves (i.e. success on one round, failure on another, etc…). I was hopeful one of the six other characters would have a change of heart in the face of yet another party member dying, rushing to their aid. I was wrong, they did not, and the druid died alone on the battlefield. While nobody was mad at me, they believe that I'm now a blood thirsty DM and that the death was more on the difficulty of the encounter than anything else. Were my expectations misplaced or should I have toned back that violent village ambush and even tweaked the original dragon encounter? I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Abraham Dorado

To the everglowing justices and Amir's personal secretary, I present to you the case of #WINDMILLGATE : I've was running a long form campaign with all my friends that lasted 3-4 years.one of my friends wanted to play a homebrew race based on the Tauren from World of Warcraft, I approved. During the middle of the campaign the party had to sneak in to 3 windmill bases to get informations, these windmills were spread put upon a grassy field that was littered with the remains of destroyed airships (basically an airship graveyard). My Tauren player then asked if he could pick up one of these MASSIVE windmills embitted in the ground and use it then sneak around the field in a Looney tunes ass move. I rejected the idea saying there was no way he himself would be able to pick up an Enormous structure and have it move around with no one noticing in broad daylight. He then proceeded to the math and calculated the strength of average Taurens in WoW against the height and weight of this windmill. He showed me that the math supported his theory but I still shutdown the idea and we moved on. Til this day #WINDMILLGATE still has it's mentions in our player group so I ask this, was my player asking too much in wanting to lift up and carry a LARGE ASS structure that's basically a building and pull a looney tunes or was I being too much of a hard ass and denied the potential looney and cartooney vibes to our campaign ? I humbly await your judgment.

Corey

This is a non-traditional Dice Christ Confession To the prophets of dice themselves and the guy who reads the confessions, I prostrate myself at the steps of your steeple. Though I have fudged some rolls (Only as a DM to avoid TPK's when I first started) that is not my confession I will pay for that in time. A number of years ago I joined a table for my first campaign. It was a 3.5e campaign that had already been going for 7 years prior to my joining. I was the parties 4th rogue and was recruited to fill that slot. I did not understand 3.5 character creation and inherited the XP of the previous rogue leaving me 2 levels behind the rest of the party as they hadn't had rogue in a while (originally they just wanted me to play one of the previous 4 rogues). I did not enjoy 3.5 (at the time) or the style of play at the table. I stuck with it for a while giving up an evening a week for 5 months while the game meandered on at an unbearably slow place. Finally it came to a head after a particularly grindy pair of sessions where we were tracking a dragon that had buried itself in the sand under a temple and hid inside. We spent 2 whole sessions (12 real world hours) attempting to find a way into the temple. We walked up and down the semi-submerged promenade and scoured every square inch for an entrance and never found one. Finally in my frustration i decided to try and dig a way in. The DM smiled and said it would take a long time to do with just a shovel and the sand filling back in. Only to find out that what he wanted the whole time was for our cleric to use move earth to excavate a tunnel in. I decided then this was not the table for me. This is where I believed I sinned. I did not know the table that well and did not want to bear the discomfort of telling them I wanted to quit this boring campaign. So I became the table flake, often missing sessions sometimes I told them I was "busy" other times I just ghosted. I did occasionally show up but my already weak rogue missed out on XP from sessions I missed and was pretty much useless. I was eventually asked by the player who invited me if they could try and replace me which I quickly agreed to. I am a DM now and scheduling is the true BBEG even for my 4 year long campaign I run now. My flakiness and social cowardice has weighed on me heavily and I seek your advice and absolution for my sins. P.S I recently ran into my previous DM and it was real uncomfortable. Should I reach out and apologize?

Dingus

To the ever eye catching Judges and the where did he go Bailiff Jeck, I present the case of the Succeeded too Hard Save. This happened months ago in a horror based campaign where the party, level 5, and my plasmoid paladin/sorcerer were infultraiting a masquerade to find and take out two eldritchly possessed leaders of different factions. After some sleuthing, hobnobbing, and sabotage the party found a secret staircase that led to a hidden ritual room with a magic circle in the middle. That is when my DM asked my character to make a Wisdom saving throw and i rolled pretty well around 20. Despite the roll my DM told me that I wanted to roll low for this save which confused me. They continued to describe my now possessed character walking forward and activating the magic circle causing an explosion that launched the party out of the castle tower with no save to not get blown away. The DM was fairly new and i didn't want to rock the boat cause all of our characters survived the fall so i didn't really bring it up but it still upsets me whenever i think about it. Judges, was my DM right in saying that my character saved so hard he failed or should my lil guy have proceeded past his pushy possesser?

Baron Trousers

To the supreme little logs and the impish bailiff Ache, I bring to you the case of the tramp-stamp disintegration. Some time ago, in an arcane dungeon, my gnomish paladin was marked with a transmutation sigil and turned into a disfigured hedgehog. The next day, when it wore off he could use the sigil to cast Disintegrate. Though, he could only cast it with Intelligence. Which is challenging for my hot, dumb gnome. In our last battle we fought a recurring villain. Our DM unveiled a cool new mini of it’s true form - a twin headed, extraplanar, crow-folk. We wamped the baddies and the villain prepared to escape. My turn came up and I politely asked my DM to make a dex save for the crow-folk. I did not declare what spell I was casting, though disintegrate is his only spell with a dex save. Despite rolling with advantage and only needing an 12, the DM failed the save. The damage exceeded the crow-folk’s current HP by 2 points. The DM asked how I would like to finish the villain. I described my hot gnome pulling up his shirt, revealing that the transmutation sigil looked like a tramp-stamp. The disintegration ray shot out of the tattoo and obliterated the crow-creature. My DM seems despondent that his recurring villain had been killed so cartoonishly. He explained that he had designed and printed the mini specially and planned to use it more than once. He also mentioned the villain had counterspell, but didn’t feel right using it after I’d rolled the damage. I can’t help but feel if I had announced which spell I was using up-front the cool crow-beast would have countered and flown the coop. Was my delayed Disintegrate declaration ok? Or was this tramp-stamped tirade totally trashy?

PlutoniumHeart

To the honorable judges, who I hope to see one day fulfill their destiny roleplaying as a bullywug boy band named new frogs on the hop comprised of swag Daniel's and the clones, and the lowly bailiff who's musical talent is so none existent they couldn't even score higher than the than dog water lapping sounds of those puppies backstreet boys posed with that one time! I present to you the case of "If I got a nickel each time someone denied my nat 20... well I'd only have 2 nickles but it's kinda fucked that it happened twice right?" Okay first off it didn't happen to me, but it happened to other players at the table who were both upset over it. I myself felt pretty mad about it. We've been playing a campaign for a while now that takes place in the fey wild. Tasked with finding a fey lord, who no one is sure is alive or not, we travel through a very whimsical brothers grim meets Alice in wonder land kind of take on it. 2 fun mechanics the dm introduced are functions that give both players and dm the ability to reroll any roll they desire too using coins you can accumulate quasi randomly for failed checks that are deemed worthy of such. When used there is a chance of a home brew style of wild magic surge that has mostly harmless funny effects and some very good effects. And not to mention you could potentially save your life with one of these tokens. On the other hand the DM has infinite access to a darker power, that they later determined doesn't need tokens, to cause you to reroll and have a wild magic surge, that while is still mostly harmless, is never beneficial. (I think you see where I'm going with this) This mechanic is fun and has created numerous absolutely hilarious moments. And for the most part everyone is pretty fair with their tokens letting certain things fail that would feel unfair to use a token to succeed on. Our dm however has twice now denied nat 20s that felt very unfair. The first was clearly because they had a plot device they wanted to have happen essential to the rest of the session. Entering a room a character randomly rolled perception trying to find any hidden living entities just on a hunch a creature that stole something from a while back might be in there and rolled a nat freaking 20! She immediately made the character reroll that nat 20 to which they rolled a natural 19! Should still succeed right? Nope. Said we would have needed a nat 20 to succeed and caused our party member to spontaneously combust into fake flames slowing us down. That creature caused a traveling companion to die in a way that revealed they were not entirely a living fairy and still half alive spurring a cool ark in the story but it felt wrong not to honor the nat 20 and punish us for it. Could have still lead to the new chapter without doing that. The next nat 20 was plain cut and dry. We were fighting a boss and losing. Our fighter rolled a nat 20 that maybe could have turned the tide of the fight! Nope, had to reroll it. We argued and the dm made us do it anyways. Reroll was a nat 1 with a surge that caused them to become prone and stuck to the ground like it was living glue that laughed at us for being stuck. We asked to use a token and she said we couldnt since it was a nat 1. The fighter died :( We were able to resurrect him after a few sessions but no one was happy with that and she acts like we are babies and it's completely fair since we have our own tokens we can use. (Accept not really evidently) It's a really fun campaign and she generally does a really interesting job of dming, we want to keep playing it but she doesn't listen to us at all. We have started a second campaign with her as a player and one of our other friends at the table dming and his campaign is very interesting as well! He's much better at listening and much fairer so we've started playing this campaign more and more. We want to continue the fey wild campaign but she refuses to change her dming style claiming we are being unreasonable and mean. Tell me, are we wrong for wanting this change? Is it really fair since we can change our own fates with these token (for the most part) or have we been wronged! I await your final judgment. I pray dice christ guide us all in these trying times. I felt their whimsical presence during both of those nat 20s.

Jack TenBarge

To the awe-inspiring justices of the Eggman Empire, and Jake. Not Hurwitz but Jake who appears in the Sonic Underground television series. I bring you the case of “The Nat 20 with Unknown Repercussions”. It was my first campaign and I was playing a Human Fighter named Luca Redding. I won’t lie he was a Hardwon copy. Our party was on a runaway train, equipped with the magic equivalent of a nuke, headed for the capital city of our world. We had to jump from train car to train car, find the bomb, and stop the train. It was a dexterity check to jump between cars, and on a fail, you hit the side and had to make an athletics check to climb back up. Me and our parties wizard had failed our previous dex check and were hanging on the same car. I rolled a Nat 20 to climb back up and asked my DM if I could use said Nat 20 to grab our wizard and throw him to the next car. My DM said yes so I Josh Allen’ed our wizard forward. However, on our wizard's next turn, my DM told him to roll a dexterity saving throw to land on the next car successfully. I argued, saying I wouldn’t have thrown him had I known he had to make a check considering our wizard had a -2 to Dex and had failed every check so far. My DM shrugged and said, “A Nat 20 doesn’t mean you get to break the laws of physics. You should’ve known”. I shut up since this was my first campaign and my DM was a seasoned vet. Our wizard rolled a Nat 1, fell between train cars, and was promptly and unceremoniously killed. The party yelled at me for the rest of the night, and even though we don’t play anymore I now DM for that wizard and he still brings it up. Justices, was I wrong to use my Nat 20 in a flashy fashion, or was my DM being a stickler and teaching me a valuable Nat 20 lesson? I humbly wait for your sentence.

Ian

Hello esteemed judges and the hunchbacked bailiff who lives in the belltower, I come to you with a case of negligent mentorship of a chaotic child player. A while back I was playing in a public game of dnd with some people who ended up being friends and some complete strangers, one of these strangers was a 14 year old boy who of course is the subject of this case. This boy played a white dragonborn Bard named Sans Undertale whom the dm let get away with some strange things, he changed his class several times with Bard only being the last one I saw him use, he regularly made rash decisions that put our party into danger we entirely could have avoided and he was allowed weird magic items I've never heard of like a horn that according to him would summon an ancient dragon if blown which he tried to use multiple times as much as the dm kept narrating it not working. This came to a head when we fought off some monsters who were attacking a farmers goats and Sans decided he wanted to fight the goats as well, the party, me included decided we'd had enough and used all our actions to physically stop Sans from harming the goats, which apparently annoyed this child player considering he quit coming to our sessions after that Now I know that being a minor these crimes cannot be laid at young Sans' feet, but that leaves the question of fault, was it the DMs fault for not taking a harder stance against bad behavior, was it our fault for driving away a potential future gamer or was it this boys moms fault for raising a problem gamer and dropping him off every week, I leave that question in your capable hands.

Derek

To the Sexy little robed justices and the Grinch loving bailiff. I bring to you the case of “ The Case of the back stabbing players” It was my first campaign with my wife and a fellow couple. It was a home game and I was loose on rules and heavy on having everyone get their spotlight moment in this fantasy world. Everyone was getting along for 3 sessions until the suggested that we include another couple to the game. I obliged and created 2 more intwined backstories and introduced their characters seamlessly. Well to my surprise the original couple had started to ghost us. After 3 months of ignoring my texts for sessions we went and created a separate game with the newer couple and are still currently playing it. Apparently we later found out that the original couple had said that I was obsessed with playing and that the other couple kinda ruined our game. Am I wrong for admitting a new couple in because they suggested it? Or are they just wanting more of a spotlight than they received?

sam orchard

To the arbitrators of the nadpod expanded universe and a guy wearing an immaculate Jake costume. I bring you the case of self mutiny. At the start of a session my group was giving the DM some light hearted and totally normal ribbing for the previous session of a homebrew campaign. This caused what we all thought was a joke as the DM said "if you hate my dming so much then we can just play icewindale" and then proceeded to actually make us roll up characters and run through the start of icewindale instead of our regular session. This was all fun and games as we were down a few people anyway, until next session came around. With our full number returning the DM started the session with an election. An election to decide on if we continue Icewindale or his game. All believing that this was a joke, primarily voted for options that didn't exist. This caused our DM to call a "vote of no confidence" and to quit dming for the group. Not a joke. We attempted to get to bottom of the issue but he was adamant that it was clear that non of us were having fun so he should just quit being the party DM. The discussion ending with us all going home dndless. Judges, did our light hearted razzing go to far? Or is our once DM in the wrong for this self sabotage.

dustin frasier

Let me add that during their "secret" time they consistently lied about what was going on and then when they came out together got mad at everybody else including me who was upset about the situation..

copperpauper

To the All-Powerful Justices and Balliff Jaaake, I bring the case of the DM PC Potential Powertrip. In the college dnd club my friends ran, I was assigned to one of the new groups to make sure that everything went smoothly. It was a Pretty Normal Campaign in the quests and enemies, with us fighting demons across the world. We were guided around by the DM PC, a level 20 Paladin named Arthas. (I didn't know this was a WoW thing until like a year later.) Justices, this paladin would appear, before and after every adventure, tell us what to do, and respond to us asking why he couldn't help with "I'm doing other, more important things." One time, a random encounter he rolled had a group of Level 5 adventurers fight an Ancient Red Dragon. Arthas appeared and, while we had to hide in the woods, one shot it. It reached a head after the fourth ritual site, where we learned that the demons had a plan to destroy the entire material plane. When the paladin appeared, half of us got various levels of testy, from my mild grumbling to the wizard calling Arthas a "Stupid Asshole." This was our last game, as the dm made a sub group of people who liked his paladin. Court, should we accept that there are players in the world far better than us, or is it fine to ask for DM PC's to be a little worse? I wait for your unerring wisdom.

Matthew Sturm

To the shrewd justices and the rakish bailiff Rake, I present the case of the Tortle Terror. My party encountered a lone tortle picking up homemade bone jewelry in the middle of the road. After I helped pick up the jewelry, it bit my cheek and sprinted into the nearby woods. The bite infected me with some sort of curse that started to slowly kill me. As we tracked the tortle to its cave, the rest of the party showered me with healing spells and even dispel magic, which the DM said made the effect disappear. However, as soon as we entered the cave, the curse came back and did so much damage that I went down at the beginning of my first turn from the curse, leaving the rest of the party to deal with an enemy with 3 actions a turn, no spell economy limits, and a really high AC. We ended the session before the end of combat, but everyone in the party is convinced that the DM has created the encounter to kill us all off. Was it unfair of the DM to make such a ridiculous encounter, or am I just salty because I only got to make death saves during the encounter?

Beav

To the benevolent Justices and secret heir to the throne Bailiff Jork, I bring before you the case of… FANATICAL FOCUS V. HEIGHTENED SPELL (featuring a murph-level freak out) A few months back, I was DMing a short campaign for a group of randos online. One of the PC’s was playing as a multiclass Sorcerer-Warlock optimized for damage-dealing. In one of the boss fights near the end of the campaign, the group was facing off against a Barbarian demigod whose stat block had the “Fanatical Focus” feature. In the sorcerer’s first turn, they cast an AoE spell and used “Heightened Spell” to give the raging Barbarian disadvantage against the save. The boss failed, so I decided to utilize the Fanatical Focus feature to reroll. Just before the dice left my hand, I noticed the wording of Heightened Spell states that the disadvantage only applies to the “first saving throw made against the spell.” To me, this seemed pretty clear cut that my next roll would instead be made flat, but the PC argued that a “reroll” is redoing the first roll, thus the disadvantage would still apply. Not wanting to spend precious playtime arguing, I just went with my interpretation of the rules. The player was clearly pissed they had wasted 3 sorcery points, but the party ultimately prevailed in the encounter. The next morning, I awoke to a MURPH-LEVEL FREAKOUT on Discord. This absolute wall of a message included a formal explanation of why their interpretation of the rules was correct, a declaration that I intentionally wanted to embarrass them, and an accusation that I was jealous that they had designed “the perfect PC.” And yes, this blowup was as out-of-the-blue as it seems. So Justices, was I correct in negating this Sorcerer’s Metamagic or am I, in fact, a cruel, heartless, and jealous DM to this online player that I had known for a total of 21 play-hours? I humbly await your insight

Luke McCauley

To the Jock Justices and the Poindexter Bailiff Jake, I present to you today the case of: The Canyon Crawl vs Leomund’s Tiny Hut A few years back, my level 7 party was attempting to travel through a perilous canyon while traveling in between story arcs. While in the canyon we fought against a challenging group of goblins and bugbears followed by a pack of wolves who, according to the DM himself, were improperly balanced, and nearly suffered an unceremonious TPK with 3/4 party members unconscious. Afterward, our bard suggested casting Leomund’s Tiny Hut to shield us from the canyon’s many dangers while we rested. The DM seemed unhappy about this, yet allowed it to happen. After a long rest, the literal second we exited the tiny hut, a massive white dragon descended on us, releasing its icy breath weapon. This resulted in 3/4 of our party members instantly hitting 0hp and being frozen solid. Only my character remained on their feet. Accepting my imminent death, I stood ready to make my final stand against the mighty wyrm. Instead, the dragon issued a vague statement about one of us smelling of dragon eggs and then promptly left (This has not come back up in the campaign since). Ultimately I was able to stabilize my party and get out of the canyon by negotiating our safe passage with a pack of cockney polar bears, but I ask you this: Was my DM in the wrong for allowing us to long rest and immediately KO’ing 3/4 party members? Or were we the players in the wrong for taking a long rest in the middle of a canyon crawl? I humbly await your judgement on this icy ordeal.

syfish88

To the ones who answer all and the guy who can sometime answer if we are in Boston. I bring to you the case of the mini mangler. I play at a local bar with a paid DM. We have an eclectic bunch that comes in and we recently started a new campaign with some regulars. One of our players, has had some gripe with the minis that we use saying that they aren’t realistic, and that the bar should buy us new ones. I donated these minis to the bar back when we started and before this player joined, so we didn’t have to keep using beer bottle caps and dice as place holders. They are pewter minis from the 70s and have seen some wear that I got from my dad and his old DnD group. This all came to a head recently when, they went out of their way to make minis for all the players and some NPCs in our campaign on hero forge. They shared them in our discord encouraging us to purchase them for our game. So we could “get rid of the shitty old ones” The problem is the minis they made were nothing like the characters we had described in our sessions and were frankly ugly. For example my ursine bear wizard who purposely doesn’t have a hair style because he’s a fucking bear somehow ended up with cornrows. When the player heard that we didn’t want to use the minis they created, they confronted us and said “what you don’t like the characters I made for you?“ I spoke up and said “we already have minis and I feel like our minis should be something we make ourselves and be more personal” this was a way to get out of telling them that the minis they made were nothing like what we had described. To which they responded “so you just don’t like my art then?” When no one responded they then sat on their phone and pouted the entire session. My question is to the court am I in the wrong for not wanting to use these minis created by another player?

Bailey Telfer

To the exquisite justices and maybe good maybe bad bailiff. I bring you the case of: the trivial reward for a trivial task. I am DMing my first game for some friends in a ‘what if’ version of Bahumias first campaign. In it they were on their way to complete a task that they would be rewarded handsomely for. Before they left, a local with her daughter asked a PC if they could keep an eye out for a necklace that was stolen from them when they used to live in the area they were going, saying: “We don’t have much but I can reward you with what I have”. They completed their main task and fought a handful of hoarding bullywugs for the necklace. Upon returning to the town they collected their main reward and tracked down the local which I narrated was very thankful and then passed some coin to her daughter who then brought it to the PC and said that it was her necklace but was too afraid to ask and hugged the PC giving him 13 silver pieces. The Player then stopped, looked at me dead in the eyes and said “Is that it?” And was very sour to the NPCs. Justices, was I a fool for thinking that a lovely moment with an NPC and 13 silver was enough reward for a trivial task by this ‘neutral good’ character or should I start handing out magic items for every quest? I humbly await your ruling

Wings of Silver

I prostrate myself before the church, for I have a confession. During an online campaign with friends, I was playing a character that I took very seriously, a well spoken noble man by the name of Lawrence Lerlous Von Einswald. I gave him my most insufferable noble man accent and I tried my upmost to maintain that demeanour throughout the campaign, with the idea of character development later to make him less annoying. Towards the end of the campaign I had to leave as I was traveling overseas, and I didn't want Lawrence to just become an NPC controlled by the DM. I decided to abandon the party during a difficult fight (not telling anyone of this, kinda just happened) and nearly got one of my fellow players killed. I had a good story reason for leaving, having to go back to my hometown to face my family. I ask, should I have taken my character less seriously? I will accept the judgement of the church.

Josh Pocha

To the Supreme justices and that guy on the side, I present the case of the Searing cleric I'm a dm with a group that has played for about 4 years. The cleric, who is a twilight cleric cast moonbeam and then sanctuary on herself. The next turn she continued to move the moonbeam and scorch the demons while maintaining sanctuary. She felt it was a cleric ability that allowed her to continue to have sanctuary and only use moonbeam as long as the spell was cast before sanctuary. This player is generally a support character and I feel doesnt get to shine as much so I allowed it but asked for a group vote if they were ok for the enemy to use the same tactic. Of course they later encountered ( 4 sessions later) druid/cleric who used moonbeam and sanctuary. The party is not a fan of this. Should I have have ruled that moving the moonbeam will end sanctuary or have I done the right thing? I throw myself at the mercy of court crit.

Yuncle Ben

To the Justices and first-time guest bailiff Jake, I present to you the case of the off-screen roller. Early during the pandemic, I joined a new D&D group on Discord. We were all new players and rolled physical dice off-screen. Initially, our campaign was fantastic, lots of laughs and good times. However, an issue arose with our warlock's incredible luck. At first, he was rolling 3 to 4 natural 20s per session, which seemed odd. But soon it seemed like every other roll was a natural 20. It was clear to me he was fudging his rolls, which I thought was making the game feel cheap and overshadowing my own cool moments. I expressed my concern to the DM, who agreed. The next session the DM suggested everyone roll in Discord, but not mandatory. I and another player agreed, but the warlock and one other player refused. During a later session, I tracked the warlock's rolls, and after his 7th natural 20, I challenged him. The room went silent, and he denied cheating. We moved on, but the mood was awkward for the rest of the session, and the tension remained in subsequent weeks. I eventually joined another D&D group with some coworkers and left the Discord game. The original group disbanded shortly after. So I ask: Am I to blame for the abrupt ending of this group? Is the warlock guilty for fudging his rolls? Or is the DM at fault for not enforcing online rolling or addressing the issue? I leave it to the court to decide. P.S. My new D&D group has been going strong for over two years and feel very lucky to play with such a wonderful group of guys.

Brian Downey

To the all mighty justices and the great Jazoo, assuming Emily can see him, I present the case of Druid vs broken Detect Magic. I play in a Pathfinder 2 Campaign where the setting is a post alpcolyptic world where all natural magic has dried up. All magical items still work however, but are continuously remade and cobbled together to keep society running. Our party started out gaining magical abilities after finding an ancient supply cache in the mountains, allowing us to level up in hero classes like normal. I played a wild shape druid, and have the detect magic cantrip. When casting detect magic at 3rd level in PF2, you are able to sense the presence of magic and learn the school of magic. My DM said however that since his setting has "Broken magic" that whenever I cast detect magic I only get nonsense information like "you smell a whiff of burning bees" or " the item seems to insult your mother ". Effectively, my cantrip is completely useless! Am I wrong to expect some useful information from my spell, or should I just accept that my DMs messed up world?

Dead King

To the all powerful robe wearing sin forgiving saints and Joke Please can I ever be forgiven for my part in damming 2 different campaigns and then in my third campaign yet again doing the same thing by accident and now being known as the god summoner. Please have mercy on me. In my first ever campaign I played a drow elf who was chopping his enemies up and dedicating them to his goddess Lolth who of course is evil (yes a bit gruesome, but if I'm being honest I wasn't the most gruesome player there). For several sessions I did this until I sacrificed one of my parties npc's, again poor move on my part but I was cursed. Although her body was healed and technically alive Lolth was in the body. She ran off and came back as all the body parts I had sacrificed mashed together in a giant horror filled spider shape, but with some bad gameplay and likely unexperienced DMing one player managed to summon and entire mountain on her instantly. Effectively sending her back to her realm but pissing the party off so much that there was no big bad to fight we stopped the game and that player no longer invited for several years. Then in my next campaign on accident, again I summoned an eldritch horror by using my fire Druid to burn several people viciously. This horror was from the first campaign, and was originally a character, who was the more gruesome party member, it was just weak at the time(and I had inadvertently copied the players actions from that campaign). That thing murdered us, I think because of it's unexpected power of said horror (this was different dm from the first campaign) effectively ending that campaign for a while, that DM is going to retcon it to continue it. And finally this last one, rolling a nat 20 as a bard with already 20 charisma to beg a god to help save us, it worked but my friends are scared of my power. They do find it funny but really don’t trust me to not summon a god since I’ve done it a three times, for clarification this is also every campaign I have ever played in. I am 3 for 3 in summoning gods, Please forgive me for my great nat 20s of summoning but horrible endings it has brought.

Transfemmes4murph

to the virile and supple judges, and the barren bailiff jake i present to you the case of : the poorly named pacifist, may it pleasure the court. I was playing a session with people i had met at Uni earlier that year, the DM was new and had struggled with not railroading for a while. We had just arrived in my home village, and I was excited as we hadn’t delved into my backstory at all yet. It had changed and a religious cult had taken over which i thought was cool, we go to find out whats happening and speak to their leader “The Pacifist” - this is where it all goes wrong. We try to speak to him and find out whats happening and the pacifist levels a weapon at us. A fight ensues and he seems to be able to direct attacks back at us so we try creative tricks with magic to no avail, our monk tries to stun him and the DM narrates how the monk himself is stunned instead, I cast hold person and was told I paralysed myself. Everything we do is turned back on us, so that “we hurt ourselves”. We find out that the DM hasn’t got mechanics in place for this, its all just a gimick to see that the way to beat “The Pacifist” is not to do anything. Our party became upset or worse apathetic to the combat and resulting session and we ended up confronting the DM and explaining what we didn’t enjoy and how we saw this as an insane move. Judges, I ask of you, did we overreact and make it too big of a deal or was our DM in the wrong for creating an invincible pacifist, who is prone to starting fights?

Aiden

Forgive me Dice Christ for i have binned (my DM). Members of the clergy i come before you today, not with a sin of my own but on behalf of another. I was apart of a long running dnd campaign (a couple of years) and after ending our first campaign we took a little break to get ready for our next one. During this time our DM decided to go to Thailand and purchase a woman to be his wife! I no longer play with the creep and am still searching for a replacement group, but if Dice Christ could smite him for his creepiness that'd be chill.

Sido Hikami

Dear feral judges and the bailiff to rein them in Jake, I put myself at the mercy of the court. My crime? I caused my DM end a campaign because of I wouldn’t compromise on my character mind campaign. I played an articfier, variant human with the keen mind feat in a 5e on discord. My DM is known for her dark souls like difficulty campaigns; if you throw your weapon and don’t narrate you pick it up it’s gone, if you roll a 1 you usually died, etc. Our party had gotten information about the bbeg and we ended the session and didn’t regroup for a month. When we got back, she asked if we remembered the information we got from the guard and I said “I have keen mind, so my character remembers. She said that doesn’t matter if I, the player, don’t remember. I argued that what’s the point of feats then and after 5 minutes of me sending pictures of the feat in the PHB because she didn’t own one, and wouldn’t take the website as proof; she left the call and we never saw her again. Judges and Jake, was I wrong to argue for my characters key trait or was my DM trying too hard to make us play dark souls, I await your judgement, Jake.

MimeticGoblin

To the honorable and sensible judges, and what’s-his-face, I present the case of the Swallowed Chivalry. A few years ago I played a Paladin of Chivalry, a half-elf himbo with a heart of gold named Chad. My DM thought this idea was hilarious and allowed it, knowing that I would play this character with full sincerity. Flash forward to 2 years later and my paladin was absolutely crushing it in our campaign, when he was unceremoniously murdered. Chad was providing backup to the party rogue during a scouting mission, when an enemy mage summoned a giant serpent into a nearby lake to attack us. Knowing that getting the intel back to camp was more important than going 1v1 with a big lizard, my paladin tried to make his escape, after the rogue had successfully absconded. In his way were two guards that he didn’t want to kill as he believed in pacifism when possible and these dudes weren’t showing signs of aggro. So Chad killed the summoner, hoping that the snake would be dispelled. Once the summoner was eliminated, I asked my DM if the snake was still in the lake. Without having me roll, the DM said that I couldn’t see the snake anymore. So my paladin jumped into the lake to swim away and avoid taking the lives of the two guards. Then, the snake swallowed Chad, killing him instantly. Am I justified in still holding a grudge to this day? Or was my DM within their right to 1-shot my noble paladin? I await your chivalrous judgement. P.S. After that session my DM said my paladin probably wouldn't have died if I had just killed the guards instead of running away.

Nicholli Bernard

Dear judicious judges, and the bodacious bailiff Jake, The case in question occurred a few years ago pre-covid. My friend signed up to be a DM for our local Adventure’s League and I signed up to be a player in her session. This was intended to be a low level adventure (level 1-4) and upon the day of the session, she only had 3 total players in her session. However, 10 minutes before the session started, 5 more people joined at the last minute, totaling up to 8 level 1 characters in play. She accommodated the extra players well, however during the final combat of the session, we went up against an Owlbear with Legendary Actions. I understand this was due to the imbalance in action economy, however I believe Legendary Actions should be reserved for creatures of truly legendary status. No one died, so no harm no foul, but I want the authority of the court to rule on the viability of giving Legendary Actions to a creature of not Legendary status. Thank you for reading and ruling on such a cornerstone case of DnD law.

Kr115

May Dice Christ forgive my sins. Oh Gracious clergy please guide my repentance. Early on (lvl 2) my DM gave the party potions of true polymorph, We didn't use the potions at the time that the DM had intended and have been holding onto them for 9ish sessions now. We're level 5 and being led through a cave by a creature that our druid identified as a Will-o-wisp. (Here's my sin) In between sessions I looked up the stats for a Will-o-wisp to see if it was the right CR for true polymorph, but I also noticed it had a lot of immunities. In the next session I used the potion to become a will-o-wisp and skiped several challenges to get through the cave. It was still fun and the party joked about me flirting with the other will-o-wisp. But what made me feel bad was at the end when I tanked the silver wyrmlings paralyzing breath (being immune) and we killed the boss in 3 attacks. Was I wrong to womp my DM in this way or is it okay to check if my potion would work?

Xweazel

May Dice Christ forgive me for my sins. I have always had a fruitful relationship with Dice Christ. I have been blessed by a disproportionate amount of natural 20s and a disproportionate amount of natural ones. I love the opportunity to roleplay catastrophic failures. Several months ago in my campaign, we met an NPC. When I first interacted with this character, I rolled to perform an activity. When I saw the roll, something in me broke. This roll was "meaningless" and I could make the result "Hilarious". So I claimed I rolled a natural 20. This kicked off a series of events that turned this NPC into a beloved side character who now even views my character as a surrogate parent. I love this character. This relationship is a lie. I have betrayed the covenant and Dice Christ. Dice Christ continues to bless me, but I do not deserve it. Where I was once lucky, I am now a fraud. Why won't Dice Christ punish me?

Garrett Guthrie

To the most righteous judges and Blake. Im but a humble forever Dm. I thought it would be fun to run a rouge like Homebrew arc where my player's were fighting a corrupted arch fey of time and dreams. Where as they would fight tough battles that I expected a few tpks but they would wake like from a nightmare well they whooped ass until the final boss then tpkd and I did the oh you wake up with a sense of deja vu like you've been here before. And they claim thats retcon BS . Was I wrong to try and make a rougelike arch.

cmoysey

I stand before you esteemed justices on bended knee, even to you justice Hurtwitz as you’re sworn in boston. Unless that no longer stands, in that case step back little Johnny. From the woman that brought you the horse that could count at Boston live, I bring you the case of chilled dick. My friends and I were playing curse of Strahd, as anyone that has played it is one campaign that really Fs with your head. The DM is one of my best friends, then we had a righteous monster hunter Shadow my best friend married to DM, a second round vengeful fighter (first character died by werewolves) DMs brother, and me a blade singer wizard Gypsy Trinity. This campaign is filled with destiny and prophecy all while you can never escape and Strahd is always smarter than you. As a Gypsy I was able to do the tarot card reading to find clues along the way. After looking for a while we found our fated ally to take down Strahd, a crazy wizard Mordenkainen. He’d been casting mind blank on himself and had been all alone in his magnificent mansion for well I never asked but a very long time one could assume. We helped him through the crazy and he slowly decided to be on our side. Then came a message in town that some of our NPC friends were captured and being kept in a town not far, we couldn’t leave them behind. As we had just saved Mordenkainen I asked him to come with us, he declined many many times but said he’d give us each a talisman, there were 2 extra and I said well can we just have them all. Then he said I’d get none if I didn’t ask nicely, to which I replied but you’re our fated ally, it’s written in the tarot cards it’s destiny. To which he repeated that I must ask nice…… well i did not ask nicely. I told my DM I’m going to punch him in the dick, we rolled initiative, I went first, now as a wizard punching isn’t my strong suit so I settled on chilled touch right to the dick, I hit, my DM counter-spelled, I counter-spelled, chilled dick hit and I got all the talismans. Flash forward to town, it was all a big trick to lure us out. We all had disguises but that wouldn’t last long, and then Our DM narrated Mordenkainen (the wizard that would not leave his mansion a mere hour prior) casting his highest level spell to stop time, save a few prisoners and teleport away. Now leaving he cast cone of cold on the prison guard, obviously a dick shot. He left us behind to escape for ourselves…. we all know you cannot cast time stop and effect another creature but for the sake of the bit it was hilarious no one at the table cared that the spell was used incorrectly My question to you is. Should I have just asked nicely and not chilled dick my fated ally or should my DM be punished and had to deal with the consequences for using time stop wrong? Or is all fair in love, war, and punched dick?

Pretty Penny

Dearly be-judge-ed and rascally midriff, Jude, Please consider taking my case of the Overkept Adventure Guide. I found a small, local DnD group and received a lot of support from their forever-DM when I agreed to try DMing, so they could take a break. To take some creative pressure off, we played from a new adventure guide. We had some fun over about a year of semi-regular meetups. The group was casual and generous but ultimately not an ideal fit for me. I broke up with the group when I got a new job and had to move a few hours away. They offered to play online and to play less often to keep me in the campaign. It was kind but would have required more time and energy than I’d be able to give. Now, Justices, it’s been nearly two years since I moved, and I still have the hardback adventure guide that the forever-DM loaned me! I swear on the DMG that I meant to mail it back, but I am dreadful with tasks like this. We haven’t been in touch since I left. I know the forever-DM was a collector, but I also suspect they may have had hurt feelings about my leaving. What orders would you Most Ordered give me? Should I bite the bullet and reach out to replace the book? Should I try to write it off my conscience as a “gift”? Should I flee the realm until the statute of limitations times out? Your mostly lawful servant, PP

Peter Tschaekofske

To the holiest Apostles of Dice Christ and the rebellious alter boy Jake, I come before you with a confession from a humble and imperfect follower. The year was 2018, and I just joined my first Dnd party with a group of co workers after sharing that I would be down to try it. At this time my only prior experience to ttrpgs was Settlers of Catan. After a session 0, I came up with my character. His name was Carl Cabbageseed. A way of the four elements monk based on the cabbage merchant from Avatar the Last Airbender who was a fan of smashing skulls and replacing them with cabbages. Now to the sin. One of the monks class features is Step of the Wind, allowing you to use a ki point to dash as a bonus action. As a monk you also get Unarmored movement, giving you a bonus to your walking speed that increases as you level up. However, my Harry Potter reading level misread the unarmoured movement feature. My misreading led me to conclude that the bonus uarmoured movement gave you was cummlative for each level. Meaning that I was supposed to add the bonus every time I leveled up. So by level 6 I had a 95 ft speed. Resulting in being able to move close to 400 ft in a turn by using an action to dash and then a ki point to dash again as a bonus action. I used this constantly. Running up caves, walls, city alleyways, and anything I could get my grubby cabbage fingers on. Catching up to villains or npcs that had plenty of time for a head start to run away from us. No one was safe from the wrath of Carl Cabbageseed. My ignorance was soon replaced by disillusionment though when I found out my error from another party member in between sessions. That is when the dice devil tempted me to sin knowingly instead of just accidentally. Because while I and the party were aware of my error, the dm was completely oblivious despite him being the most experienced. And instead of coming clean I just kept my outrageous speed. However, another part of my ignorance could be seen as penance. Because for most of the campaign I wasn’t even adding my proficiency bonus to my attack rolls( We only got to level 7 before the pandemic stopped the campaign). Carl Cabbageseed has also been used(with normal speed) in several Extra Life dnd one shots to raise money for charity. Do these good deeds out way the evil? Or is there some other divine justice that is needed.

Pilar Pozo

Forgive my prying, but didn’t you submit a question on Aabrias episode about your DM admitting he had feelings for your girlfriend or was that a different guy who likes chicken and has the same username?

Emma

Is this the same DM who told you they had feelings for your girlfriend?

Some guy who likes chicken

Yeah that was me, different DM though. We bailed out of that group very shortly after I sent in the question, and apart from some loot based trolling this new guy's been great

cplthrawn

Thanks for your just ruling. We discussed it and my wife will be DMing a bit to reduce the pressure off. In a side note, we're celebrating our 15 year wedding anniversary in NY after I magically managed to get tickets to the d20 live show before ticket master started gouging. We're in negotiations about incorporating squirrel armor for the trip as the second part of the ruling.

Jeremy Ross

Gracious Judges Axford, Tanner, Murphy and the dishonorably discharged Judge Rake now bailiff. Please settle this debate. Us the players have named this session THE MURDER CAVE. The debate in question is if we could have won the encounter. To this day he swears we could have easily won. The party consisted of four level twelve PC’s. Myself playing a gunslinger/hexblade, a life domain cleric, war wizard, and a circle of the shepherd druid. In the murder cave there were, two adult black dragons, two bone devils, one ice devil, and a revenant. We barely escaped while buying time for the wizard to cast teleportation circle. As we were trapped by an ice wall the devil cast. Our dm swears up and down that we could’ve won the fight if we snuck in and tried killing them off one by one. (Have more info but don’t want to make this longer)