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Calling for Cases! (Patreon)

Published:
2024-09-05 14:19:08
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Howdy folks! Bailiff James here to say that the Supreme Crit is convening this very afternoon. Please submit your brief (1-2 paragraphs, I do beg!) case on this thread and we will bring you wise justice.

Comments

The Idiot King

To the luscious Crit Justices and the passably literate Jork, I wish to present the case of the sleeply warlock and surpise XP system. A few years ago I was invited by someone I was seeing at the time to drop into the campaign their friend had been DM-ing for a while. Having played weekly since 5e came out, I felt confident in my ability to spin up a character pretty quick, so I asked the DM if there was anything I should know while make a character and they said “nah, just stick to the PHB and Tasha’s and you’ll be good”. Fast forward to the session, I’ve made a simple Hexblade assuming it would mesh well with pretty much any party composition. We’re ambushed on the road pretty soon after the session started and I blow my two spell slots assuming I’d have a chance to take a short rest before our next combat. This is when I learn that if we want to complete a full day of travel on their hex map, I will not be allowed to take a short rest. I suggested that we would at least need to take time off to eat and drink. But no, either you moved one hex for the day or you were able to short rest, never both. I was new to their game and wanted to make a good impression, so I just shrugged and fought the next combat in the corner hucking eldritch blasts from afar. I was a bit put off but the rest of the session went well enough, until the XP was being distributed. I’ve always been a milestone guy, but hey, some people like spreadsheets I guess. But no, it’s worse than that. I’m told that in order to get your XP you must tell the DM how your character grew from the events of the session. Not only that but because I was new I would go first. I panicked and made up something lame about strategy during the second fight and was only awarded partial xp in part because of my “spell management”. Needless to say, I decided to stick to my home game and let them keep their forced marches and their short essays for xp. So I ask the court, was I being hazed?

Banana Bread

To the brilliant legal minds of the court and the bailiff with a third-grade reading level, I present the Case of the Flakes! This may be an extremely familiar situation for many: a homebrew roll20 campaign I care very deeply about started half a year ago with a good group of six long-term players, nearly all of whom have had life happen to them to the point of not being able to make games at all. Most weeks, the choice came down to a solo session or no game at all. The creative blue-balls was getting to me as I DM the game and I feared the doom of the campaign overall, so I made the executive decision to add more players. The new players have been fantastic and the game has improved drastically, especially for me. So here is my query! Does the DM have the right to add players without consulting the party, even if it does improve the enjoyment and quality of the game?

Stephy R.

To the honorable justices Murph, Axford, and Tanner - and the lovely bailiff Jake - I present to you the case of the Character Clingers. I’ve been playing with my D&D group for about 4 years. In that time, the other two players have always played the same characters. We just wrapped a campaign and our DM said he would like a turn playing if I wouldn’t mind running the next campaign. This will be my first time DMing and I’m beyond excited! The issue is that the other two players don’t want to create new characters. Our DM has been trying to help me persuade them of all the fun options and builds they could choose. They finally relented and agreed to roll new characters, however they are very grumpy and grumbly about it. Am I wrong for wanting to start my campaign with new level 1 characters? Our old ones have really finished their story arcs and there isn’t anywhere else to go. I just feel it will be boring and repetitive to keep playing these characters forever. Am I already being a DM-zilla? P.S. I do want my players to have fun, so if they are miserable at session 1 I will absolutely let them play their old characters.

Ian Fildes

To the honourable justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy. and Geoff I bring the case of silly name scaries. I have a friend who wanted to play dnd reach out to me asking to dm for them. They said they had a couple good friends who were also interested, and one of them had actually played before! I got very excited about this and organised a time to meet up and create some characters together. I spoke with each player on the phone to see what kind of game they were interested in and began my planning. Snap to our character creation night. I made everyone personalised folders and printed blank character sheets. I even brought some dice I had around for each of the players to have for their characters and we began to roll up. The night was going well! Each of the new players were asking questions and getting excited about playing. I looked over at the person who had played before, who said they were good to work on their own, and noticed they had changed their character from a half elf to a halfling bard named Mario Pizza. I was crestfallen. He had spent the majority of the time writing his character name in the Mario font on his page. After that evening I didn’t commit to more gameplay, but have become friends personally with these people too. I want to play, but still have my doubts. Am I in the wrong for backing down, or am I justified in the loss of interest?

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

Gabriel Felix

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

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?

Andrew Fournier

To the esteemed crit judges who are looking pretty cute up there, are you guys free after the hearing? I bring to you the case of the “Short Rest” disparity. A few years ago in a campaign with my friends online in our DMs homebrew world, our party came to a new town and participated in the combat tournament to win a large cash prize. My wild magic barbarian-battle master multiclass half orc tiefling entered the solo pool, and our monk and eldritch knight entered the duo pool, the parties warlock stayed in the crowd for fear of being flattened into a pancake. Our DM stated that in between rounds counted as a short rest, and we alternated between my solo fight and their tag team so one group would rest while the other fought. However, after a few rounds of me regaining my superiority dice from clicking “Short Rest” in D&D Beyond, my DM asked how I was able to do so many battle maneuvers and I replied by saying I was taking a short rest like he said to do. The DM sounded irritated and remarked that he only meant for me to roll my hit die and that I shouldn’t have been regaining my superiority die. I mentioned that the monk had been regaining their Ki points with each rest and the DM stated that the Ki points weren’t as powerful as my barbarian having access to maneuvers so they were allowed to get their Ki back. So I ask you, oh wise and powerful judges, and the other guy I just noticed he’s here, was I wronged by my DM or was my PC wrongfully and unfairly neutered.

Amarpal

To the all knowing justices and the beautiful baby baliff who knows nothing, I set before you the case- Why does my DM hate me?  We've been part of a campaign for around 6 months now. It is important that I state, for the consideration of justice Murphy, that I am a completely normal Bard/Rogue with a normal backstory and limited shenanigans. We were exploring a pirate city heading back to our accommodation for a much needed long rest- being a few HP and spell slots down. When all of a sudden I was shot by an assassin. From out of the shadows. Now I tell you justices that this arrow did not just down me. It fully killed me- doing a full 6 points of damage over double my total HP. Revealing this to the party there was shock and horror. Our Paladin asked if they could use their protector fighting style to deflect some of the damage and thus put me on saving throws instead. Our DM was happy with this and agreed- implying that maybe he didn't want to just one shot a beloved character but I remark this was merely to lull us into a false sense of security, for once I had been revived (but before I could take another turn to do anything) I was shot and downed once again.  To give the actual stats. We were level 3 at the time and I had a total of 18 HP. I was shot by an Assassin (challenge rating 😎 who does an average 31 damage and 43 max damage. To make it even worse he had given the assassin cunning action so he could hide on his turn as a bonus action meaning we had to use a perception check as a bonus action to find him. Eventually a nat 20 perception check was our saviour but I ask you justices - Is this a vindictive DM looking to settle some unbeknownst grudge in game? If it will sway the court to further believe in this vendetta in a different campaign this DM hit me when I was already on death saving throws twice in a row. I ask you justices to please give me the backing of the court although we continue to remain friends and play although this is repeatedly brought up as a point of contention as he insists he was in the right and I just need a win.  Your humble ghost  Lottie

Dodeca DM

To the Beautiful, Bountiful, and Bodacious Judges and that sneaky shifty, sidewinder bailiff, Janky Jake I present to you the case of the TPK Takeaway: We play in my homebrew world and my players are currently at level 7. They have met the BBEG and a few of his lieutenants before and have lived to tell the tale because the bad guys were in a sporting and jovial mood. The party of 6 even went so far as to attack one of them, a pirate captain who is a paladin of Kord. They were thoroughly defeated but not killed. I warned them that the world is much stronger than they are at the moment so they will need to level up quite a bit before trying that again and next time the bad guys might not be in a good mood. The case is this, the party knowingly attacked a different lieutenant via ambush but were handily defeated. All in all 5 of the 6 were killed but one was revivified leaving 4 completely dead. The next session, after making new characters the newly formed party attempted to return to the field of battle to retrieve all their money and magic items. A few of those items were homebrew and upgradable as certain achievements were completed based off the character backstory. I gave a firm ‘No’ because they foolishly picked a fight they knew they couldn’t win. I said the bodies were thoroughly looted and everything of value was gone. After the game a few players said it wasn’t fair to take away custom loot made specifically for this homebrew world. I countered with they knew it was an unwinnable fight but tried to play on the mercy of the BBEG to get away without consequences. Was I wrong for taking away valuable and powerful items from my players? P.S. I do have more items on the way but they will have to make some deals with gods and demons to get them.

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?

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

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.

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.

Adriana B

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

Jevin Kames

To the most high Supreme Crit and that guy who burps weird, I have been DMing a spelljammer campaign, and I recently gave my players a portable hole. They now use it all the time to bypass encounters (and they follow the rules as written). Both PCs (a warforged and a plasmoid) can either hold their breathe for an hour or don't have to breathe at all. I want to sneakily have a monster end up in there before they use it again. Who is the greater sinner in this situation? Also if it means anything the players are my kid and my dad.

Drew Mindell

To the illustrious justices and the [PENDING COURT-APPROVED ADJECTIVES] bailif, I present to you the case of cheese.com. Back in ye olden days of both undergrad and quarantine, I decided to DM a campaign for my friends via discord. As we were all either inhabitants or recent graduates of theater school, I set the premise for our campaign as such: the party would be the cast, crew, and administrators of the community theater troupe of a fantasy town, catalyzed into becoming adventurers when a ghost began wreaking havoc on their theater. There were many more plot threads they'd stumble into along the way, including the machinations of the secret-nepo-baby-PC's childhood friend Eel Musk (a fish person), the resolution to the costumer PC's amnesia, and the cult that kidnapped/brainwashed the stage manager PC's younger sister. The director, also a PC, was the ex-wife of the rival theater company's director, who took the cat in their messy lesbian divorce. It was awesome. The character I was most excited for was our she-himbo barbarian stagehand played by my incredible, and incredibly brilliant, best friend. This friend was double majoring in bio and playwriting, and is now kicking ass in med school - needless to say, she's always worked hard, so I was excited to help her blow off steam. That is, until it came to character creation. When I sat down with this beautiful, brilliant human to help make her character, I asked her what their name was going to be. She replied, "I don't know, let me look at cheese.com." I said. "What." She continued, "Whenever I name a character, I go on cheese.com and look for the names of two cheeses that sound good together." You can imagine how baffled I was. This was my first time DM-ing for her, but she's played in multiple campaigns before, of varying tones of drama and seriousness. Was this actually her strategy for coming up with every single PC name? Justices, I throw myself at your mercy. Is it appropriate for my delightful, intelligent friend to name every single TTRPG character after two cheeses? Or should she stretch her brilliant brain muscles to find character names that might be more setting/tone appropriate?

casey eats pizza

May it please the incredible judges and the bailiff who I guess is doing his best. I bring forth the case of the Tabaxi and the tadpole. I DM for a party who were just hired by mindflayer hating dwarves to hunt down the last remaining mindflayer in the city. The party found him mind controlling a druid to resurrect dead mindflayer tadpoles and then teleporting them away to infect more people. After the fight was mostly over, the tabaxi, a hexblade warlock with a pact with a death goddess, then ate one of the tadpoles and then jumped into a portal, he had also just been infected with lycanthropy but we hadn't got to that yet. When asked why he did that his only answer was “Because I’m a cat”. I then ruled that he was out of the battle and then continued the fight. Afterwards he asked me what happened to his character, to which I said that I would need to think about it because I was not sure how to move forward. I asked to roll a new character while we figure it out and the party tries to reach him, but he said no and that I should create another adventure for his tabaxi. I said that I needed time to figure out the ramifications of his actions to which he told me that I should have known that before introducing the mind flayers. He still refuses to make a side character while I try to figure out a tabaxi, werewolf, mindflayer, warlock combo. Judges, am I wrong for being caught off guard or should I have expected these feline antics beforehand?

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.

Rebecca N

To the beloved Justies (Justice Besties) and the lowly Snore-liff Jack, I bring to you a case of unwitting identity theft I was incredibly lucky with finding my first ever dnd group online, and have played with them for about seven years. In a previous campaign, I played a no-nonsense astronomer who hated astrology as the party's "Straight Man". As a fun foil to my character, the DM introduced an NPC named Rachel [IMPORTANT], who was *incredibly* into magic/astrology and could read fortunes. That campaign ended prematurely, but our DM is getting ready to start a new one. Recently, our DM mentioned that he'd like to bring Rachel over to this new campaign. However, he got her name wrong and called her Rebecca... Normally I wouldn't worry so much about such a little discrepancy, however... Rebecca is my name. These guys only know me by my Discord name. I don't want to correct my DM for fear of seeming rude or pedantic, but on the other hand, I'm not sure how I'd feel about an NPC having my name. I've definitely known many other Rebeccas in my life (there were three of us in marching band!), but I worry that the comedy of the situation may wear off quickly, much like the previously ruled on "Maggie" case. Do I correct the DM on his own lore, or sit quietly through something that only inconveniences me? I await your verdict. P.S. To add to the hilarity, once when I was younger I went by the name Rachel for about a month because I didn't want to correct the person getting my name wrong (I've also done this with the name Jessica). I'm sure the Baliff can relate

Adam G

To the high priests of dice Christ, I have come to be judged for my sin of the gluttonous D8. About 2 years into a homebrew campaign I DM, the party was delving deep beneath a manor occupied by a cult that worshipped a forgotten god of gluttony. The cult leader, a homebrewed shadow/avatar of the god of gluttony, had been the BBEG since the beginning of the campaign. The party eventually came face to face with the BBEG. After the BBEG’s first attack hit the monk I decided, that since there had been so much build up to this moment with the BBEG, I would toss an extra saucy d8 on the damage roll (going from 3d8 to 4d8) for dramatic affect. Naturally, with the extra d8 I rolled exactly the monks HP, downing him. *Cue rivers of DM sweat* Luckily, the cleric saved the day with a healing word + dash action combo while leading the BBEG away, and the party later killed the BBEG at the conclusion of the arc. Did I succumb to the sin of DM gluttony when I let myself lick the saucy bonus D8? Or was I merely playing up the moment, and leaning into the theme of a BBEG that had my players shitting bricks for years? I await your holy decision on my absolution.

Anthony Thomas

Hello to the honorable justices and the bailiff who is important I guess. I present the case of the Angry DM I was playing in a game with my best friend that was DMd by her partner (they/them). After forcing us into being mercenaries, after the campaign was pitched as hunting down a legendary magic item. we were given a job to sneak into a fortress and kill the commander, within 24 hours. After multiple failed attempts I managed to sneak in alone and free the prisoners. Using the Augrey spell it was reveled I had time to short rest. After which using a prison riot the rest of my part snuck in and we killed the commander. the Problem comes here the DM had the npc who gave us the task get mad at how long it took despite still being within 24 hours. when we tried to push back it turned into the DM yelling at us loosely in character. Leading to my Best friend crying at my kitchen table and the party never meeting up again. Should we have just let the DM be mad at us or were we right to push back, because we were within the constraints given to us. ps. For justice Murph we stopped being friends with the DM shortly after

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.

Toleary

To the exalted judges Murph, Emily and Caldwell. Also, the bailiff… I bring forth the case of The Nightmare Punishment. I’ve been playing in a virtual campaign for over 3 years now. We play fairly sporadically but we all have a great time when we do get together. We finished Lost Mine of Phandelver and have been in the Rhyme of the Frostmaiden for the past 2 years. I confess to being the most razzable in the party and most of the time I take it pretty well. The group has stated many times that we are bad guys. We even work for the Zhentarim and don’t really care about the NPC’s that much. So on level 10 my bard decided to take find greater steed. Outside of the campaign I had confirmed with my DM that if I summoned a Pegasus and ripped off its wings it would give me a Nightmare steed as per the creatures summary. My DM said “Please do that.” So after a long rest I summoned the Pegasus and ripped off its wings with the help of my unknowing companions. When this deed was done a Solar came down from the sky and told me I had made a mistake and I would be dealt with justly. Now my whole party is annoyed with me. I ask the judges did I do something wrong or am I being razzed unjustly?

Ally

UPDATE OF THE CASE OF THE BROKEN HOME: To the noble justices and the common bailiff. I bring an update on the case of the broken home. We did move the campaign to my flat which helped reduce the tension. However, the court was 100% correct that the watching roommate wanted to play. One week half the players were not able to make our next session so I proposed a one-shot connected to our campaign. Word of this reached the voyeur player who asked to play, like a fool I agreed. He made a character with no desire to accept the call to adventure, only going along when another party member asked him to. Even then only agreeing after insisting the PC roll persuasion on his character. His bard barely spoke, instead he spent most the session reading his spells quietly and jumping at any opportunity for combat. The experience made me beyond grateful that I took the court's advice to move the campaign to mine before this quiet bard could infiltrate a three year long campaign I poured my heart and soul into.

Chris

To the harrowing Justices and hallowed bailiff Jack, I present thee today with the case of the stolen TPK. I started playing in an online game of Rime of the Frostmaiden. In our second session we faced off with 7 goblins and a polar bear, a tough fight but fair in my opinion. However after several rounds of combat, things began to look quite grim for the party. Our Paladin and Warlock unconscious and my Rogue on 1 hp. Suddenly a mysterious Druid appeared and somehow healed both my fallen party members and seemingly disappeared. I get the DM panic of a TPK, but was I robbed of the stakes of PC death? I humbly await your judgment.

Resido

To the celestial court, and the court-indentured servant Jasper. I bring you the case of DeusEx your dead. I was playing a pathfinder Kingmaker game with my group and as a forever DM I was excited to play an alchemist with a focus on crafting. One of the side effects of this build was insane knowledge checks. By level 8 I had a 20 on any knowledge check by rolling a nat 1. The DM narrated me going to buy ingredients and mysteriously the shopkeeper wasn’t there. Iffgraf left a note at the counter for the proprietor then turned to leave. After failing a perception check (I rolled an 18), an assassin jumped down from the rafters and 1-shot my lvl8 alchemist (after i “failed” a con save for poison as an alchemist). #sus I beseech the court, was the DM justified in eliminating an OP character, or was i godsmote for playing the character of my dreams? I humbly await your just verdict. PS: this was nearly 6 years ago and I’m still salty.

Austin

To the splendiferous Judges and Baliff Papa John! I present the case of the uncontestable check. Playing a game with a couple friends and a DM we had found online that we didn't know. Our party took a job from a shady fellow to get a valuable item from the back room of a casino. My plasmoid circle of stars druid eventually got to the back rooms alone and found the item we needed. But I was attacked by the same shady fellow that we had taken the job from. I got hit with a bunch of damage from a throwing knife so I retreated with the item and Misty stepped under the door back to my friends. As the DM allowed me to do this he rolled a Sleight of Hand check at the same time and got a Nat 20, he exclaimed that I Misty Step and appear by my friends but the item I had was gone. I didn't know how he was able to take it in the first place being at a distance when he attacked, but I said since I had it directly in my hands that it should have been a contested roll. I would also have to roll a Nat 20 but the DM didn't let me try. Later on in the session, (because we roll digital dice on Roll20) I could see the Sleight of Hand modifier for the shady fellow was a +20. I was a level 6 character so I had no chance of beating it regardless. Was I roped into an unwinnable situation facing a +20 Sleight of Hand or was Dice Christ against me by giving the DM a Nat 20 anyways?

Emmett Byrne

To the engima solving justices and Baliff Jebidah Horoscopes, I bring the case of the scrambled anagrams. Years ago I was in a Vampire the Requiem game playing a Detective turned Vampire, Jason St John, investigating a series of mysterious disappearances. For clues in game, Our gm would occasionally give us puzzles that we could solve between sessions that would then reveal more information in game for us to explore, which I did very much enjoy. Through our investigation we uncovered a conspiracy and death worshipping cult that went tp the heart of human and vampire society in our city. Near the end of the campaign, Jason discovered a coded letter that I was then given to unscramble outside of game time. This was the last clue needed to expose who was truly the mastermind from a list of potential suspects and I felt the pressure. I was hyped and got to work on it the next day. The puzzle was an anagramed two sentences, and I spent the next two weeks trying to unscramble it to no avail. My gm commiserated with me and the party were devestated but the mystery slipped through my characters fingers leading to the death of Jasons partner (in life as well as in crime solving) at the hands of the conspiracy... only for my gm to realise after the session that they had accidentally misspelled the anagram by leaving out a few key letters, making the puzzle unsolvable. The gm was apologetic and I understand that everyone makes mistakes, but the characters death stuck... which had the last few sessions ending on a sour note for me. Am I wrong for feeling robbed of my character greatest solve? Should my gm have figured out some way to retroactively fix their death? Or should I just accept that a Detective Vampires story wad always going to end in tragedy? I beg the court to finally bring justice to this mixed up world, so that my character can finally rest!

RoleforThat

To the morally correct judges, and enlightened bailiff Jonk, Today, I present you with the case of the ruined pants. I ran a session where the PCs were ambushed by a group of assassins. The assassins were looking for something the party had, and so were trying to restrain them whenever possible. At one point in the fight, the bard of the group found themselves tied up and held hostage, as a way to leverage the rest of the party to surrender. On the bard’s turn, the player had the idea to pretend to die in the hopes that the assassin would walk away, which I admit is not a terrible plan. The part where I objected is that to sell it, the bard described falling to the ground and shitting their pants in order to prove that they well and truly died. I initially said no, but then the entire table yelled at me and basically bullied me into letting the bard make a performance check to convince the assassin that they had kicked the bucket. I set the DC at 25, and judges…..they passed. I then had to narrate their plan working and we moved on from there. But, to this day, I still feel like the plan was too cartoonish to work, even though all my players still swear up and down that it was an incredibly logical move. Judges, who was right in this situation, the scatalitious players or the uptight DM? I humbly await your verdict. P.S. The bard player in question was my then fiancé, and now wife.

Peyton McDaniel Davis

To the esteemed justices, and bailiff Joink. I present to you the case of the Hostage Negotiation. Last year, I played in a campaign with five players, most of whom had never played before. I played a timid, bookish firbolg barbarian, named Tim, whose wild magic rages turned him into a professional wrestler named Rainbow Blight and one of my friends played an impulsive halfling rogue, named Chester, who was nine years old. (Sorry, Murph) During our first few sessions, Chester would impulsively run headfirst into rooms with traps and monsters, and my character would try to stop him so we could make a plan or gather more information. I’d roll athletics against Chester’s acrobatics, and we’d proceed from there. After our third session, my DM, who’s also my boyfriend, made a comment to me that my constant interference could be seen as stepping on my friend’s gameplay and decision making. My thought was that I was making in-character choices, just like the other player was, but I took his words to heart, because the last thing I want to do is make the game less fun for someone else. During our next session, we were trying to find our way back to the nearest town, making survival checks to avoid getting lost. We encountered a woman on the road who was being pursued by a bandit. We saved her from the bandit and started to ask her some questions about her travels. As soon as she told us that she was coming from the town we were looking for, Chester immediately pulled a knife, held it to her throat and demanded she guide us there. The party was stunned, as was our DM. He looked at us and said, “with a guide, we can’t get lost.” We tried to reason with him, saying we could just ask for directions and he insisted on keeping a hostage. I wanted to interfere, but I didn’t want to make the game less fun for anyone else. Finally, the warlock asked my DM if we were allowed to cast spells on each other. She cast suggestion and Chester failed the save, so he had to let her go. After the session, my boyfriend said, “I can’t believe you took part in kidnapping an innocent woman. That was crazy.” I said I didn’t want to step on her decision making. He continued to razz me about being a kidnapper for the rest of the week. Justices, am I to be blamed for my complicity in this crime, or is my DM accountable for for traumatizing this NPC? I humbly await your judgement.

Felix Principe-gillespie

To the gru-tiful judges and bailiff I came to you with a preemptive case of love and minions. I’m a long time DM for a party of 4 and recently someone I’ve been seeing for a couple of weeks asked if she could join one of our sessions. There’s only one slight issue. A few sessions back the villain of our campaign summoned in armies from other dimensions, as a goof, I found a stat sheet for a minion (from despicable me) and threw some of them in. Sadly, since then minions have become a huge part of the campaign, their ability to detect good and evil has become a core aspect of the characters journey. So I ask you judges, should I let her join our world, knowing that she’s going to see me making minion noises and using fart based attacks on my foes, or is it better to keep her out of this banana filled madness for now. I await your verdict.

NLane

To the highly intelligence and beautiful judges, oh, hey Jake, sorry I didn't see you there. I present the case of the coerced sacrifice: In the homebrew campaign I run, my players were infiltrating a subteranian lair that a cult of demon worshipers were using as a base. The players followed clues regarding the disappearance of some young paladins and tracked them to this location. The party has encountered this cult before and knew their goal was to sacrifice people in order to swap their souls for souls of demons. The stronger the soul, the more powerful demon that could be summoned. The demon preistess, that they had fought before, knew one of the party members was a powerful paladin. After getting into the main chamber and missing out of preemptively rescuing the young ones, the priestess' secret plan then went off without a hitch. She threatened to kill a young one unless the PC paladin sacrifices himself. He did resist but eventually made the decision to save the young one and kill his PC, summoning forth a powerful demon. The player was disappointed that he lost his character. After the session I provided options on how he could move forward, including coming back as a revenant but he ended up making a new character. Judges, was I wrong for coercing this sacrifice from my player? I was in an unusual situation where my bad guys plan fully worked so I felt a little uneasy about the result. I await your harsh but fair judgement.

Brooke Sanders

To the pondering justices and also Tucker? I present the case of Adventurous Knowledge. I run a home game with my two brothers (new to the game) and my dad (who last played in the 80s). My brothers aren’t strong role players and often refer to our dad to make decisions, which he has expressed he doesn’t enjoy. To help, I’ve started including Adventurous Knowledge. What this is: when the party goes somewhere new, such as a biome, city, dungeon, or even a cave system, I will explain what they would know, which includes general information as well as a few hints on how they might best utilize their abilities (such as the rogue checking for traps or which monk abilities might best help in battle) This works wonderfully for the game with my family, but at other tables I’ve been accused of metagaming for requesting this type of information or providing it to new players. Justices, is this metagaming? Should people be mad at me for this? I got kicked out of one game because I did this for my little brother at a game store.

Samuel

To the illustrious judges and the dude who’s reading this who is fine I guess. I was DMing a game where the reward for the party’s first mission was to choose any low level magic item of their choice, as long as they ran it by me first. My Rogue came to me and said he wanted the “Pipes of Haunting” but that it said he needed to be proficient in wind instruments. I said ok, that fine, you can have them anyway. And then he said he was excited to use it to test if people had good or bad intentions to the party. I was confused and asked what he meant. He said that the pipes, if he wished, allowed that “all creatures in the area that aren't hostile toward you automatically succeed on the saving throw” I said that’s not how it works. Essentially that provision is just in there so you don’t need to frighten your friends if you don’t want to. Judges, was my Rogue right? Can the Pipes of Haunting be used as a friend or foe litmus test or was he stretching the capabilities of the item?

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.

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"?

Emma

Dear the upmost gracious judges and Calder’s voice actor whose name I can’t remember. I come to you with a half confession half case. I am playing an eldritch fantasy campaign at the moment, with the same group I’ve been playing with the past 2 years. I love playing with them and they’re all great friends. However, in the party of 4, 1 of them is new to dnd, and 2 players, including the new player, are very quiet when we’re out of combat, which is most of the campaign. ( We don’t do a lot of combat ). I try to take a load of my DM’s shoulders so she’s not just monologuing all the time, but this makes me feel like I’m taking over, and putting the spotlight on myself, even when I don’t mean to. Am I wrong for trying to help my DM by speaking up the most? How can I encourage my fellow players to role play more?

Trans Rights

To the most holy bishops of the church of dice christ, and that guy who says he's a paladin but is actually just a fighter with religion proficency; I have come to the church today with a confession most grave. I have committed a murder. I lied, and gave myself a nat 1 on a death save, multiple times. It was a campaign that I was having a lot of problems with, and I was looking to find a way to exit gracefully. My character, a warforged bard named Disko, went down in a random encounter, and on the 2nd round of being left to roll death saves, I lied and said I rolled a nat 1. Everyone else panicked, and threw everything they could to help - rerolls from spells, inspiration gifting (houserule), magic item charges. I lied about rolling 7 nat 1s in a row, and Disko died that day. However, after Disko died, the resulting funeral refocused the campaign and gave a lot of character development, and lead to most of the problems I had with the game being fixed - so I stayed. I have kept up the lie about rolling 7 nat 1s in a row for years, and I need to confess this murder to repent for my sin.

Luka Vrečar

For the magnanimous justices and lowly lowly/actually alright (delete as appropriate) bailiff, I bring the case of the underperforming crit. A few months back in our Roll20 campaign, our party was in a tavern in the starter town where an ogre NPC was hosting a simple game. You bet some money and the ogre rolled a d6. You then rolled 3d6 and got your bet back for each dice that matched the ogre's. I bet 5 silver and the ogre rolled a 6, with me rolling a 3, 4, and 5. I asked the DM if I could try to persuade the ogre that 3, 4, and 5 is the same as 2 6s and that he should give me money. The DM agreed and a fellow party member gave me the help action and thus advantage. I rolled persuasion and there they were. Two beautiful green nat 20s. We all got excited by this blessing of Dice Christ, thinking I'll get my money back. However, the ogre just grunted and gave me a single copper piece. Justices, was I robbed and should get more money out of this, or should I be glad this NPC didn't decide to kill me on the spot?

Dillon Davis

To the supreme crit justices, Murph: the ever exasperated, Axeford: the wiliest worm-wife, Tanner: the deepest of blue holes and baby bailiff … Jorsh … I present to you my case. I DM for a home group of competitive crossfitters. It’s fun because our world is structured like a shonen battle anime which encourages them to compete. Normally they go along with whatever is asked of them, but on this particular occasion when I asked for initiative, I watched our barbarian roll a one, look me in the eyes and sheepishly refuse to tell me what she had rolled. She then preceded to roll again and loudly proclaim “19!” I told her no, I saw the one and that would be the number we took plus her initiative and she looked crestfallen. Judges, did I steal Her thunder for her first time rolling for initiative or was this a good opportunity to teach the power of the natural one. I humbly await your response.

Fuzzboxx

Hello my Honorable Judges and the nubile Bailiff Jack Today, 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. This gave me idea of making the boy vital to the main plot of the campaign, meant to travel with them once rescued. He however never brought up his missing son 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 were more pressing things to do -- There were not. After ANOTHER 6 months they finally rescued the son. My cousin's 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 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?

AwkwardFish L

May it please the judges and tickle the esteemed bailiff Jank, I present the case of the absent father. I DM a pirate-themed campaign for a group of friends and my dad. We’ve played bimonthly sessions for nearly two years and we’ve been enjoying it, except for one thing: my dad rarely shows up. He has physically attended fewer than five sessions. Sometimes he calls in over discord, but it can be hard for the other players to hear him and vice versa. Often he is not present at all, in which case his character is drunk in his cabin. Would I be a terrible son and/or DM if I kicked him out of the group? I have a good relationship with my dad and I think he plays as a way to spend time with me rather than actually enjoying the game. Other players have asked about why he never shows up, and I’ve always covered for him. Additionally my dad is a “Margaritaville-type” dad who fits into the pirate aesthetic perfectly. What should I do here? Thank you for your consideration. PS: 8-bit Book Club is my comfort podcast. I heard about this guy named Jake Hurnitz and I think he would be an excellent guest!

Dan The Penguin

To the ever wise Crit Justices, and ever vigilant Baliff, I submit the case of my unintentional player kill. I had a major boss fight about 3/4th of the way thru a long running campaign (about two years). In this party we had two experienced players and two new players. For this fight I planned to use a mechanic from one of the Tome of Beasts homebrew monster manuals. This creature if it brings you to 0 HP you are instantly killed and cannot be revived with anything short of a wish spell. Banking on this, I had multiple warnings for this upcoming mechanic in the dungeon as well as priming the party with a wish scroll a few sessions earlier. Our experienced fighter PC did not inform the cleric of their HP during the fight and got killed. Without them on the front line our cleric (a new player) got knocked as well. After the fight the fighter said the new player should use the wish scroll to keep their first character. It was a nice moment and we all were misty eyed. However after the session the fighter claimed I intentionally withheld information and killed their character with a homebrew mechanic they weren’t expecting. I submit my fate to your fair and balanced judgements.

Fresh Beeps

To the Serene Crit Justices and the wacky waving inflatable tube bailiff JaAaAake. I present the case of the Dead God, Deader Party. In a one shot turned manyshot we were in the final battle to stop a ritual that would bring a dead god back to our world. After much planning and luck we managed to destroy the ritual completely, leaving only the dwarf artificer/cultist. Seeing as it was in the bag one of the players downed a wild magic potion that goes off 6 times. Cut to the dm grinning as he pulls out a custom wild magic sheet. Suffice to say after nearly killing himself and summoning butterflies, a surge made him cast astral projection. The dm ruled that because of this the old god had a tether to our world and used that to finish the ritual. The god took over the character and screen faded to black as we all died. Justices is it fair that we stopped the ritual only for a bunch of homebrew shenanigans to wipe us anyways? Or was 6 wild surges asking for the end times of an entire world?

Carly Mackenzie

To the Justices most high and the Bailiff most spry, I bring a short but not so sweet question about over-relying on modules. I was in a short-lived party with some friends from the internet. I asked my DM how old a character was and they responded "I don't know, it doesn't say." Justices, what the fuck is that supposed to mean? The DM told me that it didn't say in the module how old the character was, but sent me a screenshot. This man was in his 30s. Additionally, we were in a shrine to a god and I started asking follow questions and my DM said "I can't answer that because the book doesn't say and I don't care enough about the gods to know anything about them." Justices, am I crazy for thinking that some additional world-building from the DM was required here? I sort of feel like the DM is in charge and could have just made a choice about any of this! I am still very grateful they agreed to DM for us even though we are no longer playing, but I felt a sense of guilt for it...not being very fun.

Bren McMaken

May it please the Court and the beatific bailiff Jake, I present the case of the corpse crushing artificer. A few years ago, I joined a group that had been playing together for several years. They would take breaks from their “big” campaign with one shots, and I joined during a one shot. When they resumed their big campaign, they invited me to make a character and join them. I’d wanted to play a necromancer for the better part of the last decade, so I asked everyone if they’d be comfortable with an undead-reanimating wizard joining their campaign. Unanimously, everyone said they loved my character idea and the DM confirmed it wouldn’t clash with his campaign setting or party goals. I based the character (not build) off of Fia Boginya and I had a blast replicating her accent! Everything went great for about 6 months, but then an old party member rejoined the campaign. Let’s call him Cliff. . . Well Cliff was an artificer who, upon meeting my Fia-inspired necromancer, decided to base his entire character concept on “honoring the dead” and abhorring necromancy. I asked other party members if this was a thing he’d built his character on before Cliff met my necromancer, but they confirmed Cliff did *not* hate necromancers until he met my character. From here on out, he instantly murder every undead I created and told me he would resort to PVP if I tried to use any of my necromancer class abilities. I tried to have a conversation out of character, which was wildly unsuccessful. Que classic “it’s what my character would do” excuses. I then asked the DM to step in and he said “that’s between y’all.” After a couple of months being incapable of using any of my necromancer class abilities, I decided to follow Murph’s number one advice and I “found new friends” and I’ve been very happy with my new table ever since. But Justices, I ask you: should I have had to find a new group or should Cliff have chilled out and been kosher with a necromancer in the party?

Serpent Prince

To the oh so lovely, oh so merciful panel of judges and the world’s most babygirl bailiff, I, a humble DM throw myself at the mercy of Dice Christ and beg for aid. I’m a first time DM creating a homebrew world with a few college friends of mine! In it, there are three main gods of the Stars, Sun and Moon (oldest to youngest) that rule over the world. As a part of my lore, after some divine sibling beef, the youngest god, nicknamed “The One” has inspired a cult to form in its name, and is attempting to convert all mortals to its worship. (This might be a good time to mention that The One is a toddler, prone to irrational mood swings and other such tantrums.) Pre-battle, our party tried to reason with this god and ask it not to kill followers of its siblings. This upset The One, since our Aasimar warlock was under contract with it, and was fated to be a mortal vessel of this god. Feeling betrayed by its warlock, mid-battle, The One severed the contract with him, leaving him with one level in Paladin. (With a beautifully timed Divine Intervention from our Cleric, the Sun God made a hasty contract with the warlock, saving a few of his levels in the class.) However, because of this, our Warlock is now at level 7, while the rest of our party is at level 10. How do I fix this? I don’t want him behind the party forever! I await your advice, praise be to Dice Christ.

Neximus23_

To the Honorable justices Murph, Axford and Tanner - and the lowly, but still Honorable Baliff Joke - I present to you, the case of the Terrible 6 A few years back I had a started a campaign for a small group of 4 friends, we started out as online and quickly transitioned to in person. The majority of us being at the same High school. Quickly, 2 members were added, not to my consent. I allowed it because they were still friends of some degree. This was my first campaign that I ran, and so I was a new DM (I had listened to all of NADDPOD C1 at this point and felt I had a good idea of being a DM). My players were the typical group of batshit crazy but the problems quickly arose when my then partner, now ex and another player would constantly talk while I was trying to narrate and explain what was going on. Not so long after another player joined into that group of talking while I was dming. When it got into combat, I would tell them it’s their turn and they would turn to me and tell me “What is happening? I wasn’t even listening”. This had me pretty upset but I let it slide and had a talk with them later. Continuing a few sessions later and they still persisted, and even got to a point where no one was listening and I would sit around waiting for everyone to be done. I had brought everyone together and asked that we stay on task and play the game. They agreed, but never acted upon said agreement. Fast forward a few more weeks and I got fed up and addressed all of them. I had told them that I had brought them all together to play DND, and was really passionate about this campaign and wanted to play. They counter argued that they were just there to hang out with eachother and not really to play anymore, so I cancelled the whole campaign. They all got very upset at me, calling me petty and an asshole. Am I justified in my actions, or should I have just sat there and let them mess around while I dawdled on my phone? P.S. a few years later, I’m friends with only 2 of them and don’t regret it

Michael Beck

To the illustrious judges and the sexy yet reprobate bailiff Jek, I bring a case of rule of cool versus rules as written. Back when I was a young DM I ran a game of dnd 4e. My players were 2 rangers, an enforcer style rogue, and a paladin. The rogue had a high strength and would use intimidation style tactics in most battles. One time we were fighting werewolves and he lost his knives through a risky play, at the end of the battle which was in a cemetery he instead of grabbing knives grabbed a couple of tombstones, I made him roll a strength check to use them, and strapped them to his hands as fist weapons. The ranger didn't like that he could do this because in 4e it's very explicit about which weapons you can use, I just gave them the stats of his daggers but bludgeoning as a bit of flavor. The rogue eventually got them silvered to fight the werewolves. The whole time my ranger player was unhappy because I ruled that they were just a bit of flavor. He was a younger player who made a Drizzt clone ranger, and he was very much in a videogame mindset. Should I have stuck to rules as written or was I within my rights to allow a cool fist weapon for this rogue?

Jake de Medeiros

May it please the court, this is my first time writing a case but the situation is so bizarre I feel like I have to share. I play in a campaign with some grad-school friends, it’s been going great since 2022 but recently things took a strange turn when one of PC’s (played by my friend Ryan) chastised the party for forgetting his birthday. We thought this was just a strange joke Ryan was doing, until his PC said the following in-character: “if you guys aren’t going to treat me with the respect I treat you with, I’m leaving the party.” We were floored, and implored him not to leave the party, to which he explained that over months of play he had intentionally had his PC remember our PC’s birthdays, in hopes that one of us would initiate a birthday scene with him so that he could advance the plot of his character with a curse that takes effect at the age of 25. Judges… what the hell? Should other party members be expected to pick up on hints like this? I totally understand the value of improv and collaboration, but this birthday thing came out of left field for all of us. Are we guilty of being bad party members? (P.S. We just celebrated Ryan’s real life 25th birthday and he’s doing fine, but insists that we should’ve picked up on his cues, however he has remained in the party.)

Jade Finch

To the honorable justices and that swarthy guy who lives under the bench. I bring before you the case of the Self v Self Kerfuffle. During a stealth mission to break into a fey castle, our changeling fighter split off from the party to sacrifice himself to cause a distraction. This was unnecessary but he was adamant. While the rest of the party completed the mission the fighter was captured by the enemies and given a mind-control helmet. In the meantime the player made a druid/paladin to play while his main character was captured. Several sessions later at the climax of the arc, the original mind-controlled character was present fighting against the party while they tried to remove the helmet. The player ignored the rest of the party and killed his own PC, including death fails. The character was kicked out and he had to make a NEW new character. TO THIS DAY the player brings this up about how sad it was that his original character died and sacrificed himself, and that his druid would've killed the "stranger". Justices, was it my fault for not telling him no or should he let it go, I lay myself before your blade.

Figgy the Cat

Dear Joe and those that Witness. I come with the Drunkard DM. I am in an in-person campaign (1st in many years). The DM and 1 player are experienced, the other 3 new. Last session, as the 4th hour of playing occurred. The DM opened up their 6th (or 7th) beer and winged an encounter with a players rival. By this time, not only the DM but the other players were getting rowdy and decided to beat everyone up and steal merchandise. The problem is simple: The DM FORGOT about the last hour and only remembers them approaching the rival, none of the consequences thereafter. I ask the justices: should the DM retcon the hour to set up a more impactful encounter for the players, or was it the DM's fault for getting too buzzed and forgetting the whole Whomp. P.s. This is a self report- I was the drunkard DM. Felt embarrassed but happy that my players still had fun whomping me in my silly state. (It is a home game after all)

Timothy Daughtridge

For the esteemed Judges and the "I bet he would look good in a Pea Coat" Bailiff Jake. I bring you the story of the overzealous Hexblade. I was DM-ing the first game my girlfriend has ever played in. She played a Halfing Barbarian; the other two players were a Paladin Oath of the Ancients (forever DM) and a Hexblade Warlock (only plays one style of characters). Having been inspired by Fantasy High my players were competing in their entrance exam to join the prestigious adventuring academy. Essentially it was a dungeon crawl where they would discover a plot of evil doings at the school a la Harry Potter. The dungeon was doing fine until right after they had cleared a room. The Hexblade took all of my initiative labels off the DM screen. Caught off guard I said what are you doing? He said we cleared the room… I then summoned a battle of endless swarms that killed all the players. I had the players wake up in an infirmary being comforted by their loved ones, except for the Warlock whose parents I narrated were disappointed in him for failing, and because he described his character as a rich kid tool they disowned him. We never met again to finish the campaign. My question is am I an asshole for killing the party over a player being overzealous or was I correct in serving justice to a player who I have only ever seen play a Hexblade Warlock (at least 5 different games have the same character and different names.) I humbly prostrate myself before you for judging.

Toxic Yobo

Greetings the loveable Jake and the three rats! I was playing a devotion oath Paladin and the party was hunting down a druid that was murdering the prince of coin (multiple children of the top merchants in town). Learning that the druids adopted mother was betrayed by the Kings of coin (the parents) the party decided to try and capture her alive. On the fateful session their was only two players out of five and not knowing how much hp the druid had I tried to do a non-lethal sneaky level two divine smite (not having any level one spell slots) The dm ruled that paladin divine smites couldn’t be non lethal and the amount of damage I dealt was the exact number to kill her, furthermore he said I broke my oath and I lost my paladin powers, just as a modified Wraith erupted from the druid which quickly striked down my normal guy. Was the risk trying to quickly take this druid alive before she started slinging spells at us justified or do I deserve to be a powerless hack like Jake? Additional notes, the druid super killed two people and was going for a third so she definitely wasn’t innocent, the dm even let the other player revive the druid with a cure wounds in order to help fight the overwhelming Wraith while I died and went to limbo.

Josh Kumar

@Jake pick this one you coward

clover

Hello, high priests Axford, Murphy, Tanner and choir boy jake. I have a confession for a sin I fear I may have committed on my players. It was all of our first time playing dnd (although I knew a lot from play shows). The party successfully completed their first mission of finding the culprit who was stealing valuables from villagers. At this point the PCs have had spent plenty of time together but didn't actually like each other, they bickered and fought and tried to kill each other regularly. I was unsure of how to get them to want to stick together to move on to other things so I crafted a plan. They were celebrated with a party and gifts which included stuff the thief left behind in their lair. This included a cursed sword which took the appearance of something each PC would want. I narrated them each grabbing their item and watching as it transformed into the sword which they could not let go of. To get the party to stick together I literally stuck them together. It ended up working well as they worked together to find a wizard to remove the curse but I feel guilty. The very least I could have done was to give them a wisdom saving roll but I took advantage of them not knowing the game to get them where I wanted them. Will Dice Christ forgive my sin or am I to burn in the fiery pits of dice hell...?

vince

To the esteemed Crit Justices and the bodacious, beautiful, big-muscled bailiff. I present to you the case of the spiteful cleric. My group and I decided to take a break from our main game for the holidays and play a mini campaign. In this campaign, I played a halfling cleric. She was very eccentric and spoke with an accent so I knew she might be clocked as annoying, but everyone seemed fine with it so I went with it. Cue my friend, playing the typical edgy loner "I only work with you because I have to" changeling rouge, being incredibly rude to her. I'm not just talking about typical standoffishness, I'm talking about deliberate insults directed at my cleric and only my cleric. I understood that this was roleplay, but since I'm sensitive I pulled him aside during our first break and was like hey, can you not do that? I get it's roleplay but that's not fun for me. He said cool. We continued. He did not stop. I asked him several times in and out of character to drop it, no improvement. When I asked him if I had done something wrong or if he was annoyed by my character, he told me "no. I love her she's really funny, but my character hates her." When I realised he wasn't going to stop, I told him "cool. I hope he remembers that she is our party's only healer." Which he acknowledged. Now, clearly, the rouge did not internalise this lesson. He continued to ridicule and insult my cleric, which led to her simply ignoring him (and me doing the same thing irl). In the final battle against a powerful devil, I had the choice between healing the almost dead rouge and attacking the boss. I chose to attack. This led to my friend being outraged, and arguing that I was doing a bad job as a healer (which, I admittedly was). When he asked me if I wanted his character to die I told him "no, of course I don't, but my character hates him." He seemed baffled by the fact that my character would hold a grudge, and proceeded to be butt hurt the whole rest of the night (even though I ultimately did not let him die. I healed him when he was down.) I will be honest — I do not feel bad! I know it was petty, though. And I do wonder if I should've sucked it up to not spoil the mood for everyone else over our petty beef. So I ask the court, was my spite leaking into my character unjustified? Or was I right to childishly leave the edgy loner rouge to his own devices in battle?

Jared Bloom

This is directed to the honorable justices and I’d really prefer for the lowly and lonely Jeka to stay out of it. I present to you The Party vs. the Non Role Player. I’m a first time DM, but have been a player before and am leading a group of friends in a Camelot themed campaign. My girlfriend was kind enough to humor my obsession and joined our group! She’s only played a couple one shots during covid, but wasn’t fully invested. So this is her first time playing a real character making impactful decisions. She’s playing a lvl 6 Circle of the Moon Druid with a glass cannon build focusing more on wisdom and intelligence and letting charisma and strength go to the wayside. In some scenarios, she’ll ask to roll for arcana and not really specify what she’s looking for, roll a 25 on her check. She’ll just say “I got a 25 on my arcana so what do I find?” Or “I got a nat 20 on my persuasion, so will they tell me whatever I want to know?” She’s got some real juicy rolls, so I’ve been flavoring it like she’s getting really lucky and stumbling into the answers, but she isn’t offering much in the way of roleplay. The other players have accents, talk amongst themselves, and act in character when solving puzzles (cleric sneaking away from a battle or a barbarian using brute force on a tough puzzle). But she’ll just roll and say “I probably passed. Now what?” Is there a way to meet in the middle here, or should I just suck it up and be happy that my girlfriend is willing to hang with the crew and hope that she’s just new to the game and the roleplay will come with time. I humbly await your verdict and again, Jerk, please stay out of this.

Oysters

To the real people judges Emily, Murph, Caldy and the AI that reads these cases, I present to you the case of the NPC turned PC love interest. I was playing with a new group of friends in a Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign. My character, a half-elf Bard, started a romance between the barkeep who was secretly a member of the Red Hand turned double agent. The romance went on for many sessions with it culminating to us being dads to an orphaned child. One day, a friend of my DM wanted to join but didn't know how to play just yet. My DM gave the character sheet of MY LOVE INTEREST to a stranger! (he's straight no less). I had to roleplay with the new guy who just wanted to blow things up and loot corpses which was the opposite of how my DM roleplays the NPC. In the end, the new guy decided he wanted to play a new character so he makes my pseudohusband jump in a dragon's mouth as sacrifice that wasn't needed. AND He didn't tell his plan to anyone. The whole table was just looking at me as I panicked while my bard tries to save him to no avail. Judges, what the actual hell did I go through?

Resido

I do this too man, sometimes you have to feel the moment and create tension. That’s your job as the DM. No if you rolled that 8, got a 1, and claimed it was an 8… you’d definitely be in dice purgatory for that heinous crime.

anniemurphs

I bring to you a case not for me and not of today, but of long past, regarding my own blood. I bring the case of the Ride and Die: Years ago (circa 1980s), my dad's best friend, my "Uncle" Dave, asked him to play in a game and to drive them both to wherever they were playing. Dad agreed, not really knowing the rules but a scifi/fantasy geek, made a character, and was eager to play! They drove the 2hours to the game and start playing only for my "uncle", the dm, to almost immediately kill my dad's character with a shrug and a "sorry that's how the game works." He was forced to sit for hours while the rest of the group played and then drive himself and my "uncle" all the way home. I've tried to convince my dad to let me dm something for him and my family but he refuses to play. I ask you, the humble court, to help bestow a punishment onto my "Uncle" and honestly am wondering if my dad deserves a less harsh punishment as well, for refusing to play even after so long. I humbly await your ruling ❤️

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.

Matt

To the honorable justices and the sniveling bailiff who I once saw take candy from a small child, I bring to you the case of the Bugged Nat 20. During an online session I was DMing a few years ago, my players were in a deadly fight against a homebrewed Legendary Owlbear Matron while trying to collect one of her eggs as material components for a spell they needed. During this time, there was a bug with the virtual tabletop we were using where the image of the virtual die rolled would register the exact opposite value on the die, so the party agreed to use the calculated value that registered in the chat since it would add up multiple dice automatically and save us from our subpar math skills. While knocked unconscious, the hexblade warlock rolled his death save. The die rolled a nat 20, and the party started celebrating. Justices, what is the exact opposite number on the die to a nat 20? There in the chat was a big fat natural one. Two death save failures. After the warlock narrated his popping up at 1 hp, I pointed out we had been using the chat window for all of our rolls up to this point, and he was still knocked out. My party flipped out. They insisted that me being too much of a stickler was ruining the moment and the story they were telling. I stuck with my ruling, and everyone survived, with the sorcerer landing the final blow in what would have been his last session as he had changes in his availability. Justices, was I being too harsh in the moment by sticking with the rules we had been playing by for several sessions, or should I have relented and let his nat 20 stand due to a bug outside of our control? I humbly prostrate myself before the courts and will abide by your ruling. PS- we never played another session after this interaction, but we are all still good friends.

SoPHisTiCatED-Ox

I got so excited thinking it was Friday and this was an episode 😭 now I'll be anticipating tomorrow even more ❤️ LOVE NADDPOD! BOOMER POOH MERCH PLEASE!

yumehop (no. 1 ol' cobb fan)

To the jake, and the venerable judges. Is it ok to manipulate the DM for more games? I've been playing dnd with the same online group for a few years now. I even met my partner through this group. Naturally, the players (4ppl) are very close. Half a year ago, I introduced my good buddy Andrew who I had gone to uni with to the group since he was big into dnd5e. When our group's last campaign ended, I approached Andrew asking if he wanted to run a game for us, and he was very enthusiastic about running a high level campaign using the Chains of Asmodeus module. We originally set the schedule for every-other-Friday nights. But, since the group were so close knit, we would hang out like 3-4 times a week regularly in the evenings, and often when the 4 of us gathered, we would jokingly @ Andrew to ask him if he was free, he would join the voice call, then we'd ask if he wants to run a game. He usually had a lot of stuff prepped already. Sometimes he said yes, and it was a great way to spend our evenings. This escalated to me texting Andrew things like "hey are you free this Thursday" or "what are you doing rn?" and things like that, to which he would answer honestly bc i concealed my reasoning, but secretly we would have all made sure our schedules were clear for a game. We figure, if he's down, we play, if he isn't, then whoever is available can just hang out and chat. He eventually grew suspicious of our ways, and has recently gone back to the old schedule. I noticed that since we started the campaign (January) we've played twice as many sessions as we should have. Is that too much? How much coercion (light hearted) is ok from your players? We are all truly just enthusiastic to hang out with each other. (Naturally, no hard feelings on any side from any of this. Im aware this makes me sound like a villain and I accept that, tbh)

JS

Dear most cool and refreshing justices and your room temperature bailiff. I come to you today with the Case of The Tome of Puberty. I DM a campaign where one of my players is a very naive Tortle cleric. In an early session, the party went up against an assassin, a beautiful woman, who had seduced a noble so she could get him alone and murder him. The tortle was the one to intercede on the attempt. When he found them, the noble was canoodling with the assassin. The player stopped the assassination, but was shocked and confused by the brief (and PG-13) physical intimacy he witnessed and insisted that he did not understand what was happening. Another player asked him how he had never heard of sex, and he replied that back home female tortles simply laid their eggs to later be fertilized by the males. I let this slide as I had no desire to verify the accuracy of his assertion. That proved to be a mistake. For the next several sessions the tortle continued to be troubled and confused by what he'd witnessed and brought it up to every NPC he spoke to. I quickly grew tired of having every NPC get cornered into giving his character "the talk" and as a workaround had one give him a book called The Tome of Puberty that could explain everything. Unfortunately, my solution became the bane of my campaign as both the tortle and the rest of the party became obsessed with the book. They would find any excuse they could to use or read it, frequently asking me to describe the contents of specific pages. This got old fast so I had the errant fireball of an evil wizard 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 looking 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.

Cameron S. Hero of the Land

To the venerable, honourable and beautiful judges and deacons of dice christ and the case guy and/or altar boy John. I come before you with an admission of guilt, my party asked for a DMPC, and i accidentally killed them. The party was fairly inexperienced, and asked me to have my own character as the DM to help them through their Curse of Strahd campaign, however my Aasimar Celestial Warlock eventually fell in battle against Strahd through my own use of Shatter with him in the area with many of strahds minions. He ultimately took out most of the minions and saved the party, but i feel bad that i not only killed their companion, but that he fell to his own spell damage. I beg for your absolution in this case. (He failed 1 death save and was slashed by a vampire spawn killing him)

OdinTheAllDaddy

Dear justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, whose grace honors me, as well as the bailiff Jacob. (please be nice to him today, he's been working on himself).l ask thee to consider my case of The Fleeing Captain. I am in a campaign at level 4. My DM is my best friend who introduced me to D&D, as well as 4 friends whom I have introduced to the genre. Our campaign is set in the astral plane (very Halo themed). I play as a bard who uses a classical guitar for his instrument, and he is PURELY a "support" build. The only spell he has that can deal damage is vicious mockery. He spends most of his time upcasting bless, blinding enemies, and giving out bardic inspirations. With this in mind, a few sessions back, my party and I were in a big battle while boarding an enemy spaceship, fighting off grunts, elites, and other big guys. Eventually we've mostly cleared through them, and my DM brought the ship's captain out to fight us. (Our main objective was to get info from him or kill him). He duels our fighter until an alarm blares, declaring the ship's imminent destruction. He begins to run off, and we are not quite able to keep up with him, so I took a risk and cast "charm person" on him. In battle, he gets advantage on the charm spell since he knows we're enemies. He rolled a 6 and a 12. He failed. I told him, "stop and tell us where your next attack is!". My DM decided that he would not stop, and he did not talk to me either. He said "the ship is coming apart, so he's running to an escape pod and won't stop." | tried to get a LITTLE BIT of information while he ran, but nothing. He ended up getting in a pod by himself and escaping (all while charmed) Judges, I have held no grudge for this since my DM generally doesn't make calls so controversial, but was his decision correct? Should he be punished for this act? I humbly await your judgement and will accept any punishment you desk necessary (although I think my DM deserves it for this)

Andi

Honorable Crit Justices and Crit Justice adjacents I'm about to play in my 1st game in about a decade. The DM & party are mostly people I've known from work over the years, and I'm excited to get to play, but some of the things the DM has mentioned about building the campaign has me raising an eyebrow. He's mentioned that he doesn't do experience based leveling, which isn't uncommon, but he also mentioned he doesn't do AC. He's also made hints about my PC being a "main character" in his story building & extra background information he's going to tell each player about their character when we get to the table, since we weren't really given information about the world we're going to be in or even what classes our other PCs are playing. Am I justified in my twinges of concern or should I get through a few sessions and see how his game plays out before being too skeptical?

Adam G

I pretty much feel the same. I do wonder what the number of additional d8s that would send me straight to hell would be. 5? If I had rolled 25 extra and insta killed the monk he’d be lodging a court case against me lol

Ziv like Steve

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

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?

Resido

Destroying their immersion! Ha ha ha… wtf??? Sounds like you need a new play group. Also, the lich could have known about it the whole time and just been more interested in trivia…

Rebecca

May it please the court and affect the baliff, I present the case of the DM vs. the Autognome Barbarian. I have been DM'ing a campaign for about a year. A player recently left my group, and I fear I may have unintentionally driven him away. Two sessions ago, I gave this player a bit of a devil's bargain. The character was a human cursed to be an autognome who longed for his human body back. In a dream, the character was told he could be returned to a flesh form in return for his service. Basically, when they leveled up, he would have to take a level of warlock, in return for an immediate Revivify. I offered time to think about it, but the player took me up on it quickly, and the character became a Yuan Ti. We had not yet come to the character becoming a warlock, but it would have required some big changes/powerful magic items since he was a min/maxed barbarian with a very low charisma. The character was someone with strong political beliefs that do not align with the table's (the characters come from our world). The player plays it comedically, but it could be annoying with the current state of the world. In our last session, after he made a comment during a fight, I asked that we avoid political chat during our game. The rest of the table quickly agreed that it sounded like a good idea. A few of us work in politics, so DnD is an escape. After that session, he left the group in order to focus on other things. So my question is: Am I liable for driving the player from the game? Should I have approached the political question differently? Is making a barbarian take a full level of warlock cruel and unusual? Or should I assume this is unrelated? P.S. The character's name is Jacques S. Trapp, if that affects anything. I didn't figure it out for a while, but say it quickly.

JellyForBeans

To the Supreme Crit and the even supremer Bailiff, I present to you the Case of the Latched Bag of Holding: I play in a weekly game with several of my college friends. A few sessions ago, we were partaking in a great battle for the sake of a city. This battle involved a lot of maneuvering and tossing of our group’s Bag of Holding to move resources around. The group of PCs (myself included) joked that the bag was latched shut as we tossed it around to avoid all our loot flying around. As part of this battle, our Wizard used the city’s central tower as a casting boost to purge the city of the aberrations we were fighting. In practice this acted as an expanding dome of force that ignored all non-aberrations pushing outward, crushing several monsters against the structures of the city. Super cool stuff. HOWEVER, we had forgotten that my character (a tiefling wild-magic sor-lock named Casmus) had merged with some of the aberration as part of a curse. The DM narrated that Dome began to push and damage me as well. I spent my action launching one last spell to protect the group, and intended to use my movement to enter the Bag of Holding to spare myself. To my surprise, the DM asked for a dexterity check because we had jested that the bag was latched! Needless to say, I failed the check (shoutout to the 2 Crew), crit failed my first death save, and was killed by hitting the closest wall due to the dome, which the DM noted was an automatic death save fail as a “melee attack”. Squish. Justices, I ask you this: Should I have been able to use my full movement to freely enter the Bag of Holding and save my own life, or was my beloved Casmus justifiably crushed between a Spell and a hard place because of a funny bit? PS - We all still play and joke about that moment often (I’m the only PC our DM has killed in 3 years of the campaign).

Mackenzie Fresquez

The Case of the Postponed Level Up Honorable Judges and bailiff I just can’t bring myself to be mean to, I seek your judgement. May it please the court: My husband is running an XP-based campaign for me and our friend. We had just finished fighting some scarecrows and in doing so earned enough XP to level up! We were on our way to a dungeon when we encountered the scarecrows, and it was night time, so I suggested we take a long rest so we could level up before entering the dungeon. But my husband said we were not allowed to level up until next session! I argued that because we took a long rest we should be able to level up, and that I wanted to be stronger against whatever we encountered in the dungeon. This particular dungeon was hyped up the whole session prior so I had braced myself for some tough fights. Plus, with this level up I got an extra attack! He refused and we continued on with the session. The dungeon crawl ended up being very short and not much happened. But to this day I suspect he removed an encounter or two to make sure we didn’t miss that extra level. Was I meta gaming when I suggested we take a long rest so we could gain the new level we earned? Did he have any grounds for postponing our level up? I humbly seek your judgement and accept my fate.

Jako

To the guiding lights of Truth, Justice, and Crits respectively and Bae-Lif Jake, to whom I am unable to be mean to because that’ll make me feel bad, I bring you the case of “The Seduction Roll that cost a Relationship”. Many moons before marrying my now wife, a council of Elders member, I DM’ed my first campaign, using the Lost Mines of Phaldelver campaign. My party of three (an edgy rogue, a horny paladin, and my then girlfriend bard) were your traditional bottom of the barrel adventurers. Murdering defenseless Goblins, wearing Bugbear heads as hats, and threatening shopkeepers. But the party was having fun and we stayed within the rules. Our Tiefling Paladin decided she wanted to seduce the dragon in the end. After many rolls including performance, wisdom, grappling (if you know you know), and the full team coming together to make the perfect dragon date, the dragon was seduce and we fade to back. Until the Tiefling decided she needed to narrate 30 minutes of Episode One level dragon genital descriptions and how her Arcana check would definitely help. Which was fully supported by the entire party. After the longest 30 minutes of my life, we all packed up only to be informed by my now ex-girlfriend that allowing her friend to describe her “hardened battle” is the same as cheating and led down to us breaking up and me enlisting in the Navy. (where I met my wife). Council, was I in the wrong to allow my players to seduce a dragon and then explain how they used mage hand to their advantage? Ultimately, I believe it was Crit-Christ who allowed those rolls so I could meet my wife, but I leave myself to the mercy of the court and Jake who seems like a swell guy

Jack M

To the Bodacious Bailiff Burwits and the Heathenly High Hustices, I ask, is it okay if I don't do math and guess sometimes? One campaign My character ended up being pretty weak so even when I was rolling 15's on middling monsters I was not hitting, so I just kind of decided that if I ruled a 13 or higher I would just say somewhere from 20-22 to ensure my character hit. I also feel like my dm did something wrong with character building and stat array, idk I was so weak and never hitting as a barbarian isn't fun. Should I go to hell? This might be a church question im seeing now. Only did it until level level 3

NNF

To the clergy of the church of dice, I come with a most egregious sin. Many years ago I was a part of a homebrew isekai D&D game over discord and roll 20. Because I was the most experienced with roll 20s website, my fellow players and Dm allowed me access to everyone's character sheets to aid in character creation. As the game went on one of the players began acting rather nasty towards the others in the game by using charm magic on fellow PC's to get what he wanted (keep in mind that this is an isekai game, so we are all playing as ourselves) a week passed and the Dm discoverd that he had been giving himself bonuses he shouldn't have, proficiencies that didn't make sense, and a hit point total that, as a spell caster, was slightly higher than the partys barbarian. The truth is, I did it. I did not take it lightly that he was constantly putting people down, using in game mechanics to force a narrative he wanted. He was kicked from the game, and he hasn't been allowed to join a game in the discord servers we share. Nobody to this day suspects me, and I shall take whatever punishment is deemed worthy

humanoidudon

To the esteemed justices and the you figure it out yourself bailiff, I bring to you the case of the re-rerolled stats. I have been playing D&D at a local game store for the past year. When creating characters for the third campaign, my DM gave us the option to roll for stats in place by using a single d20 and 1 reroll for our lowest stat. This led to hilarious results like a 20 constitution and 5 dexterity. However, as we were taking turns, someone rolled 3 strength, 6 dexterity and 4 constitution. My DM immediately allowed them to reroll all of them and even started rolling for them when their results came out similar to their first round until they got above a 10. No one said anything and I understand with stats that low it would be impossible to succeed in certain checks. But the whole point of rolling with a d20 was that the highs were higher and the lows were lower. Also, my DM hates powerful characters to the point of banning subclasses because they were too "overpowered" (e.g., divination wizard and college of eloquence bard) which confuses me why he allowed the rerolls. However, I have been having fun and my DM's linency has allowed me to start as a 20 charisma paladin. Judges, should I say something the next time we create characters or let him continue being a forgiving DM?

DasAutoEngineer

Hello Grand Masters of the Jedi High Council and that weird droid gonk. I was playing a lawful good paladin in a group of 16 playing Tomb of Annihilation. The game started with 4 groups of 4. 4 characters died in the leadup to a PVP battle which the DM had informed us at the beginning of the campaign would be used to get down to only 7 players remaining who would move on to the end of the campaign. In the PVP battle, we teleported into an arena and were set loose. I rolled a nat 20 on initiative (which I agree with Murph is dope) but, it wasn't great in this case because I teleported into an arena first with nothing to do. Eventually I started rushing towards the battle. On my way there, another character (let's call him BDM) ran past me on their turn while invisible, I took an attack of opportunity at disadvantage. I hit them, they lost invisibility and said in Roleplay that "I'm just an old lady trying to find my friends". His group is playing a group of old ladies for fun. It's my turn next, I take an attack at the old lady, I hit again BDM says in RP that they’re just an old lady and I shouldn't attack her. I roleplay my Lawful good paladin would hesitate, so I said that I wouldn't take my second attack. On their turn they say that they want to run away but can't because of an opportunity attack from me, I say out of character that I would let them run away since my character is hesitating, they run away. They attack my teammate while running away on their turn. Then on my turn I attack BDM. BDM says old lady spiel again. On their turn they try to attack me, miss, run away, and I take an attack of opportunity, I take BDM to 3hp. On My turn I say I'm going to take an attack on BDM. BDM asks on my turn if they can make a deception check that they are already fully dead, the DM allows a contested deception vs perception and I roll low. Then I attack another grandma from his team who attacked me previously. I take them down with my first hit. I take a second attack at the body for 2 death fails. I use my hasted attack for another 2 fails and kill that character. BDM out of character suggests that I need to consider changing my alignment since I just killed an old lady. BDM ends up killing my character after sneak attack and help from his team. Was I wronged by the sniveling old lady (BDM) trying to force me to RP my character to just let them go? I was a hasted level 5 paladin with 4 remaining smite slots (not spell slots). Should I have just smote down onto these sniveling septuagenarians?

DisClever

To the Delicious Dungeon Daddies of Dice Christ - Meticulous Murph, Calculating Caldwell, Esteemed Emily, and Judicious Jake - I come to you for help reckoning with an undeserved killing blow. My party recently finished the Fist of the Ruby Phoenix Pathfinder 2nd Edition adventure path after two wonderful years. As we grappled with the BBEG over two forms and three four-hour sessions, he was finally on the ropes. I had my DM write down the big guy's hit points after a particularly nasty attack from our barbarian, as he was on death's stoop. As my halfling cleric was about to be forced into a void demi-plane, I cast the reaction Anathemic Reprisal, and rolled 21 damage. My DM very kindly rounded up the half damage, finishing off the boss' 11 HP. The party erupted in very violent celebration, and we began debriefing the insane 12 hours of combat. At one point, my DM mentioned that the boss' final form had resistance to mental damage, meaning my final reprisal only did half damage of the halves damage. My DM waved it off, but I feel like I stole the killing blow from the members of my party who did the other hundreds of damage. I felt Dice Christ's chastisement immediately, as we all non-canon rolled on a deck of many things after the conversation. My last roll as Gherki the Cleric was a nat 20...which on our table meant that I was sent to a void demiplane. From a Cleric of Desna to the Clerics of Dice Christ - I ask for your guidance, and will do as many Hail Murphy's as you deem fit.

Cited

To the honorable and effervescent crit Justices and the slimey bailiff Jerpent the Serpent. I bring you the case of Warhammer inclusion. I ran a campaign for a friend and their friends. At character creation, everyone made fairly normal D&D characters. But one wanted to flavor his character with Warhammer lore. I told him it was fine, and I could even introduce some Warhammer gods into the mix to make it interesting, despite my lack of Warhammer lore knowledge. He created his character, Tek. A Monk Lizardfolk directly inspired by Sotek, the Serpent God of Warhammer. His character kept in contact with Khorne, the Blood God who was trying to get into this world via Tek. A few sessions go by and Tek tells me privately out of game that he’d love to form a pact with Khorne in order to gain more strength. I oblige and begin writing up ideas and ways to make this enjoyable for not only him, but the other players as well. Some time passes, Things were not looking good for the party as they fought pirates, three of the five were down, the Ranger on death’s door and Tek hurting as well. Tek chose to pray to Khorne for guidance and strength, I used it as an opportunity for Khorne to speak to Tek in his mind and tell him that if he wanted strength to save his companions and win, he’d have to officially form a pact with Khorne himself to gain great strength. Justices, after hearing this, Tek’s player looked me right in the eye and with a slightly confused look said to me: “Why the fuck would I do that?” Taken off guard and even confused myself, I took a second to compose myself and told Tek that Khorne’s voice faded away. The Ranger ended up having some really good rolls and bringing back up their designated healer to turn the tides of the battle around and beating the pirates. But Tek’s player was fairly silent for the remainder of the game. I’m still confused and even slightly upset by this decision after months of this happening and even wonder if I messed up something he had planned but didn’t tell me. We have not played since. Justices, am I in the wrong for not communicating well enough to know what my players really want or am I lingering on this situation too much?

Nick Lerche

Can we get some Spell Check sprinkled throughout? It's kind of sweeping the nation

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.

Catherine Coates

**UPDATE** Hello court. I have an update for you regarding the case of my roommate who wanted her own Mr. Darcy (or “a boy next door type who knew how to treat her sweetly”): Last time, I left out the fact that she mentioned if she couldn’t have her boy next door, then she would also be okay with “a French-like guy.” So, taking the court’s ruling into mind - that I should just give her what she wants for her own good - the next time they were in a tavern and my roommate asked if there were any boy-next-doors or French-like guys in the room, I introduced her to hEnRi (bad French accent), a former foot soldier who left the military to follow his love of baking. He is the only character in the world with a French accent and he is absolutely devoted to my roommate. He protects her at any cost during every combat, and since my roommate is the cleric of the group, she gets to be the one to heal him. We are all very happy with hEnRi. The rest of my party gets to enjoy the endless croissants that he bakes for them. And my roommate gets to enjoy knowing that she asked for this. Thank you. (P.S. I just got a cat and named her Darcy in honor of me and my roommate’s favorite movie. So she did kind of get her Darcy.)

dan mac

Dear Honourable Crit Justices, end of greeting. I need to know if I ruined a night of DnD for some strangers with my true to character RP or if it made for a good story. Many years ago I was visiting a friend in Montreal and he invited me to appear as a 1 time guest in his weekly DnD campaign with some friends in a steampunk style city. He told me they were aboard an airship about to attack a necromancer plagueing the city. I created my character as a priest and worshipper of Kelemvor (God of death) who had stowed away on board to also try and kill the necromancer. Since his control over death was cheating my God of his souls I thought it worked well. We had a great and long session, beating the dungeon, killing the necromancer together. Here came the issue: the necromancer was using a book of necromancy to control his thralls, which was incredibly valuable and the object of the party, but as my death priest saw this as an afront I had my character throw it into a fire and destroy it as soon as the BBG was defeated (rolls and turn order were used and I succeeded). The party was enraged, threw my character off a cliff where he died in rapturous glory and joined his God, his mission completed. Justices, did I RP too hard as a guest character or did this provide a memorable night for everyone? I throw myself at your mercy.

Bryan Merchán

To the Illustrious judges and the ill-prepared Bailiff Jake-ish, I present to you the Case of the Vaporized Ratman. I'm a player in a relatively new level 10 campaign that started in the city of Neverwinter. During an incursion into a cult, my character, a Paladin, managed to rescue an ex-cultist named Raina who was being tortured for trying to betray the cult. After the incursion, we had a 3-month downtime where my character nurtured this cultist to health, spent his gold to buy her some magic items, and presented her to the party as a new member and his squire. During the same downtime, our Bard met a drunk Wererat named Brutus who was a street urchin, and tried to make the same I did but to completely opposite results. He got the Wererat drunk and convinced him to join us for 4 pieces of gold a week to go on adventures with us, and then completely forgot about him for the duration of the downtime. For our next adventure, the DM explained that we were going to fight an adult Red Dragon and was vocal about Brutus not being at the necessary level but the Bard insisted on Brutus coming with us. On his first turn, the Dragon released its dragon breath. The DC was 22 and Brutus had only a +2 to Dexterity, so he took the full extent of the breath: 79 points of fire damage, 2 times his maximum health which, as per the rules, is an instakill. Brutus was vaporized, and the party went silent for a moment until our bard yelled "Fuck, I just lost my gold". We ended up defeating the dragon, and Raina was a key part in that fight but justices, I can't help but feel sorry for poor Brutus. Was he mistreated or did he get what he deserved for drinking too much? I humbly await your judgment.

Will

To the high priests of Dice Christ and the little Alter Boy Jimbo, I come to you with a grave confession I am a new DM about a year into my first campaign. My players are an even split between extremely squishy spellcasters who deal insane damage, and tanks with base AC above 20. I confess that early in my DM journey, I fudged rolls often. I wanted players to have fun but be challenged, so sometimes I would make rolls hit or miss when Dice Christ did not deem it to be so. Additionally, I have fudged damage rolls, not to knock my players out, but to save them from certain death. I have since just adjusted Monster Stat Blocks in advance of fights to make it work. Is it possible for Dice Christ to see it in their divine being to forgive me? PS, I am not sorry about the rolls. My players are having an amazing time during our sessions both when I was fudging rolls and not.

Jimbo Sinbad

To the captivatingly effervescent and yet emasculatingly turgid Justices, of the Supreme Crit, and to the noteably homogeneous bailiff Jank: I bring before you today a unique case, unlike any cases before: not from a TTRPG but still technically from D&D 5E- the case of Role-play in Baldurs Gate 3. I recently started playing BG3 with 3 other people: a friend (who invited me in), an old acquaintance turned friend, and another guy ive never met IRL. they have a scheduled weekly session where they play a high difficulty, no saves run, where TPK means game over. this allows them to always have a game going, for social fulfillment, but means theyre constantly rolling new characters, which brings me to the heart of the case. before joining our first session together my friend gave me a heads up- they have a specific "homebrew" rule that you have to "RP as yourself". that means you play as a humanoid and look like yourself, and you pick classes and feats based on what you think you would most likely possess (i.e. druids for the animal lovers, rangers for hikers etc etc). same goes for ability scores and equipment decisions; the rabbit hole goes deep. After a couple sessions of this, at level 1-2 went fine, but once the party leveled higher, i couldn't bring myself to not "meta game", for optimization. so I asked the group "if we are RPing, as ourselves, and my personality is to effectively attempt to min/max effort and value gained, would I not do the same, in the BG3 universe? were the arcane facets of the world were offered to me, i would certainly indulge". after a brief discussion, i was told i was a revolving door player and this is a casual setting, so i didnt really have to follow the "RP rule" but judges, I ask of you, how does one resolve the recursive ontological and epistemogical conundrum of "Role Playing as yourself, in a videogame adaptation of a TTRPG". has this group proposed an impossible and logically unresolvable constraint to the gameplay?

Adam Dubberly

To the honorable justices and honestly, pretty okay bailiff Jorb, I humbly submit the question of whether or not someone can touch themselves while paralyzed to the court. We are currently mid-combat in my campaign in which the oath of vengeance paladin has just dramatically killed his father a nobleman who the paladin learned secretly had his betrothed commoner lover murdered. While trying to fight their way out of the castle afterward the paladin was stabbed out of nowhere (I had been rolling stealth checks) by essentially the water dagger from Crown of Candy. He had to roll saves from becoming poisoned, paralyzed, and silenced. It was revealed that he was stabbed by an assassin rogue who was... his former lover who survived and blamed the entire family for her attempted murder. (Sorry, unnecessary backstory, but the reveal killed). The paladin failed the save to become paralyzed and tried to cast lay on hands on himself while paralyzed, I ruled that you can't touch yourself while paralyzed while the paladin argued that his hand is essentially always touching itself... after getting hit the paladin dropped and that is where we ended the session on a cliffhanger. He will start rolling death saves as soon as we start next week. Was I right that lay on hands requires you to lay your hands on something or should that hand be able to heal itself because it is always touching itself? I humbly await your judgement.

Ricky Kolar

To the honorable Crits and the lowly Bills fan Jake (go cardinals this weekend). I bring to you the wrong doing that happened to me in my first ever DnD session. I've been listening to DnD podcasts for a while now but have never gotten to actually play. Well that all changed whenever I joined my cousins campign that he DMs. He helped me set up my character sheet for the first time, we worked together to write me in with the group. Everything is going great, we get to the day and we start and I find out the rest of the group is level 10, while I am still level 1. I plead with my DM and say there is legitimately nothing I can do and am just gonna get one shot by everything. He says it's fine and I'll level up quickly. We'll the session continues and I get 1 shot by everything and barely leveled to level 2 by the end of it. So I come to the court and ask, was I wronged to be placed at level 1 while the rest of the party was level 10? Or was I wrong in asking to be at level with the rest of the party? I will humbly accept your judgement. PS I haven't gone back to another session because it just wasn't fun being a level 1 with a bunch of level 10s

Babbles The Clown

To the Honorable Crit Justices & jac who's standing is based upon the whimes of said judges, I bring the case of the unnecessary epilogue. I recently went to a D&D night at a local museum which was a good time overall. They had a number of tables set up with one shots for people to join & it was a good time overall. We get assigned random characters & told we are elves in a world that elves are second class citizens to humans. At the end of the session we are victorious & end up with a Evil Devil Box & an option presented by the DM, do we join the elf rebellion. Considering we were all basically slaves we all agree. To which the DM states "You just joined the main villain of my home game, who my players recently defeated. So you all lose." Which kinda sucked the air out of the table. So I ask the court is this a reasonable thing to tack on to the end of a session? (A session that included a number of first time PCs) Or am I correct in thinking that telling players their characters are doomed isn't a great last maneuver? I humbly await your judgement.

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?

Evan Sherlock-Hubbard

To the Cardinals with their beautiful red plumage and their 40-ish year-old candle boy Jake, I have a confession - I caused my first ever party to wipe out of jealousy. I was the dumb human fighter (the Jake), playing 3.5e. I had a packhorse named Swordhorse, due to my strapping every looted sword found to his body, as a sort of porcupine armour. Long story short, a random magic effect triggered in a dungeon when it was just us in the room, and the effect: The creature with the highest Wisdom in the area, must roll to reincarnate instantly. We laughed as we realized that creature was Swordhorse, and after a roll the DM described a nude, muscular human fighter appearing with a long "mane" of hair - Think, prime Fabio. Swordhorse the Man was born. Swordhorse became a fighter, using his sword-covered naked body as his weapon. This new DMPC outperformed my fighter at every turn, and sadly my beloved packhorse quickly became my rival. During a boss fight, Swordhorse the man was trapped under a giant's hammer. I was the only one with the strength score to help, but instead I wanted to take the win for myself, opting to keep dealing damage instead. We won, but in the process everyone but my brother's dwarf was killed. I've grown older and wiser since this first campaign (Though not as old as Jake!), and I still cringe at how it ended. I beg forgiveness from DiceChrist, and from Swordhorse the Man, who I assume is up there somewhere too.

kendraaleigh

To my dearest Crit Justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner, and their humble servant Jake, I bring to you today "The Case of the Spider Queen's Booty" My party plays in a mostly homebrewed world and had recently been hired on a quest to capture a giant spider queen. Along the way found a "box of holding" that can carry 1 thing inside, regardless of whether it's a creature or an object. During our planning, one of our players revealed that they are a REAL LIFE SPIDER BREEDER and provided us with lots of facts about spiders and their anatomy. We made a plan to place the box of holding on the ground, wait for the spider queen to stand over it, then drop a net on the spider queen to trap it while another player uses mage hand to push the button to open the box and suck the spider queen inside. As we began the encounter with the Spider Queen, our DM told us that the spider queen had grown larger than we had realized and would no longer wholly fit inside the box. We were given the option to either A) CUT OFF THE BACK HALF OF THE SPIDER'S ASS TO MAKE IT FIT, B) not use the box and find another way to capture it alive, or C) kill the spider queen, but only receive 10% of the gold we were promised because we brought it back dead (100 gold each compared to 1,000 gold each) Our group had almost immediately decided to go with A), when our real life spider breeder came in with an emphatic No, because in real life the ass of the spider is where a spider's heart is, and we would therefore kill it. This started an argument among the players about what body part to cut off instead. The DM had to shout over the players to notify us that because this spider is magical and an aberration, the anatomy doesn't line up with real life spiders and would survive if we were to cut off its ass. The real life spider breeder became very quiet for the rest of the session and seemed less and less attentive as we finished off the battle and did indeed cut off the spider's ass to fit inside our box of holding. When the session was over, our spider breeder player messaged our DM that they didn't appreciate being condescended to during our game tonight and believes we should have been more respectful of their expert knowledge. I ask the court, should we have handled the magical giant spider queen in a more respectful manner towards real life spider anatomy or was there another solution? I await your decision with bated breath!

ROMCOM

To the bailiff. I bring you the case of the Spontaneous Secret Rooms. I am a (very) new DM, and I play with a party of three; two people have never played D&D before, and one who’s DMed a handful of times many years ago. We are all new and therefor the quality of DMing I bring to the table is sub-par but the game is enjoyable. The party were investigating the house of a deceased dwarf. I knew that this guy would have secrets, so when one of the party members asked to look for any secret rooms, I thought “that would make sense for him to have a secret room” so I called for a roll, and they got a 19. I described them pulling back the floor boards to find a small armoury. The player, with the buzz of finding this, called that they would roll another investigation check for a secret room. Before I objected, they rolled a nat 20. I ashoomed that Dice Christ wished there to be another secret here, so I obliged and described one of the walls pushing back to reveal a secret temple to some long dead gods. I am not totally happy with how i handled this situation, I realise that I could have added a secret chest or something, but my mind blanked and I couldn’t think of anything else. The party was excited, but once we moved past the house they seemed to not think of it, so these hastily created rooms don’t appear to have made a significant impact on their playing experience, but still Justices I lay myself before you and ask, was I in the wrong for creating rooms that I hadn’t previously designed simply because the player rolled high enough?

The Acolyte

To the esteemed high priests of the holy church of Dice Christ, and to the buffoon who holds their balls. I prostrate myself in front of you to confess to a cocked roll gone un-honored. (This took place two days ago as I'm writing this.) Our party had climbed and struggled over the course of five years to reach level fifteen and and become strong enough to fight the three big-bads of the campaign, with whom we had only ever faced in near death, run for our life experiences. This week we got one of those three BBEGs alone and decided to take him on and bring him down. The combat was one of the hardest we have ever fought, having to down the big-bads three headed monstrosity of a mount before even being able to damage the rider himself. By the time his mount was downed, so was nearly half our party. My half-orc barbarian/fighter had gone down without getting to use his action surge, failed two death saving throws, and it seemed as if a TPK was on the horizon. My turn came around and as I rolled my final death saving throw, the dice landed cocked between an 8 and a NAT 20. I have always done as High Priest Murphy has said and "Honored the cock", but in this moment of stress and anxiety, my honor wavered. I screamed "NAT 20", got my whole turn, used my action surge to revive our healer, and even got a few hits in on the big-bad. In the end, we won the combat, and it was all because I didn't honor the cock and re-roll the dice as Dice Christ would have wanted me to. I ask for forgiveness from the church, accept any punishment that the Priests and their ball holder see fit, and pray that Dice Christ will forgive me and my character in the after-dice.

Jeremias B

To the jovial Justices and the jerkwad bailiff Jimbo. If it please the Court, I bring you a case of a climactic battle gone wrong. Near the end of a campaign, us players, now 15th level, faced off against the BBEG's 3 pets at once- a storm dragon, a frost worm, and a land kraken. During the battle Bam Bam the Barbarian got swallowed. I was rallying the party to save Bam Bam, when they repeatedly insisted via mindlink that they had it handled themselves. Justices, Bam Bam did not have it handled, and died soon after. While we were able to kill two of the pets and retrieve Bam Bam's body, the reduced action economy meant we were on the verge of a TPK. We managed to convince the almost full health dragon to stop working for the BBEG and stop fighting, but still being an evil creature, it insisted we leave Bam Bam's body as a snack. Out of spell slots, class features, and near dead, we reluctantly agreed while successfully stealing a bit of their body for possible reincarnation later. Bam Bam was furious, and quit. They think we should have risked the almost certain TPK rather than have them roll a new (possibly only temporarily!) character. Justices, should we have gone out fighting to the bitter end, or was our plan fair and solid?

The Janitor

To the hot, venerable justices of the court, and the guy who I think voiced Jvelin for a few episodes in season 1, I humbly beseech your guidance… I am a first time DM but seasoned 5e adventurer running my first campaign with a table of my close friends: three of them are entirely new to DND, while one is another battle-tested veteran and dice-christ devotee. We are roughly 1.5 years into the campaign including plenty of magic item gifting, various side-quest chicanery, gruesome holiday sessions, and plenty of ‘office hours’ - and while they are more than happy to play in the world I have created for them and keep their war crimes to a minimum, I am running into a two-fold problem I did not expect, but fear is of my own making… As the table has grown into their roles and PCs, two of my players have repeatedly expressed interest in altering their roles and their backstories… not wanting to discourage them, I have attempted to do this organically, offering them a pre-climax (settle down…) boon from a helpful demi-god allowing them to level up, or entirely re-roll their class as a sort of look into their past lives and change before the final two planned hero arcs. However, their requests persist, and I fear my consistent generosity has become a hindrance, as I’ve now had to take lengths with frustration to rearrange the order of larger story points, and retcon various aspects of backstory to make it fit into the current narrative they have built. Is my frustration vindicated and worth scolding my players, or is self-flagellation in order for allowing this to carry on for as long as it has? I lay myself at your feet and await your judgment.

Joseph Burns

To the bountifully bodacious judges and John Jacob Jingleheimer-Smith, that name is my name too haha jk can you imagine, what a terrible name. I present to you the case of the Glass Smashing Fighter. I DM a homebrew campaign with my sister and several of our friends as players. Most recently, the players have been assisting a shadow organization dedicated to stealing from the rich ruling class and redistributing the wealth to the impovershed working class track down a mole in their ranks after a series of raids on their safehouses cast the organization into chaos. One of the players saw their original character get captured amid the fracas of the raids and adopted the role of a high ranking wizard from the organization for the duration of the arc. Now, because the mole exposed a great deal of information about the organization, this wizard was now known to be an enemy of the state as are the players, who were known to the mole to be assisting the wizard and the shadow organization, and so the party has been forced to make stealth checks to move around the city without being caught. The players had succeeded for the mostpart and avoided confrontation for a majority of the arc, that was until one party member, my sister and the resident fighter, decided to pick up a mug and smash it against the wall while the party was deciphering a scroll at one of the local taverns. For the record, this was the fourth time she had done this during the campaign, and previously I had simply played the part of the aggravated barkeep, but this time I had city guards enter the establishment after hearing a raucous, and knowing the party members were wanted by the city, proceed to engage the party in combat. The problem is some members of the party now think I'm looking for any way to trip them up and use their actions to create problems, but I'm just trying to reinforce the idea that sometimes actions have consequences. So, judges, I ask, am I being too harsh on my players, or was my combat response to the fourth smashed glass of the campaign justified? P.S. my players are great and are very respectful of DM rulings, I just want to make sure I'm not being a Jake, err I mean a jerk (jk again lmao, jake you're great).

DaddyPatty24

To the oh great and wise representatives of dice Christ I come to you guilty and humbled. A while back I decided to try DMing for the first time, I home brewed a story and got some of my online friends together to play over discord. The barbarian had never played before but we all told him we would help teach him. The first session went smoothly but as the campaign progressed while other players seemed to enjoy the story while the barbarian became visibly disinterested as the sessions went on. He eventually would make excuses not to show up and when he did, he would sit on his phone or open steam and start playing video games. He would also half ass combat and only do basic attacks and missing. It got to a point where the other players would ask for him to be killed off or taken out of the game in some way as his apathetic vibes were ruining the experience for them. Eventually we had to take a hiatus from playing. When we decided to start up again I pulled the barbarian aside and asked him if he really wanted to play with us and he could back out if he wanted to since we would be starting again soon and now would be the time to do it. He agreed to leave but has since left the discord server and stopped talking to us. I ask this. Was it a sin against dice Christ to turn a potential follower away just because of his bad vibes or was I justified in asking him to back out? I leave myself in your tender arms.

Gabriel Balog

To the elevated, pristine, judges and the ordinary, mediocre even, Jak. I bring you the case of the NAPPER'S REVENGE. 😴🤜🧙‍♂️ My older cousin invited me to play in a Pathfinder campaign with some of his friends and, even tho I'm DnD's little bitch, I got excited (especially with my PC, Arthur PenGaton). On the first session, the party was preparing to rest before an invasion that would happen in a few hours, and I started happily interacting with the Magus, asking him about magic. That’s when it began... The Sorcerer, impatient to start the long rest, said: "You want to see a cool spell?" and casted Sleep on the party. The spell lasts 1min so, when the Magus woke up, he stated that he was "attacked" and "would have his revenge". They rolled initiative and, in one turn, the Magus dropped the Sorcerer with punches. He would keep going and kill the guy if the DM, my cousin, wouldn' have said that the invasion was starting and we had to deal with it. The group was silent, we never played again, and I miss my unused PC. Judges, I beg of thee to awnser: what the fuck just happened?. Who's fault was it? PS. Love from São Paulo, Brazil 🇧🇷

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.

Magnus_Scelus

Greetings, oh wise and wonderful Justices of Law and the respectable Bailiff of Shit. I humbly bring before you the case of A.I. Gods. Over the course of 4 years my table has had 3 campaigns where us as players have had our PCs assend to Godhood after completing God trials during the campaign. Our characters usually had to sacrifice something dear to them, had to be turned to stone for 200 years, or be cursed by a corrupted fate in a cycle of death and revivification. At the end of it all we assended to Godhood, but then the DM discovered AI. At first it was small things like new NPCs, but then they began Generating new Gods that had not done anything to get their roles. To clearly, the DM had a one shot in order to tease their next campaign and decided during the session to A.I. generate new Gods on the spot, some of which the DM changed our Gods Domain/symbol as it overlaped too much. These Gods were not children of ours, they did not go through trials, they just became real during the session. I ask you Court, should the DM face Divine Punishment for introducing A.I. as the designer for their Godly creations, or should the players face Divine Punishment for the hubris of divinity?

Guy

To to wise justices and the tacky Bailiff I genuflect before the court to bring the case of the flying rat. I DMed for a party trying to infiltrate a military watchtower which had guards on the top. They successfully snuck up to the side of the building and were looking for a way to remove the guards. Our Ranger used their item, the Hat of Vermin, to summon a rat and used animal handling to befriend it. They then casted Animal Messenger to make the rat say “the rat king marches from the east” and used the Alchemist’s elixir of flight to send it up to the top. The rat rolled a performance check and didn’t do very well, leading to some of the guards capturing the rat and bringing it inside to their leader. Here’s where things get iffy. The Ranger thinks I should have let them use their charisma(-1) instead of the rat’s(-4). The outcome ultimately would have been the same, but am I wrong to suggest that the rat is the one doing the talking and therefore is the one whose stats get used? I beg you for clarity.

TJ

Hail, supreme and righteous Crit Justices and their man servant Jort. I humbly submit to you the case of the supposed melee wizard. Our table has been playing for about a year together. I play a Rogue/Bard multi class and the other three members of our party are all spell casters. ( We happened upon a broken magic rapier, and our wizard said, I’ll take this. I thought it was a little strange since I am the ONLY melee character and the only one who uses a rapier. Not to mention our wizard already has a pretty cool magic scimitar. I wasn’t that annoyed though and kept playing until our DM text me and said “that rapier was supposed to be for you, but I’ll let you handle that.” I’ve not yet found a chance to ask the wizard for it back OR been given an opportunity for a new magic weapon since, despite, once again, being the only character to fight melee. Should I just let it go, or should I dismantle party dynamics for a cool magic item? I humbly await your judgement.

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.

Jenna Jones

To the esteemed Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the lowly bailiff Junk: I present the case of the Bard with no spells. A few years back, a friend of mine who was learning to DM wanted to run a spooky one-shot where a TPK was on the table. They specified in advance that the level 8 party should have no healers and no full spellcasters, because they wanted the danger to feel real. My husband and I created an artificer and a warlock, and when we got to the table, we were met with a rogue and… a bard. We were obviously confused, since Bards are both healers AND full spellcasters. I asked the bard if they had all their spells picked, and they said, “No, I don’t think I have any spells.” I said “Yes you do, bards are full spellcasters,” and the DM said, “Not all bards are – they’re playing College of Whispers.” Since that’s Fig Faeth’s subclass in season 1 of Fantasy High, my husband and I immediately knew that wasn’t right, and that our friend’s spell-less level 8 spellcaster was severely nerfed compared to the rest of the party. Our bard friend had made their character on D&DBeyond, and it doesn’t tell you your character is incomplete if you forget to stock spells. Neither my husband and I said anything else, though, because it was only my friend’s 3rd time DMing, and we thought pointing out a mistake would make them nervous. My warlock wound up getting unceremoniously beheaded, and my bard friend was pretty disappointed in their character’s abilities during the session. Was I right to stay silent, or was my warlock’s beheading karmic justice for allowing my friend to play such an underpowered character? I await your swift judgment.

Maeve Pagan

To the sweet, supple, and sensuous judges, and the man in a shockingly realistic Bailiff Jake costume—Hell, it could be Bailiff Jake himself— I present to you the case of the vibe avoidant PC. About two years ago, my amazing roommate DMed a vampire hunting one shot for our friends which was set in late nineteenth century Transylvania. She was meticulous in curating a certain spooky aura for the evening, even lighting candles throughout the otherwise dark room and wearing a black cape throughout the session. With a story taking place during such a specific time and place, one would assume that the players would create characters that at least somewhat match the energy, but one friend, a first time player, insisted on role playing as a valley girl-esque 21 year old interpretive dance major at UCLA named Chastity, all the while being adamant that she’d maintain a toxic long distance text relationship with her boyfriend Chad back in California. Upon frequent gentle yet exasperated reminders from our saintly patient DM that her intention was for us to play a Victorian gothic horror session, the friend argued that she could play whatever she wanted as long as she was still hunting vampires, even if that involved her role playing texting her Californian situationship. Wise judges, was my friend in the wrong for refusing to adhere to the DM’s carefully curated vibe of the one shot, or am I just being too grumbly towards a first time player exploring the magic of dnd? I seek your wisdom and prostrate my humble self before your greatness.

Ben Cuartas

Venerable Justices and the Artist formally known as Jared. May it please the court. I present to you the case of the Mist that was Missed... Our group is in the early stages of Curse of Strahd and currently at level 3. A strange series of events led to us confronting Strahd extremely early, with him inviting us to his keep. This interaction was clearly meant to introduce us to him and reveal a few other things. When the interaction was complete, Strahd transformed into mist and started to exit. Our Cleric took the opportunity to cast Create/Destroy Water, attempting to "destroy" the mist. The DM laughed and said it was a creative play, but clearly would have no effect on Strahd. He awarded the cleric inspiration for the move but said it had no effect. The cleric insisted that this should, at the very least, force him to change forms again and should potentially cause damage. The DM was insistent that this would not be the case. We moved on from this interaction, but after the session the cleric brought it up again, this time in more adamant terms. He argued that mist is water, and therefore should have done SOMETHING to strahd. I should mention alcohol was involved and the arguments on both sides became more incoherent as the night went on. Should the spell have had an effect on the Big Bad, or is our cleric being unreasonable. We await your judgement!

Christian M.

What up judges and jank! I humbly bring to you the case of the testicle catapult. I played in a campaign with 8 other NPC’s (3 of us seasoned, the rest brand new). One of our newbies was a spellcaster who loooooved to say things like, “ugh, do you even know who my father is?” Whenever she didn’t get something she wanted. It was pretty annoying, but her worst transgression was in combat. She would, at random, grab pc’s off the street and use them as human meat shields. When they died, which they ALWAYS died, she would then remove their bits and bobs to use as ammo for her catapult spell. When combat was done, she’d painstakingly comb the streets removing any dead combatants jewels to store for later. We told her we hated it, but she insisted. Mind you, and this is important, we played a POLICE FORCE. One of our players was a paladin and changed his character completely because he didn’t think his character would stand for this without pvp. Judges, we quit that campaign and told her it was a scheduling issue, then started a new one behind her back. Are we the assholes here or should she learn to keep her hands to herself? Ps, hate the show, I don’t even listen to it

Milo Finch

to the illustrious crit justitices and the baliff- oh, sorry. this is embarrassing. um, i want to say jim? today i have the case of the meta wizard. a few years ago i heavily altered a candlekeep mysteries story to make into a fun halloween one shot that was about exploring a haunted house. i told everyone to come with prebuilt characters to make the set up easier. my roommate at the time brought in level 3 human wizard that looks relatively normal to me with a quick glance. however, soon after we started the session, the party got stuck and i put a mulligan in front of them. the wizard yelled “we are being railroaded!” in character to the other players in the scene. when we all were confused, he then texted me a long paragraph about how this is one of his character features from another campaign- essentially someone who made s deal with the DM and can see the meta world. i didnt want to completely stop- so i said okay and moved on. he spent the rest of the session calling out to other characters when he heard dice rolling, going off on his own to loot, and generally being a problem player. my question is- should i have stepped in and stopped this? i humbly accept your judgement. ps hate the show have never listened

Jennifer Strollo

Hi Justices! About two years ago, my three friends and I started a campaign. We played like 3 sessions and had a looooong (like nearly 2 year) break, despite the DM claiming to have prepped a lot of material. During this break, they all started playing Magic the Gathering. Eventually they were begging me to learn how to play, so I told them no, I won't learn Magic until we pick up our DnD campaign. 6 months after my ultimatum, we have now started our campaign again!!! However, now they're demanding I play Magic with them, and using the fact that yall keep talking about it on this show as a clear sign that the universe wants me to play. How long would it be appropriate for me to hold out on them?

ASortaOkayBuilder

A kindly "Howdy" and a tip-of-the-hate to the judges, and a playful but slightly too aggressive push to Bailiff Jacques. Today I bring you the case of the Dirty Rotten Feat-Thief. I play with a group of friends, and we're currently playing in a higher level campaign, which has allowed for picking up multiple feats. We are overall having an incredible time, but there's another player that has doubled up on feats that my character took at a previous level (A few characters are lagging a level behind due to story reasons). When I pick a feat, I often try to have it make thematic sense, unlocking a new ability through a story beat, or past choices culminating in a new skill specific to my character. For the next few sessions, I have the opportunity to do some cool clutch moments with my new feat, however, the next opportunity the other player has had to level up, they've picked the same feat. They have done this twice now. When asked what made them pick that feat, they've responded with "I don't know, it just seemed neat." and are otherwise dismissive. Neither of the feats really make sense from a character development perspective, nor do they really synergize in a sensible way with their character class either. It now feels like a race with the other person to fulfill the specific niche the feats cover, either resulting in me feeling like they're stealing my thunder, or me feeling like I'm stealing theirs. Justices, am I too high on my own bullshit, and should find a way to comfortably share the feat-based spotlight with this other player? Or should they be chucked right off a cliff for their transgressions? I am at your mercy, and await your judgement.

Lucas

To the most beautiful of justices, and the bailiff, whom I assume is sitting on a tiny wooden footstool, I present The Case of Explosive Death. In my home brew world which is somewhat based on the forgotten-realms, Fey creatures are closely related to the elements. When powerful Archfey die, like mephit elementals, they explode. Not in any damaging way, but people are perhaps pushed away in a certain radius if the Fey was related to air. Blinded with fire, exhausted with the cold, etc. My player was downed atop their floating summons. When the Archfey died, this bard tumbled down 10 feet from the blast and died. This lead to a beautifully narrative romantic death and resurrection scene, but should I have held off on the Archfey Death Blast? I think it’s metal as hell, but perhaps without my hubris my player’s character wouldn’t have had to face death and a possible failed resurrection. Goodnight from Canada!

Jadon Eason

Greetings to the most venerated and honorable judges Tanner, Axford, and Murphy and to... The guy who can sometimes read good if he focuses, Josh. I humbly bring you the case of Repeated Recitals. I am a forever DM, Normally DM'ing for first time players who I've introduced to the game. As such, I have 3 main campaigns I use for new players, a Pirate One, a Floating Island One, and a Fantastical Army one. I've reused them over and over for different groups, and at this point I've gotten pretty comfortable playing them. The issue: my girlfriend. My girlfriend got into DND because of me, and she's played all the campaigns with different groups. We've just made a new group of friends who wants to try DND, and they've voted to try the Floating Island Campaign. When my girlfriend asked me what player she should make this time, I calmly told her I don't think she should play, because she knows the story as much as I do. She argued, saying she doesn't remember much, but I said the second I started describing main plot points she'd figure it out and spoil it for the rest of the party. Oh judges and Josh, I ask you this: Should I change major plot points of a story I've gotten used to running to allow my girlfriend to play alongside our friends, or should I exclude her and curse her with the knowledge she isn't playing this time? P.S. she would still be invited to sessions, as we have a recurring thing where if she doesn't play, when combat or story beats happen I'll let her roll my damage dice so as to not take me too far out of the story, and to keep her interested in what's going on, so she wouldn't be completely removed.

Devin Awe

May it please the most magnanimous, magnificent, murph-ect man of all time, Jake Hurwitz and whoever happens to be around when He reads it, This was my fourth session ever and a new player joined our table. The DM had his character introduce himself along with a plot hook for the session of accompanying him into the desert to investigate an attacked merchant caravan. The problem is that this new character was a drow assassin, covered completely in bandages to hide his race to avoid the prejudice and fear the surface world holds for his race. My response to the quest hook was an emphatic no, because going to secluded locations with people you just met completely covered in bandages in a fantasy world seems like a recipe for being murdered. I couldn’t see any reason a wise character would go with him, and since we were new players, we had no idea that drow were stigmatized, so the bandages seemed completely unnecessary. The rest of the party agreed with me on this, so the new player took off the bandages and we accompanied our new friend into the desert. Lord Hurwitz, should we have gone along with the DM’s plot hook more easily, or were we right to exercise caution against a sus weirdo?

Stan BW

To the mellifluous judges and effluent bailiff, Duke ‘Jake the Cake’ Hogdick - I play in a relaxed game where it’s common for the DM to play PCs when the player can’t make it to a session. On two occasions when my fellow player (Jim) has been unable to attend the session, we have renamed his characters. First, whilst he was studying for an exam, we renamed Brian, the Halfling Rogue, to Bree-an to avoid confusion with another player’s name (Ryan). Secondly, whilst he was getting married, we renamed his third character (Maad Daag, the Hobgoblin Bard) to Dozy Daag, after he had spent several sessions/days asleep in the hold of our ship, which we felt was not ‘Maad’ behaviour. We feel no guilt about this as Jim has not directly expressed frustration aside from once saying ‘his name is Brian. He’s my character and his name is Brian’, but this was after he’d already stopped playing him so it doesn’t feel like a big deal. However, when Jim informed us he couldn’t attend our most recent session due to being on his honeymoon - my friend Ryan accidentally mistyped Jim’s name as ‘Jom’ in our group chat whilst scolding him. We then threatened to rename him to Jom if he didn’t attend the session. Thankfully he made it, so we were not forced to do this - but I am concerned the threat will loom over him for the foreseeable. Dear justices, is it wrong to rename our fellow player - or is it his prerogative to name his characters more appropriately and accept the consequences of missing sessions?

Jason Crandell

Dearest justices and special guest from 8-bit book club, I give you the case of "too dangerous for death saving throws." in a long running campaign my brothers, some mutual friends, and my self have all traded in and out of DMing and different PCs. most recently we headed to the countries capital and I started a new crown paladin/bard (subclass will be important for later, also shout out to queen Petrichor). after a short adventure my paladin was acquainted and fast friends with the party. skipping ahead the party was on trial for past crimes and my paladin represented them having ties to the crown prince. the trial went poorly and the emperor sentenced us to trial by combat to a surprise match against both of his sons (including the crown prince). FYI the royal family were all red dragons. i rolled low on initiative and two breath weapons later my paladin was looking rough already, but i went IN on the crown prince with a crit, some flourishes and haste from my team the DM described the dragon as bloodied already. the next turn the dragon took all his swings on me and my DM rolled all the attacks before damage. the dragon crit and hit twice, i was already on deaths door as he described the dragon knocking me out and throwing me out of the ring not killing me but effectively auto failing death saves. later my DM said the dragon thought i was too dangerous to be left in the arena and left me alive because i was sworn to the prince, but justices was i punished for having a strong turn or was my DM nervous of being womped? P.S. i spent the rest of the fight as our parties NPC goblin named crunchy while being polymorphed giant ape. i suplexed the dragon, so it was still a great time.

Jamison

To the mightiest judges in the lands, Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, I come with a simple case, The case of slavery being unambiguously bad. I play in a weekly game with some coworkers. In this game, my character is a part of a successful slave rebellion and ongoing war against their ex magister slavers. Another of our party is an artificer who was sold into slavery and just recently managed to escape to freedom join us. There is also a, supposedly, good aligned leonin paladin. Recently, we came across a city of translucent amphibious goliaths in the underdark. Honored judges, they were straight up racists. They called us inferior for our bodies, their leaders threatened to chain and sell us as slaves if we did not fight for their entertainment, and said that was ok because we were lesser races. Cut to the city being overrun by creepy halo flood monsters and us making a hot exit along many of the fleeing goliaths. My character said he tried to help some goliaths escape who were not racists as we had met some common folk there who had shown us respect. The "good" leonin ignored this, instead insisting that we find the city's leaders and get them to safety. Judges, I was surprised by this because these were the same people who were not only maintaining the slave trade in the city, but had literally said they would enslave us hours earlier! I said as much and the paladin said it was fine, we could beat the racism out of them or something later. Again, I balked! My character said we really didn't need to save the leaders and actively tricked some goliaths wearing red "make the underdark great again" hats to go die at the hands of the parasites. This, I was told was evil! We don't have a lot of time to play so I let it go, but I feel like that was some fucked up morality. I know fantasy can be weird with tainted orcs and dark elves being evil by nature, but I thought slavery was an easy topic. Was I wrong to think going to save the heads of a slave happy society was not only weird, but very much not good alinged. Am I crazy to have just assumed we would all NOT help the people actively engaged in slavery? Was it evil for my ex slave to guiltlessly kill slavers? I throw myself at the mercy of the crit. P.S. Huh. . Why do I feel like I'm forgetting something. . . (Home alone voice) WE FORGOT JARMP!

sofia

To the most holy and humble servants of DC (long may she reign), I come to you with a confession that I can only hope is within your jurisdiction to forgive, for it does not involve *dice* specifically. I’ve been playing in a campaign with a few buddies for around four years. Very quickly, I developed a reputation as The Riddle Solver of the party, as someone who loves word play and reads lots of fantasy novels. The incident in question took place in a dungeon room, where an annoying little robot (think Keychain) made us answer ten progressively harder riddles before letting us pass to the next room. The last riddle truly had all of us stumped. We were playing online, so in a moment of weakness I googled the riddle and found an answer that didn’t really make any sense. In the middle of our brainstorm, I said something along the lines of “Could it be like… I dunno… [insert correct answer here] or something? No, that doesn’t really make sense,” solely to protect my reputation as The Riddle Solver. Just to reiterate, I did not give the googled answer to the robot. In my mind, since I didn’t use the googled information to progress further in the dungeon, it wasn’t cheating. I just wanted to still seem smart out-of-game. But then, one of my party members said: “Fuck it, that sounds good enough to me,” and gave the robot that answer. We made it past bootleg keychain, but our DM said that he put the riddle list together too quickly to realize how stupid the last riddle was, and would have let us through anyways if we didn’t solve it. Oh mighty servants of dice christ, can you forgive me for succumbing to the desire to uphold my riddle girl brand? Or shall this guilt plague me with every subsequent riddle we encounter? I throw myself at your feet and beg for your forgiveness. p.s. if anyone in my D&D party is tuning in… you didn’t hear this.

Moose

To the righteous and cherubic popes of dice Christ Murphy, Axford and Tanner and the guy they pinned all the indulgence sales on Jümpf, I fear I may have sinned by whomping too hard. I ran an encounter against the archdevil Zariel, who was trapped in an opera house prison and being driven to rage by classical music being played through a speaker. My players knew beforehand that they and Zariel shared a common enemy and I wanted the encounter to end by my players either destroying the speaker or persuading Zariel to calm down. Unfortunately, they wanted to fight her normally. I had homebrewed this encounter to be brutal, with minions giving the players vulnerability to necrotic damage and Zariel casting finger of death. It was only after I turned three of my players into zombies that the others shot the speaker to end the fight. I eventually turned the zombies back and even roleplayed a romance between Zariel and one of her new minions, so we all had fun. However, I will not repent for downing the character whose player hadn’t shown up for weeks and killing him with an op archdevil. He never came back, so his character wouldn’t either. I willingly place myself on dice Christ’s pyre and will faithfully burn should the popes choose.

Nathaniel F

Dearest honorable judges “Executioners Axe-ford” “you Calld-that-Well” and “Your Honor-the-Cock Murph”, plus Jake, whose wits are greater than hur witz, I beg you to hear my plea about the devilish DM: During our first campaign, we assisted an illusory copy of a wizard who asked for our help in escorting him to his creators “Illusion made real” machine, and to fix it. Upon our Wizard and Artificers success in fixing it, we of course did a test run. Our Wizard made an illusion of so many Platinum bars, and the machine worked. We were now mega wealthy. We could sense our DMs panic, but moved forward and made the Wizard illusion real as well. Heading back to town, our DM informs us the platinum has a half life. We are quickly losing our new found money. So we speed up, when all of a sudden, out from the wizards watch popped a stereotypical devil creature, red in color, French in accent (our Canadian dm has all bad guys speak French). Nothing nefarious happened, he just introduced himself, and then went back into the watch. we write it off as one more quirky character. We make it to the bank, where we strike a deal with the teller to “launder” the fading money, and right as the money goes in, the devil pops back up, pushes the teller into the banks vault portal, and shuts the portal down. To this day, the bank still “can’t” get access to our money. This was 2 years ago. We always play in the same world, often revisiting these characters or the guild they created. Yet the money is still lost to us. Please, tell me, was the dm wrong for taking away our cleverly gained money, or should we have known our get rich quick scheme would be sabotaged?

Mesa W

To the vibrant justices and the bailiff whose light has dimmed, I present the case of the grip breaking shove. This is a crunchy case with the potential to set a precedent in at least 2 different TTRPG systems. I am DMing a Pathfinder 2e game that is set in and around a dwarven stronghold with a group of friends who have been playing together for years. The party was adventuring through the Darklands (the Pathfinder equivalent of the Underdark) and encountered some chokers, which have the ability to grapple on a hit. My boyfriend’s war cleric of Dranngvit, the dwarven goddess of debt and vengeance, decided to spend his turns making athletics checks to reposition the enemies that had grabbed his allies. He said that the grabbed condition ends when the grappler moves, so moving the enemies would break the grab. I do not have as much experience with Pathfinder as he does, so I generally trust his input when it comes to Pathfinder rulings, so I allowed this to work. However, a couple days later, he said that forced movement breaking a grapple is actually somewhat of a point of contention. It seems that while moving breaks a grapple, it is unclear if forced movement counts the same way. So I ask you fair and wise justices: does forced movement break a grapple?

TitoKMF

To the dorks I listen to while I’m on the toilet, and Jake who makes me wanna empty my bowels…I present the case of The DM’s Heel NPC. I run a campaign for a large group of 7-8 players, as difficult as it can be we are longtime friends so it’s worth it (mostly). I love creating NPCs that my players will enjoy, but more often than not due to the group size I don’t always have the best time because of the stress. However, the one light in this darkness is one NPC I’ve created named Kelhik. He is an arrogant, brash, Ironman 1 Tony Stark type who the party FUCKING hates. But the more they hate him, the more I love him and give him screen time/importance to the plot. I’ve even gone so far as to bring the name(which still gets heat from the table) to other campaigns and settings, even when the character itself is totally different. Kelvin Hikima, Kel Hickenbottom, etc. My players are not amused but I have a great time and make it a point to not let it ruin their fun, but Justices…are my players owes the removal of this NPC, or is Kelhik not the enemy they want but the enemy they need?

SoPHisTiCatED-Ox

The briefest "case" for the wonderful judges and Jakey Pooh. Ive DM'd for a few home campaigns but lost my interest in DMing until recently that is, I want to do a one shot for my 4 year old daughter to introduce her to the creativeness of D&D, and would love nothing more than the advice of NADDPOD :) P.S. Hope this gets sparks flying for you as well Tanner :)

csolo

To the Holy Legal Paladins of Dice Christ and their hired squire Jake, I must confess to my sins of the murdered wizard. I play a halfling wizard in my current Abomination Vaults campaign in Pathfinder 2e. As my party battled a spider-monster in the depths of the second floor, my wizard Elwick moved in to finish off the beast with a spell, but triggered a trap along the way. The GM crit with an attack roll totaled to a +10 over my AC, and took my last few hit points. Due to some earlier incidents with several other traps, I was already Wounded 2. In Pathfinder, when you hit zero HP, you increase your Dying condition by your Wounded condition. You also instead start at Dying 2 if a critical hit took you down, meaning I was Dying 4 - instant death! My wizard was felled by the trap, and the party escaped, and here is where I make my confession - I forget a skill feat I had taken increased my AC specifically against traps, and it would've turned the critical that killed me into a regular hit, giving me a chance at revival at Dying 3. But we had had a funeral, our characters had all mourned, we sent his body to his dang parents! And most importantly, I was already halfway into making a really cool new character and had already moved on from that wizard. We were too deep into this timeline, and I couldn't turn back now, but more importantly, I didn't want to. I kept my chance at survival secret and am responsible for at least the manslaughter of a halfling wizard, all for a shiny new character sheet, and for this, I ask for Dice Christ's forgiveness.

Gicky

To the esteemed justices, firstly there was a man outside the courtroom asserting he was a bailiff but I could tell from his stature and general snotty attitude he held no authority. Just a heads up you may want to look into that. I have started using music when dming to help set the atmosphere and add to the mood of certain scenes. They are mostly unintrusive ambient tunes but during combat I have a thumping synth heavy song to bring some more oomph. Recently in a fight one of my players was downed. The moment was tense and after failing his first death saving throw, my player got upset and angrily asked we "turn off this shit". The other players agreed saying an 80s synth soundtrack didn't always fit the fantasy aesthetic. The player managed to get back up after a few rounds, and the session continued as normal. After the fight the players were laughing at how mismatched the vibe was of the player going down to an "annoying and arrogant" song. Judges it is my own music I am playing at the table. I don't know how to proceed from here. Do I tell them in hopes for some honest feedback on my music or do I keep quiet and avoid an awkward conversation. I throw myself before you.

Gabriela Sofia

To our most esteemed judges and the other guy whom I’ve lost track if we’re being nice or mean to, i think his name is Jack or something. I present to you the case of the ghost player. I am a player in a virtual game where we have only 3 players and our one DM. It is a very role play heavy game and we all agreed to this well in advance. We have one player his character is named Krik, he often will just disappear without warning and not respond to anything from either the DM or us. He does have kids so we understand that on occasion he may have to step away but it’s often fora long period of time after which we have to give him a recap of what happened. So we have to stop immediately and tell him all that has happened up to this point. Last game it happened during a super important scene for our other player who was remembering the first full memory he’d had since he lost his memory and the DM stopped to tell him what had happened up to this point. The other player was not happy about it and felt that it broke the immersion. So was i. We eventually just let it go, but it continues to happen and it is so frustrating. So I ask: Should i say something to Krik? Or is he justified for just leaving without warning and coming back asking for a recap even though it’s interrupting the scene? I humbly await your ruling. Whatever the fate may be.

Sam Cherry

To the magnanimous Justices and the lovely lovely Baliff Pat Cassels, I'm here to present the case of the unexpected item. I run a game with my wife and two friends, and in between adventures they visited the town's fantasy Dave & Busters. They played games and won tickets to exchange for magic items. Before the session I was talking it through with my wife and I mentioned that it would be fun to have a magical glowing cube that had some insane ability but cost way more than they could ever earn. During the session as they looked at the prizes my wife asked about the glow cube at the top of the prize wall. The thing is, I hadn't mentioned the cube yet because I hadn't decided what it did. She then tried to jump up and steal the cube. Drenched in DM sweat, I said she needed to do an apposed strength check against the employee in front of her, who grabbed her and she lost. She argues that because she was a thief rogue with "Second-Story Work" she should have been able to jump over the employee instead of doing a check. A lay myself before the court knowing full well I will lose because not only is it a case of a wife razzing her husband dm, but she was also playing a black cat Tabaxi. That being said, who was right here, should she have gotten to use her ability to get the magic cube, or should none of this happened because she broke the sanctity of pre-session spousal secrecy. PS. I love Pat and Amir, great show.

Dylan W

To the much maligned Bailiff Jake, if you happen to see this know that you are appreciated. I have no case today, but sending well wishes and Natural 20's. If the other people are there, tell them "hi" I guess.

BrowndogPiedog

To the wise and just justices and to the Great White Jark, as bailiff, I bring to you the case of the case of the Backstory Reveal PVP. I am the most experienced player in a particularly large D&D game (11 PCs). In session ONE, our party was re-taking an ancient temple and my Goblin Monk, Tripp, was staring into the void down a large pit. Our Aasimar Warlock noticed and attempted to get me to tell her what was up. The DM called for persuasion vs. Wisdom save. I failed and was forced to explain to explain that I was making sure Baphomet wasn’t following me. Another persuasion check, another fail by Tripp and I had to tell her that my father co-opted our goblin horde into a Baphomet cult and that’s how I got my back tattoos and kind of why I left. In a party this large, I didn’t want to slow the game down AT ALL, so I didn’t argue and I didn’t mind revealing the beginning of my arc, but is PVP with persuasion really the way to settle it? Couldn’t the charisma characters easily become main character tyrants to the rest of the party? I humbly await your ruling. P.S. I normally love coming up with voices, but I totally just ripped off Murph’s goblin voice and everyone seems to love it.

Jensen D

To the most unbiased judges and the busy body bailiff, bark. I present the case of the domestic terrorist wizard. A few years ago I was in a homebrew campaign with some close friends. I was playing as a warlock (named Brian 😉) when the party came across a magical merchant who sold items out of his magic filing cabinet, Bruce almighty style. After looking through his wears the wizard asked if he had any “c4 plastic explosives” which I found odd since this was a fairly high fantasy story. To my surprise the DM granted his request and presented the explosives. This wasn’t an issue for a long time until our mission to rescue the king from execution at the capital city. As we were on the cusp of escape the wizard player said “I don’t like the look the kings giving me” then brought out the c4 and set it to blow. With a successful strength check I picked up the king and using my flying speed (granted by a homebrew patron) I flew away. However the blast radius was too big and we were all eviscerated. I was pretty pissed off since this wasn’t the first stunt he’s pulled, but this time it was a TPK. I got up and said “I guess I’ll find something else to do on Thursdays” and left. Later the DM said we would mulligan the whole thing and we continued the campaign for a few more months. The wizard later apologized and even said he embellished on how much power the c4 really had when discussing with the DM prior. We were lvl 5 and it did 20d12 damage. Should the wizard and my DM be rigged to blow for playing with such a powerful item, or should I have taken that 20d12 on the chin and turned the other cheek. P.S. later the wizard used the c4 to blow up the outer wall of the city and killed roughly 200 guards.

Logan Stacey

To the Justices, all invited to my birthday party. And Jorf! (who if you could pick them up after that would be great) I present this Mother Cluckin case. Recently, our freedom loving cleric, and oxen folk barbarian who was obsessed with making sure other animals were treated fairly found a pet merchant in a cold northern town. Upon inspecting the animals, the DM told them that the animals were treated fine, not good but not bad. This of course made the two adamant to free the animals, starting with, you guessed it, a mother cluckin chicken. To understand it a bit more, the cleric casted “Tongues” on the bird. The DM who upon reading the spell gave the old, “are you really casting it?” The cleric insisted and narrated how the spell happens, and the bird continues to cluck normally, to no effect. No one was upset, we moved on with the poultry heist and smuggled the bird out anyways. Judges, as a bystander I couldn’t help but wonder if we should’ve fought MORE. Were we right to give up without a fight? Or should we have fought for our talking chicken more? I await your pristine judgement.

Kyle

To the effervescent judges and the gumby bailiff Jerk, I bring to you the case of the Ferran with too much blood in his eyes to see the cliffs edge. Before I start, I must admit that this is not the first brush I have had with your justice system. I was the offending party of the high profile hot dog case you handled in Boston and even though if I was severely punished I can't deny the case A lawyership I witnessed. Last night I ran my weekly Starfinder game that came to a contentious close. The party is currently running through the Feywild locked thousands of years in the past trying to find a way to return to their modern world. They are racing against the bloodthirsty Captain Cyra, who just crushed the Summer Court under her thumb just as she had crushed one of my players hearts long ago. My party can not stand for this... but not for the reasons you may think. They have not made themselves out to be the heroes of this story. They have cut and run at every chance. When the world needs a group of heroes to rise to the challenge my party can be seen looting the treasuries of those locked in epic combat and running for the hills. Now that someone else has appeared and stolen the clout and riches they so desperately want they need to knock these other pirates down a peg. With the background and a characterization of my friends set... The party stumbled upon the scouting party of this pirate crew in their search for the spring court while scaling a tangle of trees a thousand feet high. They got the drop on the scouts by setting up on a relief among the trees and shooting the scouts out of the sky. This led to a quick and bloody combat that ended with the final scout base jumping off of the cliff for a last minute getaway back to the big bad. In his bloodlust, one of the two remaining players yet to take their turn chose to dive off the cliff after the 1HP scrub. I asked him if he was sure and he described his Ferran (think Wookie) grabbing his Cryo-Glaive with both hands and diving into the air after the scout. I even went so far as to draw a diagram showing that he was about to leap off a cliff and my player confirmed his choice again. My mind was racing with ideas of how my player could find a floatation device strapped to the base jumping baddy but all of that went out the window when he missed his daring attack roll by a wide margin. It was only after I described him falling into the vast expanse of air that he started saying that he "didn't understand that he had jumped off a cliff" and thought "he was only going to fall like 20 feet". I did not relent and that was the cliffhanger (heh) we left off on. Was I too harsh? Does my player deserve to fall hundreds of feet to his death for misreading my admittedly shitty drawing? I have the benefit of this moment being frozen in time so I await your judgement on how severely Charon the Ferran should be punished for his bloodthirsty foray into skydiving. P.S. - The other final player to go just peered over the edge and shot the 1HP grunt as his party member fell into the distance, calling out that "he was a badass" as he disappeared from view.

Thomas Richardson

To the benevolent judges and to the hard working bailiff Jake (when are they going to get you on 8-bit book club?) I bring to you the case of excessive shenanigans. I GM a game with three other players. We're all very good friends, and for some of us our love language is razzing. Two of the players (who we'll call A and B) continue this expression of love into the game with their characters committing to magically enhanced pranks against each other. This includes but is not limited to A dropping things on B while using climb on the ceiling, B placing an immovable bar over A's sleeping head then yelling for them to wake up, and too many uses of invisibility and presti-digitation to mention. The issue is that both players eventually describe their characters getting so fed up with getting punked that they walk away from the party! Eventually to be replaced with a brand new character, who inevitably starts engaging in the prank war and the cycle continues. We've had a total of 5 characters walk away like this. The third player is fine with this, though maybe a little confused, but having the characters switch up so much makes it difficult for me to make any long term incentives for them (though admittedly everyone still seems to be having fun). Judges, I ask that you set a precedent that rules that PCs can not use being butthurt as an excuse to shirk their heroic duties. I look forward to your verdict.

SlimMaculate

Greetings wise honorable justices, and the offensively sexy bailiff. I present the case of the: Eye in Death House. The incident took place in the Death House module. Despite being level 2 characters, our party was making great progress through the house, until we got to the reliquary room in the basement. This room contained 13 fake “relic” items, which our DM had me (a gnome wizard) and the party’s Tiefling Sorcerer make arcana check on each of the worthless items to identify them. One of my Arcana checks ended up being a nat 20 which the DM rewarded by turning one of the junk items into the Eye of Vecna. When my character announced his discovery, the party’s bugbear paladin proceeded to gouge out one of his eyes out with a dagger so that he can put the Eye of Vecna in his head. The party decided to play keep away with the eye from the paladin. This game of keep away lasted for 3 rounds until the party’s goblin rouge got tired of the in-fight and handed over the eye to the paladin. My character (and myself) was upset with the paladin for not talking it over with the rest of the party before doing this. This distrust would last for a couple of sessions until the paladin got annoyed with my character’s complaining and initiated PvP while the party was fighting werewolves. The player who ran the paladin would leave a couple sessions later because the DM would only let him use the x-ray ability of the eye because the paladin was only a level 3 character. So, I ask the justices, who was in the wrong here? Me for not forgiving the paladin for his selfishness? The DM for not allowing the paladin to disintegrate my character during PvP the paladin started? Or the paladin? Or are all three parties at fault? I await your judgement.

ThisIsAnOutrage

To the Immaculate 3 and Their Perpetual Plus 1: I present the case of The Reverse Werewolf Bite. One of my players, a Druid, turned into a giant snake and bit a werewolf. I posed that biting a werewolf could also cause lycanthropy. The Druid staunchly disagreed and said this would only matter if they had a cut in their mouth for blood transference. The party then argued for a long time, getting quite technical as one player is a nurse and another has a PhD in cancer research… I ended up ruling that if they rolled 1-10 on a d100, they did have a cut and would still need to roll the lycanthropy saving throw. Benevolent Justices, was I right to think biting a werewolf could pass the disease, or should I hold my tail between my legs in shame?

Ethan Tabor

To the awe-inspiring, prodigious judges and the buffalo sauce-stained trash napkin of a bailiff whose name is James Hermes. I bring you the case of the Hunter’s Crit. In the second session of the last campaign I DM’d, involving PC’s going through different worlds by an evil deity, the players were put in Snow White. My girlfriend, in her second ever session, but very excited for her PC’s future, was a level 2 bard who had climbed a tree to attack Snow White’s Hunter, a lvl 5 Ranger. I had the Hunter on his turn switch trees, cast Ensnaring Strike, and attack. The bard had taken damage already, so I thought the attack would make her go down, and the 7 dwarves could heal her. However, I crit, told her so, then rolled high on damage, not only downing the bard, but getting her to negative max HP, killing her character outright, no death saves, and pinning her dead body to the tree for all to see with vines made from Ensnaring Strike. She started crying (we are in our early 20s for context), so I said I had a plan, then had the evil deity revive her in the next session, oppa warlock-not-warlock style. I ask you, should I have fudged the damage rolls so that my new player/gf wouldn’t have to mourn the loss of her first character so soon or should I forget it and trust in Dice Christ that “dem players gotta learn”? I still feel bad for this, and my players and girlfriend still razz me about it to this day.

Sharkey Dalty

To the magnanimous justices and Jake-me-boy! I bring to you the case of the bored, under-leveled, mustard loving cleric who was never invited back. When I was in college, I got word of a HUGE DnD group that consisted of about 22 players and 5 DMs. The DMs had all gotten together and created a giant home brewed world that was pre-filed with monsters and magical items. If you wanted to play, you would sign up for one of their sessions and just show up with a random group of people to plunder and adventure. There was only one problem. Everyone in these parties ended up being different levels! It was my first time playing and I was STOKED to play. I begged my friend to let me join, and he added me to the group. Unfortunately, my first session consisted of 5 level 6 PCs and I had to start at level 1. During this particular adventure, the crew ran into a HUGE band of hobgoblins, hobgoblin commanders, and hobgoblin devastators that were WAY too strong to fight. It was a complete blood bath and everyone's PC died. I knew I was under leveled, so my cleric instead sat on top of a hill and "Watched it go down." On my turn in combat, there was nothing I could do being so under-leveled, so I instead rolled to see how good my lunch was and if I had mustard for my sandwich. After this, I asked my friend when the next time I could play would be, considering I wanted to level up and do more, but he became cold and distant and would change the subject every time I brought it up. I realize he might have thought that that I was making fun of the game by "Roliing for lunch," but I just wanted to participate in the roll-play. It made me sad and I stopped playing DnD until I found NADDPOD years later. Justices and Jake-me-boy, had I been unfairly snubbed out of the game, or was I wrong to not participate in their battle and roll-for-mustard instead?

Michelle Cordier

Hello Honorable Justices and the mostly pleasant bailiff Joel, A campaign I’m currently in is in a predicament regarding our college of swords Bard. The bard in question is the one who initially started the group, however she forced another player to be the DM even though he wasn’t interested. After rolling our characters he realized that she cheated on all her stats. (Like 17s and 18s across the board) The DM then confided in me that he planned to kill her character to force her to roll a new one without cheating. The Bard has also been late (over an hour at some points) to every session, and the sessions we hold at her apartment she spends most of the time cooking and preparing snacks and only pops in occasionally to roll an attack. She also refuses to level up her own character and has her best friend who is our fighter do it for her. She also has thrown fits and cried when something bad has happened to her characters, which makes the whole table uncomfortable. I suggested maybe we start a new group chat without her as to not hurt her feelings, but we all feel bad because she is the one who brought the group together. Justices, what should we do about our absent Bard? Should we just give up the campaign we have been trying to work on for almost a year at this point? Should we be dicks and ditch the bard? Or should we just dissolve the entire group and give up?

Noah Kyle

To the magnificent justices and the balif Joop, 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?

frogwithhumanhands

I don't have a case I just want Jake referred to as Jar Jar Binksliff

Emily

Dice Christ Plea: to the delightful and most revered judges of the court and of course their trusty companion Gake, I offer a plea for help. Judges, I have been forsaken. Dice Christ frowns upon me and yet I know not what I have done. In our longstanding campaign, my wonderful DM gifted me a sword from one of our fallen enemies. Unbeknownst to me this sword carried an ability activated by a nat 20 to begin a cycle of exhaustion which worsens each round - wonderful, delightful! However, it took about a year for me to find this out, because judges: I roll so terribly. In the time since that beloved gift was bestowed upon me I have rolled a natural 20 but twice. So as to explain that this is not merely some complaining let me further explain: I am a barbarian, I rage all the time and almost always recklessly attack, which means I am rolling almost every attack with advantage. Despite the odds, I cannot crit. I even took the great weapons master feat to be able to reroll my damage dice after one fateful day where my party had buffed me to hell so I could roll 6 damage dice and I rolled a full set of 1s. To this day, I continue to suck so terribly, despite being the intended tank of the party. Judges, am I doomed? What must I do to restore equilibrium and stop being an obvious affront to Dice Christ? My fate is in your hands, Emily.

anna ryan rose

Hello honored and righteous clergy of Dice Christ, I have a confession. During the pandemic, one of my best friends (at the time) reached out and asked me to join their campaign. This was unbelievably incredibly exciting for me because I’d been watching Dimension 20 for a while and was desperate to play. It was my first campaign, so my dad gave me his dice from when he played. Everything was going great until I rolled initiative for the first time and rolled what I thought was a 19. My character went first in combat everything was great until the next time I rolled the dice and I actually got a 19. I realized for initiative I had gotten a 13 and it just looked like a 19 because of the weird font. I didn’t know what to do. This was the first session of DND I’d ever played so I lied and exclaimed “You’re not going to believe this!! I got another 19!” and turned my laptop so they could see it. I have no idea why I emphasized my lie soo much but it haunts me, I genuinely think about it at least once a day and I haven’t played with that party in 2 years. I am on my knees in the confession box and it’s a weird fit but I really need to emphasize my desperation. I am begging, please bestow upon me forgiveness or a punishment worthy of my horrendous mistake so I can live free of dice related sin.

hannah

To the most holy and just priests of Dice Christ, I must confess to you my most shameful secret. I've been DMing a dark fantasy/horror campaign for a year with a similar feel (different premise) to Eldermourne. In the third session, the party was attacked by two skeletons riding a warhorse skeleton. I thought it was balanced from the CR given in the monster manual, but then I rolled a nat 20 for the warhorse. It would've done enough damage to kill the PC outright. Even though it's a horror campaign, and thematically would've been fine, I didn't want to kill one of the PCs so early into the campaign. So, I didn't honor the 20 and just did enough damage to knock the PC unconscious. I don't regret letting the PC live, but I regret not honoring the nat 20. I keep wondering, did I squander the thematic opportunity I was given? Will Dice Christ ever forgive me?

Prof Bubbles

To the beautiful justices and the mid-tier Jake. I bring the case of the backstory shattering Nat 20. I'm in a game that has been mostly mystery with little bits of combat interspersed. I play a Warforged Butler who is sworn in service to the daughter of my creator in the campaign. I wrote a chunk of this character's backstory but left intentional memory holes that I wrote as my creator having erased for my protection. We've been slowly exploring a conspiracy behind my creator's death as I uncover bits of memory which is super fun. Recently, we stumbled into a group of tinkerer's who we asked for help in restoring my memory they agreed and I rolled the DM's special ***fate*** dice in order to determine how well they did. I got a Nat 20. My DM was sent into a small panic as he began narrating all of the information he had prepared. Conspiracy within conspiracy within conspiracy! It was truly amazing how many levels deep it went. I'm incredibly grateful to how much work the DM put in to making even more backstory for my character than I could have expected. However, by the end of it, it now feels like there is no more to discover and the mystery feels solved now. Am I wrong for wishing that the nat 20 should've revealed less? Or am I just big baby butthead and should work towards fixing the damage from the conspirators? I humbly ask the courts opinion on this trying time as a part of my heart is beginning even to falter in Dice Christ himself.

Lottie

To the all knowing justices and the beautiful baby baliff who knows nothing, I set before you the case- Why does my DM hate me?  We've been part of a campaign for around 6 months now. It is important that I state, for the consideration of justice Murphy, that I am a completely normal Rogue with a normal backstory and limited shenanigans. Our party was exploring a pirate city and heading back to our accommodation for a much needed long rest- being a few HP and spell slots down. When all of a sudden from out of the shadows I was shot by an assassin. Now I tell you justices that this arrow did not just down me. It fully killed me- doing over double my total HP. Revealing this to the party there was shock and horror. Our Paladin asked if they could use their Interception reaction to deflect some of the damage and thus put me on saving throws instead. Our DM (who seemed to be panicking) agreed- implying that maybe he didn't want to just one shot a beloved character but I remark this was merely to lull us into a false sense of security, for once I had been revived (but before I could take a turn to do anything) I was shot and killed once again with even more damage than last time.  I ask you justices - Is this a vindictive DM looking to settle some unbeknownst grudge in game? Did I truly deserve to be murdered twice in one session? Although we continue to remain friends this is repeatedly brought up as a point of contention between us as he insists he was in the right and I just need justice for my twice-murdered character.  Lottie

Kyle Corbett

“Come on man, leave the orphans alone Howdy Bailiff Jacque and a deep reverent fearful “howdy” to the justices. I’m in a campaign that has been running 3 years now. Im a satyr cleric/druid and im living my best life the issue we are facing is a party member. Our warforged bard leans heavily into his backstory as an assassin spy who was posing as the tutor for a noble family and was framed for their brutal murder. He has a mask of many faces and often describes their character as sitting motionless in a chair without blinking, or coercing NPCs to do what he wants under threat immolation. Last night we had planned a 4 hour session trying to find a criminal group in a major city. We know one member is a changeling who SOMETIMES poses as a child. The bard was adamant that they must be posing as one of the orphans narrated to be begging near the market place. At the start of the session they described leaving the party to track a tge orphans, they cornered the children in an alleyway, they then questioned, bribed, and “lightly” threatened the children (our DM/ one of their boyfriends) for an IRL hour and 15 mins. Turns out the orphans knew nothing of the geopolitics, organized crime, assassins guilds, or the feywild/shadowfell war happening on another plane, go figure. He then returned to the party (we ordered, picked up and ate a pizza in the interim) and said in a very Jedi fashion, “these are not the children we are looking for.”JUSTICES I BESEECH the court am I right in asking that we spend no more time interrogating children. (Also the player dm And another player host as a throuple in their home so it’s hard to bring up party issues when the DM and another player are romantically involved.) Also Jake if this post was too long how are you going to complete the animorphs series?!?!?

Jake Andrews

For the eyes of the supreme crit justice, and their special guest Bailiff Jake, I present the case of the Bag of Holding vs. Dispel Magic. My friends and I are playing a Pathfinder 2e campaign. During a recent high-stakes session, we were sneaking through the Great Hall of a castle, beginning a long mission to rescue the captive Empress. Our GM had explained that there were small 10ft. fields of anti magic randomly placed within the castle as to thwart non-detection magic. The issue arose when we failed a perception check to notice one. Our GM described as our Bag of Holding de-activated and all of our strange, illegal, and odd loot exploded out in front of an audience of enemies. It was quite funny, and we were excited for the encounter. The GM also described that half of our potions exploded and spilled everywhere, destroying half of them. This felt extra punishing, so I (a lowly player) looked up the ruling for dispelling magic on a bag of holding, assuming the GM had home brewed the anti magic fields. It turns out all it does is close the dimensional gateway to access the bag, and not cause the extra dimensional space to cease existing. I told the GM this as a hope to barter our potions back as we were starting initiative, and things got immediately awkward. Our GM then ret-conned the last few minutes of session and moved us along, without any of the encounter, causing my fellow players to miss out on a fun story combat. I know I shouldn't have looked up a rule like an Um Actually Alan, but should the GM have kept the encounter without destroying our potions so we could have still had a fun twist? I humbly await your judgement.

Skeletor's Plagiarized Dick

To the forgiving father, son, and holy dice, I must confess my sins in front of church and state, if possible, to the high Crit Justice and the even higher heavenly and bountiful Dice Christ. I'm a thief. My cousin had his bachelor party out in the woods as a 4 night Portage trip in Ontario. I offered to run a short d&d adventure for us as a surprise for my cousin, whom I've been playing d&d with for around 10 years now. With no signal and needing character sheets and notes to be waterproof and compact, there was a lot of prep even beyond creating the adventure and the PCs. To save myself time, I plagiarized Hot Boi Summer, even recreating the PCs as close as I could using the wiki and relistening to the adventure and the short rests over and over. I laminated the character sheets and my notes, and brought everyone a set of dice each and tiny notebooks. We had one extra person, so I did create another PC that me and my partner modeled off of Topper from Outer Banks (yes another plagiarism..). Although we couldn't finish the Adventure, I thought it a good sign from Dice Christ that the groom randomly picked Mavrus as his character without ever listening to the show and only going by PC names. I would argue that I plagiarized out of love for HBS, but still I throw myself humbly at the feet of our Lord Dice Christ, may he forgive me (and allow me to run HBS with more friends in the future), and I suppose the High Crit justices and the lowly (etc) bailiff as well.

Sandro Hodel (Debobbi)

To the celebrated cardinalate of dice Christ and loadbearing George, I bring my confession. It has been second time playing, first time DMing, roughly 10 years ago. I was using a premade campaign and the party has been defending a castle against an attacking army for a day and a night. Shennanigans have been had as they used every resource available to them, including flour based explosions. However the resources had been running low as the second day progressed. Finally the enemy general offered the city a deal. Hand over a relic and we leave you alone. The party monk had different deal in mind. He offered to fuel the General for the castles salvation. A high persuasion check and the monk's bad physical condition convinced the General this would be easy. The dice thought otherwise. The general would not hit even once. Meanwhile the monk was having the time of his life, the man could not stop critting but I was too scared of how much the defeat of this army would change the campaign. Merciful dice christ, I have committed the sin of repeatably padding the HP of my boss encounter and robbing my player of his victory over a foe 6 levels above him. I am begging for your forgiveness. PS: I was wondering if the church offers curse removal because I've been rolling like shit ever since the sin was commited

TheRaiOh

To the eloquent and wonderful Bailiff Jake and the ever merciful judges I bring the case of the Stolen Agency. In my first long running campaign I was playing a Bladesinger Wizard. Everything was going great until before the final dungeon I used detect magic and realized there was a scrying curse on my character from the BBEG. I decided to leave the party even past my DMs "*wink* that's bad" for their own good and my character died. I was initially satisfied as it felt like a noble sacrifice. However, instead of a new character for the final dungeon, I was required to play the nearly featureless rogue follower we had. On top of that, at the end when we recovered the artifact we were trying to keep from the BBEG, she somehow knew exactly where we were anyway. The DM narrated as the characters fled and she got what she wanted with no combat or rolls. Clearly this was to set up for a future campaign as he revealed later. I ask, was my group cheated with our choices not mattering or was our DM right to continue the ending he had planned all along.

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.

FlipppTheShrimp

To the most honorary judges and the wonderful bailiff Jake, I present to you the case of (-). One of my friends with whom I'm in a campaign with insists on only casting spells and cantrips if he has the necessary spell components. He even wanted to fix a broken mirror once but couldn't because the description of Mending says you can only fix one tear at a time and he didn't have the necessary spell components to put all the broken shards back together. Judges, I know everyones play style is different but is my friend taking it a little bit too far? I humbly await your judgement.

Grimma Lynx

To the honorable, excellent supreme crit, and the scandalous baliff Jackson, I bring you the case of the yeti headsman. Im taking a group of players through Rime of the Frostmaiden, a generally dangerous pre-made adventure. While travelling between towns, my party of 5, lvl 2 players rolled poorly on a random encounter table, and encountered a yeti at the edge of a forest. While the rest of the party spent their turns scattering into and hiding amongst or atop trees, our cleric, Rhakis the dragonborn remained out in the open to cast guiding bolt on it. This was after rolling the lowest on initiative, and impatiently asking during the first round of combat if it was his turn yet. When he did the most damage to the yeti and did not run for cover, I decided the beast would focus on him the next round unless another party member did a big hit to get its attention, which no one did. Rhakis failed his save vs the the Yeti's chilling gaze, became paralyzed, and was crit on by the Yeti's claw attack, taking enough damage to die instantly, and I narrated how his head was clawed clean off by the attack. Rhakis was auidibly upset by this, and tersely stated that it was nice playing with us, and left the discord call as I was explaining that we'd be letting him roll a new character for next session. I've reached out to him, but have yet to have a response. Supreme crit, was I right to have the Yeti totally focus on the cleric who stood out in the open after blasting it with magic, or should I have spread the aggression out among the party? I await your judgement, in supplication.

SRH

To the luminous justices and dusty little bailiff Jake, I bring to you the Case of the Bad Introduction. I went to my local game store for “Beginner’s DnD Night,” in order to try and meet some new friends and since as a forever DM, I don’t get many opportunities to play. My table had the DM, me, and three teens, two of whom had never played. The DM explained that this beginner adventure was a “follow-up” to his years-long home game campaign. Justices, this “one-shot for beginners” was anything but. From puzzles about specific dragon breath weapons, to a series of challenges whose only hints were references to a campaign none of the rest of us were in, none of this was designed to showcase how fun the game could be. After a 20-minute straight conversation with himself as “beloved” NPCs from his prior campaign, we finally got to the room with the macguffin and realized that none of us had asked what it was we were looking for. The *DM* called for history checks from the entire group. I rolled a 19, and one of the teens rolled a Nat 20. The DM’s answer was “none of you asked what it was, so you don’t know.” We did not find the macguffin, and saved a random NPC instead. I made sure to let the teens know I enjoyed playing with them, but it was one of the worst sessions I’ve ever been in. Justices: should I tell the game store what happened? This guy seems to be a regular DM at their game nights and now I think I know why his table is always the last to be filled. Or should I mind my business and hope those poor teens fall in love with DnD another way?

Alien butt puppet

To the impeccable justices and the Lil fart balif. I present the case of the OP wife. I dm for my wife in a lvl 11 campaign, she's a fairly new player but still has a bit of experience, she plays a college of eloquence bard, I found out recently that she misunderstood the rules of leveling and if she didn't like a class feat she would swap it out for any other bard class feat. This is bullshit and unfair but I fear her wrath if I try to take it from her, is it fair to let her keep playing a monster?( Ps because I know emily might be on her side I'm Bribing Murph. *slips 10$)*

Evil Anagram

To the most excellent justices and the radical Bailiff Jak, I come to you for your wisdom on a matter involving a pickup game several years ago. I regularly played at a friendly local game store that has since closed, and on the night of the session in question one of the regular players (I'll call her Marian) brought her two teenage sons to join. We were shopping in Waterdeep when one of the sons, whom I shall call Jake, despaired over the price of a magic bow. I jokingly told him he could always steal it, which may have been a mistake. I saw the lights come on, and his demeanor completely changed as he realized how much freedom he had to act in D&D. At that point I spoke up and said, "I have three things to say. First, you are free to take whatever actions you want, but there are consequences. Second, this is a magic shop with powerful items, so security is probably insane. Third, [turning to the DM] I go back to the inn and drink at the tavern." What followed was a catastrophe I feel honored to have witnessed. Jake's brother (let's say Baxter) helped him out, leading to a slew of guards chasing him in the streets for public urination and magical assault. He attempted to escape using a rope trick with the portal as high as possible to get as far away from the guards as he could, forgetting that his movement was not that high, leaving him dangling from the rope as guards shot at him with crossbows. He then lied to them and blamed his mom's character, and all the while Jake was fleeing down an alley like a coward, failing to break down doors by hurling his panther at them, not realizing none of the guards were after him. At one point, Marian asked me if I was going to help since I started all this, and I just said, "Excuse me, but I'm across town in the tavern." I feel no guilt and am delighted this happened, but all three of them have blamed me repeatedly. Justices, I beseech you, am I to blame for setting off this series of events, or does blame lie with that cowardly rascal Jake and Baxter's poor planning?

David Klein

May it please the church. I have a Confession for something that didn't happen at the table. I work at a knife factory and I sharpen customers knives. About a month ago, a customer came in for a sharpening and after he handed me his knife i noticed he had a calf tattoo of a green man. Loudy I exclaimed "Hey man! Your Jim Carrey's Grinch tattoo is awesome!" To which the customer replied "It's the Hulk. I just got it." I then made the new guy give the customer back his knife while I hid in the back. I write to you today, not for the saving of my own soul but for the soul of Brian Murphy who needs to be exorcised of the Grinch for he has been spreading the Grinch gospel. He is a false priest. I REBUKE THE GRINCH IN THE NAME OF DICE CHRIST AND I INVITE MURPH TO DO SO AS WELL WHILE THERE IS STILL TIME TO SAVE HIS SOUL. Thank you.

Chas Pridgen

To the illuminated judges and Jork, Almost a decade ago, I was cast in the world premiere of a D&D inspired theatrical improv experience. We improvised 16 gripping hours of story over the course of two weeks to sold-out houses. We memorized our stat cards, and had a few added rules to streamline and spice up the theatricality of it all. One of those rules was calling headshots. The GM decreed that if we called a headshot, we received a penalty to the attack roll, but if we successfully hit the target and met a damage threshold, it was an insta-kill. By the end of the two-week run, many of the PCs – as well as repeat audience members – were annoyed by the GM’s self-insert NPC taking the limelight and steering the story a bit too hard. So, a PC took matters into his own hands and called a headshot on the GM NPC. He succeeded on the attack roll, and the crowd erupted as he rolled high enough damage to insta-kill the character, uniting the audience against a common foe. However, the GM then immediately started narrating how his character didn’t actually die, through means I seem to have ejected from my memory. Kind judges, were we right to take the GM NPC off the board, with much support from the paying audience, or should we have stuck it out and allowed the GM his moment in the spotlight? I demurely await your judgement.

KyLo Ryn

Great and honorable justices, and to the old newly born bailiff, Jam. I bring you the case of the forever hated characters. I have been playing DnD for about 8 years now, and have absolutely loved it. I even created a world and ran a campaign for some friends. The issue that I bring up before you, is that over the 8 years of playing campaigns and one shots, I have created about 17 characters that have all been hated among all the groups. Again, all 17 of my characters that I've played have been hated, or found really annoying. I create characters I think are great for growing in their story during the campaign, like a outcast royal who gives money away to those that need it, or a scholar father that is trying to understand joy. But they all have a quirk about them, like the royal gave all his money to a hotel to help with repairs instead of buying better equipment, or the scholar touching everyones knees to see if that brought them joy (that one was pretty weird, i will admit). I could go on, but all of them havent been well recieved, and chief among the people that hate and find my characters annoying is my spouse. She found out I was writing this and instantly agreed to what I wrote. So justices, I must ask you. What can I do to make characters that aren't annoying or hated by my groups. Or are my characters just acting for themselves, and the others should just accept them as they are? I will humbly accept any ruling you give. P.S. my wife wanted me to point out that the royals name is BRAD, short for Brillunaver Rafolis Armedeus Durand, French accent.

David Klein

The Grinch is our Judas And Murph, our Judas Priest

Mrscheeseball

May it please the court, I play as a warpriest cleric in a pathfinder campaign with friends that we started about 3 years ago. It is a great way to stay in touch and we generally have a lot of fun! My gripe has to do with how our DM runs combat. An example: recently we fought a purple worm, and the worm mercilessly targeted my cleric to the point where he was down the entire encounter. The DM kept gleefully saying that their strategy was to keep the healer down. I feel like a purple worm would either attack randomly or go after whoever was attacking it, like our fighter who had just done 90 damage on a crit or our wizard who kept lighting it up with fireballs. Instead, every time another player brought my cleric up, the worm would immediately attack him to put him back down. I’d understand the strategy if we were up against an intelligent BBEG, but a purple worm?? This kind of thing has happened in pretty much every encounter for months regardless of the enemy. Also we do have other healers in the party, like our Druid, who usually escape combat unscathed for some reason. Our DM plays a lot of Baldurs Gate 3 and I fear they are applying single-player video game tactics to our collaborative campaign encounters. I have no problem being our party’s main healer, but this targeting thing is getting a little old and honestly isn’t fun. I’d like for my guy to be able to at least cast a cool spell or two sometimes. Also anecdotally our DM will exclaim things like “YEAH! FUCK YOU!” when a player goes down. I think they mean it in good fun but it happens to specifically my cleric so much. Am I wrong for being salty or is our DM using unfair, and dare I say metagamey, tactics?

Ziel R.

To the esteemed justices and eschewed bailiff. I recently joined my first campaign. One of my friends knew that I was interested in playing, and so he suggested I join his campaign. He introduced me to his DM, and the three of us met a few times to discuss the basics of the world and to design my character. It seemed to be going well, but then the day of the first session arrived, I showed up to the session, but my friends didn't. I spoke with my friend after the session, and he was like, "yeah. I don't actually like those guys so I quit." I don't know anyone here. The only times I had spoken to the DM were when my friend, the DM, and I were doing character prep. At no point during this did either of them mention that my friend no longer was playing in the campaign, and neither did the DM mention to the table that I'd be joining until my character was introduced. This campaign has been going on for five years, and the players are all very well tight knit. I've been trying to tough it out and do the old "fake it til you make it" mentality, but they've all got so much history that it's difficult to catch up on all the personal plotlines and interpersonal drama. I've got a bad case of imposter syndrome on a good day. Did my friend do me dirty my dumping me onto his old group? I admit, I feel a little insulted that he was like "I hate these guys, but you'll fit right in."

feoran97

To the Ultimate Supreme Crit Justices and the lowely Bailiff Tina, I bring the case of the one shot catapult. I am a long term player and DM (over 5 years) and I'm playing with a new DM and two new players (I'm a player in this campaign). The DM asks me regularly for advice, as he is new to the game and I have more experience. One of the new players (Banjo the tree frog wizard) was attempting to make ammo for the catapult spell by having the artificer make essentially shrapnel rounds that would burst into 6 projectiles upon impact. The problem was, he was trying to calculate the damage as 3D8 for each piece. This would make the damage 18D8 for a first level spell, and up to 66D8 damage for a 9th level spell. I argued that it would not splinter and split that damage, to which he brought up ballistic rounds for a firearm. I argued that the catapult spell propels something 90 ft in 6 seconds, or about 10 miles per hour, which wouldn't be fast enough to do the same kind of damage. His argument was that I was crushing his creativity and couldn't compete with my damage so was feeling left out in combat (I am a lvl 3 rogue and level 7 gunslinger inspired by deadeye). Am I wrong to get involved and save my new DM from setting a precedent that this was OK, or should I have just stayed out of it and let Banjo have his nuke? I humbly await your almighty wisdom and judgment.

ohmikegraham

To the honourable, incredible and in a word, gorgeous supreme crit justices and the lowly bailiff Jerk, I present the Case of the Shiny Suit. In a campaign I was playing with some friends, our party was invited to a fancy dinner with the local nobles of the city we were in. We decided that we would all go shopping separately for formal clothes and my character (an Elf Warlock) went to a tailor and asked for the nicest suit he could possibly make before the dinner. The tailor said he could make me a gorgeous suit and that it would cost me 15 Gold Pieces. I agreed to the price and then went to pick up the suit the next day. When I arrived our DM described the suit as the most incredible looking suit you could imagine, and when our party’s human Fighter heard this he insisted that he wanted to buy the suit instead and initiated a bidding war. Against my wishes, our DM agreed to it and the price got up to 150 gold pieces (all of the fighters money) when i dropped out and let him have it. After he bought the suit I said “I cast disguise self to make it look like i’m wearing the exact same suit but shinier” which led to a fight that would end the session and eventually end the campaign. Noble justices, was I in the wrong for letting him spend all of his money or should I have wore my shiny suit with pride?

Logjam

To the three unerring justices and the hard- working but lowly bailiff Jake, I present the case of the Disappointing Draw. I play in a biweekly campaign with my boyfriend (the DM) and 3 of our good friends. We came upon a deck of many things, and each drew a few cards. 1 player increased a stat by 2, then promptly had his soul trapped in a gem. The next player drew a card that allowed them to erase any event, and they chose to erase the event of the other playing drawing that card, so he was never trapped in a gem. I drew two cards. One caused an unknown NPC become hostile towards me, and the second would allow me to level up if I handled the next combat alone. I ended up fighting a pretty difficult weretiger, and my level 5 college of swords bard got several crits, used 4 defensive flourishes, got bit and passed a con save to avoid contracting weretiger-ism. I ended the fight with about 10hp, I had used all of my spell slots on shields, healing words, and silvery barbs, and all of my bardic dice. I finished the weretiger off by hitting its exact HP, and my DM narrated that as it died, I hit level 6. Before I could celebrate he said, "everyone was going to level up to 6 after the next combat anyway, so it's not really going to help you for very long." The next day, I asked my boyfriend/DM, if I was going to level up to 7 when everyone else hit 6, and he said no. I was frustrated, and told him that it was frustrating to essentially only gain that boon for 1 life- threatening combat, after I pulled 1 bad card and risked pulling another, such as the one that one that our other party member pulled. Surprisingly, the next time we played, everyone leveled up to 6, and I leveled up to 7. I was a little surprised, but excited because I didn't feel cheated out of the reward for overcoming the luck of the draw, as well as my difficult encounter. However, I cant help but feel a bit guilty, like I pressured him into letting me level up along with them. I ask you justices: Was I correct in advocating for myself? Or was I wrong to plead my case to my DM? Respectfully, Logjam (he/him) PS, if it helps: I've been a weekly listener since early campaign 1. My boyfriend listens to D&D courts along with me, but hasn't listened to main or side campaigns.

Tristan Belzer

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

Dylan Jackson

To the judicious Justices joyfully joined in delivering justice, and also the bold bailiff of the bustling courtroom, Jake. 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. 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 judgment of the court.

Matthew J

To the honorable justices Brian Murphy, Emily Axford, and Caldwell Tanner, and the dapper, dignified, clever, well-built quad god Amir Blumenfeld. I humbly bring before you the Case of the Dhampir Mutineer. A couple years ago, our campaign was on a brief seafaring arc to rescue one of the player characters, who had been abducted. In the meantime, the player whose character had been kidnapped played an Artificer who was secretly a dhampir. One fateful session after a tough combat with some shark monsters who had ambushed us during the night, my Paladin, who had been elected captain by the rest of the party, decided to keep watch at the helm until morning. When I briefly stepped away to get something, I asked the party’s Bard to take the wheel. The Artificer announced that she wanted to go for the wheel instead, prompting an Athletics check between her and the Bard. The Bard won handily, so he narrated how he pushed her away from the helm casually. The Artificer reacted by biting him, revealing her vampire fangs. My Paladin grappled her and tried to get answers before things devolved into full PVP, but instead of answering any questions, she commanded her homunculus servant to shoot me in the back. The party collectively turned on her, and the Bard, convinced that she was a vampire, finished her off while she rolled death saves. I convinced the Cleric to bring her back with a revivify spell so we could get answers (and, out of game, to give the player a second chance with the character). For the next two hours, we begged the Artificer to give any explanation about the vampirism or why we should trust her going forward, while she refused to explain herself, apologize, or even acknowledge any wrongdoing (in and out of character). At some point I pleaded, “Please, give me a reason to save your character!” but to no avail. When our characters stepped off to the side to discuss how to proceed, she tried to break free of the ropes that we had tied her up with. We knocked her out again, and, seeing how she had now proven herself untrustworthy and unwilling to cooperate, we ultimately decided to kill her, with the Bard guiding my character’s reluctant hand for the killing blow. For additional context, this was not the only time that the Artificer player initiated PVP, but it was the only time that it resulted in a character death. Justices, were we wrong to kill our friend’s backup character, or were we justified in executing an unapologetic mutineer? We humbly await your judgment.

Doctor Ransom

To the unfeigned Crit Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the mealy-mouthed cake-slathering bailiff known only as Jnco, I offer the case of Drow John Wick. I was DMing a oneshot online with some close buds that I normally play in a weekly campaign with. They were a party of four high-level heroes being tailed by a crew of drow bounty hunters. Their dice were rolling high and each of them were absolutely whomping all of my baddies, that is until a much higher-powered Drow Mage stepped into battle. He sent his Grandpa-faced yeth-hound after them and one of the players mercilessly butchered it without further hesitation. While one half of the party stayed to fight, the rest of them decided to flee 100’s of feet away from battle. The remaining fighting players got taught a brutal lesson in not killing someone’s dog John Wick style. After the Drow Mage downed the yeth-slaying player with a legendary action, one of the fleeing players inadvertently drops from our voice chat saying the fight was unfair and there’s no hope of winning even though they were four overpowered 14th-level characters, and he chose to leave his allies to die. Who was in the wrong justices? Was I being a big meanie retaliating too hard with legendary actions against my players or was this player just crying yeth-hound tears? I await your forthright judgement.

Brock Hevenor

To the Honourable Justices and the slightly-less-honourable-but-still-pretty-great Bailiff, I present the Case of the Electrum Gift. To preface, this is not a story in need of punishment, but more one in need of an appropriate goof. I've been in the same long-running play group for about a decade now. We started out in 5E D&D, but have since played other games like MASKS, ICON, and the Star Trek RPG system. I've been a player in the major campaigns, but am currently running a side Urban Fantasy campaign set in Vancouver. Through all our campaigns and side missions run by other players, we have had a running joke of searching for, trying to invent, or otherwise pushing Electrum (an alloy of Gold and Silver), since our DM said once in the very beginning of our Premade Intro Module days that he thought it was a stupid addition to the system. It's become a bit of a running gag, and we all get a laugh whenever someone manages to work it in naturally. In the Urban Fantasy game, the players are employees of the Vancouver Natural History Museum as protectors of the line between the Fantastic and the Mundane Worlds. They're currently in a storyline where the Faerie Courts are holding their Winter Festival in the city, and they need to protect the important artifacts needed for the festival from an evil demonic cult that are trying to throw the seasons into chaos. Some of these artifacts are being brought in, others are part of the city that's hosting. I came up with a list of fun landmarks for the players to retrieve, and thought it would be fun to maybe have a piece of art in the museum be one of the items too. Wisdoms of the Court, what is an appropriately sneaky way to make a thing they need to retrieve be electrum so I can lightly troll my friends?

Amanda M

Forgive me Dice Christ for I have sinned. A group I used to play in and now DM for employ a roll called a “hotness check”. We roll a d12, and the number rolled is how hot an NPC is, out of 12. In my campaign my PCs asked to roll a hotness check against their benefactor, who in my head, is a canonically tight and hot grandma. However, we have never employed “canon” hotness, so I rolled and got a 3. I could not accept this, so I rerolled (we were playing on Zoom so my players didn’t know) and got an 11. My players were happy with that and said an 11/12 powerful tight grandma is what they expected, but I am still wracked with guilt at the 3/12 ugly grandma Dice Christ gave me. Please, forgive me.

Meetch

The Case of the Regretted Retcon Hello to the Elite Justices and especially to the "lowly" Baliff Jake. Hide in the shadows a little more my friend, make them think you are lowly and weak until the time is right to strike and take your rightful place. The mechanics aren't the problem I have, as I GM a group playing Cyberpunk Red, the TTRPG that Cyberpunk 2077 is based off of. The situation around the retcon arose when the characters flubbed a job they were on and didn't have the HP to fight goons that were threatening their client, forcing them to hand over the data they stole for the client to the goons. Instead of accepting that they flubbed the job and walking away, they excecuted the client and disguised the scene to make it look like the goons killed him to prevent it getting out that they messed up the job, which would damage their reputation as reliable mercenaries. This was extremely out of character for their PC's, who are justice oriented and kind to innocents. I was shocked. I paused the game a few minutes later to explain the magnitude of their actions and ask if this is truly what they wanted to do. I pointed out that they were acting out of character, and they would most likely be hunted down for this action. I said I was fine if this is the direction they wanted to take and that it's fine if their characters were becoming more dynamic. They conceded that it was a hasty decision, and I offered to retcon it. They took the offer and the attrocity was undone. I'm now uncertain whether this was too kind. Judges, should I have let my players reap what they sowed, or was I right to let them have this mulligan? I hungrily await your decision.

Gilbemesh

Pope Jake and the Crit Cardinals, I have a confession from the future. I recently DM'd for a group of two first time players and two experienced players. This was a murder/myster one-shot to test the waters for a campaign, so background/plot hooks weren't naturally occuring. To help provide context, I had a butler telling the players about important NPCs at the gala they were attending. LITERALLY TWO SENTENCES INTO THIS, one of the new players loudly intterupted to announce that his half-orc barbarian named Omen "grumbles about being bored and goes off to drink beer." We finished the one-shot with some difficulty and confusion because some background info was missing. But when I tried to seed details to help, similar statements of boredom were made. After the session, the interrupting player commented that he thinks he would enjoy D&D more if he were the DM, and that he wants to run a session for the same group with me as a PC. He had never played before this one-shot, he adamantly will not take the recommendation from myself and others to at least listen to D&D podcasts or watch video content but has "read a few modules and has a few adventures rattling around in his head." I fully intend to participate and interrupt any NPC dialogue that goes on for more than two sentences. Please absolve or condemn me as you see fit. PS: The one-shot I ran actually went well, aside from one player laughing so hard that he passed out (something we never saw him do in the years we've known him) and we had to call his wife to check on him when he fell out of the frame on Discord. A couple of the other players and I are just a little put off by the proclamations of boredom.

Allison Talbert

To the illustrious judges and to the cake boy himself, little baby Jake. I bring to you today a case of class based discrimination. I was playing an opossum folk bog witch/sorcerer in a homebrew campaign with a large group of friends. I was the only spell caster in the party, everyone else were pretty powerful homebrew martial classes. Throughout the course of the campaign when all the other players got cool buffs and magical items that related to their back stories I didn’t get anything. When I asked about it, my DM said that I was “way too powerful as is”. Judges, I take issue with that statement as all I was doing was using the spells that he’d already approved. And anytime I tried anything his NPCs would somehow find a way around it. My witch powers were all about talking to spirits and when I was supposed to solve a murder the murdered ghost wouldn’t help in the investigation (even after a 23 persuasion check) because it was “more fun to watch”. Once I got counterspell ALL his NPCs learned counterspell to counterspell me. I started subtle spelling counterspell and suddenly they could all read my mind and knew I was casting it. I banished one of his bigger bosses and then there were another 2 who were just watching the fight from a safe distance. I tried to use planeshift (a spell he’d already approved) and it failed because “if that spell existed everyone would be able to use it”. Some of the other player and I pointed out the inequality to him and we were told that “magic can’t solve everything”. Judges, Cake Boy, I don’t mind a good whomping and I get that magic can’t solve everything, but can’t it at least do what it says it does? I lay myself and drag my DM before you ready to accept your judgement.

Nic Rangel

To the prodigious justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and the lowly baliff Ha Eun. I present the case of the dichotomous team. I am an experienced player who used to play consistently every sunday. I recently attempted to introduce the wonders of DnD to my brother, his wife and my cousin, who all expressed interest in playing. I have run about 3 different 1shots at this point and everyone is starting to develop their own style: here's the rub. My brother and his wife play like it's a video game, examining every feature of a room and trying to solve things where there is nothing. My cousin stays quiet for most of the game, only chipping in when i attempt to engage him in the narrative. However, consistently, halfway through the session he goes murder hobo and will do anything to acheive an objective. In an attempt to maintain pacing, I often make clues and story beats where originally there were none for my brother and his wife. For my cousin, I often have to pull my punches so he doesn't get killed halfway through the session when he runs off to fight way too many enemies. Justices, am i wrong for manipulating the story/enemies so that we can get through a session? (P.S. they have been thankful for every session and state that they have fun)

LyingConfection

Esteemed Crit Justices, I write to you with the case of the over zealous dm and the full party bug annihilation. In a recent DND campaign, our first time DM created a session 0 to explore their entirely home-brewed cyberpunk totalitarian government setting of our campaign. They emphasized it was important to them for the players to create fleshed out characters and worked with us for several weeks for character creation. All was well in the session until we entered a dungeon battle where the DM describe nearly all of our level 1 characters being gruesomely killed and eaten on the first hit by a level 15 giant insects from a homebrew monster guide. The party was collectively shocked and upset about our characters sudden and graphic deaths. When I asked the DM if there was any way for us to have survived the battle, they replied no, that they designed the encounter to kill us instantaneously to anger and motivate the players against the totalitarian government. When I asked the DM if we could play out actual campaign as character seeking vengeance for our session 0 character deaths, the DM said no. The DM went on to say that our character’s deaths wouldn’t be known by any outside parties and would be largely irrelevant to the main campaign. I ask you, humble crit justices, was my DM justified in creating a session 0 TPK to motivate us against the enemy of the campaign, even though our character deaths were unnoticed and inconsequential? I throw myself at the mercy of the court and await your esteemed opinion.

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?

Steven W.

To the resplendent supreme crit justices and the guy who, let's be honest: (if we like Jake) does all the real work around here (if we don't like Jeb) y'all only keep around so we can make cheap jokes about a cheap man. I bring to you the case of the world's most hated NPC. In a premade campaign I was DMing a few years ago, the PCs needed to travel to the 1st layer of the Abyss to broker information with a succubus warlord. The module included information and pictures of the warlord's bodyguards, one of which was a wispling (half gnome/half demon) rouge named Shadowfire. He was described as having a mostly gnomish physique, with sharp facial features, short/spiky hair, and two hand axes at his sides. When the PCs met with the warlord, I described all of her guards and once I got to Shadowfire, I mentioned that he was “pacing back and forth behind the warlord, with his hands resting on his axes” and “he has short and spiky hair, kind of like Bart Simpson.” I got some light razzing from the players for this description, but nothing else was said about him and the session continued. The party successfully bartered for the information and were offered to stay the night as guests. That evening, the warlord sent Shadowfire to deliver a message to the PCs. This is where things turned. As soon as their door was opened, and without saying a single word, the party fighter began to attack Shadowfire and the sorcerer plane-shifted him to their deity's plane, so he could be hunted for sport (think fox hunting, but with demons). The PCs had somehow unanimously decided turn on Shadowfire, despite the fact that he had never spoken a word to them. I was genuinely baffled by their actions, so after the session I asked how they came to their decision. One player said, “I knew he was going to die the moment you described him pacing with his hands on his axes.” Two others said it was when I compared him to Bart Simpson. Regardless, they all claim that their actions were justified. Shadowfire was supposed to backstab the party during a climactic fight, so it worked out that the party just dealt with him before hand, but I ask you: Was I wrong to add a little flare to my demonic NPCs, or are my players just masters at sniffing out a traitorous Bart Simps-- I mean demon?

Dennis J. Dolan

To the unjust and devious Supreme Crit Justices, Assford, Herpy and Twatter and the honestly kinda eh Bailiff Horseshit. I have unique case that I would love to hear your opinion on. (Spoilers for Curse of Strahd) My primary group have, after 2 1/2 long years, FINALLY finished Curse of Strahd. We succeeded in slaying the vampire lord, bringing sunlight and warmth to lands of Barovia for the first time in eons. However, that victory hasn't come without some controversy. For starters, although the campaign had been going on for a few years at this point, we ended up defeating Strahd in combat much earlier than we were supposed to. The book recommends that you defeat Strahd somewhere in Castle Ravenloft at level 10 (Which for us, would've been the castle library). However thanks to some clever planning, some help from various NPCs and a few lucky rolls, we ended up beating him at an abbey at level 7. Of course, this was not the end of Strahd, as we still needed to drive a stake through his heart whilst he was recuperating in his tomb somewhere deep in the heart of Castle Ravenloft So the party rushed over there as quickly as possible. Once there, we explored the castle very briefly and stumbling into a VERY controversial fight with a werewolf (A fight that might topic for another Dungeon Court case in the justice wish to hear it). After that, our DM, also named Jake, spoke frankly and offered us a unique proposition. He said "Hey gang, I'm gonna level with you; Castle Ravenloft is REEEEEEEEAAAAALLY fucking big and I kinda don't want to deal with it. And seeing that you guys have kinda already beaten Strahd, you guys just want to cut to you finding his tomb and killing him?". We all agreed and within minutes, we had slayed Strahd Von Zarovich and brought peace to the land. Although everyone in the party agreed to this ruling, and although the campaign had been running for years at this point, a DM skipping over an entire dungeon to get to the climax of a story feels like unprecedented territory that requires some precedent. So, Justices of the Supreme Crit, what say you?

InfamousJ13

To the honorable Justices and the lowly lowly lowly bailiff, a man who could possibly be or hell he might even be the real grinch himself john, I present the case of the 2nd level womping. I have been playing a long running 1on 1 campaign with my girlfriend for almost the entire 3 years we’ve been dating. In our world most of the people are demi gods my character being Tod my Bardbarian who is essentially a demigod mutt. In the beginning of my campaign, I had three DM PC allies to help, me along my journey the only one that needs to be mentioned here though is Benny a short Rock Gnome with an obsession for books and learning. Throughout the campaign I was given many new allies to help out and Benny fell to the wayside. We ended up doing as 20-year time jump after the events and I ended up playing Tod’s son Izuku with Tod’s whole extended family being background characters. Anyway, to keep it brief we had found out that Benny had stolen the book of knowledge a book that contained all of the knowledge in the universe. This immediately drove him crazy, and he started decimating the astral plane. So, Tod being given a scroll of banishment from the God of Creation herself was given the task of shutting his old friend down. In order for the scroll to work I had to make Benny Stand still for 30 seconds and get the book out of his hands. What was supposed to happen is one (yes one Tod has 4 husbands and a wife) of Tod’s fiancés was supposed to hold Benny down and hit the book out of his hands while Tod prepared the scroll. Resulting in a heartfelt sacrifice scene. However, in slightly cheatey fashion Tod cast Suggestion on Benny and told him to drop the book and stand still. Benny having incredibly high wisdom needed a Nat 1 to fail and that’s what he got. In the end we reversed the spell cast because I felt awful about womping her big bad and destroying the emotional moment. But judges I must ask was I cheated out of my womping or did I make the right choice in conceding for the sake of the story. Ps. We are still playing in the campaign, and we are nearly reaching the end!

Daniel Cook

Dear honorable judges and onerous bailiff Lake Mine is a tale of fruitless investigation. I’m playing a rogue in a mines of Phandelver campaign and have a proficiency in investigation. While searching for an old heirloom in a destroyed village I rolled a perception check on an emptied tavern. Excitedly I announced I hard rolled a natural 20 hoping to find clues about the area if nothing else. My DM looked surprised and apologetically said “I’m sorry I’m going to be honest with you there’s nothing in here”. Incredibly bummed at a wasted natural 20 but not wanting to pressure or seem unappreciative of our DM I took it in stride and moved on. I had nearly forgotten about this when we recently defeated the Aberration in the mines themselves and a fellow player asked to investigate the cave. I asked if I could summon my familiar to help me investigate the area as well. He said “sure! I’ll allow that”. And judges I experienced overwhelming joy and excitement as I rolled 2 nat 20s (one being my paw paw dice) I energetically proclaimed my roll along side the warlock who had rolled an 11. My DM went on to narrate that “it’s actually not that hard to find there’s just a chest at the back of the room”. I was not expecting to find any kind of extra magical items but some neat lore about the environment would have been cool. Judges were my 1/400 chance roll and 3 nat 20s total spent fruitlessly investigating stolen from me?

John L.

To the Earthly representatives of Dice Christ, blessed be His name. Forgive me, for I have sinned. A few months into the pandemic in 2020, a friend offered to run an online game of the Lost Mines of Phandelver with some other long-time friends of ours. He was new to DMing, and a few of the players were new to D&D. Despite those learning curves, we all had a blast, and continued playing fairly regularly until early-2022. Around that time, however, lockdown started easing up. Schedules started becoming more full, and D&D sessions went from once or twice a month to maybe once every few months. Players would forget how to play their characters, or sound distracted during sessions, as if they were doing something else while the focus wasn't on them. This all came to a head in Fall 2022 when, after weeks of back and forth Discord messages and emails trying to schedule the next session, I rage quit the campaign out of frustration and left the Discord server. The DM later told me that he'd been planning a special mid-scenario wrap up session to help end the campaign early, since it seemed like a few players were no longer invested, but that I had ruined the opportunity to end things positively. I have since apologized to the DM multiple times for my behavior, which they have fully accepted. As a recovering Catholic, however, I continue to be wracked with guilt over the whole situation. I feel like I have soured D&D for two new players and ruined a first-time DM's experience running a campaign. Please give me penance so that I may once again bask in the light of Dice Christ.

Brian Whaley

To the Deacons of Dice Christ, and the loyally mediocre Usher Blake. I submit a confession from my early days of DMing. I allowed a ritual sacrifice of a player to happen which promptly ruined and ended our Dnd group. I ran a custom homebrew world of high fantasy for a group of friends. One of them played a Yuan Ti hybrid. After researching Yuan Ti society he decided that it would be within his character to lure, betray, and ritualistically sacrifice a party member to his dark gods. Excited by the early engagement I agreed. He invited another party member to explore a nearby ruin with him that I had placed there for the purpose of his ritual. I left a private session for him and his chosen victim, an elemental monk in the style of Ang from Avatar the last Airbender. The two explored the ruins and found a stone altar and some okay loot. They made camp for the night and went to sleep. The Yuan Ti during his watch rolled a stealth check (high roll) and made an attack roll to cast inflict wounds on the sleeping monk. The monk player argued that given his connection to spirits etc he should get a warning. I narrated a dream sequence and at the end of it allowed him to make a Perception or Insight roll against the Yuan Ti stealth check. He failed and as a first level monk took the full force of inflict wounds. The monk player stood up said "is this why I came here? To die?" And left. It has been nearly 10 years that I have held this guilt. I know now that i should have directed the Yuan Ti player to sacrificing NPCs instead of party members for the sake of fun. I ask humbly that you sentance me to penance that I might atone for my sins and walk in the graceful light of Dice Christ once again. I submit to your righteous Judgment. -Sincerely Brian

Johny Dude-Kay

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

Yuncle Ben

To the Justices and first-time guest bailiff Jake, I present the case of the High Roller. Early in the pandemic, I joined a D&D group on Discord, we were all new players and relative strangers. With that we’re rolling physical dice and announcing our results. Initially, the campaign was going great, lots of laughs and good times. But after a few weeks, our warlock's incredible luck started to feel like pure fantasy. It seemed like every other roll was a natural 20 and his other rolls were almost always a success. I became convinced he was fudging his rolls. Which I felt was ruining my experience. I raised the issue with the DM, who agreed with my conclusion. The DM's solution was to suggest we all roll in an online platform where we could all see the rolls. I agreed, as did another player, but the DM did not enforce it as a policy and the warlock and one other player wished to continue to use their own dice. I still remained annoyed. During one session, I tracked the warlock's rolls and finally verbally challenged him on one of his rolls. The discord room went dead silent before he answered insisting he wasn't cheating. There was noticeable tension for the rest of the session. The mood was soured, and the tension lingered into future sessions. Eventually, I joined another D&D group and left the Discord game. The original group disbanded soon after. So I ask: Am I to blame for the group's abrupt end? Is the warlock guilty for fudging his rolls? Or is the DM at fault for not enforcing rules.

RichPanda

To the very honorable judges and the lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly bailiff jake. I've been DMing for about three years, and this situation has been one of my most challenging. Around sessions 15-20, I introduced a "new player" who was actually a homunculus created by the devils the party was trying to defeat. Around ten sessions later, one of my players, Riggle, had his adopted goblin son, Garbo, claim the Sword of Zariel, transforming him into an archangel. The homunculus didn’t like this and revealed himself by casting Power Word Kill on Garbo, sending Riggle into a revenge-driven arc. After the homunculus fled, Riggle proved worthy of the sword and grew a second set of wings, which doubled his flying speed. The next session, Riggle challenged Zeus out of desperation and managed to roll a 100 on a d100. After successfully persuading Zeus to race instead of fight (thanks to a nat 20), and with his flying speed tripled by his party’s buffs, Riggle won by a hair after Zeus got distracted by a guiding bolt. After the race, Riggle asked Zeus for a lightning bolt, rolling a 36 on a persuasion check. Me absolutely flabbergasted allowed it, giving him a level 9 one-time-use Lightning Bolt. Several sessions later, the party faced the big bads. Riggle used the lightning bolt, and with a perfect lineup of enemies, he wiped out like 60% of their health, leading to an easy victory. To make up for the anticlimax, I had the castle collapse, which ended up killing 2 party members as thry sacrificed themselves for their party. Now, I feel conflicted. Even though the players seemed happy and looked like they had fun, the campaign's ending felt too easy and unsatisfying in my opinion, especially for how long we'd been playing. Am I wrong for being upset about how things wrapped up? What else should I have done? (Also was not aware about legendary actions/resistances at the time) Sorry for how long this is!

Sam

To the extravagant all knowing judges and the sweet baby bailiff Jimothy I bring to you the case of the metagamed magic item. After many years of raving about NADDPOD, I've finally convinced some close friends to start playing DnD and it's been great! In a recent session the DM brought the party to a vendor who offered each member a magic item. The DM said this could be any item we can think of (very OP). The DM gave us 5 seconds to describe an item and if we couldn't made us each roll for a random pre determined item. To save time and continue the adventure 4/5 party members just rolled for an item but I noticed the last party member being on his phone during other people's exchanges, frantically searching and swiping (we don't usually allow phones at the table). Come to his turn he described an item that significantly boosted his wizards casting ability. The DM, suspected some google involvement (I voiced my agreeance) and didn't want to give him the item but bowed to table peer pressure from the others and gave it to him. Immediately after our group was attacked by someone important to my characters backstory and I asked the party if we could question him and not kill him. We all agreed but the wizard rolled well on initiative and because of his item, rolled so much damage that he vaporised the enemy in one turn. Don't get me wrong, it was hilarious, but I ask you, am I right to be a little bag of Salt about the whole situation? Has our one friend metagamed himself a better item than the rest of us? I humbly accept any ruling you dish out. PS. Fine, Justice Murphey, I'll stop hanging out with my friends.

Cristian

To the venerable judges and venereal baby jack, I submit the case of the Hell Pug I recently started a campaign with some coworkers who hadn’t played dnd before and it’s going great. One character found a mini for a hell pug and fell in love, ordering the mini and asking if it was something we could incorporate into the campaign to be a pet for his gnome cleric. He recently found and saved it from a summoning cicle and nursed it back to health, but the problem began when we had our first combat and he placed his hell pug mini right next to his character. I warned that if he wanted his pet to attack in combat that would open it up to being attacked as well, so he opted to have it around for flavor and took the mini off the map. This is the issue, he seemed a bit crestfallen to not have the mini for combat. Do you have any advice on how I handled it or is this the necessary evil for having paw paw style cute pets? I eagerly await your response.

Not.vry.gud.wrtur

to the Beautiful and benevolent Baylif John and the judges who are "obviously" not 3 goblins in a judge's robes, I present to you all the "Case of the Christmas Cookie Campaign Confiscation" (wow that was hard to find a C word for take over), I wrote a one-shot for Christmas this past year, it was a simple spy/infiltration one shot where I wanted the players to break into Santa's workshop and rewrite their names onto Santa's good list and several other's that are paying the group to do so. The campaign started out normally; two of my players decided to play gingerbread men, who realized that the Cookie race were replacing a lot of the elves for their menial and demeaning work, such as cleaning the deer stables, washing the dishes (which I mentioned to them is very dangerous without safety equipment since they are vulnerable to liquids) and other types of work,.Also, I let them know that the Elves felt the cookie races were so abundant they would casually eat their cookie co-workers if they felt the need to do so,... because, well, they are very delicious and made by Mrs. Claus herself; there is a near infinite supply of gingerbread that could produce an army of cookie people. When I tried to direct them back on track to the Good/Naughty list goal, they kept prodding me for more lore and errata about the cookie race. Since then, they have made me rewrite the one shot to a grassroots cookie revolution takeover of Santa's workshop, which is very anti-elf and certainly anti-Christmas. We could not finish the one-shot due to the holidays and the game I was rewriting on the spot due to the cookie insurgents on the team. I love my players' creativity, and I tend to give in to their sandbox ways, but this really derailed me. I want to start up the one-shot again this Christmas but maybe change it to full cookie revolution. But what can I do to possibly stop my players from full-on derailing me creatively? PS. I was seriously thinking that I needed to throw in the Grinch somewhere; I originally planned Rudoplh, Frosty, and Jack Frost to be involved as sleeper agents. PPS, I have never heard or watched the show and I hate it.

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.

Victoria Gum

May it please the most honorable court (even the bailiff), I present the case of the barely sentient PC. In my first and only long campaign, I played a very lawful good monk – the alignment is important because it was the basis of my character’s entire storyline, trying to make up for past evils she was associated with. Another player, Joe’s, character was an extremely overpowered fire-based goblin sorcerer. Joe played him more like a creature than a PC, by which I mean he was intellectually like a toddler, with zero impulse control or feelings of empathy or teamwork. He wound up being more like a terrible pet the party had to forcibly wrangle to keep him from getting us killed in any random interaction with NPCs. It was annoying, but the kicker was that Joe actively refused to participate in any party discussions or planning of actions, because the goblin wasn’t capable/interested in those things. So we would get into a battle or go on a mission, point him at the enemy, and hope for the best. Eventually we got to a huge battle in which an entire civilization’s souls were being imprisoned for use as a power source in a war machine. We were trying to free them but had to be careful not to destroy the crystal holding the souls, or they would be imprisoned in hell forever. We were on the very edge of success when an evil NPC offered the goblin a fish to attack the crystal. Instantly he used his way-overpowered fire magic to one-shot it, dooming an entire civilization. After the session, I discussed with the DM that my character (as previously mentioned, lawful good to a fault, with trauma related to those around her causing harm to others) would never stay in the party with this genocidal goblin. They agreed and asked me to make a new character rather than quit the campaign. I did, and at the next session the DM announced that my monk had gone and left a note explaining why. Joe didn’t seem to care, but the other two players were annoyed with me (the player, not my character) for “abandoning” them as we approached the BBEG, because we all (except the goblin) had a role to play in the final arc. I humbly ask for judgement on two things. First, was Joe “just roleplaying” and therefore justified in his actions, and/or should the DM have intervened before this situation to ask him to play a less terrible character? Second, was I wrong to have my character leave the party, or should I have stuck it out through the final story arc?

Sammo Cando

Dear honorable crit justices and bailiff Jonk. I present to you the case of the evasive scout vs metagaming. We were playing a 3.5 campaign for several years, and my halfling scout with evasive had a colossal DEX stat and accompanying gear, leading to a +20 in Dex saves (verified by the DM, 3.5 is wild y'all). With evasive, it almost always meant that on anything other than a nat 1, I would take no damage from breath weapons etc. We were in a cave where we found 15-20 black dragon wyrmlings, who each have a weak breath weapon. I was tasked to kite them back towards the group, and when I arrived, my scout dove out of the way around the corner. This unfortunately led to ALL of the wyrmlings firing upon our wizard, with enough damage to not only kill him but melt his corpse with the acid. We did eventually use a tooth or something to resurrect him later in the session, but the player was mad at me for not tanking the breath weapons as I was essentially immune to them. I argued that my (notably cowardly) character doesn't have the knowledge of the evasion mechanic, and that you don't have a scout kite to then also just stand there and get blasted. So supreme crits, what say you? Should my scout have used his knowledge of his in game abilities to take 15 acid blasts to the face or after bringing them to the party, dodged out of the way?

Sammo Cando

Dear honorable crit justices and bailiff Jonk. I present to you the case of the Party of Theseus. I was finally DM'ing an in person campaign after Covid and had 5 players, who we will call 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. It was a classic meet in a tavern start, in a western campaign. After the first 2-3 sessions, scheduling issues saw player 1 drop out, but was replaced with a new player, 6. Then a little later, player 2 moved to another state, and two new players joined, call them 7 and 8. Finally, player 3 also moved, and was to be replaced by player 9. The issue with this, was that each replacement player was shoehorned in their character creation as they were filling a void that was left by the departing player's party role. As player 9 was looking to join, I pointed out that we were now going to be 2/3's replacements, and that it probably made more sense to start a new campaign. Unfortunately, player 4 was incensed at this, as he really liked his original character and the original setting, and stated he wouldn't keep playing if we migrated. Ultimately, we made a new campaign where players 5-9 all made new characters and it's going great, but I still wonder about whether or not he had a point, given that he had dutifully stayed as a constant in the campaign as players shifted all around him, only to be outvoted by newcomers. I humbly await your judgement.

Andrew Scott Verdeja

May it pleas the daillif the judges can listen I guess I've been Dming for ten years.and one of my best friends has started playing for the first time. However he has an issue witch angers the others. When ever he has a turn he wants to do 3 to 4 actions at a time. Before I can tell him whether or not he can he rolls for them. I let it slid and made a rule that anyone can do more actions a turn but gain an exsotsion for every additional action. Was I wrong to let the new player control the narrative.

Baron Trousers

To the Celestial Crit Court who rule on high, and the impish bailiff Ache who wallows below, 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?

Daniel B

UPDATE to the case of The Undersold Risk of Death and the fate of Sir Aiden! To the honourable justices and the still equally honourable bailiff. Just last night our group finally reunited with Sir Aiden when we found him hanging from a tree gasping for his last breath. We successfully rescued him however were told by our brother DM that he is suffering from 2 levels of exhaustion, is now blind and deaf and unable to speak. Obviously his 10 mile stroll did not go well. My brother made sure to guilt us for "abandoning him" which resulted in his fate. I would like to clarify and request an amendment to the charges levelled against my brother. My case intended to focus on my brother's poor attempt at retroactively instilling a sense of danger (wreaking of DM sweat) well after he set up Sir Aiden's journey as low risk in his ever maniacal fashion to constantly ramp up the fear in his horror based campaign. P.S. This is all in good fun. We deeply appreciate our older brother as DM and all the work he puts into his home brewed lore, political system, HUNDREDS of named NPCs his and time spent ripping off the Silent Hill and Resident Evil franchises. He is the typical over achiever older sibling who is running an otherwise flawless campaign. So please help me in taking him down a peg in what I'm sure we can all agree is a monumental goof that should keep him up at night. Sincerely the second oldest brother who also DMs and is actually flawless.

Professor Hazard

Begging the court's pardon, I once played a character in Ravenloft who had decided that, having defeated a vampire with his group, thought it prudent to, instead of annihilating the creature, keep it captive - well, part of it. I cut the head off and customized a lantern to put the head in, figuring it might be useful to grill it for information for as long as we could. The DM decided that it was unable to speak without lungs, so I bought a set of bellows from a blacksmith to shove into its trachea. Now, this was a Good-coded character, but at this point the DM implied that this couldn't go on without a shift in alignment. But this was an abjectly evil creature! Does torturing the undead for information qualify as a penalty to Good alignment?

Hobart Malone

Dear Hogs and Hogettes…. And james. I present the case of the Monk of Penectomy. I am a new DM but my homebrew campaign has been going well. However, one of my players is a Monk who cuts the Hog (penis) off every single male opponent the party defeats. It has gotten to the point where they are disappointed if the enemy isn’t a penis wielding being. I ask the church and state if i should put a stop to it or go the other direction and create penectomy mechanics. It has gotten to the point where it’s a burden to describe and be excited about the 50th severed penis. I admit the first time, maybe the second, was funny. Thank you for your time my Hogs. I love you <3 you inspired me to DM

Insufficiently Caffeinated

I humbly seek the opinion of the gallant guardians of jurisprudence and the most noble of bailiffs (who will no doubt appreciate the cake theme of my case). I have been DMing a campaign for my husband and kids, and in a recent adventure, they stumbled into the Feywild, where they were roped into becoming (respectively) a participant and audience members in a taping of the Feywild’s most popular baking show, Is It Cake. My daughter’s character, an elven sorcerer with an interest in pastromancy, competed as a contestant, and because Is It Cake is entertainment, I had her roll performance checks against the other contestants. The members of her party were able to buff her character and give her advantage on rolls by getting the audience on her side. My son and husband argued that I should have had my daughter’s character roll skills checks in baking-related proficiencies, rather than performance. I pointed out that the show was designed to entertain the audience first and foremost, so performance made the most sense. My daughter still ended up winning the contest, and they all ended up winning the ensuing battle (the answer to “Is It Cake?” was “no, a bunch of them are mimics.”) However, I still wonder if I erred in my design. My kids think you all are hilarious, so if you rule in my favor, it will be a huge score for me as a mom. May your cake always be perfectly sweet, and never a mimic lying in wait.

Wings of Silver

To the magnanimous clergy of dice christ, I have a confession. During a campaign of the lost mines of phandelver, I was playing a character I called Lawrence Lerlous Von Einswald, a fancy nobleman butler whom I gave my most insufferable British accent. I wanted him to be uptight and annoying but slowly develop as a better person through the campaign, I had many grand ideas for his character arc. However, I was leaving on holiday towards the end of our campaign and didn't want Lawrence to just become an NPC controlled by the DM. I took an opportunity when I was separated from the party during combat to abandon the party, nearly getting them all killed. I had a reason for this in game, returning to my home town to stop my evil uncle from taking control. I ask forgiveness, was I wrong to care too much about my character? I humbly await the church's decree.

Balnor’s Best Friend - Steve

I have no case, I just wanted to point out that three of the best DMs around sound like a law firm: Mercer, Mulligan, & Murphy Attorneys at RAW

Toblerone. jpg

didn’t fit the alliteration requirement 😔

RomanProphet

To the magnanimous justices of the Supreme Crit and also Bailiff Jimmy. Our group has had an long-term Pathfinder 1e campiaign and my DM, who I can only think to describe as 'shockingly permissive', allowed me play a Cleric of Apsu, the setting's good-aligned dragon deity. Unbeknownst to the rest of the party, my character had originally been born a black dragon, who had been slain by a party of adventurers and then had had the spell 'reincarnation' cast on him by a druid, which relocated his soul into a human body. Now, as part of a larger plot arc, our party was required to attend a dinner gala at a noble's mansion. Everything went fine, until dessert, when the maître d' decided to serve everyone a 'special delicacy': Dragon's Brain. You can probably put the rest together on your own, but long story short, the party ended with my character eating part of his own brain. Many, many sessions later, I finally got the opportunity to have the cool backstory reveal, and it was about as cool as I could hope for. Except that now, it's been a running gag that my character is, technically, a cannibal, to the point that other party members will introduce him as such to NPCs. Obviously it's all in good fun, but I would very much like a ruling on the matter, o' great and wise justices: Is it technically autocannibalism to eat yourself if your soul has transmigrated into another species of being entirely? And does my poor cleric deserve a bit of a break from all the jokes? I eagerly await your judgement.

Balnor’s Best Friend - Steve

Yeah and the bookended “mer” names reads nicely, otherwise Axford, Iyengar, or Cartwright are all options. Maybe they can have their own competing firm

DJ Matty Lil Crits

To the Wife Worm and Wife Guys of the Supreme Crit, and whatever Jill calls Jake to calm him down when he's crying, I present the Neglectful Husband. We were a group of lv 7s fighting a lich and his minions. the DMPC cleric had thrust her sword into the lich's chest to absorb his magic so we would take only half damage to lower the difficulty of the fight. Knowing the lich couldn't remove the sword, my bard cast heat metal on the sword. After 2 rounds of my bullshit, my DM ruled that I'd heated the sword enough to melt it, even though that's not how the spell works. I was fine with it, and took it as a compliment for my spell usage. We won without any permanent deaths thanks to the cleric's revivify and her father, a Duke of Hell, dragging the boss to hell to completely skip the second phase. My actual grievance is that on the way home, the cleric's husband, an ancient silver dragon and my DM's pathfinder character, arrived to guide us home. As we celebrated our victory, the dragon cornered my character demanding I buy his wife a replacement sword, as the sword I melted had been an anniversary present. As a lv 7 bard, I did not have the funds to buy a new legendary class sword. He said don't worry, I can pay it off later. Judges, I do not want to buy him a sword. if he wants his wife to have a sword to defend her, I recommend he be more present in her life. What say you? I humbly await the wisdom of her worm-li-ness and the compassion of the court.

Serpent Prince

And if it pleases the honorable judge Emily, our cleric, Jean Pierre is the last of the seagull population (reflavored kenku) with a ridiculous French accent from the humble island of Florida. (He is our walking tragicomedy character.)

Jessa Jayne

To my friends the judges and… that bailiff I think his name is Joe unless we like him this episode then hi Jake! I bring the court the pink berry, good berry corruption. My husband DMs a homebrew for a few friends and I, we are all actors so the game is fairly loose with attendance do to rehearsals and people being out of town. I’m playing a plucky Druid named Lily Everpetal heavily inspired by the amazing Becca Scott’s character in the Seven. She’s part strawberry shortcake, part cute chaos and a dash of not believing in bird (bc the idea of wild shaping into an animal you don’t believe in cracked me up). My DM husband is pretty lenient and allowed me to flavor my good berry to be adorably prefect cakes and scones Lily learned to make from her grassland moms. It was a core piece of her backstory. Well I was out for a session (I was playing a gender fluid Creon in Medea) and the other healer didn’t show. We had a newer player who asked the DM if they could just find some of that pink berry stuff. Everyone at the table found it hilarious and good berry yogurt was born. They all agreed that the next time I cast good berry it would be frozen yogurt. Which is very funny, but also erasing a piece of my backstory. What say you? Should I request a retcon because I don’t want to produce sticky goo from my fingers or should I try to find a way to use this hilarious word mix up? Whatever you say I will abide by, as you are the law of the land. However she will never believe birds are real, that’s a bridge too far. Xoxo- Jess

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.

NWKB

To the honorable supreme judges and less than alright bailiff, called errmmm..Jack? I present to you the case of the prolific dragonborn liar. We have 4 players in my group and 3 of them are very much enjoying it including myself. We have one player who constantly lies on every dice roll (on their phone with privacy screen and won't use real dice)! They cannot be conversed with or reasoned with if this was brought up, as they're are a partner of a friend and it would blow up. Please help with in game methods or any advice to solve this? They suck out the joy from the game! Or should I just buckle up and confront them about it? Please bestow your judgement upon them or me I guess for letting this go on for too long!

Tony Cappellino

Sounds like a “get new friends” situation 😅

OldStump

Grow your heart by 3 sizes and lift the sleigh (throw his phone in to a wall and say oops)

OldStump

Sounds like you’re being a punk about it.

OldStump

Would you allow them to cut off titties of every female? If not the emasculating is crossing a line.

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.

Fulltime Cleric

This is a little random, but the idea occurred to me, so here goes! If y'all have connections to any of the developers for Baldur's Gate 3, I think it would be really fascinating to hear how they went about deciding how to turn these complicated/convoluted D&D rules into very rigid video game code. There is so much nuance, and so many possible shenanigans with 5e RAW... I would be fascinated to hear what they thought of the process, especially any of them who had played a home game before! It seems like codifying 5e would make someone into a sort of ultimate "dungeon court" rules lawyer...

Hobart Malone

They can cut off all the parts they want lol, however no one has tried to cut off anything other than a penis or a head. I let my players do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t break the game. If they’re having fun I am. It’s more about repeating the same joke over and over again until it loses all humor.

NADDPOD addict

To the esteemed judges and butler Jeff. I bring forth the case of the nerfed Hex spell. My friends and i have had a home game for about 5 years now and I my current character is a warlock multiclass. When creating the character, my DM recommended the Hex spell because it is known to be one of the most popular warlock spells. Fast forward to my first dungeon with this character and I cast the hex spell. The first combat goes by quick (just some fodder enemies), we loot and move on. The next combat starts and I go to assign my Hex to an enemy. My DM stops me, saying that Hex only lasts for one combat. I am surprised, because the language of the spell does not require me to immediately re-assign the spell target, and the duration cast at level 4 (the level it was cast at) is 8 hours. Long story short there is some back and forth to which hex ends up lasting for one combat, and I have not used one of my precious few spell slots on this “staple warlock spell” again since. I ask the honorable court, does hex really only last for one combat? Or have my warlock and the hex spell been done dirty? I await your wise ruling.

OldStump

Then I’d suggest asking him to stop cutting cocks every time. And only aim for rare drops.

OldStump

Just because a creature is evil, does that justify horrid behavior? Torture is an inherently evil act.

OldStump

Let him re summon it like a familiar. Or become his new focus for spell casting.

Space Cat

To the incredibly powerful and fair justices and that guy Jonk that hangs out with them I present to you the case of the indestructible map. I’m in my first ever with mostly other new players and we are few sessions in. We had spent the entire session fighting through a dungeon and found a legendary map that appeared to be crucial to the quest. As we went to leave the dungeon with the map the current main villain arrived saying he would be taking the map and not letting us live as he did before. We assumed there would be a fight but no. A random woman in a toga appeared and cast incendiary cloud on the party knocking down all but my character. We argued that incendiary cloud would destroy the map the villain wanted but were told it didn’t because the DM “said so”. We then rolled for initiative and I went first. I tried to attack the map with a flaming sword to keep it from the hands of the villains but was told the map had watery force field around it so that failed. I then used an ability to strike the water bubble with lightning to damage the map but was told that also failed. I was then power word killed and the map was taken. Our DM seems to have a plan to have us all to return from the dead and continue the quest, but justices am I right to feel our party was unfairly womped? I humbly await your judgement

Craig C.

To the esteemed judges and that guy that just works there. I bring you the case of the fizzled out flee. In our game, we are currently exploring a desert and happened upon an entrance to a tomb. The entrance was flanked by two sphinx statues. The music was on point. The entrance was mysterious. It was epic in its own right and really made us feel like we were playing through the Mummy. Torch in hand, I led the way into the dungeon. We eventually came into a room with a particularly nasty monster. I, a half-orc Vengeance Paladin, used my channel divinity Abjure Enemy and it failed its wisdom save. The next round, my character informed the party that he had an idea and asked if they wanted him to make it flee. They all cheered happily “yes!”. I ran to the opposite side of it and cast Command and said the word “Flee”. Again, it failed its wisdom save! I thought we had him. My intent was to make him flee, down the trapped hall and out of the dungeon entrance. We were all on the edge of our seats and you could hear a pin drop as the DM rolled the monsters wisdom save. Then the cheering when he failed. It was the highlight of the session. Or so we thought. Sadly, the DM informed us that nothing would happen and the spell would not have an effect due to the conflicting speed rules between Abjure Enemy and the Command spell. I was visibly distraught. And there was a collective “FUUUUUUCK” from the table. He did allow me to retcon after I mentioned my character would have known that by level 5 and instead of the word “flee” I sorrowfully used the word “drop” instead and disarmed him. The encounter ended with a slog fest that lasted a few rounds and ended in a not so climactic way. Am I right to be irritated or was my DM justified in fizzling my flee? I humbly await your judgement.

Kevin

To the Cowardly and Mercurial Justices, and the Brave and Steadfast Bailiff Jake (long may he serve). I bring you the case of the Toddler Proxy. I DM for a group of suburban dads. We meet monthly, swap neighborhood news, and slay dragons. It's mostly great. At the first session, one of my players brought a stuffed toy cat, saying his daughter wanted it included in the adventure. Over time, he became fixated on it, even grilling me about my narrative plans for the cat. I suggested he simply make up stories about the cat for his daughter, but he refused, calling it dishonest. His daughter is four and has never participated in our sessions. Eventually, I revealed that the cat was an infernal spy who had been relaying information about the party to the next arc's villain. Having served its purpose, the villain released its hold on the creature, turning it back into a regular cat with no special qualities. I thought I'd settled that issue for good. But now he's brought another toy, saying his daughter wants this one in the campaign too. Am I wrong to want to stop this? I love when players add personal touches, but it feels weird to cater to someone who's not even at the table. Keep in mind, these are my neighbors. I'll be living next to the consequences of your judgement for the next 15 years. Yours, Stumped in Suburbia