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Calling for D&D Court submissions! (Patreon)

Published:
2025-03-07 17:53:51
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Hello adventurers, Bailiff Emily here.

Supreme Crit is getting ready to convene, and we're looking for your most salacious, most provocative, most girlfriend-stealing tabletop disputes!!

Please share a BRIEF description of your disagreement / transgression / scandal, and we will mete out our swiftest justice.

<3,

2 crew

Comments

Gabriel Balog

To the most honorable judges and to the bailiff that went so low that, following PacMan rules, became elevated. 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 about 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't 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 🇧🇷

Mason N.

May it please the Grand Court of Crit and that guy who played 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.

D Cord

To the Honorable Crit Justices and the baby cake boy bailiff I submit the case of the tactical drop horse: In a game with some of my closest friends, I play an aarakocra paladin, please Justice Murphy, resist eye rolling for just a moment. In a recent session, our group stumbled upon a small camp of the invading army in the forest we were in. The group decided to approach as friends, but to have me fly over invisible, and wait at the other side of the camp in case things turned sour, just to draw attention of the enemies in two directions. I doffed my armor and we loaded my plate mail onto the horse we domesticated at the top of the session (I named her Buttermilk.) I flew over and found a place on the opposite side of camp to hide while the rest of the group initiated conversation with the camp. The plan was if things turned south the ranger would send Buttermilk through the camp to me, where I would then grab my armor and don same with the special Don/doff armor I have. When things inevitably heated up, the ranger rolled a 22 animal handling check to send Buttermilk to me. The DM said in no uncertain terms: absolutely not. It ended up being fine, we got through the combat mostly unscathed but I humbly ask the court: should we have been able to use Buttermilk as a tactical horse care pack.

Darkrisky

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

Mason N.

P.S. Not a Court Submission, but could we get Murph's opinion of Cena's heel turn?

Kevin Alman

Honorable justices Axeford, Murph and Tanner, and the bailiff whose name escapes me for the moment. I bring you the case of the confusing cat person. I just took over as DM for my group of friends that have been playing pathfinder for several years now. We decided to have a session zero where we were figuring out who everyone’s characters would be. During this one of my PCs learned about animal races, specifically tabaxi. She was thrilled about this and we all stared to make the characters and talk about how everyone’s characters meet. This is where the confusion started. My PC was talking about how their character got on all fours and approached another PC to pickpocket them while pretending to be a cat. I explained that they don’t look like a normal cat but a cat humanoid. This devolved into a friendly argument eventually split amongst everyone about whether a tabaxi looked like a large cat or a bipedal humanoid cat person. Justices please clear this up for us. Is a tabaxi more like the movie cats or like puss in boots? Also if I allow this do I have to have every npc roll to see if she is a regular cat? I await your fair and just ruling.

Tori the Tungsten Dragoose, Dr. Dog's assistant

"Esteemed" Justices, and my favorite little big wife worm Bailiff Axford: A rogue at my table has genuinely gotten me with a couple of Deez Nuts joke, even turning the one given to me by Shel B during a Council of Elders Q and A back on me. Not your fault, Shel, he's just absurdly quick, and asked if any of the goblins were psychic "mind goblins" with the punchline "Mind goblin Deez nuts" after I asked for clarification. So, I decided to go big, or go home. I came up with a story about how Wallace, the minotaur butler, was repeatedly pressured by his parents, Akalles (like Achilles with an A) and Chakandma, to go into a field more fitting of his immense strength and combat ability. When it came time to tell the story the entire table was rapt. And not once did anyone interject, not even the rogue, which is out of character for him. He seemed particularly enthralled by Wallace's tale, even somewhat moved. I had a moment of hesitation. I considered not delivering the punchline. But twelve words echoed in my mind: Fear of death is nothing but an obstacle for a perfect strike. So I steeled my nerves, and delivered the punchline, "Fondle my test-akalles while you Chakandma cock." The table immediately burst into laughter, everyone except the rogue, who let out a defeated sigh and said, "Wow, you really got me." After the session I asked him if I took it too far. He said he just wasn't expecting it to be a joke, and was genuinely moved. I apologized, and there doesn't seem to be any lingering weirdness between us, or in the group. But I still ask: Did I take it too far?

Boon

The Case of Kevin the Guard who became James Blunt the Bard To the most esteemed and honourable judges Murphy, Tanner and Axford who serve as a constant state of joy and inspiration. Oh hey Jake...didn't see you there....you look.....well. I'm the dm of a party. They picked up a truly random nothing character called Kevin (who is a guard in a town). Flash forward a they are all exchanging secrets around the fire. They asked Kevin if he has any. Kevin has no secrets. Kevin didn't exist 2 hours ago. But I ask for a persuasion check. Nat20. Panicked I say " *dramatic sigh* I'm international pop sensation James Blunt". They now love Kevin. They have knighted Kevin and made him Lord Steward of their Castle and town. My question is can I brutally and in cold blood kill Kevin? Or must I live with him now? (I feel it may be relevant that the party were lvl 2 for 18 real months- so maybe they deserve Kevin?)

Dakota Jahn

May it please the court, My girlfriend and I briefly played in a campaign with a couple of neighbors. The DM was one of the neighbors, a cool goth guy. We played a couple of times over the summer holidays, during which it slowly became less fun. For one, the DM was very focused and didn’t like having to explain himself more than once and one of the other players, another neighbor, had never played before and was having some difficulties. The DM did not like spending time explaining to her how it worked and when we tried to help, he’d continue on without giving her time to understand what was going on. For another, I was playing a cleric and my girlfriend a paladin, and when we asked about what pantheon the world used, he said “I haven’t decided yet.”. I played several sessions without knowing who my god was (I never actually found out). In the end, school got busy and my girlfriend and I weren’t really feeling the campaign. I kept cancelling, but in the end I finally quit, bc canceling several times was more unfair that just ending it, when I knew I wouldn’t have the time or energy. The DM never answered when I wrote him to quit. Now, whenever I see him, I awkwardly hide until he is out of view and it is getting pretty difficult. Justices, have I done wrong here, could I have done something different? I throw myself at your mercy.

Ally

Dice Christ I fear I have strayed into the lands of goof and away from the road of rationality. My crime, my sin, the red in the ledger of my DMing life is called Bodega Simulator. After wrapping our first multi campaign the group I DM for we decided for the next campaign we wanted to play through the character's backstories before they set out on their adventures at level 1 in 5e. To do this we've been using the system kids on bikes. The intention was to see the highs and lows of these characters growing up in a small spooky town together. However due to the fantasy band Copperback needing an opening act, a great roll for a signing bonus after the gig, and a lucky gambling streak at an underground boxing match, the party have pooled all their funds and bought the 'fantasy' bodega across from their school. Everything has become about the bodega. They finish school and go straight to the bodega, they employed their school friends at the bodega, they host gigs at the bodega, if they find out a clue about a monster or mystery they regroup at the bodega. There's even a Excel sheet for the bodega's finances. We've hombrewed more rules for the bodega's mechanics than there are in entirety of kids on bikes. The party now refer to the game as bodega simulator. I fear my desire to follow the fun the party is having with this will negatively affect the characters they had been developing. The necromancer witch, dumpster thief, silver tongued guitarist, and bear knuckle boxer have all taken a wild left turn into bodega owners/employees.

Ally

To the noble justices and the once again improved 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. A situation occured where 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.

James Wilcox

To the trijustice Emilurphwell and the soaring ever so highly highly highly bailiff Drake, I present the case of the Elephant in the Room. I was Dming for a group of friends and my brother, who was playing a Loxodon monk who specialized in passive perception. The party had just discovered an underground town that was home to a cult of Kobolds and the dragon that they worshipped. The party spotted some Kobolds standing guard and decided they were going to try to stealth past. While the Loxodon snuck past, I had him roll stealth and he rolled fairly high, but I had the Kobolds roll contested perception. After I mentioned that the Kobolds rolled higher, he argued that they should use their passive perception. I argued that since they were guards, on an active lookout for things, it no longer would count as passive perception since it’s their job to perceive their surroundings. This spiraled into a big argument and even though I tried to convince him otherwise, the Loxodon ended up switching his character around entirely because “passive perception was useless in this campaign”. This was his first session as this character. Was I being too harsh on the Elephant by making the guards roll perception or was he over reacting by switching his character? I humbly await your judgement.

Bev

Dear esteemed judges and orange cat of a bailiff, Jorts: I wrote on behalf of a friend of mine who does not listen to your podcast. My friend (let's call him K) was in a D&D campaign. The campaign was a dungeon crawler that was 90% combat and 10% roleplay. Every fight the party got into, the DM would introduce a new, ultra-powerful enemy. At the same time, the DM would nudge their girlfriend (a player in the game), and the two of them would share a knowing glance and conspiring smirk. No one other than the DM and their girlfriend would recognize the character, so my friend and the rest of the party simply assumed they were perhaps the girlfriend's original characters, or perhaps they were cameos from another campaign they shared together. When the party fought the boss, they rarely landed a hit, and the DM would say that it was because the enemy would not be affected by any of these attacks. Later, K discovered that the reason that the DM's girlfriend recognized the character was not, in fact, because they were cameos from another campaign. Instead, every single ultra-powerful NPC that the party had been fought was in fact a character from Final Fantasy. K ghosted the campaign shortly after learning the truth about the big bads, but I write in to ask you: should he have simply kept playing and dealt with it or were he (and the rest of the party) wronged by being forced to fight an endless parade of characters from Final Fantasy against their will?

vee

To the honorable justices and the great baliff, may it please the court. I’m a somewhat new dm and I was dming for a group of 6 people, with 3 players who are also dms. Because I’m new (and a woman) people give me advice about rules during the game, which I do appreciate but on this occasion I think it caused a miscarriage of justice. At roughly 3.5 hours into a game, we were finishing up the session with a combat and one of the dm-players asked to jump into the mouth if the large monster that was being used as a mount for another monster. They wanted to use a rod of immovability to stop the monster which I thought was fun. I didn’t have a chance to speak before the other two dm-players started yelling (in a library where we were playing) and debating about the rules before telling me that it should be an opposed acrobatics check. I thought this was fair, because it makes sense to not just hop into a mouth. I used their advice and the player rolled an 11, then the monster rolled an 11, so I said “meets it, beats it” and was about to narrate this cool moment, but the other two dm-players began to talk over me about armor rules and who was doing the opposing. I was overwhelmed by this so I agreed, and the jumpee took an attack against it instead. The monster died within the round, but I feel as though I robbed this player of a cool moment by going with the other peoples reasoning instead of my gut.

pedalinpigeons

Howdy to our holy Dice Christ clergy, baby Jake included. I play a (Murph, brace yourself) pigeon Aarakocra cleric of Ilmater in a The Shattered Obelisk campaign. Pigeons are my favorite and I had been planning to play a character like this for a long time. During the session zero, our DM had no problem with my proposed character and seemed to trust me when I said Rhu was more inclined to walk as pigeons IRL spend a lot of time on the ground pecking around for food. And I can proudly say I have not betrayed that trust as Rhu uses her flight for very short distances like scouting up a cliff face or helping our gnome monk across a crevice in a cave. Before a session I was joking with my sweetheart and other players that pigeons’ eyes despite being on the sides of their heads, like most prey creatures, actually can see in a nearly 360 degrees. This had me thinking that maybe my character could have a boost to her passive perception since sneaking up on pigeons in the wild is damn near impossible. I brought it up to my DM before we got started and he said sure, I can add a +1 to my pigeon aarakocra’s passive perception. And I have to say I do NOT regret that instance of bringing animal facts into DnD for a second. But I ask: Have I, a self-proclaimed Columbidologist, sinned for bringing animal facts into the game to get a +1 to my character’s passive perception? I await any penance you see fit to pass down, I guess. Signed, Burt from Ohio (just kidding, it’s Tobin in Crittsburgh)

Sydney

May it please the judges and the other one, I present the case of the car lake. Recently, four of my five players went on vacation together, using one of their cars. The owner of the car let someone else drive for a while, and she then proceeded to drive the car into a lake with all four of them inside, after missing the first two exits. Everyone is okay and she apologized, but regards the situation is being basically over since there’s nothing else that can be done. The owner of the car does not feel the same way. The two are now extremely mad at each other and refuse to talk about it, and the one other player who didn’t go on vacation just messaged the group chat asking when we’re playing again. Justices, am I wrong if I just let the game die along with the car, or should I be pushing harder for my players to work out this issue in-game? P.S. I was sent a photo of the situation and I have to be honest the lake was pretty far from the road (15+ feet)

Phfylburt

I step into the zone of truth before both the Court and Church to plead for justice and forgiveness alike. My husband and some of his friends decided that they wanted to learn how to play D&D, so he bought all the books and taught himself to DM for them. They were all having fun and he asked me a few times if I wanted to learn so I could join them. He wrote a family campaign for myself and our two young kids (aged 4 and 6) so we could learn together. We played three siblings that traveled with their dad (played by my husband) to go help their mom who was out trying to save the island from a coven of witches. Here is where I appeal to the Church because I committed the worst infraction possible: I broke his confidence. We were in an endurance challenge where we had to survive waves of tree ents while we waited for our mom to meet up with us. My kids refused to attack the trees for fear of getting hurt or losing their weapon (my 4 year old had a Throwing Taco but had to remember to pick it up afterward, and my 6 year old had a giant bunny as her animal companion that she protected at all costs). That left me, a level 3 bard, to face a growing army of trees that had two hits apiece. It was not fun. But we made it through. Afterwards, I told my husband that his combat wasn’t fun because he was balancing his monsters for our total party but it’s really only me fighting, and that he needed to remember to adjust his storytelling for little kids instead of his adult, horror loving friends. Now this is where I appeal to the Justices…. Because this was in 2022. He has yet to play another session with us as a family. He never finished the story even though we were at the very end of our journey. It took me Two and a half YEARS to get him to just TELL us the ending because I still loved the story and wanted to know how it ended. We still play D&D weekly with his friends and I have even DM’ed a few one shots for our kids. Our now 9 and almost 7 year old kids still ask him regularly when we’re going to play D&D again. Please please PLEASE punish my wonderful storytelling DM husband for not playing in our family games anymore. I shall take the decided punishment in his stead for my own sin of too much tough love. Thank you.

Gigi Grilli

Not a court case but can we please hear Murph's thoughts on last weekend's Elimination Chamber?

Yashuntafun

To the Supreme Crit Justices and the even more supreme Bailiff: I come before you today not with a criminal case, but a civil one. I'm in a 5e campaign where I play a tabaxi warlock named Bean who is just a little guy, in service of a tatzelwurm because he batted their treasure off a shelf. We were given a challenge by the DM where there was a room of vases, some real and some illusionary, and we had to choose the real ones to bat off their pedestals. Bean has the warlock invocation "Ghostly Gaze," which states simply that you can "see through solid objects." I had Bean use their Ghostly Gaze and looked at the vases. This sparked a very good-natured, but still unresolved debate. Our DM had to make a call and move on, but we beg for a ruling by the higher authorities. The two sides of the argument are this: -Myself and the DM believed that since illusions are NOT solid objects, that Ghostly Gaze would NOT see through them, allowing Bean to identify the illusionary vases. (The RAW argument). -Other players believed that Ghostly Gaze is not Truesight, so should not reveal the nature of illusions, and that it should also let you see through any obstruction, not just solid ones -- liquids, smoke, and illusions. (The RAI argument). Justices, please give us a ruling so Bean can use their Ghostly Gaze with confidence! P.S. if you have to punish someone, might I suggest punishing the authors of Xanathar's Guide for the vague and confusing supplement.

Barely Competent Roll-Players

To the suave and sexy judges and the large man baby bailiff who is my name twin. Or if its bailiff Emily hi worm lady. I bring forth the case of the wereraven playing NEVERMORE. This was 5 years ago but still bothers me to this day. This was the 2nd pc I ever got to play after dming for 8 years. I was playing a chaotic goblin warlock who worshiped the raven queen in the curse of strad campaign. In a town we met were-ravens that I convinced to turn me into one since we both served the raven queen and it fit the astatic. I was warned the 1st time I turn I might lose control and go into a lawful good rampage. I told the party and we were all good with that. Fast forward to the first full moon a few days later. We are sneaking through castle ravenloft to find key information. I begin to turn in the castle. I roll a save and was blessed with dice Christ's favor with a nat 20! Which the dm ruled I got full control over the transformation! I tell the party this but they tackle me and cram my goblin into a bird cage "just incase". I lost the athletic check as a warlock would. I thought it was funny for the first 15 minutes but it got boring after 30. I asked to be released and they would tell me no I might be lying. Even when they rolled insight to see that I wasn't they wouldn't let me out of the cage cause they found it funny which the dm didn't stop them since this was his first time dmimg and nervous to ruin the fun. It lasted the entire session where they used me like I was an item to cast spells and shook me if I didn't. I didn't get released till the next session when we had left the castle. The worst part we only played a few more games after before the game fell apart because 2 of the 4 players moved away and I never got to be a part of the exploration of the castle the one time we were in it. Was I wronged to be forced into a cage when I succeeded the saves because it was funny? Or was my party/dm right to keep me trapped in the cage cause it was funny... even after only getting to be a player twice in 8 years?

Court Davies

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

BDay

Dearest delectable judges and that guy who sometimes tags along. My husband was DMing his first one shot campaign, a homebrew Christmas special and I was playing as a gnome pirate barbarian named Bo Barsa. A right scallywag. Our party was in a tavern when suddenly Santa's sleigh burst through the window killing my tavern wench friend. Feeling sad about her death, I tried to get a one up on Santa and asked if I could pick his pocket for treats. My husband accepted but following my bad example another newbie player asked if he could and I quote 'kill Santa'. Our DM played it very well, warning us that Santa was much too powerful and admitting Santa was going to give me the key in his pocket for our mission before I stole it. Still to this day, my husband complains that we tried to ruin the game and accuses us of being murder hobos. Was I wrong to steal from a murderous Santa? Is my husband right to still hold a grudge against my bad behavior? I humbly await your wise judgement.

Rissa

To the righteous crit justices and left-eous bailiff Emily, I present to you the case of the forsaken friend. I have been best friends with my twin sister and two others since middle school (about ten years). My twin and one friend are experienced D&D players, having played and DMed in many campaigns over the years, while my other friend and I have only played a few one-shots here and there. For a long time, I was hesitant to play more because I didn’t have a great experience with those one-shots, but I’ve recently figured that DMing might be more my speed. So, despite my lack of experience, I’ve decided to try DMing a game for my friends. The problem is, I only want to DM for two of them. You see, a big reason why I didn’t have a great time with those one-shots is because my one friend (the one who also hasn’t played much D&D) is an awful roleplayer. She’s fine during combat, but her characters are always bitter and sarcastic, constantly teasing and provoking the other PCs, which makes me uncomfortable committing to genuine character moments. It never got to the point of PvP or anything, but it just generally sucked the fun out of roleplay and harshed the vibe terribly. I’ve talked to my twin about it, and she agrees with me, so I don’t think I’m being dramatic, but I also don’t know if that’s grounds to exclude her from my game, especially since I know she’s also been interested in playing more D&D. I'm also hesitant to bring this up to her, since she hasn't been great about taking criticism in the past. Justices, am I right to go behind my best friend’s back and play a game without her, or do I potentially sacrifice the joy of my first attempt DMing and give her another chance? I humbly await your verdict.

Ashen

To the honorable justices and the wise and insightful Bailiff Emily. And I guess also that disgraced justice guy Jork. I present to you the case of the Difficult Druid and the Bleeding Bard. My partner and I have been in a campaign for over four years with four level 9 PCs: a wizard, a monk, a druid, and me, a bard. I should say up top that we are all great friends and there is no bad blood here. Anyway, our dragonborn druid refuses to wild shape, and instead hangs back to use her acid breath or the spell Wind Wall in every situation. ONLY Wind Wall, every time. Of course, the wizard stays out of melee range and the monk moves out of range each turn, leaving me, the bard, as the easy target. To encourage the druid to wild shape, the DM created a home-brew ability for her to wild shape into a young dragon, which the druid has only used once since getting it three years ago. As the only PC up in the mix, I get absolutely rocked. The wizard sometimes takes hits so I don’t have to, and the monk has stopped using evasion. To add insult to injury, we all watched the DND movie together and when the druid in the movie wild shaped, our druid said, “that’s so cool, I wish we had someone in our party who can do that,” to which I responded, “you can turn into a fucking bear.” I prostrate myself before the court and ask if we should get over our tank not tanking or if we should trap our tank in a wild shape a la Tobias from Animorphs. P.S. don’t play, hate the show

Mike

Bringers of Dice Christ’s will, I have committed a terrible sin. I was running a module that used a monster called a nothic. It used a powerful ability on one of my brand new player’s level two rogue, who had a total of 9 hit-points. I rolled 3d10 for the attack and it did 19 damage which, enough to outright kill the rogue. Instead of instantly killing him though, I decided to have him roll all of his death saves at once, but he still got three fails and his character died. A few months later, I was looking through the monster manual and saw that I had misread the nothic’s attack damage as 3d10 when it should have only done 3d6 damage. I plead for forgiveness for it was not my intention to murder my player. PS: The player seems very happy with his new rogue who has a cooler backstory and much better stats than the last one.

emilythecoffeewench

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

Austin

To the splendiferous Judges and the overqualified Baliff Emily! I present the case of the incontestable 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 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?

Mikay

To the delightfully honorable judges and bailiff, I present the case of the Impossible Puzzles: I am a fairly new DM, still getting the hang of making puzzles and fights the correct difficulty. Recently, I had my players rooting around a mansion, looking for an item through puzzles that led to new rooms. My players got stumped on every puzzle. Feeling bad, I gave them huge hints that allowed them to solve them. The hints consisted of things such as taking my Cleric aside, acting as their deity (Jesus) and guiding them to something they needed to investigate. One of my players said they enjoy the hard puzzles, but I feel bad about making borderline unsolvable puzzles and I feel like it made the game less fun. Should I have basically given the answers like I had, or should I have let them struggle even more?

IvyclericHayley

Most Belevolent Judges. Jake. I bring the case of 7 Barrels of Holy Water. I am on the final few sessions of my campaign that I have been running for Almost 2 years. The Party are in the BBEGs, a very large 3 headed Skeleton's, Keep, planning on ambushing him at a ball he's hosting. Instead of using the previous session to gain intel while in The BBEG's Castle. They instead created 7 Barrels of Holy Water by our Cleric using the Real Life Catholic Law that states that any water can be holy if more than 1/2 of it has been blessed by a cleric. Also known as "pope water" Our Druid now intends on turning into an Ape and chucking these barrels "DK style" at my BBEG, doing approximately 1700 D6 of Radiant damage per barrel. I originally allowed this but I these 7 Barrels loom over my like an angel of death and I'm beggining to wonder. Is this how I want my campaign to end, in almost 300 Gallons of Holy Water Wetness? Please Help and Bring Justice on those who deserve it most.

Michael Allison

To the Magnificently Illumined Judges of the Crit, and jarn: I present to you the case of the Cardinal Sin. I recently started playing in a campaign that began with a session zero to establish the map layout, geopolitical landscape, and where our team of spies with their various expertises fit in. Everyone contributed to naming important locations and persons in the world, which led to many side discussions and not everyone saw all the names going into the map. Cut to session 1. We're in the town of Salt Bay, about to disembark in our hired ship, and the plucky captain asks us where we'd like to go. I say North, and the captain responds "What's that?" as the DM points to the compass rose on the map, on which the four cardinal directions have been replaced by the words Eksil, Plogg, Doosner, and Skrep. I laugh and say "Okay we want to go Eksil. Then I want to walk to the scrompton, which is my new name for beach, and take a big breath of Flipps, or air, into my lungs which I'm now calling Fsspss." A couple people chuckled but the DM and another player who I don't know as well got kind of quiet. On session two, we voyaged in the direction the DM insisted was Eksil by PloggEksil. Every time he said these words he had to look them up on the map first, and all the players had to look to see what the hell he meant. We had a fun time, but I think my increasingly exasperated responses to this insufferable worldbuilding caused offense and may have made the session less fun for the player who clearly thought this up. I ask the court: should I have bit my tongue and let the Doosnerly wind blow us Eksil, or am I right to dunk on this wannabe Tolkien?

Help_I_Can’t_Sleep

To the most esteemed judges, some guy named James or John or something, and anyone who will listen, I beg your swift action, for I cannot keep running!! I am a player in a play by post game, and it has been a lot of fun! It’s a horror based game, and started with all of the pcs waking up in an underground room without any clue how we got there. However, the problem began with the start of our most recent encounter….3 weeks ago. We were at the start of a tunnel, and had to run to the other side as it crumbled. We have been running for three weeks. Naturally encounters will be a little slower because we aren’t sitting at a table, but we tend to end up waiting on the DM the most, and turns are little more than dash actions. I am playing a Druid, and the parties primary healer. One of my fellow party members is a bard with 6 hp as we are still level one. He keeps getting knocked unconscious and I have to stop and heal him, meaning we aren’t reaching the end, drawing this out even more. I beg the court to take swift action, my character has only been running for about 30 seconds, but I have been running for 3 weeks. I am out of spells, 100 ft from the end, and unable to dash. Wren The Winded Druid (They/Them)

christopher belisle

To the grand justices of the court, and the weird little wife worm that's in the corner. I bring you the case of the wrongfully poisoned potion. May it please the court, during the course of my parties adventure through a tower that led to the BBEG, we found a vending machine that had potions that did various homebrew effects. Examples being a potion that granted a +2 bonus to AC against plants, a potion that cleared you of all current effects on you, and an improved health potion, 6d6+6, that had a 5% chance to poison you. Specifically, rolling a nat 1. This will be important. During our final battle with said BBEG, I was low health and needed to take a potion to not die. While I was rolling out my hit die, our halfling fighter brought up that since he was lucky, should he be able to reroll the nat 1 on the poisoned health potions since he was lucky? The DM said that that was a little too broken because he would probably never be poisoned so he decided to change the ruling so that you got poisoned on a 2 instead of a 1 as I was rolling the dice to see if i would be poisoned or not. Justices, I could not believe the number that had showed up on that dice. For it was in fact, a shout out to the 2 crew. The DM ruled that I was still indeed poisoned despite having just arbitrarily changed the number so that our halfling could be poisoned. So I ask you, do I have a right to be a little peeved at this ruling?

Andrew Whitford

Dear Supreme Crit Justices and Bailey, I bring to you the case of the polymorph punt. A few years ago, I was in a game where my party was facing off against two frost giants. Our bard cast polymorph on one, turning it into a rat, so that we could focus fire on the other. Once that frost giant was slain, all that was left was this little rat, who had started nipping at the spellcasters that were keeping their distance from the melee. My character was a sorcerer who certainly would not want to be near the giant when it turned back, so when my turn came I did what anyone would do in this situation - I narrate myself punting the rat back towards the melee characters. Instead of the rat soaring away from me, my DM narrates that the rat immediately turned back into a giant as soon as I touched it, and the giant plops down right in front of me. I argued that to kill the rat I would need to have pushed it enough to break its bones, causing it to start flying away prior to it turning back into a giant. My dm wouldn’t budge and kept his giant right next to me. Ultimately I fucked off with misty step and we easily won the battle but I ask you, was my cool move nerfed or was the DM right to keep the giant right where he was? I humbly await your judgement.

Hemlock

To the esteemed judges and bailiff Jorkin' It, I come to you, not with a story from D&D but one from Call of Cthulhu (CoC) where I played a loveable lunk of a meathead, Gurt. Call of Cthulhu is a more gritty, risky system where players have less health and any damage taken is much more serious than in D&D, so I built Gurt to be a walking meat shield capable of dishing hits but most importantly soaking up damage so my party mates could stay on the backline and not be in danger. It was all a grand time... until the last session. We had been attacked by an angel and while Gurt had it grappled, it flew into the air. No matter what happened, Gurt was going to fall dozens of feet to the ground and probably die. So, I asked my DM, my best friend, a man I would consider my brother: "Can I Hidden Lotus this Angel?" (Murph and Caldwell will know what that is). And he shattered every dream Ive ever had, with a no. This was the last session of this campaign and I was going to kill it from the air anyways, so I wanted to go out in style. Instead, I clobbered it like the Kingpin sized meathead I was and I plummeted to the ground with the corpse. Gurt survived surprisingly, but was I wronged for not being able to pile drive this Angel into the concrete?

Jake de Medeiros

Hey justices, hope you’re doing well. I have a style of case that I don’t think you’ve ever discussed. I present the case of the failed vision quest. I’m a DM, and my world has a province I habituated by nomadic centaurs on big hilly plains, who are resisting conquest a neighbouring kingdom of imperialist humans. My party, friends from college, are on a mission to help aid the centaurs in their resistance. Last session, the party had to convince a tribe of centaurs that they were allies. To do this, they had to eat some psychoactive herbs go on a vision quest, then the shaman would decide if they could be trusted. To make this more immersive, I decided to offer my friends some edibles before this session, where I could DM through 1 on 1 morality tests while they were high. They agreed, and the my first two players passed their vision quests (helping a missing child, and rescuing somebody at sea). The third player, my friend Brian, was presented with a vision where he stumbled across an injured traveller on the road and could either help him or take his hold. Brian elected to murder the injured traveller and take his clothes. Upon doing this, he failed his vision quest, and the centaurs were so disgusted by his actions that they elected to execute him. His PC is now permadead and I have to figure out a new path for the party, but he claims he should get a second chance because it was unfair to expect him to make the right choice while under the influence. Justices, I think this might be an actual legal problem, can PC’s suffer consequences for decisions their players make while inebriated?

Mike

To the Honorable Supreme Court Crit and Critees, I'll keep this short and to the Bailiff, grow up. I try my best to roleplay when I play DnD. I'll throw on an accent or a silly voice. I'll have some fun. The issue happened when playing with a group of friends recently. I guess I have a habit of saying "Jesus" whenever I'm surprised. Sometimes, an "oh Jesus" slips out when someone does something embarassing happens or maybe a "oh Jesus fuck" if I'm surprised. The problem the DM had was that Jesus doesn't exist in his game. Not as a religious figure or even as a character name. I try my best to not say it but I feel like it's reflexive. It's getting to the point where the DM has given me disadvantage for saying it. I feel like I need to reiterate, I'm not religious. I don't know why I keep saying it but to the Supreme Court Crit justices, is it fair to punish me for this? Thank you.

Fergus Woods

Hello Justicles and Bufflif Axford I offer my case of the refusing to enter the boss room: I was DMing for the first time a Lost Mines of Phandelver campaign, when the party reached the final boss room that was in a mausoleum room, the doors open, but a weird shimmer across the door. The final boss (a necromancer who had been stealing souls of the enemies they killed) was in past this aura in a pocket plane, so essentially it was a one way ticket until the boss was defeated. All but one of the party, the monk, crossed through, starting the battle. The final member refused to cross the barrier. Panicking, I narrated the doors slowly closing over multiple turns as the rest of the party began to fight. She let them close, staying outside to see if she could hear them. I eventually closed the doors shut locking her out. I eventually got her in by narrating her being able to see their auras and that they were in trouble, then having a mysterious entity (a big spoiler of the mystery as I had no idea else what to do) appear to her and hold the doors open briefly so she could get in. We continued on and had a great end of arc session, with some big reveals and everyone having a fun time. I plead this: I feel like a wimp for not completely locking her out. I beg thee, should I have stuck with my guns and locked her out of the fight completely, or should I have let the spoiler happen how it did?

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/ Lowly lowly lowly bailiff 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.

Jako

To the honorable justices and the bae-lif who would make a great addition to 8-bit book club since he's so into cakes. I bring you the case of the Kenku Baby Bjorn In my first game I DM'd, one of my players (Kenku Ranger) worked graveyard shift and couldn't make every session. Instead of writing her off, we decided she was just resting in a baby Bjorn attached to the local half giant bartender to keep out of danger while we played side quest. One of the other players (human rogue, and her boyfriend) wanted the bow she had picked up last session and since she was away wanted to to pick pocket it. I said no, because she wasn't there and obviously the half giant named Mama Mia wasn't going to allow that. So the rogue argued he should just attack the half giant with advantage since carrying a kenku in a baby Bjorn would give her disadvantage. I retorted with wearing an armed crowing would boost her AC higher thrn he could hit. Judges, was i right that wearing an armored crow would give someone advantage, like hiding behind your tank, or should it have been disadvantage? Please note, this argument led to those two breaking up and our game breaking up. The dragon was never slayed and the village wasn't saved. Also ps, please tell my wife, council of elders member Olivia the enchanting bard hello for me while shes deployed. "Hi dear!"

Joe Pelaia

Dear immaculate justices and bountiful bailiff. I bring to you, The case of the cheesed campaign. My friends and I have been playing for over 8+ years (off and on) and have floated between pathfinder 2 and 5e. One of the players wanted to start DMing (we’ll call him Jafar) so we were playing descent into avernus. Suddenly one of the players (former DM we’ll call him Dom), was paying for Draw Steel (Matt colvilles system) and decided that we’ll play that next week and switch campaigns entirely. There was no group decision, and in fact the new dm (Jafar) and I, have created entirely joke characters to try and force the campaign to end so we can go back to playing a system we actually enjoy For context the draw steel system involves NO d20. Every attack is an auto hit and you only roll for how “effective” your attack is. Are me and my friend wrong for trying to ruin the game with our joke characters, or is this just a case of us needing “to find better friends”. I leave the case in your hands judges

Guy

Dear Bailiff Emily and whoever else decides to show up, I bring you the case of the longish line. My players were trying to get into a club where one of them was banned and suggested sneaking him in through a bag of holding. Seeing as the bag of holding only has enough air for him to breathe for ten minutes before suffocating, I decided to have him roll a d20, where each number he rolled below ten would represent an additional minute that they’d have to wait in line and each number above ten would be a minute less than ten. He rolled a four, so a sixteen minute line. I told him that there was no way he could do sneak in via the bag without suffocating and he said that he should be able to poke his head out of the bag without being noticed. He kind of yelled at me and we were in the library and could have gotten kicked out. They managed to find another way in, but was my player correct that he should have been able to poke his head out of a bag in a crowded line without garnering any suspicion. I kneel before the wisdom of Bailiff Emily.

Noah Kyle

To the divine justices and uh, yeah, that’s it; I present to you a case of taking the mulligan. I have been DMing a sci-fi pathfinder (starfinder) game for my friends for the last 2.5 years, and they are about to perform a prison break for an npc from a player’s backstory. I’ve been hyping up the prison as completely inescapable so they’ve been searching for a way to get someone out. In our last session I revealed the method: they would have to project their souls into the prison and then get the NPC to project her soul out of it. This method was met with many questions. How would they do that? What would become of their equipment when they were souls? What would become of the NPC if they couldn’t bring her body? What was I even talking about? After about twenty minutes of question asking it dawned on me: this plot thread sucked. It just wasn’t as fun as a normal prison break and it didn’t make a lot of sense. After thinking about it for a day I declared to my players that I was taking my campaign’s single mulligan. That prison break idea was ass, so I was retconning it and deciding on something else. My players were pretty nice about it if confused but I feel yucky going back on my story. Justices and no one else, am I a bad person? I’m not doing that plot thread but any punishment will be accepted. Edit: I just noticed the bailiff is Emily so I’m taking another mulligan: to the justices and bailiff Emily who is actually super cool <3

DuckerQuackson

To the esteemed justices of the crit—and, begrudgingly, Jerky— I present the case of Dr. Danger and Mr. Sense I was playing in a one-shot set in the aftermath of a battle we lost in our main campaign, where a ragtag group of new characters was tasked with cleaning up the mess left by our regular heroes. Enter Edgar Mules, my level 3 artificer alchemist/level 2 barbarian tortle. Edgar’s shtick is his spell slots are made into elixirs, and his barbarian rage was reimagined as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-style transformation, turning him from a timid little nerd into a battle-thirsty confident jock. During an intense battle to decide the fate of an entire district in our campaign world, I had Edgar retreat into his shell using Shell Defense. This tortle ability boosted his AC at the cost of mobility and imposing disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws among other things. But as a barbarian, Edgar had Danger Sense, granting advantage on those same Dexterity saving throws against spells effects you can see. Things came to a head when the DMPC lobbed a Fireball into the fray, aiming to turn the tide of the battle—or, in Edgar’s case, roast a tortle as he was also caught in the fray. I was given disadvantage on the save and yet I can't help but wonder: should Edgar have had a fighting chance to dodge his doom with Danger Sense, or was his shell always fated to be his fiery coffin? I leave it to you, honorable justices—and Jerky—to decide if Edgars fate was a tort-ally fair call, or did my dm just crack under the heat.

Big Sack Dragon

Honorable Justices and … We present the case of the session 1 Player Kill. *Both sides presented in this case!* This was 7 years ago, my brother had finally offered to DM for some of my friends and I over Roll 20. Ghosts of Saltmarsh. My friends had never played before but were pretty excited to try. During the encounter one of my friends inspected a corpse that turned out to be infected with rot grubs. They killed instantly and suffered a true death, because apparently that’s how it’s written in the manual. My friend said “I guess that’s it for me then” and left the call. Hasn’t joined back. He’s a bit melodramatic, but Justices, was my brother in the right to merc this kid in one hit on session zero. My brother (DM) is here to provide his side of the story: Brother here. So the friend wasn’t a kid, he’s a grown ass man. And he didn’t even make that character himself. I did. So I thought he’d be interested in making another character even if that one died. He went a little rogue on that one and there were a lot of bad rolls that ended up with him being “infested with rot grub and ending his turn with 0 hit points” that means he dies. Maybe I could have been softer but I didn’t really get a chance because he just left. This particular event has come up more than once over the years. We humbly await your decision, justices.

SemiHuman99

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

Fish Harlan

I have a Dice Christ confession to make. Years ago, I was in a high-level D&D Campaign, playing a level 20 Artificer. Our DM was very strict about Crits, only allowing certain damage types to be doubled. For example, he wouldn't let a rogue's sneak attack to be doubled or a Ranger's Hunter's Mark. To take something back for myself, I cheated on one of my infusions, infusing my magic armor and shield with an additional +3 AC through the use of infusions. However, artificers cannot infuse magical items. I know it is a sin, but in my defense, the character already had a 25 AC without the infusions, so it's not like it made that much of a difference. Plus, as I said, he limited our damage output. To me, it was leveling the playing field, but I know now that it was wrong. I ask for forgiveness.

Faye Core

To the most holy church of dice christ, i have sinned. I ran a game for my parents and sister and ignored the nat 20 i rolled as a bad guy to give my mother a cool moment next turn. I have sinned

Panad

Dear babies and Jam. May it please the court. In our fairly new campaign, during travel between two cities, the DM "gifted" us all the chance to pull from a bag of pun-wands. Without telling us there was anything special about them. Upon the last person receiving their "wand of warmage", they immediately said they pointed it at the griffin familiar of another player. Our DM misheard, and thought the player said "I cast", rather than "I point". The wand of "warm age" immediately ages the griffin 3 years and passed out. From the griffin's perspective, they waited 3 full years inside a nicely warm force field. The other player, being furious about their familiar being mentally tortured immediately used their new "wand of disarming" on the first player. Tensions were high as we now had two players whose characters are forced to be at odds after what happened. The DM ended up sitting down with both of them and retconning the event, so the wand was in fact only pointed at the griffin before being stopped. Babies, should we have stuck to what happened in the heat of the moment? Or are we fine to have changed the story to allow the characters to coexist? P.S. Even after the retcon, I still used my "wand of find Steve" to find Steve.

ZZ Digital

In my campaign they needed to steal a planeshift gem from the villains. One player accidentally activated one, and landing in Hell, began to rescue a bunch of NPCs. The other players, still going for a gem, meet the boss, who states they are evil, but will offer them a gem and tells them a specific way to use it. The players rush through this conversation, because one of the NPCs being rescued is important to them and they want to be at that scene. They use the gem, and are trapped and miss the scene entirely. Was my mistake expecting them to not take an admitted villain's deal at face value? Or something else?

Big Papa

THE CASE OF THR BITTER “EX” DM To the honorable Crit Justices and the even more honorable Balififf wife worm emily, I am dealing withy the fact that my DM has feelings for me (you all probably can’t relate especially murphy or emily). I offered to teach my friend how to dm because i am a forever dm who is dying to play. When we started out he was very excited to take my advice and even suggested we start meeting up to discuss his plans for the campaign, however during our last meeting he confessed to having a crush on me for a long time and saying he felt that i had feelings too, unfortunately for him i am a huge lesbian, After i broke the news to him i was all of sudden no longer needed for advice and my character started to get asked to roll for things as simple as walking and been given higher dcs than other players because my character “was being targeted by bbeg for reasons he couldn’t tell me yet”. ive also been the only one who gets attacked during combat unless i’m out of range or the other players start shielding me with their bodies. My final straw with this whole thing was the fact that he keeps creating npcs that flirt with my pc and when i reject them he has me roll for initiative.. I love the group i’m playing with but i’m starting to wonder if maybe ive messed up the table by leading my dm on with what i thought was the start of a friendship or if my dm is going on some crazy power trip that was caused by me :(

Ellie

most honorable judges and baby J, I would like to bring not a case but a legal consultancy. I have recently joined a dating app and have sort of unconsciously been matching with a lot of other dnd players. Some of them had it on their profile, some of them revealed it later - I think I have a sixth sense for this. One of them says his favourite class is paladin, another prefers playing rogues. I have come to beg the question. Would it be against the DnD law to try and organise a session with my Hinge matches? I haven’t played in a while and I’m looking for chaos although I’m secretly hoping we’ll all enjoy it so much it becomes a campaign. And what are the ethics on asking one of them to DM because I prefer to play?

DJ Matty Lil Crits

To the Wife Worm and Wife Guys of the Supreme Crit, and whatever Jill calls Baby DM 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.

Jay S

Honorable Justices, boy do i have some drama for you. I present the case of the secret psychopath. I've been playing in an online campaign for nearly two years now. Everyone is great. I even started a business with one of my party members IRL, we all get along amazingly. At the start of january, I got a notification that the player I started a business with was removed from the game. All of us got in a call and learned that, to put it lightly, he is a serial manipulator, liar, and overall just a psychopath. It suddenly made sense why I felt like he made so much of the campaign about him, as apparently he bragged about his pc being the main character to his friend before she joined our campaign. ON TOP OF ALL THIS, our DM said that he was keeping track of his rolls for a few sessions now, and this paladin fuck had a 30% nat 20 rate. Somehow, this felt the most petty out of everything. My question is this. Humble Justices (oh and Jake too!), what ritual can we perform to appease Dice Christ? We want to make sure he knows everyone in our campaign honors their rolls now that this evil has been purged. PS: He also claimed that he was the best at dramatic storytelling, meanwhile all he did to act serious was lower his voice a bit and talk slower while everyone else at the table could act circles around him, now I've worked on my character's accent and affectations even to further dunk on his ass.

Noah Kyle

I just noticed the bailiff is Emily so I’m taking another mulligan: to the justices and bailiff Emily who is actually super cool <3

ZoeyHorse (Afterdark)

To Twilight Sparkle Murph, Trixie Caldwell, Starlight Glimmer Emily and annoying dragon baby Spike Jake, I bring you the case of the time that friendship was not magic. I was DMing for my little pony themed d&d, where all the actual main characters had been frozen in time in the middle of Canterlot meaning the day night cycle was not properly functioning. The gang had the knowledge of how to fix this mess by traveling to hidden vaults around Equestria to gain powerful crystals that could solve the issue (filled with antient unicorn technology, breath of the wild style) Quite early on, one of the players (who is very into her roleplaying) let me know that her character, an earth pony fighter named Splinter, probably wouldn't actually want to stay with the party and instead go back to look after her family. She had initially been traveling with the party as hired protection, but had decided to stay since they were traveling towards where her family stayed anyway. This was fine with me, as it meant I had a chance to accommodate her request and add extra motivations for her character, and meant that she could still be having fun too. I then planned to have her family be kidnapped by the Changeling Queen Chrysalis. However, just before the part of the session where this new motivation was going to be added in, a different player character, a Pegasi storm sorcerer named Thundersnow, told the fighter pony that she was fired, due to an altercation they had the previous session. The player for the pegasus hadn't told me about her plan. The fighter pony said "ok" and left to go see her family. This blindsided me completely, and I was left to frantically redo my entire session plan and ended up finishing early, saying that I needed time to work out how to get the gang back together. I have yet to find a soloution since the two characters do not like each other at all. I've never encountered a situation like this before where characters actively don't want to be on the adventure. My Little Judges, should I have warned the other players that Splinter was already close to leaving so they knew not to do anything drastic without warning me first? Lots of love xoxoxo P.S Lou Wilson would be Applejack

Alex Mirabal

To the resplendent justices and even resplendenter bailiff, I present the case of the bummer boy. I am playing in a Curse of Strahd campaign with 5 other players and of course our DM. The campaign so far has been very story driven and is filled with PC drama that we as players will actually talk through outside of the game to ensure no one is feeling left out or hurt IRL. It’s been great so far, but every time we end a session when everyone is talking about how excited they are, our Goliath ranger player apologizes for being boring or uninvolved. He even sometimes threatens to leave the party. Here’s the thing: his character is not boring nor is he uninvolved. In fact he sometimes gets so involved that he takes over scenes. One time he even picked up my cleric while she was trying to talk to important NPC and pulled her outside, causing the rest of the party to make an important decision without them. I’ve tried to talk to him about it, but it’s very awkward because the DM is his girlfriend. I don’t want him to leave the party, but I’m afraid if I’m too real with him, he will leave anyway. How do I lift his confidence and save the party from awkward confrontations?

ZoeyHorse (Afterdark)

dunjun dunjun dunjun dunjun mmm dundundunjun dunjundjunndjunnnnn jennn courtttt

Max Bailey

To the big beautiful justices of the crit, i pose the question, are the enemies allowed to play as strategically as the players? During a combat involving the corrupt city guard tracking the party through a forest using a tracking drake, the fighter decided to distance himself from the rest of the party and, at the end of his turn, asked if he could make a check to goad the guard into attacking him. I had him roll an intimidation check, which he rolled well on (~late teens). I ruled that the guards, realising he wanted them to attack him, would go for the rest of the party, while the much less smart drake would fall for the taunt, meaning on its next turn it used its AOE fire breath attack against just him instead of the rest of the party. The fighter argued that because his roll was high, the guards should have fallen for it as well or at least been unaffected. Lovely justices of the crit, should I have had the guards fall for his ruse? I await your judgement. Oh, also, to the bailiff as well. I forgot to put that at the start sorry

AbsolutelyWill

Dear judges especially Murph and bailiff jake. I bring more of a question. IS IT WIERD TO ENJOY D&D PODCASTS WITHOUT ACTUALLY ENJOYING PLAYING D&D ITSELF I listen to many different pods and love hearing the story’s and journeys people go on but the few times I played it was just wasn’t for me. Am I wrong in my way of thinking. Have I just not found a story I really jelled with. Only you judges could shine light on this.

JC

To the most auspicious judges and suspicious bailiff, I bring to you the case of Kanan, the unoptimized and uninterested Minecrafting monk. My friends and I were playing in a superhero campaign in which nearly every single person had a super power, some simple, some strange (a la My Hero.) One of our friends got excited about playing someone who could control fire, so he built a sun soul monk, but it sucked. Just objectively so. He allocated all of his stats to Charisma and Constitution. The most astitute will notice these are not the primary, nor secondary stats of a monk. We tried to tell him this be he refused to change it. He would then proceed to complain about his character not hitting or doing damage and lose interest, even sometimes getting on Minecraft (he was using a laptop for a sheet.) He would even disrupt other players who were engaged by trying to get them to look at what he was doing. The DM knew this, but frankly was already overworked with dealing with 5 other very chaotic (but at least engaged) players, so just let it happen. Justices, should this player have reconsidered their actions, or should I as a player, seeing the DM struggling and overwhelmed, talked to this other player. (PS before Murph suggests it, we are no longer friends with this person and although this was not the main reason it sure contributed)

Shel B Kennas fav SG is welly’s number one felly

Hello Carnal Court Justices and Bailiff Dake Murrwitz/Dmily Maxford (depending on who bailiffs). I salaciously bring to you part confession, part case: Looking a gifted metal dice christ in the mouth. During secret santa last year, I was gifted a GORGEOUS set of dice. They're so lovely and detailed and.... metal. (Justice Axford knows what I mean). I Hate Metal dice, they feel ugly and wrong in my hands, and with how I roll my dice it would be akin to beyblading and it's frankly a safety risk. I planned to keep them in my office as decor. Cut to my works D&D group i play in, and i noticed one of my fellow players looking excitedly at my dice I brought and then looking a little bummed. At one point they also mentioned "Everyone should have their character coded dice... well almost, everyone" and looked away from me. I realized in this moment my dice were character color references. Shit. I brought them the next time for set dressing, but my fellow player REALLY wanted us all to roll our character dice in crucial moments, and another coworker mentioned "He did buy those specificially for you." It's been causing tension at the table to the point I'm hearing heavy sighs every time I reach for my preferred dice; the most recent occurrance I snapped back asking if he was bored and he blushed before falling quiet and staying that way the rest of the session. The DM asked me to start using them "occasionally" because coworker has a crush on someone who doesnt reciprocate and he's having a hard time with it (and the implication was pretty heavy that the crush is on me...) But... at risk of sound rude, I don't want to. Again, I hate metal dice (they're REALLY heavy and dented my dice box the 1 time i rolled this set). But it’s apparent there’s pressure to just (pardon the pun) roll with it. Am I besmirching a gift in the eyes of Dice Christ and being rude by not wanting to roll them? Or am I being forcibly converted to the metal chapter of the religion against my will? My phone has zero bars

PlantGang

To the maestro of music herself Emily Axeford, and those other people who sit alongside her, I bring to you the case of the musical intolerance. I am a long time DM who teaches music at a major university, as well as being a masters student in saxophone. All this to say, music means a lot to my campaigns. I will spend hours meticulously planning scenes to the pacing of music, curate unique fights with specially selected music, have character themes/location themes/P.C themed accordingly. Most importantly I never use a song again once it’s been used. Towards the climax of my party’s fourth campaign (my third time dming), there was a tragic fight as two pcs who were not blood brothers fought one another to end a curséd line. At this point, while playing the music I’d been sitting on for years one of the players went “wow… this music is just too sad. I don’t like this music can we change it?” I respected him, changing to something else to which the same player said “really? I thought it was all new music? You’ve played this one before.” This player continues to razz for me this every time I mention that I’ve selected new music for a campaign/scene. Am I wrong for feeling slighted by this player? Or is this player rightful in his razzing of my musical repetition and emotional music? I await judgement. From a bari saxy man P.S the song was Max Ricther’s on the nature of daylight.

margot d

For the Judges consideration, My DM decided to make a new campaign with a homebrew setting recently, with the party being made up 3 people. Two of us are longtime friends who know the dm well and have played in several of his games. We have another player who has played with me and the DM before but is newer to the group as well joining in. I’m very excited about the campaign but in my DM’s new home brew setting, they have created a few mythical heroes who seem to suspiciously line up in name scheme and interests to myself, our longtime friend, and the DM themselves. This would be super fun and sweet but they didn’t make a mythical hero for our newest player. Am I wrong for feeling off put that they did not include this new player in their extensive lore? I don’t know how to approach the DM about it without feeling like I sound ungrateful for the beautiful world they’re putting so much passion into. Please help!!!

Bugbear OrMiss

To the illustrious and benevolent justices, the bailiff we deserve, and also Murph who I have a personal vendetta against, I present the case of the Eternal Surprise Rounds: I was playing in a campaign where the DM suddenly added a new homebrew rule in our third encounter. Now, all our enemies would be able to take a full turn before we did as "they are prepared to fight and react before we can", and, coincidentally, they would always target and down my Bugbear Gloomstalker PC first, no matter what. Whenever I pointed out this was just a surprise round for them, he would become despondent for awhile before continuing doing it anyways. This came to a head after we all rolled 30+ stealth using Pass Without Trace just for the Yeti we were sneaking past to see us anyways because one of us accidently placed their token on the map in the wrong place. Prithee, was this normal? Or was this a wack rule?

Justin Rankin

To the transcendent judges, and the even-more-so transcendent bailiff Axford, (ignore if its Bailiff Intern Jorf), I bring to you the case of the Spelljammer Talking Cookie. I am starting a new Spelljammer campaign soon, and my lovely girlfriend has decided to join the game knowing that I love DnD so much. I am ecstatic, and the setting is Spelljammer - if you don’t already know, it’s very Treasure Planet-esque with all sorts of wacky character concepts. Suggestions straight from the book even include things like characters with a goldfish bowl for a head. Knowing this, she came to me and wants to play as a talking cookie - not a cookie person, which I maybe could work with, but a normal cookie that can speak telepathically. When I ask her how she plans on participating in combat, she told me “why are you shooting down my creative ideas”? (I clarify this is all in good fun) I want to work with her on this, but don’t know if this is even pushing the wackiness boundary of Spelljammer. Judges, should I be heading to the homebrew section of DnDBeyond and filtering by the phrase “baked goods”? Or should I hold firm in thinking even this is a little much for the setting?

morwinire

To the opulent justices and the opalescent bailiff, I bring the case of the Perpetually Hooded Half-Elf! I once played in a campaign centered around a war between humans and elves. During character creation, another player told us he decided to play a half-elf rogue. Later, about 5 sessions in, my character referred to his character as a half elf, but the player insisted that his rogue had kept his hood up the whole time, so we wouldn’t know his race. I said this was ridiculous, as several days and at least one long rest had transpired. His hood would have had to come off, or my character would have been way more suspicious of him! Am I right to have spoken in-character about his character’s race, or does the rogue have a right to keep his secrets?

Luke McCauley

To the judges with freaking laser beams attached to their heads and the ill-tempered sea bass Bailiff Emily. I have been a player in a campaign with my friends for nearly 5 years (praise be) and we are nearly to our final arc. We are planning a sequel campaign DM’d by me set around 100 years after the events of the current adventure and all of the current players plan on returning (praise be again). A few days ago, my wife (praise be) asked if she could join the sequel campaign and I hesitated to say yes (cursed be). My wife and I have played in other campaigns together before and it was obvious my hesitation to say yes to this specific one hurt her feelings. I am very precious about this campaign and, for but a moment, I became overprotective of it (cursed be) instead of showing enthusiasm for my wife’s interest. I plan to ask my friends if she can join once we start preparing for said sequel, but I feel terrible for making my wife sad. Laser beam judges, what can I do to make it up to my wife? I don’t want to end up like Jake.

Josh Regan

“The Case of the Disconnected Crew” To the Honorable Supreme Justices and the Pokemon Bayleef, I present the Case of the Disconnected Crew. I am DMing for a group of friends, some are long-time players and some are relatively new to the game. When they were creating characters, I encouraged them to take liberties with their backgrounds and to give me connections they might have, etc. When we all sat down for our session zero, they had all created character sheets, but no backgrounds whatsoever. After this session, during which I asked them questions about where they thought their characters may have come from in the world and what connections they might have, I wrote backstories for each of them and sent them to the players, as to connect them to the world. We are now about six months into the campaign, and whenever I hint towards connections they PCs might have to the world, they give the impression they have not even read the brief backstories I wrote for them. Justices, I ask you this: At the beginning of the campaign, I told my players I was creating a deep and complex world that I would be connecting their players to, but I am feeling silly for working to write their character stories into the plot and to give them moments to shine individually. Should I scrap the parts of the plot the story that involve their characters, or continue reminding them that they existed before escaping from prison in session 1, and they have connections in the world?

Michael Uken

To the Worm Wife Bailiff and the austere Justices, I need your wisdom and ruling. I've been a player in a relatively new campaign ran by my good buddy and some of his other pals. One of the other players I do not know very well - so far he has been a bit off-putting with an unironic edge-lord/horny bard that has tried to seduce every barmaid and threatened several NPCs that were clearly going to be allies. To his credit, he seems earnest and trying hard to engage with the game and the other players. After one of the sessions that was particularly draining, I mentioned to my good buddy, the DM, feeling a little put off over how much play time was spent on the Bard's tomfoolery. My DM shared that he didn't particularly care for it either and that he would "take care of it ". I felt a little guilty about it but imagine my surprise when the very next session opens to the horny bard having been killed in his sleep. The player of the bars already had a new character ready, a fighter, so I assumed they were on board, but way later in the session, the former bard was making comments with a snippy tone towards me like "oh, would have been nice to have Bardic for that, huh?" and "sorry, I don't have healing word anymore" when my character went down. I haven't noticed that treatment towards any other player in the group and am wondering if the DM told the former bard that it was me specifically having an issue or exactly how he approached that discussion with him. Is it wrong to expect a degree of confidentiality with your DM when you were griping, and not even necessarily asking for a character to be replaced?

Emily Downie

To the fabulous justices and “sexxxyyy” Jake, I present you the case of the tired player and exasperated DM. Weeks ago me and my friends were playing a one shot and I was playing a kenku cleric who ran a meth lab, and I joined the rest of the party on an adventure to find a rare stone. The session was dragging and I was tired, so since this was a one shot I texted my DM and asked him to kill me in our next combat. Minutes later we entered combat with a genie and my DM insta killed me and said something to the effect of “ok your dead are you happy” no rolls, no dice, just a dead kenku. I felt affronted, though I was ready to go home I still expected a fair and square whomping, and maybe the chance to have a character moment before dying. Was I wrong to expect death by dice even after being the one to call it early? Or was my DM fair in insta killing me. (Note the DM is also my Boyfriend lol)

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?

Chazz

To the honorable Justices and new and improved Baliff Axford. I present to you my first time playing D&D About tenish years ago when I was like 16 or 17, I hung out almost every weekend at my local game store. Mostly I was just there to play Warhammer 40k. One day when there was no one around for a game, I was invited to join a group of people playing a demo of the then newly released 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. It was only my 2nd or 3rd time playing any TTRPG, and first time making a character. The players were; me a Half Orc Paladin, a Tiefling Rogue, Human wizard, and a gnome fighter. We were in a tavern and people were being electrocuted by mundane items made of cursed wood, but our attention was much more fixated on stupider things. I was trying to flirt with an elven ranger npc, whom I just saved, however the GM said she slapped me across the face dealing one point of damage. I had lost hit points earlier so this knocked me unconscious. The Rogue immediately declares he is going to rob me of all my stuff. The GM allows it. My character eventually comes back up and I ask who took my stuff? The Wizard and the Rogue both say it was the Fighter who robbed me. The Fighter had gone unconscious actually trying to do plot stuff. So I robbed the fighter, even though the player hadn’t done anything to me and I thought “Oh I guess that’s what my character would do.” I don’t remember what happened after that, I think someone showed up to play Warhammer. Justices I plead guilty to being that guy, but was I the biggest villain at the table? I will only say in my defense I am a much better player and DM than I was as a teenager.

el_mathemagician

To the benevolent Justices and that guy who lives in the trash can, I think his name is Joscar, 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.

Charlie Hudson

To the judges of the highest court in all the lands and to the beautiful worm wife bailiff, I present the case of the too strong slime. We were playing a homebrew game where I was playing a plasmoid bardbarian and we came across a strength based test to open a tile to get to the treasure underneath a throne. We were told that it would take a str test to open it, but we were told rolling too high would result badly. Upon hearing this rule I said this is dumb what if I roll a natural 20 as a STR focused character. I was told something along the lines of well then that'll be too high and you'll fail. I then immediately rolled at 20 and broke the entire throne and secret storage under it. Was I wronged or is this just how the slime puddles.

Simon Kalverda

To the Honorable and Fair Justice Emily (unless Jark found this, in which case, sup?), I bring you the case of the Abandoned Orc. 7 years ago, one of my players brought a friend along and we started playing regularly in a few different campaigns with him. My friend, who we can call Jake was DMing Tomb of Annihilation at the time. We had a fairly interesting party dynamic and all of our PC's got along well with each other, except for Jakes friend, who we'll call Todd. Todd was playing an Orc who loved his horse and always charged into battle "For the hoard!" He didn't want anything to do with the rest of us since we were not of the hoard, and he never strategized before battle Leroy Jenkins style, because he was "not smart enough to do so." For context, his intelligence was 11, the second highest of the party, a fact we frequently reminded him. After an encounter in the jungles of Chult where we had successfully frightened a group of goblins so badly they fled, Todd ran them down, declaring that no one can escape the might of the hoard. Another friend, who we can call hank, was tired of this behavior and told the DM that while Todd's PC was gone he wanted to climb a tree and hide there. The rest of us thought this was kind of funny, and followed suit. When Todd's Orc returned, he rolled low on perception, and couldn't find any of us, and when asked by him and the DM if we wanted to reveal ourselves, we said we didn't. He decided to charge off into the jungle, and our DM narrated that, as we had previously established, you cannot survive alone in these jungles, and that he would die there. We finished the session soon after, and Todd quietly sat dejected while we wrapped the session up. We felt bad, and apologized, and while he said he understood and told us straight faced that it was a very funny goof, that marked the end of our relationship with Todd, as he never came back to that campaign, and the other two he was involved in fizzled a session later. I often try convince myself that we did no wrong, but I wonder often if we were too harsh. I'll admit my bias because in a separate campaign he was DMing he facially scarred and castrated my character because I rolled four nat 1's in a single combat (a case for another time), but Justice's, I ask if we were wrong to abandon that Orc in the dangerous jungles of Chult, knowing what would befall him? I await your Justice.

Ben

(I peek my head in through the doors to the court room) Hey guys! I don't rly have any drama I'm just here to steal a glance. Okbye!

nathanKmcWilliams

To the most holy of Dice Christ's servants... I confess that I have transgressed against the story of the dice by going around a player's Nat 20 as a DM and punishing them by taking away something they stole with a Sleight of Hand critical success. My player stole an item in plain view of some Modrons. These extraplanar beings happen to have truesight. However the player rolled a natural 20 on a sleight of hand check to take an item while in their presence. Eventually, the player ended up in front of a higher order of Modron, and instead of looking into Truesight and how it works...I determined that the Modrons all saw the Sleight of Hand taking place because of truesight. Modrons all share a mental network, and because of this shared consciousness, that the Modron leader would force the player to give up the things they took. Only after the game, did I look up how truesight worked to see that it does NOT mean they can see through a sleight of hand check. Though I try to excuse it in that a Nat 20 doesn't necessarily mean perfect victory when stealing something in plain view of a crowd...my DM actions nonetheless convict me, and keep me awake at night. I fall at the mercy of Dice Christ and your judgment as representatives of the Holy Roll. I will do whatever it takes to cleanse my soul of this transgression!

Sam Ross

To the wise and impartial Justices of the Court, and only the Justices, no one else, I come to you seeking a self-directed Judicial Review to see if a preventative injunction is needed against my future Dungeon Master actions. My current group of after school players have been requesting that I allow them to build a Tank. A straight up, armored war engine Tank, fueled by Artificer technology that can shoot Sorcerer-enhanced shells at enemies that live in a very Medieval-style setting where a Tank would not make any sense. I have no intention of allowing my players to do this, both for narrative and gameplay reasons, but my players are persistent, so I said I would let them build a Tank when they reached Level 7. They were thrilled. But here’s the thing: I planned this School Year adventure to go from Levels 1 to 6, so they will never reach Level 7. The players do not know this, and now at every session they’re excitedly sharing plans and drawings of their future Tank that they will never be able to build. I seek the judgment of the Court on if this lie of omission is acceptable in order to maintain table peace and avoid having Goblin Warg Riders get pasted by a wildly anachronistic military vehicle. As there is still time for corrective changes this School Year, I will accept any plot deviations the Court deems necessary.

JesterTheCleric

To the Deacons of Dice Christ I come before you with a humble confession of the first and only time I have lied about a roll as a player. I was in my second game as a player (I had DMed for a couple years before that, and had fudged rolls sometimes so as to not tpk my players, you know how it is). I was playing a human gunslinger named Matthew Beren, the previous Captain of the Hupperdook Specters, a force of sharpshooter rifleists in the army. He went on a few adventures and during one, we fought a gang of were-creatures, one of whom was a werebear. The werebear bit Matt, and I had to roll to avoid contracting lycanthropy. Deacons, I desperately wanted to be a bear with a gun. I rolled high, over a 17, but I lied and said I rolled low, like a 3 or a 4, just low enough to still fail the save with my high constitution. Matt became a werebear (modified slightly to not give me so many resistances in bear form which were over powered), and had the campaign continued, would have needed to do a whole character arc to learn to control my werebear form. Alas, that did not happen, as the campaign fizzled due to scheduling conflicts. I loved playing my bear with a gun, but I know it was undeserved. I present myself to you, Deacons of Dice Christ, to purge me of my sin.

Patrick Margey

May it please the Crit, to the honorable and noble justices and some chick who lifts hay bales I think? I present to you a case of passive perception vs. invisibility. I play in a group of college friends that play fairly regularly and can get a little crunchy when it comes to it mechanics/combat wise. The DM knows the rules very well and has created a really interesting, fun world for us to explore with fascinating lore and has been generous enough to homebrew awesome magic items for us that enhance each of our playstyles as both players and characters. It’s been a super fun ride but for some reason I can’t get this one, definitely insignificant, popcorn kernel out of my teeth. I play an inquisitive rogue, and have completely built him to be good at 2-3 things: 1. Perception (Noticing Things) 2. Insight(Reading people/situations) and 3. Being a smart smug Sherlock Holmes ripoff (Being an asshole). I intentionally made him unoptimized in combat to favor these strengths. One day, over a year ago, we were following a set of foot prints up a mountain trail as we had reason to believe some group had beaten us in our search for a hidden temple. My rogue was leading the party, keeping an eye out for further signs of the people we were searching for. Then all of a sudden my DM brought us over to the battlemap and told us to roll initiative as some people started attacking us. I asked why I didn’t notice them. He explained they had all been invisible and hiding in the nearby brush along the trail. Judges, at the time my passive perception was 33 (totally RAW btw), and the DM is well aware of it as I like to remind him of the absurdity of the number. Am I wrong for feeling like my elven eyesed boy should’ve noticed these Casperly cowards? I understand they’re invisible but they’d still leave footprints and the shrubbery may wave suspiciously in the wind if they were hiding within. It’s not much to go off of but I believe my boy and his special eyes should notice such things, or at the very least be given the chance to roll for it. I spoke with the DM about it after the session and he told me he didn’t have them roll for stealth because they were invisible and I didn’t want to be a whiny little hay bale lifter so I let it slide and moved on. Well kind of, what say you? I throw myself to the court and humbly accept your judgment that hopefully leans in my favor.

Shel B Kennas fav SG is welly’s number one felly

more salicious details-- I am a lesbian, he has a whole ass live in girlfriend so i especially am feeling correct about digging my heels in on this and not rolling his weird crush dice. But also I am open to hearing i should mellow out and rolling these nasty metal dice to smooth things over

Rebecca N

To the beloved and benevolent Justies (Justice Besties) and the lowly Snore-liff Elana, 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, and I've never told them my real 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!), 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

Casper

To the most honorable justices and the absolute treasure of a bailiff Emily: I present the case of the super high passive perception. My wife was running a one shot for our friend group. It was a murder-mystery in which someone kills the host and we’re all locked inside until we find out who-dun-it. During the whole night while we were investigating, the magistrate was preparing a zone of truth spell that the intention was to put the one person we suspected in to confess. By the end we had no leads, so we put everyone in the zone (20 people including NPCs) and asked the question “did you kill the guy”. The DM stated that a cacophony of “no’s” sounded off and one person didn’t answer. My cousin was playing a halfling gloomstalker ranger with a passive perception of 24 and stated he would be able to tell who didn’t answer. The DM gave in and said it was me who didn’t (which is true). The squad ended up being on my side (the murdered guy was a truly awful corrupt guy that we all had a bad history with) and let me go. But I stand to argue that he wouldn’t have been able to tell that I didn’t answer even if his passive perception was 24. So I ask, who was in the wrong? Should have the DM make the ranger make a roll? Or would his passive perception allowed him to tell that I didn’t say anything?

Jordan Gardner

To the illustrious bailiff Axeford and the other ones. I bring to you the case of the pet dragon. I recently started an English DnD program for teenagers where I live in Eastern Europe. My last batch of kids really enjoyed the game, though the party's wizard is absolutely obsessed with dragons and it is literally all she can talk about. The one-shot we were playing did have a small dragon at the end of the game that needed to be avoided at all costs - and so of course she decided that she just HAD to make it hers. I told her that dragon's are not like pets, they are intelligent creatures who would sooner take you as a pet - But I did let her try to use persuasion to befriend it. Behold her middling 6 roll ended with her and her companions being completely destroyed by it's breath weapon. Am I being too harsh? I don't want to let these kids just befriend every creature they come across while also honoring the rolls. Should I just let these kids go absolutely ham with pet dragons? Should I just take the little L and let these kids do whatever they want? And so I leave the decision to you, the highest authority on the subject and await your verdict.

Grassy Gnoll

At the discretion of the beneficent Baliff Emily, I beseech the attention of the historically Jesus-juking justices. Last year, I ran a one-shot for some close friends as my first time DMing. One player (let’s call him Fred) had built a goblin Light cleric named Merci. His backstory focuses on how his peaceful community had been slaughtered by “the Cult of Christ”, whose religion Merci adopted with the explicit goal of killing Jesus in retribution. I allowed this bit character Fred was very excited about expecting to play for a few sessions max. However, a few of us decided to continue a campaign from this one-shot. Despite all logic, I think a Cult of Christ actually fits with and even adds depth to our campaign setting. I’m using lots from /Journeys through the Radiant Citadel/, which has each adventure in the anthology set in a different region inspired by real world non-Western cultures. Multiple fictional regions have a history of colonialism and pseudo-Spanish/Romance local languages. With this in mind, I plan to include a colonial Spain/Roman Empire analog whose empire has fallen into ruin. In their bitterness, the state religion has corrupted into the slaughter-happy Cult of Christ who will be a peripheral BBEG. Though Merci maintains heavy Christ flavor and frequently evangelizes NPCs, as far as I know the other two players aren’t uncomfortable with this (perhaps mildly annoyed at first). The Jesus juice /is/ diluted by Fred playing two characters. (Only two players wanted to continue after session one of our “one-shot”, so I allowed Fred to adopt one of the deserters with everyone’s permission. We have since gained a player.) Despite everything, Merci has had the greatest moments of emotional depth at our table, which I really value as a DM. Justices, I await your theocratic ruling. Is allowing a cleric of Christ (or two PCs for one player) an irreparable baby DM boo-boo, or have I successfully baptized this backstory and cleansed it of its anachronistic original sin?

Maggie!

The Lowly Justices and The Honorable Bailiff Emily. Today I bring to you the case of the secretive butler. I play in a campaign with my fiance (the dm) and two other people. We have been playing together since 2020 and have had a few different campaigns in the same world that my fiance homebrewed. In one of the campaigns our trio of misfits somehow found ourselves rock stars in a band called The Strangers and were given a manor house that came with a butler. His name was Archibald and we love him (or at least I love him). Flashforward our current campaign is set about 10 years later in the same city. Our new group of PC found themselves at the The Stranger’s house and Archibald is telling us that there is something in the basement that needs to be taken care of. It was some kind of monster we still don’t understand but when our new characters asked about telling The Strangers about this potential danger under their home Archibald told us we weren’t allowed to say anything. Our new characters being the shits they are left a note for the house owners to ask their butler about the being in the basement and walked away. Obviously there has been some fallout. This has led to some disagreement among the party as to what to do with Archibald. Should he be fired for lying to his employers for a long time (please note multiple generations of this family live in the house) or are his years of service and friendship more than enough to forgive his leaving out of this absolutely massive secret. Please help us decide the fate of our Butler. ps: My character in the first campaign did explore the house often. I just never rolled a good enough check to find the staircase.

Spencer Clark

To the regally-robed Referees and their banal Bailiff, I present to you the case of the Lost Faith. Our group is blessed with multiple DMs. One of whom, a self-described follower of Dice Christ, had some success at work in early 2022. He decided to reward himself by purchasing a high-priced DM screen/dice tower combo made of purpleheart hardwood. It was immaculate, and it rolled absolute garbage for him. Without exception over the last three years and across multiple campaigns, it rolled low for him and high for us. Obviously: we loved it. But, alas, we have been betrayed! We found out today that he shipped it back to the maker so they could "undo the curse" bestowed upon it. But Judges, the way it rolled was the will of Dice Christ! Perhaps the "curse" (as he calls it) was meant to teach our DM humility or self deference or to atone for past sins. Our role is not to discern the will of Dice Christ, but to respect it and through self-reflection find self-improvement. I ask you: was our DM wrong to forgo the faith and seek his own road to paradise? We faithful members of the group humbly await your wisdom.

Trevor

Dear full time judges and substitute teacher Emily. I bring to you the case of the Earth Angel. I had an encounter where a lich (to show up later) had a zombie spa set up with his 3 elemental companions: an air flying squirrel, a fire axolotl, and an earth otter. As I introduced the scene with an acid jacuzzi, sauna, and hot rock treatments my players immediately latched on to the otter and proceeded to question and razz me for a solid 10 minutes real time. We them proceeded to roll initiative and they ran past all the enemies, taking opportunity attacks to kill the otter as fast as possible, leaving their NPC companion to be surrounded by zombies. They managed to kill it quickly and the lich eventually came in and made them leave. Was I wrong for flavoring elementals in a cute way or was I unjustly razzed?

Swordmaster of Ginaz

To the exalted Justices and the Vermiform Bailiff, I lay my case of labyrinthine complexity before you. I’m DMing for the first time for some lifelong friends, including my wife, in a homebrewed world that I’ve been building up for months. We planned for last Friday at 7 to meet, eat and then start playing at around 8. I bought the pizza, scheduled it for 7:30 to arrive so a decent amount of leeway if anyone was late. They instead arrived at 8:30, hungry as hell and not wanting to eat the pizza as it was cold, and they hadn’t even made their characters (which they said they would). I was upset, but then they said that I was the rude one for ordering so early. They then held me down and spanked my lil' bare bottom with metal chains until I was bleeding (my wife whipped me the most). Then a bunch of my friends started to ransack my house, stealing my cutlery and life savings, while my friend Chet flirted with my wife. Then they fucked. Dearest Justices, was I in the wrong? Would a Session Zero have avoided this awkwardness? I bow before your judgment.

Zac White

Dear fantastical justices and the bouncing baby bailiff. I bring to you the case of the useless illusion wizard. Me and some friends have been running an open world sandbox style game. I play a level 5 gnome illusion wizard. Our party consists of a cleric, monk, and warlock. For a while everything was going great and fun. But as we leveled up and I started getting better and better spells I started to notice that we were running into more and more elves which are immune to charm. I argued with my dm about how illusions are not charm but more of a misdirection. The rest of the party did back me up on this and the dm let it go. Fast forward a few sessions we are now level 5 we are in a dwarf city and are chasing a group of terrorist elves through the sewers. It’s completely dark. Dark vision is a thing so I don’t think much of it. But once we get to the epicenter of the sewers and engage in combat none of my spells work because now all the elves have true sight. I got very irritated at this because it basically made me completely useless. The other party members agreed with me away from the table. The dm said it’s because these elves have been trained to see through illusions because they are from the city of illusions. Am I wrong for feeling like I got shafted and nerfed? Or was I truly wronged? I prostrate myself at your feet and await your judgement.

katie potato

To the luscious locked judges (especially the hot crit justice Emily) and the duke of limbs who serves them; I bring to you the case of The DRAMA 2: Electric boogaloo Hi, I’m Katie, Im a teenage fan and I play dnd with some friends, including my neighbor and close friend, Evan. I got inspired to play from your podcast and d20 and I love everything about my table but heres the thing. I have feelings for Evan, and he doesn't know. I really really like him and have done for a few years and we have serious chemistry, but I don't know if I should confess my feelings or pine quietly as justice Iyengar decreed in the case of DUNGEONS DOGGOS AND DRAMA. The dm (older but not wiser) recently discovered my feelings for Evan and told me in confidence that if I confessed, I wouldn't be welcome back at the table because this would “ruin the dynamic of the game.” I dont even know if he likes me back but he really matters to me and I dont want to lose him, I feel conflicted and dont know how to proceed. Is my dm being overbearing or should I respect their wishes and stay quiet? I desperately await your judgement, wise council. May your rolls be spicy and your siblings be peaceful. (LOVE YOU ALL)

Josh Wolff

Honorable Crit Justices and equally honorable Baliff Emily. I submit the case of Patron Percy Jackson. I run an after-school program for a diverse group of middle school kids (11-15 years old), and often have to step in as a DM (at least for the first few sessions, until a student raises their hand and wants to try for themselves). In an introductory session we had recently, I was explaining the rules and roles of our 5 introductory classes (Fighter, Wizard, Rogue, Paladin, and Cleric), and letting our students pick which ones they'd like to try. One student asked me what a Cleric does, and I explained that Clerics are a spellcasting class that gets their power from a connection with a god. This student decided that she would play a Cleric, and that her patron would be Percy Jackson (of Lightning Thief fame). We started playing, and everything seemed fine, until the party passed by a large library on the island they were exploring. The Cleric demanded that the party make a pit stop at the library so that she could do some religious investigation, and when I gave the information that would be available in the library (mostly on the history of dragons, specifically Bahamut and Tiamat) she became upset that there were no scrolls or tomes in reference to her chosen deity, Percy Jackson. I attempted to move the plot along and steer the party to the next plot hook, but other students at the table began having a theological argument about whether or not Percy Jackson could be a Cleric patron in the first place, including an argument by one of the fighters that her character was based off of Annabeth Chase, and therefore Percy Jackson would be too busy being her boyfriend to be this Cleric's chosen patron. This argument lasted until we wrapped up the session and served dinner. They are supposed to come back next week, and I am worried about how to get this train back on the tracks so that everyone can get back to dice and away from the son of Poseidon. Your honors, was this on me as the DM letting my students get a little silly, or should the Cleric have chosen a different patron?

Astrala Chrome

Esteemed and honorable justices Axford, Murphy and Tanner. As well as the cool dude bailiff who dies court stuff. I have started a New dnd game and in seission one had an issue between players, one of the players made clear that they were playing a trickster type character and started the seissiom with making a joke about an npc another player was interacting with this caused a brief disagreement between the players. Player A(The trickster) Player B (The Brewer) the campaign started with a brief overview if the oarty entering a tavern and loking for work. Each had their introduction and while Player B was having an interaction with an npc (they were being let go, due to merchant routes begin attacked by local wildlife causing a disruption In goods and services causing a deficit in monthly earnings. Player b was having the situation ecplained as to why they were being laid off and player A chimed in with the joke. Which was along the lines that player B shouldn't be so nice to the tavern owner as they were being fired. This was said out of character, and player B seem to take offense to this. Player A explained they were simply making a joke however it eas clear Player B had taken it to heart. I the Dm try to mive past it to continue with the session however player B seemed to have taken this issue to heart. They continued with sighing and clear disinterest in what was happening anytime Player A was involved in an interaction whether it was combat or roleplay. And went so far as to leave the call when Player A was in Rp, then after returning and completing the session Everyone left except player A who explained how they notcied the disnterest from player B anytime they did anything.as it was late I had decided i would talk with the group the next day as it was quite late close to midnight. however player B messaged me that they did not vibe with Player A and are leaving the session. My question justices is not just who is at fault in this scenario but should I as the dm passed over this interaction like i did and mive the seission forward and addressed it after the seission ? Or done so immediately when the issue came up. I will also note that Player A was trying to help Player B with character creation when we arrived to play as Player B had not completed their sheet this may have cause some hostility but I can't say for sure. I will accept whatever ruling the judges deem fit, May the honorable justices and dutiful bailif have a cool dinner or sumthing, I got a fun surprise round prompt ready when the gang does the shitz

Selacha

To the One True Bailiff, Jake Hurwitz, and those three other guys nobody cares about, I present to the Court the case of the Dueling DMs and the False Hydra. I play semi-frequently in multiple campaigns with some work friends. Usually the same DM, we'll call him Nate, and anywhere from 4 to 8 players. We'll usually just do one-shots or short campaigns, because our schedules are all weird, so we never want to commit to anything long-term. In our most recent adventure, we were looking into a mystery in a small mining town, where after a series of events we discovered the citizens had unearthed a False Hydra from the mine. It was our job to find a way to trap it again. Now, here's where it gets bad. Another player in this session, we'll call him Bob, is a DM for some of his personal friend group. He's usually fine as a fellow player though, but apparently he LOVES using False Hydras in his campaign. So he had a whole bunch of ideas on how to deal with them that were borderline or even outright metagaming. This really annoyed Nate, who had a whole plan of how we could deal with it like a puzzle. So he started homebrewing it to counter some of Bob's ideas. It was a little awkward, and the rest of us just kind of tried to play around it. It got pretty heated, and eventually Nate had buffed the Hydra's abilities to the point that there was literally nothing the party could do about it, and we had to basically escape the town after two PCs were killed, one of which was my barbarian. Nate did apologize for basically turning a puzzle boss into an impossible death trap, but maintains that Bob was wrong for metagaming ways around the main premise of the session. Bob takes no responsibility, and says that a DM should have ways around a "clever player" that doesn't just involve pulling abilities out of his butt. Who's in the right, here?

gamebearr

To the esteemed Justices and that one guy, I bring before you the case of the decisive druid and the vampire boy. I was invited by a friend to play in a 7 player Curse of Strahd campaign being started for one of their friends' birthdays at his request (let's call him PJ) whom I had never met, to be DMed by another friend as his first time DMing. The first session on PJ's birthday went well, with all of our characters mysteriously being transported to Barovia by some unknown force, but then the second session the following week is where shit hit the fan. We split up, as parties of 7 are likely to do, and PJ, myself and a friend go to a local church house where we find a trap door beneath which the priest's son is being kept restrained in the basement. The son is described as what sounds like a vampire spawn by the DM, and we are told to make an insight check on this child but all roll abysmally low, so we are all told "He just seems off." I immediately ask the DM "Would my character be familiar with vampires? Or do I just think this is a sickly child?" to which the DM just shrugs. PJ then reveals that it is his characters firmly held creed that all undead are abominations against nature that must die, and he doesn't care if his character knows 100% and would like to attack this chained up child anyway. I try to deescalate as initiative is rolled, but ultimately decided my character would run and try to get the other half of the party for help instead of assisting in fighting this basement child he's unsure is even a vampire. PJ immediately gets mad at me for not backing him up, the priest overhears the fighting and we are all chased from the town by an angry mob, with PJ at the very end deciding to let his character be killed by the mob. Safe to say the campaign did not continue. I ask you, humble justices, was I wrong to not join PJ in attacking the eerie basement boy? Was the DM wrong for not giving us more to work with in his second session ever? Was PJ wrong for his sort of metagaming? I humbly await your verdict.

Kevin Bomgardner

To the supreme crit justices and no one else, this is the case of the full party blowup. I was the DM of a long running campaign with several first time players and one or two experienced players. One of the experienced players, a warforged artificer, was trying to locate or ressurect his dormant race. During an adventure to a sunken lab, the players discovered a machine that had a trapped celestial inside. The machine would sacrifice the celestial to awaken some of the dormant warforged in the lab. I thought this would be a fun moral choice. I was wrong. Immediately the party divided into two lines, and without any prompting from me, began combat against each other. I got the players to stop combat, but the argument didn't stop. It led to the breakup of one long term relationship, two roommates moving out, and the disbanding of the game. I ask you, was I wrong to put moral choices in my game, or should the players have trusted that I had a plan in mind? P.S. sorry bailiff, I wanted the justices to like me, so I had to omit your name from the beginning.

Jake Gillespie

Hello, Oh Holy Dice-Deacons, I greet you in the traditional Dice-Christ fashion: a genuflection then I throw a d20 at you. I come to you to ask for judgement for ignoring the will of Dice Christ some years ago. At least 2 years and 10 levels into our first 1-20 campaign I, the DM, was having the party search for magical mcguffins, racing to find them before a dragonborn sorcerer with a penchant for arson. This quest took the party into the northern wastes where they had just finished a hunting competition between themselves and the dragonborn put on by the local frost giant tribe who were protecting a mcguffin. While in one of the cathedral-sized frost giant igloos a member of the party instigated a fight between themselves and the dragonborn, a major no-no to the giants, who sided with the dragonborn. What followed was a desperate fight between the party and way to any frost giants to be fair. A magic portal was opened and the party began to make their escape. Everyone was clear except for our paladin, the glue of the group, and a character my player had asked to bring to the game because it was his first ever dnd character and he had never been able to finish that character's story. Well, of course, I crit on him the turn before he would have been able to escape, easily knocking him below 0 hit points. This would have at best meant he was captured by the giants, and more likely, that they would have finished the job. So, in a moment of panic, I ignored Dice Christ's will and reported a miss followed by an NPC shoving the paladin through the portal and sacrificing himself to slow down the giants in the process. I submit this story and myself to your holy judgement. Castigation would be understandable, castration acceptable as long as you let me sing with my new little high-pitched boy-voice. Signed, The Good Jake

Emily Martin

Your supreme (hold the tomato) justices as well as bailiff of my namesake, I humbly ask for your judgment on a case that has resurfaced on a number of occasions to mock me over the past several years. At the time I was playing my sweet, older sister type, paladin named Janice. For some ungodly reason, the other players as well as NPCs had an innate drive to hate her no matter how loving and caring she is. Like overly rude when she is trying to help them. This is an important note. We were at a random pawn shop which is when our DM tends to throw out the most random items that we as players will then find creative ways to exploit (as players do). The item being offered to me this time was a ring of random keys, like a hundred random keys. Not entirely sure why, but our DM started at his initial price then went tried to lower the price little he began haggled himself down to free very quickly without me being able to get a word in edgewise. I took a half a second to think and responded with “how about I take these keys off your hands and find what each one goes to. For each one I find where it goes, you pay me 5 gold.” Without hesitation, the shopkeep snatched the keys and said “the keys are off the table.” No opportunity for a persuasion roll or anything! To this day, “the keys are off the table” is said by all those who were at the table that day when I am pushing my DM too far. So I ask you justices, can you really call yourself a D&D player character if you have not challenged your DM to find where the line is? Is it not the players job to fuck around and often narrowly escape finding out? Or are the keys really off the table? I anxiously await your fair ruling. Ps I have never played D&D and I hate the show

Austin Wiggin

My dice christ confession: it's not dnd, but i was playing a ttrpg called Lancer. We play online and use a browser service called comcon to keep track of our interactive player sheets. My mech had suffered a devastating blow and needed to roll a damage table. I rolled a 1, and because of past damage I needed to roll again to see if I blew up. I was drunk, snarfd, and having a good time. I rolled on compcon again and it came up as a 1. Now this roller is lamented imo because it always double rolls stuff. So instead I told the party I needed to roll and rolled in roll20. Wouldn't you know, dice christ gave me a smirking 6, saving my mech. But instead of feeling relief, I felt dirty. I know the big man was showing me what cheating does, and I can't live my mech dreams anymore, knowing I should have blown up. I swear to dice christ to always roll my structure dice on the roll20. I seek your forgiveness and yearn to feel the consequence of rolling a dice. Please forgive me

Babbles The Clown

Hello I submit my case to the highest crit in the land & Bailiff Emily. The case of "Get Thee to a Nunery" I am running a Pathfinder 2E campaign for my roommates and co-workers. Until recently it was 4 of us total, that is until one player ghosted our group text right before game & missed a second session. I always send a confirmation text a few days before games to lock in the groups. 2/3 confirmed the first message. The next day I send another direct at his character to keep it cheeky, no response. I send a third the day before calling out the player & saying it's fine if he can't make it I just need to be able to prepare, no response. Come to game day I RP that a cleric of the Spore Lord a diety his character had interest in arrived & whisked him away to a convent. So I ask, I wrong to write out his character? Should I have been more patient? Or am I in my right to depose of characters as needed? I humbly await your verdict. P.S. the player in question is a co-worker & has yet to bring up anything about the game since.

Sam O

To the honorable bailiff Axford.. and the rest of y'all, About a year ago I ran a game for a couple of friends, loosely based off the Strixhaven module where the players were attending a magical college. The first arc of the campaign culminated in them trying to prevent a portal from opening that would teleport their whole campus to the feywild where the bbeg planned to sypher the campuses latent magic to be used for evil schemes. It was implied in-game and away from the table that the next arc would take place in the feywild where my players would try and track down the bbeg. all of the players had expressed an interest in exploring the feywild and I had spent a long time breadcrumbing clues that pointed them in that direction, which they all seemed excited about! the problem is, on the day of the big fight, after my players had saved the day and were presented with the opportunity to jump into the portal to chase the bbeg, one of my players refused to go, saying they wanted to go back to school and finish off their semester. what followed was an hour of tense back and forth, near yelling, between the players and eventually it was put to a vote, where it felt like everyone was strong armed into agreeing to stay behind. after that super tense session, I had to delay our next game while I figured out how to rework the plot, and eventually we ended up never playing another game. was i wrong to have let it get so far? should I have railroaded my players or tried to prevent the strong arming? it was such a sad end to an overall very fun campaign. I leave my fate in your knowledgeable hands.

Zaq Putnam

Dear high court and the lowly worm wife (my favorite) I bring to you the case of the wasted pass without trace. I'm a super baby dm but since I've been listening to Naddpod have been pushing myself to learn more about running a campaign. My first dip was terrible, the monster I set up was way too powerful and i had to activately nerf the encounter for a session 0. For the first actual session of my astrology and tarot themed campaign set the pcs, champions of the stars and avatars of aries, Aquarius, gemini, and taurus were sent in to a sacred cave to battle an evil crime organization called Arcana based on the major and minor arcana. The players needed to go through the shrine, push to the end while dealing with traps and goons to get a scroll that had the power to capture a god. My planning was more story and less dungeon and for my first real dungeon it was a relatively narrow, straight line of a sacred cave that was point a to point b. I didn't want to take a lot of risks. One of my players, a druid, wanted to cast pass without a trace to sneak past some goons but in my mind, the cave was well lit with torches and narrow enough that there wasn't anywhere to hide and stealth plus I sadly fearing that there wouldn't be a lot to do without the combats I had set up. I said it wouldn't work but the player used it anyway and none of them were able to pass the dc I placed. Thinking back and reading pass without trace, i'm thinking I might have screwed over my players because it cloacks them in shadow and silence. Was I right to say that pass without trace wouldn't work without anywhere to hide or did I fuck over my players by being a baby? I bow before the court. Thank you.

Bubble_kitten

To the Dazzling Rainbow Road Justices and the Muddy Wario Stadium Bailiff, I present the case of the Thwarted Pirate Ship Heist. A couple years ago, my now husband DMed a pirate themed one-shot for me and a group of our college friends, most of whom (including myself) were very new to DnD. The session started with our party having to fight off an enemy pirate crew that tried to board our ship. We won the battle and everyone was having fun, until our party's druid decided he wanted to board the enemy pirates' ship, take it for his own, and sail away into the horizon. The DM discouraged this as it would derail the session, telling the druid that there was no loot on the ship and that it was actively sinking, but the druid would not relent. The rest of our party sat awkwardly as they went back and forth, until my husband finally had his DM PC, the captain of our crew, pull his pistols on the druid and threaten to kill him for his mutiny. To this the druid said "what the fuck, man?" but finally backed down and rejoined our ship. The rest of our session went smoothly; we entered the Pirate's Cove, solved treacherous puzzles, found the treasure, and successfully killed our captain after he revealed himself to be the BBEG who wanted to take all the treasure for himself. It was a blast in the end, but my husband still has lingering frustration about the incident and wonders if he was too harsh on the druid. Justices, was my husband justified in railroading the druid into abandoning the enemy ship, or was the druid right to feel that he was robbed of his fun? We humbly await your ruling.

MissAdventurer

To the venerable supreme crit justices and the bailiff Jack who does not deserve any praise, I present to you the case of the troll child's revenge. When my sister and I were kids, around 7 and 5 years old, my dad DM'd a dnd one-shot to introduce us to the game. During the session we were tasked with rescuing some villagers from a group of trolls who had abducted them. We get to the cave and manage to defeat most of the trolls, freeing the villagers. However, after we've cleared the Cave we stumbled across a young troll child who is cowering in fear. My sister and I decide that we should let the troll child go, after all, it is just a kid and hasn't done anything wrong yet and we don't believe that anyone can be evil from birth. We return to the village we just saved, triumphant and lauded as heroes. My father then describes as a great roar is heard in the distance as an even larger band of trolls storm the village, led by the child troll who we had freed. I understand as an adult that the troll child would probably seek revenge on us for slaying their family and return with reinforcements, but as a child I just felt betrayed that the child I had saved would turn around and stab us in the back. In that moment, my father taught both my sister and I that you cannot show mercy without repercussions. I ask the justices, should my father have taught us the harsh reality of the world through DnD at such a young age, or should he have rewarded our act of mercy?

Nicknack

To the opalescent bailiff Axford, the sizzling justices Murph and Tanner, as well as the toddling youth justice Hurwitz (who’s doing a great job dming so far!) I bring the case of the merchandising mercenary. So I’m currently playing the Vecna Eve of Ruin module with a couple of friends and so far it’s been alright. However, one of my fellow party members is not quite as…moral as the other two of us are. His character has insisted upon trying to capitalize on our party, insisting on buying a printing press and creating t-shirts and rolling each session to see what his profit is. Not only that but he also goes as far as to intimidate or even use spells to get npcs to buy said merch and even commanding an npc to give him her shoes. I’ve never really found it entertaining and I don’t believe my other party member does either as we’ve both in character tried to object to these shenanigans, but to no avail. I don’t want to start a fight with my friend but this has really put a damper on the campaign for me and I don’t know what to do

Gwiggs

Dearly Beloved, I present to you today, the case of the girlfriend from Canada. A long-time member of my biweekly ttrpg group is in a long distance relationship with a woman from the frozen north. She is very real, and in fact we have all met her when she visits our friend and he invites her to our game night. She seems very nice, and we all like her. The problem is not with her, dear judged, but with our game. Judges, we are playing Shadowrun - an extremely crunchy game. Every attack comes with a recoil modifier that affects your next attack. Every spell requires you to roll vs your opponents counterspelling and then roll drain. And don't even get me started on the rules for grenades. As much as I enjoy the setting, the characters, and the people I'm playing with... Combat, especially larger combats can be very dry and a bit of a slog. Not only this, but the girlfriend's visits have the worst timing. Every time she comes to visit, we're halfway through a 12 hour combat. So she has to sit there and watch us figure out the minutiae of combat for 4 hours, with minimal roleplay. She's been very polite about it, but judges I feel bad subjecting this poor woman to our boring war gamer horseshit. I ask that you rule my friend simply miss game night while she's in town, and take her on a nice date instead.

noah for now

to the gongeous wife-worm emily and the cheeky justices, i come to you with the case of the absent/tardy players. i am a dm to four players: a cleric, a monk, a rogue, and a guy who thinks he’s a wizard but neither of us are sure. i found these people through my college’s sci-fi and fantasy club. this problem has been present throughout the whole campaign so far, though we’ve only had about four sessions. i always try to message them to schedule sessions around a week ahead of time, and within a couple of days, we settle on a time. however, whenever i send a new message to remind them the day of the session, many of them will say they can’t go anymore, or else not respond at all. one time, the maybe-wizard didn’t show up even though he said he could come and then after said he had slept through it. justices, this session happened at 6:30 on a sunday. the last session was supposed to happen on saturday, and i had some exciting plans, but everyone except my angelic cleric player said they couldn’t make it. how do i solve this attendance issue? i don’t want to be annoying, but it’s disheartening to be excited for a session only to be let down at the last minute.

Ben Kullerd

Howdy, O Wise and Benevolent Judges. (I don’t get a great feeling about this Jake fella, so I’m glad Emily is taking over today). I come to you with the Case of the Salty Aasimar. In a homebrew campaign I’ve been running since 2020, one of my players publicly assassinated an archdevil disguised as the fantasy equivalent of the Pope in full view of a crowded city square. She then gave an impassioned speech to warn the crowd of corruption within the Church before escaping with the rest of the party. Weeks later, the party won a highly publicized tournament, crowning one of them as Lord of all Dragonborn. Soon after, I sent the party an official summons from the Church to testify before a tribunal and face judgment for their crimes. The problem? The Aasimar rolled a Nat 20 on a Disguise check before the assassination, which my player argues that it’d be impossible for anyone to track her down. I ruled that because she is an Aasimar - an uncommon race in my world - and had been seen traveling with someone now very much in the public eye, it’d be easy for someone to put the pieces together. Was I wrong to ignore a Nat 20 handed down from Dice Christ, or is my player being a salty little potato chip? I await your judgement.

Ben Rohrbaugh

To the honorable Justices and bailiff Gen (with a G). I bring before you the case of the inscrutible doorknob. A few years back I was invited to join a friends-of-a-friend's d&d group. During one of the two or three sessions I played with them the DM had us exploring a seemingly empty town. While we were inspecting one of the buildings therein, I asked if I could "check if the door is locked." Instead of having me roll perception or investigation (I was playing a rogue btw) the DM asked "Do you push or pull on the door?" I responded "neither, I just want to test the doorknob to see if it's locked, basically just try to use it but not actually open the door." The DM doubled down insisting that I declare weather I pushed or pulled. When I relented and said "I push" he asked me to roll a Strength check. I rolled high, like a 17 or 18. The DM then went on to narrate how the door had indeed been unlocked, and I pushed on it so hard that I tumbled face first into a room full of bandits. Was I wrong to argue that any rogue would be able to easily and discreetly ascertain weather a door is locked? Was the DM wrong to punish me for rolling high on a frankly nonsense strength check? I faceplant through an apparently unlocked courtroom door and lay myself at the mercy of the crit.

Ergsauz

To the wonderfully talented and intelligent bailiff and whatever other entities may be listening, I present the case of the campaign crashing little brother. I play a hobgoblin bladesinger wizard themed around Mongolian steppe warriors (irrelevant but I figured the Dungeon Docent would appreciate the character) in a Mines of Phandelver campaign hosted by our paladin whom I met at a ren fair. Things were going great for the first three sessions, but session four is when we were introduced to Crunko the halfling rogue played by the paladin’s 19 year old brother. The DM was forced to put the brakes on our story right before we were heading into the first boss fight of the module in order to introduce the diminutive thief who immediately showed no interest in joining the adventure. Every player at the table, including his own sister, immediately began trying to beat Crunko to death. The DM finally interrupted it by getting the town guards involved and let him go off to do whatever he wanted. For the next four hours we then split time between the boss fight and the Misadventures of Crunko as he went house to house stealing whatever wasn’t nailed down. The DM eventually just started narrating that every house he entered was empty and immediately switched back to the combat. We took a dinner break after the fight and when I came back to the table Crunko was gone. I asked the DM if he saw him leave and he said “oh yeah, I guess he had something to do idk”. Justices I ask you, were we right to bully Crunko out of the campaign? He kinda killed the pacing of it all and we haven’t had a session in the four months since. I humbley await your prestigious decision. PS. The DM was Crunko and the Paladin’s dad

Zach

Hear ye noble judges and Murph, A while back I was running a long campaign with a group of my college buddies. I'm the kind of DM that likes to get into players backstories and integrate them into the story as much as I can. One of my players, we'll call him Jack, did not have a backstory ready at the start and wanted to build it as the campaign went on. About a year in he pulls me aside with eager eyes and tells me he finally has a backstory. I'm delighted to finally be able to integrate it and give him some good story. He explains to me that his character was raised by wolves but that's it. He specifically tells me he doesn't want to meet the wolves who raised him, and that he wants it to remain as backstory but he really likes this idea of a wolf human. I nod, a little disappointed I can't integrate it more. We then get to the end of the campaign. I had asked all the players in advance if they were okay with their character dying in the final session, to which they all agreed. We play the final session, fight the big boss, and Jack's character dies. I, in the spur of the moment, had a brilliant idea. Once the final boss dies, without going into too much detail, time would reset to the start of the campaign, with only the players having the memories of what happened. SO I figured why not honor Jack's sacrifice and in this new timeline bring him back as a dog. So he can get a little bit of his wolf backstory! That was the final tableau of the campaign: all of them meeting this dog who is suspiciously similar to their friend Jack's character. This is where it all goes wrong. Apparently this really aggravated Jack. He starts talking to all the other players behind my back frustrated he was brought back as a dog. Eventually the players tell me and I go to reach out to Jack to apologize. At this moment in time, we were getting ready to start another campaign. Jack proceeded to ghost me and I still haven't heard from him since. Fair Judges, did I do something wrong? Should I have asked Jack about the dog thing, instead of surprising him with it? Was Jack right to ghost me? Was it a bad read of the situation on my part? Should anyone be turned into dogs? My other players to this day still joke around about being turned into a dog at the end of campaigns. I rest my case.

Slippery Pete

Hello, illustrious justices Murphy, Tanner, and Fartwitz(?) and the sagacious bailiff Emily. I present the case of the unintentional war crime. I am a forever DM, first time PC (it finally happened!) in a campaign with a new DM who has been doing a great job. During a session one of the other PCs, a tortle Monk/Barbarian was representing me, a Kobold Draconic Sorcerer, in a trial by combat because I had been charged and arrested for using magic in a province where that was illegal. During the trial, a violent rebellion broke out in the stands led by a general who hates magic even more than the other folk. During the combat, the DM described a tight phalanx of a dozen soldiers around the queen, in a crowd of violence so dense that it was difficult terrain. I managed to escape the magic preventing handcuffs I had been in for two sessions, cast fly, and ascended above the battlefield. Not being particularly fond of this Kingdom, and having plot motives for killing the queen to end a regional conflict, I cast a 4th level vitriolic sphere (20ft radius) centered on the queen, surrounded by her tight phalanx of soldiers that were being pressed in on all sides by rebels. The DM rolled a die behind the screen and informed me that I hit 4 soldiers and 5 civilians. Some of the soldiers were alive, all of the civilians died. I was confused, and sought clarification, but things at the table started to get a little tense so I backed off. In game, my fellow PCs all got very mad at my character for killing innocents. I chatted with my DM and decided to send my kobold off into the sunset and play a chill rogue instead who doesn’t do AOE damage. I wasn't fully honest about my reasons for wanting to do this. Justices, was I done dirty? Should I be able to kill dozens of magic hating soldiers in one fell swoop like the Gods of magic intended? I prostrate my once kobold body before you and await your judgement.

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.

CarpeLiam

May it please the court and scandalize the bailiff, I come before the court with a spicy and tragic issue that weighs heavily upon my soul. I have been DMing the same game for my wife and a close group of friends for about six years. The transgression in question took place at a cabin we rent every year to eat, drink, make merry, and dive into a weekend long D&D session. This trip, the party was set to infiltrate a fortress in the Shadowfell, with each floor being an individualized challenge based on one of the five stages of grief. Feeling a little silly and knowing it was going to be a particularly deadly encounter, my wife asked me if she could gain inspiration for her character by flashing me, the DM, in real life. Though delighted, I declined, stating it wouldn’t be fair to the other players and that it goes against the spirit of the adventure. It was then that every other woman in the party stated that, if they were also granted inspiration, they would gleefully lift their shirts in the name of quelling the menace of Shadowfell, dubbing the act “Titspiration.” Again I refused, saying this wouldn’t be fair to the fighter, the only other man in the party. The fighter insisted he didn’t want the inspiration, and endorsed the women’s free spirited gambit. With enthusiastic consent from every person in the room, and being no greater than the sum of my parts, I allowed Titspiration to occur. Laughs were had and the game began. Herein lies my plight. The fighter failed to pass his trial and died to the horrors of Shadowfell. Every other player used their inspiration to pass their challenge. Though he took it very well and has since made a new character, I cannot help but feel crushed when I see the sadness behind his eyes. Judges, was I right to allow my players their silly and rebellious act of body-positive expression, or am I a contemptible pervert that needlessly doomed my friend’s beloved character of six real life years?

Kingofanchovies

To the alright justices and not so mediocre Jake i present you the case of the civilian sacrificer. After a few sessions of trying to save some kids from cultists ut had been a rough start to the campaign not counting a druid who breeds dryads, water that moves so fast it looks still and the goat milk psycho I was iffy in continuing the campaign but I pushed on the dm said he had good plans. My pc was arguing with some town officials because they wanted to let a guy who sacrificed civilians to vecna go free which I was very against and so.was most of the party but everyone town leaders said no we need to let him go he's rich. Eventually we gave up and moved on so we could interrogate the guy but my pc wasn't allowed in because my honor was too low since I disagreed with the town leaders I was then left out of the rest of the session and eventually my pc was kicked out of town because him reporting a barmaid for threatening his life and advocating this cultists stays in prison(the dms exact words) I was flabbergastedgasted and decided to leave the campaign at which point the dm kicked me and one other friend from the campaign and then spread lies in the group chat about us(i had another friend in the campaign he tried to keep). Overall a bad bad bad ending and it left a bitter taste in my mouth. Should I not have reported the bar maid? Should I have just said nothing about letting the guy go? All the players agreed with me and the dm had one ayer left in the end. I await your judgement.

Primalkrisis

To the beautiful judges and scrumptious lil baley-wailey, I bring you the case of the unpaid actors Me and a group of 13 people were all players in a large scale campaign with multiple parties streamed to YouTube, it was fun to play in for a time but it came to an end far earlier than anticipated due to the dm cheating on his girlfriend who was a player within the campaign. A few weeks ago I was discussing with players and the topic came to dnd when one of the players asked me "what's a subclass?" ...justices, we were level 12... looking through the other players sheets most had nothing more than their basic stats, maybe a proficiency, a few didn't even have listed hp, they were never explained how to play the game, many abilities never coming up from the dm running roleplay combat which was far too loose on the rules, the players too lost to ask for help by the time it was needed Justices, who's in the wrong here? A dm who never explained the basic rules of the game and treated mechanics with such little respect many aspects of the game went untouched, or the players who never thought to read through dnd beyond (though they may not have known to do so)

Nathaniel F

To the most esteemed Baby Boy-Witz, judges, and the lowly Byron Smurfy. I present the case of the thieving DM. (Abridged). Hired by a simulacrum-like illusory wizard, we found and fixed his now-dead Prime Wizard’s “illusion-made-real” machine. Our Artificer and Wizard tested it with an illusion of a pile of platinum bars, totaling some 250k or more gold, before using it on the illusory Wizard. All seemed successful. On our way back to town, our DM told us the platinum had a half life of one hour, and are starting to disappear- not the wizard, though. As he mentions this, a little red devil guy, complete with evil mustache and French accent, pops out of our PC wizard’s watch, which he’s had for ages, and does, well, not much of anything. We shrug it off as a later problem and we book it to the town bank. We set up a deal with the bank teller to launder the money, and hand her the platinum. At that moment, said little devil guy pops back out, pushes the teller into the bank vault portal, jumps in after her, and locks it from the inside. Sealing our money, nay our joy, away. We have played many campaigns in this world with the same characters, or those from the in-game guild we started. The bank is “still investigating” - Real world and in-game years later! Please, judges, Bargamel Smurfy, judge him for this insane way of taking our money, which we feel is far worse than if he had stolen our girlfriends.

Aspen

To the respectable and decent Bailiff Jack and the rest, I come to you with the case of Grunkin and his Orb. I was starting a new campaign of relative newbies, including my friend and her first character, Grunkin. Here is the entirety of the information about Grunkin: He was an Eladrin (my friend did not know what the Feywild was). He had an orb that gave him warlock spells. The orb made all his decisions for him. So literally whenever we were roleplaying and something came up for Grunkin, he would ask me to tell him what the orb said, or he would lean into the orb and go “the orb says I should go along with everyone else”. Grunkin was a funny enough character, but he was not sustainable for a full campaign. The other players rarely made any effort to interact with Grunkin. So I had an idea. As part of his warlock spells, I decided that the agreement included Grunkin’s soul, which meant he could never be revivified or resurrected. If Grunkin died, his soul would be instantly consumed by his patron (the orb) and he would be gone forever. I then began preparing to assassinate Grunkin. Justices, the campaign ended soon after, for a number of reasons. I never did assassinate Grunkin, and the player thought that the whole “soul consumption” thing made Grunkin a beautiful and tragic character. However, she never knew that the reason I came up with that was because I desperately wanted to remove Grunkin from the campaign forever. Was this wrong? Can I be judged for future crimes that didn’t come to pass? Was my plan to destroy Grunkin, through the orb which he loved above all else, evil and reprehensible? I know technically no one ended up upset about it, but my intentions to not only kill Grunkin but erase his soul from existence, have haunted me to this day. I patiently and humbly await your judgment.

CommonCatepillat

To the Golden Gods of the highest council, thy kingdom come, thy crits be done, and (50/50 chance here so I'll say) Amir. I come to you with a cold case from my youth. At age 13, I asked to be in my brother in law's tabletop game with two other (adult) players. It was a magitech setting where our characters were recruited to be apart of a magical syndacit of people who stop evil. My character, Snap Clackers, was a Nature powered monkey who gained his abilities and sentience after being captured and experimented on. Me and the other players got along and played well off of each other and it was shaping up to be a fun campaign. At the end of one of our sessions, the DM (Brother in law) announced excitedly that there would be a guest who would play a villain next session which excited the rest of the table as well. However, me being 13 and getting shit grades on my report card, I was grounded that week and couldn't go to the session. The next session I was filled in by the DM what happened. Apparently, the guest played an evil spider queen who womped the party and demanded they bring her 100 slaves for her to do with as she pleased and they agreed. My character, who was present while I the player was not, was made to agree with them. You can see how this would be of big conflict to who my character was and, being new to roleplay, I simply played him dispondant and angry for the rest of the session, going against what the party was trying to do that session. The campaign shortly fizzled out due to other factors outside of anyone's control. Judges, should I have been more malleable with my marcupuals morals or was I right to lash out at my party for their decision? (PS. The spider queen session was the 4th session) (PPS. The guest who played the spider queen was my 23 year old sibling. The one who was married to my brother in-law)

Frank

To the Beautiful bailiff, Emily and her friends who went to law school I guess I bring to the crit a case that has bugged me for a while now. I played in a campaign with an ex coworker that invited me to, the group seemed nice so I was happy to play as this was one of my first campaigns. Shortly after the DM explained that he would be adding some home rules. One of them being that we were not allowed to say how much HP we had to the other players. At first this was okay, he said it was meta gaming and that there is no way to explain how to tell how much hp someone had in game. We all “agreed” but then he said if our characters got too low of health, they would suffer a level of exhaustion explaining that magic can’t heal deep wounds like broken bones etc.(we did not play a low magic setting) and this exhaustion would not just last a in game day, no it was a in game 1-2 weeks of exhaustion. It was because of this starting halfway through the 1st session after going down, all my roles were made with disadvantage and due to the DM’s pacing so were the following 3-4 sessions, all roles made with disadvantage. Because of this I got bored after 4th session due to almost failing every role in a 5 hour game. I talked to the DM and he said “you need to wait the ingame about 2 weeks, your character was down and needs time to rest ” I ended up not attending anymore games after this. Judges, was I wrong to stop showing up or should I have kept playing the game and rolling with disadvantage. I await your judgement.

Secret Grandpa

Dear First Team All-Pro Surpreme Crit Justices and that Waterboy Baliff, I come to you seeking your divine direction on my dismal dilemma. This has multiple layers so bear with me. Many years ago I was running a Curse of Strahd campaign for a group of friends bi-weekly. This was large group of 8 in total with differing schedules but luckily we were able to make Saturdays work. Everything was going great until one of my players approached me and said he joined a soccer league on Saturdays and could no longer do this day. Keep in mind this was his 3rd team he joined and no other day worked for the party. So, naturally I was hurt because I enjoyed those nights and I don't like playing without the whole party. Other players were upset too and this led to it coming up during a night of drinking at a birthday party. Things got emotional and a bit heated, but nothing crazy (i swear). Here's the issue...partway through the argument one of my bestfriends who lived out of state (and also plays dnd) heard we were arguing about dnd and I guess misunderstood and told me, "Clearly none of your players are having fun" and other things like that. I was too confused to defend myself and I believe this has led him to think I am not a fun person to play with. Quickly the OG party made up and is still active years later, but this other friend hosts online dnds and even after some subtle nudging I've never been invited to play with him or he says he will and doesn't. Justices am I crazy to think he still considers me a problem DM because of this night and if so do I try and explain after all these years? I am at your mercy.

Rob's Wit

Honorable Judges and Fish Baron Bailiff, I bring to you the case of the soul shaped centaur. My four players, one of them being a centaur (Pookie), completed an encounter in the heart of a Soul Forge. A place meant to alter the "Shape of the Soul." Both the chamber and baddie (an amalgamation of corrupted souls) had effects that hinted strongly at the nature of the chamber and the dangers within. One of these hints was a small pool of ethereal liquid at the center of the chamber. Not only that, my players have seen this very energy cause irrevocable damage throughout the 1.5 year campaign. Judges, would you drink this water? As my centaur player did so without hesitation, I asked for a constitution save and Pookie rolled a natural 1. The consequence? I described that what happened next was akin to a True Polymorph spell-like effect that caused Pookie to permanently take the form of a two-legged humanoid. Judges, I very rarely pull punches as a DM, but this player's reaction to this was sad and dejected enough to make me retcon the description and resort to a messily described Polymorph that turned him into a horse until the had the opportunity to long rest. The other players all pushed back on this retcon and still bring this up, as all the other players at the table found it to be hilarious. Was I right to react so quickly to my player's initial reaction? Or should I have stuck to my guns based on the energy of the table as whole?

Darren Hanratty

To the honourable justices and the often underappreciated bailiff Fake, My friends and I were playing a pirate themed campaign, and the crew ran afoul of a deck of lesser things (a deck of many things variant) with all drawing curses. One PC would float into the sky if they were not holding a specific stone on their person, one would appear to be dead while sleeping, and one who would immediately sink if they fell into water. The first two took their curses in good humour, but the third immediately said that they should be able to get rid of this curse somehow or they would just roll a new character right away. They argued since it was a pirate campaign they couldn't play a character who would immediately drown.

David Pazmino

Your Honor, esteemed members of the court, and the radiant beacon of justice that is Bailiff Emily, I come before you today to present a tale of magic, mayhem, and one very disgruntled fighter. I was running a Strixhaven campaign—a magical school setting, basically Hogwarts but with more student debt and fewer owls. The halls of this arcane academia ended in chaos because one player refused to read the syllabus. During character creation, I told my players there would be some homebrew rules allowing martial classes to potentially learn magic later in the campaign. The issue arose when all but one player chose spellcasters: a wizard, artificer, druid, and warlock. The lone player decided to play a Champion Fighter. Once the campaign started, he became upset that he couldn’t cast magic despite attending a magic school. I reminded him that he could learn a cantrip and low-level spells later, but he argued he should have been able to cast magic from the beginning. I offered to let him switch to the Eldritch Knight subclass if he wanted to cast spells immediately, but he refused, saying it wasn’t how he wanted to build his character. The tension grew, and eventually, the group fell apart. So, I ask: Was I wrong as the DM to not give him spells outright?

Nick_Nack_Patty_Whack

Theoretical scenario here: 1. a Giff (hippo build) counts as being one size larger than they are when it comes to carrying capacity 2. At level 18, a rune knight can become huge. How much would you allow a huge Giff to carry? Posture check! How much could this previously stated character carry if they had enlarge/reduce cast on them? Bladder check! What if this character (including everything stated before) took a level of wild magic sorcerer, rolled a nat 1 on their wild magic surge, then rolled a 93 or 94 to becoming me one size larger. How much would you let them carry? Newjerseydevilssuck check Could you add this check in later: WhenwasthelasttimetheNewJerseyDevilswontheStanleyCup check

Zoologist440

To the grandiloquent justices, and the churlish, rapscallion Amy. I bring you the case of the Wicked Winter One-shot. After my first DnD group finished Curse of Strahd, my brother, who had DMed for us, was excited to be a PC in our next venture. A couple of us were interested in trying out DMing, and we decided that one of us would begin preparing to run another module, while the other would run a One Shot in between. Clearly excited by the levels we never reached in Strahd, the One Shot DM told us to roll level 15 characters, which made us all even more excited. Fast forward to the One shot. Our party met at an inn on the southern border of a snowy mountain range, and it became clear immediately that our mission would take us into the snow. There had been no mention before the game that we would be dealing with extreme cold, so all the characters had no cold weather gear for protection. With some survival checks, most of the characters tried to fashion cloaks out of blankets from the inn. We set off into the frigid cold and our DM immediately had everyone take 1 level of exhaustion as "the thin blankets wouldn't be enough to keep you warm". My druid used their Alter Shape ability to grow fur and keep the smaller PC's warm, but the others were out of luck. We eventually run into a young white dragon, befriend it with animal handling, then begin to fly it up the mountains rather than walk (dope). As we are flying, the DM says we see an avalanche coming down the mountain. When we tell him that we will just fly over it, he says "How high?" "Enough to be over it?" "No, how high exactly?" "Idk like 300 ft?" He then took out a d6 and rolled a 6. "The avalanche is 600ft high and knocks you off the dragon." We all expressed our dissatisfaction and complained that an avalanche could never be 600ft above the ground. The session ended there for the night, and we never finished that One Shot, though we all remain friends and occasionally play DnD to this day. My question is, should we have been given at least some warning of the dangerous weather? Should we have been able to fly over any avalanche, height randomly generated or otherwise? Or is all fair in high level play and we unfairly criticized our DM? I humbly await your judgement.

Tuesday Cross, only here for the surf n’ murph.

To the illustrious all-knowing justices, and to the babe of a bailiff, I present to you a case of DM vs DM. I ran a one-shot for our table and forever DM. The party encountered a trap/puzzle I had designed, and one of the players thought of a way of solving it that was technically ‘incorrect’, but way more interesting than what I had planned. So, I told him he solved it and rewarded the party. After the session, that player posted in the group channel to say it was the best session of DnD he has ever played, (we’ve been playing together for 3 years) and it was specifically due to that moment. The forever DM contacted me privately, wanting to discuss the behind-the-scenes mechanics of the entire one shot, because in his words, he wanted to learn how I had made it so enjoyable. I revealed to him that I had changed things here and there on the fly in order to create the most interesting experience. I normally wouldn’t share ‘the man behind the curtain’ with anyone, but I figured he is also a DM, surely he’s doing the same thing? He was not impressed. He later presented us with a puzzle in our canon campaign, and went out of his way to specifically say that he wasn’t just going to change the answer just because it might be more interesting. Is he right to be salty with me? P.S. We did eventually fall in love IRL, but our different DMing styles still need to be resolved in court.

Patrick Ferris

To the principled judges and the putrid bailiff, Blake: A few years back I ran a Curse of Strahd campaign for some friends where I tried my damndest to get at least one player to betray the party. Being the seductive DM that I am, one PC actually took the bait. The barbarian of the party, Mashi, accepted the dark gift of vampirism, much to the parties dismay. At the time, my group followed a rule that so long as only one player was missing from the table, we would continue the session without them (5 player total). The session following Mashi’s infection, their player could not make it. I hadn’t planned for the infection to take hold quickly, so I expected Mashi to be around for at least a few more sessions. Honorable judges, the other party members IMMEDIATELY began scrutinizing Mashi at the beginning of the session. I, not wanting to fully roleplay one of my player’s characters, had Mashi run away and hide. The party pursued. Relentlessly. I was forced to play as Mashi, being berated by all of the party, before ultimately being told to leave and never come back. I tried to draw out the situation long enough for it to pick up in the next session, but the party would not back down, and Mashi’s player started next week slightly peeved, and with a new character sheet. Judges, wtf? Luckily we’re are all friends at the table, and though I still get razzed on occasion for allowing a player to miss such a crucial character moment, we’ve since moved on to bigger and better campaigns.

Ziel R.

Honorable Cardinals of the Crit. My DM "Technically" fudged a roll, but I come before the Diocese of Dice not with a confessional but a Canticle! Thus I bring to you the tale of the Dice Christ Miracle In the campaign I play in, we've been aware of the presence of a mysterious figure that we cannot directly perceive. Much like Dr. Who's Silence, it is something that exists on the periphery of our perception. We recently learned that this mysterious figure was using the realm of dreams to move around and thus our party's Eladrin Arch Fey Warlock hatched a crazy plan to corner the guy*. In our campaign instead of a standard D20 luck check, the DM will sometimes call for a contested Fate roll in moments where a player hatches a plan that is outside the standard rules of the game. In this, the player has to beat the DM in a contested d100 roll. The warlock went first. He rolled his 100 sided 1d100, and it came up a nat 1. The mood at the table sank considerably, but the DM said he would roll his anyway just in case he tied and it had to go to a roll off. The DM rolled his dice, two 10-sided die that made up his 2x10d100. Well... he didn't roll a 1, and the mood sank more. There are two ways to read a 2x10d100. 0-99 (000 is a 0) or 1-100 (000 is 100). Since a 1d100 can only be read 1-100, a 2x10d100 should be read as 1-100 to put both styles of dice on even footing. In fact, the DM had said as much previous rolls. However, this time, without missing a beat, he said "well. You can all read the dice. That's a Zero" and awarded the roll to the warlock leading to us finally meeting the elusive Scribe and getting the mother of all lore dumps.

Martin Wolf

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the kindly Baliff Sally, I submit for your consideration the case of the dynamite tent. A year or so ago, some friends and I started a series of 5e wild west one-shots. For the inaugural session, the local town's mayor asked us to go clear out some bandits holding a bridge outside of town. The fight was grueling, even with 5 level 3 characters, and all but one of us went down at least once in the face of a low-teens number of enemies, with revolvers and a crate full of dynamite. Finally we forced the leader, who we were all extremely annoyed with, to retreat to a multi-room tent in the valley below the bridge with one or two goons. They left behind their dynamite. Seeing an opportunity for a wild west action movie moment, a few of us grabbed handfuls of the "over a dozen" sticks we were told remained and threw them into the bandits' tent. The result was a spectacular annihilation of a cruel bandit chief. Here is the sticky part. When we went to explore the tent, we found a litany of crisped papers, destroyed furniture, and a humanoid corpse in a cage, destroyed by the dynamite. It was absolutely not foreshadowed or hinted at in any way that the bandits had prisoners. This was, generally speaking, a huge bummer. Justices, my question is this: was it incumbent on the players to behave more carefully and always assume there may be civilians in the blast zone? Or is it reasonable to expect the GM to indicate that there may be innocents nearby when a bunch of loose canons are handed a crate full of dynamite? Our games went on and the incident has never been mentioned again, and it hasn't impacted the enjoyment of future one shots, but I still feel bad that I unknowingly turned an innocent prisoner into a crispy critter. I await your judgement.

Frank

PS: the group later completely disbanded because the DM ended up being a creep with my ex coworker

BlondeBandit

To the justices most high and the bailiff most low, I present the case of the Death by Deermen: I am in a campaign with old friends where we play our 2011 high school selves, sucked into a dark, magical version of our hometown. Our party includes my beloved husband, my high school sweetheart - let's call him John. At this time in 2011, however, we aren't dating - we're just "talking." During some downtime, John announces that he's going hunting while the rest of the party goes to the bar. As the party's ranger, I follow my crush from afar to make sure he doesn't come to harm, and, I'll admit, angling for a chance to show off my badassery. We end up in an encounter with 6 minocervs (like a minotaur but with deer parts). My genie warlock of a husband takes the fight head on, while I break my stealth, say we should get out of here, and then misty step away. But John says, "We can take them," and blasts a sweet fireball into their faces. So on my next turn, I turn around and crit, doing big damage but still not killing any, showing us that we are clearly outmatched and this encounter was likely designed for our whole party of nine. Saying nothing to me, either in character or out, John thunder steps 120 feet away, putting himself out of range and leaving me with all of the minocervs. "Okay," I think, "this is great - he's going to try to use his high charisma to goad them into chasing him." Nope. He uses the rest of his movement to get further away and announces the end of his turn. I am gored to death. I look at John, shocked, and he asks, "What? What did you expect me to do?" They then tear into me as I'm doing death saves and John continues running away and shooting off repelling Eldritch blasts. I die, while the rest of the party looks on in amused horror. Justices, I know I am not blameless in my demise but I come to your court looking for a pound of flesh, even if it be my own. I ask you: was John right to try to save himself at my expense, because, as he said said later, "You were going die no matter what, but I had a chance to make it"? (FYI, he died in a few more rounds.) Or am I justified in feeling profoundly betrayed, believing that my party member, my crush, my future husband should have at least tried to save me? We humbly await your ruling. P.S. If relevant, our characters know that death isn't permanent for us in this world. We revive within a few minutes, but pieces of our souls fly away in a burst of necrotic energy, and we don't know why. Considering how gleeful our DM gets when he kills us, I think it's gonna be bad.

Brock

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

Cyrus

Pebble bitches and dudes of the court, and also Murph, I write to you about the case of the DM’s Irish Goodbye and their Mistress. Honorable justices, nobel bailiff, I bring a tale from a high school dnd mishap. Back in school I loved dnd (as I do now) and was eager to play as much as possible. I ended up finding three people who wanted to play so I set something up at my house (I was dming). They came, we played, but two of them kept would doing things I wasn’t comfortable with, they would make constant sexual references (my parents were in the house) and kept trying to fight each other (I am not a fan of PvP and made it clear). I would talk to them, but they never stopped, at one point they even started running around the house. After a few sessions going similarly and them continually ignoring me, I stopped setting up meetings. It petered out. Later on, I ended up starting a new group and never told the two people. I simply didn’t know if they’d listen. (The third person was kind and I invited them to join, they did.) One of them found and was angry I never said anything. Should I have kept trying? Was I right to take a mistress (second dnd group) in secret?

Riley M

Forgive me Mommies for I have sinned! I railroaded my players instantly, session 1 of our campaign, no less! My party found themselves starting at an annual ceremony celebrating the Tree of Life that grows within their hometown. The tradition is the ceremony starts each year with a toast and drinking of the trees sap. Little did they know, the sap was corrupted by something I won’t reveal yet in case they’re listening. The local pastor (an evil Denny-type) was so insistent on the ceremony going well, it caused multiple rolls to be asked for about the upcoming celebration, which included a Nat 20 nature check from our sorcerer. I told them, something seemed off with the tree. The celebration happened and the sorcerer didn’t want to toast or drink. I spent the next five minutes convincing them it was fine, until they relented to taking “the smallest sip”, which I took as permission to continue my hallucinogenic battle sequence I had planned. It was the sorcerers first time in a long form campaign, so they just accepted it as part of the story telling, but upon reflection I could have done much better. May Dice Christ forgive me? Or smite me into the ground like the tiny little worm I am.

Josh Kumar

To the effervescent justices and the wife worm baliff, I present the murder case of Krazamaz the half orc druid. For background, I take issue with the way 5e handles failed death saves by melee weapons. It doesn't really make sense to me that a level 20 champion fighter on death's door would need ~200 points of damage in one turn to kill them outright, or could simply be knocked down and killed by two bandits who take a couple swipes at their prone body. I feel that it cheapens an otherwise important story moment by not giving a player a chance to roll, and so I silently vowed to myself not to kill my players in this way (note, I was not above taking away their death saves, but I don't like outright killing them this way). Fast forward to the most recent session of the campaign I DM and my friend Krazamaz was visited by a powerful crime boss in a dream and offered a deal. Instead of taking it, he proceeded to insult the boss and challenge him to kill him. Having once not killed Kraz due to cowardice on my part for a very similar situation, I knew he had to die. Cut to the ensuing fight the next day where it was obvious that the party was outmatched and that Kraz was the clear target. Kraz went down and the next turn in initiative was a knight who gets two attacks. While I faced trepidation breaking my own rule, my actual friend kept yelling at me "Go on, do it then!", and since it was obvious the battle would just become a slog if I didn't, I had the knight kill Kraz with two swipes of his blade. Justices, was breaking my rule a mistake, or was my mistake making the rule in the first place? Conversely, is there any merit to not wanting to kill your players in this fashion? I leave my fate at the mercy of the court.

Lady Jacqueline P

To the honorable justices and the lovely sweet bailiff of the week may I bring you the case of the crispy kitty. I was playing as a tabaxi gunslinger and our group was exploring a evil temple when our turtle cleric charged through a hidden wall. Worried about splitting the party I and our hexblabe warlock followed him through as he was about to open a random door. We warned him it might be a bad idea since the player was known for doing this as "it's what my character would do." We were instantly confronted with three flame skulls that killed all three of us in one round leading us to need to create new characters mid session. I ask you justices was this the DM punishing the cleric to teach him a lesson or did we deserve a rushed combat for splitting the party? I ask for your humble and swift judgement.

Myckeli

May it please the crit and the honorable justices and magnificent bailiff, I present the case of players misrepresenting themselves and not putting any effort into learning the game outside of me leading them by the hand. I advertised in a local gaming group to find people to play dnd with, and managed to get two people that said they had been wanting to play for a while and seemed psyched. One of these players were visually impaired, so I made sure any material I sent them was compatible with a screen reader. I sent a short introduction to my world and character options, describing races, classes and other things they would need to know to think about concepts for characters before session 0. Session 0 arrives, and they havent read anything. Turns out, they dont even really know what dnd is. I had to tell them the basics and present all the options live, show what the dice looked/felt like and explain all the basic terminology. I basically made their characters for them. Afterwards I made digital character sheets and a spell list (again compatible with screen readers) so they could prepare for our next session. Did they read any of it? Nope. I gave it two sessions and then abandoned the group because of their lack of effort. Now I need the honorable justices to tell me; was I expecting too much of new players? I humblt await your judgement.

noah for now

to lovely emailey and the juicy justices, i bring you the case of the guy who won’t send me his character sheet. i am a dm for a campaign in my homebrew world. i met my four players through my college’s sci-fi and fantasy club. before we started playing, i asked them to send over their character sheets so i could have them for lore and helping the 3 new d&d players during combat. my other 3 players sent their sheets as soon as they were done with them, but the fourth guy (who was one of the new-to-d&d players) never sent it over. i reminded him a couple times, but even after we started playing, he didn’t send me his sheet. over the break between semesters, i wanted to make spell/ability cards for my players and, since this guy decided to play a wizard, i asked him again for his character sheet. he didn’t respond any time throughout the month long break, so i didn’t make him any spell cards. in the last session we played, he didn’t even bring his character sheet to the session, which was pretty combat-focused. he didn’t remember the names of any of the spells he might’ve had, so all he was able to do was shoot a crossbow that i remembered he bought in the first session. judges and emily, am i right to be annoyed at this guy?

Mason McCauley

Dear Honorable Justices and Bailiff Emmett, I present to you the case of the Unidentifiable Potion Puzzle. A few years ago, I DMed and one-shot for my girlfriend, her sister, and her sister’s boyfriend to introduce them all to D&D. They were a group of adventurers sent to liberate the castle of a wizard family from goblins and trolls. In the wizard’s tower, I placed a fun and simple puzzle that let them get to a secret treasure room. There was a wall of a dozen bottles that had a variety of effects like 5 seconds of flight, invisibility, and spontaneous combustion. The solution was to mix the correct 3 bottles and create a Potion of Teleportation that would send them to the treasure room. Upon seeing this, my girlfriend’s Wizard said she wanted to cast Identify on the potions. I said “That’s really smart but I can’t let you do that because I want you to solve my puzzle.” She was fine with this and the party went on to try and solve the puzzle. They eventually did (although it took a little longer than I had planned) and got to the treasure. Since this one-shot, my girlfriend and I have talked about this moment a few times. She says that she was a little disappointed but understands where I was coming from. However, I have started to feel like I made the wrong choice. Isn’t it part of the game for a player to completely bypass a challenge in a way the DM didn’t expect? Would that have been a truer introduction to the game? Your honors, should I have let my girlfriend cast the spell? Or was I right to force my players to do my puzzle? I lay myself at your mercy. P.S. My girlfriend’s sister’s boyfriend decided last minute to play a tortle with a moose familiar instead of an Aragorn-style ranger “because ninja turtles”. So, maybe my attitude towards siding with my players was a bit off before the session started.

Robynn

To the Crit justices and the very cutesy very respectful very demure bailiff Jake, I present the case of the stolen wizard kitty. I’m currently Dming a homebrewed sandbox one on one campaign that’s been going on for over 151 sessions now, and I’ve had my favourite npc taken from me for almost 50+ sessions now. On session one I introduced the deck of many things through a wizard cat, not a tabaxi a full on 4 legged cat who wears purple robes Merlyn style whose name is Squinkels. My own dm pc pulled the void card which lead to our very first adventure. Ever since then I’ve had Squinkels pop in from time to time to spice things up. My player grew to love this chaotic kitty or so I was lead to believe. Sidian my players pc a drow/Genasi/high elf (he has lots of mothers) rouge/warlock got his hands on a deck of many things. When Squinkels appeared next, Sid challenged squinkels to a game of go fish with a very high persuasion check and deception check he convinced squinkels to pull 5 cards from the deck first. The first card was Idiot: Permanently reduce your Intelligence by 1d4 + 1 (to a minimum score of 1). You can draw one additional card beyond your declared draws. (He got a full 5) the second card was Moon: You are granted the ability to cast the wish spell 1d3 times. (I home-brewed them as wish stones for later use He got a full 3) the third card was Donjon: You disappear and become entombed in a state of suspended animation in an extradimensional sphere. Everything you were wearing and carrying stays behind in the space you occupied when you disappeared. You remain imprisoned until you are found and removed from the sphere. You can't be located by any divination magic, but a wish spell can reveal the location of your prison. You draw no more cards. (I used a table to see where he ended up and he ended up in Sid’s house) With that my beloved npc was gone. Is this karma for all of the squinknanagins? My player (shout out to Ryan for deal with my goofs 🙌🏻) knows that I’ve been missing my poor kitty but will not give him back (he has 3 wish stones so he could give him back) is he right for keeping my kitty locked up or should he be released with a warning? We will both be waiting for your ruling (this will determine whether he will be released or not)

Rayde

To the adulated judges and the disparaged bailiff Jamantha, I submit before the court the 20 year old Case of the Anxiety Inducing Magical Item. My friends and I played DnD 3.5th edition back in high school about 20 years ago. I played a Tempest Cleric Dragonborn and had a lot of fun with my one of my friends DMing, but I will say he was fast and loose with the rules. During an adventure, I had been given a golden four leaf clover magical item with no other details about it, just that it was magical. Cut to the next time I would open a chest and my DM asks me, 'what's inside?'. I was stunned and thought "you are supposed to tell me what's inside". So I respond and say "1 million gold" as a joke. He responds with "are you sure?". Thinking this is a trick I say "no" and was given the response of "the gold disappears". I would open a chest in a future session with the same back and forth but this time I would say that the gold was definitely in there, but every time I wavered with the item or gold existing, said item would disappear. I remember the other players at my table laughing at this and it made me believe that they were in on the joke the DM was playing, so I ignored the item from there and never opened a chest again with that character. A few years ago, I asked my DM friend, what was that magical four leaf clover and he told me, "it was an item that would give you anything you wanted if you believed it existed". I then wondered about how do I make my DM believe my fantasy character believes a fake treasure is real? And the thought still pops into my head now and again. So judges, did my DM prank me by making me question what is real in my everyday life, or is my imagination just not strong enough?

Ziel R.

* In this setting, the Fae Wild is, ironically, the prime plane. It's a wild place of magic and dreams that from which all the material planes spin off of. There are untold number of material planes that all overlap the fae wild which were given form from the power of magic and dreams emanating from the fae wild. We learned that this mysterious figure was using the realm of dreams which existed on the periphery of reality to travel. Our party's warlock, as mentioned earlier, is an Eladrin who is a knight of Oberon, the arch fae who second in command only to Titania and who controls the power of dreams and gives the warlock access to the Dream spell. Our warlock said that since his power comes from the power of dreams, he has the ability to manipulate dreams, and since he is an eladrin and therefore shares the collective unconscious with all the other fae wild elves, he wanted to use Dream on himself as he slipped into a trance to give chase and pursue the figure into the barrier between worlds. The DM was like. That's insane. Roll a d100. (D.S. al coda)

Jackson Tressel

(You could use only one or two of these stories instead of all three if you prefer) To the greatly honored judges of all that is good and beautiful, and that really cool guest dm who should think about staying for an 8-bit book club episode as well. I worked at a small summer camp run through my old middle school last summer. Early on in the year I tried to help at the board game club in the camp, but after mentioning DnD once, I ended up having so many kids ask me about it that I started the first ever DnD club there, and straight up INDOCTRINATED some of the kids into loving DnD. It was great, since I am one of the younger group leaders there, I kind of got to let my kid self free and really connect with these guys, some of which I see at little sibling now. The tough issue was that I also still had to be a semi-teacher along as a DM and a friend. There are three main examples of things that happened that would be easier to figure out with friends, but as their teacher was impossible to navigate. First:There were so many kids that wanted to join that a second teacher started to dm the same starter adventure then me. Unfortunately, kids who sat in with me when she was gone straight up told me that I was better at DMing then her, and they would try to convince me to let them join my already larger group, so I had to sit them down and explain the hard work of the other DM was important and not to disrespect that Second: There were two boys in the group that were the most engaged in the beginning, but they slowly started taking advantage of that fact by telling the girls in the group what to do during their turns and how much cooler their character were then them. My solution to this was to have the two boys favorite npc have to have a heart to heart with them and talk above game about their behavior. Three: There were two girls who lowkey were kind of bullies and annoyingly controlling outside the game and in, and after a couple of incidents where they needed to write apology letters, me and my boss talked and they lost DND as a privilege. They were sad and understanding, but the group was excited for them to leave and cheered when I told them they weren’t coming back, in which I had to stop and tell them they can’t judge and be mean to kids like that (even if I was happy that they wouldn’t interrupt the game with their antics anymore as well) This is starting to feel like dice Christ, but I want to see if I was in the right as a DM since I will most likely go back to this job next summer, and I need to make sure that not only were these moves good as a DM, but good as the weird extra DM power I have as their counselor. I am ready for whatever punishment awaits so that I can optimally entrap these kids into an addiction of TTRPGs without becoming a 5th grade bully of a DM

Christopher

Dear Bailiff Jake, This case is cut and dry — we can handle it without the others. Send them to recess. (And please make sure Justice Tanner does not eat any sandbox sand at recess.) I need you to punish my rogue. After a recent fight, my rogue openly stated he had used ChatGPT to cheat, typing in the current scenario and asking what he should do. Not only did ChatGPT give him terrible, incorrect suggestions such as “make sure you help the ranger use their Sneak Attack” and “cast Counterspell preemptively to make sure the enemy can’t cast spells,” he chose to ignore all of the advice, attempting to hide under a couch like a cartoon character while the ranger fought for his life. We discussed it like reasonable adults, and he won’t do it again. But Jake — need I say more? Punish him. Humbly, Christopher

Hugo Wull

If it may please the court (please roll on the Wild Magic Surge Table to determine what effect this case will have on the bailiff): I am writing today asking the court to issue an injunction against my wife stealing my dice. When we started playing DND together, I bought her a set of metal dice. This was about two years ago, and in the time since she has become an absolute magpie for dice, and brings 6 full sets to each session we play (plus a spare D20). She has gone so far as to buy me a set of new dice so as to justify taking sets of my dice that she particularly likes. In a game two weeks ago, I was setting up my DM screen when she asked to see a new D20 I bought earlier that week; it was blue and has The One Ring from Lord of the Rings suspended inside of it. She attempted to pocket the new die, claiming she liked it, and tried to trade me back a die she had stolen from me 3 months ago (a NADDPOD Paw Paw D20). Though I siccesssfully recovered my precious new D20, I am asking for an end to the polyhedral shenanigans via an official court ruling. Thank you, and may Dice Christ bless us all.

Doctor Ransom

May it please the Supreme Crit, I have a daunting case that I feel all kinds of ick about. I bring to you the case of the Fire Giant Royal Fumble. I recently ran a high level one shot with some folks online involving a battle with Fire Giants, which are classified as Huge creatures. Remember that as it plays an important part later. The final battle pops off with a Fire Giant Forgecaller and the Goliath monk player tells me he uses his Hill Tumble feature to knock it prone. Cool, I ask for a saving throw and he replies, “There isn’t one.” Hmm that doesn’t seem right. I ask if it works on a Huge creature and he says yes because he used his Goliath’s enlarge ability to become a large creature. I didn’t look up the ability and trusted the player and their overpowered ability. What proceeded to happen was my BBEG get autoprone-locked and got its ever-loving ass destroyed ten ways till Sunday. I became very sullen and annoyed but let their sweeping victory ride. Upon closer look on his character sheet I find out he cannot in fact knock Huge creatures prone. Justices I beseech the worst punishment imaginable for this player. I must sleep peacefully in the knowledge that his shit gets wrecked like mine hath been irrevocably wrecked.

Katie

To the venerated priests of Dice Christ, forgive me, for I have sinned. My friend’s PC’s birthday was coming up, so I worked with my DM to secretly buy her the Eyes of Minute Seeing as a birthday gift. In-game time went by slower than I thought it would, and I ended up with this gift sitting in my inventory on D&D Beyond for several sessions. Recently, I rolled an investigation check, and gave myself advantage as dictated by my sheet. I sometimes struggle with keeping track of all my abilities (I’m a level 16 wizard), so after rolling two 17s I decided to remind myself of where this advantage came from, and clicked the small green “A” next to the stat. To my horror, I realized I had accidentally equipped the Eyes of Minute Seeing and was benefitting from their advantage. I believe I’ve only used this unearned advantage once or twice before the double 17s, but the guilt still eats at me. My DM told me to do three Hail Marys and one push-up in repentance, but I’m agnostic and have poor upper body strength, so I humbly submit myself to the church for your (hopefully different) penance.

Tom L

May it please the judges: my gaming group is currently nearing the climax of a campaign where we're trying to prevent a literal apocalypse being brought about by a cult. We're currently traveling across the African veldt towards the site of our (presumedly) final showdown when we noticed another group moving in a similar direction, maybe 2 miles away. We were obviously suspicious but it wasn't until we got closer that we discovered they were in fact cultists. We waited till nightfall to attack them, at which time we noticed not just their campfire, but other campfires - a lot of them. Dozens of campfires, the closest of which were 2 miles away. Almost definitely more cultists moving in the same direction. As we prepared to attach, our DM confirmed that gunshots - including our revolvers and other pistols, specifically - would almost certainly be heard by the other camps despite other ambient noise and natural features. We all trusted our noble DM, only to find via a simple internet search the following day, that pistol shots can only typically be heard up to 1 mile away. I've found nothing that seems to support our DM. We put ourselves in unnecessary danger by assaulting the cultists in close combat, narrowly avoiding significant losses - all the while knowing that we'd likely have at least a few more of these encounters on our journey, though we stole their robes to disguise ourselves. Anyways, we staged the bodies in compromising positions, like with their hands on each others' junk and/or butts, or like they were french kissing when they were killed. But as we progressed towards our goal, none of the other cultists were delayed or deviated from their path despite many of the groups easily coming close enough to notice that a camp had not been broken. I can understand not caring about an abandoned camp, but if I found out some coworkers were frenching in secret, I feel like any person would take some time to gossip, regardless of that person's political or religious affiliation. So I ask you, fair judges, was it correct for the DM to apparently decide that the cultists were ambivalent to the frenching cultists, to the point that they weren't delayed even a little? It seems like it would add some realism and flavor to the world, and if it helps us avoid an encounter or two, that seems like an ok price to pay.

Joseph T

To the benevolent judges and that guy who reads the cases . I bring forth the case of the razzed revivify. Many years ago I was playing my first ever character, a rightious paladin (I've matured, I swear it!). When our party reached our first large city, my character had decided to split from the party in search of information amongst the people of the streets the secret about a secret ruling class of dragons within neverwinter. After having had a few NPC conversations my DM set bandits on my character in an alleyway. After failed attempts to dissuade them from attacking my paladin I quickly defeated them by using a javelin of lightning at my feet. When my DM gave me an opportunity to inspect my surroundings I rolled well, to which he revealed that I had unknowingly struck and killed a small orphan boy hidden in a barrel (none were mentioned until this point) Racked with guilt, my character used his scroll of revivify. My DM asked me to make an arcana roll for casting the spell. I rolled low. My DM announced that the spell had worked but only enough to restore the poor child to a vegetative state. My character frantically tried mitigating the situation by giving all his gold and instructions that his orphanage use the money to take care of him. For the rest of the campaign, not only was I razzed by the rest of the table for "wasting" a scroll of revivify but also shamed whenever i tried to make a moral decision for my character. So I ask of the Justices, Was my DM cruel to thrust such an agregious act upon my character? Or was I deserving of all the razzle dazzle for being a first-time player Paladin?

Aaron Gurley

To the holy priests and priestess of the church: I have been forsaken by dice Christ and fear the heavenly retribution will never end. I am new to DND and am a player in one campaign and a DM in another. During my third session as a DM, my level 3 bard player (Timothy the two-leg taylor) thought it would be wise to convince every enemy they encountered for the entire session to meet at the same place so he could throw them a concert. After back to back nat 20s, Tim had convinced 5x bandits, 3x thugs, and 1x acolyte to congregate in the bandit captain’s fort. My players then threw a single alchemist fire in the room with them. I asked if they locked the door to which they replied “no.” During the ensuing fight, every player and friendly NPC was down except for Tim. I had rolled 8 nat 20s (4 of which were in a row) and instead changed them to 12-14s to give them some kind of chance. The PCs were able to barely survive the encounter. I did not feel bad about my decision to not have a TPK on my third session as a DM and my players third ever session. However, cut to my other campaign where I play a paladin. Over the past 2 sessions (typically 4ish hours long) I have not rolled above a 10, even with advantage. I have yet to landed a hit or pass an ability check. I prostrate myself before the church and before dice Christ. What must I do for penance? Must I kill my players? I humbly await your judgement.

Cas

To the honorable judges and that one guy who won’t stop following me in my dreams: I’m DMing for a table of newbies which has a girl named Abby. When she initially agreed to play, I thanked her and she said, “You just seemed really desperate in the group chat so…” and proceeded to send her character’s backstory which was just the lyrics to Copacabana. When it came to our first session, instead of helping the rest of the party in combat, she immediately dashed to a pirate ship that was a neutral zone. When the rest of the party was upset, she claimed, “It’s just what my character would do, she doesn’t know you guys.” While I understood what she meant, I had trouble navigating how to introduce the teammwork aspect of the game to her in a way that made sense. Myself and the rest of the table became frustrated when it came to her turn and she claimed she “Couldn’t do anything,” and got defensive when someone asked why she left them behind. Some players even took walks outside because her turns would take so long to sit through. Justices, is it wrong for me to crash out over this? I know it’s her first time playing so I remained patient but it’s been affecting the rest of my players. Should I give her another shot? PS Before I even started talking, she asked if I needed to wear a Wizard Hat during the session 0 and delayed us by an hour.

Matthew J

To the honorable justices and Jake who is canonically 4 feet tall in my home campaign, 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, my Paladin, who had been elected captain by the rest of the party, was keeping watch at the helm. In character, I had to step away for a moment, so I asked the party’s Bard, who was also the ship’s first mate, 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, and he narrated his character casually pushing the Artificer away. The Artificer reacted by biting him with her secret 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 robot familiar to shoot me in the back. The party then collectively turned on her, and the Bard, who was convinced that the Artificer was a full vampire, finished her off while she was rolling death saves. After tying her up, we cast Revivify on her so we could get answers (and, out of game, to give the Artificer player a second chance with the character). For the next two hours, we begged her 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). When our characters stepped off to the side to discuss how to proceed, the Artificer tried to break free of her bonds and escape. We knocked her back to 0 HP, and, seeing no other course of action that made sense in character, we ultimately decided to kill her. 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 character twice, or were we justified in executing an unapologetic instigator? We humbly await your judgment.

A.J.

Dear the Delightful Bailiff and the slightly less Delightful Justices, I seek your help remedying a messy interpersonal situation I have going on. I (a virgo) am a forever DM for my group of 5 players. 4 of the players I have been playing with for over 3 years. At the start of our new campaign we added another player (another virgo) playing a barbarian who is the boyfriend of one of my existing players (a leo) who is playing a wizard. They have been together for over two years and we all get along as a group well. Here in lies my problem. Whenever they play together, the barbarian goes in on the wizard's character and combat choices pretty hard. They are mostly in good fun but the wizard is one of those people who don't respond great to razzing. To me, it seems to genuinely upset the wizard, who has talked to me about how difficult he finds taking bigger role play swings and also gets frustrated when rolling poorly. It has gotten to the point that a couple other players make some jokes about the wizard, again in good fun, but it only seems to frustrate him more. This is where my problem lies. Do I talk to my barbarian? It's his boyfriend and, to my knowledge, their relationship is good otherwise. I seek advice in mediating my messiness and lay myself promptly at the mercy of the court.

Snailis The Eldritch Snail

To the magnanimously brilliant justices and the bailiff who is either glorious or not notable, depending on whom where’s the hat, I bring you the case of the Unwanted Killers. Me and four friends are playing in a more story focused dnd game. Very little combat but a lot of roleplay. We were briefed during session zero that our dm didn’t want random killings of creatures because it was their first time dming. During the first hour two of the four of us, the tabaxi and Dragonborn, immediately attacked and tried to kill the kidnappers who needed to grab us to start the story. I should mention that I as well attempted to do so but only because I knew I couldn’t do much. Judges this is not a question of who was guilty but rather of what punishment should I personally face. I let peer pressure warp my agreement to our dms rule, and while unsuccessful it was still attempted murder.

rollinginthecrits

To the honorable, extremely hot justices and even hotter bailiff Emily, I humbly request an amelioration of “Bullspit”/Evil DM dad’s sentencing. I happen to be in front of the whole family in line for the Tron coaster at Disneyworld in January. We started chatting because they noticed the dnd/naddpod pins on my jacket, they were explaining they’re a family playing a campaign and the twins are new to playing but couldn’t listen to NADDPOD because they’d just turned 13, to which I asked, “Wait a minute, weren’t you guys just a Dungeon Court case?”, they confirmed and the conversation ramped up. Bullspit/Evil DM dad was an extremely good sport about being recognized for his crimes by a complete stranger. But also, he told me that because his kids had shown interest in DND, he hopped straight into 5e from 2e without a second thought and is learning along the way! I humbly seek a lighter sentence for a dad who may have still made a bad call in the moment, but overall reminds us that DMing is an act of love and a desire to tell stories with and for the people we care about. (Also Bullspit family if you’re reading this - Hi!!!! You were right, about Tron! I had SUCH a good time and I hope that the twins enjoyed the rest of their birthday trip!)

Michael McEntee

Make up a story thats all about Murph rolling a table check without asking and consistently making the table fail checks “I have good a chance at rolling good as any of you”

Christopher Martin-Givens

I just want Murph to talk about John Cena's heel turn and what's going on with the Rock in WWE

TecJec

May it please the irreproachable Justices, and the irresistible Baliff, I present before the court, the case of The Stone Rune. Not a fortnight ere the conception of Sir Welly Hamdam, I embarked upon a low-magic, Castlevania-inspired campaign, taking up the mantle of a Rune Knight under the ever-watchful eye of our Dungeon Master, WeedGoku69. It was but our second session that we found ourselves entangled in the heat of battle. I activated my Stone Rune, invoking its power to force a creature to make a Wisdom saving throw or succumb to its bewitching influence. Fate favored me, for the creature faltered in its resolve. Wasting no moment, I struck with all the might, dealing nigh thirty damage. My DM, in their wisdom, decreed that due to the sheer magnitude of my onslaught, the creature shall be granted another opportunity to break free of the Stone Rune’s grasp—a ruling akin to the established mechanics of Charm Person. And lo, upon this second attempt, the creature succeeded, slipping free of the Rune’s arcane grip. Now, while I hold great respect for my DM verdict, my soul is nevertheless beset with a singular quandary: the text of the Stone Rune makes no mention of such a stipulation. It states, in no uncertain terms, that the creature may repeat its saving throw solely at the end of each of its turns, a ruling that, if followed to the letter, grants a most formidable power indeed. I cannot help but submit this matter for your judgment. Is the Stone Rune truly intended to be as unshakable as its name suggests, or is my DM justified in interpreting its power through the lens of established magical precedent? I place my case before you, O wise and discerning justices, that the truth may be illuminated.

Johnny

To Emily, may you be drinking plenty of delicious water, and to those other bozos in the room, I’ll have a cup of water with no ice, please. I bring to you the case of The Christmas Oneshot of Evil. Since my lovely wife and I moved back home, I’ve made an effort each Christmas season to host a festive oneshot for all our friends. The first year it was a PvP to determine who was the nicest on Santa’s list (4 players). The second year was a survival oneshot where other holiday patrons were invading the North Pole (7 players). This most recent session of 2024 is the oneshot in question (7 players), which has more PvP than the PvP oneshot. The theme here was everyone played a poorly constructed toy who all gained sentience and wanted to be delivered. The main issue stems from a couple of players who decided they were also motivated by more chaotic ambitions. One player, a funko pop with a football sized Megatron head and malfunctioning voicebox wanted to both become Santa Claus and mass produce more underlings…instead of getting delivered…like a toy…like we had all agreed. But judges, I’m not one to yuck on my players yum. My wife, always one of the players at my table, was a rotten potato named Spud who vowed to assist Megatron so that they might also deliver her spores across the world. Two other players are chaotic by nature and were simply down for the LOLs, while one of the remaining two players was passive, and the other was completely in shock. We’ll call this shocked player Gorf. The session involved finding Santa’s slay and getting into his gift bag. Along the way, they poisoned the elves hot chocolate, turned several elves into undead minions, nearly shoved an elf into a roaring furnace, and threatened to kill a chilly snowman for the trendy sweater he was wearing. All this pushed Gorf closer to the edge, until finally he attempted to cast Slow on the rest of the party when he was some distance away. The passive player then shot at him, only to quickly heel turn and support his side, then tried to fight off the other 4 chaotic players while Gorf ran away leaving them to fend for themselves. What followed was a quick take down of the passive player, my wife rolling death saves, and a mad chase after Gorf, who managed to reach Santa’s slay and trampled over Megatron with over 100 damage from 8 deers and the force of the sleigh. They were level 3 characters. Megatron immediately died, and the mood was only continuing to harshen. Eventually, Santa in the form of an eldritch horror (background plot) found his stolen slay, and ultimately the remaining players had to fight together, realizing that the only way to survive was for one of them to adorn all 6 articles of Santa’s outfit that they had found along the way. This was one of the chaotic LOL players, who upon wearing all pieces, which I IRL gave physical clothing and props to the player to wear, turned into the new Santa Claus, smiting the eldritch horror, and going off to deliver the surviving characters except for Gorf. Judges, what the heck? I’m all for picking up on what my players are interested in and running with it, but poor Gorf was such a stick in the mud, that even when I threw him a bone for supporting his moral stance, he outwardly was distraught by the other players. My chaotic crew didn’t mind his opposition, but should I have tried harder to remind these Elf torturers what the true meaning of Christmas was all about? Was Gorf in the right, or was the rest of the party fair in wailing on him? P.S. The session started with them all gaining consciousness in a pile of failed toys designated to be burned, so this might have biased their views on their environment. P.P.S. Everyone left out 9 hour long session laughing and cheering each other for their antics. Ultimately, there were no hard feelings, and all my players remarked it was the best oneshot yet. But judges, just what the heck will I do next time to satiate my wild friends?

Francisco S.

To the esteemed justices and wait, what the hell, where is Bailiff Jorp?  Anyways, I bring to you The Case of the Familiar’s Union.  Years ago, I was DMing a homebrew campaign for some long-time friends and 1 relatively-new partner of a friend at the table.  During the campaign, the new partner - let’s call her Jake - wasn’t the most kind to her familiar (a snarky owl with a New York accent). She constantly threw him into dangerous recon, and would berate the owl whenever she didn’t roll well on checks for this noble bird. This continued for over a year of this campaign - a year of constant belittling. As the DM, I took it upon myself to intercede. During another “failure” of Jake’s familiar, Jake dismissed the owl and said “fuck it, I’ll do it myself”. The next time she summoned her familiar, the owl had unionized with the other party’s familiars. They demanded better working conditions, including snack breaks, hazard pay for dangerous scouting missions, and the right to refuse orders under duress. Every party member loved this turn of events… every party member except Jake. She complained that the familiar was HER spell and should not be able to refuse her commands. The party ended up breaking up (as did my friend and Jake), and the campaign ended. Justices - was I wrong to unionize the familiars? Should I have sat idly as this magnificent creature received abuse from the person meant to befriend and protect it? I lay myself at your feet and welcome your judgement.

Marty Balmer

To the Honorable Justices and also Bailiff Amelia, I am a long-time listener, first-time submitter. Never in my six years of playing TTRPGs have I ever had a situation that made me think “I should submit this to Dungeon Court” until just recently. I play in a Westmarch-style campaign in a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon-themed system. GMs will post missions every now and then, and players can sign up to play in the sessions. There are nearly 100 players in the Discord server, but today I am here to talk about one. God's Most Distracted Player. Picture this: we are 90 minutes deep into a 3 hour session. One of the players leaves the call mid-session without warning or explanation, then proceeds to continue moving his token and typing in Roll20 in an effort to seem like they know what is happening. When asked to return, they say “I am in another call.” Not a phone call, mind you, but another voice channel in a different Discord server. Asking them to come back resulted in a very huffy and clearly unwilling participant in a session that began to swiftly lose momentum. Justices, I do not know what inspired this behavior, but is this not entirely disrespectful? Keep in mind there are almost 100 other players that would like to be involved in missions, and do not get the chance because there are only so many GMs. I await your generous read, and failing that, your swift judgement. Sincerely, Marty

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.

Rose

Honorable court of the crit and big baby Bailiff of the shit - I bring to you today the attempted murder of my love for D&D. For context: My dad (78) was put on a permanent feeding tube in summer 2023. As he is unable to consume food orally, we wanted to find a way to spend time together that wasn't food focused. After seeing an episode of Dimension 20 at a friend's house, I proposed we learn to play D&D and found a 6-week intro workshop at our local game store. Our D&D was a guy named Adam, who turned out to be a villain and a turd. Respectable judges, Adam, the "beginner friendly DM" nearly made me hand in my player's handbook and renounce Dice Christ forever. For brevity - I have included a highlight of each week's worth of crimes. Week 1: Adam spent more time flirting with the girl playing the elf druid than running a session for the other six people at the table, one of whom was her boyfriend (I guess he thought D&D WAS about stealing girlfriends?) Week 2: I (a beginner) decided to steal from a guard in front of the palace - mostly because I didn't have anything to do for almost 2 hours and wanted to roll some freaking dice. With a 19 on the die, and a +8 to stealth the guard I stole from didn't see me.... but his buddy did. I asked if he crit, and Adam said "No, he just rolled high." He refused to tell us what he rolled. Then the guards attacked. Week 3: My dad had to leave early for a doctor's appointment. When he left, Adam exclaimed to the table (loudly) that he thought my 78-year-old father - learning D&D for the first time - was stupid for using the stats for a hand axe instead of a great axe. None of us realized he was using his weapon incorrectly - as the difference hadn't been explained to us. Week 4: Everyone except my Dad's character survived the combat with the guards. I had to beg the DM to let my dad keep playing so he could learn. Week 5: While the rest of us took a long rest, the aforementioned elf druid wanted to trance then spend the other 4 hours talking to animals. Cue an hour of Adam flirting with druid elf girl by pretending to be a talking dog and yelling "You're taking a LONG REST" when anyone else tried to play. Week 6: Cute elf druid girl and her boyfriend had to leave early. We spent the last game of the evening getting our actions ret-conned because we "didn't understand how spells worked" and unceremoniously ending our game. As we left, I overheard him talking to one of the other players and I quote "Yeah, it sucks that rogue bitch ruined the game by stealing from the guards." Judges, I was so hurt and angry that I considered never picking up the dice again (happy to say this was not the case). But one question weighs on my mind ... was this my fault? I await your wisdom and accept your judgement.

Olivia Moody

The Case of the Stifled Suggestion To the justices Murphy and Tanner, and the disgraced/disgruntled Bailiff Axford, if it pleases the court: During the third session of a “1-shot”, my level 5 warlock cast Suggestion on a doppleganger who was masquerading as a prince, with the suggestion “you’re going to show us who or what you really are.” At the time of casting, myself, several party members, and the "prince" were in a bathroom. The “prince” failed the saving throw, and per the language of “Suggestion” we all expected the prince to transform on it’s turn - or for our theory about the situation to have been disproven. Instead, something different happened. On the "prince’s”’ turn, instead of following the course of action on his turn, he instructed us to shut the bathroom door and then promise not to kill him. I protested - as the language of the spell does not indicate the target has the option to take other actions on it’s turn. My DM stated that the "prince" would not do an action he perceives as harmful. I once again protested - the direct action of changing his shape would not cause damage to the prince. My DM indicated his ruling was final, because ‘if the other people see him change shape, they will kill him, so he perceives this action as harmful.’ Needless to say, I was livid. I argued that from now on, anytime someone casts suggestion they can just think about the potential uncomfortable tertiary consequences of the directed action and refuse to do it. If one suggests to a guard that they let us pass, could the guard think about how if he gets caught, he’ll get fired and be unable to feed his family? I (hatefully) assured my DM that based on this ruling, none of my PCs will EVER comply with a suggestion in his campaign again. At the end, I did shut the bathroom door & promised I wouldn’t personally kill him, the “prince” transformed, and I immediately opened the bathroom door to expose him to the other party goers. Justices, was I in the wrong for being so salty, or was our DM in the wrong for using a tertiary reason to avoid complying with a suggestion, thereby nerfing the spell? I eagerly await your ruling and will comply with any punishments that you suggest, even if my DM won’t do the same

Chief Parma John (Nate B.)

To the Honored Justices and the newly minted Dungeon Guy (who we are very proud of)   I bring to you the case of the hungry player   I have been playing D&D with a group of friends over Discord for several years now. One of our friends in particular has a habit of missing, or disappearing in the middle of our sessions to eat dinner. Once he DMed for our group, and halfway through the session said, "Roll initiative," muted himself, and never came back. Recently, said player failed to show up to a session and cited his absence because he was "eating ribs." When berated about his absence later, his only defense was, "I was eating MF ribs."   Judges, is this a valid excuse to miss a weekly session with the boys? Our typical session is 7-9pm and I feel like there's plenty of time to eat before that.   I humbly await your judgment.

Payt Suro

Greetings Judges and Jork! I bring forth the case of the little sister and the Hut. I was running a halloween one-shot for some friends and wanted to get my sister (22 years old) to play with us too. She said she wanted to play, but would only do so if she could play as Baba Yaga's Hut. This is a tiny cottage from russian folklore that stands about 20 feet in the air, sits on top of two huge, tall chicken legs, and can walk of its own accord around the woods. I asked if she wanted to play as Baba Yaga (the witch who owns the hut) instead, and she said no. I asked if she would like to play as a magical chicken with some kind of Leomond's tiny hut feature instead, and she said no. She chose to play as a 10×10x 30ft tall shed with no ability to talk, no eyes, and no arms. She had a "Thwomp" attack where she could sit on people, and she had a projectile attack where she could launch random witch items out of the house at folks. (hot skewer, healing potion, enchanted chamber pot). This sentient hut had an intelligence of -4, and was magically sealed so that no creatures could enter it. Despite the challenge of planning encounters for a literal house, the one-shot was a success and everyone had fun. However! It did not sway my sister's atitude at all. She is still open to playing the game, but maintains that she is only really interested if she can play as the weirdest thing possible. Judges, can you please order my little sister to give a shot at playing a regular character sometime? She hasn't exactly done anything wrong, but I'm hoping you can find her guilty anyway. If you feel fit to punish me instead I will take your sentencing with honour, however, I do feel that I am already living under some kind of twisted curse.

amazeyphaedra

Honorable Justices and the other guy I guess I humbly present to you: the balad of Biddy Duke In my freshman year of college I joined a new campaign with some friends, one of whom played Biddy Duke, a skeleton necromancer who's first descriptor of his character when asked was that he was "chaotic neutral". The first session was mainly a combat that involved all the PC's and one npc playing a game of tag/hot potato and whoever was "it" at the end of 10 rounds got knocked out of a tournament done to select candidates join a powerful wizard's adventuring party to go slay some BBEG. Biddy Duke had earlier decided that the NPC, who revealed he was an official in the tournament, was his best friend and so decided to use most of his turns casting fear on other players to keep them away from him. Due to some truly horrific rolls from other players on saving throws (and likely some confusion on the effects of fear) there were 3-4 players who ended up spending multiple rounds prevented from doing much of anything. This would be disheartening enough in most campaigns but due to there being 9 players, rounds of combat ended up taking 20 to 30 minutes. After a while several players were looking visibly dejected and every time one of their turns came up and they were unable to do anything Biddy Duke's player started laughing hysterically. I casually suggested that maybe he could stop with the fear spells to which he responded "stop telling me what to do it's what my character would do he's chaotic neutral." There was, unsuprisingly, no session 2. Justices I ask you, was I backseat gaming in asking him to stop with the fear spells? Was I out of line for suggesting maybe if whether his actual real life friends were having fun or not was more important than being "in character"? Was it maybe the DM's fault for letting 9 players join and making session 1 a quasi-pvp encounter that mostly incentivized players to use every turn taking the dash action away from whoever is it? I humbly await your judgement (p.s. it is also worth noting this session was an hour late because biddy duke's player had not made his character yet dispite having 3 weeks to do so)

Steven Hatch

To the High Justices of the Supreme Crit (aka The Goon Squad) and that gooner you hang out with, Jemily I guess? I bring before the court the Case of The Big Bird Bombardier. This happened almost 40 years ago, and I haven't mentioned it to my brother in 20 years because I know without a doubt he's still salty about it. My brother and his friends had a long running campaign that started in their characters' childhood and after many years of irl play they finally decided it was time for one last adventure before they all retired as grey-haired heroes of the realm. In the penultimate adventure, one of the PCs suffered a tragic, but heroic death and the player, we'll call him Karl, was openly peeved about it. But the dice told their story and he accepted that he was fated to be the only player at the table going into the final battle with a new character. Or so we thought. The week before the full group was meant to meet the DM invited my brother over for a special session to "discuss some plot points about your character". When my brother walked in, Karl was unexpectedly there too. Karl had conviced the DM to allow him to roll up a new high-level Druid, the same class as my brother's character who was the level 15 Grand Archdruid of the realm. My brother immediately objected, saying there was no need for 2 druids in the party. Karl and the DM said they agreed, and that Karl's druid was formally challenging my brother to a duel for the rank of High Druid, which is actually how it worked in the wild west of 2e - a druid's level was synonymous with their rank in the druid hierarchy and once levelled up high enough you had to challenge a higher ranking druid to progress. My brother, confident in his skills with the character class he'd been playing for years, accepted the challenge. Oops. Karl went first in the initiative and narrated his druid pulling out a huge sack of holly berries and a literal ream of paper. That ream consisted of 100 scrolls of the 1st level Druid spell Fire Seed (aka Badberry). This spell will turn 8 berries into tiny grenades which can be hurled up to 6 feet and will explode in a 6 inch radius dealing 1d8 damage and igniting combustibles. Karl narrated reading the first scroll and claimed that since he was holding all of the scrolls with the intent to cast, that it would actually activate the entire ream and turn the bag into the D&D equivalent of a "big fucking bomb". He then wild shaped into a "big fucking yellow bird with giant pink feet", flew over my brother's head, squawked "Welcome to the neighborhood" and dumped the bag. The DM said he didn't even need to make an attack roll - by nature Karl would have to drop the bag at point blank range and no one could survive the blast zone - my brother wasn't even allowed a saving throw because the spell stipulates if you're struck directly you do not get one. My brother argued simply, "That's not how scrolls work." But the DM disagreed, he thought it was an ingenious move and also "Fucking hilarious". My brother walked out and refused to play the final campaign. The rest of the party backed out too because they sided with him, and their characters never got their swan song as a result. Supreme Justices, regardless of whether we're talking 2e or 5e, is that how scrolls work? Or did they do my brother dirty? (PS: After a break of a few months, they started a new campaign, everyone remained friends, and everyone except for Karl agreed that canonically the assassination never happened. But, understandably, the whole situation left a bad(berry) taste in my brother's mouth.)

Knightly Luna

To the honorable Justices, the meh guy Murpho or whatever, and the Multifaceted Demi-God of beauty and intelligence, Jake; I bring to you the case of the Old Western Gunpowder Mining Town with No Gun Powder. I recently left a campaign after a lot of problems compounded into one final straw that broke the camels back. I personally believe this game is meant to be a collaborative game in which we all play to have fun. Part of that, in my opinion, is players coming up with crazy ideas to just fuck up the DM's plans. This DM heavily disagreed. So, this guy had 6 NPCs he regularly swapped out with our party, who were usually higher level than the rest of the party. It was often his characters doing everything while we were sidelined all the time. It really felt like we were sidekicks in his story and our agency was nonexistent. We ended up eventually coming across this part of the campaign where we were tracking down one of the BBEG's generals and it led us to a gunpowder mining town with an Old Western feel. Guns, Saloons, Bandits; the whole thing. Aside from the many problems already surfaced to this point, we finally got to a point where we had to clear the mine, get rid of the bandits running the town, liberate the mayor's home from this General, and were going to go after an army posted outside of a fortress to the south of this town. Now, I should note the story was pretty good. It was a good idea. The issue was that when we cleared the Mayor's home where apparently the gunpowder was being stashed, and the DM confirmed it was all being kept there, being hoarded, we managed to find just enough gunpowder for a small pouch no bigger than my fist. In a gunpowder mining town. In an old west setting. With people shootin' off guns infinitely. My goal was to create bombs that we could lob from our airship to thin out the army to a small manageable number for us to fight, knowing full well he wanted to show off another one of his NPCs. I did address the DM about this before anything, but he said, and I quote, "you WERE thinking outside the box with the gunpowder my friend, after it is said and done though i still have to look at the situation LOGICALLY as the dm and LOGICALLY speaking what you proposed would simply not have worked because THATS NOT HOW GUN POWDER WORKS." Apparently gunpowder isn't explosive and making bombs isn't feasible in his world, regardless of the numerous firearms. Jake, and I guess everyone else too; was I wrong to leave this campaign or should my DM be thrown into a bag of gunpowder with a lit match? I await your incredible commentary. P.S. After I left that campaign, one of the players who actively went afk and never paid attention had a lot to say about me that was negative. The DM also never bothered actually reading my reason why I was leaving and instead did a preemptive comment saying "when you want to talk like men, we can do this later. I'm dming." I wasn't rude. I'm a pretty respectful guy and try to present my thoughts in a professional way.

Ted The Tortle

Dice Christ Confessional: I run an annual Christmas game for my party where the PC’s are all different multiversal versions of Santa. This year, it was themed around The Nutcracker. I normally try to structure the game so that one of the players will get to have a main character moment since they don’t come up as frequently in our regular campaign. Because of that, I sent a message to one of my players (who is our forever DM) asking her if she would be on board with creating a character that would die in the first combat so that we could establish high stakes. I told her that she would then be able to take over the Nutcracker NPC and continue the game. She happily agreed and even built the nutcracker a character sheet that she was excited to play. What I didn’t tell her was that I was planning to reveal that the Nutcracker was actually the Sugar Plum Fairy, and would remember her identity at a crucial Deus Ex Nutcracker moment. Fast forward to the climax of the final fight: everything was going according to plan when, to my surprise, the fighter attacked and managed to deal the exact amount of HP damage that the BBEG had left… exactly one turn before the planned nutcracker reveal. I hesitated for a moment, then gave silently added one more hit point to my monster and allowed the nutcracker to have the final blow. Everyone had a great time overall, but I still feel like I betrayed Dice Christ to serve my own narrative. Can I be forgiven, or should I yeet myself into the Christmas-themed void for eternity?

Emma G

Dear beloved and venerated bailiff Emily and those other guys, here is the story of my almost devil girlfriend. I was playing a lvl 20 human barbarian (with some cleric and fighter levels) in a year plus long campaign. It was a great experience, and I still play with this group of people. The incident came after we had the ultimate fight with the BBEG, and were doing a set of one-shots tailored to each PC. Mine was a court case in Mechanus.  Her cleric levels came from a pact with Asmodeus, who I agreed to work with/for in order to take out some mutual enemies. She was given a +3 greataxe with an imprint of a devil trapped inside. Of course, I instantly liked them and through the power of friendship, they became a trusted ally. Eventually they even cut themselves off from the main demon to be with me. I was approaching it purely as a friendship initially, but the other PCs were making jokes/pushing it towards a romance. As someone aroace, I thought that a romance would be a cool thing to explore in game. After I had fulfilled my contract with Asmodeus though, they ended up suing me to try and get Cassandra back.   I had tried to research real laws as well as D&D lore to have an airtight court case. My DM was representing Hell, and they had a mutual friend who was not in the campaign acting as a neutral judge. After presenting both our cases, the judge said that since this was an imprint of Cassandra, they were technically a child (even though they had milenia of memories and the DM had played them as a full adult) and that we would have shared custody of her.  Nothing solid had happened in terms of the romance before this besides flirting, and the ruling obviously stopped anything from happening after. I still think it was a weird choice to make this full character a child, when none of us or the DM had thought that prior and I was excited to be in a relationship with a quasi devil. I thought I would bring the case to a higher court and see what you all think, did the judge make the correct ruling?

🐧lost penguin familiar

Dear daring and dashing justices and the average man bailiff, Juice. I am playing in a campaign where 11 sessions in and haven't completed a single quest. Essentially, ALL npc's are vague with info and portrayed as mysterious/ untrustworthy. At level 3 we encountered an ancient blue dragon. Absurd. A few sessions later we are ambushed at a "generic" temple for unknown reason. Then next session ambushed again from the "gaurdian" of the temple for no reason. But this guardian was equipped with the exact immunities to what are party was, and proceeded to split the party, group of 4 and group of 3. So we did a few sessions split, we got access to receive an item from a monkey who asked, "what do you seek?" Both parties got this access. I got gloves that let me thunderous smite as a barbarian. When we caught back up with the other group was the moment my character died via a homebrew rule: if you take -10dmg past 0 then you instantly die. No death saves. It was immediately after that moment I found out the fighter of the other group got the Cloud Giant Belt of Strength (29 strength at level 4). I was openly frustrated and the DM replied with, "I told you that you could get whatever you wanted." I feel like I don't see eye to eye with this newer friend group about dnd. I want to evangelize the grace of Dice Christ via Naddpod or Worlds Beyond Number, and how different/fun the game can be played. Or is it a lost cause? Should I leave this campaign or try to have a mid campaign session 0 to sort things out? May Dice Christ bless your rolls. Amen.🙏🎲

Matthew Bowers

To the honorable justices and everyone's favorite kid at camp, Emily. I bring to you the case of 10 high school boys playing Dungeons and Dragons at Summer Camp. A couple of years ago I was the director of a summer camp. We were looking to include more indoor activities for the kids who don't want to sweat to death in the July sun in the middle of Florida. As an avid DND player, I thought it would be fun if I led a week long game as a camp activity. This was the kind of camp where you get to select what you want to spend your afternoon participating in. Who was gonna sign up for DND anyway, maybe like two kids? I ended up with 10 players, all boys, ranging from signing up as a joke all the way to bringing their own dice to camp. If was a very chaotic, high energy, rules-light game. For example, one of the boys decided their warlock patron was the 1996 Chicago Bulls. Two of the players were twins IRL and decided their characters were lovers, that was weird. Still though, I was enjoying it. And the boys appreciated the real battle maps I'd spent the summer making for them. Towards the end they fought a harpy protecting an abandoned pirate ship. One of the boys asked what a harpy is and I showed a picture of it. One boy proceeded to say "oh, she's a baddie." Another one asked "what that mouth do?" And lastly one boy decided to say "Yo, she's thicc." It's at that point that I decided to end the session for the day and make them go outside and touch grass. They boys who knew how DND works kept insisting that they could have rolled to seduce the harpy but we were too far gone. Justices, should I have let these boys actually attempt to seduce the harpy and let the consequences follow, or was I right to end it and physically make them touch grass?

Cam L.

To the opalescent, infallible justices and the churlish yet handsome bailiff Earl: I bring to you the case of the Cowardly Carpenter. A few friends and I have been playing the Dungeon of the Mad Mage for a few years now and are on floor 14 of the 23 floor megadungeon. Recently, we had a friend of our DM come in to replace a player who had to leave the campaign. This new player - a level 13 human bard named "Nood Delman"- has never played DnD, so understandably has had some difficulties catching up on the many mechanics that come with being at a higher level. We have played a few sessions with Nood, and he seems to have picked the game up moderately well, but some issues began to surface in a recent fight against 2 young blue dragons. When Nood accidentally angered them, the dragons unleashed their breath weapons on the party. At low health after failing both saves and scared of possible death, Nood then spent every one of his turns for the rest of combat (4 more rounds) running to a different corner of the room, casting minor illusion to make a small shelf appear in front of him, and crouching behind the shelf. Each subsequent round he did this was met with increasingly unsubtle exasperated comments from our party. After several bad rolls and 2 of the 3 other party members dropping to single digit health, we killed one dragon, and caused the other to flee. We managed to chase the dragon across the dungeon, dodging traps and fighting wandering monsters, while Nood opted instead to stay in the room, and ask to sleep in a nearby bed for a short rest. By the time we slayed the dragon, Nood been away from the party for nearly 45 minutes of real time. We have played a few sessions since, and there have been more than a few terse references to Nood's cowardice, and magical "hiding shelves". So I ask the court: should Nood be strung up his his ramen noodle whip for his faintheartedness, or should we at the table be more lenient to a first time player who has more spell slots than sense? P.S. Nood is played by the DM's 73 year old father. P.P.S. No he isn't, I just wanted to see if that got a reaction

El Jefe

The Case of the First Class Grinching Good morrow to the justices of the high crit and the bodacious baby bailiff. I beseech thee to help me answer: was I wrong for trying to TPK my friends? I am a newer DM (started listening to NADDpod and D20 in the pandemic and decided after years of listening to take a shot at DMing) and run a game with friends who are newer players as well. I designed a holiday arc, with some inspiration from NADDPod. In this holiday arc, the gang gets transported to the holiday plane where they encounter Whos, a series of ski comedy challenges at The Lodge at Mt Crumpit (things along the lines of the king of the mountain beer race from Out Cold), and other Festive-mas encounters. As the overall winners after all of the events, the gang all got custom-designed magic items, but they had developed an animosity towards The Grinch by this point. I designed the Grinch to be OP for their level 5 characters by giving him a bunch of extra hit points; legendary actions like a poisonous cloud breath weapon, sonic shout (the echo in his cave), and calling out to command Max to attack )who was statted out as a chimera). The goal being that if the party messed with the Grinch, it would result in a Total Party Knockout and the Grinch would steal their gold and their brand new magic items. Well, the gang challenges the Grinch, and the battle went about as I expected. The Grinch began womping my players, who were shocked to experience legendary actions and breath weapons for the first time. I had them all in dire straights with low HP, only to have the monk roll a crucial Nat 20 to pop up from death saves and then heal the bard who had two death saves as well. This shifted the momentum and the party pulled out a victory after a hard-fought battle. Everyone said it was a great session, and the party now ribs me by referring to this encounter as the time their “nice DM” tried to kill everyone. They now playfully refer to themselves as invincible. Was I wrong to go full Lady Macbeth (it’s my job to provide the world and their job to find a way to survive in it) and design an encounter to try to TPK the party and steal their stuff? Was the monk’s perfectly timed Nat 20 death saving throw Dice Christ’s intervention to tell me I have done wrong? Or should I keep sprinkling in OP encounters to hope they eventually figure out there are some things you shouldn’t fuck with? I lay myself before you for your righteous ruling.

Ed James

Dear Preist-Justices, and the creased-busted Jake. I bring you the case of the repo-ed campaign. I have been a perpetual DM for my friend group,until a friend, we'll call them 'Flakey', offered to take over for a bit to give me a chance to run a player character. In handing over DMship, Flakey described how their character betrayed the party and got them all sent to jail - setting up a jailbreak campaign where I would play an inside man. Then, Flakey got busy I guess, they haven't been available to play in months! My question is this: do I now run a jailbreak campaign? Do I spend 5 minutes narrating how the party were arrested due to clerical error? Do I wait for Flakey to come back? All the best. And Jarn - keep your chin up, they'll accept you eventually. Ed

Maxwell Keiles

To the honorable early birds and the lowly worm wife. I bring the case of the broken hearted DM. A few years ago I was Dm for a group of people that included my then partner. Half way through the campaign we broke up amicably and to this day we are still great friends. We also agreed during the break up that the campaign was going well and we wanted to continue it. Here is where the issue arose. The next session after our break up they had the idea to flirt their way past my npc, aka me. I then proceeded to no but harder than I have no butted before. Without any role, this npc was revealed to be happily married, a fact that did not exist before this very moment, and was incensed by the advance. Judges, was a wrong to be so obstinate and should I have at least allowed a charisma check, or was I justified in not wanting to pretend flirt with the persons I had just broken up with 2 weeks ago. I await your magnanimous judgement. P. S. I had a conversation with them after the session and they also realized their mistake in the moment. They just didn’t want to bring it up in front of the table, which is fair.

Iriena Irwin

Dear honorable justices and (mumble mumble) bailiff. I am the DM for a family party including my two older sisters and my parents. The last session my party had leveled up and I sent them all links to detailed info about new traits and feats they could choose. Cut to the middle of the newest session and one of my sisters asked a very rudimentary question about an ability stat and I answered them but I also said something like “can you guys please do some preparation before sessions” and my other sister said “that’s literally your job”. I was shook, I answered her “it’s quite literally not” and continued DMing but I could tell she was annoyed with me the rest of the session. Was I wrong to expect them to know how to play their characters when I’ve created a world and plot for them to play in, or am I being harsh on people who are unfamiliar with the game?

Matthew Sturm

To the vivacious Supreme Crit justices and the lugubrious bailiff, I present the case of the correlation irritation. I play in a group that includes my older brother. During the penultimate session of a short campaign, most of the party was in the basement of the town mayor’s mansion, while our fairy party member kept an eye on the mayor, who we suspected of actually being the mayor’s vampirized twin who was masquerading as him. We came across a magically sealed door leading to a private office, which turned out to be locked with blood runes. After we used blood to unlock the door, the DM narrated that the fairy saw the “mayor” looked up from what he was working on suddenly and seemed to become more alert for a moment before returning to his work. A journal we found in the private office confirmed our suspicions, and we all met back up with the fairy to catch him up. After talking with the fairy, I theorized that the “mayor” had somehow been alerted when we broke the blood runes based on the timing of both events. My brother, who is known to get into debates easily, immediately said that I was making a huge leap in logic by assuming the two events were connected just because of the timing. When I tried to defend my theory, he got surprisingly intense about his stance. He argued that correlation doesn’t equal causation, and then went into an absolutely insane example, saying that just because he was in elementary gym class on the morning of 9/11, it didn’t mean him being in gym had caused 9/11. Eventually he chilled out and admitted that he was making too big of a deal about something that wasn’t an unreasonable assumption in a world with magic and that he was probably just worn out from work. Even though he ended up accepting my theory, I have to ask: was my jump in logic as unrealistic as assuming a 7 year-old going to gym class caused 9/11?

Molly R.

Forgive me, dice daddies (gender neutral), for I have sinned. I've been DMing for a lovely group for the past 5 years. A couple years ago, one of our players decided to try DMing for the first time during a short campaign break. She prepared a spooky Halloween one shot involving a haunted house. We were all excited about our fun Halloween PCs, and we jumped into the one shot with an energy that could be described as . . . too much. We arrived at a hallway in the haunted house with a number of closed doors. We decided it would be *hilarious* to each open a separate door at the same time. It was a disaster. We set off all her planned encounters at once. It was absolute chaos, and beyond terrifying for a first time DM. The chaos almost completely shut down the one shot. She was a really good sport, and since that one shot, she has DM'd multiple times, thankfully, with less chaotic results. But she refers to the event as "that time you all almost made me quit DMing." We're all still friends, and still campaign together. But we know we did her dirty. How can we atone?

Charles Augustus Stahl

To illustrious judges Murph and Tanner, and the bailiff who’s so much better than Juke, Emily, I present to you the case of Mrs. Claus V. Krampus. I was visiting some old college friends and last minute they invited me into their holiday themed PVP one shot/ secret santa. I was very excited, as I was quite close with most players, and had helped the DM refine some of the rules and mechanics he planned to use. He had 20+ different playable characters, and we would roll to see who we got. I got Mrs. Claus, someone got Frosty, the Wolfman, etc. A friend of mine’s gf (whom i just met) got Krampus. There were objectives, but this was primarily a battle royal style game. We rolled initiative, and the game was afoot. On my second turn, Krampus decided to try and put me in his sack, which not unlike a bag of holding. After a failed contested strength check, in went Mrs. Claus. Here’s the issue There was no mechanic to get out. After a round of doing nothing, the DM ruled that I could get out if I rolled a Nat 20. Your honors, I shit you not I sat in that bag for over four hours, rolling a D20 once every 20 minutes or so on my turn, and failing every time. That was my entire experience. The game slogged on, until finally Krampus decided to throw the bag off the map, and Mrs. Claus was no more. Your honors, I understand that we all agreed to a PVP, but am I justified in being frustrated in this? Couldn’t there be some way for me to play beyond trying to roll a Nat 20? Didn’t Mrs. Claus deserve more than a death reserved for mob snitches? I throw myself at the mercy of the court #justiceformrsclaus

caro!

To the pretty neat-o judges and whoever the HECK the bailiff is this time, I bring you the case of the wannabe sorcerer. A few years back, I was in a new homebrew campaign run by our long-time DM at the time. It was his first time running a campaign for us over discord, so he asked if he could have his partner, who we all had middling opinions on, join the campaign as well. Seeing as that’s not really a question you can say no to, we complied. In this campaign, I was playing a warforged phoenix sorcerer, an unearthed arcana subclass specializing in fire spells. I was something like a living furnace. As the campaign continued on and we leveled up, I noticed that our DM’s partner’s bard, a lore bard, had been casting a lot of fireballs, which, as a fire-based character, had kind of become one of my signature spells. I’m not saying that I’m the only player on earth who can cast fireball, I know it’s a very powerful spell that is fun to cast, but it’s hard to ignore when there’s multiple fireballs going off every round of combat. The thing that really ticked me off is that, after one level-up, they took the Metamagic Adept feat, giving them access to sorcery points. Sorcery points are one of the only things that make the sorcerer class distinct, and I was almost a little offended by this choice. At that point I felt like my toes were really getting stepped on, and my character’s combat role had been usurped completely. I held my tongue at the time, and the campaign eventually folded, but should I have said something? Was I wrong to be annoyed about this? I lay myself at the mercy of the court.

Xanian Jamfalcon

May it please the crit and the lyrical bailiff. This is an account not from my own experience but from my current DM of a past campaign, and a preemptively ghosted problem player! The player in question came over to the DMs home to discuss the upcoming campaign and make their character. They entered the apartment and saw the DM's girlfriend watching TV and muttered "Game of Thrones. Huh." Without even saying hello and proceeded to the bedroom where the DM was waiting at their computer to walk the player through the character creation process. The player ignored the DM and Macho Man Randy Savage style performed an elbow-drop onto the bed and started rolling around side-to-side for several minutes. When he finally calmed down the DM asked him about the character he wanted to play and then the player said "Oh yeah I know what I want to play! A Goblin bard!” And immediately started doing the loudest horrible falsetto Goblin voice for the rest of the character creation process, including when he started singing the songs he already came up with. His voice was loud enough to echo off the walls. The DM tolerated this player's antics stoically and after he left, never spoke to him about the game again. Should the DM have given this player the chance to sing his heart's desire or was he right to ghost him? PS: the player also insulted the girlfriend's fried chicken and asked if her female cousin was single. After he left, the girlfriend said he is never allowed in their house again.

Wyatt S

To the wonderful divine crit justices, lovely bailiff Axford, and (depending on the crit justices at the time) the shamed, litigated, but unfortunately maybe also Supreme Crit Justice Jacob Penn Cooper Hurwitz. I am simply writing to know the standing I have in your court and knowing I have to win both non-bias judges. Recently (Ep. 3 Skaldova short rest), I was told to "unzip those pants" and "actually, unlock your junk" by a Mr. Hurwitz. Now, being the loyal supporter of the podcast while simultaneously also a mindless sheep, I proceeded to do so. However, upon doing so, it turns out that "kids are here" it is "illegal" and a "felony" to do so in the middle of Central Park. I tried explaining to the cop that I was told to do so by Jake, but all he said was "You mean Bailiff Jerk?" Justices, am I in the wrong or would y'all in your infinite power push my case through so I can be given the justice I deserve? Just having fun :) hope you are having a lovely time reading the cases, Bailiff.

BrowndogPiedog

To the magnanimous justices Murph and Tanner and to the dip spit-drinking, nut-milk singing wife worm, I present to you the case of the crying rogue. Several years ago, I was DM’ing my family’s traditional Christmas Eve one-shot when I had a green hag utilize a homebrew breath weapon at my party. My then-fiancé was a rogue who made the save, but was still downed by the damage. She was extremely upset until my sister pointed out that she has evasion, so she should have taken no damage. She started crying, aghast that I had not informed her of this and was cheating to try to kill her. Justices, is not informing someone of their abilities cheating? Is it my responsibility as DM to point out when they can take advantage of their kit to kill my monsters or should my now-wife do more homework before she comes and sits at the table of a mastermind and an artist like myself?

Wyred

May it pleasure the most Supreme of Courts and tickle the bailiff’s fancy until it wets itself… I present the case of the Bullseye Druid! This one is on the longer side but I offer the assurance that your honors will find ALL the details both juicy and relevant if I may impose upon your patience. To set the scene: My partner was playing a game DMed by her long-term friend with a couple other second-degree friends. They invited me to join and, since the party was two Rogues and a Barbarian starting at third level, I made a Grasslands Druid to specialize in stealth and healing. The DM was also running the same module, Avernus I think, for another group. They thought it would be fun if both parties “raced” through an underwater grotto obstacle course to retrieve some McGuffin for a local town festival. The DM was very clear that NO ONE WOULD BE ALLOWED DIE FROM PvP as part of this competition, though Mario Kart-type shenanigans seemed to be expected. My Druid did quite well navigating the nature-based challenges, naturally, and we avoided some combat towards the end using Pass Without Trace. In the final chamber there was a large shark guarding the treasure. The DM said both groups had gone about the same speed in our separate sessions, so the other party of six came in at the same time from a different direction. I suggested—via Psychic Whispers, courtesy of our Soul Knife Rogue—that we should use our stealth to grab the treasure and make a clean getaway without fighting. It seemed like a good option to avoid PvP and my Druid didn’t like the idea of killing the shark. However, the DM ruled that Pass Without Trace didn’t conceal us from the other party because we were in a large, open chamber and made everyone roll initiative. I felt like we should have at least gotten a Stealth VS Perception roll but let it go because I felt sympathetic that the DM was already doing so much cat herding. Our Soul Knife eventually managed to grab the McGuffin, which was an amulet. Plan B was to run a sort of Dash Action relay with it. I cast Invisibility on our Soul Knife so he could get away from the fighting while the Barbarian ran interference. Then my partner’s Tabaxi Trickster Rogue used Mage Hand to grab the amulet from our Soul Knife and move ~100 feet away using some crazy class/race combo. At this point the other party’s Wizard told his group to “Focus on the Druid and break his concentration!” since they thought our invisible Soul Knife still had the amulet. Here, I’d like to pause and bring two pieces of evidence to the court’s attention: 1) the whole session was taking place in an UNDERWATER grotto with the benefit of potions for breathing and 2) the Wizard was the DM’s husband. Meta-gaming aside, Mr. Wizard would have no way of speaking to his party members. I pointed this out but the other party still turned their attacks on me—despite already being in combat with a big angry shark—and I quickly went down. By then our Rogues were long gone with the amulet and the Barbarian was able to stabilize and scoop me. Despite us “winning” the competition in the end, I still felt about an ocean’s worth of salty. Your honors, should our stealth plan have been given a fair chance? Should the DM have intervened to uphold her “no PvP death” rule, or at least stopped the meta-gaming focus fire? I await your verdict with bated Potion-of-Water-Breath! P.S. We are no longer friends with these people but that’s a story for another time…

Richard E. - jenz left glove tailor

Dear honorable and godlike crit justices and the baby bailiff. I bring to the court the case of blowing up at the party. I Dm for a group of friends along with my brother who can be on the more chaotic side of dnd. My players enjoy trying to kill all my npcs that I create for minor things such as a tavern owner who wouldn't give them free beer because in their words "I don't want to pay". In one of our recent sessions they had pulled from the deck of many things and gotten the gem card. They went to the nearest town and the player who drew the card didn't want to share to much of it but still shared most with the party. After arguing for 15-30 minutes as to why the rest wasn't given to the entire party I blew up at them saying what I thought of each of their playstyles. This has resulted in better sessions for the group as they work together more. The downside is I get endlessly razzed for it. So I come to the crit, should I be getting razed this much for something that I did which helped my party play as a team more? I humbly await my judgment.

anti lag

I have a confession to make in front of Dice Christ. I run a D&D inspired livestream called Drumbeats and Dicerolls, where I roll dice to help me write songs. The Dice choose the BPM, the drumbeats, and the synths that I'm allowed to use. Last week, I rolled bad. The Dice chose a terrible soul beat that sounded awful with the designated tempo of 190 BPM. In an effort to save the song and keep the audience committed, I fudged that we were allowed to roll a D8 to see how many free samples we could get from the sample library. I rolled up and instantly rushed to grab a better drumbeat to beat the song back into shape. This gave the song a new energy and it saved my reputation, making it look like i could craft passable misic out of even the worst rolls. Nobody noticed me wedging in the sneaky roll for emergency samples, but I feel guilt for creating myself an easy out for such a tough situation. I beg forgiveness and will observe whatever penance Dice Christ deems necessary.

Dracon the Whale

To the ferocious Justices blessed by dice Christ with Wisdom. And the fearsome bailiff who is blessed with strength (or cursed with a stinky poopy diaper if we are being mean to Jake today) I DM a campaign for a group of 6 college friends and we usually have a lot of fun during our games. Lots of goofs, lots of laughs, and it's a pretty good time. However I've noticed that a couple of my players don't seem to have any idea what the fuck is going on.   One of these players in particular, who is the party's barbarian, have said they do not particularly enjoy the combat aspect of D&D, which is fine as I understand the enjoyment of the role play aspect of the game as well but they also barely participate in the game outside of combat. Instead of participating in rp they instead are either playing Roblox, solitaire, or some other game on there tablet.  They say they are listening and can multitask but I have my doubts. On top of that myself and the other players at the table have to constantly remind them the rules of the game and the abilities that their character has and we have been playing this campaign for almost a year. Do I have the right to be a little bit annoyed at this player? I leave my fate in your capable yet corrupt hands.

Slyfox

To the sterile Supreme Crit justices and the dirty wife worm bailiff, I present the case of the ratty sneak attack. I have been DMing for a group of my friends for a few years now. During our last session, the party had to help save a sentient pile of naked mole rats named Gregory retrieve a lich’s phylactery from its lair. While they were escaping, the rogue and the cleric decided that Gregory should not have the phylactery and needed to die. However, Gregory was currently being worn as a cape by the paladin and could not be separated. So the rogue decided to pretend to miss and take an attack on Gregory. He then argued that he should get sneak attack because “the enemies attacking the Paladin are within 5 feet of Gregory”. I disagreed, saying that the Paladin was in between Gregory and the enemies, and that sneak attack is for when your ally is attacking the person. I ended up not giving sneak attack, which probably saved Gregory’s life. However, I think RAW I may be in the wrong. So should I have granted this traitorous sneak attack and killed an innocent sentient pile of naked mole rats? Our party is still split on this and will humbly accept your esteemed judgement.

Tabaxi Druid Sarah

To the Most Excellent Supreme Justices and the Effervescent Bailiff Emily, I was playing with some friends and we encountered a gelatinous cube. My un-dexterous cleric got engulfed by it and I asked if I could cast misty step to get out. However, misty step has a verbal component, so the debate began - can you cast it inside the cube? Point for: - it's gelatinous, not liquid, so it wouldn't immediately rush into my mouth and since I would have taken a deep breath before engulfment, I should have enough air for one spell Point against: - you can't talk without air, so you can't cast the spell After some debate, the DM ruled a compromise: I could cast it if I passed a DC 15 CON check. Naturally, I got a 10 and with my -1 strength, I couldn't get out. I then continued to comedically fail every subsequent save until the cube died. This was all friendly because we're adults who like each other, but I'm writing because we tried googling to see if there was anything online clarifying the rules of this and there wasn't. So, I'm writing to the court to ask them to consider setting the Gelatinous Casting Precedent. Many thanks. Sarah aka Tabaxi Druid P.S. My cats Trixie Meowtel and Jake Purralta asked me to say hi to all the 2 Crew Critters

🦋 Merryn C 🦋

To the Esteemed Crit Justices and Lowly Wife Worm Baliff Emily. I bring you the case of the Accidental God Cannibalism. Many years ago in a campaign with my girlfriend at the time and her friends, I played a Gnome Cleric on a quest to find their missing god. We ended up in a boss battle killing a fearsome lake monster and another player joked that they took the monster's body back to our camp to eat, and we all sort of went along with it, reluctantly pretending to have a BBQ. Next session, the DM revealed that the monster was actually the corrupted divine body of my fallen god whose heart we needed to bring to a nearby temple to help restore her. I was distraught. My character absolutely loved and worshipped their god and would never eat her. I immediately sought to clarify with the other player that they were only joking when they said they ate my god, but they instead double downed on it, saying she actually still had parts of it with her, having turned the remaining limbs into jerky which she intended to continue eating throughout the campaign. I made it clear in and out of the game that I wasn't cool with that but she said we all participated in the initial god BBQ and that I just had to be cool with it. Not wanting to make a scene I dropped it (esp since noone else was on my side) but it still haunts me. Justices. Was this extremely weird behaviour that I'm justified in feeling wronged, or do I need to own up to my own part in the god BBQ, and let it go?

Caden MacLeod

Dear most magnificent and enigmatic justices and the boisterous, bumbling, curmudgeonly bailiff. I present the case of the blind and tasty sharp. Me and small group of friends were doing a spin off one-shot of our over qrching campaign. Me as the DM. The group had head into a speakeasy where they were looking for a Mob boss (who is blind) to kill him and end his terror of the town they were in. They designed a plan to pretend to be his cooks and cast prestiditagtion on a steak knife to change its flavor to be good, and try to convince him it was edible amd is actually just food and not a knife so he would eat it and die. I am usually fine with these type of goofs but to convince someone that a knife is food to the point of swallowing A FULLY SHARPENED KNIFE is slightly insane to me so I set the DC to 25. They called me out for being unfair and were saying I was mad at their masterfully designed plan. So I beg of thee, who was in the wrong. Me for still allowing THIS CRAZY PLAN but setting the dc so high. Or the party who felt they were being treated unfairly. We await your decision and will submit to your justice.

SicBoi

If it so pleases the exuberant and justices Murph, Tanner, and the eccentric knight of order BAEllif Axford; I present you the case of Pickles the Paladin and the familiar familiar. (Not a typo.) While running my first game, that focused around Aboleths passing off their contaminated water as “holy water”, I had a paladin named Pickles. Pickles insisted that his “find steed” spell be home brewed a bit to match his story. He wanted to make it so that when he summoned the steed it was always the exact same animal and not a random one plucked from another plane. I was very ok with this at the session 0 because it would be a great chance for the party to bond with the steed in a more serious way and saw nothing game breaking in its nature. I was correct the party loved the steed, a giant bat named Beatrice, and even tho she always regenerated they hated to see her take damage. The majority of the campaign went smoothly until the final battle with the BBEG. In this last stand battle the BBEG cast “Crown of Madness” on Beatrice while Pickles was on her back, causing Beatrice to attack Pickles on her turn. As soon as Pickles turn came around again he un summoned Beatrice and then re summoned her triumphantly stating that since she had been un summoned the effects of “Crown of Madness” would have faded away. I ruled that since Pickles explicitly made it known that he was summoning the exact same steed every single time that he summoned Beatrice that this was the same bat with the same spell afflicting her. Pickles argued slightly but eventually concluded that my ruling was fair. The issue came when I refused to let him take the action back. I explained to him that his character was using trial and error to try and test the bounds of magic and he had learned something from this even if it was not what he intended and there for could not simply say “jk nvm”. I beg your divine and unflinching judgment on this matter. Was I wrong to rule that crown of madness would hold over? And was it douchey to deny take-sy back-sies? I await your humble judgment with bated breath. Hey Jake.

Cam Baker

To the benevolent angles of dice christ I bring the case of the overpowered wizard. In my first time playing 5e, until then I played 2e, I was playing a 5 shot with some friends on a youth group trip with a bunch of new players. We where supposed to start at level 3. My DM knowing I had a bit of experience encouraged me to set up my character without any assistance. Excitingly I choose a necromancy wizard, largely because of one specific spell. Vamperic touch. I was excited to use this very sneaky skill and surprise my whole party. I kept the spell a secret from my DM and waited for my moment. Through the campaign we went to a village where the DMs sister, who wanted to join the game, dropped in as a level 5 druid. After an initially aggro introduction and a small scuffle we begin negotiating with the sister for her to join. I was annoyed at this point and decided to use my secret spell. In real life I shook her hand and on contact I said "Vamperic touch" the spell downed her character and was a fantastic moment. My DM asked if I could do that spell at level 3. And I insisted yes My sin is this. Vampirism touch is a level 3 spell. NOT a spell for level 3 characters. I did not realize this until later but I did not use the spell agsin or tell anyone about this realization. May dice christ forgive me

El Jefe

P.S. I gave the players a gift the session after the attempted Grinching, so they are fine. I allowed them to loot more magical fun stuff from the Grinch’s lair, and I threw a powder puff fight at them where they got to action-movie-montage through a host of baddies and wreck house, a la the Band of Boobs at the end of The Nannerfly Effect destroying a group of Chosen at the entrance to the Old Summer Court.

Christina Yen

To the erudite justices and the effervescent Bailiff Emily, I stand before the justices seeking reparations for myself and my party after being subjected to a case of BBEG Blue Balls. My friends and I recently gathered over the course of a weekend to finish a multi-year long campaign. Our DM promised to subject us to an extremely difficult, extended finale battle, and we were pumped. The fight opened with numerous opponents on the map. We had a blast taking them down, showcasing our epic-level PCs’ skills and killer teamwork. As the battle ends, we are informed that we must now fight the BBEG’s 3 enforcers. That’s fine. We nearly take down two of them; they run away. This leaves the BBEG’s right hand man, who we take down in a tedious third fight. During all these fights, the BBEG is on the field, taunting us from the sidelines, just out of reach. The day’s session comes to a close, and we eagerly await our final fight against the BBEG. We reconvene the next day only to be informed by our DM that we will NOT be fighting the BBEG. AT ALL. Instead, we will be roleplaying an end scene with the BBEG, who turns out to be a thinly-veiled self-insert of the DM: a sad-boy philosopher god. I repeat, we will NOT get the satisfaction of taking our BBEG down. Despite having saved high level spell slots, wondrous items—one party member saved a potion of invulnerability! We have been edged and now we have been denied release. Justices, should we or should we not be able to fight our BBEG after fighting basically everyone BUT the BBEG? Or should we be left to suffer with BBEG Blue Balls? My party and I humbly await your judgment.

MacBeth

Update on DM (me) vs non-d&d-playing wife (Lady Macbeth): I write in, not with another case but with thanks to you as well as my wife who, unlike Lady Macbeth, has seen no phantom blood "spots" of guilt for telling me to kill my party. My group got together and I swore to them I wouldn't be afraid to kill them all even though one of my players (PC name "Shake Spear" the goblin) was moving out of state a few days later. To add a mechanic to the inherant countdown in the module, I told them every 10 minutes outside of combat someone would have to roll a luck check and if they failed, the BBEG would take off in a rocket and the party would be left behind and possibly incinerated. The party's first roll was immediately but the launch would only happen with a nat 1. The party had Shake Spear roll the first die... It came up as a 1. I didn't prep for this happening so fast (a 5% chance is basically 0 right?)! I froze and said I needed a minute. My friends got together talking and I sat there contemplating how I can Deus Ex Machina them out of this. I looked up and saw my wife. She had been doing a puzzle across the table but now was looking at me shaking her head. She knew what I was thinking. I decided to let the chips fall where they may lest I receive another verbal lashing for my weakness. It turns out while I was thinking of a cheap trick to get them out of the situation, my PCs got together and figured out an amazing plan and that plus some good rolls managed to get on the ship, kill the BBEG, and narrowly avoid dropping the rocket on the keep, but still destroyed many priceless artifacts along the way. It was the perfect partial success to a final one shot for the whole group. Shake Spear's epilogue finished with him dying pursuing his life long dream of seducing a dragon <3 I just really glad my partner took an interest in something she knows I love and will help out in the funniest way possible.

Gregory Nelson

I’ve been playing with the same DnD group for years. I’m also a huge fan of WWE. I recently learned my group is doing a WWE themed campaign, and I’m not a part of it. Should I find new friends? 🙃

Brock Hevenor

Beloved Justices and also pretty great bailiff, I bring to you the Ryan Reynolds Conundrum. I've been DMing a side campaign for my long-running TTRPG group for the past few months. The setting is an Urban Fantasy Vancouver, a la The Unsleeping City. The PCs are all members of a secret group that operates through the Vancouver Museum where they have to help maintain the division between the World Mundane and the World Fantastic. Right now, they're collecting artifacts for the Winter Solstice, where the power balance between the Fey Courts will shift back to Summer, which is a yearly cycle. They're having a great time, and I'm finding the world to be a ton of fun to DM in. The problem comes from a mysterious character. I purposefully made The Director a secretive figure in the organization who helps fund their activities and has a vested interest in protecting both sides of the Worlds. I've dropped a few hints that The Director is an important person, and that they're definitely from the World Fantastic, but live on the Mundane side by choice. My intention was to have a big dramatic reveal that the Director is Ryan Reynolds, a powerful Archfey who decided to go try acting on a lark and decided he loves it. His assistant is going to be Seth Rogen (another famous Vancouverite) who's just a really stoned Satyr. When this campaign was a 4 or 5-session throwaway, we all would have laughed at this reveal and then moved on to the next story. Now though, my players are really enjoying this world, and we seem to be stretching out much longer than before, and I'm not sure I have a good enough Reynolds/Rogen impression for this to be the actual long-running Director character. Should I pivot and just have it be an important in-universe character? Should I have it be a fakeout and the real Director is someone else? Should I spend the next few months really honing my Reynolds impression? Help me, Dungeon Court!

Mike Geggie

May it please the court, illustrious justices, and the just okay guy Jack reading this, I present to you the case of the predictably cowardly adventuring party. My players and I have been playing our first full D&D adventure, Tomb of Annihilation. We've been making our way through the jungle hexcrawl, and my players have started to complain that the encounters in the jungle have felt tedious and uninteresting. This past session, the party finally arrived to one the major lost jungle ruins. To try to help with their jungle traversing complaints, I added a dormant fast-travel gate into the ruin with a huge hint implying that it was there. But, while exploring the ruin, the party encountered a veiled Medusa. The rogue succeessfully cast Charm Person on the Medusa and convinced it to remove its veil, which immediately petrified their NPC guide on the spot. This scared the players so much that they ran away from the ruin entirely, completely overlooking the solution I'd placed to solve their major complaint of the campaign so far. This was the fourth major event of the campaign that my players have fled from without a PC death and without getting to its end, missing plot points, loot and any other rewards from seeing them through to the end. Justices, I seek your counsel, how can I convince my players to overcome their instinct to simply survive these encounters, without allowing their characters to act heroically or maybe die trying?

Stephen Charbonneau

To the leaders of the dice Christ congregation, I am in need of absolution. In January I took a break from drinking as many do to start the year off right. The only problem? When people asked me about it I kept accidentally calling it “dry July” from Hotboy summer . On the third time I did this my wife asked me “isn’t that the thing from Nadpod where there characters didn’t jerk it?” Realizing my error I blankly gave a thousand yard stare and said “no that can’t possibly be it”. Please forgive me for my deception and not being honey and true with Dry July and Hogaust.

taro ! (he/they)

To the most rootin'-ist tootin'-ist Justices, and the Wormly Bailiff adorned in a supple bucket hat. I present to you, the case of the Rapunzel Ritual Razzing I play in 2 alternating campaigns with my dnd group, myself having joined late. Upon joining I brought to the groups attention how ritual casting works - specifically that you can take 10 extra minutes to cast ritual spells without a spell slot. One of our DMs accepted these rules, the other Does Not Like It, but admits it is part of the rules. The issues comes with my bard (who we realized following character creation is very similar to Tangled's Rapunzel) (i swear this is relevant) trying to cast Identify twice by rituals without using spell slots during downtime. For the first one, my DM asked me what song my character was performing, so I played the “flower gleam and glow” song from Tangled, and he said to sing along, which I did. He rolled his eyes and then gave me the results of the spell. After a cut to other characters for a bit and it came back to me, I went to ritual cast again, he said "okay, sing the song again. for 10 minutes." Your honours, I refused to back down and just use a spell slot. I sang the song 10 times, the first 3 with intense eye contact with the DM. After 3, he said "okay fine, you cast the spell-" and I grinned saying "no, no, i need to finish casting" and added dances (macarena, a bad ballet, a worse jig, and a mime) to the last 7 renditions as he sat with his head in his hands while the other players laughed. Afterwards he said "I think we can all agree those were the longest 10 minutes of our lives" (jokingly. i think.) and the other players boo'd the DM. I thanked him for the opportunity to perform and how enlightening it was to experience such an audience. He said "If i'd known you would have enjoyed it, I wouldn't have had you do it!" Justices, was I being a little stinker and derailing the session for 10 minutes? A wrongful (and dramatic) razz? Or was I justified in maliciously keeping to what the DM SAID he wanted? I throw myself at the mercy of the court. PS. This same session my PC lost a finger, so I admit to feeling a little vengeful. (Submitter uses he/him pronouns, name pronounced like tarot cards)

Jen

Dear justices! The placement the og baliff’s name on the dungeon court sweatshirt causes it to fade first because of how I sit at my desk!! Anyway! I present you the case of edgy kids being edgy! I run a curse of strahd campaign for a dnd club for teens (mostly spooky hijinx ensue less kidnapping women and less finding skeletons of children from a fight club). I have players meet strahd fairly often and early when I DM this campaign cause that’s fun for me, but when I had him meet this group of teens the first time, they all immediately and I am talking immediately pledged allegiance to him. One even wants to change class to a warlock to make a pact. I have had an important npc be like “hey guys, strahd is gonna murder and betray you” (a little more eloquent but yea). They shrugged. I have already set up two deals with Strahd that have negative impacts and still the others are like “us too!” So im gonna make sure they have fun, but im probably gonna end up murdering all their characters. Is this ok? I will TRY to get them to see character growth is cool or at least a warning “this path be bad for y’all’s health.” And just fyi, the npc was madame eva doing the fortune telling scene as a sandwich maker at a jimmy johns because none of them wanted to go with Ireena to the vistani camp, they all wanted to leave the carriage in the middle of the woods and go to jimmy johns. Honestly one of my best scenes.

chlo!

Not a dispute just hilariously relevant to the caption. I had a group I played with for three years in college, and the group fell apart for a number of reasons. The main one being this: our paladin had begun dating our wizard’s ex IRL less than a week after they broke up. Cherry on top? They lived together, with their other roommate being our barbarian. Absolutely nuts series of an events to witness in real time.

Drew Pate

Dear hot boy justices and the ephemeral bailiff worm wife. I present the case of the Artificial DM. *fun fact: I wrote in about DMing for the Mayor of my city and this DM was the mayor of another near by city. Unrelated, just neat.* My friends and I have been playing a weekly game since 2021 and have had some of the best games of DND in my life. Our first DM was a trained voice actor and our second DM was a creative writer. Our third and most recent DM was a tech guy with little acting or creative experience (self described.) We all understood going in that he was nervous about improvisation and the more RP aspects of the game but figured we'd fill those gaps for him when he was out of his depths. However, to avoid being caught off guard, and without our knowledge, our DM started using Chatgpt to generate things like scene descriptions, game mechanics and NPC motivations. When the players tried to riff on what he put before us he would say things like "You do that" or "That happens" and then continue with whatever chatgpt had generated, not incorporating our choices. In one instance, my knowledge cleric did an insight check to see if she got a bad vibe off some NPCs, she rolled a dirty 30, to which the DM responded "You can tell that they truly want you to follow them". We followed and were immediately ambushed. This is but one example of instances that happened throughout the entire campaign. We ended the campaign recently after a big, genuinely fun combat. With the big bad (a home brew dragon) defeated, the DM described (in the parlance of chatgpt) that the missing god of this world was finally freed. When my now disillusioned cleric asked the god "How were captured? You are a god and the big bad was but a dragon." The DM got very heated and said "The god doesn't have time for this disrespect, he teleports you back home and that ends our campaign." We are still friends and about to start our next campaign, but I can't help but feel both bad for maybe ruining his final game but also mad that we never got to do the fun group story telling that I love about DnD. The party itself is split 50% think I was a bit rude and 50% thinking I was right to be over the AI game. I humbly ask the justices AITA? (Love the show. Never listened. <3)

Dennis J. Dolan

To the chivalrous and philanthropic justices and-wait a minute, is that a worm at the bailiff's stand? Uuuuuhhhhh-ANYWAYS Today, I wish to present a case of the HIGHEST importance; a case of betrayal, of intrigue, of debauchery and of MURDER! My oldest group have, for the past few months, been playing in a Theros game that has been... let's be generous and say interesting. For example, in spite of the fact that Theros is a deity heavy setting, well over half the party bares no godly affiliation. My character (Cub Funny, Satyr Bard and racy, freshly canceled comedian) is even actively ANTI-deity. There is, however, one notable exception. That exception being Braxos, a Barbarian, champion of the minotaur god Mogis and man on a mission; find the champion of the god Heliod and slay them. Having cleared out a dungeon infested with demons, the party helped the champion in question out of said dungeon and into the light of day. At that point, Braxos knew it was time. Time to strike. A fight broke out between the two that quickly became a very turbulent affair. One of our two Paladins got involved, landed the killing blow and intimidated a witness (a guard who happened to be on scene), our Druid turned the fight into a cartoon scrape by casting Fog Cloud and my character just panicked and started running away. It was such a mess that it took up our entire session and our DM called for a temporary hiatus of the campaign in order to figure out where in the blue hell we were gonna take the game going forward. As a representative of the defense, we wish to take a guilty plea in exchange for a reduced sentence. However, we still wish know who do you believe is at fault in this scenario and how shall they should be punished?

Saoirse

May it please the court and the lowly wifeworm, I present a case of election fraud A while back I joined a group of teenagers to play a Strahd campaign. One session, everyone but me ran in an election to replace the mayor we killed, while I was a campaign manager to another player. I gave him advantage on his speech, then spent 2 hours sitting there. I'll admit I was bitter, and I rigged the election in my candidate's favor. This proceeded to enrage every player at the table. It fully derailed from there, ending with a ballot box full of hot oil and ball bearings. This had no real effect on our campaign at all, and the DM said the player I aided would have won anyway. So the question stands: am I the bad guy? Did I make this a main character moment, or did these teenagers screw me over? Much love

Mitch Rhook

To the righteous reverends and pious priests of Dice Christ I come before you with a confession. I have openly defied Dice Christ and may face his retribution at any moment. I was a first time DM with all first time players. I ran a session 0 where they all made characters and backstories everyone was really excited. I was running a pre-made campaign that started with a little goblin ambush to introduce combat, however these goblins ended up killing the sorcerer outright by critting on 1hp and taking her down to negative max health, and the cleric who went down first round and failed death saves by rolling a 7, and then next round a Nat 1. Now these are all first time players and I didn't want them sitting out of the session or losing these characters they were so excited to play so I let the ranger use his next turn to deliver them good Berry's from the druid, and then reroll a death save. This is where my great defiance of the lord comes in. The cleric rolled another Nat 1. Dice Christ clearly wanted him dead and yet I couldn't bring myself to allow him to lose this character and so I allowed the good berry and medicine checks to help keep him alive. (He didn't roll above a 4 on the dice for the rest of this session). Devoted Deacons, have I angered Dice Christ? I submit myself before the church for penance

Sephiroth Did Nothing Wrong

Wonderful Emily, those other guys, I write to you about the case of the Stolen Final Breath. A couple weeks ago, the party I DM for was stuck in a ravine with an Earth Cult at their heels. The party's fighter, Bonk, put himself in front and went down within a round. Bonk's player had been toying with a new character, so we talked after session and he decided to give Bonk his Swan Song. My Swan Song mechanic gives the character an immediate turn when they would die, all attacks at advantage, auto-crit if you hit, with guaranteed death at the end of the turn. He dealt massive damage, tipped the combat in the party's favor, and gave his last speech and final breath. Just as he finished, the Blood Hunter piped up, asking if he could use his Blood Curse of the Fallen Puppet to make Bonk do an extra attack. I allowed it, but we teased the Blood Hunter for it. Jake, should I have allowed that? Bonk had already given his heartfelt speech and acted out his final breath, but the damage was needed to save the whole party. I carnally await your ruling. The other Justices can chime in if they want. 🤷

Megan Biewer

To the Sagacious Justices and the lovely Baillif, four people that have inspired my love of D&D since their first roll of the dice. Several years ago, my friend wanted to DM for the first time in a one shot and I played as a Way of Mercy Monk (lv 3), with a Marine background to embody an army doctor. Within the first few minutes of the session, our party met a very ill man who was living in a dilapidated shack. I tried to use Hands of Healing, but upon a failed Medicine check, my DM said it didn’t work and that this man was suffering a lot. I decided to end his suffering and killed this character. Throughout the rest of the game, every NPC commented on how much this man knew and that it was lost now. I was also accused of trying to gentrify a neighborhood after suggesting to help an NPC find food or work since she was living off of scraps. Finally, when we stumbled upon the woman behind the town’s mishaps, she was described as injured and in pain. I offered to help but my DM said that since I had already killed for no reason, my character wouldn’t actually do this and wouldn’t let me help in any way. I didn’t want to argue with the DM in the middle of a game and let it go. Was I right to be upset by my friend’s decision or should I just chalk this up to first time and last time DM sweat? I humbly await your justice.

Befallen

May it please the court: Dear court justices, bailiff, and the guy who gave me a Sharpie in New Orleans who may or may not be present, I bring to you a case that involved not myself, but a fellow player, a human rogue named Slyxx. The story led us to said player's hometown. He was once a member of the mafia that had long since overrun the town. The godfather of the mob arranged us into 1v1 matches in an arena. The DM arranged Slyxx into a fight with the boss's daughter, Bedorah, who he had been friends with since childhood. Bedorah went first and used an attack that blinded Slyxx, giving him disadvantage on attacks and saving throws. Slyxx made an attack and missed On Bedorah’s next turn, the DM told Slyxx to make a Dexterity saving throw with disadvantage for Bedorah’s signature attack. Slyxx proceeded to mistakenly roll only one die, landing on a natural 20, to which he was excited. Unfortunately, the DM had to point out that he had disadvantage due to the blindness. Slyxx begrudgingly rolled another die and proceeded to land on yet another nat 20. We turned to the DM, ecstatic, said the dice had condoned it, and it would be narratively amazing for Slyxx to dodge his old friend’s signature move while blind. The DM stated that due to Bedorah’s ability, it would not only hit, but do full damage. Since we were low leveled, this instantly lost Slyxx the fight. Honorable justices, Should Slyxx have taken the full force of the damage rules as written, or should he have been able to dodge the attack as Dice Christ clearly favored? I leave the judgement in your hands.

Heather Stratton

To the most illustrious judges on high and the bailifiest bailiff, I bring you a case of character creation woes. A few years ago I joined a campaign that would take place in the feywild. I made my character, an earth genasi wild magic sorcerer who sprang to life when an errant spell hit some nearby rocks, imbuing them with the wild magic of the fey who cracked like a geode when she could not keep the magic contained. I was really proud of my idea and when I presented it to the table everyone was on board except one other player. They claimed I had stolen the concept of their idea (a celestial warlock who was created and sent to a previously evil warlock who was on the path to redemption). They said that there was “a plot of themes that overlapped” which made them think I had copied. I still don’t really get what that means. We moved ast it and started the campaign. My sorcerer discovered she was not the only one like her in the world and had a new side quest to find her family. The warlock decided they wanted to create a new character. Judges. The new character was quite literally a sister of my character. An earth genasi warlock who was like a geode with crystal growing outwards. Am I wrong for being salty they gave me such a hard time when there were some slight if you squint similarities between our original characters but seemed okay to make a literal sibling of that same character? I prostrate myself before you and await your judgement

Binky Fiasco #1 Fan

To the exalted judges, and their loyal and widely respected bailiff — I have been a member of a dnd group for over four years, spanning multiple campaigns with rotating DM's and various players cycling in and out of the table, outside of a core group of 4. Our most recent DM has been running a campaign for over two years, building on extensive lore and the world we created, with the games being hosted at his apartment. However, our DM began dating a player at our table several months ago, which was a shock to the rest of us, as we would have not suspected they would be a good couple. Over time, the DM worked with their girlfriend to revamp their character's backstory, making them the central focus of the story. As time went on, we noticed tension growing between them, with the girlfriend intentionally pushing the DM's buttons, and the DM getting visibly aggravated with their girlfriends in-game shenanigans, which included asking if their stinky farts delt poison damage to enemies. A few days after a particularly tense session which ended on a cliffhanger, with us at the precipice of finishing a long quest and about to face off against an ancient dragon, we received word that the DM and the player had broken up with a lot of drama. This schism marked the end of our dnd group, as the DM needed time away and their now ex girlfriend was the driving character of the story. Judges, am I wrong to think that the DM should have waited to break up with his girlfriend until after finishing the campaign, or at least until after resolving the cliffhanger he left us on? I humbly await your judgement.

Necromance isn’t Dead

To the most Honorable Justices and the sniveling sneaky bailiff, I bring to you the case of the dimensional tear. I was playing in a long campaign with a group of friends. Our party was tasked with saving the realm from a legion of evil corrupting creatures, which were coming in through a dimensional tear. To stop the threat once and for all, we needed to defeat the enemies and mend the tear. We snuck and fought our way past enemy lines, made it all the way to the tear, then completely and utterly failed to fix it. If anything, we made it worse. After that session, I half-jokingly said that there was probably no way to fix it. I was trying to keep the party’s spirits up, but I also did think it was unfixable, since it had been established in-game that the gods had tried to fix it and failed. The DM corrected me and said there WAS a way; we just didn’t figure it out. Fair enough. Years later, we finished the campaign. I asked the DM how we could’ve fixed the tear. They said there wasn’t a SPECIFIC way to fix the tear, but if we’d come up with something “creative enough,” they would’ve let it work. Honorable Justices, we were level 8 at most, and even the gods couldn’t zip that thang up. Was our DM in the right to leave things open-ended, presumably with room for creative problem-solving? Or was our party set up to scratch our heads, flail, and fail? p.s. We tried all the usual stuff for figuring things out in-game, including many different skill checks, asking for help and intel from NPCs, etc… but I guess our ideas just sucked ass.

Frank The Fickle Leaf Fig

To the worlds best Judges and the worlds most reliable backup bailiff – I present the case of the curious robot and the cursed ring. A few years ago I was playing in my first major campaign based in the Underdark, I was playing a warforged paladin who had been created in the feywild but had unfortunately lost its memory while traveling to the material plane. Due to this reason my character was very curious about the world, often times noting mundane acts as astonishing events and always looking to learn everything. The campaign was going well and we came upon a large city that was essentially a black market. In this town we found a variety of interesting and fun magical items one of which was a black ring that was found on a severed hand. With a quick check by our wizard he saw a series of flames and that’s it, the party surmised that the ring was cursed and decided to not put it on. This made the DM look incredibly sad after describing the item in great detail. Feeling a bit sad our DM didn’t get to play with his super cursed item, I thought that I would try it on to follow my characters curiosity and make him happy to use the item he created. Boy was I wrong, as soon as I put on the ring he began laughing and said that all of my other items became unattuned, this sucked because I had just gotten a really cool plot related item. I thought it wasn’t the end of the world because surely it must be a really cool item so I went along with it. The next several sessions more and more curses were revealed such as taking extra damage from every attack/spell, gaining vulnerabilities and my arm slowly decaying, but hey I got to add an extra d6 on my attacks. A few sessions later and my DM and I start chatting on what could be a cool potential moment where if my character dies and I’m brought back I might have some of my original memories which I thought was super cool. The next session we are in a combat which begins to go a bit poorly, I am left with half my hit points in which he declares that now I deal extra damage but on every of my turns I take even more damage, I was a bit worried as our healer was super far away but I chalked it up to metagaming and proceeded to fight. During the battle I was knocked unconscious and immediately failed two death saves then my turn came around and he said I died due to the ring dealing damage to me. The battle concluded and the healer went to revive me but the DM then said the black ring was missing and there was no longer a soul to be returned. It has been a few years since the incident with the campaign is still going on with a new character I still can’t help but wonder what could have been with my character I loved. Judges am I fine to still be a bit sad that I never get to play this character after my DM had led on to me being able to have a plot driven death, or should I just let bygones be bygones and never let him put another cursed item on me?

Josh Kumar

That story gave me so much delight and I'm really thankful for these updates.

Laurel

To the beautiful bailiff and her helpmeet hands of justice. I come to you humbly with a case where I want to be clear I love my DM. He works very hard to make a fun game that has brought us a lot of joy for over five years. However, he has two rules I would like him to receive community service for. First, nat 20s and crit fails are only nat 20s and crit fails in combat. In all other circumstances, they need to be rolled twice in a row to be a true crit. That means a 1/400 chance instead of a 1/20. In my years of playing, I have rolled a single “true” nat 20 and this makes me sad. Additionally, he rolls all insight checks behind the screen, for player characters too, with the theory that if we know the result of the roll, we as the players will know if the character we’re insight checking is being truthful, and perhaps meta game. I don’t think we are deserving of his distrust and would like him to have to perhaps volunteer at the animal shelter, unless you agree these rules are cool. In which case, I will pick up litter at the creek. Thank you for your time.

Dungeon Daddy JC

To the gorgeous, rock-collecting bailiff Emily, the supremest of supreme crit justices, and that guy—what’s his name, Jeff? Jorgen?: I submit to you the case of the trifling winged teifling. I had a character who was playing in my campaign who was an unintentional rules lawyer because of his immense, almost encyclopedic knowledge of the game/rules books. When I tried to have him roll athletics or acrobatics to cross through airspace above a river where there were airborne combatants/traps, he insisted that—since he was born with and had spent his whole life with a fly speed—he didn’t need to roll, he would naturally have the ability to dodge and fly around any obstacles, even though several of them were sentient creatures with move speed, reactions, etc. I humbly prostrate myself before the esteemed court (and I *guess* the riff-raff Jork, or whatever his name is) and ask—was I in the wrong for expecting my players to use their skills to avoid my NPCs and cross a deadly river, or was my player correct? I humbly await your divine and ordained judgement.

Kiwa

To the saintly envoys of Dice Christ herself, as I organize a dnd group of friends I must first confess my sins before becoming the dungeon duke As covid lockdown began some of my group moved online with one becoming the new DM, while it was fun I began to notice that at any combat when someone got to low health the enemies would start missing a lot and eventually it got to the point where I began to fudge the dice rolls when this would happen to speed up the process by giving myself some decent roll that would hit. While I knew it was wrong, I felt it had to be done and I ask to be absolved of this so I might come into this new group a man born again

Roger May

To the un-doxxable judges, and Jacob Hurwitz... To repay a favor to a friend's partner, I agreed to run a pre-written module for their D&D group. This group is mostly people in their late 40's early 50s, who have been playing together since high school, and their now grown up children. The problem is, that these people absolutely refuse to play anything other than 1st edition. The module they handed me is unhinged. It's called the Throne of Bloodstone, it was written in 1988, and it is suggested for characters between levels 18-100. (yes, actually). After the warm up encounter of fighting a level 30 Lich in his Sauron-esque tower, the party descended to the first layer of the Abyss where they had to figure out which of 26 portals would take them to another layer of the Abyss ruled by Orcus, so that they could rob him. They narrowed it down to 2 choices, one was the correct portal, and the other was a portal to the “Layer of Evil Incarnate”. Naturally, despite all my hints, they chose the wrong portal and jumped headlong into an endless black pit. According to the module, Good or Neutral aligned characters were instantly thrown out, randomly scattered to different separate levels of the Abyss, most of which were the homes of different Demon Princes. However, Evil characters were “Instantly polymorphed into undead (No saving throw) and vanish into this layer, never to return.” It should go without saying that there are 2 Chaotic Evil Rogue/Assassin edge lords in the party. Judges, what would you have done? They have been playing these characters for something like 30 years in real life. I didn’t have the heart to auto kill them. I did my best impression of Crowley from Supernatural, and offered all the still living players the chance to make a devil's bargain to save their friends, gather them back together and bring them to Orcus’s doorstep. However, none of them would, so in the end I allowed one of the now undead Rogues to bargain away his eternal soul for 6 more months to finish the mission, and get everyone back together and back on track. Should I have been more harsh? Should I have let them all rot? I leave it to you to decide. P.S. I would have listed Jake’s actual address here, but he is currently homeless, since Jill has kicked him to the curb.

ArcaneArcher

To the noble judges and the ever-diligent Bailiff Emily, glad you've replaced that guy "jorge I think", I present to you The Case of the Supreme Spellcaster. Our adventuring party has been exploring the realms of dice and destiny for over a year, meeting faithfully 1-2 times a month. Eight valiant heroes, each bound by the sacred laws of 2024 D&D rules—well, almost all of us. You see, one of our party members has been granted a Gestalt build by our DM. Not just any Gestalt, but a Wizard/Sorcerer hybrid who has the spell slots from both classes and all the features of both classes. Meanwhile, the rest of us remain but humble mortals, bound by the limitations of single-class existence. This Arcane Anomaly can cast more spells than the entire party combined and yet somehow manages to avoid the front lines, letting the rest of us eat dirt while they fling fireballs from the safety of the back. Sure, we still have fun—we love the game—but every session feels like watching a one-man magic show while the rest of us play henchmen. Esteemed Justices, we come before you seeking guidance: Are we just a band of loyal sidekicks in The Wizard’s Tale? Or should our DM be held accountable for allowing one player to wield unchecked cosmic power? We humbly await your ruling.

Gicky

WARNING SPOILERS FOR LORD OF THE RINGS THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING. ALSO TW: SPHINCTERS. Dear honorable justices and vigilant bailiff Emily! A friend of mine wanted to try his hand at dming, and I as a long time dm gave him some tips. I told him to be careful when describing the environment as it is often the case that what the dungeon master may think is a minor detail, the players mistake to be the key to cracking this whole thing wide open. Moreover I told him to never describe anything in a way that could be misconstrued as phallic or resembling a butthole as this WILL derail the session without exception. Cut to our first encounter with some eldrich flesh monsters in a strange fleshy cave. The fight is not going in our favor and the mood at the table is getting deflated. The DM picks up on this and in an expert move describes a horrifying howl coming from deeper in the dungeon, and has the flesh monsters suddenly stop and look panicked before fleeing ala the goblins in moria fleeing at the sound of the Balrog (note the spoiler warning). Unfortunately he had the monsters flee through a hole in the fleshy walls of the chamber, which closed "tightly like a sphincter". Judges was I wrong to encourage the party to spend 20 minutes lubing up and coercing the sphincter to open, resulting in us being attacked by an eldrich horror of flesh and bone? Or was this an important lesson for the DM to be careful with word choice? I await judgement. P.S we managed to get the sphincter hole to open but couldn't get our whole bodies in, just the tip.

Bright Witch

Dearest Honorable cutie pie judges and the gemstone of a bailiff, wife worm Emily, I present to you the case of "Oopsies, Barbarian Rage Gone Wrong." My DnD group is currently playing in a Theros campaign, where we've all diligently worked to follow the rules except the three doofuses who are actively unaligned with a god. I play a Circle of Stars Triton druid styled after Jessica Rabbit who sings in a cabaret club at night and drowns sailors by day. We're a chaotic group, but we have a lot of fun. Nothing shows how much we enjoy playing together more than the fact that we're an online group who has played together for over two years. Our latest escapade involved saving the hero of the town, a devotee of Heliod, from a cave swarming with cultists. Our barbarian, a minotaur named Braxos dedicated to Mogus, has an active hatred of Heliod's champion and has been trying to humilitate him as an act of service to his god. The rest of the party kept a close eye on Braxos throughout the cave and the rescue. Braxos behaved himself...until we reached the light of day. In full view of a guard and an NPC cleric who had joined us on the rescue, he attacked. Our Leonin paladin also decided to start his villain arc by attacking as well. The fight dissolved into chaos as the Paladin's brother - another Leonin Paladin - attempted to keep him from going off the deep end, and the rest of us trying to save Heliod's Champion. We all had our role in this fight - our Satyr bard (my character's ex husband) ran away, I cast Fog Cloud to try and confuse the group, then randomly shot the spell Bees?! into the cloud, prompting the DM to roll a D6 to see who I hit, and the Leonin paladin brothers fought one another and argued. Heliod's champion was killed by our now evil Leonin. Our party scattered. The chaos was actually a lot of fun, but while the DM loved the curveball, he still called a two week break in our campaign to give him time to plan the next portion of our arc. We are all guilty, your Diciest Honors, but we have to ask - who is the most guilty? Will we ever be redeemed in the eyes of Dice Christ?

Tails with really supple birthing hips

Greetings oh venerated arbiters of justice, ye who hath passed judgement on all wrongdoers of dice Christ, and that one person that reads these messages, I think his name was Tucker or something I don’t remember. This question is less DnD related and more just table drama. So umm just jump right into it, I am polyamorous and am apart of a group of 4 friends that play dnd religiously, the beginning bit matters only because a year or two ago I was in a tumultuous relationship that was were my journey started. I’ve been out of that relationship for about a year and nigh forgotten about most of the crazy stuff that I did then, however last week at dnd my dm said he and his wife are bringing over a new friend that they are planning on dating as well (thruple) so me being poly and happy to see them taking the journey I am overexcited to meet their new partner. To my horror the new partner was my most recent ex and the main reason the previously mentioned relationship didn’t pan out. She joins the table and all is normal, no one knows we know each other. But right as the session ends she corners me at my car and says she is going to tell my friends everything and doesn’t want me to return to the table if she is going to be there. WHAT DO I DO. I don’t want to hurt my friends and possibly ruin their intro into the lifestyle but I also don’t want to lose me dnd group. I beseech thee give me advice.

zach james

To you guys… yo. I was playing in a campaign with my brother and 2 of his friends. I was a rapping bard named chocolate steam and I made a parody of ice ice baby called steam steam baby. I wanted to play a snippet of the chorus every time I casted my homebrew steam spell. I was never invited back and my brother hasn’t spoken to me since. I have nothing else to say. I know I was wrong. DnD ruined my family and life. Love the show

Jake Punch

To the clerics of Dice Christ Herself. Ive come to confess my sin, and absolve myself of the guilt I feel for lying to help a friend have more fun. I've been DMing a Homebrew campaign for almost two years now. We are level 6, and our Changeling Ranger came to me privately, and told me he wasn't having fun as a Ranger. Not only did he have legendarily bad rolls, he felt underpowered compared to the Druid or the Rogue. So I told him we could work something out. At one point in the campaign, I gave him an item as an action. He could roll on the Wild Magic Surge Table. Part way through a particularly rough combat for him, almost dead, he used the item, and rolled a 100 (regain all your sorcery Points) The entire table starts yelling, and chanting ONE! HUN! DRED! ONE! HUN! DRED! So, I allowed the ranger to re-spec into a Sorcerer with the surge of Wild Magic, And now he is having MUCH more fun. So about my confession. My friend rolled a 00, and a 1. Then started chanting. I as the DM knew this was a 1, not 100, and my bad rolling friend beefed it hard, but I said nothing, and started chanting too. If he rolled a nat 1 instead of a 20 I wouldn't have lied. Does pretending not to notice a mistake make me a heritic? Please absolve me of my guilt holy rollers. Thank you.

Luke Wilson

If it pleases the white-hot judges and the why-not bailiff - may I introduce the case of Jaguar Johnny, the PC who has has never been hit, and never missed a shot. Our story begins when the DM tells us he is running a very deadly one shot, so we best bring overpowered characters to the table. Comedic character conceits are also encouraged. With this in mind, I create Jaguar Johnny. Johnny is a hyper-serious gruff and tough human battlemaster fighter, as well as a staunch flat Faerûner and magic denier. In the first combat, I shoot my crossbow, and do not meet the creature's AC. The DM announces how Jaguar Johnny misses with his shot. It is at this point I correct him, and introduce my character's jokey flavour. Canonically, Johnny never misses a shot, and has never been hit by an enemy. When he "misses" a creature, he is actually hitting them but failing to do damage (IE striking a shield or armor). When he loses HP, he is not getting hit, but instead getting fatigued from the battle. My DM vehemently protests that it is unfair for JJ to be an untouchable bad ass who never misses. I respond that "flavour is free" - Johnny follows all the rules of DND, so why can't I flavour him however I want? It’s silly and preposterous, we were encouraged to make funny characters. My DM argues: "Flavour for your character is free. But if your flavour is that all the other PCs suck compared to yours, now you're flavouring their PCs!” The debate rages. Other players also have stupid jokey character concepts for this one shot, and they have no problem with Johnny's flavour. The DM responds that he is a player too, and he doesn't enjoy that flavour. Ultimately we compromise, and that day is the first day Jaguar Johnny suffers the ignominy of missing. But our beef continues to this day. The DM roasts me to other players, calling me a problem player. Am I entitled to my free flavour in this one shot, where silly comedic characters are encouraged? Or is describing your character as unhittable + with perfect aim, even as a joke, a dick move? I throw myself at the mercy of the court.


FoxyNarwhal

To the honorable crit justices and the lowly bailiff Jamily, I bring you the case of the "Not all animals are the same DM" Our party had a druid who was an Eldrin, our DM has decreed that the fey wild in his world is a plane of creative chaos and is different than the material plane. Personally, for my character that was an Eldrin as well until he was transformed into an Aasimar (long story) had to basically be a dumpster racoon due to the transition into the material plane being drastic. He was even ruled to have had bad social skills due to it despite being a 20-charisma sorcerer (he also rolls stats with 9 D20s take 6). However, for our druid it was even worse, because when she tried to cast speak with animals on a nearby squirrel or something (I don't remember the exact animal but it was a very standard one), she was told by our DM that it did not work and then asked "when have you seen this animal" as she was from the fey wild. So basically, she could not speak with ANY animals from the material plane since they were different from those in the fey wild and she had never seen them before. The druid later left the party and when asked later on why she left she said that our DM was "too one way". This DM has made many other rulings like this when it comes to the extensive world lore he has that is significantly homebrew to where most things cannot be assumed based on the rulebooks. Justices, was our druid wronged by our "this is my world you're just living in it" DM or should we have just accepted that our druid couldn't speak with animals?

Herman Egenberg

May it please the honorable supreme crit justices and the lowly bailiff Eminemily. I bring you the case: "revenge of DM" We are a group of friends playing a weekly dnd campaign in Eberron, planning to take the story all the way to level 20. I must admit, I am a bit of a power gamer. I have carefully built my level 11 wizard to make the most of the spell Armor of Agathys (that I got from a feat). It provides a shield of temporary hit points that reflect ice damage on anyone who hits me with a melee attack. By using the protective ward from my abjuration subclass, plus feats and items that reduce incoming damage, I can taunt the enemies to hit me, and reflect more damage than the paladin and fighter in our group combined. I once reflected 175 damage to a 7-headed hydra in one turn! The dm has struggled to prepare challenging fights for us, but one day he arrived at the game with a menacing air about him. I worried that he would counter my character with archers, as Armor of Agathys doesn't work on ranged attacks, but what he did was so much worse… Our enemy was a huge giant. I cast Armor of Agathys and squared up to it, daring it to hit me. However, the giant didn’t attack, but grappled my character, something my low strength score made me helpless to resist. I asked the dm if the grapple would trigger the ice damage, but he said no because it didn't count as being hit with an attack. Then, the giant started battering the fighter with my character as an improvised club. He said that THIS counted as a hitting with a melee attack, causing my spell to damage the fighter. After repeated blows with my screaming wizard as a weapon doing 25 extra ice damage on each hit, the fighter was down, and the giant turned on the paladin. "I release the spell, I release the spell!" I pleaded. "You can't, it doesn't require concentration, bitch" the DM replied, thus not only turning my favorite spell, but also my often used catchphrase against me. Luckily, our bard (who, to be fair, rarely gets to shine) managed to dispel the Armor of Agathys spell, and then torched the giant with her moonbeam, saving us. Dear justices, did the DM go too far, or was this brutal unveiling of the perfect counter to my build karma biting me in the armor of agath'ASS? And should I be able to cancel a spell cast on myself at will, even though it doesn't require concentration? I humbly await your verdict. All the best, love your podcast: Herman from Norway.

Beccaroniandcheese

To the lowly, lowly, lowly judges and the illustrious bailiff - I bring you the case of my mother and the Kevlar umbrella. I dm’d a one shot for the first time with my mother and a few other family and friends. During the character creation, she wanted to play a high elf who had been outcasted and essentially lived in a man made cave where she crocheted and made crafts to sell for a living. Sounds adorable and I was in, but she wanted to have an umbrella as part of her character design which I was fine with - until she said specifically it was a Kevlar umbrella. I asked her if she wanted it to be Kevlar for a specific reason and she said that she wanted it to basically use at random as a shield, but not have it as her actual shield. I told her nope, you can have a normal umbrella or have this be your actual shield but she was adamant on just having a Kevlar umbrella. In the end she agreed to have it be a normal umbrella but bought it up a few times during the actual play through (jokingly I believe). Please deliver your swift and merciful justice on this relatively low stake situation!

Phlax

To the bodacious judges and the most honorable of all bailiffs, Bailiff Emily. I bestow upon you the the case of the robbed Nat 20 Some 4 or 5 years ago I was playing one of my very first games of DnD with a bunch of friends. We were all very new to the game and had no experience playing but I'd listened to Naddpod for some time so knew the basis of the game and it's rules. Early in the story, we were running from the city guards and found our way into the sewers. We were trying to infiltrate the castle from underneath but came upon some sludgy ground. I rolled low on my perception or insight check and so just proceeded to walk through. I quickly began to sink through the floor. I asked to roll to throw a rope and get out of the sludge, was told to roll a dex check and got a Nat 20!!! The DM then narrated me falling through the sludge and into a spiders layer. He then ends the session. I was fuming and was later told that the reason he ruled that was due to if we had continued through the sewers there was a gas trap so it was safer to come down here. Judges, despite what outcome was better, this isn't what I wanted to do. So was I robbed of my Nat 20 to save myself from the sludge even if it meant killing myself in the sewers? I await your judgement.

Emily Bender

May it please the court and poke the bailiff, I present the case of the curse breaking coin: My friends and i are currently part of a campaign that includes a fair amount of homebrewed items, including an All or Nothing Coin-- where once per day the holder can replace a roll of the die with a coin flip, heads being a nat 20 and tails being a nat 1. We also recieved a Deck of Some Things, which our DM described as being full of minor boons and curses but nothing too game breaking-- we've been loving having a celebratory draw from it every level up! However, our paladin recently drew a card which turns every nat 20 roll into a nat 1, forever. The curse will be lifted if he can roll two nat 20s in a row. (In fairness, the opposite card, nat 1s into nat 20s, was previously pulled by our delighted druid). Our paladin is now spending every long rest trying to wrestle other party members and any nearby NPCs, with the plan that after his first nat 20 he will use the All or Nothing Coin to increase his odds from 5% to 50% to break the curse. Judges, the DM has not told us whether or not this plan will work, as "technically a coin flip isn't a ROLL of a nat 20" and "it would be funnier if i didn't let you do this", so we're just wrestling with hope in our hearts. I ask the court-- has our paladin come up with a genius solution or is he using a shortcut to defy the will of Dice Christ? Are we doomed to never have another critted smite ever again? Even if it won't work, can we convince our DM to give us the ruling in advance? We eagerly await your thoughts

Jane Paintrain

To the Honorable Justices and the worm bailiff, Lowly - I present the case of the Marvel Menace. In the early days of our playgroup one of us wanted to try DMing for the first time with just me running two PCs. The practice session was fun and I agreed to another. What I didn’t know was that the DM invited a second player to the next session. I was nervous because my two characters were parodies of Marvel characters - funny for a one shot but far from what I would typically play in a full campaign. Of course, the new player comes in with Thor and Black Widow and a full campaign ensues. From there things only got worse as the second player created exclusively Marvel characters for all subsequent campaigns, one shots, and mini arcs in our larger play group. These PCs have not been well received at the table as we tend to play typical medieval high-fantasy adventures. Judges, I ask you - who must bear the blame for this superhero epidemic that has been going on six years now? Is it the second player for forcing his superhero fantasy into our forgotten realms, is it the new but overly permissive DM that enabled us, or must I make my way to a Dice Christ confessional and beg forgiveness for this superhero inception? Perhaps everyone is to blame and this case has no heroes after all. I leave the ruling in your capable hands.

Artwo Jones

To the honorable justices and the stellar bailiff SUSAN, - My crew is starting a new campaign with the 2024 rules. For the new campaign we have realized that rules for 2024 were not written to be immune to being exploited because D&D is a GAME, so a general comment of "no bullshit shenanigans" was made. Our wizard of the group says they can summon a Giant Fly using the Find Familiar spell because it's a beast with a CR of 0, but I as the GM say they can not because it's not in line with all of the other choices of familiar. Am I being a DM that is squashing player cunning? Or is my wizard pulling bullshit shenanigans because WOTC didn't make the Giant Fly a CR 1/8? If judgement is ruled against me, please have the bailiff SUSAN wear lipstick while giving the judgement.

Erica B

To the honorable justices and super classy bailiff: I present the case of Horses on a Mesa. I was DMing a game set in an academy for adventurers that was located on and in a giant mesa. Early on, I narrated that the school's stables were on top of the mesa, where the horses could graze and run around on the field up there. The cleric - played by one of my best friends who is also a Certified Horse Girl - immediately jumped in to claim that this would be a terrible idea, since horses get spooked and stampede, and so would eventually and inevitably gallop en masse over the plateau's edge and fall to their death. I hadn't thought of this, but I quickly explained that the academy had magical protections in place to prevent this - essentially, "a wizard did it." This answer was accepted, but every now and then my friend will bring it back up and razz me for this (admittedly ignorant) bit of world-building. Justices, I ask you: should this player have automatically assumed that the magical academy would protect its horses through magical means, or do I deserve to be regularly reminded of how horses work every time the topic comes up, fifteen years and several campaigns later? I await your wise judgement.

Tyler Goevert

To the esteemed court and the Wormliff, I bring you the case of the Vengeful DM and the Busy Roof: Our level 8 party is currently attempting to break a character out of prison whose player was gone for paternity leave, but now has been unable to rejoin the campaign as his character because we got too distracted. We finally reached the prison, which presented us with a sheer wall at the top of a cliff. I, a Dwarf bard, had the idea to Dimension Door myself and another one of our party (a rogue who recently joined the campaign and is new to D&D) to the top of the roof to find a way in. Upon arrival at the top, we were greeted by 10 guards and an execution happening on the roof. When told to drop our weapons, I assumed that these guards were wieners and turned our rogue invisible so he could deal a heavy first hit while the rest of the party followed with our wizard and another Dimension Door. We got fucking rocked by 40+ damage each in the first round of initiative, prompting the rogue to tackle me off the tower on his turn and be Feather Felled to safety. The DM said that he was interested when we discussed Dimension Door as our plan, but, and I quote, “was baffled when the planning stopped at the words Dimension Door” and “none of you once asked each other what would happen if there were guards up there.” I ask you, was our DM justified in presenting us with a full cohort of guards on the roof conducting an execution, or am I a smart good boy who should be rewarded for creative thinking to attempt to find our missing party member? I await your humble judgment.

Evil Anagram

To the Jovial Justices and Bailiff Baddie, I bring the case of the Thieving Teens. I used to regularly play in a local store that has since been murdered by Covid and mismanagement. One of the other regulars brought her teenage sons to join the campaign. While we were in Waterdeep the teen playing a ranger was with my character at a magic item store, of going an Oathbow out of our price range. I told him that he could always steal it, and that's when I saw it: the light filling his eyes as the limitless possibilities of D&D finally clicked with him. I stopped everything and said, "I want to say two things. One: You are free to try stealing from this place, but it's a magic item shop, so it probably has tons of magical security. Two: I'm going." I told the DM I'm going back to the inn and not leaving. What followed was the worst theft I've ever seen attempted, with the ranger's brother immediately caught casting spells while publicly urinating in the street, the ranger immediately turning on his brother and accomplice before running away, and a Rope Trick escape leaving the urinator dangling from a rope as guards fired volleys of crossbow bolts. I laughed the whole time, and when asked to help reminded everyone that I was at the inn. Afterwards, both teens blamed me, but I maintain that I warned them that it would be difficult and had nothing to do with their plan. Am I in the wrong? I will not feel guilty either way.

confusedgoat

Most beloved, esteemed, and venerated judges and the honestly just kind of a cool guy bailiff: I present to you the case of the Abbott. I was a player in a Strahd campaign and we encountered the Abbott. This guy was fully described as creating mutated people and making them live in squalor. Then we find out he is making Strahd a bride?? So, we go fight him, kill him, and our DM explodes. Goes on and on about how the Abbott was not a bad guy and was trying to fight against Strahd. This leads to inner player conflict to which almost broke apart our group, our friendship, and took a long time to overcome the bitterness. Justices, I am now DMing this same campaign for my own group. The Abbott is LAWFUL EVIL and clearly states he is trying to gain Strahd’s good graces. The other DM is now a player in a different Strahd campaign and built their character around working with the Abbott to fight Strahd from the underground. Am I missing something? Am I just going crazy? Did this DM almost split our group for nothing or are they forcing a weird perception of this character onto everyone else?

Evil Anagram

To the juicy justices and bodacious bailiff, I ran a table that consisted of my wife Sandra, her best friend Lyra, Lyra's husband Joey, and our friend Allen (all fake names). Lyra and Joey were in an open marriage, and my wife liked hearing about their sexual escapades from Lyra, both the delightful and disastrous. Occasionally, this came up at the table because they would both be drinking and like teasing each other, though Joey would get occasionally get embarrassed, so I would put a stop to it. Welp, Lyra and Joey divorced, and while it was a shockingly amicable split, Joey announced he was leaving the table. Allen, who would pretty much just sit there quietly when table talk took a titillating turn, decided he was going to split too, saying he wanted to have more Sundays with his wife, and the group fell apart. Should I have been more firm in stopping the salacious gossip at the table, or was this pretty much unavoidable?

FireKing17

To the amenable supreme crit justices and the wormiest of wifeworm bailiffs, I write in a time of dire need. Over the years, I have listened and sympathized with the plight of many stunned players. It is with a heavy heart I share my tale: I was the host of our weekly sessions, we held strong to a beer rotation with a common theme, everyone but the DM buys the beer. We were completing a Mind Flayer arc and my half-orc paladin had been stunned intermittently for two weeks. The next week I was on the beer rotation, I grabbed a 30 of our beer of choice (Michelob Ultra, not an ad) prepped the fridge and got the basement set up for game night. I brought a coworker guest cleric (don’t worry he was stunned all night). We ran up on the Elder Brain and his various minions and my paladin was yet again stunned for the entire evening. I caught flak for my guest and I ripping half the beers, but what else were we supposed to do? It is for this reason I propose an amendment to the Critstitution permanently banning player stuns: ye who provides the beer, should never fear (your character getting stunned for 3 weeks straight).

RebeccaC

Dear merciful judges and meh bailiff, I bring to you the case of the silent two-headed dog. My friends and I are have been playing DnD for several years together and have a couple different campaigns going at once. Everyone always has a good time and the dm does an excellent job with all the different storylines and character arcs. My one worry is that my friend seems to be developing a pattern of mysterious but increasingly quiet characters. Campaign one: every time they saw a piano they would play it nonstop. I’m not exaggerating, we could not get them away from the piano. While this didn’t come up a lot, it derailed several sessions. And their character never wanted to talk about it afterwards. Campaign two: they played a character who couldn’t speak out loud and spoke to one person at a time via telekinesis. Campaign three, one that we just started: they are playing a Druid transformed into a fierce two headed dog. We just met them and they refused to shift back to human form until the wildshape expired. I (in character) asked them why they weren’t changing back right away, but they were a dog so they didn’t answer. And once they did turn back, they sat by the fire growling rather than joining our party on a mini adventure. There are often cool story reasons for why they choose all their character elements. And they almost entirely home brew every character, bringing a lot of charm and fun to the sessions. But judges, am I wrong for finding it increasingly frustrating to interact with their characters or should I put more effort into role playing with them? I throw myself before the mercy of the court.

David Klein

To the Knightly justices including the former bailiff, now straight up Jaking it and by it I mean his Naddpole Jork and the Sterling Bailiff Axford, May I present the case of the Character Creation Conundrum. A while back I Joined my friend's new Dnd Group for the start of a new campaign. upon character creation I started to ask the other players what race/class they were going to play as I didn't want to make the same or similar character as someone else. I was immediately told that I was 'meta gaming" and was trying to "spoil" the other players characters. I was then told to not talk about my own character. I then just rolled up a Shadow Sorcerer inquisitive rogue multiclassed Tiefling that was a failed P.I. with a terrible curse who just wanted to help people but needed to learn to trust others. Come session 1 I was met with only very vague descriptions of everyone else's characters and ai reference art. When I (in character) asked another character what their name was I was told that I "hadn't earned knowing their name". Another player was also playing a Tiefling when I tried to engage them I was given the cold shoulder. I was given the vibe that they all felt I was trying to "meta game" by trying to know the other characters. Should I have tried to let character relationships happen slower and more naturally? I humbly await the Judges decision. Also PS. I have just gotten 3 pea Pufferfish and need help naming them! if the Judges would be so magnanimous as to assist me in naming them? Mahalo.

Jake Shurley

To the Ever Unified Supreme Crit Justices and the Ever Beloved Baliff Jake Hurwitz who I will defend the honor of in the parking lot of a Waffle House (I am not biased I swear), I bring to you only one simple question, Who Killed Mett the Automaton, the Character or the DM? A few years ago in a homebrew campaign, whilst hiking through the wilderness of a frozen tundra, we came upon the aftermath of a dragon attack on a caravan. Searching through, we found the lone survivor, an automaton who just then “awoke” for the first time. He was really friendly; real golden retriever energy, so we named him Mett and brought him along. Night time came, so we dug a hole for us to sleep in, and Mett offered to take night watch alone since we didn’t need to sleep. We all turned in early except for one character, our Warlock/Barbarian named Veltin. Veltin had been a very introspective quest because of the nature of his pact with an Ancient Ice Dragon. Veltin and Mett spoke with each other for a bit before Veltin retired for the night after leaving Mett with one last question. “What is Justice?” We all woke and thought everything was alright. Justices and Bailiff Jake Hurwitz!!! All was not alright. We awoke to the scrawlings of a madman on the snow walls and a crazed Mett muttering to himself about Justice. We all tried to calm him down until the DM stated “Mett’s eyes go dim and he drops to the ground motionless” After a quick moral dilemma, we shoved his corpse into our bag of holding and moved along with the adventure. After the session, I joked around with the DM about “How he killed Mett” which, to my surprise, he was confused about. He told me that He did not kill Mett, but Veltin did since he asked a question without one correct answer. I countered that he was the DM, he controlled the world and NPCs and could dictate who lives and dies, and he chose to kill Mett, which meant he the DM was the killer of Mett. The DM doubled down and said that Veltin was the one who killed Mett since he was the one who asked the question that caused his death. We agreed to disagree and even though we still jokingly argue about it from time to time, the DM, Veltin’s player, and I still play together to this day. So Justices and Bailiff Jake Hurwitz, I ask you to settle this argument once and for all. Who killed Mett the Automaton? Veltin or the DM?

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 details 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.

Wilderfeast

Dear exultant justices and the ever shrinking baby bailiff, I bring you the case of the Halfling Sailor who Cannot Swim, A while back I was the dungeon master for a fairly new group of players in a modified campaign combo of Sunless Citadel and Forges of Fury. Amongst the party, played by my close friend, was a Halfling Rogue with the sailor background known as “Halibut Raft”. His personality was based on seafaring and fishing to the point where his character was found by a boat as a baby. Throughout multiple conversations throughout the campaign, Halibut had mentioned that he cannot swim. The campaign did not have too many water based areas in it up until near the end. The entrance to the last dungeon involved a duergar minecart chase that ended with the party plummeting into an underground lake bed. As I described each party member swimming to the surface of the lake, I narrated Halibut struggling and beginning to drown at the bottom as I thought it would finally have a hilarious callback to his offhand jokes of not being able to swim. The druid wildshaped to dive back down and help him up to the shore. The rest of the party enjoyed the moment, but my good friend expressed disappointment that his sea based character looked like a fool upon the first water encounter. I ask you, judges of the near drowned, was I looking too much into his ironic jokes? Or was I in the right to take note and utilize it later for attempted amusement?

LaRockin’

Dear esteemed justices and the radiant bailiff. Today I bring to you the case of the Clever Girl. In a home game with friends we are playing in a setting modeled after Jurassic Park. After being chased for multiple rounds by a pack of velociraptors, who would have ripped are party of squishy casters to shred, we spot a bottle neck in the path. I, the party wizard, cast fog cloud behind us, Our Druid cast mold earth to create a pit trap and our bard cast cloud of daggers into the bottom of the pit. We sat back and waited for the sweet moment these raptors would fall into our trap only to be SHOCKED when our DM announces on their turn the raptors jumping clear over our trap! We argued the raptors would have no way of knowing there would be a trap but our DM insisted they would. Were we robbed of a improvised trap or was our Dm justified to make his raptors clairvoyant? P.S. we later scared the raptors off with an illusory T-Rex roar. Guess that’s one point for the invisible T-Rex, apologies to justice Murphy.

Patch

May it please the court, I am writing to you directly after this event has transpired. I was playing Online dnd with my usual in person group since we weren't able to meet as normal. We were in the middle of a combat when I rolled a nat20 on my attack, but as I announced it over the voice call, my wi-fi died. I messaged the group about it, and the dm said he was ending the session, I mentioned my attack was a nat 20 and asked if I could finish my turn even if it was over text. He just repeated, I'm ending the session. Honorable Justices, should my crit have counted? Should I be allowed to finish my turn next session with the crit still counting or is DMs rule law despite technology interference. I await your judgement P.S. the combat is likely to be a tpk if I'm not allowed to retain this crit

Sage Shaw

Oh holy archbishops of ivory, we come to you with the most egregious case of a curse bestowed by the dice devil. I am running a D&D campaign based on Greek mythology. Amongst the players stands a new player playing a barbarian aasimar. Part of her backstory involves a dead family, as they do. During a recent battle, I killed her and sent her to the underworld to meet them. My issue comes here. She's an amazing player and a great addition to our sessions but there has been a consistency of TERRIBLE roles. For the whole session, she didn't roll above a seven. There was even a moment where I introduced her to her mother, named Nomani, and she responded “neither do I” referring to her character who didn’t have any money. Afterward I made her roll to remember Nomani, who she was separated from at 6. She rolled seven ELEVEN TIMES IN A ROW (with nat ones sprinkled before and after). Failing to remember her each time. I even offered a few free advantages and again each time a seven. She took it in stride and even opted to stay true to the rolls when I gave her the option to bypass. I ask the clergy to banish this demon from her dice, allow her the roles she so obviously deserves as is shown by her devotion to the roll. Allow her forgiveness.

Huascar Holguin

My dear regal defenders of all that is crit and holy, I bring forth a bizarre case with no winners, no sides, only chaos and bewilderment. I join my "freinds'" DnD table as a passive observer of sorts, joining the table in their highs and lows but more or less non existent to the PCs or DM. Very recently, the rotating DM decided to do a one-shot based on minion creation. The PCs had fun creating imaginative creatures with hilarious attributes and the DM set the stage in as a America's Next Top game show for dark lord's favor, a similar set up to a one-shot based on a baking show that went incredible. All seemed well, until the second challenge, when a PC, let's call him Shmurphy, steals the prize of another player, let's call him Shjake, starting PvP. The 3rd player, Shemily, then captures Shmurphy as a prize, which the DM, Shaldwell, accepted! Dejected, Shmurphy continued to fight with PCs which caused the DM to pivot away from the last event in favor for PvP. Shmurhpy then ATTACKED the DM's PC Dark Lord, and Shjake and Shemily weirdly joined on the attack. Shaldwell was going to have the PC Dark Lord leave but then try to attack the PCs stating "I'm leaving dramatically," failed to get their lightning back then left anticlimactically. Judges, am I wrong for being absolutely thrown off by this behavior? Which PC brought on this insane chain of events? Did the DM err by pivoting off script? Ultimately, everyone at the table had fun, laughs were shared all around, and everyone is still friends. I continue to faithfully "observe" the table's campaigns and love them dearly. I throw myself before the court for your fair and rightful judgment.

Lerpy

To the magnanimous Bailiff Emilia + background characters I refuse to learn the names of, I have a conundrum only you can give answers to. Last year I DMed a campaign for my brother, cousin, another brother’s s/o, and my fiancé. My brother and cousin want to pick up exactly where we left off in the campaign. I disbanded the campaign for the following reasons. My cousin continued to try and start pvp (not that egregious). My brother kept getting black out drunk to the point he would sleep in the guest room until his turn rolled around in combat. My other brother cheated on his S/O so she moved states. I broke off my engagement with my then fiancé. Am I crazy for thinking if my brother, cousin, and I keep playing dnd we should at the very least start a new campaign (and possibly have an intervention with my brother)?

Tim Sawatzky

To the esteemed judges and the (please insert however we're feeling about the bailiff today here) bailiff Emily. I created my first Dnd character at the end of 2023. I'm playing a halfling soulknife rogue. I had been enjoying the character quite a bit, but as we continued to play I began to feel frustrated by my lack of options in combat. A while later the 2024 books came out, and I really wanted to rebuild my character to have a few more options. I asked my DM and he said he'd get back to me. A couple months later I still hadn't heard anything and a new player joined our group. She created a cleric on DND beyond, and without even realizing it, made a 2024 build. I had no issue with this, it was the natural thing for a newbie to do. I asked my DM again, and he continued to say he needed to read the new rules. I sent him a list of all the changes, and he continued to not get back to me about it. I've gotten to the point where I'm considering abandoning my rogue so I can build a brand new character. Judges, am I being unreasonable? Am I badgering him? Or should I be bothered by being continually pushed off. I await your infallable judgement.

sarah may

My dearest loves and judges, I write to you today to ask if it's okay to ask my DM to stop tying a pc to the main plot hook? I was invited to join my friend's dnd campaign, there are two dm's and we swap campaigns every so often so one can take a break or if the other needs to do more planning and etc, you get the gist. There are 7 pc's in each campaign, and I noticed that one of our pc's, let's call her Cindy, is tied pretty majorily to the main plot hook in both campaigns. For instance, after being unwillingly transported to a plane with a 3000 year old Queen, Cindy revealed she fought in a war with said Queen 2000 years again (and is actually part god) and wants to meet up with her again, right after it took us two sessions to get into the heavily guarded city unharmed and hidden. In the other campaign, her character is a direct tie to the priest that is giving us quests, and the story is based in her city with barriers that she is a key in getting through because she has ancient knowledge from the city. These things wouldn't be an issue, if she wasn't either on her phone the whole time, or not sleeping. Cindy also got engaged a few months ago and is constantly on her phone looking at wedding related things, talking to one of the dm's wives (as we play at their home) and just completely ignoring that we are playing and she sort of really needs to be involved. Is it rude of me to ask the dm to possibly undo her characters being tied to closely to the plot so we can at least run more of the game without having to wait for her to pay attention (we constantly have to ask to pay attention and repeat whole conversations and remind her what's happened in the last 10 minutes). I'm not asking to remove her completely bc she does play, just only like 40% of the time. Am I crazy or should I just be happy for her wedding planning lol

William Blankenship

Dear highest honors and sewer dweller bailiff, ( if we are nice to Jake this week then TMNT bailiff) in my first ever campaign I had a few issues one being the worst. I was encouraged to be a blood hunter and talked to my DM about being a tiefling and was told some people in the world would not like me or hate anyone seen as part evil. I thought that be cool to roleplay through and earn peoples respect despite what they have heard. But in one of the early sessions a fight went bad and I revealed myself as a tiefling as my bat like wings came out and I took flight. But after the fight ended the party paladin tried to attack me calling me a devil and not wanting to roleplay a convo but have the party kill me. So I flew off into the spooky woods. My dm told everyone they should turn back when night comes but since I was ostracized from the party I asked if I could perch in a tree and make a perception check at night fall to see what was so spooky. Dm asked if I was sure and I said yes. Well night came and I expected to have to flee but out of no where a homebrew giant loin with no wings ( important to note) ran out of the darkness and I tried to call my mount but since it was a dire wolf ( my dm approved in session 0 enthusiastically ) she was ways away from me as he said towns people would never let me have my mount by the towns. So I took flight and tried to get away but the lion in one turn was able to run to me climb a tree leap from the tree and hit me midair causing my level 2 blood hunter to go to 0 hp from fall damage. I failed all my death saves ole after another but the dm smiled and said “if you let me always rule your death saves in secret and tell you if you fail all three and die or not after I role them all for the rest of the campaign I’ll role one for you now” I said no but the party said yes since he also said if he did it for me it’s for everyone. He rolled a nat 20 and saved my pc. I feel like it was unfair to have a creature who can move like somewhere around 80 feet a turn be able to also claim and make a 20 foot leap in one turn was to hardcore and taking away my agency with the death saves. I ended up switching characters later on and the campaign, slowly disappeared bc of other issues though we are all still friends. An old case but any justice would be so nice. PS please Murph don’t hate me for being a blood hunter just thought hunting monsters would be cool I was very party focused

Grayson

To the flippant Justices and the Bailiff covered in cat fur. I present the case of the Thirsty Slime. Years ago, I ran a D&D game with my siblings. Things were great until my older brother invited his roommate to play with us. I allowed this, since he and my brother go way back, but this decision ended up blowing up my campaign. At first, our games were a blast and things were fine, but shortly into the campaign, my sisters told me that they felt uncomfortable around him, as he would seem to stare at them often. While he made no moves on them in-game, one of my sisters told me later that he had messaged her privately, despite her being in a long term relationship. Then, to my utter astonishment, he had even attempted to slide into my grandma’s DM’s as well. Oh yeah, and his PC was literally a wordless green slimeball. Anyways, this all came to a messy end when I spilled the beans to my brother in drunken confidence and that his roommate’s behavior was the reason I stopped planning sessions. Later on, I received an angry and accusatory message from the roommate denying all of the allegations. Justices, was I right in quietly ending the campaign, or should I have tried to figure things out another way?

HAUNTEDSAGE4K

Dear Highest honors and the meek fart huffer bailiff , i am creating a world taking alot of inspiration from final fantasy, specifically final fantasy 7 and i wanted to give the players a chance to gain abilities aka mutations , how could i make this feel awesome but also have a downside in a way?

MEL Keith

For the Holy Clerics of Dice Christ, for I must have sin. It’s been awhile since my last confession but need the blessing of Dice Christ for one of my characters. I have been in an online campaign with my monk character for over a year and has been notorious with bad rolls. May it be digital dice or physical dice. I even bought her two sets to see if they would help. They didn’t. She fails more than succeeding it seems as it’s been a joke with our group. In our last sessions, she failed every one of her dexterity rolls, had to roll an acrobatic which she has a +7 and needed to just roll a 3 or higher…she rolled a 2… But not to say there isn’t some rolls that succeed. In fact, the best roll I had was the last one of the session which was a persuade roll which was to convince a paladin captain to take my monk to jail if they let the rest of the group walk away from fight. A roll that let my monk get into more trouble. Please, help me and my girl out with Dice Christ, cause at this point, wondering if he wants her gone.

WitchKingofAngmar

To the enigmatic justices and omnipotent bailiff I present this offering in the form of what I like to call “the trees hate dnd. I am a forever DM who recently took their online sessions to the little screen and started streaming on twitch. When we got through our first arc, one of our long term players needed to step down due to moving across the country, having twins, you know life stuff. So I did what most do, braved the wilds of the internet and put out a call to adventure online via reddit. Soon my DMs were flooded with inquiries that I painstakingly narrowed down to those I thought would fit. Well I was about to find out how bad my judgement really was… Leading up to the first session, everyone was excited and had come up with great character ideas that fit into the story. I had the intro scene and narration all ready to go and things were looking smooth. Then comes the first day of streaming. We get through about half the session (we play 3-4 sessions) and then one of the new players just logs off! We keep pushing through and then about 30 minutes later the second new player just logs off. Only a quick “there’s a storm rolling in so I have to hop off” and then empty square on the stream layout. We finish the session and I’m a bit peeved. I get a message from the first player that they don’t think the campaign and play style is right for them. Ok, kinda early to judge that imo but no worries. I can’t force someone to do anything they don’t want to. When it comes to discussing what happened with the second new player I asked them if suddenly signing off is gonna be a running thing as we are streaming these games and it kinda killed momentum a bit the session prior. To this they exclaimed that they couldn’t control the weather and didn’t want to be rude and have my power go out mid session. I rebutted, this wouldn’t have been rude. That would be something out of your hands and I’d much rather they stick around and play and possibly have their power go out versus just bailing in case it might. This set them off, suddenly I was being cussed out and accused of not having their safety in mind. I said I couldn’t think of anything safer than sitting in your home playing dnd. To this they responded that they live around a bunch of trees and they needed to make sure that they didn’t fall on their house and kill them and that they didn’t wanna deal with a DM who acts like a teacher who can dismiss the players when I’m ready. I told them that none of this made sense and that it was best we just parted ways. So I ask you justices, was I in the wrong to ask this player to defy the odds against the trees? I await your judgement. Whatever it may be. P.s. we’ve played through multiple thunderstorms, blizzards, and hurricanes since then and no trees have claimed any of us or barely knocked power out.

Rory Thompson

The Case of the Stolen Blood and the No-Win Choice Your Honors of the esteemed DND Court, and Bailiff Tim? I come before you burdened with a great moral quandary one that shakes the very foundations of paladinhood, party loyalty, and the sacred art of getting cool magic loot. I play a paladin devoted to the One Above, the lawful good god in our setting. Another player in our group plays a cleric of the same god. Our characters come from the same church, but while I’m newly reunited with my old friend, I’ve quickly noticed that the rest of the party tends to bully and belittle them. Then, things escalated. One of our party members sought to corrupt a Holy Avenger, and to do so, they needed the blood of a holy person. Rather than seeking some obscure ritual workaround, they attacked the cleric, stole their blood, and planned to corrupt the blade. At this point, my paladin had seen nothing but disrespect toward his friend since rejoining the group, and now someone had physically assaulted him and was committing a blatant act of sacrilege. There was zero chance my character would stand by and let this happen. If anything, the logical in-character response was to kill the would-be corrupter on the spot. The cleric, being equally devoted, also wouldn’t have tolerated it. However, as players, we didn’t want to derail the game, start major PvP, or completely ruin the fun of the person getting a cool new sword. To complicate things further, my paladin is actually a temporary character—my real character is being held hostage by pirates, and the party is actively on a mission to get him back. So if my paladin had gone through with attacking the corrupter, it wouldn’t have had long-term consequences for me personally, but it could have caused major drama in the party. So my question is this: Did our DM put us in an unfair position? Should they have made the ritual require something like “the blood of a sacred mouse” instead of forcing us into a scenario where our only in-character choices were: 1. Ignore everything we stand for and break character, OR 2. Engage in PvP that could fracture the party? I await your judgment. May justice be served, may fairness prevail, and may Bailiff Tim prove himself worthy of the title though I remain skeptical.

Filmscape Chicago

May it please the court and if the bailiff could run out and grab some food for everyone. I bring you the case of Boss Vs Joy. I work a sales job where my boss is always trying to get the salespeople excited about the work we're doing. Last week, he announced that this year's weekly sales meetings will have a quote "board game theme" and the number of calls and emails we make through a week will determine how far we move on the board. The presentation included a lot of game puns crammed into sales jargon, and then there was a slide of the "game board" - a generic DnD world map with landmarks like "the fortress of profit" and "the delta of prosperity." I can understand he's trying to connect to younger salespeople but it's hard not to find this confusing or even patronizing. I don't want to start thinking about Q1 invoice data while I'm playing in my home game, anymore than I want to think about encounter balancing during a sales call. Justices - can't work just be for work, or am I being unfair to a boss who's clearly trying.

Madison Brown

How does Murph feel about Cena turning heel?

Gareth Da Silva

To the humble judges and vain bailiff. I once spectated a dnd game at a friends house. During which, the party encountered a white dragon. The party’s Druid (named celery) wanted to cast Thorn whip, but with a twist, judges the Druid wanted to modify the spell to turn it into a dildo to shove into the dragons throat. The dm refused but the players kept insisting, the situation continued for a while before I suggested secretly to the dm, that he could have the Druid roll an arcana check to make the dildoification happen, the Dm refused my offer. The Dm eventually relented to celery’s demands and the dragon had an unpleasant time. Honorable judges, was my dm hoodwinked into a having his dragon receiving a thorn phalus or was the druids bit of crass imagination warranted?

Santa Grinch Hugging HumBaba and two Fairies

My brother back in Jersey( i remote in and he and the other 3 are typically in person) has been DMing he's been great maybe giving us too much to play with with the B squad and everything but should I have not opened my mouth about limiting the definition of " Ze Wizard's spell scroll Prescription Pad with five 'random' spell meta game to your hearts content " and sugesting we can't leave it this vauge because as is i could cast Wish with this. Should I have listened to The Dice Devil and stayed quite or did i do the right thing

Richard Wellbock

To the esteemed and enlightened Judges and the Bailiff, who cannot be faulted as they're still learnin'. I bring you the case of the boob bombs. When I was a fairly new DM, my wife was a player in the homebrew campaign I was running for her and a few of our friends. It was her first time playing and after a few sessions she decided the game wasn't for her. She therefore requested that her character, a, "redneck, MILF dwarf named Mitsy," be given the heroic death she deserved: to be blown apart by her character's experimental breast implants in a moment of self sacrifice. I did not want to allow this particular manner of death, as it didn't vibe with the grim and dark fantasy tone of the rest of the campaign. We debated this matter for several weeks in between sessions and in the end I reluctantly agreed to her double-d-destruction. I am currently running a different campaign that she has joined and it is going great! However, the story of this busty battle has regularly been retold, with a jovial but stubborn debate raging for years! Judges, I ask if I was in the wrong for wanting a death that matched the tone and lore of the campaign, or was my wife justified in picking the manner of her character's death? Please help us take this burden off our our chests!

RagDollCthulhu

To the passionate Pontiffs of Dice Christ and Emily who for some reason is yelling from the steeple, I humbly come to you with a confession. I am part of a D&D campaign based on a home-brewed setting of the Ghosts of Saltmarsh. I play Yopso Buttscale, a chubby lizardfolk reflavoured as a red salamander, Circle of Moon Druid and have researched in-depth as to the current and future Wild Shapes I am allowed to shift into (currently lvl 8, so only CR2 beasts). Come a session where we were ambushed by several Giant Coral Snakes in a monastery and Yopso was in a Polar Bear form. These snakes are able to inflict short-term maddness that I had looked up the previous few days because I thought it would be funny if I could inflict it on enemies in the future. Yopso had been bit and failed the Con save for the maddess, and I knew that one of the affects would have been the most thematic and funny outcome. I rolled for it, the number rolled was 43, which had zero impact to the fight as I couldn’t talk in wildshape and wasn’t casting any spells. This was when I decided to sin as I lied and said I got a 78, betraying Dice Christ. In the end, though it weighs in my conscience, I still believed it was the funniest choice and the table did really enjoy the disastrous outcome of Yopso eating scraps of documents that may or may not have been important to our quest. I ask the clergy, pleas smite me down with a divine smite if it is indeed heresy or absolve me of my guilt to have made this decision for this funny goof. Thank you.

Argonautica

For people who may be enjoying Murph playing this Steel Hawk subclass, you may also want to give the Celestial Lancer Fighter from Valda's Spire of Secrets a look. Live your Dragoon dreams.

Midwestnerd

To the fellow faithful worshiper & emotionally uplifting bailiff Emily- I bring a case of the player cursed to live, the player being me. During lock down of 2020 I joined my friends in a prison escape campaign and rolled up a human rogue/wild magic sorcerer. I was quick to realize that I had built the only human and saw the perfect chance to make a crass joke toward one of the elves in the party that started with a "You people." That drew laughs from my friends because it was so out of character for me as a player and cemented my rogue/sorcerer as a prejudice and boardline racist human. I figured my friends would let my character die an unimportant death in the first round of combat and we'd all have a laugh but after dropping to 0 due to a surprise fireball, the Elvin Cleric above the table stated to me "you made your bed and now you have to lay in it" and then proceeded to ensure my character never made it past death saving throw number one and protected my prejudice and boardline species-ist character through a year long campaign, despite my best efforts to end the character locking me into a year of crass humor Justices I ask. Was I wrong for sniping a comedic moment and making a crass joke? Or was it wrong for my fellow player to continuously revivify and cure wounds the bit?

hobblelobble

To the esteemed judges and the wonderfully chaotic bailiff, if it should please the court I present to you the case of Taco Bella Thorne and Shake Shaq O’Neill versus Aoife the Warrior and Donovan the Wise. My friends and I recently played part of a Wendy’s TTRPG game (yes Wendy’s like the fast food chain- “Feast of Legends”), and it nearly ended our friendship. Of the Six people playing this game, 4 of them were actively hooking up and believe it or not that wasn’t even the problem. The issue at hand, dear Court, is that half of our players cared only for bits and fast food puns and half of our players created intricate backstories and fantasy lore to explore. Our GM was exhausted prepping pages of material we never got to, and our bit-players never noticed they were being borderline disrespectful of everyone’s time and effort. When this finally came to a group discussion, the bit players said that everyone else was making THEM feel bad for “playing d&d incorrectly.” Dearest Court, I was a player on the side of trying my utmost to play the game. Pray tell, were we in the wrong for trying to take this campaign somewhat seriously or were the bit-style players at fault for their lack of campaign etiquette that was sort of half-explicitly described? Communication could have been better from the start, but the implication that asking for a little more commitment and seriousness from the bit-players was in some way wrong or hurtful rubbed me the wrong way. Please deliver unto us your ruling and we will adhere to your word as law. Humbly, Aoife the Warrior

M. Hedrick

The Case of the Consequence Kerfuffle Dear Jerp and the gang, I approach the bench with a case of alleged NPC weaponization. A few years ago I DM’d a campaign based around a society of airships. Around a year in the party decided to avoid capture by jumping off the side of a ship with a massive makeshift parachute. Before this the surface was just vast desert populated with giant insects. To justify how this didn’t just lead to a tpk, I added a society of decentralized tribes living in mechanical approximations of the bugs around them, and that the Capital City had to refuel once a year at a fueling station across the continent, so they could loop back in on the story. I expected a two or three session travel detour, it actually spanned twenty 6+ hour sessions over the course of nearly a year. They got DEEP into the political structure of these tribes, forging alliances across the territories, the people of the dunes brought together by the parties mission to topple the authoritarian regime. Everything was great, until they tried to sneak onto the Capital ship. Multiple failed rolls, and the panicked PC decisions made in their wake, left only one option for the party to get on without being caught and detained. The tribe that they’d spent nearly 150 irl hours traveling with faked an ambush on the fueling station, distracting the military enough for the party to slip by, but damning the large crew of NPC’s. My players were pissed, they said I “railroaded them” because they had no way to save their friends and still get on the ship, and that I was being manipulative because I “got them close to all these characters just to kill them”. The sacrifice wasn’t planned, but was another spur of the moment justification for avoiding a tpk. The fight over whether or not I was being too cruel ended up dissolving the campaign. Judges, did I go too far here? Should I have added another dues ex machina that dodged any consequence? Is it too much to end a session with the party getting a glimpse at an army opening fire on their fav npcs? It was my first time DMing, I haven’t DM’d since, and I await your verdict before I do.

Dunces and Dingbats

In lieu of a local perish, we turn the office of the Archdices and highest officials of the Church of Dice Christ, including Jim, who’s okay during this part of the show! A wicked green curse has fallen on our party and nobody can explain. I am the DM for our humble party. We’ve been on our walk with Dice for over a year now, and I fear a terrible darkness has just fallen over us and we may be in need of…an exorcism. Before you call bull, ye of little faith, be assured, I know this sounds too wild to believe, especially here. But I tell you, it is true. One of my PC’s portraits on DnDbeyond spontaneously became the Grinch. He says he didn’t do it and I don’t remember doing it. Bringing it up prompted genuine surprise and concern over whether another player could change his character sheet, but I don’t think they can through DnDbeyond. We plan to bring it up in tonight’s session, because the change occurred within the last week. If nobody owns up to it…what then? Where did he come from? Why is he here? Even if someone owns up to it, I’m not sure it matters. He is here now. The PC he’s taken over is a Bard Warlock who’s already a huge pain in my ass, so I fear the worst. I fear it might change him. Sure, we could just change the picture, but if neither of us did it in the first place, it feels like we’re meddling with something bigger than ourselves. I beseech the Church for any guidance in this matter, and beg forgiveness for whatever sins allowed him to enter here. Please help us, -The Heralds

Jacob Adams

Hey judges and balif skippy, I bring you the case of the no homework Dm I am a forever dm who got to enjoy a new players oneshot. I asked what level we would be to which he said level 8. I warned him several times that as a first time dm this might be overwhelming. He said he was fine and could handle it. I then provided my spell list for my now lvl 8 wizard to which he said cool. I had provided him with resources to use like a beginner friendly dm screen but noticed he wasnt using it or asking questions about how to run encounters. Night of we all sit down to start and meet our first npcs. The new dm ran around his living room and picked up his daughters toys and sat them on the table to which he said you meet chucky from the rugrats and bb38 from star wars. We initially thought "o so is this a goblin or ork or something?" He said nope its chucky and bb38. What came next what a nuclear level of razzing as we laughed and pointed out this was as far away from fantasy dnd we had ever been. There was confusion as chucky and bb38 attacked us and we started battle which the dm didnt plan for. I used a toll of the dead cantrip to which the dm was shocked at how much damage i did and stated okay you cant use those spells. The one shot then stopped as we couldnt stop laughing at how unprepared the new dm was. Judges, i didnt want to hold his hand because we are all adults and i dont want to get the story spoiled, but now i feel like my other players wont try to dm out of fear of any level of homework. Should i have been a co dm? Or are adults responsible for themselves

Rick van den Akker

Highly esteemed court and the queen of gremlins bailiff, I bring you the case of the infinite spice merchants. Aside from my main campaign, I also run one affectionally titled Crime Gremlins. Very similar to Trinyvale, a series of minis and one shots where the wonderfully awful party gets up to heisty shenanigans. One of them has the chef feat, and I decided to play into this by giving her Heward's Handy Spice Pouch from Xanathar's Guide to Everything, thinking this could be a fun flavor thing for them. Judges, I severely underestimated my gremlins. Because some time later, one of my players came to me with the following: "the spice pouch allows for 10 servings of spices per day, then regenerates some. let's say you get one vanilla bean per serving (The second most expensive spice in the world). let's say you just use a meagre 5 charges per day, 5 vanilla beans per day. if you do that for 360 days (to account for spoilage, forgetting, etc) there's roughly 120 beans per pound, that's 15 pounds of vanilla beans per year and vanilla sells at about $600 a pound. that's 9000 dollars to be made selling spices on their travels. now, I understand, that that would be an absurd amount of money to hand over to us. So, let's call it, 4000 gold? Winky face" Judges, I am both incredibly mad at nd also insanely proud of this A+ gremlinry. Now the thing is, having what is essentially a money cheat code at level 5 is a problem. Yet I also don't want to just take it away. How do I reward them for their cleverness while also keeping things manageable as a DM? I await your judgment.

August Sky

To the most honorable Bae-Life Axford - and the other guys in the room (I guess if I have to acknowledge them), I played in an online game (some friends, stranger to me DM) as a Minotaur Barbarian, a character I quickly fell in love with. He was the "disappointed dad" type, and I took the Totem of the Warrior path of the Bear to be the party's much-needed meat shield. As the campaign went on, the DM seemed more invested in my character and the moments I was having with other PC's, diving into his tragic backstory with heart-wrenching moments shared by all (Role-playing and sobbing is hard to do). But things took a turn two sessions in a row. I tried making character decisions, like walking away from a fight or cooling off from going into a rage, but the DM overruled me, saying it wasn’t "true to the barbarian nature" and would opt to use my character to instigate trouble around the town. Then, in a battle with a clockwork guardian, the DM introduced "Gravity Damage" which ignored my rage. In one hit, from full HP as a level 6, the DM instantly downed me. As the fight went on, I noticed that the Damage for others didn't even come close to what he dealt to me. I tried confronting him about it in private giving it a day to mellow my mood and his response was that he just Homebrewed Damage types to respond to "broken characters". To this day, I still talk to some of the other PC's who kept playing -- turns out the DM adopted my minotaur and made it his own DM-NPC. (the party threw out the npc a few sessions later cause it wasn't the same) Judges, was I wrong for having “Mad Cow D&Disease,” or was it justified to question the DM’s rulings?

Magestain

I come to you with the most grievous of sins that I have never spoken of. In fact, I hesitate to do this because the people I played D&D with listen to NADDPOD. During the final session of my group's foray into Wild Beyond the Witchlight, I, the group's fairy wizard, was told to roll an arcana check during the final battle against the BBEG. I rolled a six. I said I rolled a nat 20. After all, who could tell what I rolled? It was over Zoom and my dice were out of sight. It was my last roll of the game, it turned out, as I was given the opportunity to cast the Wish spell. What I wished for doesn't matter, because frankly, it was undeserved. This is the most grievous of sins I have ever committed. Ever since I committed this sin, Dice Christ has cursed me. I cannot roll higher than a five whenever I'm a player. When I DM, which is most of the time, I roll so many Nat 20s against my players that I have to fudge most of my rolls in order to not accidentally kill my players. I beg for forgiveness, oh diciest of dicelords! I need to be cleansed of my sin and made anew! Help! I beg!

Plover

wow this one's pretty brutal

Magestain

God. I'm worried I put in too much detail and they'll know it was me.

nbsgamer

Honorable Justices of the D&D Supreme Crit as well as "I have to use the jakes" Jake, I bring before you a case of strategic brilliance undermined by the Dungeon Master’s sudden and suspicious return to their killer DM roots. The plaintiff, The Mangler, a young, battle-hungry, and definitely fungus-influenced dwarven eldritch knight, enacted a bold and cunning strategy during the assault on an underground duergar fortress. The fortress, rumored to house a forge of legendary power, was heavily defended. After a grueling fight at the entrance—where the party (a kobold sorcerer, an autognome cleric, a goblin artificer, and a bugbear ranger) dismantled six duergar and their two ballistas—The Mangler pursued a fleeing enemy deeper into the stronghold. In his pursuit, the duergar panicked and bashed open a door, unleashing a group of skeletons, including one that the DM ominously described as a “flaming skeleton,” which is never a good sign. Meanwhile, using his tremorsense (per 2024 rules), The Mangler detected another cluster of duergar warriors lurking behind a second door, right next to the undead chamber. Seeing an opportunity, The Mangler enacted a daring gambit: using his fungal sproing ability (reflavored Jump), he leaped to the duergar’s door, threw it open, and retreated—intending for the skeletons and the duergar to stumble into each other and fight before engaging the party. The party, well-seasoned in this DM’s past tendencies, immediately yelled, “That kind of plan never works!” But The Mangler stood by his strategy, knowing that even a small disruption between the enemies would tip the balance in their favor. The team had already fought a deadly encounter just to get inside. By luring the survivors back to the entrance, they could use the enemy’s own ballistas against them. But the DM had other ideas. Instead of reacting naturally—where at least some of the skeletons would engage the closest moving creatures—the DM declared that the duergar, with perfect coordination, immediately went invisible and held open all the doors so that the skeletons could march past them, through the fortress, and straight into the party’s waiting faces. No fumbling. No hesitation. No skeleton-duergar casualties. What should have been a dynamic, chaotic battle—where enemies clashed and the party capitalized on their environment—became a brutal slog where the party had to face every enemy, one after another, at full strength. This double-deadly encounter (per the DMG’s calculations) became even more brutal due to the DM’s insistence that the duergar executed a flawless, invisible maneuver without so much as a Stealth check. And thus, I submit this case to the Supreme Crit of D&D, on behalf of The Mangler, who asks: Was this fair, or was this just another instance of a DM refusing to let the monsters act like monsters?

Blue Bokoblin

I have a suggestion, though it is not a case. In the review of “Picnic in Pacland” of which you all hated, the idea of a March Sadness Bracket proposed by Jake. Now that it is March, I believe that it would be an interesting episode. Thanks For Considering, The Town of Arlington, Massachusetts

Vinny Panzarotti

Good Day Honorable Crit Justices and their little bailiff boy, Jock, who is in fact, more muscular than me. My case is not actually my own, but was given to me by a fellow DM and best friend in a rant session about his own campaign. But please bear with me. The game is the first game that the DM has run, with majority of players being new. The players are approximately 35 sessions in spanning a 2 year time frame. The PCs have gotten to the part of the game where they receive the twist of the BBEG and major motivating factors, and the DM decided to run a series of flashbacks as a 3shot where the PCs get to play as the BBEGs henchmen and friends when they became the villain. With me? Okay good. This is where it gets fun. The party created new characters for the 3Shot, 5 of 6 party members created Monks, with the new 2024 rule set. The new monk has an updated version of deflect attacks that uses a reaction to block 1d10 + Dex + monk level damage (or thereabouts). The problem? The encounter the DM created and ran, had a number of small enemies with single attacks trying to overrun the party. Who quickly started taking no damage and proceeded to slowly and monkthotically whomping the important story encounter. My friend the DM, came to me the next day complaining about how broken deflect attacks is and why it's dumb. I responded with a friendlier version of "Get Gud" as I think he just needed to modify the encounter on the fly and either target someone or give the enemies more attack/damage. He disagreed, he said an encounter should work regardless of the party composition and was miffed that they could negate 10 dmg before they even rolled. Ultimately I think you have to build encounters based off what your PCs are capable of. What do you think?

Christopher Ubøe

To the noble and Nobel winning justices, and their credit stealing runner up, J'accuse! My friends and I were playing a campaign trying to prevent a demon possessing a king and taking over a country, where one of my friends was a mercenary fighter, another was a sorcerer trying to free his father from the demon's clutches, and I was playing a paladin determined to send the demon back to Hell. As we were about to face the demon, the Demon offered the mercenary a title and a castle with wealth, giving him his mercenary desires. And the sorcerer was offered his father's freedom and the demon's oath (which he was bound to keep) that they would be allowed to live their lives in peace. Since this was the motivating factors for both, they said yes. The demon tried to offer me power, but since I played a noble paladin, I felt I had to say no, and in the end I faced him alone. Needless to say, final battle ended quickly and not well for me. I tried to take it with good grace, but I still find myself irritated with the result, but I am not sure who I am more bother by: My fellow players, for accepting the offers at the expense of the story because it is what their characters would do. My DM, for offerering the players exactly what their characters would want, knowingly taking away their motivation to fight the BBEG without any real cost that their characters would care about. At myself, for essentially being a sore loser for picking the side that did not win. I await your ruling -Guy in Norway P.S. They are all good friends, so please don't tell me to get new ones

Joey V

Your most Holy Eminences, please forgive me, for I have sinned. In 2020 I joined an online game with strangers, as was the style at the time. I played a kender-like halfling: playful and carefree, sparingly providing some comic relief to an otherwise serious campaign, which everyone seemed to enjoy. (this is important). As the campaign progressed the scheduled end-time began drifting from 10pm… to 11pm… to midnight, when I would often remind the DM that we should stop soon. But no one else seemed to care about the late nights, so I gave up. The DM’s style was to have extended role-play scenes with individual PCs to develop the separate plots they wrote around each of our backstories. During one such intense scene – around 2am – with our party’s elf, I dozed off. Since it was voice-only on Zoom, and most of us were muted during the scene, no one noticed. I woke up near the end of the scene, about 45 minutes later. Although my halfling was meant to fade into the background while the spotlight was on the elf, mine was the only other PC in the room. So when the rest of the party wanted to know what caused the elf to suddenly be so upset the attention turned to me so my happy-go-lucky halfling could fill them in on the dramatic revelation. I put on my best squeaky kender voice and said “What do you mean?” The group broke into laughter at my “wonderful roleplay” and the other PCs chalked it up to “you can’t trust a halfling with anything important.” Soon after that I left the campaign, as the late nights and extended role-play weren’t for me. But I always felt terrible about missing my companion’s big moment. To atone for my sin I have spend that last 4 years as a forever DM, blessing dozens of PCs with cool character moments like the one I slept through. But my past indiscretion troubles me to this day. I prostrate myself and await your punishment.

JJ S.

To the Honorable Crit Justices and the bailiff balancing 5 bucket hats on her head right now, I present to thee the case of the Liquified Python. I'm running a western-style campaign and I wanted my players to fight a monster that resembled Rattlesnake Jake from 2003s 'Rango' with a gemstone flair that obviously needed to be homebrewed. After making its statblock, I tried to show this to a couple of DM buddies, and they told me it had the capacity to TPK the party multiple times over. I argued that the party might be able to deal with this in a way they cannot foresee, but their stance did not change. So, against my better judgment, I scaled it back a bit. Within the first 3 rounds, the party monk ended up getting swallowed, dropped a potion of Aqueous Form into the Python, and then made it out after some nice rolls from the entire party, leading to my monster being turned into a electric puddle that the party wailed on for the next 10 minutes. Despite the fight not going as planned, the party had fun and they enjoyed their spoils and treasure afterwards. After the fight however, I was left wanting more and a little part of me wishes I had knocked the party down at least once. Judges, I ask you, am I right to not feel as satisfied with the outcome of this boss fight or should I resign my feelings as bloodlust and leave myself to a puddle punishment?

Mike Marchetti

To the honorable crit justices and tip staff infection Jafe, I present the case of " Great Scott." I DM a campaign with my wife and two daughters who are 6 and 11. It is the best, everyone is into it, but . . . not to go into too much detail because I don't want to spoil anything- the plot is eerily close to Severance. We've been playing the campaign for a year, but some of the developments in season 2 are similar to some plot points my family hasn't gotten to yet. Justices do I change things, or risk my wife asking me if I stole from Stiller.

🦋 Merryn C 🦋

With all (no) due respect to your former DM, that's insane

Noah Fence

To the wise court: Congrats on your promotion, Emily! Sorry about your demotion, Jake. I present to you the case of the Awkward Oathbreaker: I play in an online game as an Oath of Devotion paladin. My character believes that kindness is the most important thing in the world and is pretty much a cinnamon roll. Recently, we were exploring an underground cave when we came across a locked door. We happily pick the lock and enter, dodging a couple traps and finding some loot, when we get attacked by some drow. I jump into action to protect my friends, and knock out a drow to question him. After we tie him up, we get attacked by another wave of drow. They untie the prisoner and we have to kill him. Darn. We make a plan to disguise ourselves as drow prisoners. Another wave attacks. Darn. One character races ahead to attack because he doesn't want to wait for another wave. Darn. I try talking to some of the drow we're fighting. They call me a "filthy sun-licker" and attack me. Darn. I'm pretty stumped at this point since it seemed like we tried everything but the DM just wanted to run a six-hour combat... After the session, the DM asked the discord "how everyone felt about breaking into this stronghold unprovoked and slaughtering everyone inside without cause." He also asked if "anyone broke their oath." And I'm the only Paladin in the group! I ask the court: Was I in the wrong for not halting combat to play the part of the pacifist paladin, or was I correct to just start slashing?

JakeMeOffBeforeYouGoGo

To the honorable Crit Justices Axford, who inspires me as player, Murph, who inspires me as DM, Tanner, whos quick wit never fails to make me laugh and bailiff Jake, who’s just so great at being razzed. May it please the court: I’m DMing a game for almost two years now. In an early arc my players were sent to investigate the Abyss. After an encounter of almost certain death, they escaped to the lair of the demon lady and mother of spores Zuggtmoy (ZUGGTMOY DICK, JAKE! (…got ‘em!)). Zuggtmoy was very hospitable to the PCs and offered them refuge and safety from the other dangers of the Abyss. In return she asked them to take some of her spores to the overworld and plant them in a forest which is, tbh, shamelessly close to the Crick. My players agreed. Secretly my idea was for the spores to spread rapidly and eventually corrupt the forest. Very similar to the Crick rot in the Tales from the Crick in C1. About a year later now my plans unfolded accordingly. The literal seeds have been planted and I was very excited for my layers to return to the forest where I would reveal the long prepared womping and that they brought one of the most dangerous demons back to the overworld. But instead of expected light hearted and fun razzing (so not the kind that Jake gets off to, you weirdo), my plot twist was received with frustration and upset. They complained that since Zuggtmoy was a high-level legendary demon (CR 23), their then level 5 characters would have had no chance to see her true intentions by any means. And even if they did, they would have almost certainly been killed by such an overpowered encounter for their level. My long-time plan was denounced as “cheap monkey paw twist” and “strong arming them” in one of their most desperate times. Tbh, I don’t remember the details of that interaction in the past anymore. I do remember that I had multiple contingency plans in case it came to fight or a PC death. Still, I wonder if did my players dirty and my big bad should have been simpler and more forward, like a beholder or a dragon (BEHOLD DEEZ NUTS DRAGON OVER YOUR FACE, JAKE!... (back-to-back, sucker)). I humbly await your judgement.

Bess Clem

To the honorable justices and the Worm Wife herself, I present the case of the Runaway Romance. I run an in-person game for 5 players, and in our first session our bard did a little bit about thinking our beautiful but oblivious paladin was a babe and hitting on her. In session zero, no one said anything about romance between PCs, and it seemed more like a Bard Doing Bard Things than a serious bid for romance, so I let it carry on. Unfortunately, that moment became the impetus for all intra-party conversations moving forward (other PCs conspiring to leave the two of them alone together, setting up gifts for them to give each other, etc). I tried to give each of the players a different romantic npc option to get things to fizzle, but instead I created a love square. Now, I know as the DM it's within my control to pull people aside and say "this is getting out of hand, let's walk it back" but 4 of my 5 players are really enjoying it. I did a mid-campaign check in, and just one player let me know that she's getting a little sick of this bit-gone-major-plot-point dominating the party's interactions. My issue is that it feels like I'm taking away a shiny toy from 80% of my table, but on the other hand if one person is uncomfortable that matters. I welcome the court's judgement (and hopefully suggestions).

Quack Dragon

To the honorable justices and… *side eyes the bailiff* …Jake, if it pleases the court I present the case of the Wild Magic Sorcerer vs. the DM. I was playing a Wild Magic Sorcerer another player was playing a Druid. The Druid cast Geas on a corrupted hag we were fighting, their DC was 16, the DM said that the hag rolled a 16. I said that I would use Bend Luck so it would fail, the DM then asked me to roll, I said that it didn’t matter what I rolled because even a 1 would put it under the DC. The DM then said that it rolled a 16 on the die, it had additional modifiers on top of that. Confused I asked what the total roll was, the DM remained silent even after I asked again and explained how Bend Luck works. I went ahead and rolled but it wasn’t enough and the spell failed. I posit that I should get to know the total roll beforehand, as if it was high enough I wouldn’t have used Bend Luck to begin with. We won anyway but I am still a little miffed. So honored justices was I wronged or did my DM rightfully get one over on me?

Courtney

I'm a 32 year old mom of two. My 9 year old got a pet snake, which will have a lifespan of a couple decades. He happily calls it his son. In my eyes, this makes me a grandma. I would go so far as to describe myself as a Tight Grandma. My wife rejects this label, however. She says pets don't count toward the designation. I do a lot of grandmotherly care for my son's snake, I work out 4 times a week, and I have a full time job. I think I deserve to have it all.

Barrel of Salted Beef

To the sober Crit Justices, and Jakey (the Scottish name for a drunk vagrant). I bring you the case of The Cornered Cockroach My wife DMs for teenagers. She’s amazing and, frankly, if I did the same job, I would be arrested for striking a child. She “Yes And”s the kids as much as possible and tries to let them learn from mistakes, in-world. But a recent incident has convinced her that she has failed Dice Christ. One child of 14 - let’s call him Omelette - plays a Gnome Artificer. He’s a mechanically sound player. But he plays as though he’s unbeatable, and never learns from mistakes. When he gets an idea, he cannot be dissuaded no matter how much the other players object. His offences include: -Hoarding treasure for himself -Deciding to fight a fellow PC during battle, and killing them -Executing The Queen of the Pixies when she was in peace talks with the rest of the party Recently, the party retrieved the Gorgon’s Head from a labyrinth, and discovered there were 3 gods who wanted it. Omelette wanted to give it to the Goddess Iris. The other PCs weren’t against this, but wanted more info, so some of them went to commune with their personal deities. While they were away, Omelette cast Expeditious Retreat and fled with the Head, on a solo mission. The players at the table were annoyed and implored him not to do that, but he insisted. The next session, my wife checked in with Omelette privately: ‘Today could potentially be quite intense, are you okay with all this?’ He said he was fine with it. She said ‘Let me know if it’s getting too much and we can stop’ He said ‘No, I won’t need that.’ So, arriving back in the lands where he’d killed the Pixie Queen, Omelette found a barn to stay the night. Aware his friends would be following, he cast an alarm spell on the door and went to sleep. The alarm was triggered by a group of pixies, and after failing a Wisdom Saving throw he was Polymorphed into a cockroach. When the rest of the party caught up they were annoyed and went in pretty hostile - he was physically restrained, in cockroach form, by two fellow PCs, a 7ft tall Dragonborn Barbarian and a 6ft Animated Skeleton. My wife paused the game and asked them all their intentions. They agreed they just wanted him to stop fleeing and talk. Omelette’s take was ‘But I think I’m right.’ A stand-off continued for 10, 15 minutes. Throughout this, Omelette desperately scrolled through his spells. He wanted to cast Expeditious Retreat again, but, being restrained, he was going nowhere. It started to feel wrong, like a cornered animal, and my wife called it. Knowing he’d reached the end of his rope, Omelette broke down at the table. He thought he could take it, but in the end he couldn’t - he is after all a child. My wife feels guilty for allowing the kids to get in that situation, even though she was questioning them and making them roll. Was she in the wrong for letting this escalate so far? Or was she right to let the kids learn ‘better playing’ through consequences? I place her life in your hands.

BigComfyChesterfield

To the honorable justices and the Baeliff Jake, if it pleases the court I present the case of the infinite money glitch, and power gaming forever DM. This account takes place during my first attempt at DMing a campaign. Initially we were a group of seven + our DM. Myself and the DM were the only two with prior experience playing D&D and thought it would be fun to start a group. I took a role as support in this party of news to provide a fun experience for every and our DM took care to make each session interesting and involved for each characters backstory and play style. Our DM was really amenable for fun first and worked with our party monk to get his PC closer to a DBZ charavter. Times were good. The nature of work in our wonderfully frozen province of Alberta meant four members were going to be going away for work after two years of play. We all agreed to hiatus the campaign, as we were all invested, until the majority of these work contracts were up. So, here is the issue itself. I wanted to try DMing because A) it looks fun, B) i thought it would help me grow as a player, and C) i dont want my DM to miss out on chances to be on the other side of the screen. I have plaid a lot of DnD and wanted to try a self contained, small scale, stone-punk game. I found some cool 3rd party material to help. I thought it was going to be fun. My party was composed of the two remaining members, another friend who has been playing ttrpgs for over a decade, and another green member. This setting used salt as a form of currency and our old DM thought it would be funny to ask for an alchemy jug. I gave all members a fun utility item that I thought wasn't going to be very impactful. He made a hyper optimized flying race gloomstalker who had an alchemy jug that he used to make salt from saltwater every in game day. He was rich and powerful and I was inexperienced. I think he may have taken advantage of me. The rest of the party was completely unoptimized. My long time dnd friend who joined filled a role much like myself in my previous campaign, ensuring people had HP and good vibes. As I ramble on I ask, was I taken advantage of by our previous DM turn PC. He walked through all combats that I geared for the rest of the party. I almost killed the remainder of the party when I geared it towards his skill level. Mind you all, This. Was. My. First. Time. The campaign ended shortly after a romantic fissure in the group. Old campaign is probably dead, hope it comes back in some way. Things are all good between myself and my old DM. My new campaign rocks, Thazzo Rai'fen the divination wizard will never die with his 22hp with help from his halfing commoner attended Vik Velveeda the divorced cheese merchant. Thank you justices and baelif, I hope you come to a fair ruiling on if I was taken advantage of and in the wrong for wanting to curb his fun? Or should I have let a forver DM have fun with it? P.s. my wife calls me a dungeon daddy now because of our shared party we are in and I get to celebrate our first kid in 2025. Our ultrasound tech called it a gummy bear because the first ultrasound shows it with nubby arms and legs... all I can think of is a Baby Theobald Gumbar. P.P.s. it's call Planegea and it's pretty cool. P.P.P.s, if it makes $$$ sense more Canadian shows, we will travel for shows, it's just a part of living here.

Carl Stanley

Great Bishops of Roll, I seek your guidance and if you deem I need it, absolution. I have recently begun a new campaign with my regular group, with myself GMing and the players starting at level 15. Having played a lot of D&D with each other by now, we have decided to get a little fun with the character creation, but in doing so I believe that I may have angered Dice Christ. One of my players wanted to be a cursed person, represented as a Warlock who has such terrible luck that it manifests as their malevolent magic, with a clear character hook of discovering the source of their familial curse. To make it a little more fun, I decided to reverse the results of rolling natural 1 and 20 on the dice. Any time they roll a natural 1, it is a critical success. Every natural 20 is taken as a critical failure. We are currently going through brutal combats, and to date they have only rolled a single natural 1 as part of a low stakes, out of combat skill check. The number of natural 20s on the other hand, is a clear sign of divine condemnation! Every single combat there is at least one natural 20, and in the most recent, most difficult combat yet, they rolled a Natural 20 on every round. One round had two Natural 20's, amounting to 3 misses of their Eldritch Blast. And now I must admit, that I did not come up with this idea myself, but I had heard it from the good Bishop Murphy on this very podcast! And so now I come to you, pitifully on my hands and knees! I wish to know if I have indeed sinned, and if so how can I repent?! I know not how I could have angered Dice Christ by following your wisdom, but a gnawing doubt has crawled into my mind and soul and I fear I cannot tell the difference between Dice Christ and the Dice Devil any longer. I await your guidance. May Dice Christ have mercy on us all. - Bedeviled by Chance

Clam-Sauce the Salty

To the honorable slices: Murph or Nothing, Emily Bobby Baxford, Hannah Cald-Tannah, and the Built Homie; Drake. I present the case of the sensitive penguin taint. I was playing a one-shot set in a homebrew world as a Rock Gnome wizard who had never left his mountain range. During the session we came across a penguin. My character, having never seen such a creature and also having a high animal handling, immediately wanted to befriend it. My DM allowed this, and a friendship blossomed between me and this bird. I admit, I tried using the penguin (named bratwurst) to my advantage a lot, like as a sled, or a pillow, etc. My DM was clearly getting sick of it, which leads to the problem. I wanted bratwurst to slide down a steep hill we had come across, purely because I thought he would find it fun. To my surprise, he had the penguin roll a dex save. Bratwurst rolled a nat 1, and the DM declared he had failed to navigate the terrain and hit his taint on a rock, effectively dealing fall damage to him, thus killing him. I argued that was absurd, and even so, he would have slid down head first, as penguins do. The DM straight up disagreed, moving on and starting to engage with the other PCs. After the session, I talked to him and he laughed and said he was tired of having to narrate the penguin's activities, so he took the opportunity to get rid of it. I don’t think he realized I cared so much about Bratwurst, and I decided not to argue since ultimately it’s just a game, and he is my friend. Still, I ask: was Bratwurst’s death my fault for having Bratwurst take up so much space at the table, or was my DM needlessly cruel? Or both? I humbly await your judgement. P.S. My character later suffered a similar fate, being incapacitated by attempting to mount a horse from a tree. Them taints is sensie :(

Crispy Pilsner

Blaire!!! This is insane! We save DnD courts for car trips and today (6 months after meeting, 3 months after this episode aired) we were listening in the car and heard YOUR story about meeting US!!! The entire family was floored and delighted. Thank you for seeking justice for my husband! It was hilarious and wonderful...and a great Father's Day gift! We hope that YOUR birthday and the rest of you trip was fantastic!

Crispy Pilsner

P.S. We have been in line with John Cena IRL at a liquor store!! Ha!

rollinginthecrits

Hope the family is doing well!!! ❤️❤️❤️