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Calling for Cases! (Patreon)

Published:
2025-07-22 14:41:39
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Greetings! Bailiff Jack here, to tell you the Supreme Crit is convening this very afternoon. Please submit your brief injustice and or drama on this thread and we will bring your story to light!

Comments

Ashen

To the honorable justices and I guess also Murph’s DMPC “Jaek.” I present to you the case of the Difficult Druid and the Bleeding Bard. I have been in a campaign for over three years with four level 8 PCs: a wizard, a monk, a druid, and me, a bard. 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. ONLY Wind Wall, every time. The DM home-brewed an ability for her to wild shape into a young dragon, which she has only used twice since getting it two years ago. As the only PC up in the mix, I get absolutely rocked. The wizard 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 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

elizabeth

To the beautiful, magnanimous justices, may it please the court. I was playing in a campaign with a group of friends about a year ago. Around six or seven sessions in, the DM said, "I don't really like running combat, so this is going to be a more roleplay focused campaign from here on out if that's okay with all of you." Three of the five PCs were happy about this, as they prefer the roleplay part of the game; myself (a ranger) and one of my other friends (a fighter) were a little disappointed. I was fine to go along because I was a beast master ranger and my animal companion (a hawk named Barley) gave me plenty roleplay opportunities. My other friend, however, was a champion fighter. She asked if she could switch classes to something with more options for roleplay, since her entire character/all subclass abilities were built around combat, but the DM said no. The DM justified this by saying that we had already played enough sessions that it would be weird to change it when her champion subclass abilities had already come up multiple times. The campaign disbanded a few months later (no other combat encounters were run) due to other issues*, but I still feel my friend was wronged and should've been allowed to switch classes to something that had more utility outside of combat once the DM decided to make the campaign more roleplay heavy. Was the DM justified in telling my friend to stay a champion fighter despite not running combat, or am I correct in thinking this was a weird move that just served to decrease my friend's enjoyment of the remainder of the campaign? *In case the court is interested in the drama, two of the PCs who were dating in real life had also made their characters romance each other in a way that was (kudos to our DM) very interwoven with the plot of the campaign. They broke up, didn't want to keep playing romance, and the campaign kind of fell apart around that.

Benjamin Dale IV

The Case of the Squashed Roaches: Hello Honorable Judges and Little Buddy Babyliff, I played in a campaign where the premise was essentially villainous Hogwarts- complete with house ghosts, house parties, and teachers and students who sought eachothers' downfall in an effort to create the most dastardly beings possible. My generally jolly dwarven fighter named Bognak quickly irked many in the school for not matching their definition of villainy- especially since his most heinous offense to earn his enrollment was a frame job. By order of the school's headmaster, myself and another PC were put in a situation where we were told to fight to the death as a cliffhanger before our next session. I told my DM between sessions that I was planning to escape to the Astral plane to avoid the combat altogether since as a player and a character I was uncomfortable with PvP. I was fine playing a new character, and I even prepped a backup baddie. I looted the school's magical items, said my goodbyes to my closest friends and other PCs, and used a portable hole with a bag of holding to launch myself into the Astral plane with the intention of becoming a planar pirate. My DM said after 6 hours had passed in the material plane, I appeared back in the same spot from where I had left. Since our game was streamed live, I didn't want to fight about character motivation in the moment as to why I would want to return even though it felt contradictory to what we had discussed. In the end, the duel took place and both PC's wound up dead as the victor of the fight was hit by a power word kill by the school's headmaster. Both bodies were tossed into lava destroying any chance of revivify along with all of our magic items. I ask you, was I wrong for trying to avoid the combat? Should I have accepted the PvP and put my feelings as a player/friend aside in an "evil" campaign? P.S. the DM's wife who played with us told me he had said the session before that the other PC involved and myself "are cockroaches who refuse to die"... I eagerly await your decision.

Erin Perry

To the holy rollers of the highest church of Her Rolliness and little alter boy John, I come to you this day with a confession. A while ago in my current campaign, my DM gave us all custom feats after we reached an important story beat. Part of my feat was access to my very own familiar, but the stipulation was that she had to use the stat block of an abyssal chicken at all times for story reasons. While not the most useful for scouting, this little chicken comes in clutch in battle often, most recently allowing me to twin spell cure wounds, as my chicken and my PC were able to touch separate party members. Apostles... I recently found out that I've been using the unearthed arcana statblock this whole time, as it was the first result on Google images. If I'd paid just a bit more attention, I would've realized the image came from the unearthed arcana subreddit. The real abyssal chicken has blindsight in a 30ft range, but is blind beyond that, meaning that half of this chicken's clutch moves I would never have been able to do bc the chicken wouldn't be able to see the target to cast the spell on them or move to them. I have since begun to use the right stat block, but how can I begin to right this wrong?

Uncanny

To the ever divine justices and the ever dependable Bailiff Hard Jake Shorts. I bring you the case of The Wasted Wish. I’ve been a part of an online campaign for almost 2 years now. We were a party of 4 and one DMPC. At the time I was playing an Eladrin Rogue/Wizard. My character was a part of the Thieves Guild and stole a book that was actually some sort of prison for an ancient black dragon. My character was now cursed and couldn’t get rid of the book without getting an aneurysm so he did what the book asked him while looking for a way to prematurely cut ties to this book. At some point the DM puts a Deck of Many Things I’m front of us through a Bag of Holding which was stolen by the DMPC. I drew one card only and I got The Moon card. I then rolled a 3 for the amount of wishes. I used the first 2 wishes for the party, but I used the 3rd wish to end my curse. The DM made me roll the percentile die 3 times and asked me to call high or low before I roll. I only got one roll right and my character instantly died. The DM said that the Wish did cut my connection to the book, but there were side effects that ended up hurting me. The damage was so high it killed me outright. Judges, I ask, shouldn’t a Wish just a give me what I want without having to roll for it and WITHOUT KILLING ME or was what I was asking for too much? I patiently await for your judgment, Uncanny

David Pazmino

To the Honorable Judges Murphy, Tanner, and Afford, and… uh… Balif John? Your honors, I come before you not as a mere mortal, but as a victim of narrative injustice. This is The Case of the Misnaming Dragonborn. I play in a campaign where your race and stats are random due to rolls and you're reincarnated from our world to dnd. Here is Carl: My purple dragonborn cleric with bad luck, worse dice, and the shortest life expectancy this side of a kobold in a wizard’s duel. Carl met an early grave, as is tradition for level 1s. And so, from the ashes of Carl’s tragic nat 1s, rose Randy — a new hero. A fighter. A fresh start. New stats. New class. New soul. But alas… not a new race. Dragonborn again. As if fate herself couldn’t let me escape Carl’s legacy. Here lies the tragedy: For nearly a year, I have walked the path of Randy. I have fought, bled, and roleplayed admirably in his scaled boots. And yet… my party those I trusted most still call me Carl. Not in passing. No, Your Honors. As a habit. A casual disregard for Randy’s existence. Every time they call me "Carl," another part of Randy dies inside. And while I correct them, they laugh. Tell me, your Honors — do all humans look the same to you? Are all elves interchangeable? Is this racial profiling?! Randy deserves better. And now I stand before you with a plea. A crossroads. Should I just embrace this mockery, give in to the peer pressure, and change my name back to Carl — thereby erasing poor Randy’s identity forever… or continue this struggle to be recognized for who I truly am, not who I once was? Your Honors, I am tired. Randy is tired. Even Carl’s ghost is tired of being misattributed. All I seek is justice… or at least a ruling. Sincerely, Randy "Definitely Not Carl" the Dragonborn Fighter

Devin Danko

Humble deacons of the church of dice, I lay myself before your altar. I often play spellcasters. A couple wizards, a druid, standard stuff. A large part of playing them is preparing spells to face the challenges you foresee. I am very bad at this. It seems that every time I put together the perfect list to solve the problems for the coming day, none of them are ever useful! Or, when the moment comes where one specific spell would be the *perfect* solution to some obstacle, I didn't prepare it! And in my shame, I will admit that on more than one occasion, I have secretly swapped out a spell when I was not allowed to. Please, forgive my sin so that I may no longer be tempted to violate the sacred laws set forth by the good Player's Handbook! I am at your mercy.

Cas Marie

Honorable justices and Mr. Crabster himself, I bring to you the case of the armored wizard vs the dm. I play a bladesinger wizard in my good friend’s campaign. In our recent game we fought an Aboleth that has the ability to charm creatures. Our dm was able to charm me and the Aboleth commanded me to drop my bladesong, mage armor, and my concentration on haste that I had on our monk. It took a couple rounds of combat to get all of those effects up, and it feels wild that this beast would know exactly what magic I had active. Am I being a salty wizard? Is this worth bringing up? Or is my dm just pissed I can get my AC to 21.

Molanarch

To the magnanimous justices and the kinda cute bailiff haha Jk. Unless?… I present the case of the mildly moist fire. Years ago my group started the Elemental Evil campaign and after a few months of playing fizzled out because life got busy. A couple years later we decided to restart the campaign with new characters and all agreed we would build our own characters around specific elements. I made a Triton Sorcerer who had all ice and water spells so I can be specifically useful against fire. A few levels in we entered an area where we encounter 2 greater fire elementals in an enclosed room. Our dm warned us before we entered this area that we were not supposed to be here yet and that it would be extremely difficult to make it through. We agreed and went in anyway. On my turn I cast the Tidal Wave spell which hit both elementals. After calculating the bludgeoning damage I asked if they take any extra damage from water which upon my DM checking, confirmed they do. They take 3 cold damage for every gallon of water splashed on them. There was a lot of arguing about how much water would actually be considered splashed on the fire elementals as the wave would technically fully engulf them. There was also the argument that magical water was not the same as normal water. After multiple online searches online with no Official™️ answers, my dm ruled that they only took 4 extra cold damage. They proceeded to whomp our entire party on the next turn and instead of being killed we were all imprisoned by cultists. Here the kicker. In the prison we encountered our previous characters from our first party to which our dm pulled out our old character sheets and declared we would play as those characters for the break out. After the break out we were given the option to either stay as our new character or play as our old character. So Justice’s, I ask, was I wrong to be upset that the specific strength I built my character around was stolen from me for my dms clever twist?

CamSmall

Greetings Judges and Bailiff, I humbly present the Case of the Unlucky TRex. In a game of Curse of Strahd that I DMed, my players were in THE Battle with Strahd at the end of the game. The druid of my party polymorphed themselves into a TRex after being knocked out of their last wildshape. The next round, they tried to attack Strahd's coffin, which we had established as having a higher than typical AC for coffins because it was Strahd's coffin. They missed their attacks. The player then asked if they could use a Luck point to reroll. I originally said no because TRexes don't have luck points. After some debating back and forth between the other players and myself, we left it to Dice Christ to see if they could. Dice Christ decided no, and combat continued. My players made it out alive, but are still bitter with me for not allowing it. I feel allowing Dice Christ to decide was more than generous. My question is this: would a character who is polymorphed have access to Luck points (or other feats) in the polymorphed form? I await your judgment, and may Dice Christ save me if I have wronged my players.

2fastBicurious

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

Gabagooblin

Forgive me, your honors, for I have sinned. I play a support class in a Curse of Strahd game with basically all new players. Ive run the campaign before so have enjoyed sitting back and just helping the group explore the game and occasionally explaining things on the side while the DM does their thing. In our last session, we all rolled like 100% Grade A Certified Dog Shit against a group of vampire spawn. I was struggling to keep people from going down, and we were all banking on our assassin rogue and his sneak attack damage. However, I realized about halfway through the combat that he had misread his assassin feature and thought it gave him advantage and auto-crits against anyone who hadn't taken a turn yet each round- basically, anyone who went after him in initiative. I knew it was wrong, but even rolling four times per turn he was barely hitting and so, in the interest of party morale, I said nothing. In the end we defeated the vampires and the rogue got in a cool finishing blow, but as my CCD teacher loved to remind us, a lie by omission is still a lie. Therefore I kneel before Dice Christ and his holy justiciers and beg for forgiveness.

benji b

Honorable Justices and also that man nearby, I bring to you the case of Joel, the coward, gifted a firearm I was running a game some friends (3 brand new players, and veteran), and in a small town they came across a local halfling named Joel (inspired by scoutmaster Denny), and convinced him to show them the way to the tower of the wizard they were hunting. On coming to the tower, Joel insisted that he was too scared of the wizard, and that he shouldn’t continue with them, openly admitting his cowardice. The rouge, named Hush Hush Harold, gave Joel an impassioned speech about being courageous, culminating in hush hush Harold handing Joel a revolver, with the words “Joel, you’ll know when the time is right. Do not hesitate to use this on those who oppose you”. So into the tower he went, armed with his shiny new six shooter. Inside, there was a library that was guarded by 2 roaming gelatinous cubes. The party, all passing the save to see the cubes, decided to attempt to stealth past, so I called for initiative to track the encounter. Joel rolled highest. At this point I must clarify, no one made an effort to tell Joel to be stealthy, and none of them spoke in character while the decision was made. I gave the DM wink by saying “are you all sure everyone here understands your plan?” And I was assured that everyone did. At the beginning of Joel’s turn, I had the party roll an intelligence check and a “courage” check for Joel, using his charisma bonus. Judges, Joel got a 2 on his intelligence, and an 18 on his courage. So Joel, seeing an enemy and for the first time in his life having a weapon fight with, stepped out from cover and fired at one of the cubes. Hell broke loose. The table erupted, saying it was an unfair call, and that surely Joel would know better. But judges I argue, is that not what the intelligence check was for, to know if it would be a stupid idea to stand up and fire? Judges, I ask, was this a fair call? Did my players give Joel too much credit, or was Joel finally being courageous for the first time in his life? P.s. in the same encounter, Joel Died, due to being absorbed by a cube while pinned between two bookshelves. The party was distraught, however, I maintain that Joel died an honorable and worthy death. This death also served the purpose of them not keeping Joel the rest of the campaign.

Chik3n

To the Honorable-Sprightly-Judges and Flirtatious-Gyatt-Damn-Hurwitz, This case is of a D&D murder mystery gone wrong. A player had to make death saving throws because he made poor decisions- However, our VERY interesting DM friend has a personal house rule: DM rolls death saving throws for all the players, all behind the screen. Judges, this is a violation of player rights: to take death into their own hands to the very end! And so I humbly prostrate myself and my chaotic evil DM friend to the court.

ToddFortnite

Hello Illustrious Judges, and court bird Jake Turkwitz. I recently started DMing a campaign for my roomates and few friends of mine, which has been going really well. Most of the players are generally new (a few had played with me in a campaign previously), so l've been trying hard to encourage role play, especially in their backstories. Two of the players, our Ratfolk Rogue named Scruff Danger, and Dwarven Bard named Roxie Ironstring established in their backstories that they are ex's. It's been amazing for role play (and to watch my roomates flirt with each other), giving players something to talk about, tension during battle etc. Recently, Scruff came to me to bring up the idea that he and Roxie had hooked up before the campaign, and that Roxie was pregnant. I was surprised, but figured if they had both agreed on it, l'd find a way to make it work. In the finale of our "season" (we're taking a break because people are going home for the summer as we're still in college), I subtly hinted at the idea that Roxie was pregnant, and the table LOVED IT!!! It was a funny moment, and we talked about it after the session for a while after. I thought all was good. However, Roxie recently came to me and told me that they had NO idea Roxie was pregnant, accusing me of having made it up! There has been a discussion, and its been revealed that there was a BIG (likely drunken) miscommunication on what the two meant by "hook up", and we have decided to retcon the reveal and move on, laughing it off. Judges, is Scruff in the wrong for wanting to be a daddy, am I wrong for going along with it, or is Roxie wrong for not having spoken up?

Grotesque Ghoul

Oh praise be Dice Christ and bless thee omnipresent priests and priestess and the altar boy who is….well I mean he’s there so that must count for something. I have a confession that has been weighing heavy on my soul for 5 years. When I played dnd with a group that were friends with my roommate at the time, who I moved in with because he and his boyfriend’s rent was raising so they needed one more person on the lease, I was an inexperienced player who only played video games and thus, warped my mind as to what a PC was. I was stricken with a horrible case of M.C.S, or Main Character Syndrome. I made my characters as holier than thou and always wanted to draw the attention onto my character because I thought they were the coolest and the most important and I definitely ruined campaigns and soured moods. I am no longer friends with my roommate or their group because they are genuinely horrible people and I haven’t played dnd since, but that doesn’t excuse my sins against Dice Christ and I pray that in all Their rolling benevolence I may be cleansed of my filth.

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 to figure out especially during something you wanna keep fast paced like combat. Im also cursed with a pretty bad case of Murphism and can often go through whole sessions without rolling above a 10. So to combat my awful math abilities i’ve started using Dnd Beyond to roll my dice and do the math. However i have also noticed now that im using an online roller im rolling astronomically better! So i ask the church, do i walk with the dice devil now that i have strayed away from physical dice? 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

kyle crim

Dear Nepo baby Justices and the boot strap Bailiff, I present to you the case of the hammerhead dick. I play college basketball at a small school in southern Indiana and love DnD. Problem is, I could never find any one to play with me. The DnD club at the school would meet on Saturdays early in the afternoon, right when I would have either a practice or a game, so I could never play with them. I also felt very self conscious attending the group as the only 6 foot 3 190 pound guy there and could tell that I was an outsider in the group. Everyone was friendly and welcoming but I could tell that my presence did make some people in the group uncomfortable, so instead of trying to kill their safe space just to try and play dnd, I tried to create my own. The problem was my basketball friends laughed at me when I brought it up. They’re great guys that would do anything for me they just couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea of the game. So after begging for months they agreed to play. We did a session 0 and built characters all normal and good with a little shenanigans to keep it light but nothing crazy. Come session 1, after I worked for hours outside of homework and practices every night, one of my buddies decided he wanted his fighter to no longer use a greatsword anymore, opting instead for making his character having a giant penis with a helmet on the head to dealing blunt damage. Justices, Im sorry to say I relented. I was so excited to run my first real session ever and couldn’t honestly didn’t want to rebalance all of my fights for one less party member (get it, member). The sessions was fun but I could tell that the game wasn’t vibing with anyone at the table and cut out a big room of my dungeon so it would be over faster, I have yet to play since. Should I have made more of an effort to push back against the giant tip in an attempt to make my players take the game a little more seriously, or should I have turned the shenanigans up to 100 to try and get the players to engage with shit and piss jokes? Flog me if you must

Blubread00

A firm and respectful handshake to the sedulous judges and a seated finger grab handshake to the skylarking bailiff I’m running a new campaign for two of my lifelong best friends (small group, I know). The premise is that rift-filled tempests have been plaguing the world ever since a god died. One player is a wall guard for a small city, and the other is a farmer who left home looking for adventure. Session one started with a tense scene: the farmer sprinting for the city gates while fiends closed in, and the wall guard making sure the gate didn’t shut before he made it through. It was a great way to kick things off and get them invested. After some downtime and RP, I gave them the call to adventure—pretty standard stuff. The duke needed brave souls to enter the storm and investigate its source. Both players flat-out refused. Caught off guard and not great at improvising, I panicked a bit. After a long rest, I told them a royal decree had gone out: not enough volunteers had come forward, so the city’s wall guard (one PC) was being forced into the mission. That got one of them moving. The other still refused, so I started playing a bunch of NPCs—begging, pleading, guilting him into going. Eventually, he relented, but afterward they gave me a hard time for “railroading” them. So here’s my question: should I have just let them walk away and scrapped the session I planned, possibly spending hours rewriting everything? Or at some point, is it fair to expect the players to take the hook and go on the adventure?

peace k.

To the very attractive judges and that guy off to the side I think I saw at Starbucks one time, I present the case of the Metagaming Cousin. I have a cousin that plays DnD at my family's table, and he is what one can only describe as a power gamer. He joined our extended campaign late, and thus came in with no backstory, no relationship to the party, just a stat sheet and a dream. I was a mere infant DM, and thus allowed this so he could feel included in the family activity. Throughout the course of the campaign, I allowed the party to do insight or investigation checks on the monsters they were fighting to determine any vulnerabilities or weak points to exploit. One time, on a nat 20, my cousin asked me how hurt the monster looked, and I foolishly told him the exact HP left of the monster. He had then taken this to mean that every time he rolled a nat 20 on these checks, I would basically give him the exact HP of the monster that was left, and he would sit off to the side and do math and call out to the group how much was left. The campaign has long since ended, but on the occasions we do play smaller games, he continues to insist on this mechanic. I have grown as a DM, and learned that pulling out a calculator and doing damage calculations isn't really what I or the other players want. Judges, I throw myself at the mercy of the court, hitting my knee painfully as I kneel. Was I wrong to give space to this blatant metagaming for the sake of one person's enjoyment, or should I have put my foot down?

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 to figure out especially during something you wanna keep fast paced like combat. Im also cursed with a pretty bad case of Murphism and can often go through whole sessions without rolling above a 10. So to combat my awful math abilities i’ve started using Dnd Beyond to roll my dice and do the math. However i have also noticed now that im using an online roller im rolling astronomically better! So i ask the church, do i walk with the dice devil now that i have strayed away from physical dice? 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

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. THE CASE OF THE PRIMATE V SPIDER 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)

Emma

Dear esteemed judges of the high crit and the dude who collects donations at the door, I bring to you a case of the quickly slain “Summon Beast” spell. This happened 4 years ago, when my friends and I had first started playing dnd. The druid in our party decided to use the spell summon beast, out of combat and during a time skip, to summon a creature that looked like Bibble from the early 2000s animated Barbie movies. Almost immediately after she did this, myself (the rouge) and the monk locked eyes across the table and turned to our dm to role play that we were terrified by the appearance of the unearthly creature and started to attack it. The druid was shocked, but overall, it wasn’t really a waste of a spell slot dramatic because we were out of combat and time skipping so we immediately had another long rest. We all laughed about, including the druid who cast the spell, but as my friends and I approach our 4 year dnd-iversary, I wonder if the monk and I were in the wrong. I humbly await your judgment

Michael W

To the esteemed bishops of Dice Christ, and also Jake; I am cursed by some manner of Dice demon, so that my rolls are forever poor. I have attempted multiple ways to rid myself of this curse, including new dice, asking nicely, and even fostering some dice with other players. In a recent session, my level 10 fighter attempted to attack a monster; with action surge, and 4 attacks, I only hit once, and got two nat ones in the bargain. My fellow player then returned a foster dice, which then immediately rolled a nat 1. I beg of you, how may I be absolved of this curse, and get a more normal distribution of rolls?

Panner_Samuel

To the three Major Gods of the court of courts, and thst one honorable smaller almost forgotten about God, Mr. BabyLiff. I have been running a Stradh campaign for almost a year now (I am loving trinyvale btw. They also picked on Ismark. Hard.😭) And it was good in the beginning, but two of my players have also started their own campaigns, and it feels like when it gets back around to mine no one is interested anymore! I don’t know if I need to be a hard ass and start issuing no more phones or books at the table, or If I just need to give them more breaks! (I also have a pc who keeps wanting to kill her characters to make new ones and that’s gettting hard) I bring this very brief so so brief case to you three beautiful individuals, and the guy who is reading this out to you, what do you do when the group morale seems to focus its interest elsewhere??

ZoeyHorse (Afterdark)

To Twilight Sparkle Murph, Trixie Caldwell, Starlight Glimmer Emily and annoying dragon baby Spike Jake, I bring you the case of the dragon with a nickname that I'm not sure any of you are allowed to say but I might be wrong sorry if I am go ahead and say it. During a shortlived campaign I did for some friends, I had introduced a house in Elturel for the gang to live in. In the basement of the house was a Faire Dragon called Candle Bucket. I chose the name because I thought it was whimsical and fun! I even ended up drawing a lil dragon a few times before the session! Unfortunately, almost immediately, one of the players apparently misheard me, and said "Did you say it's name was Candle . This derailed everything completely as now every time I tried to do anything with the dragon, they would call it a name I wasn't really comfortable with, but not wanting to be a stick in the mud I never said anything. The campaign only lasted one more session before I gave up. Did I take the joke nickname too personally? Or should the players be allowed to have their fun with it? I certainly could have been more assertive I await your divine justice P.S Lou Wilson would be Applejack

Ally

Dear justices, a holy Kong trinity of Donkey Kong, Bluster Kong, and Diddy Kong and the other one I think he's Tucker's little buddy. I come to you with the case of the railroaded DM. My friends have recently started a new campaign. I always ask my players for their feedback to build a more collaborative game. Including, asking what themes players want in their character's narrative. However this has backfird, a new player is giving such specific feedback about where they want their character to go, even saying how specific NPC interactions should go. Obviously, with the dice and player decisions, there's no way to guarantee an outcome and when the story has deviated from the player's fixed idea they have given me negative feedback, even saying things like 'I wouldn't have run it that way'. This is making me feel insecure in my DMing because I'm always dreading the inevitable text message from this player post-session about how the story isn't going right. Am I right to feel like this is overstepping or am I being too sensitive and I should just DM the book this player wants to write?

Final Girl

Dearest Judges and the guy who follows them around in sort of a sad way that we're all concerned about. I present the case of Party Vs NPC we hated. In a short campaign run by a run by a friend, our low level party encountered an NPC who was a grizzled long time adventurer who seemed to think we were a huge pain in the ass and kept telling us to give up on our quest (recovering a beloved Local artefact stolen by a necromantic cult) This guy was rude and abrupt and the DM described him as looking at us like 'dirt on his boot' In short, I hated him and didn't want to interact with him, a sentiment shared by most of the party. However the DM kept putting him places we were going, and making him integral to the story. Other players tried to give the benefit of the doubt and attempted to get to know him or explore a storyline with him, only to have him continue being an ass, calling them weak, being annoyed they were talking to him. At this point I called the guy a dick to his face, told him to fuck off and said we should stop bothering trying to engage with him. This seemed to bother the DM, and she said I shouldn't be so 'aggro' as he was very powerful. I said that there was no world, real or fantasy, where I or any of my characters would willingly hang out with someone who was this big of an asshole. This guy then went on to be basically the main character of the campaign and adventure, driving me mental throughout as he was always a pain to interact with. Was I wrong to tell this dude to go kick rocks every time we met? I await judgement with my two cats Jack-o'-lantern & Bonnie, who said to tell Justice Axford Hi

spider_pasta

To the all equally ignominious justices of the supreme crit (how ignominious that is remains to be seen), I humbly stand before you with the case of the Operation Clumsy Fireman. I'm a player in a Curse of Strahd Campaign with a couple of friends and recently despite our DM warning us through multiple NPCs not to try to fight a baddie to get a magic item as we'd probably die, we decided to try and between sessions strategized a bit. A few days prethe session our fighter (who has a masters in mathematics) sent a google doc to the player-only group chat detailing a 15 part plan he titled "operation clumsy fireman" to give us an advantageous starting position in combat. The plan involved a vortex warp by my wizard into a bathtub that we would drag to the top of the tower of the fortress we were in, then pushing him off into the path of a pre-aimed ballista. The doc was two pages single spaced and contained multiple charts where he had written code to run 10^6 simulations of all of the necessary rolls to determine our chance of success separated by if each step had succeeded or failed and possible modifiers of the enemy. The highest chance on the plan-critical vortex warp with low assumption of the enemy's modifiers and all our debuffs working was around 60%. The party had some reservations about the plan and we didn't go for it, and ended up running from the fight for our lives but having grabbed the item before we fled. With knowledge of the fight, the plan had no chance of succeeding due to a blizzard mechanic obscuring sight of the baddie as soon as combat started. We've been razzing the plan/our fighter a bit since and after the encounter the dm was let into the joke and said she would have smote us for clowning on her scary villain by trying to push him of a tower in a bathtub. The fighter maintains that his plan was a better option than what we went with, was 100% compliant with rules as written, and is playfully indignant about us clowning on him about it. Justices, Id like to settle the matter once and for all, are we right to poke fun at what i think was a pretty ridiculous plan that wasn't likely to work out even though he put a lot of work into it or is he right argue for the power of pure crisp mathematics and committing to the bit over an untested option. I humbly await your ruling. (he does listen to dungeon court, hi brian!)

Clint S.

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

Gunner P

May it pleasure the court, and pander to the honorable judges and of course Murph the most respectable patron of the wrestling fandom. I bring you the case of the "ACCIDENTAL" Cursed blood drinking sword meta build. I Co-DM with my wife primarily because of our 5 month old son taking too much attention for one person to properly handle all the duties that come with the job.. anyways my wife as DM early on in our campaign gave my PC the periapt of wound closure, no big deal right? Well after several close calls but never any real need for the item i left it attuned and simply forgot about it. Fast forward 6 months worth of sessions and a newborn child later, my character was mistakenly Soul-Bound to a Vampiric sword my wife and I had built together. It has an obnoxious sentience of its own, ironically sounding like a bloodthirsty Shank, which gives my max DEX rogue disadvantage on stealth checks, which is great flavor and i love it so no problems there. But the issue lies in the sword has the ability to cast Vampiric Touch with the Cost of a DC 15 CON save to not gain a +1 to Death Saves and Crit Fails on Death saves for every use that isnt passing the CON save. This rule has worked fine until a recent battle had my PC downed making death saves. I was promptly reminded about the Periapt of Wound Closure which then raised my dilemma... If my character is immediately stabilized upon going unconcious. This amulet has my PC sitting up like the Undertaker making Booker T piss himself Have we accidentally meta build my PC by making death saves being the penalty for my cursed sword? And should i just hand off the Amulet to a companion NPC in order to remedy the situation also providing plot-armor for said NPC I feel guilty and plead guilty so i do ask for the harshest of punishments like a Tombstone from the Reaper himself, in order to deter future DM's from abusing their privileges due to negligence!

Haley Lukes

Dearest Judges and wittle baby bawiff Jake, I come to you with an update of advice used in the recent case of the DM vs Middle Schoolers. In my summer group, I took Murph’s advice and changed the guards in a museum to more of an automaton like creature with a passed away human soul in it. This was a mistake… Now, instead of descriptive kills, they spent nearly 30 real life minutes trying to break the mind of the “naive and newer” guard that they found. Their goal? Make him lose his mind so that they can get what they want from him and pillage as they please in the museum. Judges - should I simply let these gremlins exist as they want and do some craziness or do you have more recommendations for a humble and tired middle school DM. I humbly wait for your advice and accept my punishment fully if you rule it as so! P.S. I also took Murph’s advice of not mentioning war crimes prominently and it went over well! The kids have definitely not been as descriptive! P.P.S: Jake, I’m still waiting on those books for my classroom library:)

Daniel Baskins

To the honorable Judges who defend the land and uphold the rule of crit and *looks Jake dead in the eye* literally no one else. I bring you the case of the fucked up cleric. About a year ago I played in a one shot that turned into a campaign (or at least it was suppose to). It was a VERY magic heavy setting so everyone was at minimum a half caster. We played this over zoom, and I had play with all but one of these people before. We all had slightly problematic but OP characters, for the bit, and we worked well as a dysfunctional family. That is except for the unknown player. He played a cleric who had a personally built customized d100 table of different drugs and their effects. When he wasn’t under effects from a drug he was suffering withdrawal and he was insufferable. Not contributing to the party and actively taking away from the narrative. On MANY occasions he would take a drug that would fully incapacitate him and just expect us to carry him through a dungeon. It was funny for the one shot, but as the campaign drug on (pun intended) the drugs seemed to get worse. One was that his healing spells had the opposite effect so instead of a healing word he did a harming word. Once during a withdrawn, outside of combat he randomly attacked a PC because he “needed the good stuff”. I tried to voice a complaint but he just steamrolled his addict cleric in no matter what. The campaign later fell apart, not exactly because of him, but many other players shared my frustrations, so it definitely had something to do with it. Judges, am I wrong to be frustrated with this character and this player who refused to help us in what was a really incredible campaign (with one of my favorite character I have ever made) or was he on another level of character creation/commitment that I have yet to reach? I await your verdict. P.S. Emily thank you for being the greatest D&D player of all time I will follow you to the end of the earth

Annika

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

Daniel Baskins

Jake pls don’t be mad it’s for the bit!! I love you❤️❤️❤️

Jake de Medeiros

May it please the court, I am a Canadian army engineer and I was stationed in Eastern Europe a couple years ago for a few months, during which me and some friends started a campaign. We had time to play once or twice a week, in the evenings, and it was a great way to spend our free time. Here is the issue that needs deliberation- while in a knock down dragout fight with a green dragon and a mage, my character went down, and had two death save fails. The mage had cast chill touch on me, so I wasn’t able to be healed that round, and the green dragon was about to use a breath attack to kill my character. My friend asked the DM if he could narrate his character sheltering my character in order to keep me alive, but would take double damage from the breath attack as a penalty. The DM said yes. This brought my friend’s character to negative his total HP, killing his PC without death saves. It was really exciting and fun, and I think character death adds a fun element of risk to the game… but then my friend said this- “Haha, that was really fun. Honestly I just did that because I wanted to play a new class.” Justices…. what the fuck? Didn’t this undercut all the emotional stakes of the sacrifice? Am I wrong for being pissed that my character was saved simply because my friend wanted to play a new class? I’d rather have had my beloved character die, than be saved for a cheap reason. I’ll accept any ruling, and carry out any punishment, Thanks

Sammi-Doodles

Submitting for my partner: To the honorable justices and the bailiff who is just trying their best (derogatory for Jake, endearing for Emily), I present to you the case of the soured hostage negotiations. I run a bloodborne-inspired campaign for a group of 5, and we’re nearing the endgame. Last session, my players met one of the last surviving and sane people in a cosmically FUBAR’d city, a stoic hunter-esque character who, in typical Bloodborne Fashion, gave the players cryptic information and a promise to aide them in reaching their final goal after winning his trust by retrieving a key in a mausoleum. The following session was that dungeon dive, but one of our players couldn’t make it. We agreed to play anyway, and to bolster their numbers, I invited a newer friend, lets call him Joe, to play as this hunter NPC to fill out the party. Joe recently moved near us, has plenty of TTRPG experience, and has been wanting to join our table for a while, but our group is rather large, so I thought this would be a good way to start onboarding him for a future campaign. Joe seemed really excited to get to play, and we spent a day going over some lore to explain the world to him. He asked thoughtful questions, really wanting to make sure he understood the role he was inhabiting. I obliged, but told him not to worry too much, since this character is still secretive, and he’d really just be playing the quiet, mysterious type. I did explain that the player’s characters were this NPC’s last shot at finally breaking this cosmic horror cycle he was trapped in, and while he didn’t fully trust them, he was privately very invested in their survival and success. Cut to the session. After a (rather easy) battle with two mysterious cloaked knights outside the crypt, my fighter and barbarian had the inspired idea to ACTUALLY take one captive to interrogate them. They used non-lethal means to take them down, bind them, and were preparing to squeeze some information out when Joe gets a glint in his eye. “I’d like to move to kill the knight while no one else is looking.” Flabbergasted, I broke kayfabe and asked why. Every eye was now on Joe, who simply said “I don’t want him to wake up and fight us again.” Our fighter and barbarian explained that the hostage was tied up and at 1HP, and further, they absolutely crushed it when there were two of them, there was nothing to fear. He insisted that he was “Just being true to his character” and that he wouldn’t want loose ends. The party explained they would almost certainly still kill the hostage after their questions, but Joe wasn’t having it. I made him roll a slight of hand, and he failed, where the argument played out again but in character. He tried to move forward anyway, but the barbarian and fighter blocked him. I reminded Joe that his character was invested in this mission succeeding, and that more information might be valuable. Then I noticed Joe checking his sheet and glancing at the other players’ stats. He asked me ‘am I at a higher level than these guys?’ At this point I just dead-eyed him and asked ‘are you seriously going to start a pvp match with my players versus a key NPC, 45 minutes into a guest session?’ I think he finally read the room and de-escalated, but did say he was looking for an opportunity to stealth kill this hostage, should the opportunity arise. Almost 30 minutes later, they finally attempted to question their hostage, but after a single bad roll they gave up and executed him before the argument could start again. After that the session proceeded normally, but my players were colder on Joe, and the NPC in general. We called it mid-dungeon, and Joe gave me his sheet back with his current HP “for next time”. I asked him privately what *THAT* was all about, and he sort of smiled and said “I just wanted to throw a wrench in the works” or something to that effect. I don’t plan on having Joe back for this campaign. Our group is goofy and we go off the rails a lot, but my players do take the world seriously, and while I often play the part of the comically vexed DM, no one ever outright tries to break my games just for the hell of it. Most agreed that it was an awkward session, though one player, my wife, thinks I’m over-reacting to banishing Joe from a guest spot. Judges, I have three questions; am I wrong to one-strike-you’re-out to this hopeful player? And if I let him back in, should I put us both through the indignity of explaining (in the most nasally voice possible) ‘you have to respect my world’? And finally, should I still consider having Joe as a permanent player in a longer future campaign, where he might be more invested in the story? I await your judgement.

Doctor Ransom

May it please the most effulgent Supreme Crit justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and if he has to be there too then fine let the ungodly little sinner bailiff Jon Odenhurtz listen in. I bring you the case of “The Smitten Paladin.” This tale tells of an unseemly situation that occurred during the final battle with the big bad guy in what was a standard fare heist oneshot. My “friend” James, who played as a warforged Paladin named Junkbot, got charmed by an Incubus and politely asked far too eagerly, “Shall I Divinely Smite him, Master?” while turning to face my poor himbo Barbarian named Hurricane. After slashing my PC twice, Junkbot used both of his highest level spell slots to Divine Smite me on both attacks, after which my PC dropped unconscious, leading to our party TPK’ing immediately afterwards. Justices, I beseech thine most discerning of deliberations. Was this Incubus-smitten Paladin within his right to savagely smite my himbo or should they have toned it down a couple notches? I await your most shrewd and sangfroid of sentences. P.S. - To my ‘friend’ James, “Fuck you, I love you, eat a rat.”

Hugo Wull

If it may please the court, as well as that kid Jake that my mom made me invite over: I DM for a group at my game shop, half younger folks in their 30s and half a little older. One player was George, a very experienced player who, when DND was released 50 years ago, said “cute, maybe I’ll use some of these rules in my RPG.” The party was camping in the woods, so I rolled a random encounter and rolled randomly to see who was on watch when it happened. George’s character saw a hungry looking dog wander into camp and move for some bags. Being an extremely experienced player, he decided the best course of action was to blast the dog (oppa grandma style). This immediately split the party; the paladin woke up and finished the dog off with a smite, the rogue attacked the paladin for killing a dog, the bard cast Tasha’s Hideous Laughter on George to teach him a lesson, and the ranger rolled his eyes and stayed in bed. This turn of events upset George, to the point where he left the campaign. My question is this: is this acceptable role play, did one player or the other overreact, or should I the DM have intervened when it turned to PVP? If it makes a difference, the rest of the party still plays together with a new player to replace George, and also George was technically correct: the dog belonged to some trolls who, hearing the commotion of a bickering party and trying to find their dog, attacked and tried to rob the lost campers.

Bep Bingus

To the honorable justices and lil' sheriff Jake, I am running a steampunk cowboy themed Pathfinder campaign with some friends online. The campaign includes chunks of downtime between bigger events where the party members tend to split up to explore the city their characters live in. For this downtime, I do small, 20-30 minute one-on-ones with the players individually between sessions so their characters can have some Independence. The players love these one-on-ones, so much that two of them have started doing one-on-ones together without me. Now their characters make inside jokes and references that I, the DM, don't even understand. I'm flattered they're so invested in the campaign and their characters, but feel weird that I don't know what their characters are getting up to between sessions.

Barely Competent Roll-Players

To the suave and smexy judges. Oh and Jake is there. Man imagine being so lame to be named Jake...couldn't be me. Anyways I present the story of the time I didnt died? Long story short we are playing Curse of struad fighting one of his wives in a duel. She had said it was to test us not kill us so she wouldnt use high level spells if we followed the rules. (We where like level 5 at that time) we said we where trying to kill her so no rules. She was a bladesinger so I used heat metal so she couldnt use her swords. We did way better than our dm expected which was frustrating him. But our paladin went down so I went to heal him. But when I did she used bigbys hand and attacked me and critted. I was already low and she did over my maxed health in negative. (I was a warlock) so I declared "I am dead" My dm chucked and said "you mean down right?" And I responded with "Oh no she did so much damage I am outright dead." He looked shocked since he was a new dm. I had dm'd before and my other friend who was a dm looked over and confirmed I was in fact very dead. My current dm freaked out not meaning to have killed me outright and insited that I didnt die. And instead I lost a limb. Which everyone agreed it was fine. But to be honest im kinda miffed I didnt die. The game lost some steaks after that and fizzled out so we never finished. I always think back and wish my dm had just committed and killed my ass. I probably should have said something but he was new and no one else wanted me to die but I'm still a little disappointed I didn't. Please sentence my dm to start and run this game again so we can finish it or sentence me for being a masochist who wants to die I guess I dont know I'm not a judge.

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.

MulvinPrime

To the Noble Priests of Dice Christ’s Di(e)castery, I come before you this fine day to ask for an interpretation of His Will. A little background, I am the Murph of my group. No one calls me by my first name, and I roll horrendously, even before this transgression. In a Pirate campaign hosted by a friend of mine, our group was ambushed by a shadowy organization from another player’s backstory (our wizard). My Wild Magic Barb was under a spell cast by a traitor who infiltrated our group to get our wizard. I had failed the roll for it, and continued to do so (Wisdom dump stat). Our Wizard was outside, and I asked my DM if I could hear the wizard shouting as he was being jumped. The DM put it to a DC 15. Now thanks to a choice of proficiency, I only needed a 14 on the die. I did not roll the 14, and lied saying I did. I chose to rage immediately with this knowledge, and lucked out on my wild magic table granting me a teleport towards the wizard. Oh holy interpreters of Dice Christ’s will, were my transgressions forgiven? Was the blessing on the wild magic table a sign of forgiveness or just another of His Randomness?

Aloha Nani Simmer

Dear Balliff, Jake-ifer. I come to you humbly with an offense of the highest proportions (in my opinion)! Doing a spooky short campaign last year for Spookyween, I played an eerie and seductive changeling that ran a…. Lady’s tea shop… with certain entertainment packages available for purchase to NPCs. I played her in a witty and cunning manner and ever so playfully seductive. (Think: Eris from Sinbad but 100s of years old and normal sized). While going to interview a baron over some deaths in our fog-choked village, this baron (assumed villain) entered. I asked the DM if I could cast Zone of Truth on the baron as soon as he walked in the room. (the DM had just role played his intro) and the DM role played that the baron cut me off, thus cutting off my verbal component and making it unable for my character to complete the spell. I was so baffled. I said I’d like to try again (me thinking as a character, confused because she can still talk? I’m not paralyzed or anything) and the DM said “the baron waves you off. ‘We don’t need any of that magic nonsense!’” Not allowing me as the PC to cast what I thought would be a really cool spell and story moment. I was completely dejected and though I played the rest of the session, the D&D magic for me was deflated. Is there a way I can have a healthy conversation with my DM about better communicating in game about things as this? Or was he valid in his storytelling and I over stepped? Oh dear Balliff Jake-iffany. Give me the guidance to seek the proper course. Thank you. And good day to ya sir! I said good day!!!!

PlausiblyPJ

May it please the wise keepers of the holy crit and that guy who stands at the confessional and announces our sins, I come to you with a confession. 3yrs ago, I started playing in a Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign where I met my fellow players for the FIRST TIME during session. that being said, I made a bold mistake very early on that has weighed in my conscience ever since. During our 3rd session, we were locked in a player debate on whether we should assist a town in need or to turn the people against the mayor, helping the mafia. Only 1 player wanted to help the town. This player (lawful good) was threatening to rat us out if we went through with it. So... I cast Sleep on them. We then proceeded to tie them up, bag their head, lie to the towns people that he was delusional and a danger to others, and left him on the side of the road penniless and alone, kicking the character out of the party and causing the player to create a new one. It was hilarious! This was the point that I realized my mistake. I was playing a bard, and I didn't realize bards can't prepare spells each day. So, Sleep was not on my original spell list. I added it after a rest for this plan to work... Luckily, the campaign continued and has been an experience we will remember forever! Our DM even told us that moment entirely change the campaign plans! But that does not free me from the guilt I feel. I kneel before you hoping for absolution, but accept any meal you decide Jake has to cook for me as punishment.

You Yee’d your last Haw

To the honorable crit justices and the wormy bailiff Josie. May it please the court I offer you, the sleepy artificer. Me and my party have been playing in a long 6 year campaign mostly with the same group. We have a player who despite the fact we’ve been playing these characters for YEARS can’t see to read his character sheet or remember basic character features. Last session one of us rolled pretty bad on an important check and our rogue asked the artificer, “hey don’t you have ‘stoke or genius’?” To which the artificer replied, “what’s that.” Another issue we have is that he keeps falling asleep during the session. We will be doing a quest and all of a sudden the rest of the party will hear LOUD SNORING from the couch. And granted id understand if this was a one time thing but he has fallen asleep almost every other session. We don’t know what to do at this point, he seems like he likes playing the game but then he’s falling asleep and not reading his character sheet every session so we’re not sure. Justices, what should we do about our sleepy artificer?

Ben

This is more of a confession than a case, So I will enter the majestic halls where the Jachoir (Jake Choir, make of cloned, castrated Jake's) bellows their silky chords and bow before the clergy. I often fudge dice rolls in favor of my players. I don't /Want/ to, but I feel it gives the players an advantage over stronger enemies and an ability to feel stronger. I throw strong enemies at them, because I want them to be hit hard, realize how hard theyre being hit, then defeat them anyway. So I fudge many rolls. 16's turn into 14's, 18's to 12's. Dice contests are rolled honestly, and usually come up equal odds. But I suffer because of this as well. Literally none of their NPC allies roll well 9/10 times. Rebellion leader, master fighter? His rolls say that he basically strikes with wet napkins wet as Jake after a hot day. Master Smith, wanting to make them masterwork armor? Falls to traps and explosions. Im probably not going to change this unless some higher power gives a sound argument, but I thought Id try my hand at getting forgiven before Dice Christ so that maybe my NPCs can start rolling better. ✨️Toodles!✨️

TeamLouie

To the Cutie Patootie Judges and the (adjective) Bailiff (name) I present you the case of the Dungeon master with a grudge? We had a DM take over the helm after the original DM said he wouldn’t have time to do it anymore. The campaign started off fairly interesting. Until things started getting tedious, like making us narrate turning a doorknob to open a door, or when we’d look behind a painting he’d say “you see a wall, a nail, a string”, or having to look in a specific direction or behind an object before making a perception check. Then he started picking off players with no agency. One player died because they were chasing something through the woods alone. No explanation. Then we got to “the house” We were in a house where every room had monsters, be it zombies, a mimic, sludge monsters, a book that possessed you, etc. We were in this house for 3 months of game time. Ten 4-hour sessions. He said it could be done in one session and we were just playing it wrong. When I called him out on this, he seemed to start targeting me. when we were investigating a bedroom, and my character stepped into the side bathroom, he pulled my character into a toilet occupied by a squid, and even though it was adjacent to the room the other characters were in, he said the other characters couldn’t hear my cries for help and started counting until they could hear me. It was 47 seconds. He made me play 7 turns of initiative where I was just getting crushed and eaten by a poop squid before my friends could come and help me. Needless to say I died. And then he would mock my character backstories, first for not being detailed enough, then for being too detailed, or giving him “nothing to go on”. Then he would outwardly say I would take too long on my turns, even making me move seats in my own house so I could sit next to a more experienced player “because I needed the help”, even though there were less experienced and slower players at the table. Full disclosure I had only been playing DND for about four or five months at this point and he knew this. Despite all this we had a pretty decent friendship outside of the table, at least I thought. We went to cons together, had dinners, he’d pay sometimes. It came to a head one movie night when he came to my house and sat in my usual seat, refused to move, and made me reach over him to grab my nightly medication that was on my side table. Then after the movie, he complimented my girlfriend’s new character backstory and said I should do what she does. When I told him that was the method I used he told me that I clearly wasn’t doing it right and I needed to do what she does. This is when I finally confronted him about everything and he acted innocent and shocked. “You think I’m picking on you?” He asked. And when I told him my reasons and all the comments he made, his response was “Well you can’t be good at everything. I’m not your babysitter.” That was when I decided I was gonna leave the campaign because other people were attached to their characters and I didn’t want to break up the table for my grievances. This upset everyone except the DM who happily proclaimed that D&D was now at his house. Other people asked for a resolution. I tried and he refused to budge. To my surprise, the table voted him out and we’ve been playing at my house with our original DM ever since, except for recently when I’ve been trying my hand at DMing. There’s actually more to this I could have listed but I’m trying to keep it short for you. I ask you this. Should I have stuck it out or was I right to have tried to get out of that campaign? Did the DM seem to have it out for me or was that all in my head? I humbly await your judgment, and I’m ready to accept any punishment.

ThatDammChickenNugget

To the supreme crit justices and I guess the baliff is also there. I’ve been playing in a homebrew Pathfinder 2e campaign for about a year and a half with some friends who managed to switch my love for D&D 5e to PF2e. As soon as I saw the Witch class, I knew that was the character I wanted to play. I made a Tiefling Witch who worships Aranyani and the Wilding Steward as her patron. Instead of horns, she has antlers, and her familiar—Nettle—is a red fox who is also part bioluminescent mushroom. She’s into herbology and mushrooms, seeks revenge on a family member, and found a new home in a druidic village after hitting rock bottom, where the Steward gifted her Nettle. Pretty early on, our party detoured to this village. There, we learned a lot about the campaign’s BBEG, and during downtime, my witch communed with the Steward, who cryptically tasked her with helping heal a sickened land. Now, over a year later, we are deep in those sickened lands. We recently discovered a nearby “World Tree”, guarded by mycoloids, but suffering from the blight. We fought to protect the tree and gradually uncovered clues about how my character was meant to combat the blight. During the final fight, it was revealed that the Steward had planned for my witch to sacrifice Nettle by merging her into the World Tree to purify the blight. It was emotional—I was having trouble roleplaying through my crying. Nettle was sacrificed. The tree transformed, and my character experienced Nettle’s final emotions before their connection was severed. The party gave my witch a moment alone, where she prayed and left her holy symbol behind with her familiar. Then, in a vision, the Steward told her he was stepping back—bigger things need his attention. Nettle would now take over as patron of the World Tree... and, it seemed, become my new patron too. After some more emotional party roleplay, the session ended. Then my GM abruptly told me that my “homework” before next session was to rework my character as a Cleric, and that I won’t be able to cast spells for the next few sessions as I am not a Witch anymore. Then he just left voice chat. The rest of the group immediately started praising the plot twist, shocked that I’d managed to keep the “class change” secret. That’s when I had to tell them that I didn’t. None of it was planned with me. I never wanted to stop being a witch. Now one friend agrees it was messed up to spring such a huge mechanical and narrative change on me without talking with me first. The others say it was great storytelling and I should just roll with it. And while I do think it was a cool scene, I can’t shake how gutted I feel. I loved playing a witch from the start and I loved Nettle. Now I’m staring at cleric feats, on the verge of tears, wondering if I’m just being dramatic. So I’m wondering, am I allowed to be a little stinker and be upset about this change?

hobblelobble

Forgive me Crits for I have sinned. I seek forgiveness from Dice Christ himself, and from the Supreme Crit Justices as well. I guess the bailiff too, John your opinion still bares some weight for me! This is not directly related to my actions as a player, but perhaps my actions as a playa :/ I matched with a girl on hinge and we hit it off particularly due to how I got her immediately hooked on NADDPod! Things fizzled and I thought she left me on read, but I moved recently and in the chaos it was I who left HER on read. I have a strict no ghosting policy in my life because I think it’s a kind of low thing to do (lowlier than bailiff john even) but now it’s been nearly three weeks and that ship has definitely sailed. Her last message to me was insanely thoughtful analysis about Moonshine & the crick chapter finale and asking my thoughts. I don’t think I can reach out again but I feel terrible for not only ghosting her but potentially tainting her experience with the pod via my poor behavior. Forgive me, I am but a spacey fool with no object permanence :(

Tyler Goevert

To the holiest of rollers, I prostrate myself in confession. I started a campaign with some friends, two who are new to D&D and two experienced players. The world is low magic with dead gods and fey, inspired by The Witcher and Dark Souls. Death is a very real threat (or is supposed to be). In our very first session, the party was involved in a large fight with some heavy hitters. I thought they would run and gave many hints that these guards would be out for blood if they chose to fight. One of my players even rolled a nat 20 persuasion check that backed the guards down and took their hands off of their hilts. The party then stood and fought, dropping two of the party (one of whom then failed all three death saves). I defied Dice Christ, throwing in a vampire NPC associated with an allied organization of one of the party members who offered the dying character vampirism to save his life. The tide then turned in the party’s favor and everyone survived, excited for the next session. Tell me, must I prepare for the vengeance of Dice Christ for removing stakes or am I absolved for protecting the lives of the (so far) innocent?

Ben Serra

Good day. I come to the honorable justices and the roguishly handsome bailiff in pitiful desperation. I DM for a long-time group and often design homebrews systems to cater to their interests. Our current game incorporated a few roleplaying elements like flashback mechanics to fill out backstories, a Karma system for their actions, and a class system that uses narrative Ambitions as mechanics. These have all gone extremely well. Too well in fact. The characters now spend hours of real life time in game having simulated arguments on their opposing world views and moral positions. On one occasion, a character perfumed another and stained her clothes, so she hid inside the inn for three in-game days (about 6 hours of IRL session time). They slowly RP'd coming together again at a pace so slow that eventually I had to just out of game ask them to move on so the story could progress. One character is a monster hunter with highly specialized abilities, but loves to argue in character, and so they will ignite in-character debates on the usefulness of their limited skills and philosophical views that last for half the session. How do I de-immerse my players? I have so many plans and encounters but they won't stop role playing petty disputes and emotional reconciliations. I would love to also play the game, but I can only have random monk NPCs interject into their turmoil with plot points so many times until I run out of believable names. Help.

Randy

Dearest crit justices and bailiff who always sounds like he’s sweaty I present to you the case of the 10 plus paladin. I’ve played dnd on and off for about 15 years, and recently joined a group for a small campaign and the occasional one shot. They are all new players inspired to play by dimension 20, and have watched every episode multiple times so are very familiar with the rules making my job of showing them the ropes quite easy. The issue I am having is our paladin. He chooses paladin everytime for every one shot, which is fine, and is the typical edgelord paragon power fantasy you know and love. The issue begins with that we use digital dice, and his explicitly never seem to show publicly despite him “trying” to change the settings. He has never once rolled below a 10, we have played multiple 8 hour sessions. He only announces his roll first if it is a nat 20 and is always higher than at least one other person on group rolls. Never missed a save or an attack. How do I humble this Palterous Paragon or is it on me for not calling out this behavior earlier

Matthew Harvey

To the Classy Judges and Gassy Bailiff I bring you the case of the disguse-self snafu. While developing a campaign I was DMing I mentioned to a player that I was playing with the idea of have warlocks be seen as bad-luck or cursed to most NPCs. The player, loved this idea and made a warlock whose entire build and backstory was centered around "passing" as a wizard (pact of the tome for a spellbook, wizard robes and familiar and even living in a tower.) This escalation led to when the game started Warlocks being fully illegal in the city they were living in, meaning if they were discovered they'd be serious consequences which the player really enjoyed. The trouble came when he had as part of his disguise, planned to use constant disguise self spells to appear differently. This worked for awhile but an NPC eventually confronted him, since it just made sense at least one of the high-profile magic issuers they were encountering would notice the constant spell effect on him. While I intended to have this just be the NPC's first clue of the Warlocks deception, when confronted the player folded immediately and fessed up to being a warlock. Not wanting to send a player directly to jail, I on the fly changed the NPCs motivations to have them blackmail the player instead of turning him in but I wonder, should I have made the change or should have folding under an NPCs first accusation have led to his character being sent to a prison cell?

Raven

Greetings honorable judges and bailiff Jake (which is actually wrong this week because you said Jack). I bring to you the case of the first session TPK. Years ago a friend invited me to play D&D with a friend of his as the DM. The party was haphazardly formed over about half an hour, with most of the players being very inexperienced. Excited to meet our characters and explore this world, the session starts, and we shortly encounter an enemy. Turns out, the enemy is a lich, which I know now is not something a level 1 party can face, so we all tried to fight it as hard as we could. The DM proceeds to kill all of us, not offering a deus ex machina or anything. I never figured out what he wanted that session to be, but we never scheduled another session

Cubsguy108

To the effervescent justices and the bailiff whose name, Jack, I unfortunately must share- I bring you a case of Heroic Hubris. Several months ago our dnd party came across a village of elves being attacked and slaughtered by the dwarven army. Our dm described the villagers being taken away and killed. We decided to have our barbarian, who through several barrels of ale has become friendly with the dwarves, to fly to the dwarven king and broker a peace deal. After several rounds of us sitting back and watching the villagers be killed I decided my half-elf had enough of sitting and watching his people be killed, and jumped in to at least save some, not knowing if peace could agreed in time. This triggered a major battle in which I was killed. I’m razzed about it to this day. So I ask: was I right to step in when I did instead of watching villagers be killed in front of me as I hid? Or did I deserve the house being dropped on me?

Aeriel Belk

To the classy, generous justices and esteemed bailiff, I present the case of D&D on ice! I recently participated in a Dungeons and Dragons themed curling tournament (curling like the sport with the stones and brooms). In this version of curling, each team member selected a class that gave them "spells" they could use during the game. For example, the Bard had Polymorph, where they could turn one stone into a rubber duck, the Rogue had Set Trap that let them put a cone on the ice that you weren't allowed to hit with a stone, and the Cleric had Kati's Adorable Sweater, which put a crocheted sweater on a stone that dampens your ability to hit it. The conflict I bring is this: in the rules, there was specifically no Counterspell (previous iterations of this tournament had that as a spell, but it was removed this year), or using your spell to stop another players spell. In one end (round), the other team played a spell called Bait and Switch (Fighter), which allows you to saw two in-play stones. We were about to win 3 points, and by doing this they got 2 instead (For the sake of keeping this concise I won't fully explain the scoring system of curling, but feel free to google if that's necessary!). We then played our own Bait and Switch spell, and switched the stone they had just put on the button (scoring stone) with a DIFFERENT stone than they had moved. So, they put stone 1 in the place of stone 2, and then we put stone 1 in the place of stone 3. The other team objected, saying that this was a form of Counterspell. I ask the experts, since we did not move the exact same stones to reset the ice to where it was originally, does this count as a counterspell? I eagerly await your judgement! Sincerely, On Thin Ice in Alabama P.S. Some extra context: The Game Master ultimately decided in our favor, though we later heard that the tournament leader wouldn't have allowed it if she had been on the ice. We still lost by like 7 points despite this, so no one was truly hurt.

Luke Jarrett

Greetings Bailiff Jake please present the case of smellavision to the mighty judges who I am not worthy to talk to. This takes place over two campaigns I am currently in within my group of friends. One I play in and the other I DM. In the one I play whenever we are in a dark cave or dungeon one of the players “Mike” rolls a perception check using smell to decide which way to go. I don’t love this as I personally don’t think a orc’s or anyone’s smell is that good. In the campaign I dm for “Mike” did this again however one of the directions was a water coming through a wall, on the other side of the wall was a green sladd surrounded by a flooded room with a layer of alcohol on top which was a trap set to explode when any fire touched it. He rolled a Nat 20 but I don’t like smell a vision so just told him he smelt damp this led to the trap activating during the fight. They won it and moved on but they haven’t dropped smell checks, we have decided the future of smell checks are down to you.

AutoReroll

Dearest Justices and the revolving door of bailiffs (maybe Murf this week?) I want to bring you the case of the fair weather werefriends. My party is running Strahd Revamped (get it?) and avoiding spoilers, got involved in a power struggle between factions in a werewolf clan. The party agreed to back their preferred alpha (naturally to the sounds of Weird Als party in the CIA) but after the skirmish, things quickly soured. The werewolves discussed their plans for the currently kidnapped children, our fighter/blade warlock asked the group "do you trust me?" Before nuking the new leader with literally every ability they had doubling the health of the werewolf and causing the rest to immediately concede to their demands. Upon giving up the children, the new new leader made some impotent threats and headed back to the cave. Justices, my heart stopped when the wizard asked "are they all bunched up?" He ended casting a devestating fireball while the traumatised children screamed and the rest of the party wiped out the humanoid form survivors. I ended up giving out a couple of dm inpirations to the instigators, but now that I have had some time to think on it (it only happened a couple of hours ago) I am feeling less good about how it all went down. Is it murder-hobo-ey to turn on former allies, or are the actions justified when the enemies are so monstrous?

Faye Core

The Case of the Airship Piss: Hello Esteemed Jubilant Judges and Bonus Bailiff I am the DM for a wonderful 5 year campaign. Whilst traveling aboard an airship, a monk, Jupiter lost a fight to a npc fighter, Bog. He threatened to do the warm water sleepover trick on Bog when a player Will spoke up. In a bit? Or character choice? Jupiter decided to piss on the outside of Will's bedroom? This was discovered and lead to a in character fight. The player defended his actions as a character choice, but has since apologized. Should i let bygones be bygones?

clerby

The Case of No Context: To the honorable Justices Murphy and Tanner, the Beautiful, Gorgeous Bird Queen Axford, and that guy who squats in Jill’s house: Hi, hope you are well. I am extremely new to DnD and playing in my first campaign this upcoming fall semester with my best friends at college. After cycling through about 50 different builds I finally settled on a character and asked my friend (the DM) for some info on the world so I could build backstory. Now, I hate to speak badly about someone who is not present (pls remember i love her she is my best friend) but this bitch won’t tell me anything. Literally nothing!!! What do I do? I’m in college to be a screenwriter all I want to do is develop my character in the world she lives in and I can’t!! Whatever shall I do? I patiently await your response and judgement. PS I fly down to visit the DM and her girlfriend (who is also my friend and a PC) this weekend if that changes your ruling/punishment.

Amanda M

Dear the magnanimous high crit, may you please save my troubled soul and release me from my mortal toil. I started DMing for a group of friends from college a year ago, and everything was going great, until I started dating one of my players about 10 months into the campaign (I know). Suffice to say our love was extremely short lived and crashed and burned within, like, a month. Whoops. However, because of this, and because all my other players are in the same friend group, we haven’t played DND in almost 4 months! I miss DM’ing for my besties, but this rift has given me pause. Would I be terrible for excluding my ex and resuming play with my friends (in a different campaign most likely), or am I destined to a life of loneliness with my glory days of whomping my players behind me? Please save me from the burdens of societal niceties. Thank you.

Randy Pillay

All hail the mighty justices and that one guy, Jork. Our party was on a side quest to upgrade our Eldritch Knight’s sword. Our perilous journey took us to a volcano where we had to get a special steel that was guarded by fire giants. We were supposed to replace the steel we were using for the sword. The mission cost us my rogue’s life, but the party was able to put me on a cart to pull me to a cleric for reviving. On the evening we were returning to the outskirts of towns, our fighter remembered he could summon his weapon. He then summoned his now upgrade weapon before we had a chance to pay, turning our side quest into a theft. A few sessions later, the fighter dropped out of our D&D group. All knowing gooners, does this constitute enough of a punishment or does Dice Christ have to punish this little freak?

Rebecca

To the holy members of the church of Dice Christ and a guy whom I think is named Dan, I come asking for forgiveness. My party and I play with opt in massive damage rules so if an attack deals more than half your hp, you can opt in to roll on a massive damage table to have something else happen. We’ve never had a problem with this till now. Through a series of unfortunate accidents, the rouge ended up 1v1ing a six headed hydra. The hydra, through six attacks, dealt more than half the rouges hp. Before I could say otherwise, my player joyfully exclaimed, “Hell Yeah! I love consequences!!” And then rolled before I ever told her to. She then rolled to have her characters arm ripped off. This is where my sin enters. She was so excited that I couldn’t bring myself to clarify that because the hydra had six attacks, it wouldn’t count as massive damage and that it has to be done in a single attack. So I simply narrated the hydra ripping off the rouges arm and have carried this lie with me ever since. It weighs on my soul. May I ever be forgiven?

Chip

To the highest justices of the Court, and the lowliest Bailiff in all the lands, I bring you the case of the Suddenly Interested Problem Player. I have been DMing a campaign for some friends of mine for quite a while already. The campaign is going okay, we play once a month. Unfortunately, the longer the campaign goes on, the more I'm realising some annoying and disruptive behaviour of our Rogue player. He's only active when his character is directly involved, or when he's able to sneak off on his own without including the other players. If he's not front and center, he immediately clocks out and is on his phone, games on the side, or even interrupts other players scenes to describe his character doing random edgy rogue stuff. I have talked to him already and asked him to be more present and he agreed, but he never followed up on that promise. Now, I have decided (after discussing the issue with some of the other players and they agreed) to end the campaign by letting the plot come to a fast close within the next two sessions. That way we give the story a good send-off, and I can fill my schedule with groups of players that actually want to be there. However, after hearing about this, the Rogue got pretty upset and started talking about how much he'll miss the game and how it's a pity we would want to end it so soon and not renew it. Did I misjudge the situation, or am i right in trying to end this campaign early? I humbly submit to the court.

likedafish

To the heavenly supreme justices and that guy, Joub HeQuits I come to you, humbly, asking for guidance and justice. My usual table of players includes three DMs; my husband Jay, my friend Matt (Murphy none the the less!) and me, a baby dm who doesn't know what they're doing and has only hosted two sessions so far. We haven't played DND in a YEAR AND AND A HALF, not due to scheduling conflicts, but due to collective creative blocks. Here are the following excuses: Me, I started my Stardew Valley themed campaign while I was unemployeed and needed an outlet, now I'm happily employed but truthfully don't know where to take the story due to a PC dropping out. Matt: doing grad school and getting married this year (congratulations!) Jay, my husband: No excuse! None! Works a desk job that could easily allow him to write more sessions. I play a bandass Gunslinger Lizard and the story was captivating. Judges, how do I bully my spouse into DMing again so I can shoot enemies and regrow my tail. I accept any punishments willingly. Love, Dorie

Thefindingmoon

To the judgy Justices and Jim, I bring to you the case of Bob’s Fiery Fate! May t please the court. In the last few sessions of our curse of Strahd campaign, we rallied a town of commoners to join us in facing off against Strahd. On the way to the castle we fought some monsters and sent a group of commoners ahead of us in the battle. The result, we managed to keep all 5 commoners alive and Commoner B AKA Bob, got a killing blow on a large fiend. We asked if we could have Bob become a level 1 fighter that we controlled and our DM gave this requested agency to our comrade Bob. We love Bob and in the next fight before Strahd he even scored armor and a flail that upped his AC to 20 and gave him solid fighting stats. I now bring to you the injustice. In our final fight against Strahd, Bob was knocked unconscious, on his third death save he rolled a nat 20. Everyone was elated. I said so Bob can take his turn right and the DM and one of the other players said very matter of factly that a nat 20 death save brings you to 1 hp but at the end of your turn. It really isn’t a big deal and if it’s a house rule fine, but they were saying it as if this was RAW. Bob ultimately survived 2 more rounds of combat, coming back to full with a second wind, gaining temp hp from an ally, surviving another strike and then met his demises to a high level fire ball. If Bob would have gotten his turn at the appropriate time, I believe due to placing he may have survived. At the end of the day we all had fun and I chose to revivify our paladin with my last 3rd level spell instead of Bob and we invoked a statue of him, but was I in the wrong for not speaking up for Bob or was I right to accept my DM and player’s incorrect ruling. I already had to smash one of my DMs counter spells due to the 60ft rule and wasn’t trying to be that guy, but I fear Bob’s fate may have been in my hands. I await your ruling.

Rebecca

To the bone dry justices and the slightly soggy bailiff, I bring to you the case of the OP spider. I’ll cut straight to the point. It was our final session. I was playing an Elven Warlock named Alanis, as it is a dope ass name and whoever came up with it is quite cool. We were trying to finish up the quest we were given and had ended up in a field equidistant from a wizard tower (our end goal) and a random city. So we determine to go to the tower. This was apparently contrary to what the dm had planed. The DM moaned a bit about us not going to his cool city, then got a funny look in his eye and narrated my character’s shoe getting stuck in the mud. So I narrate taking my foot out, pulling out the shoe, and then putting my foot back in. SURPRISE! In the shoe was a spider that then bit me and poisoned me without a save. That poison PARALYZED ME INSTANTLY and the DM was adamant that I would be unable to move for the next three days. And that’s how the campaign ended. A full year of play finished with my character paralyzed in the mud with no story arcs completed. So I ask you this, was the DM right to “railroad” us in such a way? All in all it doesn’t really matter, this is just a thing that will come to mind every once in a while and I’ll get pissed off all over again. I await your response. PS: I have many examples of this dm being……interesting in his rulings but that is a case for another day

naur_body

i come humbly to the great temple of crit to pray before dice christ, i’m planning my first ever game DMing and i feel i could shit dice. i crave the blessing of the lord 😩

Beav

To the benevolent Justices and secret heir to the throne Bailiff Jork, I bring before you the case of… FANATICAL FOCUS V. HEIGHTENED SPELL (featuring a murph-level freak out) A few months back, I was DMing a short campaign for a group of randos online. One of the PC’s (let’s call them Murph) was playing as a multiclass Sorcerer-Warlock optimized for damage-dealing. In one of the boss fights near the end of the campaign, the group was facing off against a Barbarian demigod whose stat block had the “Fanatical Focus” feature. In Murph’s first turn, they cast an AoE spell and used “Heightened Spell” to give the raging Barbarian disadvantage against the save. The boss failed, so I decided to utilize the Fanatical Focus feature to reroll. Just before the dice left my hand, I noticed the wording of Heightened Spell states that the disadvantage only applies to the “first saving throw made against the spell.” The question became “Does that reroll have disadvantage now?” Eventually, we had talked in circles long enough that we just flipped an Anchorman DVD to decide. The Barbarian won the toss, so his reroll was made flat. The PC’s still ultimately succeeded, but Murph was clearly not happy about the ruling. I awoke the next morning to a wall of text on Discord (including some pretty creative personal insults) and Murph never returned to the online game. So Justices, was I correct in negating this Sorcerer’s Metamagic or am I, in fact, “a cruel, heartless, and jealous DM” to this online player that I had known for a total of 21 play-hours? I humbly await your insight.

Riley Nielson

(Please just use my initials if my story is selected I beg) To the honourable justices and... I want to say Jerry? I (they/them) humbly submit the story of the two person rule. I've been running a campaign for nearly four years, consisting of myself and five PCs. We play every other Sat. One of our group members, Z, runs a different campaign with the same group on alternating Sats. We have a hard rule in both games that we play if one person can't attend a session, but we don't if two or more people can't attend a session. We've rarely missed more than a session or two in a row in that time, until recently. Recently, two players (a couple, one of whom is Z, the other we'll call G) have repeatedly schedule plans on several Sats, including nights that I DM, about 4-5 since the start of the year. This has caused us to cancel sessions for more than two months, though one cancelation was not the fault of the couple. I have no issue with emergencies, work, planned vacations, etc. impacting sessions, or if Z wants to cancel his sessions, but this has more often than not impacted the sessions I DM. Since these two players are a couple, the sessions automatically get canceled whenever they make other plans per the two person rule. This feels disrespectful to my time and the time of the other players. I spoke to my other players who agreed that the issue needed to be addressed as a group without calling anyone out and to see if the couple had maybe lost interest in the game. In our group chat, we all agreed that we wanted to keep playing and that no one had lost interest. I also offered to move games to a different day if it helped, though no one was interested in moving from Sat. Z privately informed me of several other plans that he and G have that conflict with a few sessions I DM for various weeks coming up. I privately informed Z that it's ok to miss those sessions, but I will be counting him and G as one player for cancelation purposes going forward, and Z said he understood. I don't want to kick them out because they are good friends (Z was my spouse's best man and one of my best friends, and I really like G) and fun to play with. My spouse, one of our players, feels like this is unfair, but I feel like it balances the power between players and ensures we still play the game. Another player of mine who has several years of DM experience thought it was both fair and very funny. Judges I humbly seek your ruling in this case, is counting the couple as one player fair in the context of the two person rule?

Cavan Edwards

The case of the terrible but also good? Player. To the illustrious judges and the bailiff whom I am unclear is worth the air he breathes. My case is this, my friends and I have a d&d group which has run for easily the last 5 years if not longer. One of our players we'll call him jorp, is a terrible DND player mechanically. He refuses to use any technology insisting on sloppily handwriting his notes and character sheet on paper. Rather than record the specific wording of his spells, he writes down a summary or short form often only writing down the benefits of the spell and not the caveats. Usually the description will not even clearly define what the spell does or how to use it, resulting in us having to look up the answers and slow down gameplay. He will also often neglect abilities and magic items that he has, failing to use them ever in combat despite their massive mechanical benefit and the imminent danger of the party. He will favor tricks and attempts to mislead NPCs despite the obvious danger, this poses in combat He often has no clue what's going on in the story and will zone out for long periods of time, coming back into the game stating " oh sorry guys I wasn't paying attention. I have no idea what's going on" he once joined a game remotely and played for a full hour and a half nodding along politely and taking his turns, despite later admitting he was unable to hear us clearly and had just been pretending to follow the game the entire time. This would have easily been fixed if he had just spoken up about not hearing us. Judges the problem is thus. He is also really fun to have at the table. Overall He's a good friend, when he does follow the plot he's engaged comes up with creative role play and is a pro-social combatant/party member. He is always on time for sessions and cancels in advance only when needed. I submit to the court. Does he need to be severely punished for his absent-mindedness and terrible application of d&d mechanics? Or should he be found not guilty for the fact that he is good at heart and ultimately still a fun player? I submit him to your mercy or extreme prejudice as you see fit.

Liam K

To the blessed apostles of Dice Christ, I come to confess my sins. I’ve been a DM for about 5 years, running DnD for friends. This year, I started running a game for some coworkers, mostly new players. One of the new players made a Paladin PC, super cool character with a developed backstory. And 9 Constitution. I thought about suggesting a different distribution of stats, but decided it would probably be fine. Fast-forward to our first full session - the party encounters a couple swarms of lobster-eel like monsters in the basement they’ve been hired to clean out. The paladin, already a bit hurt, steps forward bravely, and…the swarm crits. Hands sweating, I grab the pile of dice and roll them, knowing it will almost certainly instant-kill this PC. In a moment of weakness, my brain refuses to add up the numbers, terrified of the total, and instead say, “you’re down, but not instantly dead.” The party manages to survive the fight and the Paladin player is having a blast. I thought I handled the situation ok, that is until I ran a session zero for another group yesterday, including a non canonical fight to get some new players used to the mechanics and their characters. On round 1, I proceeded to roll consecutive nat 20s that, if I had rolled full damage, would’ve instantly downed both of the PCs they attacked. I fear I have been cursed to beat up lvl 1 PCs until I finally kill one. Dice Christ Disciples, I ask that you forgive me for my dice fudging before I am forced to kill a new player’s first PC, souring their first experience with this wonderful game.

MyrMonkshood

To those litigeous hotties in the barrister wigs, and to the half eaten cake next to the gavel, I bring you the case of the AOE spell vs the invisible BBEG. My partner was DMing a high school wrestling murder mystery campaign. The final battle involved keeping the CEO of the wrestling league from hitting a sacred bell with a sacred hammer. A wild magic effect, not on anyone's turn, caused this baddie to go invisible right before our bard's turn. Our bard wanted to cast shatter on him without hitting our very hurt cleric. Our DM said it would be a DC 18 arcana check to place the spell in such a way, even though there was no way the invisible BBEG could have moved yet. This spooked our bard from casting this spell at all! I only complained to say that my DM would see me in court, but we quickly moved on. So here we are. Please allow me to shower him with stale croissants!

Marc Easton

To the Illustrious Justices and the lowly lowly lowly Bailiff Jark, I present to you a case centering around the spell Time Stop. My friend DMed a level 20 one-shot and used Chat GPT to generate everything (including puzzles, our characters, and enemies). His BBEG was a chronomancy wizard and he had minions that seemed to be home-brewed (AI-brewed?) that were not affected by any spells that stopped time. I can't remember what the name of these creatures were but when we looked them up, we couldn't find anything. He cast Time Stop on us, which says that the spell ends whenever you make an action that affects other creatures, and had his minions proceed to make attacks on us while we could do nothing for three turns. We raised a challenge about this but he ruled that the Time Stop spell would only end early if the person who cast it did damage.He didn't grant them advantage or anything and we still managed to defeat the BBEG, but it still felt wrong. Justices, were we wrong to feel like this was an abuse of the spell? Or was our DM in the right? I await your ruling.

Dan Callery

High preistesses of the church of dice christ and enthusiastic Altar Boy Jake: I come to you with a confession My first campaign I ever played was a few years back with my friend as the DM, also his first time. For one of the battles against an ancient red dragon, the DM granted us a boon for the battle by making us level 20. I, a human Wizard now had access to incredibly powerful spells. Excitedly I decided to cast Time STOP, forming a plan to set traps, summon elementals and transforming into a dragon myself resulting in an instant barrage of cold damage. Unfortunately when rolling the d3 to gain extra actions I only rolled a 1, limiting my plan. Frustated at seeing the awesome scene of chronomantic power handicapped, i sold my soul and lied saying I rolled a 3. The resulting magical effect was epic, seriously damaging the dragon, but only I knew that the scene was built on lies. Oh clerics, may you forgive a humble wizard for judging my time stop for personal gain?

Drew Pate

Dice Christ Confession: Save Me From Temptation! Very soon I am beginning my first stint as a professional DM. I have been hired by a firm in my city to run several games of D&D for their staff. This the first time I am being paid to play D&D and I am both excited and nervous about the opportunity. I can already feel the Dice Devil’s influence telling me to fudge rolls and ignore enemy Nat 20s so that the players never suffer. I mean they’re not paying me to lose, right? The sick taint of capitalism is making me rethink Challenge Ratings and trap DCs, because they money is so good I’m worried if I’m a “tough” DM I won’t get this chance again. Is it wrong to let my dream of paying my rent with D&D turn me into overly generous DM? Please, clerics of the icosahedron and their d4 sycophant(Jake) how do I resist the Dice Devil and hold true to my faith in Dice Christ! PS-Just got back from the Seattle D20 show and loved every second of it. Thanks!

Joshua LaGrone

Good morrow, justices and bailiff alike! I DM’d a campaign where one of my players (we’ll call him Gary Busey) was trying really hard to romance another player at the table (we’ll call her Jamie Lee Curtis). It started around halfway through the campaign and every time it happened, Jamie (being the pro that she is) was able to deal with it gracefully in-character and really did her best to seemingly help Gary Busey keep things contained within the story. Things took a bit of a turn though when, at the campaign finale, Gary Busey revealed a bunch of AI images he’d created of his character and Jamie’s characters being together and starting a family and stuff. Already odd, he then also showed us a couple AI images of him and Jamie (the players, not their characters) being together. Jamie Lee Curtis is married and has a kid. It became very clear that Gary Busey could not keep the in-game romance separate from real life. Thankfully, once again, Jamie Lee Curtis handled it with grace and laughed it off. Gary looked pretty embarrassed but still delivered an impassioned speech at the closing of the campaign where he begged Jamie to choose his character because of how much the character loved her. Jamie was cool about it all, said yes, made Gary the happiest boy ever, and the campaign closed. I FaceTimed Jamie after the fact and asked how she felt about it all. She said she was flattered by it and understands there was just a maturity difference and hopefully as time goes on, Gary Busey will understand how odd that was. My question is this. Should I, as the DM, have stopped it before it got to the uncomfortable event of seeing the AI images of the two? On one hand, I feel like I maybe could have, but on the other hand, I had True Lies’s own Jamie Lee Curtis telling me it was fine and that she was unfazed by it all. I humbly await your verdict. P.S. Gary Busey no longer plays dnd with us.

Sean Simoneau

Greetings Yon Honored Judges, may I present The Case of Atheist Rogue and the Goblet of Piss. I recently joined up with a party that had been adventuring for a little while, right in the middle of their quest for The God Cup, a Holy Grail-esque relic that had great significance to multiple religions, including those of several party members. The party’s rogue was a vehement atheist, as his family had been killed in a holy war years ago and he has been angry at the gods ever since. The player is sort of a Reddit-style atheist himself, though not to an insufferable degree, just in a “okay dude, just stop talking and roll please” kind of way. When our party finally arrived at the temple where The God Cup was found and reached the inner chamber, they sent the Rogue ahead to scout for traps. He made it through unscathed, all the way to the pedestal with the cup, then as everyone else followed into the room, he proceeded to drop trou and piss into The God Cup. The party reacted negatively both in and out of character. The cleric and paladin obviously had an issue with it, and the IRL players felt it was just generally disrespectful and in poor taste from the rogue player. He argued that it was in keeping with his character with a vendetta and that since there were no negative impacts from the act, it’s fine and we just move on. The others think he was just doing it to be edgy and that it wasn’t as funny as he thinks it was. So who’s right here? Was it distasteful to piss in The God Cup? Or do the other players need to swallow their pride, along with some now-blessed piss, and chalk it up to a character choice? All thanks, Jon E. Nooksvale, Arcane Trickster

terst

An update on Tricky Dick: We just finished the campaign, and we found out that "Richard average guy" was going to be a spy among our ranks that was at the same time doublecrossing his employer, playing on the image of Nixon of a slimy, scheming man. Let's just say that the big reveal fell a bit flat.

Dominic Stacey

May Dice Christ forgive me for I goofed Years ago I was DMing for a game that had been going on for about a year, I wanted to do something big and iconic. So I went with a Vampire lord in his castle, I needed to figure out where to put his coffin, so I thought, why not the dungeon? I'll put it behind a locked jail cell with a golem to guard it. I then put the key in another room close by that was also guarded by a golem, I thought I was being so clever. Justices, not only did the party immediately pick the correct door to get down to the dungeon, when they saw the coffin being guarded by that golem the gunslinger of the group asked, are these open jail cell bars? I said yes, and he says, I open fire My poor golem couldn't even put up a fight! In the end I had a blast taunting them in my best robot golem voice, and even picked on myself as the golem's final words before it perished. The party went on to fight Mr. Lord Vampire with ease by dropping a bag of holding full of melons on his head, but that's a story for another time

Muqtadaa Miandara

Honored Justices Murphy, Axford, Tanner, any guest justices, and our estimable Bailiff Jank Howitzer, thank you for convening. I present the case of the Game Show, the Lich, and the Pressure Plate. My players were racing to claim a shard of a dead god’s heart from a sarcophagus guarded by a lich in the Astral Sea who’d spent nearly 2,000 years trying to unseal it. To ease them back into the campaign after a year-long hiatus, I used the lich's boredom as an excuse to stage a game‑show trivia contest: the party answered lore questions using skill checks and clever teamwork (and referencing old notes). They did well, won some loot, and the lich - mildly amused - sent them on their way. After some ridiculous (but this is ridiculous) Investigation and Perception checks (multiple 30+ rolls and a critical success), they uncovered a humble pressure plate on the floor no one had noticed. Stepping on it popped the sarcophagus open, they grabbed the shard, and the lich, livid at their success, demanded answers, revealing that his Lich-like floating around meant he'd never put pressure on the plate before! The Lich lost his shit and attacked with summoned beasts before getting soundly wrecked by my players. The problem is this - one of my players was upset. This player, as you might recall from a previous case that you judged, is the same person who gave his best friend an overpowered dinosaur companion with four attacks in the campaign he DMs (and no I didn't go to a baseball game with him as he lives in Germany and I am in Texas so I have already defied the will and judgement of this crit). He claims I've shattered his suspension of disbelief as he can't believe that the high INT Lich couldn't figure out the pressure plate puzzle. I argued back that I described the Lich as floating around with his toes not quite grazing the ground! In all honesty, I didn't have a mechanic for why the lich hadn't stolen the heart, or how the sarcophagus was sealed, I just wanted to run a game show and improvised the rest around that once I had the players in the setting and interacting with things. I know it's a stretch, but what do you all think? Do I need to more carefully craft layers of intrigue and puzzle to explain why their enemies are stymied where they succeed? Am I in danger of copyright infringement if I start a show called Yet Another D&D Vodcast (a YADDVOD of jorts)? Will Jill and Tucker ever tell Jonk about their third, Emil? I look forward to these answers and humbly await the judgement of this esteemed crit.

Michael Beck

To the illustrious bailiff Jack, the powerful and fair justice Emily, and the other two, I bring the case of too many cooks in the kitchen. I ran a 5e game a while back that on the whole was fairly successful, everyone enjoyed it, and until I started grad school everyone was making it to sessions. However towards the end there were some issues with one of my players. He was playing a warlock that was geared to be a full summon spam nightmare. He would have 3-6 minions on the field at a time. This only became a problem because he started taking forever when it got to his turn. One of the other players got really annoyed and asked me to start implementing turn timers. I didn't want to do that as I think I shouldn't need to babysit, but I did try to encourage faster turns. I would also start Targeting his minions just a little bit more. It got a little better but I got burnt out DM'ing a little while into my grad school before I could find a good solution. Justices, should I have brought out an egg timer and started enforcing shorter turns? Or should I have started targeting his minions harder? I await your fair judgement

Brandon Maier

To the plebeian Justices Spanner, Waxboard, and Burp and the respectable Bailiff Jake, I bring a case against the court itself. For too long have you basked in the sun, filling our heads with empty promises to never be fulfilled. Once, the great Henry Hogfish promised a pilgrimage to Western New York to see his beloved Bills, and yet here we stand having never been gifted that occasion. I call on the court to make right this slight and journey to the colder climes. If not Buffalo, may I suggest Rochester, New York as the destination for the 2 Crew to grace us with their presence. While here you can visit the National Museum of Play where an exhibit is dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons along with various interactive video game exhibits sure to titillate the Justices. Afterwards you can enjoy Rochester’s signature dish, (and world’s best drunk food) the Garbage Plate. Please, I implore the Justices to redeem their honor and visit Western New York.

Secret Grandpa

Dear First Team All-Pro Surpreme Crit Justices and that Waterboy Baliff Jarf, I come to you with a classic tale of DM antics gone wrong (Murph cover your ears). About a year ago I was prepping an Autumn Festival session and was admittedly in a wacky mood. Beyond the normal festival games, I created an NPC who would polymorph PCs into toads for a little harmless fun. As a secret option at the festival I hid a small toad sized hole, which when entered the PC would come upon a sacred seance with tiny toads in witches hats surrounding a pentagram. Said PC would be greeted as the chosen toad-brother or sister whose arrival was fore-toad by Toadstradamus. After a ritual the PC gained a leaping ability and the sworn allegiance of all evil toads. Here's the issue...before all this I mistakenly made the polymorphing NPC a shapeshifting toad, so naturally they swore allegiance to my chosen PC and travels in her pocket. Now my PC has near-unlimited access to toad polymorphs and has used them to get other players out of sticky situations by polymorphing them and tucking them in her pocket. She is amassing a small toad army and I fear there's no turning back. Please help.

ScanmanRT

To the judges who I pay full reverence to and the bailiff who constantly messes up their paperwork. I present you the case of The Most Deadly Dodge. In a home campaign that I played in another PC named Rebel was a war-forged eldritch knight fighter from a desert kingdom. After returning by himself to his homeland in order to find his creator, he eventually found his sort of Dad and had a heart to heart about his creation and purpose. Rebel had been struggling with the fact that he possessed an incredibly powerful magical hammer imbued with the spirit of an earth god but despite his best efforts, he couldn’t draw out the weapons magical power. We at some point learned that the hammer works similar to Thor’s hammer and will only lend its power to someone who it considers worthy or virtuous. After sometime the town came under attack by an evil wizard (my character’s brother). The wizard was able to take control of the minds of the other war-forged and had them attack the people of the town. Rebel sprung into action to defend the people of his homeland and eventually he is all that physically stood between a group of children and his mind controlled metal siblings with crossbows. With his shield raised, Rebel assured the children that he was prepared to defend them with his life. The DM let the player know that the war-forged were about to open fire on him and in an attempt to brace himself and get some bonus to his defense the player said “I take the dodge action”. The DM then described how as the bolts fired towards Rebel he dodged out of the way at the last moment, allowing the bolts to fly past him and into the group of children killing them all. This lead to a morose end to the session and the hammer still not seeing Rebel as worthy. The player protested that he was just trying to take some kind of defensive stance in order to take less damage from the oncoming attacks. I ask you judges, was the DM right to interpret the players words literally? I throw my friends, and definitely not myself, at your mercy.

monstercake

To the amazing and fair judges and the silly boy bailiff: Our group used to play with a DM who we have since left his table and formed our own, where we all take turns DMing. One time when we were playing with him, he told our group we would have to fight a bunch of pirates and a baby dragon. He said the golden baby dragon (we named it Sparkles) was super hungry. We wanted to adopt the dragon so we tried feeding it and rescuing it. Our DM was so mad that we were attempting this that he started saying it’s “a wild animal and it will attack everything because it’s hungry.” This caused one of our players to lose all of their HP due to fire damage and go down. One of our spellcasters managed to make the pirate that was close to it attack the dragon so their attention would be turned on the pirates. Instead the DM suddenly said that Sparkles would “identify that the spellcaster was the strongest person in the fight and attack him” ignoring the dozens of pirates and other PCs in its way. We argued that he said Sparkles was starving and was going to eat and attack everyone but now suddenly Sparkles is not hungry and wants to attack the strongest (magically) person on the field? In the end, we rolled for it and managed to get a crazy high amount to be able to charm Sparkles into staying with us. Our DM was clearly annoyed and told us the immediate next town doesn’t allow dragons and we had to hide him away. We said we were fine with not using them for fights or we could have crazy reduced stats on them but we just wanted to save Sparkles but he wouldn’t go for it. That DM did a lot of things that eventually caused the group to leave but in this case, were we wrong to want to save Sparkles?

Hanna Dahl

Honorable Justices and Bailiff Jorts, today I bring to you the case of No Bugbears, Not ever, Not Even once. For the last six years, I’ve played at a table for with the my same crew from college, with the same Dm. We’ve played multiple campaigns, countless oneshots, and the DM has only ever had one rule, No Bugbears. He’s repeatedly stated he hates them and refuses to budge when I’ve argued against it many occasions. The DM claims it’s because of their ten foot reach and how with a glaive, it’s 15. Since we’ve been playing together for so long I can understand the hesitation to allow some power gamer shenanigans HOWEVER, here’s the catch: We play in theater of the mind. What does it matter? Why can’t the enemy just be 20ft away and not fifteen? I simply just seek to play a big fuzzy guy with comically long arms ala fozzy bear. So I ask you justices, is this embargo of bugbears a disservice or am I wrong for wanting to play a character race that Could Potentially be power gamed? hugs n’ kisses Hanna

Abigail Rickabaugh

Noble Justices and Jeek, I humbly present you with the case of the bard who was too in character. A few years ago in college I made a new friend who wanted to start DMing a campaign for her friends and she invited me to join. Several of the players were new to DND but the DM and I were not. There was one new player in particular, let’s call him Kyle, that everyone else at the table knew, but I had never met. Kyle was a music major and wanted to play a bard. He wanted to be charismatic, powerful, and have a dark past. Unfortunately, when we started playing, he only seemed to be interested in participating when he could romance female npcs, and frequently forgot major details of his backstory. He was somewhat attentive during role play but completely checked out during combat. I sat next to him to offer help with spells and navigating DND beyond when he needed it, so I could see that he spent most of the sessions designing his buff bard (with 10 strength) on hero forge. During one combat session, Kyle actually left the table and sat on the couch playing the guitar when it wasn’t his turn. As you can imagine this was disruptive, and I felt bad for our DM who did a lot of prep for each session. When we asked him to come back to the table, he brought the guitar with him and continued playing. Again, this was distracting. He did after a few months learn better table etiquette, and we had a lot of fun sessions, but to this day he proclaims that I “used to hate him” because he was new to DND. Judges, I ask you, was it wrong of me to be frustrated with Kyle’s behavior, or should I give more grace to a new player?

Jane Lee

To the all mighty Justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner, and that’s it. I bring to you the case of the unmovable Grandma. Back in 2021 I started playing a through-zoom dnd game with my cousins, uncle, dad, and grandma. We played as dispatch detectives solving a train hijacking that was supposed to last about four sessions. However, I was unable to make it to the last game. While my whole family did go ahead with the session and defeat the BBG without me, we retconned my characters absence by saying that I simply was in the other room dealing with hostages and my cousin DM promised to hold one last session centered around what my character was up to. When I showed up to the last session, my family surprised me by announcing they had made all new characters to each play a different hostage and that it was now my job (alone) to come up with a plan to save them. However, when we started playing, my grandma ultimately decided that she would not listen to any plan I would come up with as she “didn’t trust authority figures”. The session then turned into 40 minutes of me trying to convince my in real life grandma that she could trust me, her own granddaughter. I’m timid and shy, so I didn’t say anything to the table, but even now this session bothers me. All knowing justices, and also Jake, I argue that if these were regular NPCS I would have been able to make persuasion checks to convince them to listen to me, and because of that I should have been able to make a persuasion check against my grandma instead of having to genuinely convince her to be on my side. Was I robbed of this by my own family, or should I have tried harder to get my grandma to have faith in me. I leave my case in your court.

DMAN

Dear Bailiff Jork (since I know you hold the real power in the court), I come to you with a question of ethics, of morality, and of whether or not I am about to mess up. I am wrapping up a campaign that has run since 2019, and over the years we have seen two players leave the table. One of the players had to drop out due to starting a master's degree (did you know that Tabletop gaming is now a form of therapy for children???) and the other left for... personal reasons. Mainly that "personally" I thought he was an asshole, and booted him after three years of arguments at the table, passive aggression outside of the game, and on at least one occasion for the crime of "Getting drunk during game and passing out on the floor while we kept playing". Jork (and justices), the problem is that while the PLAYER was a giant dick, the PCs that this person created were very fleshed out and well-crafted characters, and it felt like such a shame to retire them from the story just because the player was gone. For one of the characters this player had it was easy enough to have them be in the background doing labor around the homebase, since it was a cluster of 10 goblins that had been hive-minded. The issue is that their other (main) character left the party to go "explore other options", and are returning in the campaign finale as a lich working AGAINST the party. One of the last things the player told me about their PC before things went to Hell was that they wanted to learn about lichdom. Bailiff Jork, Justices, I am genuinely scared that I am over-stepping a boundary here, and that my players won't be enthused with the reveal that one of the final BBEGs is the lichified version of a PC whose player was banned from our table. Even though this case is me vs myself, I plead that you take my case and help soothe my troubled sense of justice before I do something I won't be able to undo. Does this feel like plagiarism? PS: I no longer interact with this player at all (for non game reasons), but one of my players does, so there is a 100% chance that the former player will hear about this tom-foolery. The player has been gone from the table for almost two years at this point.

William Blankenship

“Aggressively Naive Fiancée” High justices of the Crit and Bailiff Jorts. I bring to you the case of “The aggressively naive fiancée” my bride to be is the love of my life. But as I’m the forever DM she is always my problem player. She is clever and great at in game play but whenever I make a call or declare something she doesn’t like she gets angry with me. Saying “what ever you aren’t fair”. But justices the times this happen it’s always by the book things such as another death fail for a player hit with an AOE spell who is already downed. Even with disadvantage a 21 still hits you. Etc. it’s often my rules lawyer players who aid me and say it’s “the rules”. We have been playing for 4 YEARS. I know mechanics aren’t her fav part of the game. But is it right for me to just say “look it up” from now on? It breaks roll play and since it’s my love I try to not be as snappy as if it was one of the other players. We start a new campagain I’m running this Sunday and it’s gonna be darker and grittier so the difficulty is higher. I won’t supply as many life lines. So I know this will happen more. How do I address it going forward? Should I not be annoyed and happy to explain myself or should she not attack me for using the rules of the game we have played for 4 years. Thank you for your time. I humbly await your judgement.

Reilly Willoughby

Honerable Justices and the (if we're being nice to the Baliff) ruggedly handsome Baliff Jake/(if we're being mean to the Baliff) that Juan guy with lukewarm boiled hotdog energy.I am in a Curse of Strahd campaign with my DM and 4 other players. Before we started, the DM laid some table rules, banning some spells and subclasses, including banning all summoning spells because they "big down combat too much." While I accepted the rules at the time, in a recent story arc, we spent several sessions saving NPC townsfolk and sending them back to a stronghold. After literal months of this, we went back to the stronghold to defend the NPCs from an onslaught of enemies. When we started combat, at one point there were 14 enemy monsters on the field. They swooped in and killed several of the NPCs we spent months saving. Playing a druid, I asked if I could use a spell like summon woodland creatures to try to distract the enemies from the NPCs we had grown attached to, and he reiterated "No summon spells, they slow down combat." I retorted "OK, but your 14 monsters on the field are slowing down combat way more than my summon spell would" and he got very defensive. At one point, I think we spent 20 minutes of him describing the monster acting, killing NPCs without a single one of us having a turn. I ask you, most honorable supreme crit, is this fair? Or should I have been allowed my summons?

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.

SiteZero

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

rollinginthecrits

To the deacons of the dice, I humbly throw myself before the altar and request forgiveness for withholding plot information on a crit. I am a first time GM, GMing a Daggerheart campaign in a homebrewed world. My players are on the hunt for an assassin of two princes, and found where they were killed. My Fungril (mushroom person) was communicated with the grass and rolled a crit, so I narrated the moment the princes were assassinated. They asked if they could make out the physical details of the assassin given their crit. They theorized correctly who orchestrated the assassination and they wanted to confirm their theory. I told them details about the assassin, a mercenary hired by the orchestrator. I am now feeling a little guilty and feel like maybe I did not adequately reward their crit and intuition.

CJ Rhodes

To the honorable Judges Murphy, Axfford and Tanner and the plucky Balif Jake I bring to you the case of the silent roller. I used to switch off dming with a friend of mine at my table (emphasis on used to) But have stopped due to hyper aggressive power/meta gaming. That makes the game less fun for me as someone a little more focused on the roleplay aspect of the game. I am writing for advice on how to deal with what I believe to be an instance of cheating at dice rolls and how to subtly address this at the table without causing tension. But if the justices determine that rash punishment must be dealt out, then I will be faithful as their proxy at my table. This player who I used to swap with as the role of DM uses a particular D&D character sheet app that has no option for making a dice roll sound at all. I downloaded and paid for the app to confirm this. It rolls instantly much more like a random number generator than an animated dice roll like on other apps. Justices, this player never fails. I once counted out number of Nat twenties in a game that he had and it was close to 25% of his roles. He naturally has very shaky hands and keeps his thumb very close to the roll button and I think might be subtly passing off shakiness as hidden double taps on the RNG. Even in a level 2 game he regularly hit skill checks and attack rolls totaling up too 22 to 26. Normally I would think if someone wants to ruin the game for themselves by cheating then let them because it's not interfering with my fun. But no, when I DM he insists I roll in front of the table. Calls me out on lying on roles, has requested that there be no DM screen. Constantly peers at my dice tray even when I'm a player as if to keep me honest And watches all of our roles like a hawk from hit dice minor skill checks to attack rolls. He is always staring at us as if we're going to cheat. So justices is it fair of this one player to have a silent method of rolling that seems to always be successful but expect the worst of his players and DMs and request to see every roll himself. I humbly await your judgement.

Binky Fiasco #1 Fan

To the exalted judges, and their loyal and widely respected bailiff Cake, I present the case of the cliffhanger I have been a member of a dnd group for over four years, spanning multiple campaigns with rotating DM's from our group. 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. 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.

The cheeseman

To the illustrious judges and that other guy, I think his name is John. I come before you not with a case, but a confession. In the campaign my sister is running, I once casted Compelled Duel against a goblin boss. The fight went swimmingly, and we emerged victorious. However, later, I realized that I did not remember to roll concentration on the spell, and there was a point that I took enough damage that I could have failed the save and lost the spell. Judges and priests, have I committed a grevious sin against Dice Christ, or was it just a little flub that I shouldn't feel bad about in the least?

curlyfriesanddnd

To the Honorable Judges Murphy and Tanner, the Luminous Dice Pope herself, and Mr. Jack I have not so much a case as a question. I am running Phandelver and Below: the Shattered Obelisk. (Spoilers) there are a lot of aberrations and mind flayers. My question is, can a character protected by the Nondetection spell have their thoughts read? Nondetection specifies they are protected from divination magic, but the mind flayers ability to detect thoughts is listed as “Psionics,” which has been occasionally separated from spellcasting. So far my players haven’t encountered an issue with this, but I know they will in the future and want to come prepared with legal and religious precedent.

Darkrisky

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

Taylor Lester

Dearest judges and bailiff, I come to you with an uncomfortable case that I'd love your perspective on. My long-time TTRPG group has been playing our current campaign (not D&D) for about a year. In this campaign, I play a 6'6" goth elven sorceress named Marlowe--a certified baddie, if you will. However, she is also kind of a hermit; I established in character creation and many times both in and out of character that she is mostly interested in her magical studies and is definitely not at all interested in romantic/sexual relationships. My DM seems to be having a really hard time with this. It started with him asking me early on if, perhaps, my character had a secret half-elven child. She doesn't, and I reiterated that she is not interested. He then has put several NPCs who are interested in Marlowe in her path, and she has rejected them. I thought her rebuffing their advances was kind of funny, but my DM has since escalated. At one point, my character was possessed by a forest spirit NPC, which quickly turned into what I can only describe as a forced labor situation. Both in and out of character, I stated that I would not be engaging in this, and the DM would need to find a workaround (he kind of did, kind of didn't). Most recently, I used some spellwork to puppeteer a demon, and the DM went on to explain how my character was "making noises that could be either pain or pleasure--it's hard to say" and how the demon "finished, if you know what I mean." I think this is so odd and, honestly, kind of uncomfortable. Esteemed members of the court, should I have created a different kind of character to better meet my DM where he seems to be, or is my DM really taking things too far with how he's describing these situations involving my character? I humbly await your verdict.

WesKane

The case of foot in mouth head in mimic. I suplicate myself to the judges and to dice christ. Screw the bailiff, his opinion is not holy. I was dming a game for my fam and some coworkers. During the dungeon my sister rolls a bad perception check on one of the chests. I narrate that she kicks the chest to open it, before i can finish that it is a mimic that attacks her foot she says her character wouldnt do that and would have opened it with her hands. I was a lil bitch and said fine the mimic now has your head grappled in its mouth. Saints of the dice i ask for forgiveness for this petty behavior. She survived the encounter but it was clearly a case of petty dming. I am at your mercy. Not the bailiff's though.

Zach Pankratz

To the Beefcake Judges and the "Maybe into cake" Bailiff: Hopefully simple case here. My party was spying on an adversary, with my character hiding and cast Invisibility on myself. As our enemies moved towards one of my other party members who wasn't invisible or as hidden, my character ran to push (or pull) them out of line of sight of our enemies. However, my DM ruled that doing so would constitute an attack on my fellow part member, which would cause Invisibility to drop, saying that I was shoving, and a Shove Attack is type of attack. I countered that a shoving an enemy would be an attack, but my action was more akin to shoving a box, moving something/someone with no intention of harming it. We went back and forth for a while on this, but thankfully my DM allowed our party to resolve the scene a different way, instead of continuing to argue on that topic. Judges, while I would have ultimately accepted my DM's ruling (after arguing a bit more) if he hadn't allowed me to change my action, how do you think moving a friend out of the way should affect Invisibility? I humbly await your all-knowing judgement.

Ida Casmier

To the wonderful, beautiful, insanely talented judges— and the bailiff Jorm! Or maybe jacket (You’re alright) Back in high school I ran a campaign with 4 of my friends that was mostly home brew. It was a huge mess as it was my first time dm’ing and I’d never played the game before. All I knew about dnd was from listening to a certain podcast that shall not be named and definitely has nothing to do with you guys for sure. Anyway— one of the players was this guy I had a huge several year crush on. We’re talking 8th grade to Junior year of high school. He offered me a lot of advice for the campaign, and even lent me several player handbooks, a dm handbook, a dm screen, figurines, and also a bag with hundreds of dice in it. Super considerate!! However, despite his help, and all the supplies, the campaign eventually fizzled out, especially as we were all getting ready for college. It has now been many years since then and I live all the way across the world in Japan. My dad is retiring and trying to sell the house. While looking through my stuff he found all the dm materials and books that the boy I liked lent me that I am now realizing I completely forgot to return. Justice’s, how do I make this wrong a right and make up for my forgetfulness? I have not spoken to this man in years… do I text him to meet up with my dad and go get his stuff?? Or do I just let him live his life and assume he probably doesn’t care that much anyway. I put myself at the mercy of the court, and accept any punishment you deem appropriate for forgetting to return something that was probably pretty precious to a friend of mine. P.S. you guys have been a huge comfort, been listening since the very start and have loved every second ❤️

CoyDifference

Dear fantastic and all powerful bailiff and who ever the hell those judge people are. Me and my cousin were playing in a lvl 6 one shot hosted by a local game shop. My cousin had just gotten off of work and we had decided to go last minute so the DM offered to let my cousin use one of his own characters, a lvl 2 hedgehog named Albert. My cousin very enthusiastically agreed. Flash forward to the center piece of the session, we were tasked with protecting a mage tower from an army of robots. The DM narrated how we the players each had two runes we could place and they would do what ever we described. Naturally the being slightly degenerate the runes ranged from teleporting who ever steps on it to Avernus to giving the person flaming explosive diarrhea, both placed fairly close to the entrance. After a few rounds of combat the DM described the robots starting to breach our tower. My dwarf and Albert the hedgehog were the only two left inside so we did the only logical thing, I picked up Albert and placed him on the flaming explosive diarrhea rune and used him as a flamethrower. This injured him greatly and knocked him unconscious. Our Druid and Wizard entered the tower shortly after and, staying true to character, tried to help. The Druid used create water to put out the fire and the Wizard used a lightning spell to finish off the robot’s…forgetting that the robots, Albert, and I were all standing in a pool of water. This “helpful” action did kill the robots but also almost killed me and obliterated poor Albert who had already failed one death save. After the fight was over we hosted a small funeral for Albert which ended with his corpse being placed on the teleportation rune to Avernus. I humbly ask were we wrong for the semi-accidental murder of my DM’s beloved character that he was so kind to let us use? I await your judgement with a bowed head.

Chandler Rice

To the pleasant bayliff and the friendly judges of the court, I ask for Jake Hurwitz to please take the stand. In an episode of Skaldova the player characters are climbing out of a hole while carrying NPC's. You made them roll normally while making the checks, but shouldn't those rolls have been made with disadvantage instead? the fact that NPCs were being carried puts this into consideration for me and I need this debacle settled today in the courtroom. All I ask for is a fair trial and I thank you all for your time.

Santa Grinch Hugging HumBaba and two Fairies

Honorable Justices and Blake the Jalief Jester may i present the case of "The Political Campaign" one of my first DnD campaigns ended because The Dm didnt like our alternative solutions to combat. Was I wrong for assuming that a Political DnD campaign would involve diplomacy and finding creative ways to avoid violence?

JC

Glory to you, honorable justices, and a quick nod to the deplorable bailiff, I bring to you the case of Joe Plunker. Joe was an insane man with an insane backstory who insulted almost everyone we met. After, he insulted the governors dead parents to his face, he was challenged to a Duel to the death. We, the party, negotiated a peaceful settlement on behalf of Joe that required he publically apologize. Joe, after agreeing to the settlement, instead attempted to flee on his mule, Hule. Hule was then shot and killed by the townsfolk trying to recapture him (the DM allowed us to heal Hule so he's alright) and with no way to get away, Joe turned to the governor, insulted his dead parents again, flipped him off, and stabbed himself and opted to die. The player, who I will still call Joe, stood up silently with a smile, left the table, and left the house without saying a word. The player who got a ride from him texted us ten minutes into their ride home and said dude is still silent. Later that night we received a six paragraph Eulogy for Joe Plunker in our group thread. Now, I ask, is the fault of this situation with the insane player, or the DM who allowed this insane PC at the table in a more serious campaign? (PS, Joe is making another character to play for next session, so no, Justice Murph, we did not make new friends)

Choc DISCO

To the once decided judges and the baby bailiff Jake Cake, I bring you the case of the triple leveled player. I was spectating a fun game of Pathfinder 2e. The players were going through the Beginner Box’s module, playing the pre-made characters with their own quirky twists, when it was revealed that one of the players was playing a third-level version of his character. Apparently, he had misunderstood the email sent to him from the GM describing what abilities he would have IF they leveled up, and rather just leveled up instead. The group laughed, and as he hadn’t used any of the second or third level abilities yet, it didn’t seem to cause too many problems, but I still feel that it was unfair, and created a level of distrust among the other players and the GM, as the GM didn’t do anything about it. Am I wrong to think that the encounters were unfair and that the spotlight might’ve been taken from the other players, or was this just a casual session and just a funny mishap? I shall await your judgement. PS: Jake, wait to tell them that this is literally the pathfinder 2e playthrough you guys did. Accept your punishment if you are decided guilty…

Wren Ash-Piper

Bless me Dice Christ for I have sinned. This is my first (and hopefully only) confession.I submit for your adjudication the confession of the fudged decapitation role. I had been playing in a campaign with my husband and 3 of his friends for almost a year but only about 7 sessions. From the beginning it was clear that my husband, our DM and I were interested in a slightly more grounded campaign with some shenanigans sprinkled in at appropriate times whereas the other two PCs, we’ll call them Kyle and Richard, were content to have a 1000% shenanigans campaign based on characters who were drunk all the time. We play over discord because our DM is based in a different country. Richard ended up being consistently distracted and disconnected from the sessions, often joined while running errands, playing shows in the background, or having dinner with his parents. He missed significant portions of the session, including both lore dumps and combat. Even missed out session 0 and didn’t look at any of the lore- causing him to create a character with a partially world-breaking backstory. As the only woman of the group, I felt uncomfortable voicing my discontent for fear of seeming shrewish. I do not happen to be terribly fond of Richard for a variety of reasons, not the least of which includes opposing political views. All of this brings me to the night of my offense. We had finished a fight in a suspicious town with an enchantment that had been mysteriously broken without us knowing. Our DM heavily hinted that despite being out of initiative something still was off about the town. Richard’s druid decides to go sleep in the trees outside of the town while the others were sleeping in an abandoned inn. Surprise surprise, Richard is attacked- by Actual Cannibal Shia Lebouf. We fight him and win by the skin of our teeth. again we all try to go for a long rest but this time with us doing watches in shifts- except Richard is still sleeping in the forest. Everyone else was resting in or around the inn but he just “wouldn’t do that.” My barbarian was doing the first patrol around and Richard gets attacked again. I truly debated whether or not to save him. But I did begrudgingly since I was the only one who could get to him fast enough. As we fight Actual Cannibal Shia Lebouf, we are struggling and our DM says that we find out through magic communication scroll that we need to decapitate him to kill him all the way and the only way we can do that is with a nat20. The fight goes on for two more rounds and Kyle has told us that he has to sign off by 12:00am because he has work in the morning. It is rapidly approaching midnight and our party is looking worse for wear as we are only level 3. I rolled my attack and got an 18, obviously not a nat20 but I said it anyways and narrated an artful decapitation. In between sessions, the election happened and the rift between myself and Richard was deepened. Ultimately, after several discussions with the DM about the interpersonal issues with undertones of political anxiety and the future of the campaign, we decided to subtly kick Richard out and continue on without him. the campaign continues on a less than monthly basis but i can’t help but think of how we retcon killed his druid. Deacons of the dice, I humbly ask for your forgiveness. Did I rob Richard of a just campaign send-off because of our beefy background or do it just be like that sometimes? PS. Since this role, I have made an effort to roll in front of my husband every time to keep me honest. I also told my husband about what I did as he and Richard were closer despite me knowing Richard longer.

Mike

Bringers of Dice Christ’s will (and the slightly stinky alter boy), 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 was 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: I have not told him that his character died because of my mistake… Double PS: He seems very happy with his new rogue who has a cooler backstory and much better stats than the last one.

TheShady Sparrow

To the honorable judges and the sweet bailiff junk (paramour to the junk mother), I present the case of the stolen bacon. While playing a 4 shot with my friends DMed by one of their dads we were sneaking through a tunnel and up into a food cellar. It was our first session everyone was getting their bearings and two other pcs were squabbling over stealing something in the cellar I asked to snatch a portion of thick cut bacon off the shelf. The dm said “no you companions can see you” I decided to roll anyway getting a nat 20 on sleight of hand. He said it didn’t matter everyone can see you we argued a little and went back to playing. I felt pretty sour after but we finished the session and had a good time but I long for my nat 20 bacon. Was I wrong for coveting such a delicious treat or should I have gotten my bacon fair and square? I await your justice upon this matter.

Help_I_Can’t_Sleep

To the highly esteemed crit justice Axford, the esteemed crit justices Murphy and Tanner, the cour stenographer Tuckers and Jake too I guess, I present to you the case of the Block Blast battle. I recently started a game with three of my closest friends, people I consider more like siblings. I came into the game with my circle of pollen (re-flavored circle of spores) Druid, a full backstory (complete with the mysterious disappearance of a childhood best friend) and my roleplay shoes on. Our DM came with an entire homebrew world, maps, backstories worked into the main story, ect. My friend Amber came with a sorcerer, a thought out backstory, and some spells she “thought would be funny”. Our third player came in with a character the DM had built for her (a paladin), very little backstory, and very little willingness to roleplay. The session went fine until it came time for our first combat. When it wasn’t her turn, the paladin (Sara) would pull out her iPad IRL and play Block Blast (a puzzle video game) instead of engaging with the rest of us. When I asked her why she said “I’m bored and it’s not my turn, I’ll pay attention when it’s my turn”. Worst of all, outside of sessions she has started pulling out her phone mid conversation with me to play the game as a bit (objectively it was funny a few times). Judges, I personally find the best part of combat to be the way you interact with other players, whether it’s your turn or not. Is it fair of me to be frustrated that one of my friends fully checks out of the game unless she is actively doing something, or am I overreacting? (I should add, we are level 1, so it’s not like our turns take very long) I humbly await your judgement, Wren (They/Them)

Guy

To the honorable justices…I bring you the case of the long line. My players were attempting to sneak into a dope bar that one of them was banned from. He suggested that he should be able to hide in their bag of holding, which had enough oxygen to last for ten minutes. Since the bar was crowded, I decided to have him roll a d20, with a natural one being a twenty minute line, two being a nineteen minute line, etc. He agreed. Justices, he rolled a three. He then complained that he should be able to poke his head out of the bag so he could breathe. I said it would be impossible to do so in line without others noticing and he started yelling and we were playing in a room at the library so we could’ve been kicked out. He ended up casting invisibility to go in anyway. Justices, should my player have been allowed to stick his head out of the bag without anyone noticing or was my player being a dick?

Ash Vance

To the sensual Supreme Crit Justices and … I bring to you the case of the Greedy, Gaseous Fighter. I was DMing a pirate themed campaign for my friends and we were at the final fight against the BBEG. The party was up against a Morkoth (a mini kraken spellcaster) and multiple players went down in the first round. They began to recover a few rounds in and used all their potions of healing, but the sorcerer was grappled by the Morkoth and would surely go down. The rogue (my wife) asked the fighter to administer his Potion of Gaseous Form so the sorcerer could escape the grapple. He said “No, I think I’m gonna save it for later.” The table erupted. They cried out, “There is no later, this is the final fight!” After about a 3 minute razzing from the party, he relented and said, “You are all paying me back for this. The sorcerer became gas and tried to run away, but the Morkoth downed her anyways with an opportunity attack. The fighter said, “I told you so.” The party ultimately won and the potion did help after the sorcerer was back up, but my wife is still peeved months later. The fighter never showed any cowardice or greed throughout the campaign, so she felt like he was metagaming so he wouldn’t have to give up his loot. Justices, should he have just given up the potion rather than saving it for a later that would never come? Is my wife wrong for being upset? Am I wrong for downing the sorcerer and proving him right? I humbly ask for your adjudication.

Reese

To the lords and lady of Dice Christ. I kneel before you to confess a sin. In my campaign I overshot. I overdid myself. I wrote a full fledged background of each city, town, and dungeon. The regions and provinces, as well as cultures and warring factions. Climates that shift as the party ventures and the BBEG’s cult meddles with the worlds fragility. I’ve created a world. And my players? Refuse to live in it. In the most recent session, the fifth. The party all discussed how there is just too much going on, too much lore, too much background. Not gonna lie i kinda lost it, i kicked them out and said if they didn’t want to play in this world i built for them then they can’t play in my house. Oh by the way, my wife is one of the players…. But i did not kick her out and she was not happy about it. I am feeling guilty about it and maybe Dice Christ can forgive me. May Bahamut keep you, may the babayaga not take you this night. Cheers

Spencer Clark

Dear pristine Judges (for whom the very sun shines) and some disheveled bailiff (tepid and wet), I present to you the Case of Moving Too Fast. Precampaign, my DM always asks if we want to have any surprises for our characters, like a backstory secret other players don’t know about that we can work on including. This campaign, I told him I just wanted a cursed item. Fast forward to our last session. We were trying to gain entrance to a bandit hideout and pretended to be lost hunters. One of the bandits, named Trix, befriended us and let us inside for a meal. She mentioned, among other things, that they didn't get much company this far out and she was very happy to see new faces. We exchanged friendly banter and I made light flirtations, before suggesting we have an archery contest. As prize, I produced my ring of water-walking and held it aloft. The DM asked me for a charisma check and I rolled very high. He made a secret roll and relayed Trix was eager for the contest. We set up targets at three distances and I prepped for what should have been an easy win since I roll +11. Judges, I lost. To my surprise, the DM described how Trix gleefully grabbed the ring, put it on, and exclaimed how excited she was to be engaged. He then shared that secret roll was her insight check, and she rolled low, misinterpreting my pulling out a ring. So when she (a single person in their 20s who lived in a remote area and was consigned to being single forever) met a charming stranger with similar passions (archery and hunting) who expressed interest in her, she jumped at the chance for a storybook romance. Your honors, Trix is already planning our wedding and wants to adventure with us moving forward to "keep the family together." Judges, I ask you: was I wrongly betrothed or was my DM right to answer my request for cursed items with a stage five clinger? I patiently await your verdict.

Austin Marquez

Greetings honored judges and the lowly bailiff Jace I bring to you the case of the wasted grove. I am currently playing in a pirate themed campaign as a punk rock bard named Drzz Vicious where we are trekking through a jungle island to get to a forgotten temple. We had stopped to make camp and long rest and our Plasmoid Druid, as a precaution, cast a high level Druidic Grove to protect us through the night, specifically picking the option to cover the ground in grasping vines. Lo and behold, in the night we were attacked by a burrowing creature that would burst through the ground, attack, and dive back. Suspiciously, our DM (my best friend for over 15 years) stated that the creature wasn't affected by the vines because it was popping up through the ground and not moving through it. We mentioned the fact that it should have to make a saving throw a few times, and the DM just shrugged. Judges, I ask, was the DM right to ignore the vines, or was our druid robbed of his high level spell?

Luke G

'Sup judges, 'sup bailiff 😎 After asking a powerful npc ally for "tangible boons', our party received custom magic items, each designed to upgrade a specific class feature. My level 18 divine soul sorcerer received an item that allows him to upgrade his Twinned Spell meta magic option to Tripled Spell. Instead of targeting an extra creature for a number of sorcery points equal to a spells level, i can now target 3 creatures for the cost of double the spells level. Oh and I take 1D10 for each sorcery point spent. This means that were i to cast haste on my three other party members, i would take 6D10 - which is potentially half of total hp (112hp). When i mentioned that was a huge amount of damage, my party members replied with "you got heals though". Tripled spell is an amazing ability, but i feel like the cost is too high for it to ever be worth using. Judges, am i wrong, or did my DM balance this item fairly?

Bridget Lynn

To the illustrious judges and their friend Jack who sometimes tags along without being invited. I present to you the case of the train-obsessed rock gnome. I just started DM-ing a homebrew campaign in a medieval-fantasy setting for some friends of mine as well as my boyfriend. I’ve been trying to get him into DnD forever and he finally seems super into this campaign! Only thing is, he is insisting I let his character invent the steam engine. I thought he was joking at first, but now he keeps saying things like “if you love me, you’ll make my train dream come true” and his character, a rock gnome named “Spriggee” chose to pitch his train idea to the Princess when he was tasked with offering his hand in marriage. Judges, this is a medieval setting, and a train would make no sense in the world I’ve created! But I also love this man more than anything. Should I be working harder to give him his train, or am I right to deny him this dream? I humbly await your judgement…

A. Godfrey

Dear Justices and Bailiff, I am submitting this case not for guidance, but mostly because I think I can get justice Murphy to side with an aarakocra bard. I was invited to play a game with my partner's friends' partners (so I don't really know these guys). I had never played before, so I jumped at the chance. We were two players and one DM. The DM did not do a session zero; he did not tell us about the setting or talk to us about our characters beforehand. I played a Goliath Paladin, and the other player picked an Aarakocra Bard. Session One, the DM reveals that our campaign setting is trapped in an underground labyrinth. From that point forward, everything the aarakocra tried to do was wrong. The bard tries to fly; the DM says the ceiling is too low. The bard tries to glide forward silently to get a surprise round on some rats; the DM says his loud flapping alerts the rats, and now they get a surprise round, because the aarakocra is using his hands to flap, not hold weapons. The bard walks into a new room, and instantly dies and turns into a skeleton (he came back when my paladin lassoed the bones out of the room). Meanwhile, my paladin is succeeding wildly, even when he shouldn't: one-shot killing those rats, lassoing skeleton birds effortlessly, and scaring away a monster even though I rolled a 2 on an Intimidate check. The favoritism was so blatant, I later asked my partner if she knew of any bad blood between these two; she did not. We only played that one session, and we never brought D&D up again at future hangouts. Dear Justices (especially Justice Murphy), could you see fit to sending the DM to some racial sensitivity training to work on his hatred for aarakocras? Or sentence the DM and the other player to some kind of group therapy session? Thank you for your time.

Bakuraptor

To the Supreme Justices of the Crit and rightfully demoted Bailiff Jonk, I ask: was I wrong to punish one of my PCs with explosive diarrhea because he refused to roleplay his nat 1s? I've been DMing for a group of five for a year and it's been great fun: my players are really invested and I've loved creating a world for us to tell their stories in. One thing I ask my players to do is to roleplay their Nat 20s and Nat 1s: I love hearing them explain how they succeeded wildly (or how they totally beefed it) and I think it helps us be more invested in our storytelling. However, one PC (a gloomstalker ranger) hates narrating his failures (but is more than happy to narrate his Nat 20s). Therefore, to help motivate my PC to lean into narrating Nat 1s, I came up with an innovative solution: if he refuses to narrate a Nat 1, I now always rule that the Nat 1 happened because his character suddenly and violently shat himself. I've only had to follow through on this threat twice so far - once in a tense negotiation and once when he failed a nature check (I said he felt nature's call far more strongly than he'd expected). My PC is now much more involved in our collaborative storytelling thanks to this threat, but I fear I have merely coerced this cooperation. Was I wrong to punish his impudence with involuntary incontinence? I humbly await your judgment.

Sharpweaselz

Greetings noble justices and Bailiff Jack, who I actually think is a chill guy. I believe I was the victim of a wrongful razzing! I was part of a campaign of episodic adventures a few years ago with some close friends. I played a minotaur barbarian and my companions were an arcane archer and a wizard. In one battle, when we were at level 9 or 10, I dueled a shaman on the edge of an active volcano. My allies were not particularly helpful: they decided to stay hundreds of feet away while I fought. The archer rolled a natural one, which my DM decided meant he shot me instead of the enemy. And I don't remember what the wizard was doing. Ultimately, I threw the shaman off the edge into the smoking lava below. My companions then sprinted forward to join me. The DM said that the shaman smiled as she fell into the smoke of the volcano. So the wizard cast fly on me and I jumped off the ledge to pursue her. When the smoke touched me, the DM called for a constitution save. I rolled a 25. With a smug smile the DM told me I lost 12 permanent hit points. I flew out of the volcano. I asked what the save DC was if a 25 wasn't good enough. DM shrugged and pursed their lips. I asked if that was a pass or a failure. Same response. I complained that the DM basically took away a level from me while everyone else hung back and did almost nothing. The wizard mocked in a nasally tone "wah you took away my level." Everyone made fun of me for being upset. I left at the end of the session feeling pretty shitty. The next session, a massive monster emerged from the volcano and destroyed the whole region. We fled ignobly in a skiff. We still play together and are all very good friends... but it irks me to this day that I was so wrongfully razzed.

Kelly Orgen

To the honorable justices and Amir: I present to you the case of the premeditated total party kill. Years ago, I was in a campaign in which I played a wild magic sorcerer who had a past as a con artist and had a fun New Jersey accent. She had a relatively goofy tone that the DM role played with me to establish and, overall, the entire party would joke quite a bit during sessions. After several sessions of us continuing this vibe, the DM then asked us to take on a more serious tone because they weren’t having as much fun. I was confused, but tried to do so and had some beautiful moments with some NPCs. However, it seemed that every time I or any of the other party members made a joke to provide levity, the DM seemed to get more and more irritated, resulting at some points in them snapping at us. It all came to a head when the TPK occurred, where the paladin, a close friend of the DM and the only healer of the party, essentially refused to heal us even after all the other party members went down. I believe there was collusion among the paladin and the DM to kill our characters. So I ask justices, was this premeditated murder as I suspect? And if so, was it justified because we couldn’t adapt to the tone in which the DM wanted? I humbly await the courts judgement

Matthew Sturm

To the honorable Justices and that other guy, I present the case of the invincible rats. I played a swarmkeeper ranger in a level 15 one-shot, flavored after the pied pier with rats as my swarm. The one-shot concluded with a PVP contest where we were trying to get a gift card out of an indestructible barrel. I had found the barrel and was carrying it up a rope trick under one arm. At the end of my turn, I used my swarm to give me a flying speed in order to avoid falling, describing it as the rats grabbing the rope and creating a rat chain platform. One of the other players tried to frighten everyone in the area, and after everyone had rolled their saving throws, he said, “But what about the rats?” My brother, who was DMing, and I tried to explain that the rats were just a feature of my subclass and weren’t really separate entities, so they couldn’t be frightened. After some arguing from the player, he eventually moved on and we assumed that was the end of it. On the players next turn, he tried to attack the rats in an attempt to make me fall off the rope. We once again explained that they weren’t separate creatures and couldn’t be hurt. The other players tried got upset and shouted, “So you’re saying the rats are gods!” After a lot of laughing from everyone else at the table, we eventually got him to stop going after the rats and try something else, although he was still in a pissy mood for a while after that. I ask the court, were my brother and I correct that you can’t target a swarmkeeper’s swarm, or was our friend correct that we incorrectly made the rats gods?

Aedan Bridwell

O Die-ocese of the Supreme Die-ety Dice Christ, I come today to you seeking penance for an ill I wrought upon my players long ago. To set the scene: it's the early 2010s. I'm fresh out of high school and just beginning my RPG career. In the wake of my first "official" (read: not just my dad and I) campaign as a player, a Pathfinder game run by a friend of a friend, I decide I'd like to dip my toes into the world of game mastering. By this time, I've run a two-session Call of Cthulhu game for another group, and I've had feedback and tips from other GMs on their narrative styles, so I think I'm hot fudge. Little did I know this pride would be the precursor to my great sin. The Pathfinder group and I decide to play a game of Rogue Trader, set in the Warhammer 40k universe. We hash out a session 0 and a first session to set the tone and background of the game, more Firefly than grandiose space drama, and soon the party arrives on a lush alien world seeking a crashed capital cruiser. Once the party finds it, they meet a friendly party of space battle-nuns aboard who are hiding from a group of pirates that brought the cruiser down. The nuns have captured the pirates' navigator and are holding him for questioning. Here is where my hubris waxes its greatest: I had no idea what information this navigator was going to tell the party. On the misunderstood advice of one of my DM friends, I was winging it, convinced setting up situations and improv-ing my way through would be enough. When the party began to interrogate the navigator, I panicked, and told the group I needed to think for a moment. They were understanding and started to chat - which, oh, young GM Me found all too distracting. But instead of stepping away like any normal person would do, I "shushed" the table. We had no music. There was no ambience. We sat in dead, surprised silence for, I'm not kidding, a full 15 minutes as I wrestled with the loose ends of my narrative and the embarrassment of forcibly quieting my party. Eventually we resumed, but the game didn't survive that night. The group, I'm happy to say, lasted for some years and through various campaigns. As of today, I've run several successful campaigns in various systems, but the memory of that silence still makes me cringe to this day. Can Dice Christ forgive me? Can I forgive myself?

HaysForHorses

What’s up judges! I’m assuming you have an AI bailiff at this point, so I won’t address the previous guy. I’ve got a quick case I’m calling the “Anticlimactic Cutscene”. I had the pleasure of experiencing the final session of a campaign that spanned at least a decade. It was a day filled with masterful storytelling and a beautiful comeraderie between players that is only a flitting dream for many tables. My character was very pivotal at the end in one of the final battles (hence why I was invited), but the key word is “end”. I spent about 12 hours vibing before getting my ultimate moment. After a drawn out fight with the fate of the known multiverse on my shoulders, I came up with a brilliant strategy to disarm and take down the great foe on my next turn. As my turn finally came around, the DM cut us off to narrate a cutscene where my character instantly died and the world was saved by another PC that showed up. I know this was ultimately not my day or even my campaign, and I’m not even asking to have an epic BBEG kill when it doesn’t fit the story, but I’m just curious: do yall think I could’ve gotten a chance to at least not die after all that? Ultimately, it doesn’t matter and they had a beautiful finale, but I would love to hear your ruling.

Matthew Sturm

To the honorable Justices and *distastefully side-eyeing Jake* him, I present the case of the barrel rider. I was playing in a one-shot that ended with a PVP competition to win entrance to Heaven+, a premium afterlife. We had to find an unbreakable barrel on an island full of barrels and grab the Heaven+ gift card out of it in order to win. After the barrel was found, I grabbed it and began climbing a rope trick with it under one arm. When I was one turn away from reaching the portal at the top, one of the other players attempted to misty step up to me. More specifically, he wanted to misty step onto the barrel, hoping that the extra weight would cause me to drop it. My brother, who was DMing, initially ruled that I would need to make a strength save to hold onto the barrel, and then the other player would make an acrobatics check to stay on the barrel if I held on successfully. After some further deliberation, he decided to reverse the order of the rolls, citing that the misty stepping player might just immediately fall off and make it easier for me to hold the barrel. He failed his check and fell off, which resulted in me having to hit a lower DC on my save due to only having to withstand the initial impact rather than having to hold a whole person’s weight continuously. I succeeded my save and was able to make it into the portal and pull up the rope on my next turn. The other player initially argued that he shouldn’t have needed to make a check to stay on the barrel because he teleported directly onto the barrel and that I was unable to move out of turn. My brother cited that he might fall due to the rope moving drastically at the fulcrum point of my grip, causing me and the barrel to tip because of the extra weight. The player then argued that my save shouldn’t have been easier even though he fell off, but was overruled due to the original justification for the lower DC. For the record, I rolled higher than the higher DC anyway, so the lower DC didn’t even matter. I’m glad things worked out for me, but did my brother make the correct rulings, or was the other player robbed of his cool moment?

christopher belisle

To the venerable DM's of the court and the baliff who can really take a beating, Jake, 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 potion effects on you (some of the other potion effects weren't great), and an improved health potion, 6d6+6, that had a 5% chance to poison you, specifically rolling a nat 1. During our final battle with said BBEG, I was low health and need 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? P.S. We never fought any plants monsters P.P.S. I've included the link to the potion effects https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xkRn_WRPSHtcq_nGhwNKQ6Vw0mBfm_lHRVhinFD4aMc/edit?usp=drivesdk

Matthew Sturm

To the honorable Justices and Bailiff Snake, I present the case of the rope trick robbery. I was playing in a one-shot that ended with a PVP competition to win entrance to Heaven+, a premium afterlife. We had to find an unbreakable barrel on an island full of barrels and grab the Heaven+ gift card out of it in order to win. After the barrel was found, I grabbed it and climbed up a rope trick and pulled the rope up. It took 2 actions to open the barrel and then grab the gift card, so on the first turn I opened up the barrel and waited for the next round. One of the other players directed a kraken, which had followed us onto the island and had been attacking all of us, toward the area of the invisible portal in the sky in a last ditch effort to stop me. My brother, who was DMing, had the kraken use all of its movement to get directly under the portal, then said that it made a grapple attack with its tentacle through the portal, rolling to see whether it attacked me, another player that I had charmed, the open barrel, or just the air. I argued that it shouldn’t be able attack inside the portal because it wasn’t inside the portal and attacks can’t pass through rope tricks portal. He ruled that it could attack because he thought you would be able to punch someone through the portal even if you couldn’t shoot them. He rolled a 1 on a d100, which resulted in the barrel being grabbed and yanked out of the portal. I attempted to save my plan by saying that the gift card might fly out of the barrel when it was yanked. My brother agreed, but gave it better odds to come out outside of the portal than inside. The card ended up falling out outside of the portal, letting the next player in initiative walk up and easily grab the card to win. Did my brother make the correct ruling by allowing the kraken’s attack, or was I robbed of my well-planned victory?

Hot Karl in the City

It is my pleasure to address the honorable supreme crit: the balliff Jake, the Lady Jake, little Jake, and lesser Jake. I present the case of Wrestlers Running Wild. My spouse and I were invited to play as the opposition in a level 12 colosseum match for a friend's group, as a special guest situation. In a moment of spousal synchronization, she looked at me and declared “Let's be wrestlers” as I said “Let's be heels.” It was perfect. I played an Aarakocra Druid, named Nature Boy, a flying distracting menace, supporting and confusing the battlefield. My spouse played Sandy Ravage, a Human Swashbuckler Rogue, whose sole purpose was grappling and could get no lower than a 25. To make things feel more authentic, we brought soundboards, filled with clips and performances from our mimicked wrestlers, to start matches and throw an “Oh Yeah!” or “Woooo!” when it felt appropriate. The DM, my spouse, and I all had a blast. It became quickly apparent that the group did not. Maybe it was the seemingly inescapable grapples and sneak attacks, maybe it was the flying birdman just making a mess of everything to throw off any possible plans. It's a mystery. A sullen silence descended on the other group as they frankly got womped. The game eventually ended with the DM declaring us as winners and the other group saying “Bye.” and quickly leaving. So I ask, were we in the wrong? Did we commit too hard to the gimmick? Should we have kept the sound effects (that I swear were used appropriately and never spammed) in the locker room? Or was the other group simply not ready for the tower of power, too sweet to be sour. I accept whatever terrible fate you bestow on me.

Colby Greer

To the honorable justices of the supreme crit, today I bring to your attention a case concerning a conspiracy to corrupt the integrity of the very powers that govern our games themselves. The powers in question: The Honorable Justices of The Supreme Crit. The conspirator: Lowly Bailiff jack (hold for shocked exclamations.) For years the lowly baliff has sat, in his proper place, beneath the Justices feet. He read the cases, presented the confessions, and sat quietly in the next room while you recorded 8-Bit Book Club. Over the last year, or so, things have begun to change. First the introduction of Surprise Round, a series where jack holds equal standing among the Justices. Innocent enough at first, but then Justice Tanner left for paternity leave. This created a power vacuum, and with the newfound confidence granted him by his role in Surprise Round, jack saw an opportunity. Over the following months, Tortle Tank (a second show where jack holds even power) is revived, jack is granted a temporary seat on The Supreme Crit, 8-Bit Book Club is replaced with The View Crew (another series where jack has equal standing) finally, jack is allotted the title of Dungeon Master. Coincidence?? I THINK NOT!!! Over the past year, right under our noses, the lowly baliff has wormed its way into sharing equal power with the honorable justices! I ask you Justices, how long must this go on before jack is stopped? I leave my case in your benevolent hands. P.S. Love Jake and Skaldova P.P.S. hate the show

Britt Maynard

To the honorable Crit Justices and mediocre Bailiff Josh, I present to you the red flag DM. I played my second campaign ever with an online DM. He seemed great at first, but when we started, we never clarified if we were playing 2014 or 2024. I spent hours making my 2024 sorcerer and even more hours leveling up from 3 to 6 or 7, choosing my spells and feats and ability scores. Everything I adjusted had a reason and a story. About ten sessions in, he pointed out that I shouldn't have as many spells as I did. I was confused, it was only my second campaign and I didn't know 2014 and 2024 had such big differences. We had already started the session when he noticed the discrepancies. He insisted that we stop the game and I change my character from 2024 to 2014 before we could keep playing. I hate being put on the spot and I begged him to let me just finish this session and that I'd fix it that night immediately after the session. He insisted that even though we had already played ten sessions without big problems, we wouldn't continue until I readjusted my spells, ability scores, and feats. He made me do it on the spot while all the other players just sat on discord waiting for me to change hours of preparation and work and I almost quit on the spot. It was the most uncomfortable I had ever been while playing D&D and I almost quit the campaign completely. I expressed my discomfort and it was ignored. Am I just too sensitive or was that the wrong move from the DM?

Dylan C

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

Cole Kuiper

👉😎👉 To whom it may honorably concern. I ran a long campaign two years ago, introducing DND to first-time players. At the end of it, in a group text, I asked what everyone imagined was next for their characters. One player (our barbarian dwarf Angus McDangus) responded that within a year Angus would be dead and buried in a shallow grave behind a tavern. The thread had a good laugh, got sidetracked, and no one else really responded with their characters' imagined future. Eventually, I started a NADDPOD-inspired "Campaign After the Campaign" to show them the impact their terrible choices had on the world around them. As new PCs, they're attempting to reunite the old adventuring party and that player was devastated to find out Angus was the only one who died in the 25 years since the last adventure... it doesn't help that he experienced our party's first PC death during the session just before making that discovery. Beautiful justices and well-personalityed bailiff, should I have rewritten the character's arc to be more gentle on him? Or was it okay to let him unknowingly seal his fate with a joke in a group text thread? BTW, I do have plans for a fun payoff for Angus in the future -- it turns out the beloved plucky goblin sidekick they recruited is actually his bastard son.

Rebecca N

Dice Christ's Disciples , I seek forgiveness on the behalf of my DM. Our group has been playing through a Pathfinder module to learn the system, and we ran into an encounter with a demonic guard, who reluctantly tried to arrest us. We closed the door on him and tried to run away, which lead to a combat encounter. On one of his attacks, he crit on my Tripkee (Frog folk) Fighter, and immediately brought her from full health to Dying 2. Here the DM began to sweat, and he said the demon picked up my PC, and dragged her away a bit before dropping her and walking back to his "office", muttering about needing to do paperwork first that would probably take him long enough to complete that someone could help me. Here's where the transgression lies: The DM ended initiative after I was dropped, and while other PCs made some attempts to end the conditions on my character that would knock her back down if she was healed, they ultimately failed. I attempted to roll to recover from these conditions, and rolled a 1. Suddenly, the DM decided to have us reroll initiative (a pro-Murph move), but he ended up ignoring my failed rolls. My character survived, but we all know she should be dead. The DM very specifically said he didn't want to kill my character, but I feel awful because other PCs have died in this module. While I appreciate the DMs mercy, I know he has sinned to spare me. Please forgive us for these transgressions

captainGeneral

To the great and incredible justices, I present a case of friendship, resentment, and forced schooling. I have a lovely D&D group that I have played with for a long time. We all have tried our hand at DMing and currently we have 3 running campaigns with different DMs. One campaign is an adventuring school. We were promised in the beginning to run through some classes, meet some classmates, and time skip to some adventures. Instead, we have run through every class, every meal, every evening of activities in our ~biweekly sessions. Pleas to speed it up have fallen on deaf ears. Egregiously, we have only had one level up in two full years that we have been playing!! Instead of playing the adventures I believed I would be getting, I am spending 4 hours in actual normal school, and sometimes distinctly turned away from more interesting activities. Normally, I would just leave, but this DM is very invested in their world and story and is a valuable friend and a great player in our other campaigns. He simply refuses to hear that this is getting ridiculous and keeps saying that we are 'about to get to the adventure'. Please definitively rule on this case to save me from yet another actual class lecture on lore!! Please give me some advice on how to handle this situation! Justices, I beg!! Thank you.

Lili McGee


To the esteemed Crit Justices and ever-lowly bailiff, I present to you the case of: The Possession of Trust. I play in a chaotic Spelljammer campaign with a party of six. We’re lucky enough to meet every other week, and if someone can’t make it, the rest of us can skulldrag their character along as needed. In a recent session, our DM brought in a substitute player to fill in for an absent party member. This sub had never played D&D before, but it was fun while he came along with the group asking questions about the plot. We figured he was just a new player trying to keep up. Then he started volunteering information about the character’s family—details that had never been established before. We laughed it off, and joked he was creating new lore for the absent player. Meanwhile, our DM kept having us roll for ship maintenance and daily travel checks. Everything seemed routine. It was not. By our third in-game week of travel, the substitute viciously attacked a party member out of nowhere. That’s when the truth came out: the character had been possessed by a ghost in the previous session. The maintenance checks- He’d been planting a bomb. We managed to defeat the ghost and disable the device just in time—but we rolled to see what would’ve happened had it gone off. It would’ve been a TPK. So now, honored judges, I ask you:
Was our DM within their rights to deceive us this way, hiding the enemy behind the face of a cheerful newbie?
Should we have seen through the ruse and suspected foul play, rather than assuming this was just an innocent beginner? I humbly await your verdict. PS we did have a great time and only argue about it in jest. But we will never trust the DM again.

Nathaniel F

To the most esteemed Baby Bailiff Boy-Witz, judges, and the lowly, lowly, lowly Byron Smurfy. I beseech you to judge my thieving DM- before it’s too late! I suspect he’s about to strike again. Several years ago, in my groups first campaign together, we were hired by a simulacrum-like illusory wizard who wanted to become a real boy. I don’t remember exact details, but the original was dead and had started making an “illusion-made-real” machine. Our Artificer and Wizard fixed it up, and to test it, our Wizard made an illusion of a pile of platinum bars, totaling some 500k gold or something. It worked, so we used it on the illusory Wizard. All seemed successful. As we happily skipped our way back to town, our DM told us the platinum had a half life of one hour, and is starting to disappear- but the now-real wizard was fine! As he mentions this, a little red devil guy, complete with evil mustache and French accent, pops out of our PC wizard’s watch. He taunted us or whatever and disappeared. We shrug it off as a problem for later and we book it to the town bank. There, We set up a deal with the bank teller to launder the disappearing money, and hand her the platinum. At that moment, the 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, and the bank is “still investigating” - Real world and in-game years later! Then last night, we defeated several dragons in Avernus and claimed their hoards. The most money we’ve ever seen! And we just know it’s too good to be true.. So please, lest he strikes again, judge him, punish him, take your executioner’s Axe-ford to him if you must!

Charlotte Lepora

To the juicy Justices and bubble-butt Bailiff, I bring to you the case of Constrictor Dick. This happened a couple of years ago but it still annoys me and I want to know if I’m just unimaginative. I was playing with a group of friends and our forever DM offered to run the module Storm Giants Thunder. He sold it as a sand-box game, lots of travelling around, meeting NPCs and role playing. I made a druid amateur wrestler whose schtick was to transform only into constricting animals and grapple enemies in combat. Her name was Constrictor Dick. My friend made an edge-lord vampire hunter, purely as a joke. We have a session zero, roll our characters, and start our first game. We begin in a village and there’s a group of travellers nearby having a party, they’re called the Vistani and they have troubles in their home town they’d like help with. We follow them, get engulfed in a strange mist, pass out and wake up in a place called Barovia. So yeah, we weren’t playing Storm Giants Thunder, we were playing Curse of Strahd. My character did not fit at all and I couldn’t do half the things I wanted to do with her. Or I suppose I could have tried harder but it felt so awkward – none of the villagers in Barovia seemed interested in watching a wrestling show, and grappling vampire spawn is not the best idea. Even my friend who was the vampire hunter felt weird about it because he wouldn’t have asked for such a broken homebrew vampire hunter class if he knew he was actually going to be fighting vampires. So I ask you, was this a brilliant bait and switch by our DM that was meant to encourage us to think outside the box? Or am I right to be annoyed that I made the wrong character for the wrong campaign that left me handcuffed until she was eventually killed by a stupid tree?

Steve E

To the Honorable and extremely attractive Judges, and that guy who played Ace in Ace and Jocelyn: I present to you the Case of the Omnipotent Interloper. Several years ago in my college days, I was part of a DnD game with some friends. It was our first session, and we were all very excited for the campaign. The problem arose when the DM brought his non-player girlfriend to the game, and said she was just there to "observe". The problem is, I knew this girlfriend very well by this point, and I knew out the gates that she was going to do far more than just "observe". I told her up front that, while she could be part of the discussion between roleplaying, she was not a part of the game since she did not have a character to play, and thus could not contribute to in-game discussions. She said she understood. Evidently (and predictably), she did not. It took her no time at all to begin adding her two cents to party discussions, saying things like "you guys should do X" or "don't forget about Y". I explained to her multiple times (admittedly a little less friendly each time) that she was not a part of the game, and that her input broke immersion and hurt the roleplay. She never learned her lesson, and the session eventually came to an end. We never continued that campaign (or ever started a new one), and I can't help but feel like it was at least partially due to the tension created by my repeated scolding of the DM's girlfriend. Nobody else, including the DM, ever said anything to her about it, but that is most likely because most of that friend group were introverts who likely did not want to rock the boat . We never spoke about the session again, but I am confident that my fellow players felt the same way that I did about her transgressions. Judges, was I right for calling out my DM's intrusive girlfriend while admittedly bringing some negative vibes from past interactions with her to the table, or should I have allowed this omnipotent voice from the heavens to continue to speak to our party? I await your absolute judgment.

Corkboard Podcast Network

May it please the honorable Judges, Emily Autumn Axford, Brian Tobias Murphy, and Caldwell Samantha Tanner... (And PLEASURE the delectable Baliff Jake “The Quad God” Herwitz) A little long, but I BRING YOU the Case of the Muskrat vs. The Raging Hawk Running a horror game. One player (who goes by “Hawk” after the old cop show) is a detective from the “big city” come to an Alaskan town searching for a missing reporter. The rest of the party are locals who had each been given a clue to the reporter’s whereabouts that when pieced together would reveal a mystery incriminating the town’s doctor as a practitioner of dark magic, murder and such villainy. Naturally, the party solved the mystery with only TWO of the clues, confronted and killed the BBEG, and cut the game several hours short. JUST AS the villainous voodoo Doctor was killed, outside, the “Vietnam Vet” PC failed his check, was surprised by another cast member in the dark, and accidentally killed them with a headshot. In order to keep the game going, I called a quick pause, pulled aside the player of the Veteran, and had him roll Willpower checks, which he failed, allowing the Doctor’s Spirit to SECRETLY possess him. The drama begins a short time later, when said player ran down the others with his truck, BARELY clipping the Detective, and dealing 1D4 of Damage (of about 28.) At this point, the 50+ year old player stands up, slams their laptop shut, and loudly proclaims “This is NOT how you play DND!” They then scooped up their stuff, and left. My bad? P.S. He left so quickly that he forgot his dog, and… IT WAS CHRISTMAS. 🎄

Morb

To the esteemed justices, wonderful Bailiff, and Jake I guess, I bring you the case of The Triple Were-Curse I’m running a long-term 5e campaign where the players travel the Astral Plane, restoring broken timelines across various fantasy worlds. In the very first arc on the Sword Coast, their gnome artificer failed a bunch of con saves over several long rests and ended up becoming a vampire—which the entire party found hilarious. Later, they also fought and defeated a clan of mind-controlled wereravens, and while the gnome was asleep, the rest of the party forced him to injust Were-Raven blood. He somehow rolled a series of incredible CON saves, and I gave in, letting him become a were-raven too. Thinking this would be the end of it. That kicked off an ongoing party joke-goal of trying to give this gnome every mystical disease known to man. Since then, they’ve added were-tiger and were-bear to the list, and at this point, he’s basically a walking abomination, causing me to have to adjust how were curses work just to allow him to function. Justices, the players clearly love the gag, but I’m worried that if I keep allowing it, this poor gnome will end up mechanically impossible. Should I put my foot down and cap it at three were-curses, or let the bit continue for the sake of the chaos and the players enjoyment?

Hermit

Good afternoon morning priests of the high dice. I prostate my self before you so that I may be relived of sin. In my long running night sky sailing homebrew cainpagin I had my players fight an entitled teen stella goop dragon. I had intended for the players to fight it ontop of the brass whale submarine but my players were having to much fun cossying up to the fire dwarfs inside. My solution to this was to have the dragon poke its head through one of the subs doors video game boss style. As you might imagine this severely limited my goop dragons combat potential leading to my players dealing with it with haste. So priests my sin is this. Upon defeat I had the dragon fly to the other side of the sub ignoring its movement speed and stick its head through the other door with full health. If that were not bad enouph the dragon almost insta-killed the wizard with its breath weapon. I throw my self upon the alture so that I may be judged by your holy selves, also Murph I guess.

SomeBaldNomad

Oh beautiful and honorable Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and of course, Bailiff Jake… may it please the court. I present the case of The Unknowingly Punished Player. I play in a 6-player campaign that been going for years, one night after a session, I was gaming with our party’s Warlock when—unprompted—he started telling me spoilers about his next arc and the campaign. For context; We recently found out his patron is secretly the BBEG. Well he told me they'd planned a new patron for him that is a major character. So I messaged my best friend (also a player, and dating the DM) for advice. He told the DM… and then came the punishment. Next session, the BBEG appeared and stripped the Warlock of all his warlock levels, leaving him with just 3 levels in his secondary class. The party was level 11—and has since leveled up again. His left arm, which bore his pact tattoos, was also taken when his pact was broken. I also think the DM has abandoned the storyline they were planning altogether. I'm pretty sure the Warlock doesn’t know. It has been about 7 sessions. He got 1 Warlock level back briefly for a fight recently but it was revoked again after the encounter. He’s still showing up and enjoying the roleplay, but i can't help but think he's been punished enough. So justices, was this a fair sentence? Has he suffered enough? Or should he remain a budget PC? Side note: everyone at the table listens to NADDPOD, except the Warlock. So he has no idea the effect these proceedings might have.

anniemurphs

Hello deacons of Dice Christ and alter-scrub Jalapeño. Or not. Intros die or alive, 2025! Whichever you're feeling -do what you want, I'm not your mother! Anyway, this time I do not bring you an 80s cold case of my father's, but a confession. Or... I guess more an apology to our al-dicey lord, dnd community, and my friends, for I fear I have been less than a stellar party member and all around friend. I have made amazing friends from around the globe all due to our mutual love of Naddpod. 3 years ago, a few of us started a fantastic online campaign (s/o Feygang). We played every week for almost a full year and now play about once or twice a month. Most of us even met up this past April from across the US with our dm flying over from Australia to have an AirDnD getaway (the "Feygang-away") in Tennessee. We got to play dnd IN PERSON!! (one member who unfortunately couldn't make it from AUS so they Zoomed in for the session) and had so much fun. Since then though, I have been pretty absent both for sessions and just in everyday conversation with them due to some stuff happening in real life. I know that they understand that I have a lot going on at the moment and they've told me as much when I've apologized but I feel as though I am letting my friends, and more importantly (jk) Dice Christ down. I feel really guilty for being "that member" who has a last minute scheduling conflict when it's mostly just me being too tired to play. These are some of my best friends in the literal world. I love them and playing dnd with them, but feel guilty enough to worry that it may be better for them if they didn't have to deal with my flakiness. Do you think Dice Christ might forgive my transgressions against my friends so that the burden of guilt may be lifted? Thank you :) Annie B

Kelly Varanay

To the honorable justices and the honestly pretty cool baliff, I present to you the case of the off-the-rails one-shot. I was invited by a friend of mine to play in a one shot that would take place in a magical version of our city. The only requests the DM made were no truly evil characters and no PVP. Reasonable! I think! I made a chronomancy wizard who helped the trains run on time, someone else made a barbarian postal worker, another a con man "cleric" sorcerer who was a little morally gray, and then last was...a fighter class drug dealer who was part of the gang the Latin Kings. So we were already a little over the line. For context, at the time I was running a rotating roster West Marches game at a local gaming café with a pool of about 20-30 players, 10 or so being regulars. These regulars include the con man, the fighter, and the DM. The fighter also sometimes subbed in as a DM as well, so I thought we were cool and didn't know of any tension or bad blood between us. Now, something to know is our DM this evening is a super sweet wholesome person, the reason she'd laid out those rules was to avoid conflict. So she lets the drug dealing of it all go. The one shot is super fun and we get to the fight with the evil villain at the end and... the fighter takes him aside to make a deal, telling the villain that he'll take the rest of us out. I, in character as a good person, tell him to stop conspiring with this bad guy or I'm going to drop a fireball on them. I'm fully doing this in rp as a player, and this guy turns to me and says to stop railroading him! I told him I'm just responding in character and remind him the dm asked for no evil and no pvp and he huffily complied with fighting the bad guy but then left as soon as we were done without saying goodbye I ask you, was i wrong for trying to keep my friend's game on the rails? Is it even possible for one player to railroad another? Is playing a drug dealing member of a real life gang evil? This game happened about a month before the fighter went nuclear and completely cut off most of the friend group but especially me, but I still regularly play with the DM. In fact, she's probably listening now. I defer to your judgements and accept any punishments I might get as a railroading player but if, somehow, you find guilt on the DM, I will take that punishment as well. Thank you justices!

Colton Vandegrift

Greetings magnificent judges and magnanimous bailiff! I present to you the Case of the Squandered Love Potion! Many months ago, in my still ongoing homebrew D&D campaign that I DM, my party was visiting a fey garden party hosted by a trickster prince who had infected all of the guests with spores that caused them to go mad. Each party guest had a unique form of madness and a mini quest associated with them that the party could undergo in order to get an audience with the prince in his VIP room. This case concerns two groups of these guests. The first was a lonely troll poet named Goro. His madness exacerbated his desire to be loved and led him to believe that his own still-living severed arm was in fact his date to the party. The other was a quartet of sprites whose ability to read the hearts of other creatures had been twisted into a desire to EAT the hearts of other creatures. After talking to the sprites, the party learned that they could get them past the guards to see the prince, but only if the party gave them something in exchange: Goro's heart. The party quickly surmised that one of them needed to make Goro fall in love with them, such that he would give them his heart. While making their plans, the party's sorcerer suddenly remembered that he had acquired a philter of love so far back in the campaign that we hardly remembered where it had come from. Judges, I had forgotten about this love potion! The party had stumbled upon the perfect solution to my puzzle! All they had to do was slip Goro the philter! I was thrilled that such a perfect opportunity for an otherwise often unused magic item had organically arisen! But despite my apparent (and somewhat performative) shock at the reveal of the love potion, including a delighted admition that I had totally forgotten about that item, the party just kept deliberating. Kept planning. Poking holes in what I thought was a perfect plan. They came up with excuses for why it might not work, or how it could go wrong, until they had talked themselves out of it and abandoned the idea entirely! They wound up tricking Goro through other, less interesting means to retrieve his heart, but made an enemy of Goro in the process and missed the opportunity to have him fight for them in the coming battle. Judges, should I have done more to support the party's idea of using the love potion? Or was I right to stand back and let them make the mistake of abandoning their perfect plan? How much should a DM try to steer their players towards the right solution for the sake of a better story? I humbly await your judgment. P.S. The love potion has since gone forgotten and unused, like so many love potions in D&D games before it.

Johnathan

The people vs Brian Murphy To justice axford who had a heretical snide comment about how to train your dragon, to lyin Brian, frick you Brian, to the bailiff whom I can’t remember the name of because I don’t notice his absence on 8-bit book club but I know he’s tuckers girlfriends husband. And justice tanner, who also likes one piece, have you read/ watched black clover or kurokos basketball? May it please the court I bring a lawsuit to the crit against Brian Murphy for broken promises Brian you city pigeon why do you keep promising us things you never deliver on. To start at the end of eldermourn you promised us we’d see the characters again and yet when discussing campaign 4 there were no mention of it as an option, where’s my hogfish. Same with the Band of boobs in the astral plane. We were also promised a beef of the week calendar if you and yet no results. The naddpoles have been wronged. I will settle for an update on the referenced campaigns, a free copy of the beef of the week calendar and a set of those pawpaw dice no longer on the store. If not possible then I’m okay with a character with my name being bullied and possibly murdered by the triplets.

Matt

Venerable Supreme Crit Justices and Wacky Goofy Bailiff Jerk Howitzer, I bring to you the case of the Ill-Rested Fighter My first ever D&D experience was a high school club game DM’d by a first-timer running the Curse of Strahd module, where I rolled up a fairly basic human fighter folk hero. The party took a job in a tavern to deliver a package to a merchant in Barovia proper, had our long rest, and set out the next day. Long story short, after a long day of wagon-riding, the party encountered a crow-human hybrid and immediately decided to attack it as a monster. However, it wasn’t attacking us at all, a successful insight roll told me it wasn’t hostile, so I tried to dissuade the party first in-character with speech and then by defending the poor thing. I ended up using my action to dash and had no way of defending it on that turn, so I tried to action surge to give myself more options before my ravenous party could tear it apart. However, the rest of the group then complained to the DM about my interference and “anti-group behavior”, and the DM ruled in their favor, stating that because my ability required a long rest to recharge, and because I “wasn’t well rested after hours riding in a wagon”, I was unable to use my ability. I was annoyed - both with him and my bloodthirsty party - but ultimately relented, and ended up checking out for most of the rest of the session playing Cool Math Games on my laptop. Justices, was I wrong to give up so quickly on a new DM because of an asinine ruling, or should I have been more forgiving of his and the party’s faults? And was fully checking out a step too far? I humbly await your judgement. -Tristan L. PS: the party’s characters included such highlights as a Catgirl (yes, the anime kind) sorceress who said nya every ten seconds; a half-Aasimar, half-Tiefling oathbreaker paladin; and three goblins in a trenchcoat. Also, the three goblins guy smelled BAD.

Craig

Noble judges, I bring you the case of Gucci vs The World Lore Hello judges, also kick rocks Jack. A few years ago I was playing in a campaign with an extensively home brewed world. Several campaigns had already been run in the world and it was very well established. I was new to the world and the DM at the time. My character was a slightly obnoxious social status focused sorcerer. Early in the campaign we were going to a gala. I went out of my way to find very expensive clothes. My DM pointed me to the in world luxury clothing brand. I kept referring to the clothes and style as Gucci. I wanted to make it clear that my character didn’t care or recognize the quality of the clothes. He only wanted expensive clothes. My DM tried to reinforce the actual name of the brand, I tried to reinforce that I was wearing the ‘Gucci’ version of that brand. It came up regularly in the campaign after that, to the point that by the end of the campaign the original clothing brand was being referred to as Gucci by NPCs who recognized my characters clothes. Today the original name of the clothing brand is all but lost and the Lore knows it as Gucci. Am I at fault for breaking my DMs will and changing the world lore to make Gucci canon?

Lyndon, being Johnson

To the witty, charming, cool cat clerics and also jack. I beg your forgiveness for a grevious sin against dice Christ. One of our party was a bard, who, not to put too fine a point on it, was super horny. Everywhere a dick joke could go, he'd ram one in there. Kind of funny, and some of the others at the table would crack up, but I often felt it would ruin cool story moments and undercut the vibe at the table. I was annoyed... Fast forward to a combat against some killer necromancers. It was a tough fight, and the bard went down. He begged us to save him but no one could get to him, except for me. I had to make a acrobatics check to get there and administer the life saving hand of healing. I know dice Christ was watching as I rolled great, but i turned and lied directly to his face, telling him I rolled at nat 1. I didn't reach him, and his cocky bard died alone. Can you ever forgive me? I know I could have just been honest, but I couldn't choose that difficult conversation when instead I could watch gleefully as he died. P.s. love to all the critters and to tucker, I hear that guy is great.

Insufficiently Caffeinated

To the supremely exalted legal scholars and the sometimes salty bailiff: I’ve been DMing a campaign for my husband and kids. My kids pick up in character threads that I lay down, engage with the world, and have a great time. My husband, not so much. His bard character’s backstory included a mentor who Pied Piper’d a bunch of kids who disappeared, and throughout the campaign, I’ve left hints that these kids are looking for my husband’s character — but he just doesn’t seem to care about this mystery or any of the other story threads. Weirdly, my husband is the one who introduced us all to D&D! He spent his middle and high school years playing TTRPGS with friends (while I was playing improv games with Drama Club — we were obviously both super cool). He *says* he enjoys our sessions, but doesn’t show a lot of enthusiasm. Should I kill him off because he’s being a buzzkill?

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

Hello to our honored and pristine Gems of Judges (esp Sapphire Axford!) and Bailiff Cubic Zurconia. 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." 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

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

Susannah Perkins

To the Well-Seated Justices and their footstool, Jeeves, I present the case of the absent smiting: In a break between campaigns, my group decided to run through some floors from the Dungeon of the Mad Mage. This module has the DM as the Mad Mage pretty involved in the day-to-day torturing of the adventurers within. Gizmo, my deep gnome artificer, had made a point to sit on anything even slightly resembling a throne. Sometimes good things happened, sometimes the gravity flipped, sometimes he took ass damage. This was maybe the least disruptive bit in a party that included Mother Mia, a pastafarian evangelist; Smarf, her hobgoblin butler; and Paul, collector of eyes. I was unable to make one of our regularly scheduled sessions, but told them to keep delving the dungeon without me and to use my character if they needed an extra hand in battle. I came back the next week to the players and the DM gleefully retelling the story of Gizmo sitting on a throne and immediately keeling over dead. They eventually revived him and continued onwards that session, but I felt like I had been robbed of my fun character moment by having to hear it third-hand. Justices, should Gizmo have been struck down for his gluteal hubris, even on autopilot? Or should the dungeon have been mysteriously absent of chairs for the week that I had to work late? (submitted on behalf of my fiance because I am the one with the patreon subscription)

Rae Leo

To the Justices and the jackal they keep chained to the lectern to snap at naughty plaintiffs: I bring before this esteemed court The Case of the Unfulfilled Promise. The Background For a long time, we had a fantastic D&D setup. We ran two consistent campaigns with the same group: two married couples (my husband and I being one, Isaiah and Valerie the other) and two single women, one of whom is Abigail. Isaiah ran the "Planar Campaign," and Abigail ran the "Dregs' Regs." We played weekly, sometimes even both campaigns in the same week – it was glorious! Then, things started to fizzle. Isaiah and Valerie, or Abigail, would consistently cancel last minute, citing vague "sickness" or "something else came up." After months of this sporadic play, where we were lucky to get one game a month, Abigail finally confided in me about the real issue. The Grievance Isaiah and Valerie, knowing Abigail was in a tough living situation, irl , insisted on helping her find a better job and a new place to live. They told her not to worry, that they had it covered. A month went by with no word. Abigail checked in – they hadn't done anything, but promised they'd get right on it. Another month passed, and she asked again. Their grand solution? A single Indeed job search link. Let me remind the court: they insisted they had this handled. This kind of flakiness is a well-known pattern for Isaiah and Valerie; they consistently commit to things and then fail to follow through. Abigail, understandably, called them out on this behavior. (While I don't agree with her exact phrasing, her anger was absolutely justified.) Isaiah and Valerie did not take it well. We played a few more times, walking on eggshells, but then our fears were realized. One night, at 9 PM, they dropped a bomb in our Discord chats: a message stating they "needed to back down from playing." Then, in a truly petty move, they left every single Discord chat Abigail was in with them. This was after Abigail had, earlier that day, sent them a message expressing that she was still upset but willing to talk things out whenever they were ready. Instead of talking, they went nuclear. They effectively ended the Planar Campaign and nearly destroyed the Dregs' Regs. Thankfully, Abigail managed to bring in new players and keep her campaign alive. The Damages The Planar Campaign, which we all invested five years of time and energy into, was abruptly and selfishly abandoned. My and Abigail's characters, who had a budding romance, were left in narrative limbo. Abigail and I are now in the process of rewriting their story, trying to fix the damage Isaiah inflicted and finally give them the ending they deserve. Adding insult to injury, Valerie was our notetaker for the Dregs' Regs campaign. I tried to remain cordial to retrieve these crucial notes. It took six months of persistent asking for her to finally mail them to me – despite the fact we live in the same city and I offered multiple times to pick them up. Mailing them was just another baffling, passive-aggressive choice. The Plea We ask Dungeon Court to rule in our favor, holding Isaiah and Valerie accountable for their egregious behavior. We seek justice for the emotional toll, the wasted time, and the utter disregard they showed for their friends and the campaigns we all loved.

A. Lee. S

“Bailiff Jack.” You made me giggle while drinking coffee and it went up my nose. Does that count as a case?

Joshua Brown

To the conclave of Dice Christ. I seek absolution for my sins. I was lucky enough to finally find a party to play with last year after searching for nearly 5 years. I jumped in during the last stretch of Strahd (shoutout to the triplets and Duncle). We finished up the campaign and the forever DM of the group was fatigued. Have gained the courage from listening to NADDPOD since campaign 1, I volunteered to run a 1 shot. It went smooth enough, so I decided to volunteer to run a mini-campaign. My confession is this, since starting to the campaign, I have made up the outcomes of rolls to try to keep it interesting. Mostly it have come up on random encounters or loot tables. My players will roll and when I look at the outcome, I switch it to something I find more narratively interesting or I think will engage the party more. Some times I don’t even have a table, but just want to let my players roll and narrate the outcome, like searching for gear or special items I wanted to give them. This has never lead to a party members death or to an encounter they have not been able to handle. Just some funny moments. I ask the great apostles of Dice Christ, is my made up rolls a spit in the eye of the great D20 or a mere slight to the holy Dice.

Pablo Benito Nuñez

To the Holy Icosahedron who spins destiny in palms of luck, and to the High Clerics whose chalices overflow with d6s of mercy… I bare my soul to the fickle whims of your divine judgement. My confession is a mix of inexperience and willful ignorance, on my first dnd campaign I managed to be the avatar for a problem player before realizing it, as a warlock in a world of living gods and low magic my character was supposed to be a "flat-earther", instead I played a murder hobo with no attachment to his patron or reality, after some reddit lurking, I came to the realization of why my choices weren't hitting with the rest of the table. With the help of my DM we managed to work more character into my pc and make him more fun to be around, even he was still a jerk. However, there is an even bigger stain on this story, I multi-classed. I had envisioned a hexblade/swarmkeeper that could stack d6s on a bow, my dm even homebrew a feat for me (when my pc "recovered" some memories), the feat doubled the damage I made on a turn if I attacked twice, this led to me eventually picking a third class: rogue. With sneak attack, hunters mark, gathered swarm, hexblade cursed, favored foe, and the double damage I was the main damage dealer for single targets, with 2 crits and a haste potion I even wound up doing a 252 points attack on the BBE. Here's the problem, hm, gs, hbc, and sneak attack only add to the first attack, however I kept adding these bonuses to the second attack, I only realized the error of my ways on the final arc of the campaign and didn't have the courage to come clean. Can this ever be forgiven or should my DM review every wombo combo I come up with?

Fia (but not Boginya)

To the snobby and elitist justices and the loveable underdog Bailiff Jake, I bring you the case of the the Homesick Rogue. I was running a campaign for some people online. One of my players was a Rogue, who's backstory included being on the run from a shadowy organization. I structured the early portion of this campaign around this organization, with plans to make them a prominent enemy throughout the whole campaign. However the player instead played the Rogue as incredibly timid, and whenever I would attempt to get them to engage in the story, they would respond simply "my Rogue just want to go home and hide". After many frustrating sessions of bending over backwards to get this player to engage with the campaign, I finally told them "if you're character wants to go home, they can, and we'll keep doing the story without him". The Rogue ultimately left the campaign after this session, claiming the other players weren't good enough at role playing for them, but I ask you, was I right to be frustrated with this player sandbagging the campaign, or should I have had more patience with this timid rogue?

Red Rocket Rising

To the esteemed Justices and to hell with what they think of you I think your wonderful bailiff Jake. I humbly seek your judgment on the case of the killer rouge. I am normally a DM for my daughter's Popstar Princess campaign and have never had the chance to play myself so I was eleighted to be invited to join my co-workers campaign. I joined the party at level 3 about 5 sessions into their adventures. Everything was going great! The first session I had a blast and even rolled my first nat 20 as a player to smite our final foe for the evenings game then the party bedded down for a long rest ending the game for the time. The next week we all excitedly gathered to continue. As soon as we started the party's Rouge narrated him self sneaking over to me and attacking me in my sleep! I was shocked but apparently this character was secretly sworn to a powerful necromancer who "ordered him to kill me because of my worship of the gods". Thankfully for me dice christ had other plans and the rouge rolled 2 natural 1s on his attack I was just able to win the conflict with some very lucky attack and damage rolles and then removed the head of my enemy resulting in a true death. After that the DM and the rouge were angry at me for killing the character and a heated argument issued. In the end I left the table for good telling them that this isn't the type of game I want to be a part of and was accosted by the DM for "ruining his game". Tell me justices was I wrong for causing a true death in the party then leaving the table or was my fury justified? I humbly wate your judgment.

Rainbow Cake

To the Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the acceptable bailiff, I present to youthe case of the Alchemy Jug Conundrum I DM a game and thought it would be fun to give my players some magic items after their first big battle. I gave them a +1 staff, a bracer to give them +1 AC, and a few other small things. The problem, Justices, is that I gave them an Alchemy Jug. I wrongfully assumed that they would just use it for goofs. They could create a Mayonnaise Empire that , oil and vinegar to create a salad dressing, coat themselves in honey to cause mayhem. Instead, one of the players (who DMs a game I play in) has become obsessed with it. She wants to know each and every property of the jug but the official description offers basically no info. She tried to insist that she could use the acid to coat her mace every day but I decided that the acid would be enough to cause skin irritation but would not inherently cause extra damage. Instead, she has collected her 1/2 oz of poison meticulously every day so she can assassinate someone at a later date. We came to an agreement that it would take the person consuming 8 FULL oz of the poison to kill them. I had hoped that it would stop or at least limit her dark desires but she has informed me that she plans on knocking people out and then forcing them to drink it to "make it look like an accident". Judges, is the Alchemy Jug fully broken? Should I have her god abandon her because she's a clericf? Would doing so before she commits a crime be pre-cog injustice? I humbly await your judgement

Primalkrisis

To my favorite supreme crit employees and also the other two i just saw live in Seattle, allow me to present the case of the unknowing party A few years back me and most of my friends group all had the same dm, all having campaigns in different timelines in the same world, I was in all 3 groups for a cameo session now and then. Since the campaign disbanded I recently discovered that the players, somehow, didn't know how to play the game despite 3 years experience, the rogue had a max hp of 4 at level 6 and no listed proficiencies, the barbarian didn't know what rage did, and the bard's sheet had only his name the word dagger, and thunderclap. The dm seemingly never explained anything to them and basically just had them roleplay so much that their stats never came up. Justices who's in the wrong here? A dm who never explained or referenced anything to the point players didn't need sheets, or the players who had never been taught how to play

Kingofanchovies

If it would please the illustrious DVD flipper king Caldwell and the other guys who dont. I present the case of the scientific shatter shatter. I was a genie warlock and I love my thunder spells mainly thunderwave and shatter. My party and I were in a big cave and I asked the dm if it was wider and taller then the shatter sphere he said yes so I specifically stated I target the enemies and keep the sphere from touching cave parts. He proceeded to deafening the party and have us split up by a cave in, stating the heavy thunderous damage would cause a collapse I argued shatter is different from Thunderwave and doesn't specifically state it makes sound go outwards it actually goes inward so it should echo deafening and hurt us, I was shot down I feel I was in the right but the party was split on who was right. Ps rocks are lame

Gilbemesh

May it please the court of high justices and remind the lowly bailiff of the heights he once stood upon before his precipitous descent into, at best, mediocrity. I DM'd a remote campaign using Discord and Roll20 during COVID lockdown for some of my closest friends and then-fiance (now wife, despite this story). Just before the final battle of the story arc, our wizard cast Leomund's Tiny Hut for a short rest. Allowing this proved to be a colossal mistake, as the players would literally duck into the hut mid-battle to avoid being targeted by the big bad. While the party put on a masterclass in cowardice, I had my DMPC, Nondrak, take to the shadows for sneak attack opportunities. The boss ultimately found Nondrak, making short work of my DMPC. When the players downed the big bad, Nondrak had already failed a death save. After the fight, the players valiantly busied themselves with looting while Nondrak failed two more death saves. Mid-looting, my fiance left for a restroom break and it wasn't until after my fiance returned that the party remembered Nondrak existed. When asked, I told them that he had gone down in battle, and died as they were looting. An uproar ensued, and my fiance argued that it was unfair that Nondrak died as we were clearly heading into a break. Nobody liked my argument that their looting before the break (not to mention the subsequent discussion of what to do with the boss's cool swords) took much longer than two more rounds of combat. Was Nondrak's off-screen death unfair? Or was it negligence that did him in? I lay myself at the mercy of the court and am willing to distribute punishment as necessary. Unless it’s for me, in which case I request Jake receive any punishments handed down.

Rob's Wit

To the Affluent Benevolent Judges and Effluent Flotsam Bailiff, I bring the case of the DM Countered Counterspell. I joined a friend's table which had already been ongoing for 2.5 years and after 6 sessions of playing a trial-run character (given to me by the DM), I was set to introduce a character of my own making! Enter: Fiero Solon, the Oft Alone. Celestial Warlock. As a DM myself, i understood the trial period, but I was very ready for my own PC. Unfortunately, since my PCs introduction, our DM has been very hesitant on most aspects of the character build -- most of all, "Counterspell." The Introductory Encounter: 5 Evil Wizards Chasing One Fleeing Princess While the rest of the party engaged with the wizards in close combat, Fiero moved to protect the princess. For two rounds, I attempted to help the princess hoping to cast "Fly" on her to help her flee. In response, the DM said "You can't see her, she's hidden in the grass." Sensing that he didn't want to deal with that, I instead cast "Invisibility" on myself. Here comes the crux of the issue. While my PC is INVISIBLE, one of the wizards casts "Fireball" hoping to take us all out. The entire party -- including the princess -- was in the AOE. I said, "Fiero casts Counterspell. For he doesn't want to be alone any longer." I thought this would be the perfect character intro moment. I'd befriend the rest of the party and help protect the princess! The DM stated that Fiero was unable to see the Wizard casting the spell even though i had clear line of sight. "The chaos of the battle" prevented fiero from spotting it clearly. I asked for a perception check. I failed with an 11 to see the evil wizard's casting of the spell. So, no counterspell. The evil wizard blew himself up. Nobody died. The DM kinda handwaved the princess being in the blast range. Felt bad. It's even the 2024 version of Counterspell, which is just a Con Save instead of an auto fail! My big issue with his ruling was that he's so TECHNICALLY correct. the casting time of the spell states: Reaction* - which you take when you SEE a creature within 60 feet of yourself casting a spell with Verbal, Somatic, or Material components But my PC was invisible and actively watching for threats! Judges - Do you think my DM should have allowed Counterspell without the Perception roll? PS -- I have found some great character moments at this table with this DM, and he's usually willing to listen to differing interpretations of the rules. I think he just really wanted that Fireball to go off.

Gary J

To the honourable justices and whomever else maybe is there I submit a simple argument I maintain was a fair resolution and my player maintains was hugely unfair. This player (a level 15 bard) called out an NPC to a duel, in an area we dubbed the ‘under city’ where the party had fought in before and knew there were arena venues, it was where a good chunk of the last arc took place and he was well aware the rules of the duel there as they fought others When it was accepted he insisted on going and when I pointed out all other party members had a different event going on and if he did this I wasn’t going to force them to abandon their own quest lines he was fine with it. He showed up with our paladin. Now here is the issue His entire plan involved putting a portable hole (described as a handkerchief like cloth) on a paper airplane with a mage hand, deploying this to land at his foes feet and then toss in a bag of holding. I said he would need to roll initiative since he had hostile intent and failed a stealth roll vs a high level baddie He threw the airplane and then when he cast mage hand the enemy used counter spell. My player cried fowl and I pointed out he literally picked a fight with a magic user, the. Cast a spell directly in front of him so of course he would counter spell it. He became so upset we ended the session so we could resolve it off table and he says I ruined his ‘best moment’ Justices, I ask and will accept the verdict. Was I wrong in A calling initiative or B the counter spell call? It felt wrong to have such a high level fight resolved by cheese when he failed the stealth roll, and the initiative roll and letting the dice decide seemed only fair

Cam Valpoop

To the honorably adorable judges and the… Jake, I bring you the case of the failed Mulan-ing! I was DMing the Lost Mines of Phandelver for my party of experienced players. The group just made it to the ruins of Thundertree, where they were asked to help scare away a Young Green Dragon who was keeping his hoard there. The party devised an incredible plan to “Mulan” the dragon by using one of the party’s 2 sorcerers in the role of Mushu, as he was playing a tiny dragonborn named Slippy, who was reskinned as a salamander (a Salamancer if you will). Slippy unleashed a 2nd level Dragon’s Breath spell into dragon’s room to fill it with smoke, while the other sorcerer used prestidigitation to silhouette him in the smoke and the party’s cleric used prestidigitation to shout at the dragon to flee from the tower. I had the cleric roll Performance for what he said to the dragon and had Slippy roll Deception to appear as a giant dragon in the fog, and then let them use the higher of the rolls to scare it away. I set the overall DC for the check to 30, because in my mind there was no way outside of a nat 20 that this would work. However, after slippy rolled a 21 on his deception and I said it failed, my party grew upset with me. Now alerted to their location, the green dragon unleashed his breath weapon on the group, nearly TPKing them all if it weren’t for some high CON saves. Battle ensued and the party was eventually able to scare off the dragon by taking it below half HP, but they still say I took away their “Mulan Moment” to this day. Judges, I ask you: was I too much of a stickler for realistic gameplay and crushed the creativity of my players, or were my players too engrossed by the hit 1998 film Mulan to see how foolish their plan was to scare away a whole-ass dragon? I leave my fate to your swift and fair judgement.

Josh F

To the immaculate shining beacons of justice and goodness in this cold cruel world, as well as any bailiffs that might be just kind of hanging around. I come to you with a case of PC homicide that I believe may in fact have been pre-meditated murder. I was playing in a homebrew world with some friends over discord. The campaign had been going on for a few months at this point and we were making our way to our first big boss fight. My level 4 Wildfire Druid/Monk Eladrin was excited for her first taste of a real adventure. However, the first enemies we encountered was a pack of basilisks and after only 2 rounds of combat my PC ended up dying and then being petrified post-mortem. This was especially traumatising for her since her whole village met a similar fate due to a magic experiment gone wrong when she was a child. The party was forced to continue forward and a few sessions later returned to cart my corpse back to town to ressurect. Unfortunatly the session in which the revival occured saw a number of our party unable to attend due to irl struggles. The ritual involved everyone helping lower a DC that would be rolled against to determine if the spell worked. Against the suggestion of the remaining players the DM decided to go forth with the ritual and when it came time to roll the dm did so irl instead of on roll20 where we were playing, then flatly announced that the spell failed and my PC was now unrevivable. I was actually excited to play out how this whole experience would have affected my PC who had up to this point been very happy-go-lucky and energentic. The party argued over what to do next and some of them wanted to try to find a way to attempt the ritual again. The DM told them through an NPC there was a very slim chance that an area of unstable magic in the world might be able to bring her back. And so they headed off. However I asked the DM after the session what their chances were and he said zero. I was absolutely shocked that the DM would set up multiple sessions of a journey that was doomed to fail and was fine leading the players on. I left the campaign shortly after. Later I heard from one of the other players that a few sessions later the statue that once was my PC was stolen by the BBEG for some undisclosed reason and they are currently going after him. Noble justices, was I simply overreacting to an unfortunate series of events or was I right to nope out of there before this DM could kill again.

Alan Hickman

To the omniscient and always consistent judges and that little rapscallion of a bailiff. I bring to you the case of the undying PC. I have been running d&d as a forever DM for over 10 years now. It started with forcing my housemates to try it out with me as I ran the (at the time new) 2014 starter campaign lost mines of Phandalin. Most of my friends quickly decided it wasn't for them except one friend, who made his first character, a ranger named Erin Cloudborn, and became as obsessed with D&D as myself. Since then I have ran many campaigns with many different players that often included this friend. So what's the issue you ask? Well I am currently setting up a new campaign and this friend has asked to join and play his original character Erin Cloudborn, aka the only character he has ever played! He has played the same damn "angsty lone wolf" ranger known as Erin Cloudborn in every game I have ever run for him! If I run a one shot, he plays Erin, if I try out a new system? He works out a way to play Erin. Did I mention that Erin has died in almost every campaign? The player just gets annoyed and demands the other players work out a way to bring him back and until then refuses to make a new character and just sits at the table awaiting Erin's grand return to the living. I have asked him to branch out and try new characters or classes but he has no interest in playing another character. So I ask judges, am I cursed to include Erin Cloudborn in all of my games or should my friend be willing to play literally any other character? I await your swift and brutal sentencing. Alan H.

Mitch Rhook

To the high lord justices and the weird but loveable guy following them around. I want to say Joke Horrortwit? I bring you the case of the orc loving tortle. I was playing in a homebrew campaign with some friends that are all fairly new to DnD. I was playing an autumn eladrin who as a child was sucked through to the material plane and trapped there, being found and raised by tribal humans who were always at war/being attacked by an orc tribe. My characters motivation for adventuring was to find out who/what I am. My friend was playing a tortle warlock (fathomless). The campaign, made and ran by another friend who had never DMd before, was that on a ship ride between continents, we all somehow crashed into these islands that don't exist and appear to have been shifted to a different realm. Needing to find a way home we adventured, found a map that showed a human kingdom and an orc kingdom among others. My friend the tortle wanted to go see the orcs, bringing it up every single interaction, with every stranger and in every silence to the point it got really annoying. I explained in character and out of character at the table why my character does not like orcs or want to see them and feels like they'd just kill us. He didn't stop. After the session I tried to explain again why my character doesn't want to see the orcs and wanted to know why he just wanted to railroad us into the orcs. He said "the game isn't just about your character my dude" and insisted what he wanted to do was what was important for us to all go and do. Justices am I wrong for not ignoring my characters back story and biases and avoiding the orcs? Is he wrong for not caring about what anyone else at the table wants? (I should note here that the DM hadn't built the orc kingdom out because he did not expect us to go there at all.)

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.

Zachary Smith

To Jake and The Justices: The Case of Saving an NPC "Best Friend" over a PC Thief. Characters: * me, a halfling war cleric * a party-adopted NPC kobold with an endearing sassiness and cutesy NPC kobold name (pertinent info: he was MY best friend, I was not HIS best friend) * A PC rogue gnome that had stolen from a party member early on and had gotten a little...murdery of some fleeing goblins Going into the final battle of a year-long "one-shot", kobold and rogue are both making death saves. I think kobold had 2 daily and rogue was fresh. I healing word the NPC to save my best friend. Should I have meta-saved the thiefly, morally-questionable-at-best PC rogue, instead of a fake, one-sided friendship? Pertinent info: The gnome was brought up after the battle and managed to sneak/steal the original mcguffin, but then hid in a hallway instead of helping us stop the world from ending in the final fight.

Georgina Haf

To the honourable Crit Justices and the other one concerned… I write to you with the case of the Cleric who “derailed the whole campaign” We began The Ghosts of Saltmarsh, where i played a jovial Cleric of Pelor. About 9 sessions in, after we had looted a haunted manor, we headed back to town to inform the town council of our findings. There had been a drop off of interest from the other players through the weeks. So myself and another player, halfing folk hero, attempted some fun role-playing to sell the stolen goods in town. The DM took issue with this. Lecturing us on alignment and telling us our gods had intervened, forcing me and the other PC to tell the truth at all times (a fair and fun punishment) But also stripping me of my Clerical powers until my god deemed me to have repented (maybe not so fun and fair). So, when we came across an Old NPC who double crossed us earlier in the game, I proceeded to stand up and loudly declare him CRIMINAL SCUM! He ran, and I, very much wishing to gain my powers back, chased and tackled him to bring him to justice. The DM asked for a grapple check, to which I rolled a Nat 20. The players all cheered and spirits were high at the table! But not for everyone. The DM was STILL unhappy about my actions. He preceded to tell us, out of character, how we had played the campaign wrong, what we should’ve have done instead, and what was going to happen next if I hadn’t “ruined it”. I was openly accused of having derailed the whole campaign. Everyone left a little dejected that evening. We never continued the game. I ask you, was I ok to have acted in such a way, ignoring alignment slightly in the name of investment and fun, or am I guilty of derailing the campaign? I throw myself humbly in front of your wisened feet.

Faun

To the Noble Justices and the okay baliff Jeff yesterday my dm of a long term campaign messaged just me (not our d&d group) asking my opinion on switching system mid campaign (to move away from d&d). I said my honest opinion which was that the system he suggested didn't appeal to me, that I would make a new character rather than force one I'd already built into it and that this should have been a convo for the whole group. he then got shitty with me and guilt tripped me for not being supportive. noble justices what should I do? was i wrong for giving my honest opinion?

Caleb Feiler

to the honorable justices and the bailiff, can you guys play when did things come out?

JonesyBoy

The most Justice-ly Justices and King of the Low, Jink. I bring you the case of the "Not a Druid". I am a forever DM playing in my girlfriends Humblewood campaign. One of the players in our party is an aspiring author and is playing as a human wizard that has been isekai'd into this realm as a Vulpin(fox) Druid. in game their PC acts strange and my PC, a Rooster Fighter is suspicious. They are a druid and have never wildshaped, the reason? the Human Wizard doesn't know they are a druid and is confused why they have a fox tail. I've been brought this up to my GF and though she understands, her attempts to make this player play their character better falls on deaf ears. Justices please, is my ForeverDM showing or is this Player doing the absolute worst?

Faun

Additional Info: in the next arc of the campaign my wife and I were both about to play new characters (the characters were also wives) and we both agreed we would both rather build new characters that fit into a new systems mechanics

wick

To the Honorable Justices and the creamy Cake, I present the case of The Poopie Bedroll and the Ultimate Sacrifice I once played an online session with some people I met in an online Facebook meme group. The session was going alright, but someone I didn’t know super well kept trolling me, ultimately shitting in my bedroll (admittedly hilarious) before his character absconded to the woods to die to a windego. Later, we were infiltrating a town that our army was sieging. The town had a weapon raining hellfire on our allies that the DM described as very volatile and explosive. So i hit it with my ax and killed everyone in the town including myself and the party. Was my funny solution too silly? After the poopie bedroll I felt empowered to make the ultimate funny decision. We did save our allies ultimately but I never heard of any future sessions.

Barney

Honorable Justi' and Jake-y Jake and the Funky Bunch. Look under here, under the podium. I have a Bat problem. In our Curse of Strahd campaign, we find our party clearing out a werewolf den. When sending the bat familiar (Bat-Aranth) to scout, hiding werewolves shot him down. The issue, he has blindsight via echolocation and these furry fluffs were hiding near the stalagmite ridden shadowy walls. Not behind any amount of significant cover. When I brought up to the dm that the bat would have seen them, he said they were hidden and that echolocation is not seeing... so line of sight means squat. No check, no rolls. My question to you! Was my bat unjustly murdered by a god who refused to let him see, his echo-y-way, or do I need to pay my 10 gold in materials and apologize to my batty boy?!

AnthoniMM

To the glorious and beautiful justices and the vile and rat like balif I bring fourth the case of the distracted players. I at one time recently ran 5 consecutive games with different groups and players. One group was made of very new players. Two of these players joined in a few sessions later than the other but not too late that it felt awkward. These two players would constantly play other games like overwatch while we all played d&dragons over discord. They were very loud and distracting but would never listen when I asked them to stop. Eventually one player started playing games with them during our sessions and another player would just get drunk during our sessions. Only one player we reasonable during these sessions. I eventually ended the campaign early because two player never once updated or looked at their sheets over the 2 months of playing. Justices, should I have ended this campaign early or should I have punished the problem players differently so my one Saint of a player could still have fun? I lay my head ready to die before the court.

Rover Bernhard

May it please the court: I present the case of the held action hold-up. Our party was in a showdown with a coven of hags holding our ranger hostage. The ranger’s player was out with appendicitis and the character was knocked out off screen and held at knifepoint. The DM said that the hags were readying an action: they would plunge the knife into the ranger if anyone tried to cast a spell. The wizard cast “wither and bloom,” hurting themself and healing the ranger with the same spell. They thought that the one of the hags would act before the wizard since the hags had readied actions. However, the DM ruled that the hag waited until after the ranger was healed, essentially sequencing events against the ranger. The party all eventually made it out alive, but I ask you judges: is it bullshit that the DM changed her mind about when the hag acted?

John Miller

Dear high Lord justices and bailiff John. Unless someone other than him is the bailiff l then respect to the bailiff as well. Unless it's murph. Anyway I bring before you the case of the ooey gooey armor We are currently 3 sessions into a one shot game and my friend is playing an armored artificer who is an little old halfing lady in a mechanical suit. In our very first combat, our dungeon master had us fighting ocre jellies in a sewer. when it's the jellies turn, one drops from the ceiling and onto artificer, and in one turn and with no ability check, it seeps INTO her armor and starts attacking from within at advantage, leaving her basically screwed. After only two rounds she goes unconscious from full health, If our healer hadn't pulled the character out of her armor, she'd have died there in the first combat with outever dealing damage Our dungeon master and artificer have been arguing now. the dungeon master claims that he was just trying to keep combat challenging and dynamic, and that he would have entertained creative solutions for getting the ooze out, the player feels that he hardly had a chance to be creative before getting kicked out of combat. Plus, we technically had to abandon his subclass in the sewers (the jellies won) Justices, please is my dungeon master letting his oozes be ocre powered? Or is the artificer just jellie of the dms creative strategy? I humbly await your decision

angel iniguez

To the benevolent Supreme Court justices, Axford Murphy, Tanner and their court baby..I want to say Jax? I bring to you the case of the feign death prank. While our group was running “Descent into Avernus” we needed at one point to cross the river Styx we did this by jumping the river in our war machine. Unfortunately, we went too fast and ended up going about 70 feet into the air I, as our cleric decided it would be funny to feign death on myself as a prank when I went to wake myself up the DM informed me that I cannot wake myself up due to the rules of feign death. this lead to the party going off track to put me in a room with a bunch of red caps as a prank by hanging me up from the ceiling. After a small fight and a few dead red caps the party ran in and stopped the prank. I still argue that I should’ve been able to wake myself up from the spell, but I throw myself at your feet was I wrong for wanting to do a little prank?

Nicole

To the honourable Justices and the alright Baliff, I’d like to file a complaint against my husband, may it please the court. We’ve recently joined a new dnd campaign set in Exandria. It’s been super fun so far and we’re heading into our 4th session. In our last session, our Monk found themselves in trouble with their abbey, and was forced to prove their fate with a creepy blood ritual. Our monk was visibly shaken when she returned, and our cleric offered to take her fishing to relax her. The cleric, monk, wizard, and myself (the barbarian) went fishing and had a very cute role play scene, while my husband (the sorcerer) went back to his in-game mother’s mansion. After the session I mentioned that he should join in with the role play. He said his character “just met us all and wouldn’t really care that the monk was upset.” He maintains that the adventuring party becoming instant friends is boring and bad story telling. Judges, am I wrong for thinking it’s weird that my husband ditched the party for his mom, or is my husband a sociopath? I eagerly await your ruling.

Jessa Jayne

I must make a confession oh mighty Dice Christ. I ran a Holiday themed one shot I wrote in which Santa was kidnapped and characters from other main campaigns ended up transported to the fairy realm of twinkleville to look for him. After fighting a gum drop ooze, sailing an eggnog sea and surviving an elven toy shop with very island of the Lotus Eater vibes my hero’s found the lair of the Sugar Plum Fairy an eldritch horror with lair actions and a giant open mouth of sugar glass fangs. I made this encounter highly deadly because the heroes had played their characters before knew their spells and picked up healing potions along the way. They were ready…their dice I gave them as holiday gifts were not… and they all rolled like absolute dog shit and when their healer took back to back hits that would have tripled her HP in damage I fibbed… okay I flat out lied and said the Fairy missed. I’d prepared gifts for each of their player characters back in the beds at the inn from the start when they’d freed Santa but the Cleric was so low that’d they’d started to check out and not have fun. I felt guilty and worried that maybe their dice would have rolled better than the ones I gave them. I humbly ask for the good lords forgiveness in this the time of Summerween and will take whatever punishment the D20 rolls me for my high crimes and dicedameanors.

Wojtek

Supreme Crit Justices and the unfairly trodden-upon High Bailiff Jake, long may He reign: I bring you the case of the pre-combat held action and the forced-lore murder. Our long-running, primarily remote group had an in-person climactic session, taking place across a weekend with two good friends joining as guest players. After nearly 10 hours of play, the BBEG arrived to initiate combat in the treasure cave the party had been seeking for months. One of the guest players, Brian, then revealed he had been secretly working with the BBEG and harbored secret hatred towards the party bard, played by Hugh. Despite his dramatic declaration of revenge, Brian was immediately crit-killed on round one by an NPC before he was able to attack. As he dropped to death saves, Brian declared he had a held action from *before* initiative to crush a gem, summoning a fire elemental that directly targeted Hugh. The fire elemental killed Hugh after both downing him and attacking him during death saves while Brian shouted about past grievances to add to the lore. Hugh was furious about being targeted through what seemed like a questionable retroactive reaction. Our cleric could revivify, but the damage was done. Was Brian justified in his dramatic lore moment via undeclared pre-combat held action, and should our DM have allowed it? Or was Hugh right to be upset about the sketchy mechanics and being removed completely from a climactic fight?

Andy Kaplan

To the noblest of Judges, Axeford, Murphy, and Tanner and to the lowest of lows or highest of highs, depending on what mood Judge City Pigeon is in, Bailiff Jake (COYS), I bring to you the case of the Folding Fireball Boat. In our weekly campaign we are on the last level of Dungeon of the Mad Mage, and before we descended to the lowest level to face Halaster and his apprentices, we were able to exchange some of our inventory for other items that would help. 2 very rare items for a legendary and legendary for legendary or very rare for very and so on. Our wizard and paladin come up with an idea to get a folding boat (new version, not legacy) and multiple necklaces of fireballs and stuff the necklaces in the boat with the idea to use it as a molotov boat-tail. Our DM said we can roll a total of 12d6's per necklace, and we were able to stuff 35 total beads in the boat which would result in 136D6 worth of damage. We spent a good hour and a half of real world time deciding the rules of this boat bomb. The DM said it wouldn't work on Halaster because he was an archmage, but we could still use it on one of his apprencienes. Once the encounter happened that we decided to use the boat bomb, we opened the door and tried to toss the bomb in and kill Arcturia, a transmutation lich, only for the DM to tell us right when we threw it, Arcturia cast telekinesis on the boat and launched it back at us doing 458 points of damage. Luckily, our bard cast circle of power and we were in our Paladin's aura so we took no damage as we were all able to make the saving throw, but we were denied the joy of our boat bomb. I ask you judges, was the DM in the wrong for letting us take the time and effort to build the boat bomb knowing full well he was going to use telekinesis and launch it back at the party the whole time or should we have expected some DM shenanigans? I await your judgement, oh wise ones.  - Andy 

Tyler Roberts

Dear stunning, perfect, beautiful justices and their little buddy Joke Haywire. I come to you today with the case of wasted attacks. I play a high level campaign with some buddies and my barbarian fighter takes upwards of 20+ attacks each round. My friends complained that my turns took too long so I started rolling these attacks ahead of time. Flash forward to my next turn and my 3rd attack downed the guard I was hitting so I said I would direct the rest of my attacks to the next baddie. Dm said no. I rolled the attacks I rolled to attack the first guard, so all the attacks I rolled would be directed at the first guard. Even though he was dead. Justices, am I in the wrong? My barbarian wasted 17+ attacks swinging at a dead body. I throw myself at your feet and accept any punishment you may dole out.

Tyler Roberts

Ps- please change my name if I am chosen. My party subscribes to your Patreon

Telea Dodge

Dear Prime Time Judge Judes and Judies doing their Critical Duty and to the upcoming Birthday Bailiff, please help me navigate this nasty affair. Recently, my friends and I started a new table and are three sessions in. I absolutely love all of these people and I was so excited to start a campaign with a bunch of baddies. However, it has become clear after sessions 0, 1, and 2 that we have a problem player. This player is fairly new to the game and has gleaned most of their knowledge from podcasts like yours. Here's the problem: she has named her character "Whiskey Psili" and she is playing a "swamp elf" character who is covered in lichen and has a skunk familiar. Sound familiar? It gets worse. She keeps insisting that my character - an adopted Satyr monk with religious trauma - should be very...Bev-coded. Our other player is a large human barbarian named "Miller Skylife." Our own Whiskey Psili has nicknamed him Surefoot. The largest problem here is no one else at the table has listened to NADDPOD and does not realize that one of the PC's is trying to railroad us into being knock-off versions of campaign one's characters. How do I call her out and ask her to be more original with plot without insulting her? I already know she's the problem, so I would deeply appreciate help with sentencing her to a middling and somewhat copycat-coded bad time.

Austin

To the splendiferous Judges and Baliff Papa John! I present the case of the uncontestable check. Playing a game with a couple friends and a DM we had found online that we didn't know. Our party took a job from a shady fellow to get a valuable item from the back room of a casino. My plasmoid, circle of stars druid (yes i'm actually playong a Goo-id) 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?

Willy The Wild

To Your Holinesses Emily, Murph, and Caldwell, and the baby-faced altar boy (I think it was Jayden). The most critical dice rolls in D&D happen not during sessions, but when you level up and roll to see how many more HP you have. And, most Holy Hierophants of Dice Christ, I have sinned every single time. If I roll, and the number is less than the average the Player's Handbook prompts you to take instead of rolling, I just take that average. If it's higher, you know I'm taking that higher number. I would suggest it's a small sin, but over the course of a recent Curse of Strahd campaign, by the time we got to level 14 at the end, I had 37 more HP as a monk than our (intended tank) Paladin. Can I continue down this road to perdition with a few "Hail Selunes"? Or must I cease my sacrilegious practice altogether?

Sovash Chetty

To my lords and my lady. I don't know why I have to recognise the bailiff, so I'm going to elect not too. This is the case of how a Plate of Pancakes ended a DMs career. My friends and I have been in a five year long campaign that i have been DMing. We live across the countey and play through Discord. One year we realise that we can meet up in December, and chose to play DnD in person for only the second time ever. We booked an AirBnB for 3 nights and started planning. Discussions were held on who would DM the in person game. I told them i would be more than happy to DM a canonical session, just in person. They told me to relax and for once allow myself to be a player. I was ecstatic. Eventually my player was victorious and we all agreed to allow him to DM, this was his first time DMiing. I sent him all the resources I use and have avaliable, offering my help with whatever he may need. As the date was looming closer and closer we were getting incresingly nervous. When we questioned him about the setting he would make vague allusions to a prision island, which we would be trying to escape. The day came. The table was set, the charater sheets printed, the dice pickled. And it quickly became clear that this new DM had prepped absolutely nothing. He was making things up on the fly, and not doing a convincing job of doing so. Trying to make any progress was like pulling teeth with a blade of grass. Eventually my frustration and annoyance with the game got the better of me and I ended up asking if anyone wanted pancakes. I told evryone to continue the game and I was going to the kitchen to make 2am pancakes for the table. I heard the game die down, i came out with a plate of pipping hot panners and found that the DM and players had absconded from the table and were scattered amongst the lounge and deck chairs. It was clear the game was over, and while it may sound egotistical, I feel like it was my action to leave the table that might have spurred the game to end so unceremoniously. What was meant to be three glorious days of DnD became a much more lackluster weekend of Mario Kart and boardgames. The DM has never offered to DM again somce that weekend and I feel terrible. So I ask Your Lordships and Ladyship, was I wrong for leaving the table in the middle of playing, or should I have tried and tough it out because it was a first time DM? Just a side note. I'm an actual advocate and I listend to Naddpod on repeat while studying. You're the reason i passed my bar exams! I use to chuckle while writing the exams because I would recall the episode I was listening to when I studied the topic. Thanks for all your hard work and keeping me company during the long lonely nights deep in my books. Love from South Africa.

Prof

To the honorable Judges Tanner and the Axfords and oh hey lil guy who let you into the court room I bring the case of the insane battle droid A couple years ago I ran a Star wars campaign with some friends using SW5E, one of my buddies(who is known for making insane characters) wanted to play a magna guard barbarian, I said sure. This was a level 10 short campaign and so I expected some shenanigans but he arrived to session 1 with a PC that had an AC of 36, 6 reactions and resistance to all damage (tbh I think the last one was a misread on both our parts). Naturally I said no no way and set his AC to 22 and gave him vulnerability to a type of damage in that system. He agreed but still argued he did it "perfectly legally". We are still friends and have a solid group going but I still raz him about it and he still defends it So judges shall I continue the raz or if it was legal is it ok? PS he said he's more than willing to send an explanation to the insane build

Seven

Dear supreme crit justices Paladin Murph, Wild Magic Sorcer Axeford, Bardic Caldwell and I guess that guy Jake I bring you the case on a campaign I played in when I was 15, all other players and the dm were adults. During covid I joined and made a warforged cleric, the guy didn’t respect me but I was just happy to play. After a while of playing a pattern emerged of the ranger being targeted by him in ways. Starting with giving inappropriate items about suicide and the characters dead wife. Along with creating slurs against her because she was a Tiefling. It all came to a head when after one session where the dm introduced a dominatrix warlock patron and forced her to make a pact. She then left the campaign, but that was only the beginning. She left the campaign because the dm wanted to date her. He was married, and she was a lesbian. We all left the group but didn’t confront him. Should we have confronted him? I can’t say more as he also loved to do things very bad and uncomfortable that are too horrid to write. We only stayed because we weren’t that close at the time

Joe Rudolph

Big hugs to the Justices! Slight head nod to the bailiff. Im calling this the case of Flavor gone Sour. A while ago, a group of friends from college and I were in a campaign and infiltrating a bandit hideout to confront the bandit leader. When we get to the last room, the leader had escaped, but his right hand man, a rapier wielding duelist, was there to ambush us. After a long battle we finally know we’re approaching the finishing blow. The barbarian of our party, a DnD newbie, asked if there was a way to attack the duelist without killing him so that we could interrogate him to find the whereabouts of the leader that had escaped. We all got excited and said “Yes! You can claim you’re doing a non-lethal attack.” After our barbarian (and entire party for that matter) decided to go non-lethal, our DM asked the barb to describe the finishing blow. I suggested he cut off his dueling hand so that he may never duel again. Barbarian loved it and announced that’s what he does. Combat immediately ended and we started narrating ourselves inspecting the duelist, wrapping up his nub wrist, and tying him up to get ready to interrogate him when we wakes. This is where the point of contention lies. Our DM literally says, “Sorry he’s dead. He bled out.” We were stunned. We had announced non-lethal. Our DM literally heard us work out this plan with a smile on their face. Their argument was that, although he announced non-lethal blows, he described a lethal blow. I argued that plenty of people lose their hands and dont die, and we immediately tried to save him mere seconds after combat had ended. Our DM didn’t budge, citing we can’t have our cake and eat it too, arguing that in no way would we be able to care for the wound like that when modern medicine doesn’t exist. It took us a couple of sessions after this to piece together clues where the actual leader was, and we did end up killing him, but judges, i ask, was it wrong of me to suggest what I thought was a clever way to finish him without killing him, or was our DM wrong for not letting us narrate the finishing blow without consequences? I humbly await your verdict. PS the campaign has since ended but just because of schedule problems. We’re all good friends and the DM is great. This has just always bugged me, i feel like i let my newbie friend down by suggesting somethting clever.

Mama Hot Tomato

May it please the Court, and especially please the Bailiff. oh yeah, I bet you like that don’t you little baby Bailiff, you are delighted over there in your corner of the courtroom you nasty gutterwhelp. I come seeking relief for a slight so long past, e’en scholars and sages allowed it to pass into the hazy fog of half-forgotten memory. But I, a miserly and vindictive plaintiff, will rouse this spiteful spirit and allow its brittle bones to dance across the courtroom floor in search of that fickle sister of joy: JUSTICE. In a lost age, my character Tub o’ Butter (or Tob) was slain before our characters had reached a level where he could be easily revived (in 3.5, where resurrection was at higher levels than 5e). The DM offered a choice - the cleric could permanently sacrifice a 5th level spell slot (which they would get on next level up) to bring back Tub o’ Butter now. The cleric agreed, Tub o’ Butter agreed, but ANOTHER PLAYER - here called LAND O’ LAKES - did not consent. They declared it would be unfair for Tub o’ Butter to return even with this heavy cost. This player had a character die permanently early on and had received no such compromise, and they were willing to let Tub o’ Butter curdle as - in this humble country lawyer’s view- a twisted form of revenge. Obviously we immediately put the player to death at the table, but Justices, I beseech ye - was the DM wrong to make this offer? Did Land o’ Lakes have a leg to stand on, unjustly cut down before their prime? And most importantly, which one of us do you think is cutest? I humbly leave these questions squarely in your court.

garb0w0dor

Oh dastardly Deacons of Dice Christ’s dazzling light, and youth pastor Jake, I have made the greatest sin imaginable… I have fibbed. A few months ago I joined an online game with a group of complete strangers, and it has been absolutely wonderful and everyone there is super talented. The problem is the game had a strict age requirement of 21 and up. At the time I was a mere 20 years of age but knew I’d be 21 in early July, so I fibbed. Now that I am of legal drinking age in the United States, I am burdened by guilt over my blatant lie to people I now like and respect. Should I confess my deceit now, while it hasn’t been very long and accept the consequences, or take this to my grave and just pretend to have been born 2 months earlier forever? I humbly request the Bailiff grovel in my stead, to properly express my anguish.

Quest Couture

Justices of the crit and brambpants jork 1st and 3rd and 5th of his name, my gaming group consists of myself (Q), my partner(A), my partners sister (C), her husband(D), and their mom (T) they're a fantastic group that gave me the grace to fizzle my first campaign and recently finish my second. Since the beginning D and I have been switching off him running dnd and my running various other systems, my issue comes about a year ago shortly after mama T joined both games D, perhaps at the reccomendation of C added a fifth player to our dnd game who we will call EP for edgelord paladin. I knew EP from the place A,C, and I all used to work and tho he was a work buddy of mine I would have vetoed his addition to our game mostly for scheduling reasons but also cuz of EPs maturity level. Since EPs joining hes been cagey around A and C's elvin characters due to his backstory leading to him pretty much exclusively talking to my character the only other dragonborn in the party and man at the table(excluding the gm). This behavior has been discussed in character and away from the table but just rubbed everyone the wrong way. We are doing are best to hold space for him to grow as a person and player but my question is this. Was it wrong for our gm to add him to what is essentially a family game without consulting the table? Maybe im just a grumpy pants but I know in my heart I would have voted against it before he joined and maybe we could have avoided this awkward situation and low morale for the campaign

Snail Man

To the magnanimous magistrates of the Crit on High and that Rat Jim, I present to you the Case of the Soggy Bun Conspiracy I was running a short campaign for some Ren faire friends, in which they were tasked with uncovering the mysterious disappearances of clerics during a towns 3 day autumn equinox festival. On the first day of the festival, one of my players, a Gnoll barbarian named Raw Dog was following up on a lead the party had discovered about a cleric who was the daughter of the baker, a Halfling named Mr. Pringle. Mr. Pringle was both sponsoring and competing in the towns hot dog eating competition, where the winner would receive a heafty sum of silver coins donated by Mr. Pringle himself,as well as revive the title “Lord of Misrule”, an honorific title that mechanically wise would give them a slight boost to persuasion when talking to peasants throughout the town. Raw Dog however, had convinced himself and the rest of the party that I was hiding something, and the title held some greater power over the town. As a result Raw dog and the party’s fighter both juiced up with buff spells and bardic inspirations, set out to crush the feeble mass of assembled farmers and commoners and claim victory. Esteemed Judges, they rolled so fucking bad. There were 3 checks, an initiative role, a CON save and a DEX save. Even with all there advantages, the highest roll between the two was a 6. As a result, The winner of the hot dog eating competition was non other, then Mr. Pringle. The party screamed in outrage, claiming that Mr. Pringle had somehow rigged the game in order to secure the title of Lord of Misrule for himself. I explained to the party that it’s not like Mr.Pringle rolled good, just that the party rolled so bad. Raw Dog then asked for an investigation check on the hot dogs to see if they had been tampered with. He Rolled a Nat 20. The party erupted, eagerly waiting to learn the atrocities committed by Mr. Pringle. Judges, there were none. He was a simple baker. In a panic of not wanting to have a Nat 20 go to waste or lose the energy the party had, I described how upon Closer inspection, Raw Dog discovered that Mr. Pringle had pre-soaked his own hot dog buns and had used his baker skills to purposefully make everyone else else’s buns five times as dense. Calamity ensued, with Raw Dog Swinging his Ax at Mr.Pringle in revenge. I ended up giving Mr.Pringle the BBEG’s stats and the story completely got turned on its head, with Mr. Pringle using the title of Lord of Misrule and the captured clerics to complete an ancient demon summoning ritual. We ended up having a great time, and plan on playing more in the future but there is still a lingering feeling that I succumbed to the pressure of the moment. Judges, should I have just let the nat 20 be for nothing? Should I have let my party’s bad rolls be just them sucking? Or was I right to follow the flow of chaos and abandon my previous plans. I await your words of wisdom. -Snail Man

Krystine W.

Oh mighty Justices and most radiant Dice Christ, I come before you broken, and dice-blighted. I kneel before you, not as a hero of high rolls, but as a humbled husk of a once-mighty player who dared too greatly. For a time, I rolled as the chosen - a child of Saint Axford, basking in the glory of nat 20s. But then... I gave. I offered my gifts unto others. I DM'd a one-shot for my best friend’s ten-year-old son for his birthday. I crafted dungeons of delight, encounters with wonder. They said it was “the best D&D game they’d ever played" and one child said they wanted to grow up to be a real DM like me. I wept. But now I fear I have trespassed into the realm of the divine. Since that day, my dice have betrayed me. My rolls are tepid. Tepid! Not foul enough to be funny, nor glorious enough to be praised. Middling is the true damnation. So I come to you, and I beg. I plead. I beseech thee: Dice Christ, what must I do to be forgiven? Let me return to the flock of the faithful who crit.

Dillon Bohinc

To the honorable and benevolent judges and the balif Who-gives-a-schitz. I bring you the case of the Greedy Bard and the selfish heal. In our spelljammer campaign, we had an encounter with a crazy hermit and his brother the murder comet. My plasmoid artificer vortex warped himself from our ship to the back of a Kindori (space whale) and was followed by our parties bard. During a tense encounter I was downed and the bard was taken down to 10HP. The bard proceeded to heal themselves using healing word rather than healing me, after which I was murder-suicided by the murder comet and fully died. I ask you to punish the Greedy Bard to the fullest extent of the law. P.S. I ended up being respected by a demon and changing my class to 4lvls artificer and 2lvls blood hunter, which was fun.

Sean Lawrence

Justices Axford, Tanner, and mostly Murphy (also Jake I guess). I come bearing the case of Our DM Needs New Friends. A couple of years ago, our DM ran a great homebrew campaign full of danger and political intrigue, but part way through one of our sessions, the Warlock player complained that he wasn't having any fun, that our DM was doing a bad job, and that he quit. It ruined the session. Justices, he came back two sessions later as a cleric and did the SAME THING that very session. Our campaign limped to the finish line, but our DM believes these harsh and foul lies and has never quite had his mojo back. I beg you, Justice Murphy, to sentence our DM to find new friends who actually enjoy his games snd to believe them when they say he's awesome.

Josh Kumar

To the magnanimous justices and the bailiff whose name I shamefully share, I bring you the case of Gary the Goblin. My players were in the second session of a twoshot, playing as Senators in the Orc government who were a part of a secret organization bent on bringing down the corrupt government. One of my players, a goblin named Gary, was on house arrest after being framed for murder. While on the tenth floor of a building, he walked up to a bay window, opened it to “goblin size”, and then proceeded to mime jumping out of the window. The guard watching him tensed up and put his hand on his sword. Gary then said “Wouldn’t it be crazy if I just jumped out of this window and escaped?” They rolled initiative, Gary did jump out the window, and was promptly killed after a slew of guards descended on him. His death ultimately derailed the session, forcing the other players to abandon their plans of intercepting a secret weapons convoy and instead try to sabotage the cleric who was going to cast speak with dead on the corpse of Gary to find out why he did this and if he had any other allies. This kicked off a comical series of events which eventually led to the deaths of 2 of the remaining 3 players (who laughed and committed to a plan that I told them would kill them). Justices, I would kill Gary again a thousand times over, but I wonder if I should have let his consequences reflect on the rest of the party. On one hand, it would feel like railroading not to, but on the other, I could have just ignored it for the sake of the session. Ultimately everyone had fun, and also these guys are my close friends so no one is mad irl, but is it rewarding a problem player if their actions have no party implications, or is it ultimately punishing the party for the sins of a single soul? I lay myself at the mercy of the court.

Aiden Swartz

Felicitous salutations to the Supreme Crit Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner. And a hardy hello to the guy who works at birdlesque. I bring to you the case of the time travelling DM. Me and my friends play D&D infrequently due to the fact we are in medical school. We recently completed a major arc that ended with us beating a team of electro-boogaloo pirates, freeing a royal ship and its crew and returning it to the king. When we went to play next sessions our DM had no recollection of this happening and no notes. He insisted that we play the whole capturing of the boat again. After a while of us trying to convince him that we did this he relented and said “ok, I forgot we played this part, but I’ve added information so let’s replay” what ensued was an entire re-do of our last session, where the only thing that changed was the addition of a joke about the song Karma Chameleon. Needless to say the players were a bit upset at the fact that our last session before exams was an entire repeat that resulted in the same ending (except for Karma Chameleon). Is my DM in the wrong for having had us replay a session we already did? Or should we all have just gone along and been happy with the addition of the Karma Chameleon joke? We await your benevolent decision.

Conrad Bobonrad

Greetings Honorable Justices of Dungeon Court and that guy from Jake and Amir, I come before you as a first-time DM running a chaotic homebrew game set in a “party plane” world — thanks Mavrus. From the start, I’ve let a lot slide: my players frequently mess with NPCs, the rogue robs nearly every vendor he sees, and things generally spiral into delightful madness. I figured that was part of the fun, and honestly, I was just trying to keep the good times rolling. But things took a darker turn when the party captured a surrendered combatant, interrogated him, and then decided to kill him despite him no longer being a threat. I finally put my foot down, explaining that this was a clear war crime — at least from a real-world perspective — and not something I was comfortable glossing over. That’s when a heated debate broke out about whether the Geneva Conventions even exist in our world. We were stuck. So, in true chaotic fashion, I proposed we settle it with a roll. I rolled a nat 20, and thus declared the matter resolved. Justices, was I wrong to let the campaign run wild until this point? Should I have stepped in earlier to curb the chaos? Or was it fair to let it play out until real-world ethics were breached? I accept whatever ruling you deem appropriate.

Gurt

To the pretty honorable justices, Murphy and Tanner, the most honorable justice Axford, and the surprisingly employed bailiff Jorts, I present you the case of the fully and completely murdered character. While in college I had the chance to play with a group of other students and with 5e being relatively new, we learned the rules together as we went along, typically adhering to the rules as written but coming up with house rules as well. Near the end of the campaign, the Dm introduced an item called the Deck of Many Things and I proceeded to have my character pull 3 cards, the first, destroyed all my items that were not magical, leaving my level 6 halfling bard completely nude with a plus one rapier. The second card gave me a keep infested with monsters somewhere in the world. The last card was the skull. This card summoned an avatar of death that my character had to fight by himself or die permanently. Having DMd myself and used this item, I knew what I was getting myself into and we were having a fun time as I was getting ready to fight this avatar of death with only my sword - I had used all of my spells in a fight prior to this- the DM announced that he was going to use a different stat block than was listed with the item. He felt that it would be too easy for my level 6 character. Instead he took a different stat block from a CR 6 monster and reskinned it as the avatar of death including the permadeath ability. I argued that this was not a fair adaptation since the rules as written provided a stat block for this creature and was suspicious that this move was just a vengeful quest against my character for some Caldwell-like shenanigans at the beginning of the campaign. Ultimately, I conceded that he was the dm and we’d go with what he said and my character did a surprisingly good job of fighting this new monster with only his rapier but was ultimately killed. Forever. I made a different character for the next week and the campaign wrapped up shortly after and we went our separate ways. But to this day, my heart aches for my poor little halfling lad. So dear justices - and jorts- , was this stat block adjustment in the right? Or was my character a victim of a murder most foul? I humbly await your judgement (and jorts capricious whims).

Dunces and Dingbats

I come for penance. I come to right my wrongs. Trusted arbiters of Dice Christ’s will, hear my confession that I may be absolved. It was just a one-shot. A western-themed romp. Two veteran players and two professionally trained improvisers trying out 5e for the first time. Due to time constraints, I made it very clear the session would almost certainly end with a TPK, serving more as a broad exploration of TTRPGs for new guys. When the monk’s hard deadline was approaching, I triggered a sequence of events to draw him outside alone, and the rest of the party emerged to see a Lonely Sorrowsworn (CR 7) impale and permanently kill the monk before he could land a single hit. It was brutal but swift and happened in time for the player to leave…but it was birthed of falsehood. Deacons, Jake, I rolled the thing’s initiative and got a nat 20. Rad! But when I went to attack, the 1 on the other side laughed in my face. I was bewildered. This could mean asking the player to stick around, which isn’t cool, and I’d already told them to expect lethal ends anyway. I’d rolled in private and, in the heat of the moment, I decided the initiative roll would also count for the hit. 8d8 destroyed the level 3 monk. Because of the reality of my roles, I let him take his attacks on his way down (a la the Western swansong). He missed entirely and died looking into this thing’s face. Overall, a great time was had by all, but my decision eats me. I’ll bear whatever judgement is passed. It’s eating me. Please. Release me.

Matt Grelle

Hey Jack I once played in a campaign with a friend group that I was mostly well acquainted with. The one person I was not acquainted with had, unbeknownst to me, spoken with the DM to homebrew some things. I had decided to play a goliath fighter, a departure from my usual social- focused characters, as part of a dynamic with one of my friends who was playing my adopted sister (an elf ranger). My goliath was very protective of her as he was when they were growing up, so I was basically the muscle to back her up. The problem arises here. Come to find out, the player who I was largely unfamiliar with (who we knew was playing a charisma/ social focused rogue), had spoken with the DM and homebrewed an animal companion. This animal companion was a bear that was intelligent enough to follow the rogue's commands and wore a set of armor. This CR1 bear had a higher AC, more attacks, and more hp than my fighter kitted out specifically for fighting. Now this would all be well and good if I was simply fighting alongside them, but the rogue did all of the talking to npcs and would use the bear to enforce whatever he wanted to do, to either npcs or the rest of the party. To my surprise, I seemed to be the only one at the table that cared about this, even when he constantly shut down my character's sister. Am I justified in wanting a fellow player to not be the only one making decisions (and letting my sister shine), or should I have just gone along as the rest of my party seemed to be ok with it? P.s. I left shortly after the rogue confirmed with the dm that his bear would level up and be staying at a similar power level

Alec Posta

Sup Justies, Pretty sure I'm in the wrong here but hoping for an out. Our party had just gone through a big fight in which our wizard PC died. In the process we also lost a random Quasit NPC that we had just met that session. DEVESTATED by the loss, we poured all of our resources into ressurecting the Quasit. I (a cleric) declared that if I rolled a natural 100 my god would reasurect the unnamed creature (this is not based on any mechanics, I just wanted it to happen and the DM said fine). As it turns out, God is real, and answered our prayers with a beautiful natty 100. Our DM (a heathen) scoffed in the face of this divine blessing and said it did not work. Look, Justices...we all grieve in different ways. Did we focus on the PC who died? No. Did we stick to the mechanics of the game? No. But did our passion pierce through the veil that separates us from the divine to answer our prayers? I think it did...and I hope the court can see that enough to rule that our Quasit be resurrected and our DM turned into a bird or something. Thanks!

Kyle the Chaotic Stupid Wolf

I seek absolution from Dice Christ. During a Tiamat module campaign I would relatively consistently fudge my rolls. I have sinned against my best friend, fishing buddy, and fellow veteran, the DM. Though the rolls were during fairly harmless passive rolls and didn't affect combat. I was playing a Warforged Paladin who only spoke Celestial and was "brought to life" a la Frosty the Snowman rules but with a holy sigil of five good aligned deities. The Paladin was taught some Common mistranslated purposefully by the party's Rogue for example, the word "plug" was a battle cry and the Paladin would yell it before battle. The Paladin survived the final battle against Tiamat after Tiamat targeted my Paladin from the jump bc one of the phrases he learned from the Rogue to tell Tiamat was "Bite my shiny metal ass" which he yelled at Tiamat. I've been a bad boy and need to be punished.

Lord Conqueeftador I

G’day honourable justices Axford, Murphy and Tanner and the pitiful bailiff Odd Job Snake, I present the case of the pissed off Cleric. In the game I am playing in I play a cleric. We are currently infiltrating a captured castle we had to abandon in a previous session that was overrun by one of our BBEGs to save this kingdoms dragon Queen. Since our party is only three strong we wnlisted the help of some of our NPCs or so I thought. Little did I know that some of these NPCs were PCs from the previous campaign and a previous one shot we had when I was unable to attend our regularly scheduled game. My issue is that one of our players is playing 3 NPC including a dragon from the one shot. While I have some issue with them playing 3 PCs at once my bigger issue is with how their dragon is treating my Cleric. After some tense exchanges the dragon has taken to attacking my Cleric if they give a little too much lip. For example after the dragon proclaimed “I would be happy to eat him” my cleric responded with “you could try and then maybe I could show you why they call me The Dragon Slayer” referencing the white dragon my Cleric basically one shotted with a Harm spell on our (attempted) stealth flight to the castle. The Dragon lashed out attacking my character for over 20 dmg, I thought it was fair game, death threat for death threat, at the end of the day were still on a mission to save their queen and I’m the only healer. There were a few other situations where they attacked me again for a simple jape and they simply watched me slowly get eaten by a carnivorous plant without lifting a finger to help, I was struggling since the party told me to focus on healing so I had no real offensive spells to defend myself and my Cleric is neither strong nor dextrous enough to escape without an exceptional roll. Later in combat the other player got upset because I wasn’t healing their dragon EPC (extraPC) but I told them “the spell only heals NON HOSTILE creatures to my character, and you have been hostile, maybe think twice before attacking the only healer over mere words”. Justices, am I in the wrong for not healing this EPC? Why should the player get to play three characters when the third player and I are only playing one. The combat ended with the dragon still alive so they’re not dead (yet) but I wouldn’t miss them if they were in all honesty. Was I right for standing my ground or am I just being a stubborn Eladrin?

Ben Fleuter

To the honorable crit justices and their funny little clown boy, I bring you the case of the Missing Window. I was in a campaign where all of the player-characters were locals to a city where there had been a strange pattern of killings. The GM made a map for the city and made sure we all knew where our characters lived, who they knew, what their day jobs were, etc. I decided my cleric-in-training lived above the family shop with her mom and sisters. A few sessions in we got a tip that something strange was going on at a factory. Employees hadn't come home in days, and the outer gates were all locked. Well, my character's two-story home was on a hill right across the street from the shady factory. We decided to head there and stake the place out from an upper-story window. After hours of roleplaying the other characters meeting my character's family, failed attempts by the NPC sisters to flirt with our disinterested fighter, and being berated by my cleric's mom, we were finally allowed upstairs, only for the GM to say my house had no windows facing toward the factory, so we couldn't stake it out from there. We talked about getting on top of the roof, but were told that my character's mom wouldn't let us. After an entire session we ended up giving up on Operation Look Out A Window. Justices, was I stepping out of bounds as a player by defining where a window was in my house? If so, should the GM have told me "you can't see the factory from your house" before we spent an entire session there? Please, help me put this windowless wrongdoing to rest. -B

feoran97

To the Ultimate Supreme Crit Justices, and the Baliff, I think their name is 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.

JessMayWin

May it please the judges et al. I bring the case of the bungled bathroom ambush. I once played in a group where we were tasked with kidnapping the daughter of a wealthy merchant to get information about a valuable artifact - the only problem was, according to the DM, 'she never leaves her mansion and has at least 2 guards with her at all times'. We spent around 2 sessions trying to solve this issue in a variety of ways, which the DM continued to shoot down (can we infiltrate the merchant's militia and try and get on her guard shift? No. Start a fire at her estate to smoke her out? No. You get the idea). In desperation I suggested that I, the bard, polymorph into a fly and try to sneak through a crack in the window while she was on the loo and then dimension door out of the mansion, as I reasoned that surely she would have to be alone while doing her business. The DM flat out refused, saying the guards would also accompany her to the toilet. The whole thing left us feeling pretty.... crap.... to be honest. I humbly ask the court - would someone being guarded at all times expect their guards to be with them when they're on the can, or was my idea, as gross as it was, a viable one? How do you deal with a DM who seems to have a very specific idea of how a problem should be solved? p.s. after this same in-game day continued with no further success for another 2 SESSIONS i followed Murph's cardinal rule and got some new friends to play with

h moon

wife here!! pls help

Pranav Kiran

Highly honoured Baliff Jake and not-quite-as-highly honoured but still held in high esteem Justices; I come to you with a question of mechanics. My party (Owlin monk + Shadar-Kai fighter) and I (Aasimar paladin) were infiltrating an enemy camp to liberate some prisoners. It was decided that, as a big glowy winged guy, I would be a poor sneak but an excellent distraction, and so I flew above the encampment spewing stereotypical Paladin lines while my party snuck in the back. At some point, my party was spotted, so I flew down and landed on a building my DM told me was 10ft tall in order to use Compelled Duel to buy precious time. Justices - I was willing to have spears thrown at me. I was expecting enemies to climb up the building (none were close enough to do it in one round without dashing - I calculated). But my DM had an Orc run to the side of the building, jump without expending movement, and grab me to pull me down to the ground. He called for opposing strength checks - I argued it should be a grapple. He did not relent. Without being able to add my proficiency modifier, I lost. I was pulled down to the ground, quickly beaten unconscious, and the DMPC druid who's people we were saving had to save me. I ask - should I have been able to roll Athletics vs the Orc? Was my undignified unconsciousness undeserved? I humbly await your ruling.

Lord Conqueeftador I

Oh mighty Dice Christ I confess to you a sin. 8 years ago I decided to try my hand at DMing for the first time and I had created my own session zero adventure based loosely on The Count of Monte Cristo. The session went so well my players wanted to continue into the first session of the Dragondeep module we were going to play and so we did. However at the end of the session one of my min maxed to hell players rolled at nat 1 on a wisdom save vs an intellect devourer, ultimately rendering them a vegetable. My player had spent the last week and a half building this paladin going back and forth with me, I asked him to roll a religion save setting the DC at 20 in my mind. Oh what folly I should have double checked their stats, they had a negative 1 to religion. They rolled, nat 19, mod 18 everyone at the table looked up at me for my reaction. I narrated as the fire from the braziers in the cavern burst to an emerald green and shot forth encircling the paladin burning the intellect devourer away and restoring his intelligence back to its original value. Forgive me dice christ for fudging the DC, after 9 hrs of play, and forgetting my players stats, I just figured their paladin would have had a positive modifier on religion.

Sam Ross

To the illuminated justices of the Crit, and the Bailiff hidden in the shadowy corners where he belongs, I bring you the case of the Absent Duergar Princess. I was running an adventure where the PCs landed at an island to rescue a shipwrecked sailor, and as the PCs first arrived they went to the local bar to meet a contact. One PC struck up a conversation with the Barkeep, asking about anything strange they'd seen, any odd people, standard stuff. I fed them the plot hook to send them into the middle of the island, and then for flavor also mentioned that a Duergar Royal wedding party had come through a couple weeks before, en route to the mainland. Just a story flair of no consequence. Justices. This was a mistake. The Party latched onto the Duergar Princess, asking details about her, the wedding, her companions, the underark. The PCs had the right plot hook, but were intentionally setting it down to chase after this crew of grumpy subterranean dwarves who, to be clear, I didn't describe being in any kind of distress or in need of intervention. I had to strong arm the party back onto the adventure path, and could tell they were upset that the Duergar Princess plot was a dead end. Justices, was I in the wrong?

Michaela Z

Dear Dice Deacons and that little rat, I have a confession for Dice Christ. I work at a local library that has study rooms, which patrons can reserve for 2 hours small events. My coworkers and I always shit-talk those who overstay their welcome in the rooms, especially near closing. I have a new gaming group after a year long dry-spell from d&d, that has been struggling to find a regular place to host, so I excitedly recommended my library as a free, convenient option. The session was going great, but was clearly running long, & I knew that the library was about to close. However, I hadn’t taken a turn in combat yet, so I held my tongue, so my trickery cleric had the chance to work her shadowy magics. In the end, we ended up leaving 5 minutes late, delaying my coworkers from locking up & starting their weekend. As I walked out, all my fellow librarians pointed at me and chanted “SHAME, SHAME, SHAME”. I am now forever burdened with the knowledge that I am “that guy” all librarians speak of in frustrated whispers. So I ask ye diviners of the dice, can I be forgiven for being so eager to play I deliberately loss track of time, or should I quit my job as to not again show my shameful visage in the sacred halls of my city librarian? I lay my neck at your sword point.

Jiggy Merlino

To the resplendent justices and joey I think his name was, I bring you the case of the itsy bitsy barbarian. A few years ago I was DMing my first campaign during Covid for 3 of my friends remotely as we all live in different parts of the country. Since I didn’t have a lot going on at the time I had poured a ton of time into the campaign, homebrewing a setting, making maps and a complex political conflict for my characters to navigate. The issue arose after my 3 players had helped to defend a village from a band of orcs that had come to destroy it. In the aftermath, 2 of my players (let’s call them Steve the Fighter and Bob the Warlock) began investigating the orcs and talking to townsfolk to figure out why the attack had occurred and thus advancing to the plot (yay!). Unfortunately my 3rd PC (let’s call him Cory the Barbarian) decided the best use of his time was to throw as many orc bodies as he could into the town well. I had an NPC comment that maybe he could pile and burn the corpses somewhere else as that was the main water source for the village to which Cory responded “I attack that little twerp talking to me”. Luckily Steve the fighter stepped in to stop a new massacre beginning and after a short struggle and a contested athletics check, Cory the barbarian himself took a trip down the well. Judges, I’ll admit I was a bit nervous at the conflict, but spirits at the virtual table seemed high, I was clocking smiles and laughs over video so I figured I could let the in-party problem solving play out. After all, both Cory and Steve were middle school teachers IRL, surely their conflict resolution skills from their day to day would help them rise to the occasion and create a fun story moment before continuing the story. I was wrong. Judges, what came next was 20 straight minutes of Steve the soldier trying to talk Cory the Barbarian out of trying to kill him and everyone in the village, all while the barbarian repeatedly tried to climb out of the well and was repeatedly pushed back down as he neared the top in a display of some of the worst rolling on Cory the Barbarian’s party that I’ve ever seen. Both sides became more and more frustrated with the other until the players themselves were yelling at each other with such intensity that I couldn’t get a word in if I wanted to. It culminated with our fighter saying, out of character, “alright dude well since you don’t want to have a playable character why don’t our characters fight to the death next week and whoever loses just leaves the campaign”. They both left the voice call and Bob the warlock and I were left speechless, wondering how and why this happened. the campaign fizzled after that but I’ve always wondered if there could have been a resolution. Could I have done more to prevent my characters from spinning out of control, or were my characters always bound to clash due to our barbarian deciding to be a murder hobo at a less than convenient moment? I humbly await your judgement. -Jiggy

Phyrexian Librarian

To the supreme crit justices and Jack (Jackstices?), I bring the case of the Campaign That Just Won't End. My friend group and I have been playing in a nearly six year long campaign set in Theros, the Magic the Gathering world inspired by Ancient Greece. We've gone all the way from level 3 to 15, finding legendary weapons and receiving godly boons, in our quest to defeat an evil planeswalker trying to become a god. The problem is that, due to real life, I will be moving to a new country and a new time zone soon, and because I'm also the host for our games, that likely means that if the campaign continues at all, I won't be a part of it. My minotaur paladin will never get his chance to face his patron, die a hero, and have songs sung about him. Our DM keeps adding new side activities for us to do instead of the main quest, our table always wants to do all of the side activities, and now they're starting a second campaign to play as well. I know real life gets in the way of this hobby, but what do I do? How can I convince my group to wrap up this epic quest before I leave?

Maddie

Dearly beloved justices, but even less so beloved bailiff- two years ago, my friend and I joined a dnd game online. Fast forward to four months ago, the dm and I are now happily dating and very much in love! We assured the rest of the players that I would receive no favoritism or spotlight hogging, but that isn’t completely true. Since we started dating, my boyfriend has started telling me all the secrets of his campaign unprompted. This includes: what monsters we’ll be fighting each week, cool homebrew abilities he gave them, the loot they’ll drop, traps we’ll encounter, puzzles we’ll have to solve and their answers, bits and pieces of lore we have yet to uncover, and more. When I ask him why he’s telling me all this, he says “because I want to get your opinion, I want to make sure it’s balanced/fun/challenging”. Justices, how do I balance being supportive, while wanting to return to only having player knowledge about the campaign? He’s so excited about his game, and I do love hearing him talk about it, but at the same time it’s hard for me to separate my character’s knowledge with my own. I have to be silent during traps and puzzles because I already have the answers. I go into every fight knowing exactly how the enemy is going to destroy us. Should I continue to keep quiet or tell my boyfriend I don’t want to talk about his campaign out of session anymore?

Clever Innuendo

I wanted to humbly suggest if we could make mini-cases for rapid-fire arbitration, like "is a flying broom being 'carried' when some teleports while using it, or would it get left behind", little stuff like that which doesn't need a lot of drama.

Aaron Thomas

To the supreme Crit justices and that guy who guest Stars on 8 bit sometimes, I bring to you an update on the Youncle case. If you remember from last time I told my uncle to kick rocks and the justices suggested I start DMing for the group, so I did. What follows is a small account of the crap that happened. My Youncle decided he wanted to play a paladin which I was cool with, until he informed me that he wanted to mix and match different oaths to make an OP character, which I was adamantly against, but after weeks of him never ending calling and texting me about it I finally gave in. What he ended up creating was a paladin that had on average 23 AC and always had advantage on attacks. He then sent me a magic item he wanted which was a +1 shield that allowed him to cast Haste on himself once per long rest. I again adamantly said no but after another round of calls and texts I gave in just so my other players could enjoy the game without constant whinning. What happened after that was his paladin could in dire moments have 25 AC and get 3 attacks with advantage to burn smites on. He became near invincible and the only time I was able to even come close to take him down was when the party fought a mindflayer and everyone failed the intelligence save ( all hail dump stats) afterwards he complained that I built that combat specifically to target him and that I should just get better at DMing if I couldn't handle it. To which I told him to again kick the fuckin rocks. And we haven't played since. We are still close (while there is an age gap I am 37 and he is 44) but we decided we can't play dnd together anymore because of obvious reasons. So I ask again........was I justified in telling him to kick rocks or should I have just stuck with it. P.S I'm still DMing have been running a Supernatural inspired campaign for a couple years now and it's awesome.

Dev_online

To the almighty Justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy. Oh hey Jake didn’t see you there, can you grab us some coffees? You’re the best. Justices, I bring to you the case of the Roleplay Repeater. My friend DM’d a session for us awhile back, we all brought adult beverages (badass, I know) and about halfway into the session he had a few too many beers and with a glazed look in his eyes he only mumbled the word “roleplay” for I kid you not, almost an hour until we ended the session early, it was super awkward but all good. A year or so later, he DM’d a classic “castle heist” one shot after we finished my campaign and after talking to all of his NPC’s/visiting all of the shops in town he just says “you can’t go to the castle yet…roleplay.” For, you guessed it, the next hour, with nothing lined up for us. It even got to the point where our Druid just started killing NPC’s out of boredom, Mind you, we were all sober this time. Justices, am I in the wrong for not wanting this friend to DM for us anymore?

Jorge Fuentes

I throw myself before the justices on high and the even more elevated bailiff, I bring to you a tale of woe. In our Star Wars Force and Destiny game there were three players, me, my friend who I’ll call C, and the DMs partner at the time I’ll call Y, as we go through his campaign we fight high level droids, even grievous himself, but the whole time my character (human padawan) was slowly being led down the path to the dark side, eventually we encounter a fight between a nexu and an acklay, justices. What happened next was what I regard as the worst moment in any campaign I’ve ever played. C challenged the animal keeper leading us to fight both monsters, as I was targeting the nexu (gross ass tiger looking thing) Y started getting IrL upset cause they thought it was cute, then the npc who was the stand in for the DM (his words) got destroyed so they just in turn stopped fighting, in order to get anything done I used my one deus ex Machina we are allowed to bring back the npc so that Y would do anything productive in the fight, and eventually when it became apparent we weren’t gonna win our DM just rocket launcher’d the enemies to death. To this day I still get flack because I’m still salty over the fight and consider the rocket launchers as a cop out, but also it was 2 years ago and I frankly shouldn’t feel this heated about this truly awful combat. So I’ll leave it to you justices! Am I justified at still feeling so scandalized by this or should I just let it float down the river of time

BigComfyChesterfield

I humbly prostrate myself before the benevolent Bailiff and Justices. I humbly ask the court, should we not all be on pencil and paper or all on applications??? My DM has expressed that we all play on paper, which I begrudgingly accepted and subsequently learned how to do. Alas two members still play via application at the table and consistently have issues of not knowing their character sheets and constantly mixing 2024 and 2014 rules. My DM has breached the topic thrice with them but he is a kind soul and has not pressed the issue, even though myself (apparently DMs pet) and two other members, have brpught forward frustrations. I ask this higj court, should a table stand divided or should it be unified in its application of paper or apps?

Figgy the Cat

I come crawling to the court hoping for justice in the highest form. I bring you the case of ex best friends play. I am playing in a 7 month game with my best friend for life, 1 ex best friend and 2 others. We have had trouble outside the game as housemates, mowing the lawn, talking shit to random people behind their backs, etc. Right before our most recent game, I just got home from work and was ready to DM when the problem player/ex best friend hurried the other 2 from their cars (who arrived at the same time I did) and bombarded me with their pent up feelings of anger and frustration of having me as a friend/housemate. The 3 other players watched through the windows as this happened. THANKFULLY, I had forgotten my notebook at a nearby place, so I drove back and gave myself some time/space to get my head back on right to DM. The game went smoothly and no problems with the player, besides being super quiet and normally never really role-playing. I ask the judges, what should I do? Our lease ends in 4 months, and we will not continue to be housemates/friends. Could I end the game with them after the next arc? Would it be too awkward to host and have them not play?

Soup Sandwich

I throw myself at the mercy of the church. I play in an d&d open play group where I helped my friend with some of the rules when we sat at the same table. (It may be important to note we weren't outside friends. We met at this group and did not hang out separately but I drove them home from sessions and got along great when we played together.) They played a dragonborn paladin and wanted to add smite on top of their breath attack. While it was neither of our turns in combat, they leaned over and asked if I knew if they could use smite on their breath attack. I didn't know so I started to look it up. It got to their turn and they asked the DM if they could add the smite to their breath attack. The dm also did not know and was trying to google it when I piped up that I figured it out. Rules as written, smite has to be added to a melee weapon attack so it could not be added to breath attack. They instead ran up to the giant worm we were fighting and smite it with their trident which did a good amount of damage but not as much as they would've gotten with their breath attack plus smite. I feel really bad because it seemed like the DM was about to allow it if their phone took too long to load. (We play in a basement with very bad internet so this was probably going to happen) I repent my rules lawyer sins and await your judgement.

Pseudo

To the honorable supreme crit justices and that other guy who hangs out sometimes. I present to you the case of the overenthusiastic druid I'm currently DM'ing Curse of Strahd and we started with the notorious Death House module so that my party of 3 could get some experience with new classes they haven't played before. We're close to the end of the module and my players are standing before a desecrated altar while evil spirits surround them chanting "one must die! one must die!" Now… the party’s druid, and irl partner of the party’s paladin, had just learned of the rule where when a wild shaped druid loses their HP they get turned back into their normal form instead of going down. So, as a way of satisfying the evil spirits and solving the puzzle, the druid suggest the following: “what if I just shape shift and let you guys murder me on the altar! I’ll just shift back and everything will be fine!” My jaw literally dropped. Never in a million years would I have thought of something like this and I was incredibly impressed with the druid’s creativity. However… I also felt like the evil spirits of the altar wouldn’t be fooled by this if no-one actually died. And more selfishly, refusing to sacrifice a party member was to lead to a boss fight I was excited to run. So I nix’d the idea, but I’ve felt guilty about it ever since. Justices, should I have allowed the druid to let their friends and family murder them?t! was there a way I could have honored their creativity without just shutting down the idea?

Elizabeth Gunn, sickly but cruel

To the sensual justice Axford, the stalwart justice Tanner, and the indefatigable justice Murphy, as well as the submissive and obedient bailiff Jorts. I'm a new D&D player and did a one shot recently with friends. We were coming up on the finale, about to throw down against a group of 10 baddies. I rolled first in the initiative and targeted their artificer in the center of the group. I crit with a fireball and pointed out (like the nasty little teacher's pet I am) that the DM had said the artificer had explosives on his person and that all the baddies were within 15 feet of each other. He paused for a long time. He then described the artificer absolutely blowing the fuck up and taking every single accomplice out with him. I was, um, not dignified in victory. Nobody was mad at me but I'm mildly haunted by the guilt of robbing everyone else of our final battle in this six hour one shot we played. Should I have kept my mouth shut about proximity and explosives and let us all play out the battle, or am I justified in being a a grabby rules weasel? With overweening humility, Elizabeth

Cassi

If it may please the court.  Your honors, the bailiff  (kinda my favorite): I am a player in a year-long game with 4 friends from work And the case of Roleplay Revenge: Cut it Out Steven. Our DM is awesome - we had just finished an arc where we got to see another player character's background and all the sweet drama that comes with it.  The next up was visiting my hometown, but a surprise swerve landed us in the hometown of the friend, let's call him Steven, whose village seems to be dying slowly.  I wasn't upset, the storyline seems pretty mysterious and cool, but then another friend in the same group told the rest of us what was up - Steven and the DM had been in a situationship, and I guess Steven decided to end it to be with another girl.  I can say honestly, I had no idea.  The game seemed the same, there wasn't any tension online, but....with this knowledge the campaign seems to be taking a turn because literally in every session we find out someone close to Steven's character is dead or dying!  His mentor, his mother are dead, and now his best friend is missing (a girl who apparently loved his character for a long time but he didn't notice YIKES), and his father had come down with an incurable magical disease?  Steven seems to think it's part of the drama, but I know the DM through other campaigns, and she has never just killed people off so thoroughly.  I mean I know it isn't technically my drama, but I'm starting to sweat a little every time we meet. I feel like there will be a point where we will all have to choose sides. I ask the judges, in this scenario should we talk to the DM?  Talk to Steven?  I just wanna play DnD where nobody is stabbing their ex's imaginary characters I guess. Am I wrong for feeling this way or should I just let it play out?  Please judges.  Help. 

Nolan Kaiser

I throw myself at mercy of the church and that guy who wrote the music for La La Land. I dm for my family including both my parents and my two younger brothers. I am currently running a modified Hoard of the Dragon Queen module as I don't have the time to run a full homebrew campaign and have discovered that the beginning of that campaign is absolutely brutal. To keep a long story short, my youngest brother's character, a level 2 sorcerer, found himself face to face with his certain demise. I am unfortunately blessed by Dice Christ to roll high, even when I'm a dm. I rolled my 2 attacks against him, and crit twice, and with the prerolled damage I had he would have certainly died. And so, he did. Gakabogo the sorcerer was unceremoniously murdered while the rest of the party fled, and I tried to give him a death that was still satisfying. I am not asking for forgiveness, rather, I am asking that you damn my name and curse me to roll low so that this may never happen to one of my players ever again. I await your judgement. P.S. We are still playing the campaign, and I continue to womp my family with my rolls. It’s seriously ridiculous

Elizabeth Gunn, sickly but cruel

This is amazing. I misunderstood it for a second, I thought you were saying he was a PC who, when prompted to roleplay, just said the word "roleplay", which would be even more deranged, but this is still glorious.

Big Sack Dragon

Justices, I just started my first campaign. Mad props to y’all, wouldn’t be here if not for Caldwell’s Drawga series long ago. Anyways I made my artificer the boots of Leonidas, which he can use to cast that defenestration spell Murph used once per short rest. Is that OP? Also forgive me of my railroading sins. I even named the Jason Statham NPC R.R.Stacey. I gotta stop. Love you bye

TheArcaneAttorney

Dear Bailiff Jack and the Supreme Crit Stack, I come to you with a case of rules/spirit of the rules lawyering. My group recently played The Pudding Faire campaign where I played a lvl 3 halfling thief rogue with the character backstory of “Bilbo Baggins but the ring corrupted him and now he wants his groove back.” (Jack, the groove in this case means the ring). Admittedly, I stole a lot of shit, which makes sense for a thief rogue with a +9 sleight of hand. But the constant thefts weren’t the issue. It was one roll in particular that set another player off. I tried to steal something from a certain story-relevant NPC and the DM said it was nigh impossible with a DC30 but he’d let me try. Another player immediately cast Guidance on me and rolled a 4 on his d4. I rolled my d20 and got a 19. With my +9 to sleight of hand it totaled a 32. Judges, we went nuts, but one player was silently incredulous. He then argued he didn’t think anything above a 30 should even be possible/allowed for a lvl 3 character. Now, I could understand this attitude in a long form campaign, but this was a short 3-shot without consequence or leveling. That said, was my friend wrong to argue for fifteen minutes over the merits of a lvl 3 getting a +9 to anything, or was I wrong to min-max Bilbo Baggins into a burglar with the power to impress Tom Bombadil?

a

To the mighty supreme crit justices Murphy, Axford, Tanner, and that other weird thing in the room with them, I come before you with a cold case of carnal calamity. Long ago, I was dm'ing a campaign for some friends, as well as a person I had been on some dates with who would later become my spouse. The campaign was, to my knowledge, overall well received. Recently that same group has been trying to assemble for a new campaign. However, when I offered to DM again (being the only person to regularly DM) I was met with some real pushback and razzing, on the grounds that I showed "preferential treatment" to my partner. The treatment in question? I helped her build her character (as she had no DnD experience back then) and "made her way too OP". To be fair, I did give her a sorlock build with an aboleth patron that featured heavily in the plot, but we weren't exactly mechanics focused players or min-maxers. She was strong, but not soloing bosses strong. I did not give any other players character creation help, but neither did they ask for it! I ask you, am I an unfair DM using my powers to get married and subvert my other players, or am I being wrongfully razzed in the first degree? Thank you, except to anyone with a J name.

Lauryn

To the honorable supreme crit - the comedic heavyweights Justice Assford, SurfNMurph, and Tanney…… and Baliff Jake. I bring you the case of falling damage in water and the water walking spell. Where this begins - My wonderful players had an epic battle against mechanical dragon. One player cast water walking on the entire team pre battle. During battle, another one of them decided to mount the dragon because they’re a melee fighter and naturally wanted to get up in the dragons business. Well, the dragon flung him off, and since the battle was on the coast of a lake, he asked if he could aim for the water, to which I (the DM) said sure - make me a Dex check. He succeeded and promptly landed in the water. I ruled that hitting water from 100+ ft would be equivalent to hitting land, but he argued since he had water walking, he should at least take half damage because the spell would attempt to keep him on the surface of the water. Reading the spell, it says “move across any liquid surface as if it were harmless ground”, so I ruled that landing on the water would react like landing on the ground. This player almost died from drowning (he was stunned) but ultimately ended up barely surviving. My table still argues that the water walking should’ve reduced the amount damage he took. Judges - please settle this one and for all.

Dev_online

Omg that would be insane/hilarious

Augi5000

Dear esteemed, noble judges and the guy with a substack who reads these, I was at a bar with a couple friends last month when they started talking shit about how good they would be at D&D, despite never having played a TTRPG before. These two happen to be total chaos gremlins with zero patience for rules, so I said "Bet?" and proceeded to run them through an EXTREMELY rules-lite session of a goblin battle encounter. One player said she wanted to "stab things" and the other said he wanted to "shoot things," so I made up stats in my head for a rogue and a gunslinger and scrambled through the encounter. We had a good laugh, but these two whined, complained, cheated, argued with me, and were full-blown murder hobos the entire time. So I was extremely surprised when over the next few days they repeatedly asked me to DM a campaign for them. The thing is, that impromptu session had been very stressful for me, and I didn't feel comfortable putting the time and effort into running a campaign for them if they weren't going to respect me or the game. So I told them that I would DM for them on ONE condition: they had to put in actual research to create their own characters and make legit character sheets (which I offered to help with.) The response I got gutted me. One of them immediately came back with a screenshot of chatGPT asking it to "create the perfect D&D character and sheet" and its generated results. Taking that as my answer, I said "Ok, I'm not DMing for you then." He hit back to justify it by saying he was just "trying to skip past the tedious, boring parts so we could get to the actual game." I was so hurt and upset by this I had to back off and avoid them for a few days just so I could cool down enough to respond. When I finally did and explained my stance, I got chewed out for "ignoring them" and "taking a silly game too seriously." Judges, am I in the wrong for being too strict and turning them down? Or was I justified in trying to protect myself from all the red flags these players were throwing? Thank you, and I humbly await your ruling. Augi

BlondeBandit

To my favorite voices in my head, I present the case of Teen Love Betrayal: I am in a campaign with old friends where we play our 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 our past, however, we aren't dating - we're just "talking." During some downtime, John announces that he's doing some completely nonessential hunting in the woods our DM has specifically warned us about while the rest of the party goes to the bar. As the party's ranger, I secretly 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. Through a series of bad rolls, 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, yell we should get out of here, and then misty step away. But John says, "We can take them," so I turn around and join him. Justices - we could not, in fact, take them. This became readily apparent when John's fireball and my crit still didn't bloody a single minocerv. On John's next turn, saying nothing to me, either in character or out, he 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 then gored to death. I look at John, shocked, and he asks, "What? What did you expect me to do?" The minocervs 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, roleplaying a lighthearted drinking scene at the bar. Justices, I know I am not blameless in my demise - I made my choices - but I come to your court to ask you: was John right to try to save himself at my expense, because, as he 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. Our characters know that death isn't permanent 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.

Hawthorn

Howdy gentle judges and the rough-and-tumble bailiff, I bring to you the case of the stonewalling DM, and ask for your mighty and infallible judgement. My group has been playing for over a year now, and mostly it's been great, except for one recurring annoyance. In session, if the players ask questions about aspects of the scene, the DM often won't answer - instead, she shrugs and says things like "you're asking me?" or "who's to say". She won't answer or ask for a roll until we've framed our questions as statements and declared a roll we want to try. It's like reverse Jeopardy rules up in here! As an example, we infiltrated a villain's hideout while Big Bad Boy was out doing big bad things, and in searching it we found a secret room. The DM described it as not being used in while, and full of magic tomes covered in layers of dust. I asked the DM, "do the books look like they're decaying or falling apart?" and the DM said that line, "you're asking me?" with a big dollop of sass on top. She didn't ask me for investigation or perception, or ask me to clarify an action I was taking. Instead, I had to say, "I investigate the books" before she would give me any description at all. I eventually had enough and raised the issue with the DM privately. She takes the stance that it's my job as a player to state actions and declare the rolls I want to make, but I haven't seen it done this way before. In all other games I play, DMs respond to exploratory questions by telling the player what's obvious without a roll, and ask them to make a roll for anything that passive perception wouldn't cover. If needed the DM might ask, "do you approach the shelves?". The DM sees games as player driven and her role as passive, creating a space for us to attempt to interact with. I argued that's more like a King's Quest game than a tabletop game, and that asking questions about things we perceive is an implied action, but the DM isn't swayed. Am I wrong to use questions to learn more about scene? Or to rephrase it as a statement, I ask for your wisdom regarding whether my DM is right to say "you're asking me?" or if I'm right to wonder, "who else can I ask?"

Bryce Jackson

Dear humble and kind judges and the soso baliff i bring to the court the case of the baby cow at church. My group has been playing for roughly two years now, this happened in one of the first few sessions we had at the climax of our first arc. The party has a minotaur paladin who really loves water(no real relevance but a fun fact) and a basic slacker wizard plus a few other players who dont really matter to this story. The players were stealing documents from a corrupt churches basement and to avoid any suspicious behavior they came up with a plan to reduce the minataur and strip him so it just seemed like a cow found its way into the church because its a farm town and that made sense to them. I didn't stop them however I was clear it was going to take some good roles across different skills to pull it off. The party clears one room in this basement to use as hq, then send the naked cow ahead who then immediately roles a 2 on deception. The plan ends horribly with the players getting stuck and the whole church on lock down. To which they begin adamantly defending themselves that even with a bad deception why would they immediately spaz out and start fighting. They all survived (barely) and they still kinda got what they came for. But with alot more violence and close calls that could have easily been avoided. Nobody truly had hurt feelings but to this day my players still bring it up to razz me. So I ask the court, in what world would this plan have worked and what dm would have given them more than one chance? Please strike my players down with the harshest of punishments so they may never bask in dice Christ's light again.

Adrian Naber

To the most Holy Pontifex's of the Church of Crit, and the altar boy that is somehow also fitting into this confessional. I humbly beseech thee for a performance of Last Rites given to the campaign of Darthon. It was a year and a half long campaign started over Covid with 6 players and myself DMing and while none of us were busy in those cursed times the weekly schedule wasn't too much on me but as we started to return to our capitalist hellscape alas the sessions began to peter out. Since then two of the players got divorced, one of those divorcees remarried another player in the group, myself and my beautiful partner who was also a player had a baby and I started a career in construction. I believe it's safe to say this campaign is dead. However I also have not felt the creative spark to start a new campaign since then, the ghost of this 18th level arc stopped right before the confrontation with the Eldritch horror set to consume Darthon haunts me and will not allow me peace. Please benevolent high priests exorcise this restless spirit and allow me to move forward with my love of the game without my sins weighing on my spirit. It is time to lay Darthon to rest so new worlds may rise. Thank you

Adrian Naber

P.S. Y'all killed it at the last Portland live show and look forward to the next one

Chef Julie B

May Dice Christ hold you and yours in their velvet-lined dice box. I have a confession, and it involves nerfing children. I taught a daytime summer camp of DnD 5e for 11-13 years olds. This is exactly the dark omen you think it is. The group I got were the kids whom were forced into the camp by their parents, in addition to one try-hard kid who thought you could ‘win’ DnD. They chose to be the muscle for an organized crime family, with a kobald fighter, kenku rogue, elf bard, and the try-hard was a human wizard. All the other kids were slowly getting into it, even getting into roll playing. I was genuinely stoked. Then the wizard spoke up, before walking into the lair and confronting the BBEG: “I cast Magic Stone, and use the pebble to shoot through the temples of all my party members.” I tried to dissuade him. He was standing within 25 feet of all targets, and to my absolute horror the range was 60ft. I had cleave in play. I, and the rest of the party, were about to get wiped and ruin the game for all of the kids. The wizard went into an evil monologue, saying he was going to claim the MacGuffin relic for himself and begin his journey to be a lich (news to me). I panicked, weighed my options and made my choice- I gotta ice this kid. I searched lich stats, made the MacGuffin belong to another lich, and had the lich HAMMER this kid into the ground, very literally. The other kids were ecstatic that they got to keep playing, while my wannabe lich kid was stuck in an oubliette that I used Thunderwave to shove him in. Your holinesses, did I transgress in nerfing this kid, or did I save the summer?

Mike Marchetti

To the honorable Justices and not so ripper, Jack, I come to you with a property case. I have a detached garage, and while I was rearranging some boxes today, I heard a buzzing in the Halloween decorations. Thinking it was a shorting decoration of some sort, I opened it, and yep, it was a big ol box of fluffy bees. Court, I come to you asking, do they own my garage now? The box is a given, but there is a decent amount of square footage im loosing due to their imperialism. I recognize this is not a traditional case, I think I am just having a little disassociation about the bees, I failed whatever fear check this was.

David Donnel

May it please the court. My wife wants full custody of our two children with no visitation and I don’t believe this is in the best interest of the children. I think alternating xmas and every other weekend visits are more than fair. What is the proper custody/visitation agreement? (We all used to play D&D sometimes.) Thank you, and please let me know if you want to conference with the kids.

Matthew Rudland Barfoot

Darkness for one and all, Dear justices and the esteemed bailiff Jake, blessings be upon thee. I request judgement from the court. I play in a five person group, across multiple campaigns. One of our players often plays a nobleman wizard, a shadowish warlock, or mysterious sorcerer. The character choices do not bother me, as we all play to our skill sets. Lady and gentlemen, this player only casts darkness, and does it every session, especially when we are in a room, where we are either chasing foes or fighting a boss. This has lead to either everyone missing multiple attacks / being unable to go on their turn and players taking damage or the enemies getting away. To make matters worse, the player then has nothing to do on his turn as he says "I can't see through the darkness" and refuses to cancel the spell. Judges, is this acceptable? Am. I being a salty guy or does this player need to be punished. Most of the time the darkness resolves itself and we push on, but his 'side-splitting-shenanigans' that we exasperated at draws out combat or the story unnecessarily purely for his own amusement. I have wondered whether this player actually understands how to play, as I often help him with his dyslexia and dyscalculia. I have called him out and he laughs saying "but you have to admit, it is funny". I await your judgement. Signed, the often or not Monk / Bard.

DoodBroMcManGuySir

MY DM TORE MY ARMS OFF? Good Morrow, my gracious juctices. And, I guess, the extremely stinky and gross bailiff Jacque... I have a case in which I feel my DM wrongfully stole my arms. And yes, I am not kidding. My Dm tore my characters arms off. For context, my character is blind like toph from ALTA, in which she has some vision but it's like outlines of things she can feel. Our group recently went to my father's house in the campaign and found a magical vault in which I stole a weird magical book (the necronomicon). After this we went to another party member's family's home to find out more info on the cult we were semi hunting. With this info we realized the book has more to do with the cult than we thought. With that information we decided to try and make our way into the magical dimension the book was from. Even though we had been talking about going to this dimension for a couple sessions our DM seemed very caught off guard when we decided that we were going this past session. She repeatedly tried to get us to go somewhere else but we were very determined. With that I decided to ask if I could create a portal with the book. Obviously I know the Nerconomicon has consequences so I asked if I rolled arcana could I better understand the spell. I rolled a natural 17 with a +6 so well over 20. She told me the consequence was quote "not great but not terrible" so with that and how high I rolled I assumed something minor. I cast the spell and she proceeded to describe how both my arms were torn from the sockets and morphed into the necronomicon. Making my character not only blind but armless. I was immediately upset but tried to stay calm. Mostly just having a 'stankface'. I'm sure she noticed as I she then started backpedalling and said I now had nubs forming from the magic of this different dimension, and that they were not great and the magic from them was going crazy. After the session everyone was making jokes but I think we all were upset by what happened and I just ended up leaving with the two party members I had drove with. In the car we all agreed it was wild and uncalled for. During the drive she messaged in our group chat and personally called me out saying if I was upset that we could talk about it. Which felt very bad to me as I felt like a spotlight was placed on me for being upset. Since then we have worked it out and come up with a better mechanic for the necronomicon going forward and the end of our last session was retconed out. But, my Gracious juctices, was I right to be mad and did my DM make a bad choice? P.S. I love you guys very much and I really hope you guys get to read this! Love, your humble viewer, Chrissi

Quack Dragon

To the honorable justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner, and Jank. I present the case of “Strahd v. His Own Portrait” I’m playing a 9th level wild magic sorcerer who is Strahd in a weakened state and missing his memories after being almost killed by Vecna. My party and I having just killed Baba Lysaga were searching through her hut when we came across a portrait of Strahd. I rolled history and remembered when I had the portrait commissioned and completed, I wanted it so began to take it off the wall. I was killed instantly and my magic items were vaporized as I was hit by what I think was a modified version of disintegrate. I asked if I could counter spell it my DM said yes, I rolled a 19. He then had me roll 2 Dex saves (DC 27) to save myself and the magic items I initially succeeded in saving myself but not my magic items until I remember that I had advantage bc of my Robe of the Arch Magi, I rolled again and succeeded on both rolls. My DM then had me roll again and if I succeeded it would only save my Staff of Power, I passed. My friend brought up later that my counter spell should have negated all of that and I think that if I had remembered the portrait that I would have remembered putting a spell into it, also my DM is a bit of stickler for the rules so it’s surprising that they’d modify disintegrate to destroy magic items as well. So justices was I fairly womped or do I deserve my magic items back.

Mnixon

Thank u Mr Jake

Kaleb Crowe

To the honorable doods in robes and uhhhh… anyway! I bring you the case of the shifting DC! Me and my friends were restarting a previous campaign with some new characters and some of the old ones due to losing some previous players. This was one by having a pc (the DM’s boyfriend at the time) suddenly reveal they were a bbeg the whole time and were basically rewriting time and space to send us all back to the beginning so we wouldn’t have met and stop us from trying to save the world. During this he was using magical chains to hold down most of the party while he did this. I (a orc barbarian who joined the party after they bested me in a gladiator pit) asked if I could try and pull free from the chains and was told I could roll. I rolled a 19 for a total of 25 and was told “oops, the DC was 26!” I was dejected until one of the other players reminded me I was in a rage and had advantage and the dm told me to roll again… judges I rolled a nat 20 for a 26! The table went wild and after we calmed down I told the dm I wanted to charge the bad guy. She told me that I didn’t break free. When I asked why she said she “needed me to just get over it because she wrote a story for this” and dejected I sat back and took the loss. To this day I’m adamant I should have at least been allowed to make a move or do something even if I just got taken away right after but she still insists I was “stealing the spotlight for her big moment and should have just not asked to roll if I didn’t want to fail”. Judges I ask you, was I wrong to want to have a cool moment for my character to go out swinging or should I have just sat back and listened? I humbly await you vicious judgement! p.s. from my friend that I was told to add! The PC that turned evil was also the one who specifically beat me in the pit when I joined the party

Jamison

Hi Justices and Jakestice (Derogatory or not as your honors see fit), I offer you a simple, ten year old case from a good group of friends: the flying barbarian’s strength checks. We were all pretty new to DND and TTRPGs in general. My friend Dave was DMing and in one session as we traversed the underdark with a group of fellow escaped prisoners, we came across a lava flow that barred our path. We settled on my character, a level 7 wizard gnome, casting fly on our 20 strength barbarian. He could then pick us up one at a time and fly us across the 25 foot wide flow of lava. This cost me a very precious third level spell (Pandering to justice Axford). Our DM, my genuinely good realworld friend Dave, turned to our barbarian and told him to start making strength checks. I was confused and countered that he wouldn't need a strength check to carry any of us. He had 20 strength. The DM said it was for the fly spell and I said the spell just lets you fly. It already has time and speed limits. We did not shout or fight for an hour. No one left the house or broke up (Though one of us was playing a different gender character and actually coming to terms with being trans. Hi Cay, love you.). We just trusted our friend and had fun. The barbarian raged, myself and our arcane trickster rogue misty stepped across and our monk managed to jump the thing himself. However, in the course of this, our weird lil NPC gambling addict deep gnome Jimjar, the only one of the prisoners we had escaped with that we actually liked, was dropped into the lava. He died. Even Dave the DM was heartbroken. We all liked the little weirdo and his random propositions for gambling on things. Dave the DM let us do some stuff to resurrect him a few sessions later, but this has always stuck with me. Justices, and possibly Jakestice, I ask, does a barbarian need to make strength checks to carry something while under the fly spell that he could carry normally if he were just walking? I throw myself at the mercy of the court and beg that you show some, but not too much leniency, to myself or Dave the DM. Jamison

barbaric conversationalist

To the benevolent justice Axford and her lackeys, I bring to you the Case of Language Woes. I play a game with my Canto (Cantonese) speaking friends. We enjoy playing with each other as we can swap between English and Canto, languages in which all of us have varying levels of fluency and ability in. We also sometimes speak in Mandarin and Malay. All of us can understand each other for the most part and are quite understanding and helpful in translating and correcting each other's pronunciation (after a bit of razzing for some particularly interesting pronunciations). Recently, my friend's (white) husband (married 6 months) has joined our game. Before he joined, we warned him about the multilingual aspect of our table. We even clarified that it was multilingualism at the table, not in game. He had said ok. However, since he joined, he has incessantly complained about us switching languages please. He make comments like "uh oh i'm gonna need English subtitles for this" and "English please for the kwai lo (white man) at the table thanks" and even "Wow, didn't realise I needed a two year Duolingo streak just to play". The worse of this came last session where the party was separated. The husband was faced with two doors labelled "sei" (death) and "choot" (out). He chose the death door and was killed by a power word kill. For me, it was kind of obvious that the DM had set up a test for the husband to see if he should keep playing with us. Was it brutal? Yes. Was it necessary? After 20+ sessions of his complaints, absolutely. The other players and I were trying to comfort him on the loss of his character but the husband just kept saying that his death was discriminatory. Justices of the Crit Court, was his death a necessary evil or should we have done a better job to allow for him to assimilate into the group? Should we have tried to keep to just English for him? I humbly await your decision and will enact any punishment you see fit, even it is on me.

Anna R

Dear Justices and Esteemed Bailiff Jake, I put forth an unusual case before you—one in which you are the defendants. This very evening I went on a bike ride and queued up a couple episodes of Trinyvale x Strahd to listen to on my ride. I had just crested the top of a tall hill when you began discussing gooning into overnight oats. Distracted by this frankly crass bit, I didn’t brake in time at the bottom of the hill and crashed my bike. The crux of my case is this: am I at fault for crashing my bike, or are the very justices (and bailiff) of this court to be held responsible for distracting me to the point of injury? Regardless of your ruling, you will be hearing from my lawyer soon.

Lady Jacqueline P

Emily's question about where my name came from reminded me that I wanted to submit Misty's case and no it has nothing to do with Hades from Hercules. Dear Supreme Justices and that handsome guy whose name is Jack or Jackie or something close to that may I present the case of Misty the Crispy Kitty. I was playing Misty as a tabaxi gunslinger in a Netherdeep campaign and she quickly became the party mom and voice of reason. About ten sessions in we came across a temple and went in to gather some information, but as temples are it was full of traps. Our cleric found a wall trap that required a wisdom save to slide through and Misty, our sorcerer and the cleric all passed. As we were exploring the cleric was randomly touching things and setting off more traps so we quickly tried to grapple him to stop it while we figured a way out. Claiming it was "what his character would do" the cleric attacked us and it turned to a round of "grapple," "break free" "grapple again." Reaching a door on the other side of the room the cleric opened it before thinking and without warning three flame skulls one killed the sorcerer and cleric in one round. Only one use of Second Wind saved Misty for another round but with no clue how to get out of the room she was dead in the next round. As Misty was only my second character ever I'm still not really sure if this was a fair combat or not, so I ask you justices was I in the wrong for being frustrated at this weird combat or was something in the combat broken between the cleric player and/or the DM? I leave it up to your justice should you so desire Justices.

Robert Snow

It's nice that the justices let Jonk have a turn with the computer.

Zoop

I dearly hope that despite the late submission of this truly upsetting & shocking case, it is still considered & brought before the justices by disreputable bailiff Jank. After all, even the average layman could clearly see that you are the much wronged victim of First Degree Negligent-Tomfoolery. Thus it is only just that the members of the court hold themselves wholly responsible for the damage done to you and (perhaps most importantly) your poor innocent bike as a consequence of their HIGHLY irresponsible & reckless descent into condemnable shenaniganry, the crude nature of which, to be frank, was quite unbecoming of trusted actors of the law, off-duty or otherwise😤 TDLR: This made me laugh out loud and I really hope the NADPOD gang gets the chance to enjoy it as much as I did but if they don’t, just know that my night was improved by its hilarity and also that I’m 100% on your side!🙏🫡

Zoop

I must apologize to you David for as I sit (virtually) before you now, feeling the humbling weight of a heart heavy with remorse, I confess to you that I initially had you pegged as a confused novice to the Court foolishly attempting to submit a case out outside of the good justices purview. As you can imagine, upon reading that final parenthetical clarification, I had quite a moment of justified mortification & self-dispensed abasement. Let this be a lesson for all, in judgement prior to finishing reading a case in its entirety 😔🙏 lol no but for real, your submission really tickled me-ESPECIALLY in the context of the slow but steady increase of progressively more & more questionably RPG/DnD-related cases submitted to & heard/debated by our beloved Supreme Crit Justices (and the infinitely shady bailiff Jonk ig)

Zoop

Hmm I feel like this miiiiight be outside the purview of this particular Courthouse. BUT, then again, who am I, a simple layman, to say what is and what is not, fit to be heard by the Good Justices of The Supreme Crit!? That is, after all, up to—and to that point, SOLELY up to—the discretion of the High Court’s very own Disgraced Former Multi-Time Interim-Justice & Globally Notorious Bailiff, Mr. Jink Humpwizz himself 🙏🫡

Denatonia (Haven)

Esteemed lords and lady, I present the case of the Forbidden Horse! A few sessions ago, our 5e campaign had a big mid-season finale fight. We had just reached lvl5, and as we approached the BBEG, my beloved paladin Esther cast "Find Steed" for the first time to help her in battle. Citing that he "didn't want to deal with an extra thing on the map", the DM randomly forbade this. (Note: his gf plays a druid in another campaign and frequently wildshapes/summons, and my ranger is also perfectly fine to fight with her dog, so this had no precedent. HIS paladin also recently summoned himself a steed). He said I should have discussed it with him first if I wanted to use Find Steed - a normal and common paladin spell. He's experienced and it wasn't a 'you'll be too powerful' panic moment. Am I right to be salty about this random decision? I also wouldn't ask if my cleric / wizard are allowed to have Cure Wounds / Magic Missile before I use them! PS: Esther died in the fight, Idk if a steed would have saved her but it definitely would have helped. The party knows of one resurrection scroll and are planning to one day bring her back. Except after I'd made my interim bard with an exciting but time-limited story arc, the DM suddenly decided that being resurrected would lead to Esther becoming an NPC and leaving the party (I do not want this, she would not, and I was not asked; I was excited to play out my first ever resurrection!). Normally this DM is chill. Esther was well-liked, the sort of leader of the party but not a showstealer, not a problem character whatsoever and smack in the middle of her arc. :(

Doctor Ransom

Your red flag indicators are working just fine. I would 100% avoid DMing for these fiends at all costs. They failed the easiest test you could give them and would only cause further injury to your psyche in the long run. Tell them to go on StartPlaying if they really want to play D&D (although that would just unleash their antics on a poor unsuspecting DM).

Doremi

A multi-lingual TTRPG group sounds so fun! I need to brush up on my mando TTRPG vocab... This is such an interesting case, and one that I think will be especially challenging for the all English-speaking court to answer.

Simone Munck Nielsen

To the honorable justices and the lovely bailiff Jake. This is more a question and the possibility of an injustice. I'm playing my first game of D&D, and recently had my first death saving throw. Not only did I have to roll on my turn, but also the moment I went down. Is that normal? I've learned D&D from Dimension 20 and you guys, and I know it might have some differences since you are a performative show but this seems like a big thing? The DM is new at DM'ing, but is being assisted by his friend who is a veteran DM and does a lot of homebrew. Can I say something about this or is it just the DM's call? Love, Simone from Denmark PS: Please come back to Europe, we would love to have you <3

barbaric conversationalist

thanks! we have quite a bit of fun. unfortunately i do agree on it being a bit challenging for the 2 crew to answer but i really couldn't think of anywhere else

sorennn

*not a case* The comments becoming reddit aitah posts is not what I expected for my first time reading crit case comments. It's wild in here yall.

Steve E

I don't know what you expected when that's basically the premise of Dungeon Court.

Darkest Darkness

My Eyes of the Runekeeper warlock invocation not being able to read and understand writing and only being able to identify the language it’s in. An example the DM used for what the invocation does “I can’t read a book in French but I can know it’s French”

Ashe

To the Illustrious High Crit Justices and to the guy that reads the cases... Tucker I think?😉 I bring you the case of the Unceremonious Offscreen Patricide. My adult son recently started DMing for a group of his friends(I'm normally the DM of the house) to which he plays a week here are our house, then a week at his friend's house. He invited me to play with them on the weeks it was at our house, we were doing a prison break, I made a level 1 wizard with 8 con, a very old man who has been trying to escape for years. My first sessions playing, the escape was going well, we are about to make it to the ship(the end goal of the escape) I had to go to work, and they were finishing up without me. To boost magic for the escape I took some Arkane, which caused 10 rounds of wild magic surges, my character made it to the ship, I think I still had 8 rounds left of wild magic surges, so I say "Alrighty I'm headed to work, you can go ahead and roll the wild magic surges (most wild magic surges are not deadly and just silly), message me what happened). I get a message about 30 minutes into my shift "Everyone escaped, but you blew up, ...you're dead" to which I was like WTF(It was the 3% chance of fireball centered on yourself). So my character died, while I wasn't at the table, due to a die roll I didn't roll, took all the juice out of it(No dramatic death, no emotion, just a lame text message) Had I rolled while I was there I'd be fine with it. So to the esteemed Judges and the Excellent Bailiff Jacoby...was I wrong in being upset for my character being killed while I wasn't even there, or was my son right "You died to a die roll". I leave it in your capable hands. P.S. My son who rolled the wild magic surge is cursed, he once had a character die in my campaign to a finger of death spell, and rolled 3 Nat 1's in a row.

Steven W.

To the undefinable Supreme Crit Justices and the guy who, let's be honest, you only keep around so we can make cheap jokes about a cheap man. I think his name is Jeb? I bring to you the case of Bart Simpson, the world's most hated NPC. I was DMing a campaign and the PCs were traveling to the Abyss to meet with a succubus warlord. During the meeting, I briefly introduced the warlord's bodyguards, which included a wispling (half gnome/half demon). I described him as “pacing back and forth behind the warlord, with his hands resting on hand axes” and “he has short and spiky hair. Kind of like Bart Simpson.” I got some light razzing for this description, but nothing else was said about him. The meeting with the warlord went well and the PCs were offered to stay the night as guests. That evening, the bodyguard was sent to deliver a message to the PCs. As soon as their room door was opened, the party fighter attacked the wispling, followed immediately by the party sorcerer plane-shifting him to their god's home plane, where the demon would be hunted for sport. Despite having never spoken a word to them, my PCs had unanimously decided to kill the bodyguard. After the session I asked how they came to their decision. One player said, “I knew he was going to die the moment you described him pacing with his hands on his axes.” Two others said it was when I compared him to Bart Simpson. Regardless, they all claim that their actions were justified. The bodyguard was supposed to back stab the party during a climactic fight, so it worked out that they just dealt with him before hand, but I ask you: Were my players wrong to kill my NPC before he technically did anything wrong, or are they just masters at sniffing out a traitorous Bart Simp-- I mean demon?

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

if more context is wanted: 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...)

Josh Kumar

You have to be in a really specific situation to have a crunchy mechanics based question, whereas drama at the table happens a lot more.

Rena DeLorenzo

To the benevolent Supreme Crit, and that other guy. Sup, I’m a big fan. I bring you the case of the Reforming Vampire the Destroyed Bag. This is from a campaign my partner and I were apart of years ago that had dissolved (not because of this). We were dealing with a group of vampires, the leader of which was exceptionally cruel and cunning. She had charmed and controlled and caused the death of my partner’s character, stakes were high and while we got them back there was still bad blood. We went to fight her, hopefully for the last time, and during the fight my partner’s character (a bard/rogue) beat an impossibly high dc to capture the fleeing vampire in her mist form INSIDE THEIR BAG OF HOLDING! We were ecstatic, the bitch was as good as dead she wouldn’t be able to reform the day was saved revenge was sweet! With the threat dealt with we went to bed for the night thinking all was well… Well it was not all well. The next day the bard/rogue woke up to find their bag of holding torn open! It had been ripped! The dm explained it as the vampire had reformed inside the bag, and not able to get out she decided to rip her way out. This cause her and all of the bard’s possessions to be thrown into the astral plane. While the character was rightfully upset about losing all their money and possessions, my partner thought it was funny and brushed it off. However years later we’re more curious than anything, is this legal? Was this by the book? We humbly rest our case at your feet hoping to get an answer after all this time.

sorennn

Nah I meant someone's talking about property issues not dnd and stuff

Olive

Thx jkae

Hoid

To the honorable court and…j-jake? Is that you ? Omg man haven’t see you since what that guest episode of 8bit book club? Wow I thought they ai your voice this whole time. Justices I play in a campaign with the best players/friends a bard can have. Our dm in particular puts in so much work for the campaign. Justices the fault in question lies with us the pc’s we haven’t met up for a session in what feels like months. Your honors and oh Jake you’re still here hi. How can I blackmail my friends into re-prioritizing our campaign over life’s other obligations

Augi5000

Yeah, I thought about suggesting that but felt guilty about passing them off to someone else 😂 Also their further response to me saying no was basically "You act like DMing is so hard? Screw you, I'm going to learn to DM myself!" And I was like "LMAO I HOPE YOU DO." They'll either give up immediately or learn an actual appreciation for how much effort it is!

Braden Lee

Not related to the post but just heard that one of the greats hulk hogan has passed and wanted to offer my condolences to Murph as our resident wrestling buff. RIP brother!

Doctor Ransom

They sound like little Taruk’s in the making

thesimplesloth

COURT!! My DM kept interrupting my turns to argue my level 2 ranger shouldn’t be able to use a bonus action spell as well as one light weapon attack with Vex (hand crossbow) and a second light weapon attack with Nick (scimitar) all in one turn. I tried a few times to read the weapon mastery properties of each that would allow this, which my ranger is trained in for each of these weapons. He cycled through various arguments about breaking up the attacks with bonus actions in between (I didn’t do this) and that missing the first attack would not allow the second attack with the scimitar’s Nick. I tried a few times to push back but ultimately just took one attack with the bow (nat 20, is that the dice weighing in on the veracity of my stance I hear?!) instead of going down this increasingly loud argumentative rabbit hole. Next up, the rogue’s turn! He attacks with a shortsword (Vex) and scimitar (Nick), then bonus action disengages. Not a word from the DM. COOL! I ask: is my voracious internal fuming over this unjust double standard ruling warranted? I’m not trying to game the system to get more attacks than are allowed, but both the rules and my DM on a man’s turn seem to rule that bonus action + two-light-weapon-attacks-when-one-has-the-Nick-property is allowed in one turn. Please vindicate me, I beg.

Sam

Dear justices -- I present to you the Case of the Neglected Nemesis. I'm the DM of a long-running campaign and know that one of my players loves for his character to have a rival. With this in mind, in session 1, I introduced a braggadocious Gaston-esque NPC -- Radgar the Red -- who shoved my friend's PC into the mud. Since then, I've made sure to have Radgar the Red appear every now and then to antagonize my friend's PC and even gave Radgar his own rival party of adventurers to compete with the player group. I thought this was all going great... Cut to three years later. The campaign is starting to wind down so I do a check in with all my players, asking if there are any major character beats they want to make sure we resolve. My friend let me know that he's been having fun, but he wishes his PC had a rival. I was very confused and brought up Radgar, an NPC specifically designed to fill this role, and my player's response was "yea, but he's no Frankie Farrah". Justices -- Frankie Farrah is a guy we went to elementary school with. Looking back, I realized my player brings up this childhood enemy at the table often. Like almost every game...but it had never occurred to me that he wanted to confront this real world bully inside our silly wizard game.  I beseech your judgment: Should I introduce real-life human man Frankie Farrah as a late-game villain, or should my player have to transfer his feelings of rivalry onto a fictional foe?  P.S. We're adults in our mid-30's. P.P.S. I also knew Frankie. He was kind of a dick

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden

who all were old friends with the DM , trying dnd - whereas I was a friend of the DM with several years of dnd play experience. One of the party were making some pretty bold choices that even just with my characters knowledge seemed bad. I used my reactions to shout out suggestions, but it came across as overly assertive and controlling (i admit this). After session this was brought to my attention, at which i immediately apologized and decided in that moment to take a step back and "yes and". I became a cheerleader. This still fit my character as I was a drunken master monk who found that he could be better friends by taking a backseat and being supportive. The result... I became the dog of the party. I wasn't allowed into any room/ extra dimensional space to sleep. Was always told to take watch, and anything I found "went to the party". I ask you. Is this justice? Should I have kept taking it on the chin? (I ended up leaving the campaign because I asked to have some real life check ins to make sure it wasn't personal and told that "just because we play dnd doesn't mean we talk in real life" This has bothered me for years even after playing several great campaigns with amazing groups. Sincerely Fastun Longdrink Drunken master... flunk?

josh boyanowski

To the honorable Jake and those other voices we hear. Several years ago my friend group and I started to play dnd for most of our first-time. The DM was the only one to have some experience before. There is 5 us that our DM so patiently started a campaign for. Fast forward into the first boss fight our campaign has ran into. It is a necromancer that has been downing most of the party. I played a half-orc barbarian that was chaotic neutral and our DM let me get a sword and armor that was way OP for the noob i was. Anyways, we were finally able to get the necromancer down to just 2 hp when he surrendered and begged us not to kill him. My companions took this opportunity to try and get some information out of him. I wanted to end him. I agreed to give them an opportunity to get some information. The party is asking all sorts of questions and the DM makes them roll for each question to see what the response given. After each of the 2 trying to ask questions rolled at least 10 times each.... I shout out Feng (my characters name) jumps on top of the sarcophagus, chooses rage, attacks with viscous intent. Our DM now giggling at this tactic demands an attack roll. I crit and behead the necromancer while our DM is laughing and the other party members are shouting for me not to kill him due to the information he had that we needed. I ask, who is more to blame in this situation. The party members that continued to roll terribly trying to get information, getting nowhere? Or am i at fault for being a murder hobo? I patiently await your judgment. P.S. I did keep his head as a souvenir