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Collecting Cases! (Patreon)

Published:
2021-05-24 13:00:08
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Hear ye, hear ye, D&D Court is back in session! We're here to dole out justice in the form of cruel and unusual punishment like not letting you go to Summer Slam. Please comment on this post with your story so we can try your case.

As always I beg you to keep your submissions BRIEF!

Your righteous bailiff,

Jake

Comments

Kevin Alman

If it pleases the court. I am throwing myself on the mercy of this fair and just court. I run a small game with 3 other people and I had planned a session where I had the daughter of the innkeeper my PCs were staying at brought in with a poisonous bite on her. I had planned for them to find the source of the bite to have an antidote made for it. However the cleric in the group, my wife, decided that they would then pick their spells for the day and choose to switch in lesser restoration, which was not stocked before. These events happened after they already had breakfast so I felt that she should have already had their spells stocked for the day. So because of this I said the spell removed the poison but the bite had a curse that was still effecting the girl, so they would still have to find the cause of the bite to fully cure her. But now I feel like I took away this clever solution and I should have let her take advantage of this solid derailment. What do you think? Was I wrong to make this choice, or should I have let them womp me? I await your wise judgement.

Taleisha G

I forgot for a second you guys did dungeon court and I thought you were making merch dice cases or like spell/item card cases. This is my favourite segment of yours so this works too!!!

Tamlin Faraday

May it please the court, My DM won't let me use unarmored defense in Wild Shape, even though I dipped into Monk specifically for unarmored defense. The Handbook says nothing against it, and I feel it's a rule of cool if nothing else. What say the judges?

Nico the Underpaid English Teacher

May it please the court (but mostly bailiff Jake because I feel like you need a win buddy) - in one of my home games, my DM makes it an action to change weapons. We have characters with multiple weapons, and in nearly every other campaign I've been in where people have multiple weapons, it's sort of understood that we use "video game rules" insofar as it isn't too terribly realistic to be carrying three magical weapons, a great axe, javelins, etc etc... am I right for saying that this rule should be ignored for the sake of the rule of cool?

Richard Nelson

May it please the court. I am a player and a new one at that. I decided to choose wizard as a class, despite the fact that the world has more that magic is banned and forbidden in most areas of the kingdom, I however was born on an island of elves that still practise magic and are left to their own devices. I hoped that my character could be a surreptitious wizard, which would make for some fun antics. However on the boat over to the mainland my DM had a guard vessel board us, to confiscate all magic items. He then took away my staff and spell book. We are now 3 sessions post this incident and he has given no opportunity for me to recover or get new magical items. I have talked about this with him out of session and he has said "It's all part of the lore" but I am not having any fun as I can't cast any spells! Am I an idiot for choosing a magic user in a world with banned magic, or is my DM being too harsh?

BrethrenBlev

May it please the court, I lost my entire action due to flavor. I'm playing a warlock and my party and I have just gotten into a fight outside the tavern we're staying in. I'm last in the turn order so I have plenty of time to think this through. Then it happens, it comes around in my turn and I start off by saying "I would like to start out by walking towards the door leading outside, on my way grabbing an empty mug, I would like to then kick the door open and say 'hey assholes, I came here to kick ass and drink ale *points to mug* and I'm all out of ale'." I then asked my DM if I could minor illusion a shotgun in my hand as I eldritch blast to make it look as 80's as possible. The DM allowed it but after rolling to hit, he then speaks up and says you can't minor illusion and eldritch blast in the same turn. This is true but it was just flavor I said. But he insisted that because I said I went to minor illusion first I couldn't eldritch blast him. I was frustrated and then protested further but he kept his ruling. He wouldn't let me choose between eldritch blast or minor illusion and forced me to stand there with a fake gun for my turn. It took 20 minutes to get back to my turn again. I feel wronged, cheated, and unexpectedly punished for flavor :(

Matthew R

May it please the court and Baliff Herwitz. My first ever D&D campaign runs weekly or so and has 6 players. There are two players that the DM will cancel a session for or wait around up to an hour and a half for them to show. Everyone else has to be there, and be there on time, or miss out on exp. If you want the exp, you have to allow the DM to run your character or be willing to die. I’ve brought the issue up to the DM and he gets cagey and defensive about showing blatant favoritism. How would you handle this oh honorable judges and Jake?

David Moelker

If it pleases the court, (And if the Bailiff is in a good mood) I was running a session where my party ended up having to run from an ancient white dragon. They were much too low level to fight it and they knew that. But they did have a magical item called the immovable rod. One of my characters decided to jump in the dragon's throat and activate the rod which could take 8,000 lb of force without moving. So I could not figure out a way to get myself out of just instant killing my dragon, because it would rip it apart from the inside. So, with no health gone and not wanting to feel like I was robbing my players I let it rip through the dragon. It was a massive win for my players and they felt great about it so I wasn't terribly upset. However, how would you have ruled it? Because I feel like I did something wrong, and I didn't have to insta kill my Drake.

ThatManGareth

Hear ye, Hear ye Now presenting the case of sorcerer v. DM May it please the bailiff. There are two charges placed against our DM. Several years ago our party was first introducing ourselves to DnD. We were playing 3.5 edition because we told that was the place to start. We get deep into the story and have our first encounter with the main villain of our campaign, former DM character, fighter turned Warlock villain. 1st Offense: The party noticed the villain before he saw them, so my sorcerer used zone of silence to give us advantage on stealth to get much closer. Except, the DM claims his character noticed the lack of background noise (Torches crackling, water dripping, ect.) and noticed us immediately despite the spell. He didn't even allow us to roll. Combat begins and my sorcerer casts the 3.5 version of phantasmal killer which says, "The target first gets a Will save to recognize the image as unreal. If that save fails, the phantasm touches the subject, and the subject must succeed on a Fortitude save or die from fear." Villain crit fails the first save and fails the second save by 1. 2nd Offense: Villain dies extremely early in the story so you think we would get something out of this, except the DM claims villain had a nearly endless supply of clones using the Clone spell. We neither get experience nor loot because we didn't destroy the soul, and the body exploded when we tried to inspect it. Was our DM just being a dick since we upended his story, or was what we did irredeemable? Should he have at least humored the change in direction of the story rather than completely override our luck?

Dustin S.

may it please the court, I don't actually have a case but I do hope you all have a beautiful fucking week.

Chase

Honorable justices and Bailef Jake, may it please the court. I've been playing in a campaign for a little over a year now as a Wizard of the necromancy class. One big benefit of the class is that you automatically get buffs to any undead you summon. During one encounter, I casted a spell called danse macabre(it was a spell from Xanathar's, so I didnt feel the need to ok it with my DM), which summons 5 buffed zombies instantly. I was under the presumption that the buffs would stack, which would give my zombies 1d6 + 14ish damage each, but my dm said I had to pick which buffs they got. I still contest it to this day, but I wanted to see what you deem just in this case, thank you.

Omar

May it please the court and the honourable Bailiff Jake, In my home game recently, we had a session that I (a player) was quite peeved about. In our game, our player characters are part of a militia for a small part of the region, basically a local police. The previous session, we had shut down a terrorist organizations base with no casualties (did it peacefully, essentially an EMP). This session, we were suddenly arrested by a larger police force that we had never heard of for doing this, and our DM made it clear that he had not prepared a combat encounter and that we could not talk our way out of it - we had to go with them. So we ended up doing a "court episode," and our friend who wasnt a regular was a guest player and was our defense attorney but didnt know anything about who we were or what wed done during the campaign - as a player I wanted my friend to be able to play but my character would never let him represent me! This court/session lasted 3 hours... we didnt get to roll a single dice the ENTIRE session. At the end, our DM let us know that he had secretly recorded the entire thing, and was going to edit it and let our other friends serve as the jury, and I know theyll say we're guilty (even though we did nothing wrong in universe) because they think it's funny. No one else seemed to have issues with the session. Am I in the wrong to be upset about being recorded without consent and to have not been able to play my character right? Thank you!

Dan Callery

May it please the court, In my campaign I currently run my party is investigating a smuggling ring run by Yuan-Ti, half snake half human monster people. Their leader is a Yuan-Ti abomination called the Great Mamba, and as a joke she has henchmen known by numbers instead of names like any good villain would. When the party kidnapped a henchmen to squeeze for intel they found the fifth henchmen known appropriately as "Mamba #5" What immediately followed was a violent rage I had never seen from my players in our entire campaign. One player fully logged off discord, another called me a dumbass for 30 seconds and my roommate threatened to move out and left our apt without shoes on. My case is was my joke really so bad? I knew it would be a little corny but did it deserve such dramatics? Should I have chosen another name like Monica or Erica or Rita? Thank you and I flash the jury

Grace Atkins

May it please the court! My DM has put into effect a house rule for his campaign that I don't agree with. My DM is very new to D&D. This is his first time DMing, so he wanted to make this campaign very much his own. He thought for death saving throws, instead of rolling a D20 we would flip a coin. Now, I know technically the odds are slightly better than 50% when you roll a death saving throw, but he bought a cool coin so we all agreed, to be fun. Except now he's telling us that he is flipping the coin for us if we go down and won't tell us the results of each flip, so we have to sit in suspense to se if we died or not. I guess I'm asking should the DM have this sort of hold over our character's fate? Thank you for your consideration!

Dave 3D Art

If it pleases the court, I'm creating my own DnD setting based on late 1990s and early 2000s boy band music videos. I have found a group willing to test the setting out for a short campaign, but one player has been a bit of a bother. I had established that one of the character rules was that they would either need at least 1 level of bard, or have an entertainer background. They previously agreed to this. But during character creation in session zero they kept arguing against it. They're a fun player, and I'd like to have them but I would like my Pop themed world to have some integrity. Should I waive the rule for the sake of one player, when all others have adhered to it? Thank you for your wisdom.

Katie Egg.

May it please the court: I am running a game for my little cousins (eleven year old twins) who have never played dnd before. They were both really excited to play as dragonborn and are getting really into the game, but as to be expected, a lot of the concepts are really new to them. They’re not used to games where you can essentially do or say whatever you want, and it hasn’t entirely clicked that not every action has to be motivated by combat. In one of our first sessions they returned to the inn, already exhausted from an encounter, to see a group of sketchy cult members talking to the innkeeper. I had set this up as kind of a foreshadowing thing for a future session, not thinking they would try to start a fight. So the cult members were acting rude, but not directly hostile. However, one of the boys decided that his character has anger issues. he’s an absolute sweetheart irl so I was all for letting him explore this idea, except he decided this meant that his level two druid was going to have to challenge their leader to a one on one fight for his brother’s honor. I gave some pretty direct hints that this was a bad idea like “are you sure? This guy looks strong and after exploring that cave you are only at 7hp and you don’t have any spells left”. He was adamant that his character fully did not care and was very angry. He was knocked out after two rounds, and since he was the party’s healer no one could help him before he failed his death saving throws. His brother and an npc carried him to his druidic mentor figure who was able to cast reincarnate. I was flexible on the logistics with this but I was firm that he had to come back as whatever the dice rolled on the reincarnation table. His character is a human now, and he’s accepted that, but he’s bummed since he was so excited to play a dragonborn and he only got to do that for a couple sessions. Now I’m feeling conflicted. I don’t think there should have been no consequences, however, he’s really new to acting in character and that was one of the first descisions either of them had made based on rp. I don’t want to squash their character motivations, and mostly I want the game to be fun! Is there a way I can encourage roleplay without negating consequences when it’s in a player’s character to do something stupid? Knowing their proclivity to combat should I not have even introduced them to a character that wasn’t on their level? (If I’m in the wrong I will accept my eldritch granny bard blast with dignity. Also I will let the kid push me into the lake.)

Nicholas Badtke

May it please the court, and especially the esteemed balif Jake. My DM has graciously gifted me a "crown of ducks" (no idea if it's homebrew or not) for missing a few sessions. The crown attracts ducks to me, regardless of my location, and the amount of ducks summoned is based on a D12; each duck having 1 hit point. After every long rest is when this roll occurs. He says that I am unable to horde the ducks over time to ammas an army of poultry, due to inconvenience/impracticality. I say that it was his own fault for giving me something fun to play with. My fellowship and I recently wanted to make a "cannon of ducks" by passing ducks around in a circle, to accrew momentum, to then have our resident giant-folk yeet it at an enemy's face. Thoughts and opinions? Xoxo

Eric Udy

May it tickle the court, I am DMing a Theros campaign for my friends. Due to the nature of the world the Gods have a lot of influence and so each character received an omen from the god they worship that would be a character focused side quest. These side quests were meant to get the party into the level 10-15 range before becoming champions of the gods and jumping to level 17 after being blessed as champions. NONE of my players decided to pursue their side quests and focused only on the main quest line meaning they were only level 7 by the time they became champions. I decided to still jump them up to level 17 for the end game of the campaign. A few of my players said they thought it was a bit weird for such a drastic level jump. I pointed out they each had a Godly omen they could have pursued but they all ignored their omens meaning they were under leveled for what I had planned. They complained they did not know they each had an omen even though I went through a personal scene for each of them where they received visions from their gods, and every player knew about the others omens. They said I should have put bigger focuses on them and that they never had a chance to pursue them, even though they had months of downtime in game. I argued they should have some responsibility to follow through with their characters and remember experiences involving their gods. So I ask the Justices and I guess the Bailiff too, was I in the wrong to not put more focus on the players omens or should they have been more aggressive in following through on the side quests so they would not have had such a jarring increase in level?

Sydney Olshak

I have an update, if it may please the court. A day or two after I sent my case to you, my DM was able to find the rule that honorable judge Murphy stated: that the offhand attack is only on a bonus action. That said, she decided to allow me to swing with both weapons per attack I get (3 at level 13), as my character is suppressing her magical abilities and I will, therefore, be far below the other characters without using my 5 levels of sorcerer. Thank you all for taking a look at my case and for ruling. Lowly bailiff Jake, one of my character inspirations for her was Hardwon and honorable judge Murphy, you are entirely right about the other player, funnily enough. He is the type of person who once said that I needed to stop talking during a turn because the conversation was "more than six seconds long."

Jared Gabbard

May it please the court. I am a DM for a group of 6 friends and we are playing a homebrew campaign heavily inspired by character backstories. Last session they were in the shadowfell fightng Shadows and Roland, the gunslinger, got his strength reduced to 0 by the shadows, instantly killing him. Finn, the boy cleric tried to use revivify, but I ruled since his strength was 0 he didn’t have the strength to breathe. Roland’s death was especially tough because we have not been able to explore his backstory to the extent that I had hoped. Honorable judges, I want my game to have stakes, but I feel bad for killing a character before fully realizing their backstory. Should I have been more merciful? May it please the court

Ricardo, devotee of dice christ

May it please the court. I was playing a campaign of a Star Wars role play based on dnd call SW5E. I was playing gavesh, a pirate fighter in our crew with a lust for cash. On occasion I had put aside selfish urge for the betterment of the team but on this occasion gavesh gave in. I found a safe on a ship with cash in it and gavesh couldn’t resist keeping it. One player at my table was upset that I kept the cash to myself and in character asked my character several times if I found anything on board. I succeeded 5 deception checks against their insight to lie about it. They then pressed me further and told me to empty my pockets, to which I rolled poorly in an attempt to hide the money in my sleeves and cash poured from my breeches allowing the other player to take half of it. Was I done dirty by meta gaming or did I deserve to face the music for this one? I humbly accept any decision by the court.

Scottee

May it please the court in all the right ways: I, an innocent player, recently made a character for a level 14 campaign. Rauadai (Rudy to his friends) is a large and sensual firbolg, but the most important thing is that his whole theme was around not only being strong, but being able to lift as much as possible. He's a level 6 bear barbarian, which lets him lift twice his carrying capacity. He has Powerful Build from being a firbolg, which also doubles his carrying capacity. He has the Brawny feat which doubles that again. He's multiclassed Rune Knight, so when he enlarges, his carrying capacity is doubled again. Then he's multiclassed Oath of Glory Paladin, so he can use his Channel Divinity to double it again. This means that RAW, he can lift almost 10,000 pounds (about a whole elephant) without even slowing down. Here's the issue: my DM is still making me roll strength checks for stuff like picking up wagons and horses on the basis that it's unrealistic for my large and sensual firbolg to be able to lift an entire elephant without much effort. Meanwhile, the casters are busy teleporting to the other side of the planet or making demiplanes. I feel like my level 14 Big Boy being basically Hercules is pretty fair and building him for this specific niche doesn't break anything terribly- am I wrong?

SoupLightning

May it please the court, I am a DM with a party of mostly new players and one player who has played with me before his character is named Geep Gop. The party was in combat against guards protecting the mayor of the city. Rather than wait for the Mayor to come out of his meeting they chose to slaughter all his guards and force their way in. When it became apparent 8 rounds in that more guards were on the way and they were outmatched, Geep Gop a bard tried to persuade one of the surviving guards that this was all misunderstanding and the party was the good guys. The insight check I rolled was a 16 but Geep Gop used cutting words to lower the guards insight in order to convince him. In a moment of clarity I felt there's no way the guard would be convinced by what Geep Gop said after having witnessed his friends be murdered by the party so I reneged on what the dice showed and said it didn't work. My player was frustrated even though I tried to explain that it'd take a lot to convince a person who you were in the middle of attacking that you're on their side and you're the good guys so even with cutting words it wasn't going to be enough. The round/session ended with the party being arrested. I had plans to give the party a way to get in contact with the mayor in the next session but they stopped playing with me after that encounter. Was I in the wrong and how can I do better? (Geep Gop listens to this podcast so maybe it'll change his mind.)

Aidan Mead

The un athletic guard defense. May it please the court, I am a DM running Waterdeep Dragon Heist for a group of swell guys. One of said guys, the barbarian, attempted to loot a body in the middle of a crowded street with guards present. I proposed that he would be able to loot what ever was on the poor dead gnome, but would immediately be in pursued by guards, as this would raise many questions as to who murdered this poor small boy. He disagreed and stated that he could run faster than guards, due to them being lazy and stupid, and lose them by ducking in a building. This ended in a retcon and multiple passive aggressive comments towards me. Should I have allowed him to run with dead body contraband, or was I in the right?

Joe D’Antonio

May it please the court and the lowly bailiff, I humbly request your ruling on DM v. Barbarian. My party recently fought a group of Eladrin. The barbarian in my party was raging and I (the DM) had the Autumn Eladrin cast Calm Emotions on the barbarian to break her rage. Our barbarian said she could be raging in a calm way. I countered that the spell specifically says you become indifferent to a creature of the casters choice and you cannot be raging against someone indifferently. She protested saying rage isn’t really about emotion which seems absurd to me and I argued that it is the same as being counter spelled, just for a different ability. Was I in the right or do I have a horrible punishment awaiting me? Thanks sweeties.

Samuel

May it please the court, I was DMing a Neverland themed one-shot for my players recently. The final boss of the day was Peter Pan himself who was a demon eating the souls of the lost boys. The fight took place on a cliff protruding out two hundred feet up over the sea. Peter, like he does, was flying all around the field to avoid hits. When he was hovering out beyond the cliff over water, my sorcerer used the spell Earthbind on him. The weak little boy he is, he failed his strength save and began to descend. Once he hit the water, I said he began to laboriously climb the cliff face to rejoin the fight. My sorcerer argued that he had not yet “reached the ground” as determined by the spell and should instead sink and be held to the ocean floor where there is no saving throw to let him be released. I said, no, he is no longer airborne and descending, thus that part of the spell ends. She claims that since he was at one point “an airborne creature affected by the spell” the spell should conclude its effect until he reaches “ground” whether or not he is currently airborne. I made a ruling that no, he’s not going to immediately drown and die with one 2nd level spell. The players whomped him anyway by tossing multiple fireballs at him while peeking over the cliff face while I failed to break her concentration with the lair actions. Who was right?

E Lachaud

Honorable justices of the court and Baliff, during a one-shot in which a friend was DMing for the first time, me and my partner got into some unwarranted PvP and it has been erking us ever since. I was playing a Mountain dwarf that fell off the mountain and was raised by awakened bears, hence a Barbarian Druid named Bear McCrag. My partner was playing an evil Iago-like college of whispers bard. We got into a fray with some blinkdogs, and me being a lover of the forest, I saw them as cute and cuddly, so I managed to make some decent animal handling rolls and grab a blinkdog in my arms. I said outloud, "hey you can finish off the others but this one stays with me." My partner proceeds to say that their bard would be evil and stab at the blink dog, believing that I was just holding it up for them to hit. So they rolled and hit the dog which promptly ran away from my hands. At this point the other player and the DM were surprised. I had said in-game please don't hurt my dogboy. So I decided to pull out my hammer and give the bard a massive 17 damage whack and tell them not to mess with my pets again. My partner complained, saying that was not an appropriate response and that with only 34 HP that was uncalled for. I said it was called for; I told everyone not to hit my dog and as a Druid-Barbarian I would definitely seek retribution. My partner says she did not hear me say that because she was looking thru her character sheet, but either way that level of PVP violence was not how a person should play D&D. Please help us. Was my violence overboard? Was her bard wrong to attack the blinkdog in my hands?

Alex C.

May it tickle the Sweeties. I want to throw in a case from an adjacent court to settle this case via the highest, possible instance. One of the members of my last magic the gathering tables refused to play whenever someone was using official cards in a language he didn't understand. We mostly used english or german (our native language) cards, but occasionally we'd get our hands on a chinese, russian or japenese card. Whenever we tried to use one of them, he refused to accept it - even with a provided printout of the rule text - stating "I cannot read this. How am I supposed to know how it works?", not trusting the provided printouts and also refusing to simply check the card on his phone The major issue is, that we gathered at his place and he would simply end the session whenever someone talked against him. Was this an acceptable houserule or just an unjustified abuse of power?

Joel Marsh

may it please the court: i DM a campaign where one of my players uses a spindown D20. The die is special to him because a homeless man in vancouver gave it to him after they had a long conversation about D&D. technically, a spindown die probably isn’t any better than a standard D20 in most tests, but he always seems to roll very high. should i be suggesting he play with a more balanced die?

Stephen Charbonneau

May it please the court, I recently ran my group through a “dinner party” encounter with Strahd. The goal was for each character to try and use their skills in a way to impress him, so he didn’t murder them on the spot. We rolled initiative and each player on their turn got a chance to show off successfully. That is until our gnome ranger (Stumpleduck) had their second turn. This player argued that they should be able to use their athletics skill to: cut down a tree and hand make a chair on their turn. I said they couldn’t because it would simply take too long. The player protested and said I wasn’t allowing them to be creative / fair. Who was right? full disclosure, the player is my wife and she will NOT be happy to find out I wrote this. Thank you, from a long time caller and first time listener.

Vonvonvon

May it please the court, Please do a session of DnD court in character. Idk about YA'LL but I'm fiending for some Balnor. Or at least have some guest characters pop in to give their two cents. Maybe Moonshine is in the audience or Beverly is in the JURY. Hardwon could call in, Pendergreens could Highjack the microphone from his cb radio in he'll. Please with sugar

Noelle (Snoelled)

May it please the court (and the bailiff of course)! A campaign I am in is using Roll20 (this is very relevant). Two sessions in and we are all at a tavern and there’s a group of sketchy people sitting behind us. We go up to them to talk and suddenly.... The DM starts moving them away from us on Roll20! We are all super confused and we are like “What? Where are they going?” (Keep in mind we have mostly first time players playing on slow crappy laptops). The DM (experienced) simply says “they are leaving because they don’t want to talk.” At this point we demand to roll initiative because he’s moving them about 40ft away from us with every click (like 100ft before we even realized what was going on). DM said if we want to stop them we have to act and that he won’t let us roll initiative. Of course, all the new players were too confused on how that was meant to work and they got away. Should he have let us roll initiative? All the players claim he should have. He claims we’ll never roll initiative unless the OTHER group starts conflict with us, but he denies using any homebrew mechanics. How would the judges rule?

Resident Gorgon Games

May it please the court, I recently approached my DM with a character concept using the new Folk of the Feywild Unearthed Arcana. I want to play a fairy druid, who would be able to use wildshape to turn into a flying bear that can squeeze into a 1” opening. My DM says that because a bear can’t physically do either of those things, I’m not allowed. However, while the rules for wildshape say the new form can use racial and class traits if physically able, the rules for fairies explicitly say that the flight is magical. Please Supreme Crit Justices (and Jake), let me have my flying bear.

panpolypuff

May it please the court, I recently got into a disagreement with my DM vis-a-vis optimizing vs. roleplay. On a recent level-up I was considering taking a feat for my Echo Knight, and Lucky was looking pretty appetizing. However, my DM argued that since my character's backstory involves being cursed by a higher being (for as-yet unknown reasons), I couldn't select this feat. I believe there is an argument that feats are definitionally more about optimizing mechanical play than fitting into a character's personality, since nearly all of them seem to exclusively affect dice rolls, modifiers, etc. I throw myself upon the mercy and wisdom of our esteemed Supreme Crit Justices, and implore you to help convince my DM to give me a break for once.

Luke Thompson

Your right honourable justice's and the Jailiff if it pleases the court. Over lockdown me and a couple friends had the idea off starting a campaign over zoom. We got to our first session and all was well until we came across two men whispering in a alley. The DM's intentions were for us stealth and listen to the conversation instead we shouted for them to reveal themselves they ran away and we failed to catch them. We then spent the remainder of the session trying to find something to do wandering around town but the DM made no attempt to rekindle the story and there was no session 2. Was it unforgivable to of us to derail the campaign like this or was our DM being weird.

David Donnel

I’m running a one-shot where my players are playing as themselves, real world stats and all. On the last session my friend decided to slash the tires of a potential suspect. I had him roll a stealth check and he failed. I told him that the police were en route to arrest him. However, he protested that I should’ve rolled for the bystander effect for someone to actually call the police. He was not arrested, but they had to abort the plan. Am I in the right?

Malcolm J Gatlin

May it please the court! This is more of a hypothetical me and my dm had a long discussion about. My Chef "Handy Eats GrubnGulp" wants to assassinate a king. This king is about 36 and has a disease that he may live a few more years with. On our journeys I found a certain scroll and brought up a hypothetical. If I slowly work my way into his staff and poisoned his food, watch him eat it, and cast the spell on the scroll "Time Ravage" wouldn't the king just die? The description says if he fails the saving dc "the target also ages to the point where it has only 30 days left before it dies of old age." Wouldn't that mean not only would the poison quickly course through his body via the aging but the disease in his body also age with him making him instantly die? My dm believes a disease and poison is actually a foreign force to the body which means it's not a part of their body so it shouldn't be involved with the spell. I would like to know your answers to my blight dear court so I can cook something to smack my dm with.

Riley Wesson

May it please the court. Two of the characters in my DnD campaign made a bet of who could seduce more people in the next town they arrive at. On the first attempt one of the players was chatting up a barmaid while the other went outside and used Disguise Self to look like Tom Hiddleston (the characters are originally from our world, so he had the point of reference). After failing a persuasion roll-off with the disguised character, the other player argued that she would know this was her party member because he looked like Tom Hiddleston and she would recognize he’s not from this world they’re in. I allowed her to roll insight against the disguised character’s deception, but after failing the roll I told her that it was simply a ruggedly handsome man that looked like Tom Hiddleston, and her character stomped upstairs in a huff. It ultimately led to more interesting story points and character developments so it worked out, but I feel like I handled this as fairly as possible and the dice just didn’t go her way. Was there a better way to handle this? And because this is DnD Court, who is guilty in this case?

Dylan

May it please the court. My players were in a location where they could sell parts of their characters souls for powerful abilities, but if they sold too much, they were possessed by dark gods and became NPCS. This happened to two out of four of them. Those players made temporary characters and they all went on a quest to save their old characters. When they found them, I made a tough boss fight where they had to fight their own characters, now with the abilities they got for selling their souls, and some extra abilities that the dark gods had. When they purged the dark gods, I let them keep the abilities they got from selling their soul, but not all the powers of the gods. My players complained that the boss fight against themselves was so hard they deserve to keep all of the abilities from the fight, even though they were OP to make a 2 vs 4 fight fair. Was I in the wrong to give their characters powers when they wereunder my control and then take them away?

James Jaskolka-Butler

May it please the court! My group and I were exploring the fortress of the ferocious Stag Lord bandit leader in the Pathfinder Kingmaker adventure path. Our groups ranger (a Danny Devito lookalike named Frank) cast speak with animals on one of the horses and, with a high persuasion and deception check, convinced one of them to strap dynamite on its back and ride it into the fortress’s entrance, collapsing the insides entirely. This fully derailed what the DM had prepared, so much so that we had to take a full three months off from playing while the DM figured out how to rewrite the encounter. It became a point of contention, arguing that the DM should have been able to “roll with the punches.” Who was right?

Gianni Pappas

If it may please the court, I joined a group for a lvl 20 one shot that had 3 hard stages and a boss fight with a D4 rounds between each fight. Before we started the DM said we would have one group agreed short rest as the dragon running the event wanted a somewhat fair fight (this was stated in the module). I was playing a paladin and he had each of us roll a d100 for a magic item I got the luck blade with 2 wishes. So after the first two rounds were not as hard as he hoped for us he said we wouldn’t be getting the short rests. I was a little annoyed cause my character took most of the damage but was like ok fine. That round we only got 1 round of combat before the next fight so I wished for a horn of Valhalla. He said the horn appears in your hand.....broken. I was a little more annoyed that I wasted a wish spell for that. When the round started two dragons appeared pretty close to one another so our sorcerer using his last spell slot overall to cast meteor swarm. This allowed for both dragons to get hit by all 4 points of affect so the total die to roll was160d6 this killed both dragons in one turn. After that he didn’t give us any rounds between that fight and the boss. So thinking we were clever had our warlock cast force cage on ourselves. We said we take a short rest because we were gonna die if not. As I tried to cast my last wish to give everyone their spell slots back the DM said “you have forfeit the challenge now I and my children will bring fire to the world”. Do you think we are windy bitches for trying to take a short rest which was promised or was the DM mad he was getting whomped?

Nicolas Lee

May it please the court and Superbailiff Hurwitz, I bring before you the incident that is affectionately (by my party) and disdainfully (by me, the DM) referred to as the Case of the Triceratops Meteor. My party had infiltrated an underground fight club (I invented that idea) to parlay with a drug lord named Big Dirk. When my brother’s warforged druid spotted a mysterious figure slipping out the back door, he wild shaped into a fungus that could camouflage itself and followed in pursuit. I had figured someone would try something along these lines so I guarded this exit with three strong bouncers. My brother, in his invisible fungus form, distracted the bouncers by summoning poisonous snakes and then high-rolled a check to slip out the door. Behind the door, he found himself in an alleyway where the cloaked figure was revealed to be the big bad for the arc of the campaign rendezvousing with her very powerful bodyguard. Rather than stealthily gathering information or sneaking back to the party, my brother decided that the best course of action was to initiate combat on his own. I hadn’t expected anyone to fight these two characters and had intentionally created them as the arch enemies of my brother’s character. They had anti-magic centric abilities and a number of anti-druid tricks at their disposal, so when he decided to fight I was horrified. My horror was compounded tenfold when he opened combat by casting summon nature’s ally (we are playing 3.5) to summon a cave triceratops thirty feet above the two enemies so that it would plummet to the ground, crushing them. At this point it’s worth pointing out that my brother is getting a PhD in paleontology, so he knows the weight of a triceratops off the top of his heads. He also had prepped a table of fall damage for heavy objects which, in 3.5, is ridiculously poorly thought through. The triceratops meteor dealt a monumental 600 damage to my enemies. At this point, the party was level 12, so this was a wholly unacceptable amount of damage to deal in one turn. I gave them a reflex save to dodge the incoming fleshy apocalypse. One of my NPCs succeeded and dodged, but the other rolled a nat one. Fortunately, he was a warforged with an adamantium skeleton and he took half damage from bludgeoning, and I had rolled him with a massive amount of HP planning for a boss fight against the whole party. My NPC survived, just barely. The remainder of this fight involved my cobblestone streets getting transmuted into mud, my brother summoning a horde of tree octopi, and an array of other Bev level shenanigans. Ultimately, my brother’s PC was knocked out before the party could escape the fight club and rescue him. I structured the remainder of the arc around rescuing his character and, for that time, he played an even more BS PC in the form of a walker of the wastes dry lich cat that would fill entire rooms with sand to drown enemies. But this is besides the point. In retrospect, the language for summon nature’s ally specifies that the creature must be summoned into an unoccupied square. Am I right in arguing that, in the case of the triceratops meteor, the target square would in fact be the square on the ground where the creature will land rather than an unoccupied space in the sky? Thank you and I happily accept the judgement of the court. -Unlagia

Seth C

May it please the court, my player who was playing as a barbarian wanted to rip the head off of what was essentially a giant bird. I told him he could make a grapple check to grab ahold this turn and do another to rip the head off next turn. He argued that because a grapple check counts as an attack he should be able to do both checks in the same turn because of extra attack. I ultimately gave in and let him do both checks in the same turn but I feel that was wrong. Who is right?

Steven Hoffart

Your honourable justices, if it pleases the court. In our campaign the DM made a fun interaction for when you are between life and death, making death saving throws, where you go to a demiplane and can bet all your earthly possessions if you die for 1 magic item if you live without being healed, if you take the bet you auto fail 1 death save. My character made this deal and then was stabbed by the boss they were fighting, falling to full death. My character had the bag of holding so we lost a lot of good stuff, however, the worst was the DM took 1/3 of each horse we owned, killing them all. We argued that they could of just took 1 of the 3 horses, but the DM argues they are all equally owned. Was this just punishment for a brash gamble, or is the DM being unfair in taking all our horses?

Armadon the only

I call a judgement from DnD court’s honorable judges... May it please the court Just for perspective my gaming group is a close nit group of friends. A group that had informed me when I first started that i use to railroad my games. An incite i take seriously and spent the past few years changing my process. Ever since i started listening to NADDPOD i have been trying mimic the game style of Honorable Judge Murphy (he is my Matt Mercier) We started a campaign that did have a setting with “things” going on but i left everything up for them to decide what they should do. Hooks were casted and the players were nibbling and everything was left up to dice Christ Sadly in doing this one in world game takes 3 months. After the “2nd” day (a new arc that was in-game months later) my players were were feeling they are slogging through my campaign and were wanting to change games for a time. At times when i tried moving things along i was told i was putting words in characters mouths. I know we aren’t ever going back to my game I want a judgement of even though I didn’t railroad, should I have told them their actions lead the story, or just cut out my GM elements (i.e. my pride of my story) to move them along

Mikey9052

May it please the court. I am playing a halfling battle smith artificer which has the steel defender pet. Being small sized, I use my steel defender as a mount. However, in combat my DM says I can't use it as a mount or if I do it'll cost my action to mount it, and bonus action try to command it. When I referred to the rules of mounting, he said because it's not a traditional mount like a horse, the rules in combat are different. Is my DM right or just being a knob?

BigPidgey

May it PLEASE. the COURT. I fell into the Murph trap of getting whomped in ally "hard" encounters by setting them up to happen against fully tested players, and decided that while they travel through a dangerous rocky canyon I would try the prescribed 3-5 encounters per long rest. Needless to say it became my turn to hop on the whomping stump and deliver some pain, and my players felt the burn. They started asking for a long rest after encounter two, and I had to remind them it was only midday, and that they would need to travel longer before resting. They were trying to work around it by saying they would sit around for 8 hours then sleep through the night, and I reminded them that while they aren't on a strict timeline (that they know of) things are still happening in the world while they take their time. I kind of feel like I'm forcing them into feeling overwhelmed and scared, but at the same time this part of the journey is supposed to be their first taste of the real world outside the guild they grew up in. Should I have let them rest when they wanted to?

Alex Attwell

May it please the court, This is my third time posting our case because it still proves to be a problem 😂 Our DM has decided to ban Rogues from being in anymore of his campaigns since he seems to find them problematic. He argues that the sneak attack ability is overpowered, as well as impractical because of its name and mechanics. He says the extra damage should not count because having advantage on a roll or simply having a party member near the enemy is not “sneaky”, like the feat specifies, despite rules as written stating this is the way it works. He also argues that it doesn’t have any limitations because players can use the feat every turn—but even then, you need to have the advantage or someone near the enemy. The other players and I have done our best to try and convince him of the validity of this feat, but he’s stated he doesn’t want to argue about it so he’s banning Rogues all together which is rather upsetting. Rogues are fun to play! We hope the Supreme Crit can help us come to a verdict for this case.

Beebles

May it please the court, My party spotted two enemies from a hidden position, and our frontliner stepped out of cover to engage them in combat. The DM immediately had the enemies run up to the party and make attacks, and THEN allowed initiative to be rolled. We were level 4, and every hit is important, so this combat resulted in the death of my character. The DM argued that this was a trap mechanic, not a combat mechanic. We follow the DM-is-always-right rule, so we moved on, but there it still saltiness about it. Is starting combat with a free enemy round due to trap rules okay? Thank you to the honorable judges and esteemed bailiff.

Emily

I approach the court and offer it the most gratuitous and pleasing respect as I get down on my hands and knees. If this pleases the court and tickle your pleasing perception bias, this addresses the highest court in this anglosaxxon society. One time, I was the only girl and the main tank in a dnd group (the DM was female but they only stepped in when it was necessary). I constantly felt like my character was too much of a bitch (and had to be more polite to them bc otherwise they wouldn’t interact with me) even though the character was traveling with a dwarf Druid who whipped his 4 inch peeper for intimidation tactics, a human rogue with dementia and a halfling bard who would go along with the Druid or the rogue. I always felt like the odd man out. I did try talking to them but it only made things worse. I get that D&D is a man dominated society but fellow Judges; what is a good solution in dealing with this? I also ask a cosplayer and content creator for dnd too. It feels like men don’t want me, a woman, at the table unless it’s to wear chain like bikinis and be the reason they join the crusades. How do some of you help fight this? Thank you most honorable ones. (Also: I listened to naddpod while my dad had cancer and later passed away. I’ve been listening for three years and all I can say that I love your guys content and hope you know how much you guys helped during a really dark time in my life.) Thank you, Honorable Justices and Divorced Baliff. Sincerely, Emily

Curtis Hoeppner

May it please the court, My drunken master monk has a tankard of the finest ale that is always full for him only. The only scenario where another person can drink this ale is once per long rest, I can give someone a matching tankard and cheers. Otherwise the ale turns to dust outside of my monk's mouth. This is a source of tension in my group, and they have tried everything to get a taste of that magic ale. We've tried every possible container, soaking rags, baby birding, disguise self, persuading and threatening the mug. Someone even suggested drinking the ale after I have already "used" it. Should my party be able to get drunk on monk piss?

The Dreaded Orochi

Honored Justices, allow me to please the court. Our party had become stranded in the middle of a giant lake after a hard-won combat on a boat that then sank. A few of the party were lagging behind or drowning, so our conjuration wizard used his last high level spell to summon a few sharks for them to ride. The DM ruled that since the sharks are saltwater creatures and we were in a lake, we only got so far before the sharks drowned and we were kinda stuck again. This event happened years ago at this point and is still brought up amongst the group as a point of contention.

Andrew Heller

May it please the court, My group of adventurers years ago were wrapping up the Hoard of the Dragon Queen adventure, and had several magical items purchased through added means. One of the items included a Talisman of Pure Good, which has the ability to instantly kill evil creatures with a Dex save. My Cleric chose to use a charge to do this against a dragon serving Tiamat, and in the moment of chaos I forgot that the Adult Blue Dragon has legendary resistances as it was swallowed by a flaming fissure from the Gods themselves which turned a deadly fight into a breezy one. Did I have any rights to retcon the fight in which I got DM whomped, or did I take my lumps as deserved?

Amanda Diamond

Esteemed Justices of the Crit, (no question) If you guys did this as it’s own monthly thing I would happily jump up a tier just to listen! Hell this could be a whole new Patreon and I’d buy in! Love you all! Go Bills!

Marcus Heer

May it please the court. 5 years ago in my very first time DMing, I made an encounter where the players had to fight a flying dragon while traveling across a rainbow bridge thousands of meters above ground. The level 6 barbarian of the group, without any ranged options, decided to try and lasso the dragon. I had him roll athletics to do this and he rolled low. I decided that he would take 1d12 of damage from rope burn and I rolled a 12. He protested that 12 damage was way too much damage for rope burn but I argued that this rope would have been yanked out of his hand with the strength of a dragon. He still razzes me about it till this day. Was I wrong to have him take this much damage?

Danny Summers

May it please the court, My wife plays a level 14 Dragonborn cleric named Nogard that she plays in a long running campaign. Our party encountered a powerful water elemental, and so she decided to cast Create or Destroy Water on the elementals face (upspelled to level 4 for a better chance at damaging it). The DM ruled that while the face was destroyed, it was able to immediately reconstitute itself and continue it's assault unhindered. My thinking is that perhaps for a round or so the elemental would be blind or some other condition or penalty would be applied. We defer to your esteemed judgement, as there is no higher court in the land.

CoB

May it please the court. In our last campaign my paladin character picked up a squire on the second session of play, thanks to some lucky persuasion roles. He was with us as an NPC for the entirety of our campaign, but during the final fight with the BBEG, our DM informed me that because I hadn’t specifically mentioned training him throughout the campaign, he was basically the same level as when he joined our party (level 4, vs our Level 14). I argued that because he had been in all of the combat encounters with us he should have leveled up as we did, but he maintained that squires only level up when “trained,” and that it had been my responsibility to make sure he leveled up. We had to put a lot of effort into keeping him alive during the final fight, and it continues to be a sore spot in the group. Justices, did I truly neglect my squire in such a grievous way, or was my DM being too harsh? Please lend us your judgement.

thomas ronda

May it please the courts and court staff (Jake), My group finished our most recent campaign and one of our players who has never DM’d before wanted to try. Most of us being seasoned DMs we were very supportive of this. However, he has a terrible habit of just sprinkling every dungeon with massively OP magic items in a setting that he originally called “low magic” and we are currently only lvl 2. The most recent one caused a massive argument because I could not help but comment on how powerful it was and a few agreed and the DM nerfed it much to the outrage of the player who found it. The item in question? A sword that can heal 2d4 hp 6 times EVERY DAY, effectively a 4th level clerics worth of spells. This is the 2nd healing item of similar power he has tried to give us. Do I push my boundaries as a player to point out whenever I see a home brew item that he might now know the strength of? Or should I sit back and quiet the inner rules lawyer and balance police in me?

Frank Askvig

The d.m. is is obsessed with the new book that deals with horror and "lofts filled with ravens." The p.c. have shown interest and excitement over said book and agree it should be part of play soon. The original game was a well rounded exploratory, social and combat game until about 4 sessions ago, that is when the game has turned into dungeon crawl & slaughter house. Only veteran skills and clinging to the rules as written like a life raft has saved the party. It is obvious the d.m. is out to kill the party; the d.m. has openly admitted it even. What coast should there be for suspense & horror? Creating new characters mid campaign isn't the concern of players, the loss of the original campaign is. Build up vs Metagame, trusting in the d.m. vs player concerns. Thanks for your time, Franken A why is this so hard the first

Carter Lance

May it please the lowly court and honorable bailiff. I have been running a campaign for 2 years now and have suddenly run into an unexpected problem. The barbarian is too damn smart. He has figured out that with his flying broom and folding boat he can easily crush almost any encounter I make. By simply flying 30 feet straight up and then manifesting a 24 foot long boat directly above my poor unsuspecting monsters. I have allowed this but with the stipulation that it damages the boat too and eventually the item will be destroyed. He argues that since it is a boat he should be able to get it fixed by any shipwright, and continue with his shenanigans. Should I allow him to continue with his super secret boat attack, or should I put a stop to this tomfoolery?

Kayleigh Chrisfield

May it please the court and the honorable bailiff Jake, In our current campaign we ran across a group of shady looking (pun intended) plants on our way through the outer planes, specifically Elysium. Our druid cast speak with plants to determine their motives and it quickly became apparent that they were not being forthcoming. I, a paladin, decided to cast zone of truth on the plants so they could not be deceitful but our DM ruled that I could not hear what the plants were saying as only the druid was able to speak with the plants and I could not know if the plants passed their charisma saving throw. Was this a fair interpretation of these spells or was our DM just being a stick in the mud? I await your fair and balanced judgement.

Aaron Sterne

May it please the court and our most honorable bailiff, a while back I found a dnd group to join online. After my first game, without warning, I was kicked from the group because I was ‘under 18,’ while in reality I was 18. I got back in, and the people in charge told me that I was trying to power game and was also being disruptive. I can’t argue with the disruptive part, I was definitely letting my fun get in the way of everyone else’s. The next game happened, and the problem was that I played a flamboyant, overly emotional light cleric named Galadar. I had one of my best dnd games IMO, and i think everyone had fun. TBF I was told to stop being disruptive once, but the dm told me how much she like galadar. Anyway, the next day I was kicked from the group for good. My main complaint isn’t that I was kicked, it’s their group and their rules, it’s the failure to communicate that I was on such thin ice. I just felt a bit shell shocked. I freely invite the games group that kicked me to give their side; I recognize my bias. -Galadar the Oft Disruptive

Muqtadaa Miandara

May it please the court, I present to you all the case of the younger DM. My first experience playing D&D before I dove headfirst into being a DM was playing a high elf wizard (bc obviously that's what you do when you play a high fantasy ttrpg) in a party made up of some folks off the Dropout discord back in it's early days, like the first month or so after D20 started, and we were spread out across the US, UK, and Australia. We played a few sessions online, this DM was definitely new and getting his feet wet, but he had a strange sense of humor that the rest of us were a little weirded out by. For example, one time I rolled a perception and an insight roll on an overturned cart to see if there were clues for our quest. I got two Nat 1s. He got real dramatic in a fun way at first, describing my character investigating the curves of the wooden wheels, the splintered spokes, the broken axle, only to say that my character was rock hard at sight of this broken cart, and gave me disadvantage on my next Dex roll. Now I get honoring two Natural 1s in a row, but we were weirded out by his attempts to make sexual jokes, bc it didn't seem like he fully understood what sex was. Lo and behold, seven sessions into our campaign we learn that of all us 21-27 yr old players, he's 13! We got duped by a kid whose voice changed early. We felt a little squicked out by that, bc there's some things I wouldn't joke about with a teenager for fear that they'd take me seriously and internalize my off the cuff joke as a rule of life. Anyways, we stopped playing with him, saying if he'd been honest about his age from the start we'd have been fine with it. He argued that it wasn't fair for us to quit the campaign. We argued that we didn't feel comfortable with playing with someone so young, and with someone who felt the need to hide that. Were we wrong to stop playing with him? Did he commit a sin by being dishonest? I humbly await your judgement.

Oldworlder451

May it please and tickle the court, a few years ago I multiclassed my Githyanki battle master with war mage, the intent; to achieve a true gish build. During the first combat after coming online, our paladin was sucked into a mirror while the rest of the party (3 including myself) were left to fight about 8-9 Minotaurs. Using the shield spell I was able to take on about 5 by myself without getting hit once. My DM was visibly bothered by this, and at the start of our next session he told me I was no longer allowed to hear what an attacking enemy’s to-hit-roll was. Naturally, shield was no longer as useful, and I swear it never worked once since then. To this day I feel like I was cheated, as I must use up a spell slot regardless, so it’s not as if it’s a free ability I get to just spam. I subject myself to whatever wisdom the honorable court might divine.

Jeff Merrill

If it pleases the Court, my question comes from dissention within one's own party. There was a time where a rogue attacked one's own party Member. The DM said that the attacker surprised the party Member so the rogue was able to get sneak attack damage. The Victim was none other than our Honorable, but unoathed, Justice Murphy. Was the DM in the right to let this injustice happen to a person on this most honorable court or should Murph be punished for his inability to perceive?

Neil Prospect

Dear Honored Judges and Beloved Bailiff, may it please the court. I bring to you today a case of ... MURDER. I was playing a tiefling bard named Random Page who played Led Zeppelin songs on his mountain dulcimer. My party went to investigate a pirates' cove and had gotten in way over our heads. Things were looking grim when our rogue tried to make a deal with the pirate king, offering to serve him if he'd let us go. The pirate king said he'd allow that, but he'd have to prove his loyalty by killing one of the party. He looked around and I was nearest so he stabbed me and I went down. One of our party members healed me and then he attacked me again and I went down. While I was down he attacked me again, killing me. At that point there was nothing the rest of the party could do, so they escaped and both me and the rogue had to role new characters. I was stunned. I couldn't even wrap my brain around the idea that my own party member would kill me. He explained that it was the only way for the rest of the party to escape. I understand that and it makes sense, but also what the fuck. I got over it by the next session, but did continue to jokingly refer to that player as a murderer for the rest of the time I played with that group. But even all this time later I still think about it from time to time. I appreciate the concept of having to make the bad or hard decision for the sake of the party, but there's something about killing a member of your party that goes completely against everything in my being. So, this is the case: Are there times where it's ok to kill a member of your party (and is this one of them) or is it never ok? To me, there's no reason to ever kill a member of your party, but I do understand and appreciate this other player's reasoning.

Sean Marz

May it please the court. In the case of hog steed vs pig friend. One PC has been riding a large hog using find familiar to complete their motorcycle aesthetic. After the PC was trapped in a gem after an unfortunate Card of Many Things incident our child prodigy wizard PC kept the hog around as her familiar. Month passed before they could free the PC, but now they are upset the wizard refused to give them back their pig. I have ruled that they need come up with a way to determine who the pig is more connected to, but the biker says the rules would not have allowed them to keep the pig to begin with. Should they share the swine or should it have disappeared?

Paddy S

May it please the court, A previous session ended with two of my fellow players being forced to flee a monster due to the frightened condition. When we started the following session, one of them decided to run in circles so that we could catch and snap him out of it. The other player however wasn’t present at the session, so her character kept running away. I failed a grapple check on her, so asked the DM if I could try to trip her up with my warhammer. The DM had me roll an attack, which hit. The DM then not only had me roll damage but also declared that the player’s ankle was broken from the attack. I feel this was somewhat harsh but would like to hear your judgment.

Jacob Kerpan

May it please the court. I DM a group playing a homebrew campaign. The party was on the trail of a massive zombie hoard and their imposing general. There were well over 1000 total monsters as this was a force meant to siege and invade a rather large city. The party attempted to get a sneak attack on the general but found themselves instead fighting against a whole army I was intending to be occupied fighting soldiers in the city. Notably I have a large party of 6 with 2 clerics and a paladin in the mix and everyone is level 8. They made it about 2 rounds barely scratching the general before the zombies could overwhelm them. Then as they tried to escape the party was cut off with another necromancer Witch I had been teasing was around controlling the zombies. They were nearly killed and I had the general make a call to keep them prisoner as I wasn't too keen on a tpk. My question after all of that is if I should have lessened the amount of enemies they were up against? Or kept the Witch out of it? Their strategy could have gone well but I did full stop the game and tell them flat out that this fight was not a good idea and that it is likely that they wouldn't all make it out alive. I hate to limit player choice but a couple of the players didn't like how I ran the encounter with so many enemies with two highly intelligent necromancers who like most don't want to die.

Patrick O.

Dear Honored Judges and whoever else is there I guess, may it please the court. One of the other players in a campaign was playing a Warforged named Auto who was wearing heavy armor. An enemy spell caster used Heat Metal on Auto’s armor, but Auto’s player argued that, since Warforged integrate their armor into their bodies, it was part of his body and no longer an object and could not be targeted. It eventually devolved into the only shouting match between the DM and the Player we ever saw, and serves as a dark stain on the history of the campaign. In your ineffable wisdom, how would you rule the case of Auto’s Armor?

Muse93

May it please the court & the honorable bailiff Jake. I play in a Curse of Strahd campaign and we are close to the end. The party and I just made it to the castle and believing ourselves to be hot shit, decided to take on Strahd without much exploration of the castle. We found him on the balcony as we were told to. We got thoroughly whomped and were all killed. Our DM was gracious enough to have a back up plan to keep our characters alive so we could try again instead of just die of and roll new ones. One member of our party was sad we died and proceeded to wine and moan saying that they only like to lose once and that they don't want to fail again. It made everyone uncomfortable and they have a past of making the whole game uncomfortable because of their overly sexual character, they've made an inappropriate joke about sexual abuse once before. They have been talked to more than once by the DM about this behavior but seem to continue the overly sexual behavior. Should we have removed them from the game and continued to play our 2nd chance without them?

Thomas Troy

If it may please this beautiful court, I have a simply inquiry. I once had a new player create a Centaur Ranger as their first character. Innocent enough. But This centaur joined us right as we began our 3-4 session Underwater Adventure. I ask the court the same question I've been thinking about every night since: What does a centaur look like when it's swimming underwater? Was my Bard wrong to mock this swimming nightmare?

Travis Butcher

If it may please the court. In a Megadungeon, I put an endgame room with a wooden sign nailed to it that said "do not enter under any circumstances" as a joke. however the party still went in and the place is statted for 17th lvl and they're only lvl 4. I made up some stuff on the fly to keep from immediately killing them. They've said "if we did we die" but I'm not sure how fun it would be when a person actually hears they're dead. should I continue to break what I've established to keep it around their level for the place or should I just unleash everything this place has to offer? p.s while a bailiff can't sentence jail time they can send out fees and fines to cover the cost of your time in court Edit: P.P.S we've played a couple one shots in it where they played monsters like a Balor and Pit Fiend and nightwalkers and stuff vs me playing a party of adventurers and it was fun af but gave them a taste of what's in other party they weren't in yet in the dungeon.

Ryan Savage

If it pleases the Supreme Court of DnD. I have nothing to have you judge, I am just writing to let you know you guys are my favorite podcast by far and I'm really happy a friend of mine recommended you to me. You are my DMspiration, keep being awesome. Signed former, (thanks Jess for doing every other week now) Forever DM The Man Savage.

Alex Pitzel

May it please the court, and bailiff Jake, While my party and I were in a cultist sewer dungeon, we discovered a mouldy tapestry that nearly killed a couple of us by dealing a ton of poison damage. Much to our chagrin, our Warforged Echo Knight rolled up the tapestry and stuck it in his backpack to bring along since poison doesn't bother him much. About 3 months later, the Warforged was forced into a Summer Slam like duel with a BBEG to get information on the cult activities. This was in a small, underground arena with a couple hundred spectators. The fight started going badly and so the player threw his backpack on the ground and stomped on it, much to the DMs confusion. Soon a look of horror beset the DM as the fighter reminded him of the mouldy tapestry still tucked away in his bag. The backpack released a huge poison cloud of toxic spores, however, it also dealt massive damage to a very large number of spectators who were close to the ring, killing them instantly. We suggested to the DM that by the time the spores would have spread to the crowd they wouldn't be as concentrated so they shouldn't be as harmful to the onlookers but our DM wouldn't budge. While we "won" the fight and got the information we needed, is it fair that the DM had us kill all those "innocent" people and made us wanted for war crimes?

Skillful Ferret

Honorable Judges and Omniscient Bailiff Jake, may it please the court: I was DM'ing my first DnD campaign and during an encounter along the way to town my players were attacked by a Blindheim. During combat the Blindheim jumped onto the horses of the wagon the players were using to get to town. A player wanted to use Witch Bolt, but I warned them that, that would also hurt the horses as the electricity would travel through them as well in order to ground into the Earth. The player’s argued that the horses would be unaffected since it was a spell and was magical so it did not have to obey physics. The spell states, “A beam of crackling, blue energy lances out toward a creature within range, forming a sustained arc of lightning between you and the target.” Do spells still follow physical law or do their magical nature mean that consequences outside the spell’s verbiage cannot occur?

Alex Blanke

May it please the court, my home game of 6 players and our DM has been playing for over a year now. There are a mix of skill groups so those of us who know D&D better than others help out with rules if asked. Our Bard had been using Stinking Cloud and didn't check how it is resolved before saying that if the targets failed their saves they skipped their whole turn. After the session I looked up the wording because it looked too OP and then texted our DM explaining to her that they just couldn't use their action but could still move out of the cloud on their turn. The next session our DM explains to our Bard that I was the one who rule checked her and I was the one to blame if she was upset about it. My question is this : now that I know our DM is a narc should I continue to help with rules or should I let the world burn while letting our less experienced members get away with murder?

Brian Jones

If it may please the court, I play a Beer Domain Cleric Mountain Dwarf that has his life together more than Mack son of Mumford. My adventuring companion is is a half elf oath of devotion paladin. We entered an abandoned mine and immediately saw duerger religious iconography. My DM told me to roll to know how much I could share about duergers since I am a DM as well. I rolled a 15 and I gave a good description. Grey dwarves that have become corrupted from their greed in mining. Not on a good relationship with mountain dwarves. 3 rooms later, we spot a duerger in armor and we aren't seen. The elf sneaks into the room and mercs him with his longbow including a crit. Problem being, that was a vital NPC. Next long rest, the elf's god takes away part of his power for murdering an innocent. The Player and I are now struggling at our usually strong RP and chemistry and has made comments about his dwarven companion losing him powers. Am I wrong here? I communicated at an appropriate level of knowledge and he acted on his own. But he acted on my knowledge I shared. Please bestow your justice in this case as dice christ watches us and the time devil tempts us!

Just adopted a male bearded dragon and had to name it. So welcome to the family CHASE LIZ-ARD-SON.

Dearest Honorable Judges, and May it Please the Court, I recently joined a D&D group at my workplace, with about half experienced and half new players. One player in their character creation went a bit off the rails- they demanded having a tarrasque as a familiar at level 1. Additionally, they wanted said tarrasque to be their spouse. The DM has been trying to be accommodating to this, but I feel that at some point the DM needs to stand up for themselves. I ask that you rule that the DM be more firm against game breaking behavior. We love shennanigans, but this aarokacra's choice of fantasy spouse/familiar is a bit much.

Muse93

May it please the court & the honorable bailiff Jake. I run an Icewind Dale campaign with some work friends. They are currently at the point where a dragon construct is flying around destroying Ten Towns. Rather than fight the dragon they decided to go to the largest town and have them send out militia to fight it, but that town is busy handling the refuges from the destroyed towns. My paladin player went on their own to a few towns to have them leave and head to the other town. So she saved a few people from being murded. The horrible part is that in the book it says that the town they went to is the final town it attacks. So all of the other 9 towns are going to be destroyed and hundreds of people dead while they wait for it to attack. Also the npc-s with them are of in the town helping where they can. How should i handle them letting so much of the world be destroyed?  How do i fairly decide if the npc-s died off camera? Should there be specific repricusions for my Oath of Ancients Paladin for not charging into battle?

Jesse and Sawyer McKeown

May it please the court, I would like to present the case here of a wronged player, a dead pc, and a derailed main campaign. The backstory here is long and storied, but to keep it brief the main things you need to know are, this is a homebrew campaign that me and 4 other PCs have been playing in for about 2 years now and our Rules As Written DM really likes playing holiday themed one shots in the same world, with the same characters, but everything usually goes back to normal at the end of things, no matter how weird they get. Well, last October, we had a Halloween one shot where basically, in the middle of a dungeon crawl in the main campaign, a kobold called down meteors and killed our whole party. Fun intro, right? We all awoke as different undead and my warlock was a ghost, and thus, the only one able to move around. I tried to free my companions, but none of us had access to our spells or weapons. Our gear was in a locked room, with a trapped door. Usually, I’m the lockpicker of the group, but since I could not interact with objects, I made sure to place my 1hp spectral body in the other room. But then I made an out of character joke about telling the person who was picking the lock that I could just try and float through the door. At that moment, the character unlocking the door failed his check and the trap went off. It was simply a firebolt spell that randomly targeted someone in the room. Even though I stated that my character was in an adjoining room, because I made that joke, the DM decided to make it so I was at the doorway and got targeted by the spell. I was at 1hp, so no matter if I saved or not, I was poofed. No big deal I thought, this is just a one shot. The other 3 characters continue through the dungeon, now with their stuff, and a ring of wishes with one charge left. Now, because my DM has always gotten on our butts as being a RAW purist, my wife, playing their wizard, was trying to decide whether to true resurrect themselves (as they posed more of a threat than any other person against the necromancer we were about to fight) or my character (the support with 2 spell slots). I told them to resurrect themselves, the DM watching and listening to this all going down. They resurrected themselves and the party won the fight easily due to some smartly placed walls of fire, timely shots with the mummy ranger and angry claw work from the Ghoul wizard. Now, I’m expecting us all to wake up and it all be a dream, or perhaps we were trapped by a mindflayer who found us sleeping, but no. This session was revealed to be cannon and now my warlock is completely dead. Turns out, the DM was expecting us to use the wish to bring us all back to life. But he never said anything as we spent 20 minutes trying to decide the one person who would be brought back to full. Now, because this team is upset about loosing my warlock, instead of going after the cultists who we were originally fighting for the world over, they now have to find a way to get me back, and get the other 2 their bodies back. The other two are now back at level 1(we were at level 7) and the second wizard has been changed to a fighter as he no longer has access to his magic. I’m pretty peeved because our DM never indicated that he would be ok going against RAW for this situation, or that this was all cannon. We have played 2 games since, and I am playing a fun trickery cleric until we can purify my body and then bring me back (which is a whole other thing), but I want to know is, is it fair for us to be upset with our DM, seeing as he completely nerfed 2 of our players, and killed me off without 1-letting us know this would be different than any other holiday one shots and 2-not speaking up during our conversation about who to use the wish spell on, letting us know that this was our “get out of jail free” card?

Brandon Maier

May it please the court, my party and I were exploring an underground water temple and ended up fighting a dragon turtle that attacked us from an underground lake, and it quickly became apparent this foe was beyond our current means. The dragon turtle started to climb onto land to fight us and my party’s cleric wanted to cast Control Water and use the whirlpool effect to pull the monster back out to sea. Because the dragon turtle was partially on land, our DM ruled that the creature would get a strength save against being pulled away, despite the spell not having a save for being pulled, and that it would be very hard to pull it out further into the water. Taking the DM’s hint our cleric decided not to cast Control Water and the party instead attempted to flee. Unfortunately the dragon turtles breath weapon carried around the corner we hid behind and we were all killed. Was our cleric robbed of doing something cool to save the party, or was our DM right to impose the Strength save? Thank you honorable judges and most esteemed dungeon bailiff for your time.

Tristan

May it please the court (and the baliff), In the campaign I'm currently playing in, my paladin got totally whomped , and ended up going unconscious. When our bard attempted to heal me, the DM informed us that healing in this campaign, would not bring a character up from zero. Seeing as I was the main healer, this meant I couldn't keep people up. We survived but it was very stressful. I don't take issue with this DM's choice in rules, but rather when he chose to SAY said rules. So judges (and baliff), what's the verdict on me finding a weird and obscure dnd rule to use to my advantage to throw him off his rhythm in (loving) revenge?

Axel Andrade

I was a tabaxy rogue (First name: Cat Last Name: Fish) that had 3 cursed weapons that my DM allowed me to keep and use because I pass his check, and 2 weapons that were not cursed but I had to pass a check to use them. But after a few sessions my DM killed me off just so he can turn me in a weapon for another player.

paige

If it pleases the Court, I have a question regarding using race features. I started playing a one on one campaign with a friend of mine, crafting a UA Reborn blood hunter named Jinx. Reborns have a feature called Knowledge from a Past Life that gives you the ability to add a d6 to an ability check 3x per long rest. During a battle, I missed the mark on an athletics check to jump from one boat to another during a fight with pirates, one failure in a series of many during that fight. I asked my DM if I could add my d6 to the check and hopefully not land in icy cold water. She insisted that it didn't make sense to use the feature with physical rolls because there was nothing I pull from my past that would help me do better on an athletics or acrobatics check. I disagreed and said that my character may have had experience with climbing and could use that to find a new place to land or something to catch herself on as she fell. Was I right when I advocated for that d6 roll to prevent my character from missing out on a round of combat? Should I have been allowed the chance to salvage a terrible roll, knowing the likelihood that it would actually help me was pretty low? After I presented my argument and my DM decided the feature couldn't be used, I accepted my fate and was plunged into the icy depths. I will accept whatever ruling and subsequent punishment the honorable justices and baliff decide, even if it means I must jump into arctic waters myself. Thanks!

rando

May it please the court, My Star Wars 5e game had a slight road bump a few sessions back when one of my 7 players went into a cantina looking for a rocket launcher. All of my players are sith or sith affiliated. When the scout was talking to one of the patrons trying to get information about finding said rocket launcher another player came to help by trying to shoot the guy with force lightning. Which ended up kicking off a bar brawl. The first player got mad that a fight got started and in the first round of combat fired on his party member who tried to help nearly killing him. I just sort of let it play out since they only did it the one round. Some of the players were a little upset as well that combat broke out in the cantina as they were trying to earn some money gambling. Unbeknownst to them though I had already planned on starting a fight here this just made it more organic. My question is am I right for letting the PvP happen or should I have stepped in since the second person was trying to help?

em

May it please the Court and the honorable Bailiff: My DM and one of the PCs (who happens to be his fiancé) called me a "main healer," as a paladin in a party of 5 with a pool of 45HP and cure wounds. No one else had any kind of healing magic. I asked for a magical healing item because I would spend whole turns healing when I wanted to be doing damage or anything else. For context, I was new to D&D before this and didn't create my own character, roll her stats, or have any kind of insight as to what the characteristics are of the different classes. After some time of me complaining, the DM told me sarcastically, "well, you don't have to heal." So I essentially stopped healing except in dire situations. ANYWAY, we were in an arc in the Feywild. I came across a magic sword that my character attunes to (+2, adds 20HP to my Lay on Hands pool, an extra cantrip and spell at my highest level) I am forced by my party and the DM (he threatened me with a fight that I simply wouldn't win) to give up the sword. Before we end the session, his fiancé receives a new arcane focus with the same stats as the sword I was forced to give up, except instead of the extra HP, it increased her spell save DC. They then got upset with me that I was angry because I believe that I should have gotten the sword to HELP MY PARTY. I have since left the group, but I want justice for my character and sanity.

Matthew Cheesman

Might The Court and its esteemed Crit Justices be pleased, and might that deplorable dungeon Bailiff Jake scrounge for scraps at the feet of such divine figures. I have a player who consistently engages with the story by heading off on their own and accomplishing cool plot points solo. It is simultaneously a great way to get exposition, but also a drag on the cohesion of the group, because it essentially forces each session to revolve around him. The player also occasionally does crazy stuff in universe just because he seems bored, like kissing and murdering a spy at the same time, or flying a sacred gliding lizard into the roof of a barn and breaking its neck. I have built in plenty of consequences for these actions, and it makes for some interesting group dynamics, but it also halts the direction I am hoping to take the story quite frequently. This is an all too common problem I’m sure, but how would the Justices (and their floor sucking Bailiff) handle a player like this while maintaining integrity to collective story telling and not railroading everyone’s decisions?

Arwyn Robinson

May it please the court! I once had a group of 8 players so I brought in a Co-DM to run combat while I ran the story. My druid used his only seventh level spell to reverse gravity on the battlefield, but the Co DM counterspelled it. I was alarmed because I had previewed all the monster sheets ahead of time and the monster only had up to seventh level spells. The other DM told my druid he counterspelled it at an eight level and wouldn't let the druid roll for it. I whispered to the Co DM that the monster only had a seventh level and it needed to be a contested roll but he was firm to not let it happen. Was I in the wrong to not stand up for my player and insist that it be a contested roll and the other DM stay true to the monsters character sheet?

Chris Wooley

May it please the court but more importantly the high regent bailiff!! I’m running a heist themed campaign that had its second session last week. During the session, my four level 1 heroes were tromping through a sewer hideout belonging to a notorious crime boss to save someone who’d been abducted by the boss’s syndicate. They arrived at the end of the dungeon to find the captive being tortured under the supervision of a mind flayed who was working with the syndicate. The Mind Flayer released several intellect devourers to attack the players while also using Dominate Monster on his captive to fight the PC’s as cover while he escaped to a portal out of the lair, my plan being to have the Mind Flayer re-appear as a recurring villain for my Vedalken PC. Frankly, justices, I got whomped. 3 Nat 20’s in the space of two round, my cleric obliterated one with a single guiding bolt, my rogue crit on a sneak attack, and I didn’t roll anything over an 8. My encounter which should have been deadly for a group of 4 level one’s was a whomping worthy of “.... chicken” So now comes the crux of my problem. The PC’s then began to chase down the Mind Flayer, intent on capturing it and questioning it. Again, I was getting whomped. They took it from 71 HP down to around 15. So now I have a problem. Obviously, a creature this smart wouldn’t continue to flee as it was being actively murdered. But if it had stayed and fought, it would have easily one-shotted my entire party which wouldn’t have been fun for my players who have no reliable source of resurrection. My compromise was to fudge it a bit, giving him another use of Dominate Monster (Mind Flayers technically only get one use per day) and have a PC who’s mind had just been read by Detect Thoughts to roll with disadvantage, as the Flayer was familiar with the inner workings of his mind. Not how the spell works but close enough to rationalize. My players are calling bullshit on me and saying I robbed them of their kill. I’m torn because on one hand I agree with them, but on the other they REALLY shouldn’t have done as well as they did if the Mind Flayer fought straight and I did the best I could to prevent a TPK. How big of an asshole was I, and was there something else I could have done to prevent this?

Laurawr

May it please the Bailiff, Jake Hurwitz. I’m currently running a party of 4 (at the time) Lv.4 PCs through Storm King’s Thunder. The party’s wizard is an experienced DM and dear friend of mine who, on my request, has been giving me feedback/crit at the end of sessions to help me grow as a DM. Normally this is great, but we’ve had a bit of a disagreement, which I’m looking for an outside opinion on. To preface: in an encounter against a certain giant and her body guards I had given the guards a mechanic where, if they’re in melee range of their charge, they can spend their reaction to intercept an attack taking the damage themselves. My party’s rogue rolled a crit on a bow attack, and one of said bodyguards intercepted it as its reaction, taking the (significant) damage instead of letting its leader get killed. My DM friend argued after the fact that, since the attack was a crit, it should have succeeded regardless and negated the bodyguard’s reaction, and that my handling of the Nat 20 was reducing the fun of crits for the players/whittling away player trust. I argued that a critical hit deals critical damage, sure, but does not negate an enemy or PC’s action economy (specifically a reaction in this case). I then offered a solution where, if the party as a whole wants this, I could tweak the game’s mechanics to have crits negate reactions but noted that the mechanic would work both ways, giving the following example: “if an enemy crits on a ranged spell and you go to counter-spell as a reaction, your counterspell will be negated since, by your own request, crits will negate reactions.” Needless to say that didn’t fly either. Here’s the kicker, I’ve spoken with the rest of the party individually because I obviously want to make sure that they are having fun (I mean that is the fundamental role of the DM after all), and they had an absolute blast, ESPECIALLY the one who rolled the crit in question. So, supreme, wise, justices of The Forgotten Realms and beyond, did I make the wrong call in how i handled the crit? Should crits negate reactions? All I want is to make my players happy, and I’m stressing about this now.

Aaron Thomas

May it please the court and the honourable bailiff Jake. I've recently gotten my Uncle super into Dnd by dming a campaign for him. The way he became hooked was by noticing that Drizzt and other characters from forgotten realms are mentioned in the core books. Seeing how he has read all that series and all of dragonlance he really enjoyed playing. After the campaign was finished he wanted to dm a mini campaign himself which I was totally stoked about because I am forever DM at the moment. The problem comes from him taking all of his understanding of dnd from the book series and not the core books, which don't really compare. Some examples are he wouldn't let my fighter/wrestler character designed specifically to grapple enemies grapple things that he imagines to be to big like Driders or Minotaurs. Or he gives his enemies crazy plot armor to the point that they cannot be killed (free dimension door escapes not on their turn before I can act) How do I convince him that the books take massive creative liberties and his ideas of how to dm actually make it less fun for his players because he just destroys any cool idea thing they try whenever it messes with his plans? Thanks so much sweeties, star spawn for life!!!

Evan Spears

Supreme Crit Justices, may it please the court to hear my one and only D&D story. I'll keep submitting it until I have my day in court, your Honors. I've only played D&D once, for one session, nearly 15 years ago. I spent a good while rolling my character. I drew his portrait. His name was HEAVY, and he wielded a big-ass hammer. When we got started, the rest of the party spent literally two hours getting drunk in a tavern, but I was impatient and wanted to kill some monsters and roll some dice, so HEAVY went out on his own. I encountered a river. DM asked if I wanted to cross it or go try to find a way around. I said I wanted to cross. He asked me to roll to see if I could swim. I rolled a 9. DM said "you can't swim. You drown and die." DM wouldn't let me play unless I roll a new character. So I left and haven't played since.  That experience turned me off on the game for years. Shows like D20 and NADDPOD have changed that, but now I'm too busy to actually play. I only made one roll in the game and a lousy DM soured everything for me.  Can the court please rule on whether or not that DM was a total knob? Thank you.

Rylie R

Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the Court. I am playing in multiple campaigns with the same group of friends. One of the members plays all of his characters with the same motivation and mentality. He has a “murder it all, take no time to formulate a plan, loot everything, greed is good” In the first campaign he was a fighter until his character death from jumping on a dragon’s back as it was flying away, before rolling as a bard cousin of my character. In the other he is playing a psionicist. It has gotten the party into trouble on multiple occasions in both campaigns, as if it doesn’t match what it seems the player wants, he just has his character attack (infrequent) or mouth off (almost 100% of the time) to NPCs (many of whom are guards, nobles, holy men, etc..). One such occasion had him just impulsively drink an unknown potion causing him to go insane. It cost the party almost 90% of our total party wealth to cure him. After this any time someone in the party wants an item he hops on the “oh, not sharing with the part...nice (dripping with sarcasm)”. His “all about me” play style is starting to grate on other players and the DM. I have spoken to the DM privately and am now actively campaigning for his character to suffer significant harm. Is it okay to try and lobby for another players character to suffer in private out of game conversations with the DM, or should we find a better solution? What options would the justices (and the esteemed Bailiff) suggest.

Thundermammal

May it please the court, our party finished an encounter with a floating, flaming skull and after trying, with high rolls, to break the skull into pieces we were told the skull could not be destroyed. My character randomly had a chest in his inventory from his background and I used it to place the skull inside and lock it. True to his class, another PC went rogue, grabbed the chest, doused it in oil and said that he was going to make a skull bomb. He explained that the next fight we had, he could light the chest on fire and throw it at an enemy, "opa Aladdin style", hoping the fire would make the skull come back to life and it would attack the nearest person (our enemy). What ACTUALLY happened was 3 minutes later our DM randomly said we noticed the chest burst into flames, incinerating the chest. Suddenly we were back fighting the skull without even getting a surprise round for the skull being trapped. I said we should get at least one round to throw the chest into a nearby river because it would take at least a turn for the skull to melt the chest. Our DM said we were morons for covering a chest containing a once flaming skull in oil and there would be no surprise round. It was just so disappointing to think I had a good use for a random inventory item and have it amount to nothing. Who was wronged?

Jacob Heiss

May it please the court, I think I have a bit of a different type of case here. My party was in ship combat where we were being attacked by some dragonborn. Some of them boarded our ship while others stayed on their own ship and periodically hit us with their breath weapon, covering the whole deck. My paladin, Seventeen (they/them), dropped just before the dragonborn's with the breath weapons turn in initiative. When they attacked the DM said that I would get a failed death save for taking damage from the fire breath. However, I argued that because there were four different dragonborn attacking and that we had previously been rolling different saving throws for each attack that Seventeen should have taken damage 4 times and been dead. The DM said that because they were all attacking at once that it would only be one instance of damage, but I think he just didn't want to kill my character. After a few minutes of arguing I relented and only took the one failed death save, but I still feel like Seventeen should have died there. Was I wrong to argue so hard that my character should have died? We have moved way past this fight but it still doesn't feel right to me that they survived those attacks. Thanks, Jacob H. PS: I ended up rolling a nat one on my next death save so Seventeen did end up dying in that fight anyways.

Olbyack

May it please the court, a few years ago in my first DnD campaign I created a Gnome Monk named Blu Magoo. Due to a combination of excitement and DM inexperience She became very powerful. After winning a battle the DM designed to be a final last stand for Blu and her party members the group and I decided it was time for us to let Blu go her own way and ascend to godhood. I decided to make Her the God of "Last Hope" meaning she would show up in dire circumstances and try and change fate often with lots of collateral damage. She'd end up getting a reputation of being a bad omen instead of a good one. The only problem is My DM insisted we change he name because Blu Magoo is not a "Godly Name" I was pretty upset by this but eventually gave in to keep the game going. Was I wrong? Do Gods have to have serious names? Should I have fought harder to keep the name alive?

Gill

May it please the court, I run a game for three players, one of whom plays a gnome named Jaconathanob who is "round as he is wide and bobs like a cork in water." I didnt get a backstory from this player so these facts came out in rp (I had them play team building exercises like two truths and a lie with a bunch of new pirates). I love how funny this is and dont want to spoil his fun but how do I run water encounters with stakes for him? Is there a way to do it without throwing the cork thing out the window and saying he has no choice but to sink? I have one coming up, so this is preemptive judgment if you hear this case, Thank you so much! Gill

Jade Finch

Dear honorable justices and hi Jake, I run a homebrew campaign and I have a classic case of PC suicide, by way of replacement PC. My changeling fighter (we'll call him Tex) tried to infiltrate an enemy castle, posing as a guard. While this should be easy for a changeling, he completely failed in both planning and execution and was quickly captured. Because of this catastrophic failure I decided to keep his character as a mind controlled pawn of the enemies- the player made a temporary character and the others got the chance to free their friend. When the chance came later, during a boss fight, all the other players did their best to remove the mind control. Instead of helping, Tex's player decided to KILL Tex. You might think this is just a convoluted way to get a new character, but here's where the conflict is: the player is EXTREMELY upset about Tex's death. He put in a ridiculous amount of time and work into the background and custom class and personality, and he's upset with me for "killing his character". While I did take Tex away briefly, the others tried to free him and could have done it with a round or two more. He also doesn't even like the new temporary character- he plans to roll a new one. Did I ruin my player's fun and indirectly murder Tex? Or is the player just deep in his self inflicted grief? Thank you for your time, esteemed judges and honorable bailiff.

Peter Mundell

May it please the court, I DM for six players in a game set in the Dream Plane where they've all lost their memories but can regain them by sleeping and have to fight the various Gods of Dreams to get back to the Material Plane. In an early battle, the party was facing a fire myrmidon and a couple of salamanders, and the team's paladin pushed the myrmidon into the lava 50 feet below. Fire Myrmidons are immune to fire damage and are also immune to the prone condition, so we stumbled back and forth for awhile trying to figure out "Do you take falling damage if you fall onto a surface which damage you're immune to and when you're immune to prone?" One player brought up that if you belly flopped from 50 feet in the air into water, it would hurt like hell, but I would argue that belly flopping is essentially landing prone, and professional divers drop into pools from much taller heights without dying. In the end, I gave them the fall damage because it's only 5d6 anyways and I like rewarding when players do something in combat outside of just attacking. What would you have ruled? Sincerely yours, The Only Creature to Survive Falling in Lava

JesterTheCleric

May it please the court, the case of DM v. OP Feat Loving Aarakocra. I DM for a half homebrew half module game where one of the characters is an aarakocra open hand monk. At level 8 he told me he wanted to take the lucky feat. I had just given all of them access to the Tasha's additional features, since like gestalt characters, they get a bunch of cool shit but the same number of actions to do them. However, I thought Lucky was too far and told him no. I've learned my lesson for aarakocra and won't be allowing them in future games (run for 2 total and they're way too OP), but should I have said yes to the player? I don't want to tell him his fun is wrong, it's an OP feat so I just ruled it out for everyone, but I feel bad for saying no. Should I have said yes and allowed the OP feat to make sure the player was having fun? I accept any punishment deemed necessary.

WALTER HOFFMAN

May it please the Court, and Bailiff Jake. My players where fighting a vampire. The rouge jumped on the back of the vampire and attempted to remove the vampires fangs, I said it would be pretty difficult to remove the vampires fangs from it's mouth while it was still alive. I had the player roll a flat strength check, the players insisted that the roll should have been slight of hand. Should the roll have been slight of hand? Should I have even allowed the fangs to be removed if the roll succeeded, and what should the DC have been?

Elyana Scerbo

MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT, My character is a Paladin who relies a lot on the Mounted Combatant feat as well as the Find Steed spell. She's basically a cavalier baddie riding a celestial warhorse named Twinkle Toes who also happens to sound like Eddie Murphy. Once in a battle, Twinkle Toes tried to make a hoof attack and botched. The DM ruled that because of this, my character got kicked from her horse (which seems fair enough!) but then added that Twinkle Toes ran 60FT away (his max movement speed) AND that the enemy had the right to an opportunity attack since my paladin was was thrown out of range. In another incident when our party was being ambushed when we made camp, I was told I could not get to Twinkle Toes because the DM decided that he was tied to a tree outside of my movement range. Who ties a celestial horse you can telepathically communicate with to a tree? I argued this and got shut down and so my question to the court is this: does my DM have it out for the Twinkle Toes mechanic? Or am I a bitch baby who is frustrated she can't do the cool thing? Please let me know what you think because I am desperate to come to Summer Slam. Love, Elyana S.

Michael Sanders

May it please the court, I was playing in a campaign as a goblin and at one point we went into an armorer. I said that I wanted to buy a shield and my DM, in character as the shop owner, said that because of my small size that a traditional shield would be too large and cumbersome for me to carry, so he found a buckler. Out of game he ruled that because it was a buckler and was smaller that it could only give me +1 AC as opposed to the +2 of a usual shield. I reasoned that while it was smaller, by his own RP, I was also smaller and thus would be more covered by a buckler. Given that AC, in its abstract definition is how hard it is to hit a target as determined by ability to dodge (dexterity) and the size and strength of the armor, a smaller shield protecting a smaller body would still convey the same bonus as larger shield covering a larger body.

Foolnif

What's good, Pawpaws and judges. I'm a DM usually, but this is a rare case where i was allowed to play. I found a group of people on Roll20 looking for some players to play the Descent into Avernus campaign. I was very excited because I wanted to romance the Archdevil, Zariel. I played a canonically Trans(this will be relevant), celestial patron "Neutral Evil"-Warlock human named Akilah, who was a former con artist indebted to a celestial patron. I fell in love with playing this sassy bitch, hoping more of her story would unfold throughout the adventure and after a couple months of sessions it seemed like that would happen, but ultimately, it would not. After months of adventuring into literal hell and proving herself as the tactician of the group, getting the party out of scrapes and bad situations of their own making, Akilah was shaping up to possibly become the queen of Avernus(?). At the end of a session, we were entering a dead forest or something and found a Bag of Holding strapped to a corpse. The party was elated, and ran to it, but Akilah had some suspicions. OOC, I had a strong, STRONK hunch that this was a bag of devouring because, as i said before i usually DM and i know my shit, but i didn't want to just call it out as a trap and move on, because where's the fun in that? So Akilah proposed to test out the bag by putting the hand of our stupefied companion into the bag and see if they were sucked in. The druid in our party who had "adopted" the stupefied former mercenary objected, so instead I figured "let's commit to the bit". Akilah stuck her own hand in the bag and was immediately sucked into it's void of death, still alive. In a panic our bard turned the bag inside out to attempt to free their healer and tactician. Unfortunately, turning the bag inside out destroys the magic of the bag, thus dooming Akilah. I thought it was the funniest fuckin turn of events that couldve happened, but I figured "I can talk to Tim the DM and arrange a sidequest to revive Akilah, like how Hardwon was revived after becoming a wampire in the shadowfell," we had just met a genie and i bet that a wish from a genie could bring her back for sure. I rolled a shotgun-toting Githzerai artificer alt to bridge the gap between now and Akilah's revival. None of it worked out as well as I thought it could've. Tim the DM staged an afterlife scene for Akilah over text chat where he had an angel drop Akilah's deadname and called her a trans slur and sent her to hell because her alignment was NE. (this wasn't the first time the trans slurs and deadnaming had occurred and it really bothered me, I wanted her Trans-ness to be recognized, but not with slurs and deadnames, but i was also very scared to say how I felt about it because these people were relatively strangers to me and i was definitely the odd one out, being trans myself) It soon became apparent Akilah was not gonna be allowed to be wished back to life, at least not without completely changing her class, race, and personality to fit a devil because her eternal soul was damned. So I quit the campaign to everyone’s dismay because I felt like Tim the DM was not being a very good DM if he wouldn’t negotiate with me for the benefit of the story we were telling. Should I have stayed with the game to finish it out even if I couldn't play the way I wanted? Also, should I condemn another person’s DMing style if it doesn’t match my ideals of DMing? Love y'all, -Felix

Alaina Moreno

May it please the court! I present the case of Druid versus Druid. I was playing a swashbuckler rogue who took some levels in druid as the campaign was leaning towards more druidic themes and it fit my character's backstory. Another player who had been playing a monk decided he was bored and had his character killed off with the DM. He brought in a full druid to play. One point in the story the party was given treasure for helping out a hermit, which included the Staff of the Woodlands. Given the new druid had one already, I requested to use it. The new druid stated he wanted to "duel wield" the staff and kept it without any conversation between the party. So, given my character being a pirate rogue, I said "f*** it" and had my character try to steal one of the staffs in the night. The dm, the druid, and the druid's real life brother said I committed a big party No no, so I didn't get to keep the staff (even though I rolled ridiculously high on my sleight of hand). The DM did give me an enchanted bow but nothing compared to the staff. To this day, I am still mad at the druid player and his brother for complaining and hoarding items (where the rest of my group agreed with me). Dear honorable judges, who was in the right here? Was it me, the pirate druid who just wanted to help out my team, or the other new druid?

Hank Cox

May it please the court and also Jake in the case of the Gnome Player vs the DM. I (fairly new DM) ran a Session 0 for a level 6 all gnome one shot I have planned. One person (who we’ll call Gerald) is playing a Beast Master Ranger with an owl animal companion. Gerald argues that if he makes his character small enough, he can ride the owl; I argue that gnomes can’t be small enough to ride owls for fear of it being OP. Am I ruining the fun of a one shot? Is Gerald being annoying? Please help me your honours and also Jake.

Artie Cardenas

May it please the court; I am currently in a campaign with four other players, and one consistent no-show, whom we'll call CJ. He has not shown up for just about two months, and it had gotten to the point where we canonically dumped his PC in a random town and just forgot about him in our last session. We had also gotten to 6th level last session, and we were excited to go on this adventure. In the session that followed, CJ showed up halfway through the session, which annoyed us, and then our DM said he could be 6th level along with the rest of us, despite missing a very large portion of the campaign to this point. I was annoyed by this and talked to our DM after, who said that while he probably should not have gotten CJ to 6th level, he wanted to make sure that he became engaged and didn't feel like he couldn't participate anymore. While I understand why he feels this way, I disagree and feel he should not be at 6th level like the rest of us. Am I being petty? I humbly await your sentencing.

ChromaticMars

If it may please the gracious and benevolent Justices... And Baliff Jake. During a character creation session, I argued with my DM about a possible Bee Keeper Druid going into wild shape as a giant bee and laying eggs to build a giant bee swarm army (or even normal sized bees). My argument was that when an animal lays an egg it’s not considered a birth because it’s not fertilized, and that laying eggs is more like a menstration or ovulation, so my little bee body could lay eggs as long as it’s ovulating, even timing my ovulation specifically to wild shape into a Bee and lay as many eggs for as long as I can, BUT the special thing with bees is that non-fertilized Eggs still become worker drone bees that follow and take care of the Queen (aka their Mommy bee me). So would you rule that I indeed can become a Bee Keeper Druid can form a Giant Swarm of Bees Army?

Jacob Buttarazzi

May it please the court! Bailiff Jake, I humbly invoke the Bond of Jacobs and request a simple plug. I'll be making a post on Reddit for the cases that you don't choose. Obviously a lot of people don't get chosen, so I think this would be a great way to engage the community.

John Smutny

May it please the court... I come forward as a party member, but also as someone who wants to improve how to DM. During a battle atop a tower against Dragonborn Dragon Riders, one of my party members (a Ranger) harpooned a dragon so they can trail behind it as it flies like a human kite. The dragon eventually dies and plummets to the ground with our Ranger close behind. The Ranger decided to place a Good-Berry in their mouth so when they hit the ground and take fall damage, the Good-Berry activates, giving them 1 hit point and essentially avoid being knocked out from the 100+ ft drop then just endured. The DM allowed this interpretation to the Ranger's joy. As a DM in-training, how would the justices approach this Good-Berry Folly? I'm thinking I would allow it once for being cleaver but with the warning: "Never try this again". - SadWheatFarmer

BeeBoop

May it please the court in the case of Anxious DM vs The Importance of Rules As a Dungeon Mistress, I love creating a story for my friends to explore! In my current group, I am the only one who has played D&D before and it's starting to get pretty overwhelming. I keep asking them to read certain passages from the book so it's not just all on me to know everything for them, but no one has done so yet (we finished Session 10 and going into Session 11 this upcoming weekend). With this in mind, I have two players who constantly argue over what the rules are when neither of them have read the rules in the first place. I also recognize that this is just an fun excuse to hang out so I don't want it to feel like everyone has to adhere to what I want out of the interaction my social anxiety will allow me for the day. Do I insist that my players read the rules before running another session or just brace myself for some fuckery and scramble through their character sheets for them. Thank you for your wisdom esteemed Honors <3

Brent Bouchard

May it please the court, I present a case in second edition D&D. My friend ran a game in second edition and there is a rule that when you come to an unlocked closed door in a dungeon that you want to open you have to roll a D20 and get below your 'Open Doors' score based on strength. A character with 10 strength has to roll below a 6 to open a door, but can try again as many times as they like, with each attempt being 'noisy' and may attract monsters. After multiple doors, each with only a 25% chance of success to open them, the party grew to despise any door they saw, as we'd have to roll 3-5 times each door just to open it. After dozens of failures during the night, we would try a door, fail, and give up while claiming the door couldn't be opened. We did this under the guise of roleplay, because if I tried in real life to open a door and couldn't, I wouldn't assume I could the next time I immediately tried. I plead with the judges to overrule this RAW, and make dungeons about traps and monsters, not the challenge of opening a door.

Ryan A

May it please the court and the lowly bailiff, I run a campaign where my party was in an airship battle with a pirate crew of lycanthropes. It took place in the Shadowfell, the captain was a dragon, I was feeling pretty good. Until the druid, Tero, conjured giant eagles who dropped the enemy crew off the deck one-by-one into the rocks far below. I was feeling less good. Besides opportunity attacks and grapple checks, could I have prevented this mechanically? Or did I just get absolutely annihilated by a creative player?

Adam Michael

May it please the court... My level 14 Tiefling/Rogue player split the party and opened up a mile-long portal to the 4th level of hell. She did this with a magic item given to her a few adventures back after making a deal with an ambassador of hell. Krakens and other horrors crept out of the portal before we ended on a cliffhanger. She argues that she wouldn’t have opened up the portal if she knew it would be huge, she thought she’d only have to fight like one devil. I never said how big the portal was when she spoke to the Ambassador character. Who is in the right here? Should I back out and say it wasn’t really a mile long portal, or go with it? The devil she made a deal with was an obvious bad guy. She will probably die because she split from the party too, which would suck as she’s already been reborn once after agreeing to be a warlock of devil Matthew Mcconaughey. Thank you for your time.

Zack

If it may please the mighty justices, arbiters of the Crit and also the bailiff: In a recent session with my players I had them fighting in a bar brawl (a huge swarm) when two of my clever players decided to combine the casting of web around the swarm with some aoe fire damage. Pretty bad for the swarm with its vulnerability to aoe and the 2d4 of a burning web but not devastating. BUT THEN my players argued that the swarm should take 2d4 for each square of the burning web-a whopping 18d4 for the giant swarm. I argue that the brawl should only have to take one instance of this burning web letting it have a single turn before being eviscerated by these level 3 characters (though I did give them 5d4 as a middle ground plus the flavor of fully burning down the bar). Who was right? I got whomped either way but how bad did I get whomped. I lay our fates at your robes great deciders of the crunch and the flavor and also with Jake.

Bulbarat

Thank you Honorable Judges, may it please the court. I was playing with a group I have now since left. In this campaign, which was the first session, I was playing a Centaur Barbarian names Lazedon Odeas (pronounced La-zeh-dawn). We were level 1 and playing out of the Abyss, which if you don't know, starts you off as prisoners of drow and obviously no equipment. There is an NPC prisoner in the module named Jimjar who's whole deal is that he makes bets. The DM had Jimjar bet to me that I couldn't push the drow guard off the cliff when they open the door. Obviously, as a barbarian, it would only make sense that I would never back down from a challenge, so I took the bet. I successfully pushed him off and was proud. I knew this would initiate combat, so I was ready. But I wasn't ready for the utter buttfuck we would be getting. Most of us were unconscious in 2 rounds. We stood no chance, just us players. But there were 6+ other prisoners that did nothing but cower. He even removed the Orc Barbarian NPC that was supposed to help escape. Everyone blamed me saying I shouldn't have pushed the Drow, but I argued that it made too much sense for my character to do that and to not push him would've been out of character and metagaming. I called him out for greatly increasing the difficulty of this game and constantly bullying my in prior games as well. This was the straw that broke my sanity and I just left. Please tell me Honorable Judges, was I in the wrong?

Roxanne Ross

May it please the court. One of my players likes to multiclass, which I usually love, but in this new highish level campaign (level 12), they chose to take 4 different classes (initially taking 3 then a fourth once they leveled up…not telling me because they wanted it to be a surprise). This might be okay; except they are still a fairly new player so don’t know the rules well enough to make this work. For example, they try to rage, summon their echo knight, summon their pact weapon, and cast MULTIPLE smites all in the same turn. This makes it so, in combat, their turn takes around 7-8 minutes each round as they have to figure out what they want to do and I have to make sure they play the character correctly, lest they do 70-80 damage a round while the rest of the party does maybe half of that. I talked to them about it saying I would let them redistribute their levels into 2 of the classes, but they seem adamant playing the character this way saying the character’s multiple classes are integral to their backstory. Am I out of line here? I’m having trouble running these encounters now and it seems like some of my players start to get bored once this player’s turn comes around. Thank you kindly! Roxanne

AmberDextrous!

If it may please the court & bailiff: My standard group was playing in a school-based campaign and while in combat class, my party was separated from the rest of the class and attacked by a spectator, with the DM saying that it seemed to be sent after us. We managed to win the fight, but our gunslinger said she spoke undercommon and wanted to talk to the spectator to find out who sent it, so she finished it off with nonlethal damage. DM said she couldn't do nonlethal damage with a gun, so I cast spare the dying and DM said it failed. I know that the DM can make rulings and all, but we felt a little cheated because we wanted to get a start to our investigation and it just got shut down. We knew that we wouldn't get the name of the BBEG or anything but interviewing a spectator sounded like fun. So what's fair here? Thanks y'all.

Victoria Fair

May it please the court, My D&D group has been playing together for about five years, and in every campaign or one-shot we have done in that time, two of the players always make their characters best friends or relatives. This habit has led to situations where they screw over the party or takeover the game to handle their personal issues. As they are the two most extroverted players, this happens more often than I think they realize. Am I out of line to mandate that their next characters have no prior connection and that there is no out of game decision that they are best friends (yes this has happened)? I want everyone to have fun, but I am also sick of going through a repeating cycle of the same narrative with their characters. We all take turns as DM, so it isn't like my decree would make this a 'forever' situation. Thank you and may Pelor smile upon you.

Harry Abrahams

If it pleases the court I present the case Two Hands, One Punch I built a PC with the goal of having an unarmed brawler. The PC was a variant human so that I could take the Fighting Initiate Feat from level 1. This way as a level 1 fighter I had the unarmed fighting and two weapon fighting fighting styles giving me a 1d8+STR unarmed strike as both an action and a bonus action. For the first few sessions all was well and I enjoyed playing my battlecrazed puncher. Then the DM decided that I could no longer use my fighting styles to allow me to punch as an offhand attack. I went from 2d8+8 damage a turn to 1d8+4 very quickly. This wasn't a huge deal but he also wouldn't let me change up my fighting styles at all so no matter what I do one of my fighting styles is useless. I could always multiclass into monk I guess but it still feels not so great. Should I be allowed to punch with both hands once more or suffer as a man who can only punch once when all he wants is to punch twice

Richard Jacob Meadows

May it please the court, and the extremely honorable and cool Judge Balif Jake I have a new player joining an ongoing campaign, using a character she's used for stories and other things before as a base. I went through with her on creating the character, a paladin of oath of the chef dragon born (who looks more like a teifling but that's just flavor). The case arises in the stated characters height. Canonically she wants her character to be 10 ft tall, because one of her mothers is an actual dragon, while the other mother is part giant and teifling. Essentially a melting pot of backgrounds and races, but we got it down to just being dragon born flavored to look tiefling at 10 ft tall. She brought up a point about since the character is Large, would that change their movement speed any since they would have a longer stride? I found an answer that we settled on for the moment, stating since large creatures take 2x2 squares instead of one, the distance is from the center of the square, meaning smaller than a medium creature with same speed. Should I increase her speed to match what would be a longer stride, or follow the ancient yahoo answers claim of center of the character with no change in walking speed?

Salil

If it please the court. I was running a combat (4 level 2 PCs) centered around monsters attacking a village. The crux of the combat was that if the players attacked a monster, that monster would target the attacking PC rather than the innocent villagers (would would add/remove XP if they survived or died). One of the PCs (an artificer) was firebolting the bugbear chief and getting a little cocky . I decided to do what the bugbear chief might do if someone was taunting and move out of long range so he didn't throw javelins with disadvantage. The bugbear chief ended up getting a crit and knocking the artificer unconscious. A few rounds later, the artificer has 2 fails and no other healers in the party, so I ended up having an NPC run into the fight and give the artificer a healing potion. First, was I being a jerk by trying to knock the artificer down a peg, even if knocking him unconscious was an accident? Second, was I wrong to use Deus Ex Machina to bring the PC back? It felt wrong, but I was worried about alienating a new player by killing his character so early and for something so trivial (i.e. being cocky toward a monster). P.S. I do actually have a way to use what I did to my advantage. The artificer now is indebted to the NPC who saved him. A murderous gnome who is very reminiscent of Swiftie.

LM Larson

May it please the court (and the bailiff, I guess): I run a campaign on a fungal world. I used an adventure template but replaced the NPCs and mob/BBEG encounters with creatures that would likely be present in that world. Unfortunately, I didn't think ahead and NONE of the replacements were able to physically speak (ex: Myconids) besides a choldrith (undercommon). Because of the lack of speech on the island, I maintained that all mobs and the dragon (BBEG) could not speak or understand speech either. My party seemed annoyed and frustrated, but we found ways for them to communicate with the Myconids (who were the quest givers) through electrical connections (lightning spells & mycelium pulses). Was I right to maintain consistency with the encounters being unable to understand/speak languages considering the lack of spoken language by all other creatures on the island? LM

Grayson

May it please the court! This case weighs heavy on my conscience and comes from me and my party's first time ever playing D&D. My brother-in-law playing a brooding, elven rogue named Straggolas, and my sweet wife playing the eager and curly-headed Halfling-Paladin boy, Gilbert Digglebee. The two Level 1 adventurers paired up to help the nearby town where they chose their very first quest; aiding an apothecary living in a windmill just a few miles away, but upon arriving, they were ambushed by a Manticore. Things were going well at first as the two were dealing damage and hardly taking any. But it was when the Manticore became desperate and scooped the halfling boy 50ft into the air, that things quickly got out of hand as I realized Gilbert would soon be facing a 'God-Goofing' amount of falling damage. With a well placed shot Straggolas hit the Manticore with an arrow, but my sweat covered eyes noticed the Manticore still had remaining hp. With conflicted emotions, I fudged the numbers and declared the beast dead, but the boy still had to fall. After the scattering of 5d6's, Gilbert managed to survive with a mere goodberry's amount of health left, preventing my wife's first character from permadeath. I never told them what I had done, or that I believe the Halfling should’ve be died on his first quest, so if you hear this babe, I'm sorry. Am I wrong for what I did?

mugabi rubamba

May it please the court and Handsome baliff I am a new DM and in our most recent session, long story short, the gnome artificer of the group failed a wisdom saving throw and "accidentally" released a bound evil God. The God then told them to either bend the knee or leave him to accomplish his mission. Before this moment, many of the players had received visions from their respected gods telling them of the danger this God posed to the world. Yet as soon as he was released, both the gnome artificer and the Tabaxi monk willingly offered their services to help the dark lord accomplish his goal. So I told them both to add 3 levels of oathbreaker paladin to the character sheets, turn them in & start on new character sheets. The artificer asked me if there was any way to save his character from this fate and I told him no because "there are no Takesies-Backsies on selling your soul". He said that i was being unfair and has already started making a cleric he hopes to use to save his old character, even though i told him that his gnome is basically dead. My question is was I being too naive in assuming my players would not side with an evil God? and Should I give my players a chance to save their old characters, even though they both willingly went to the dark side?

Andrew Yeager

May it please the court. Who is the blame for completely derailing a campaign? The majority of the party blames me however I blame the paladin. This happened in our very first session. We were out of tavern and I was still fairly new to d&d. Partly being lazy on my part as the player and not wanting to break down currency I was paying and tipping the tavern very well. If drinks and food that only cost silver or bronze. I just paid with a gold coin. That got attention of a mafia type organization. One member decided to pickpocket another member of our group. The paladin saw this and went to confront the thief. Who had a body guard with him. A fight broke out and we killed both the thief and the bodyguard / assassin. I jumped in to help the fight towards the end because our other party members were starting to get killed. Because of this we had to then deal with this mafia organization. Which took three sessions and only ended when the party completely wiped. I put forth if the paladin had just let things go none of this would have happened. The thief only took 14 pieces of gold. So wasn't that big of a deal. Everyone else blames me for flashing our gold around and getting their attention. Who really is to blame?

SyrupSampson

May It please the court, this is a case to set the precedent of how combat mechanics work in RP. Two of my fellow PC's were arguing and being hostile to one another, as the verbal fight ended one of the players walked away and the other player attempted to take an opportunity attack on him, to which the other player explained that their character can not provoke opportunity attacks. As a hard ass on the rules I argued that RP wise that probably means that the player swings on the guy walking away and misses, thus the whole party sees this attempted betrayal. This lead to the whole party attacking the PC in defense and that guys character getting killed. So tell me, was I in the wrong to interpret it like this? I realize it was kinda shitty for me to point it out but if my character actually saw him attempt to stab his fellow party member in the back, he would not let that slide. I accept whatever the court rules and I yield the remainder of my time.

Pagos, Self-Proclaimed Fae King, Now with Real Musical Improv Action

May it displease the court (I’m still irked by this) About a year ago, right before the pandemic I was part of a campaign with friends. After a few sessions the dm wanted to discuss an issue he felt came up. He wanted to limit the number of cantrips a day. His reasoning was that he didn’t want to see players abuse cantrips in order to plow through dungeons or encounters. He backed this by calling out me dealing damage to a door with a couple firebolts. We had two casters. A cleric and me a divination wizard. We were all at level 2. And I called this out for being an unfair disadvantage to us, as a person who primarily plays casters. This led to some heated discussion and I feel it’s what ultimately caused the game to end. I feel guilty but justified, and seek closure from the supreme crit justices. The decision is in your hands.

joshyboo

Your honorable judges, May it please the court. I was DM'ing some friends and ended up giving out an item called the luck stone. This stone gave the person holding it advantage on every roll. However it gave every other creature within 50 ft. Disadvantage. I didn't actually tell them they had disadvantage though. I simply began rolling it for them. Having already given out some cursed/questionable items, i figured it would be obvious when suddenly i was rolling a die every time they did any action. This resulted in them missing attacks when they had rolled 19's but hitting when rolling 14's. Some of my players began getting very upset to where one was even yelling at me by the end of the session. Is there any way to make an item like this work without just telling them exactly how cursed it Is, or did i just goof this up and ruin my campaign? Thanks, Josh.

Mr Oso

May it please the court and the baliff I am a player in a campaign where we are currently on our way to kill a demon lord that is terrorizing a town and when we got there he sent his minions after us because he did not want to deal with us. This fight took 3 hours because his minions were mainly succubus demons and they would repeatedly charm us. The issue was when our Kobold monk who thinks he's a dragon tried to use stillness of mind our DM said he can't because stillness of mind requires an action but his action was not in his control because of the charm. We argued about this for a good 30 mins because we were saying if that is true the only way is for him to be aware of his own charm and that makes no sense. Were we wrong to get mad because I can see why he would be right but at the same time if he is right that ability is useless?

Rafat Chowdhury

If it pleases the court, this is the case of the flaky player. So I am currently running a new 5E game as a new DM with all new first time players. After the first 2 sessions, everyone has happy and excited to play more on at least a weekly basis. However, session 3 came around and one of the players said he was busy so we pushed it to next week. He flaked on us again and I told him it was fine and he could just join back up next session. After we played session 3 everyone was excited for session 4 only for the same flaky player to say he was busy with exams. Starting session 4 I wanted to introduce more story and lore so I told the flaky player it would be better for him to join us at the start of the next storyline so he isn’t lost. He agreed. However as we were playing session 5, the other players said that they didn’t want to play with him as he always flaked and that he wasn’t even studying for his exams as he was playing League of Legends as we played last session and that we should just kick him out of the game and not let him rejoin at when we start a new storyline. Here’s where it gets awkward, all of the players are my first cousins. We all grew up together and we are all in our 20s now but I am the oldest and the DM so they think I should be the one to kick him out of the game. I think this might have negative impact on our relationship as a family if 4 out of 5 are playing a game of DnD where one person was specifically kicked out. We are still 3-4 sessions left in this storyline before the next part starts. The flaky player seems like he liked playing DnD and its summer now so hes done school so he doesn’t have a “real” excuse anymore and he seems to be down for the next storyline to jump back in. Should I bite the bullet and just kick him out? Should I tell the players they are being bad cousins for kicking the flaky player out? Should I wait to see if he flakes out on the start of the next storyline to kick him out?

Beav

The case of the stoner druid May it please the court. Your Honors, I DM a game in which one of the PC’s is playing a Grassland Druid named “Purp” who is also a weed dealer. We’ve worked out a mechanic to determine the strength of their magically grown, dank bud and therefore the price he sells it for. Ive also allowed him to use it to temporarily boost his own charism at the expense if his Dexterity. On one occasion, however, Purp got a nat 20 on their grow check, yielding the Stickiest of the Icky. They saved this batch until the party was infiltrating a military base, then stuck the intoxicant into some of the guards’ stew pot. They waited until the drugs started to take effect, and i played it as the guards were significantly less effective at perception and would roll any attacks with Disadvantage. Purp, however, argued that their “OG Crit” kush should’ve rendered them totally unconscious, but i thought this was overkill. This did not end up impacting the sneak mission, as all the PC’s made it past the baked guards, but the real life player of Purp still complains about this detail today. So my honorable judges and bailiff, did i not do enough to honor the nat 20 or is Purp being a lil’ diva? I also welcome any suggestions on modifications to this homebrew mechanic. Honorably yours, JB

Gabriel Felix

May it please the court! Our final session of a homebrew campaign came to fruition, in a rather unsatisfying way and I only have myself and my at the time 2 year old son to blame. We were entering a cave to fight an undead dragon. One of our players was captured whom we found at the end when the BBEG fight began. During the fight the player that was taken pulled me into another chat (this was done online) to explain something ominous that lead me to believe they weren't the same character anymore. We defeated the dragon barley when my son began to cry from his room. We play pretty late so I explained I would be back in a couple minutes. So I could check on my boy and make sure he was OK. After putting him back to bed I returned to see the once captured player leading another away from the group. This lead to him killing the pc and charming the rest of us into a situation that resulting in our deaths. When I returned to the computer I asked if I could join the 2 wandering off alone as this new info given during the fight would result in my cleric not wanting people alone with them. The dm said no and that I needed to be there to say so. I accepted this and rolled with it. Were all still good friends and we have a laugh now about how my son may have indirectly caused a tpk. Was I wrong requesting my pc to retroactively join them due to my absence, or was the dm right to say nah. I look forward to your verdict and want to say thank you to all that you all do.

Resa

May it please Bailiff Jake, I’m in a discord campaign where the DM says he plays rules as written except he’s added in a couple of his own house rules. One of them being that our combat turns have to actually be in 6 seconds real time or else we risk not completing our actual turn. He has yet to cut me off because I spend the entire rest of the battle muted and writing notes for exactly what I’m going to do on my turn. I have a lot of anxiety about knowing my character sheet well enough and making the right move and this new rule has immediately made me more nervous! I told him about this and I think he’s been more lenient with us being “snappy” but there will be times where I ask him a question for map clarification/whether or not I can move somewhere without getting hit and he refuses to explain anything to me and says in a grating sing song voice that I need to make as quick of a decision as I would if I were actually there... This just seems entirely unrealistic to me and I know combat in 5e can get bogged down super easily but surely there must be another way to speed up combat? Also hi judges, you can debate my case too lol Resa

Crits

May it please the court, I present to you the case of the timestop disintegrate. My kobold monk and our party were fighting a reoccurring villain. During this fight, the villain used two 9th level timestop spells to get a party member several hundred feet away from us and killed him with disintegrate so we couldn't revive him. I argue that the DM was wrong to do that for two reasons: A) She said the stat block she used had two 9th level spells, which was true however that stat block did not have timestop on it. She homebrewed that part. B) If my level 13 monk with 50 speed and bonus action dashes couldn't catch up no matter what, it seems unfair because there was no way for us to stop that from happening. What is your ruling? Should the DM be allowed to use homebrew to make my monk catching up impossible, and should she be allowed to use disintegrate to make revival impossible on top of that?

Sara Davison

May it please the court! We just started a new nautical campaign. My character is a multi classed swashbuckler rouge hexblade warlock sea elf. We were fighting against merrow (evil merfolk people) and one of them had a magic orb which when directed at you, you are paralyzed if you fail your con save. Well, I failed my con save and my DM proceeds to tell me that I need to succeed on one of the next 6 round or I would drown as we were fighting under water. As a sea elf, I can breathe under water and I have a swimming speed of 30. I argued that since I can breathe underwater, I wouldn't drown and that if you were paralyzed on land you wouldn't suffocate, so drowning doesn't make sense. I made my save the next round so I wasn't paralyzed for long, but was wondering who is right, me or my DM?

ChloPiercer

May it please the court: The case of the chicken and the hitman. I'm a DM and my players bought a ten foot pole, a basket, and some rope, and then obtained a live chicken. They put the chicken in the basket, tied the basket to the pole, and now carry the entire apparatus around everywhere they go, holding it out in front of them, the goal being to trigger any traps, alarms, or anything else they may encounter. No amount of discussion has convinced them to get rid of the chicken on the pole. I've given them disadvantage on stealth due to the constant clucking, on acrobatics and climbing checks due to the size of the device, and still, they will not abandon it. I've tried to kill the chicken more than once out of cheerfully admitted spite. To my chagrin, they have managed to keep it alive. I came close, once, when the chicken triggered a cluster of mushrooms that sprayed a poison cloud, but due to poor damage rolls on my part and good rolls on the players', the chicken was saved. Despite the fact that they haven't even named this chicken, it has become the focus of the entire campaign. I don't want to just take it away without any sort of roll. A mutual friend of ours asked to join the game, and we all agreed. In private, I made a request: eliminate the chicken. He agreed. However, after a single session, the 'hitman' declared his undying loyalty to the chicken, and I have no ideas left. The game has been on hiatus for a while due to the state of the world, but hopefully we'll be able to resume shortly. Before we do, I must know: Was I right to put a metagame hit out on the accursed bird, or should I embrace him and accept that I am running a fowl-based campaign?

Emeline Fauci

May it please the illustrious court! I bring you the tale of the "Brother-in-law playing a Kenku roleplays dumb by making other players tell him what to do and gets offended when I call him an NPC." I am a lady DM for my husband, friend, and brother in law over Skype. My brother in law plays a chaotic "good" 12 year old Kenku named Hoe Scratch. His roleplay is saying his character wouldn't know what to do or how to warn characters because he's "a dumb bird". This has meant the party has bumbled stealth missions, been severely injured after his character sees danger but refuses to act, etc. I've provided opportunities for backstory quests, which he firmly rejects in character by saying he stares or clacks his jaws at people. HOWEVER, the literal blow up that caused the game to halt was I asked Hoe Scratch to roll an investigation check while the party was in a dungeon under a Rakshasa's house. He said he did nothing. I let it go. Initiative rolls around again with absolute chaos: the druid's spells having no effect on the Rakshasa and the paladin leapt into a huge water trap to avoid a scythe. I asked Hoe Scratch what he does again, and he one more time said he does nothing. I asked for him to roll another investigation check to do literally anything to find a hidden entrance. Out of character, he blew up on me because "he doesn't understand why I'm forcing him to roll these stupid checks" and "it's not what Hoe Scratch would do." We stopped the session and made the next point that the other characters have to tell him what to do because he's a dumb bird. I told him that behavior is an NPC that I could control because he's part of a group and even if he wants to play dumb, he needs to communicate with the others. Later, when he called my husband to complain, he was furious about being called an NPC. He said his character had grown over the 50 sessions we'd been playing because he called people by the right names now. Even weeks later, he still refuses to talk to me outside of D&D. Was I in the right for explaining that communicating with players trumps "role play" of a dumb character? Thank you for the honor of submitting!

Nicolas R

May it please the court: my group's dm from a previous campaign was visiting as he had moved away since the end of the campaign that he ran. He invited us to a one shot boss fight that he was designing. When we agreed to it he told us to make level 15 characters and sent us a 10 page study guide on the boss. He then told us that the boss would be nearly insurmountable if we did not read the pdf. Were we right to not take this that seriously?

Luke Cullen

May it please the court. In my campaign I recently killed off a playable NPC who was a part of the party for a while. However once I did this and we had no revives or reincarnates my players then said since we were in a massive city (think Baldur's gate) they could find another NPC who was level equivalent and replace them. I said no one would want to join us because of the evil we faced. But my players insisted that surely someone in this city would want to come along. Was I wrong to exclude NPCs or should I have just bit the bullet and let them have one.

Alice Azalea

May it not please the court, here's a quickie so y'all can be just as upset as me. Was (keyword: WAS) in a large party with a ranger who loved to flavor up his attacks and spells, he would usually say a sentence or two explaining how he casts spells on people or how he hit whoever he was attacking. This is all fine and dandy, combat was already sluggish because we had EIGHT people, but he always knew what he was going to do ahead of time, was quick with his descriptions, and out of all us PCs, his turns were definitely not the longest. HOWEVER our DM started to TAKE AWAY his Bonus Actions each turn because he was describing what he was doing. ....right? I know. This DM had a lot of issues (like relying too much on abuse as a shock factor 🤢🤮) and I'm amazed I stayed with that group as long as I did.

Sander Goldman

May it please the honorable lord judges Axford, Murphy and Tanner (if it pleases lowly bailiff Jake thats ok too), the group I DM for is a group entirely made up of artists so when we started our campaign most of them drew their characters right away so we would all be able to picture eachother and use the art for roll20 tokens. One of the players, our half-orc paladin, Chunky, did draw his character but said he would soon. Its been a year and a half now and he is still saying he'll draw it soon. Should we let him work at his own pace and leave him alone, or should I use my infinite DM power to punish/incentivize his character so he'll get his ass in gear and stop edging us with empty promises and procrastination?

Brooke Sanders

Not really a court case, but: my players and I are tossing around the idea of running a game where they start with a blank character sheet. As they progress, I as the DM would reveal information, tell them modifiers to their rolls, etc. We’ve ended up talking in circles about the pros and cons and I was wondering if I could get your professional opinions. Thanks!

Christina Manry

May it please the court: I DM for a group of my friends, and we stream it on twitch. Recently, they were traveling through a hedge maze that had a sapphire dragon boss at the end. This whole maze, especially the dragon, is basically the security system for the castle town that the party is heading in to. When they got to the dragon, the Dragonborn sorcerer rolled persuasive to try convincing the dragon to let them pass. He rolled a nat 20, but I explained that because of the dragon’s personality and relationship with the queen of the town, even a nat 20 wouldn’t convince the dragon to let them pass. So, the sorcerer instead used that roll to make a “gentleman’s agreement” with the dragon where if the party gave up a good fight, then the dragon would let them pass. Most of the party was cool with this. However, the changeling rogue wasn’t and, on her turn, proceeded to walk around the dragon, unlock the gate behind him, and try to convince her teammates to walk through the gate with her. They all said “it’s a dragon. It can fly out of the hedge maze and chase us.” And kept fighting him. Was I wrong to not have the nat20 persuade him to let them leave? I humbly await your judgement

JakeF

May it please the court, Over a year ago I was DMing in a home brew campaign and the lvl 7 players had stumbled upon a towns cult. The cult was led by some Kuo-Toa, which are lovecraftian fish people who create gods out of their powerful worship. In my town they gestated their own god, Crypto, god of money. The players infiltrated the cults underground mint by POSING as Crypto only to find him leading the operation as a larvae. I allowed a player to keep up the con by rolling a deception check and they met my DC. Now the basement is in confusion and about half the kuo-toa are on the players side. All I needed was for the Kuo-Toa to strengthen Crypto with their dying breaths anyway. Well my player asked if he becomes a god. I said ABSOLUTELY not. I said their faith in the beliefs of Crypto is reassured and points in the same direction it always has. It kind of killed the mood and they went on with the fight anyway. Surviving “good” Kuo-Toa got jailed. Maybe I was in the wrong for not granting them ANYTHING magic from this successful performance. But 10 seconds of support from half a cult that took WEEKS to make a larvae doesn’t seem like much. Maybe I should have accepted their character sheet as a celestial entity? I have since let the players contact a remade Crypto for their basketball team and he replied in the save voice as my deceptive player... hinting that they gave a face to the name. I await judgement. And thank you.

Lysterine

A brief tort, may it please the short, short court: I had my new group of players roll for their ability scores (4d6 drop lowest). We are starting the Campaign at level 1 and one of them rolled insanely high, 91 total from the 6 stats. Three of their ability scores were rolled 18 at level 1. Another of my players rolled extremely low, 62 or something. The rest were average-ish. Now the issue, I told the group I wanted to make sure everyone had a chance for good stats, so I had the highest and lowest rollers decrease and increase their totals by 5 respectively, I even let them choose what to change. The low player appreciated it while the high stat player got quite angry and said that I was ruining the point of the game and now they didn't want to play anymore. Should I not have fudged with the dice gods or was this a fair way to play it?

Andrew

May it please the Court, I was running a session recently that took place on a flying GHOST TRAIN careening through the mountains, with special mechanics for being in train cars vs being on the roof, moving/jumping between cars, and who could target who from the different cars- complete with an IRL train set I put together. The goal was to kill the evil Conductor and take an artifact from his body and retreat to the back and decouple the cars. By the end, one player wanted to jump off the car they were on and let themselves fall back to the last car to escape. I countered that we were all together to try the game with these modified ghost train rules, and that he should just play within the rules instead of trying to circumvent them. Was I wrong for asking him to suspend realism and play a certain way, or should I have let him do things the way he wanted, since it would be semi-reasonable from an in-game perspective? Thank you.

Evolet Harris

Hello, May it please the court, I'm a first time DM, and play a home game with my stepsister and father. I also play a character in the game because I felt that it would be easier to do that since my father is a first timer. She is a half-elf bard named Elk Grove. My dad is a very problematic character in the game. He always makes fart jokes mid-character development for my sisters character, Ria, the warlock dragonborn. He is very loud and drinks lots of beer while playing so mid-combat he is either yelling or in the bathroom every five seconds. He also tells me, the DM to end the game when he is tired even though in the first ten minutes of the game they're is so many beer cans I have to put them behind my DM screen. How do I make my dad less problematic and loud, and how do I make my sister stop joining in on the "fun." Cause its not fun at all for me. Sincerely, Angry DM.

Nicholas Elmitt

May it please the Court, We have just started playing again with our core group. One of our players is engaged and his fiance says he can only play once per week. What if we also want to play Gloomhaven or Mork Borg that week? Could the court please intervene? Gratefully, Nick

jaydon

Bailiff > judges prove me wrong stand up for jake

Mitchell Link

May it please the honorable court! One of my players came across a raw nugget of adamantine in the plane of earth. He’d been talking for a while about forging himself some new armor, and I wanted to give him some cool materials. But now that he’s got the metal, he’s decided to forge them into swords instead. Fair enough 🤷🏻‍♂️ I haven’t been able to find many details about adamantine weapons, but he’s aggressively saying they should be +4, and autocrit. Seems a bit intense, especially since the party already does enough damage to kill a full grown kraken at level 10. Is there a good compromise that I’m missing? I await your glorious judgment...

Paul D

May it please the court, I'm playing as a Moon Druid in a 4 person, level 7 party. Our DM runs fantastic and inventive combats, but he's concerned that we've outpaced the recommended challenge rating. He asked my party how we feel about him increasing the deadliness and difficulty of future combats. The Conquest Paladin and I strongly encouraged the DM to raise the stakes: use high CR monsters, strain our resources, limit rests, and kill our characters if the dice gods deem it proper. But the party's Open Hand Monk and Hexblade Warlock are strongly opposed to upping the campaign's difficulty and deadliness. They're very attached to their characters and don't like it when we win fights by a thin margin, preferring instead to enter every fight with maximal resources. The Paladin and I tank for the party and neither of us would mind if the DM focused his increased wroth on us. But the DM is concerned that artificially focusing on just 2 of the 4 melee PCs would be unsatisfying and awkward. Your Honors, how should we navigate this challenging issue to find a happy medium? Or is such compromise impossible, and must the Paladin and I stifle our masochistic desires? I await your judgement, - Druid with a Death-Wish

DanDrako

May it Plort the Court, My group was exploring the Underdark when we were ambushed by a school of Kuo-Toa slavers and their brawnier boss. Straight up, I'll admit it, I snitched. This is the DM's first campaign and he forgot to give the monsters a surprise round. But because of my "help" two of our party (the ones with healing) went down before even getting a turn. Bad start. But I had healing word and they were back up. Later, I used a dissonant whispers spell on the boss and he failed. Great! Now he'll run and the two players that missed their first turns would get an attack of opportunity when it flees. Only it didn't flee, it moved 5ft before one of its minions stopped it. The DM claimed that the lesser Kuo-Toa could identify a spell being cast and wouldn't let his boss run away. Robbing two of the players their attacks. Was this the right call? I mean the spell has a verbal component, but it's a whisper for Moria's sake! Humbly awaiting your verdict, - Frustrated in Fishtown

GayIndoorTyler

May it Please the Court and all the Cats of the Axford-Murphlands, A couple years ago, our friend group was new to D&D. The third time we were getting together I had to miss a session (had to work, hospitals don't close just cuz I wanna play D&D). Anyway, the rest of the party explored a trap filled dungeon, which included a floor trap with blades. Our rogue rolled a Nat 1 to save against falling in the trap so the DM ruled her whole foot was cut off. She spent the rest of the session struggling to get thru the rest of the dungeon with her bloody stump. The next session, I'm back but the DM ruled that my Cure Wounds could not heal an injury so severe. She would need to get over it. She rolled the Nat 1 after all. I couldn't even have cast Lesser Restoration much less Greater Restoration. We were Level 1. I argued a Cure Wounds spell by a Life Domain cleric was going to be the best source of healing we were going to have access to as a Level 1 party and that should be sufficient for an injury we should be expected to sustain. DM said if I had cast the spell at the time of the injury maybe but I rejoined the group the next day in-game so too much time had passed. Should the DM have allowed my healing spell to heal my thieving little gnome friend or had some way of allowing her to be healed? Or just leave her to stumble around with disadvantage on her Dex checks for the rest of her life? Should the blade trap been allowed to maim such a low level character? -A miffed cleric

Olivia Hill

May it please the court, Noble bailiff Jake and honorable judges Tanner, Aexford, and Murphy: my friends are lame and don't want to play DND with me. How do I go about making this change. Also are they guilty of being lame? Also I live in fear of DMing the first time I play but this might be the necessary course of action to make my dreams come true. - Olivia

Jethie

Lords, Ladys, Binarys of all kinds, and even Bailiffs, may I make a suggestion to the Court! I Propose that we add a new segment to DM Court! I call it: Recess Thoughts A place where the court can discuss other aspects of DnD that may not be a court case between two sides. Like for example: What's everyones favorite Homebrew / house rules?

Andrew Collum

May it Please the Court, and should the uprising have gone well all hail Supreme Chancellor Tanner and Grand Inquisitor Hurwitz, long may they reign. I was a relatively new DM and I had a campaign where there was a greedy monk who would horde loot and gold and the player generally played characters who stuck his nose up at other characters. I designed a maze that would slowly sap players strength the longer they were in darkness and at the end there was all kinds of loot. I knew the player would get far ahead of everyone else so I snuck a mimic in that would grapple him and I hoped the reduced strength would at the very least teach him a lesson. He managed to get a lucky roll and get out and ran back to the party. When they re-entered the room I had the mimic change into something else to make it more difficult but the monk argued that his passive perception was so high (upwards of 25) that he would notice any changes. I just wanted to move ahead so I allowed it, which set a dangerous standard for the rest of the campaign. Whenever there was a trap or any kind of perception roll he would argue that it wasn't needed because his passive perception was so high. It got to the point where I no longer used traps and made it so he just heard and saw things because of his godly passive perception. I don't hear much talk of passive perception on the show and I was just wondering where you would draw the line. I realize I messed up and some things need to be rolled but how would you sneak up on a character that can basically perceive through the 4th wall.

Jay V

May it please the court, There is an "official" ruling to this, however, I am of the belief that it is arbitrary and unfun :(. I would like your opinions nevertheless. So, with Find Steed, any spells you cast that target "self" also benefit your steed. Most steeds, when not being ridden, have attack options, which count as weapon attacks. Would it not stand to reason that if I, as a paladin, cast "searing smite" or any other smite spell on myself as a bonus action, then dismount my steed with half my movement, that my steed and I should BOTH have the benefit of Searing Smite? Thank you for the time. (PS: My steed is a wonderful big old bison named Vaughn. He is lovely and a Friend)

Sonja Maitland

May it please the baylif and the other fine peoples of the court? I am playing as a Divination Wizard in an online campaign and am having trouble using portent. Our DM follows the rules exact, so portent has to be used before dice is rolled. But since we play online it is harder to announce before dice roll. - We use roll 20 to roll die, so it is a lot quicker, you don't have that split second to stop them while they shake dice in their hand. - There is a bit of a lag on discord. So by the time I have announced my portent the player has already rolled the dice on Roll20. I have tried to convince the DM to let me announce after dice is rolled but he is firm. Is he being fair? Do you have other suggestions? PS. The DM is my BF so if you sentence him, please don't kill him. Xx

Fandom Encounters

May it please the court. I run a Percy Jackson/Greek Myth themed campaign. We have one problematic player who is a Light Domain Cleric dedicated to a council of various sun gods. He drifts towards murderhobo, made a deal with Kronos knowing his sick mother would be at risk, and refuses to take responsibility for getting the party into problems. Many NPCs have pointed out his recklessness, but he continues to play a victim. Is killing his mom too far to show him the error of his ways?

Kevin Craig

To the honorable judges Axford, Murphy, and Tanner....and bailiff Jake too I guess. (You're the real MvP Jake, don't let anyone else tell you otherwise) I am running a campaign for my dad and older brother where one plays a Kalashtar paladin who has a tendency to murder, and the other is an orc barbarian named The Mite, who acts very VERY similar to a certain blue dense superhero who is all about justice and lady liberty. My question concerns the barbarian trait Feral Instinct, and how it should be used during an assassination attempt. (I have included the description from the Players Handbook here) "Feral Instinct. PHB p46 By 7th level, your instincts are so honed that you have advantage on initiative rolls. Additionally, if you are surprised at the beginning of combat and aren't incapacitated, you can act normally on your first turn, but only if you enter your rage before doing anything else on that turn." Recently there was an assassination attempt on them both while they were sleeping in an inn and they got pretty messed up on the first sneak round. When initiave was rolled the assassins rolled higher that both PCs and the rounds continued. About a round and a half in, the Mite brought up that because of his Feral Instinct he should have had a turn during the initial sneak round. I felt that him being asleep constitutes being incapacitated and so he wouldnt get it, but he said he wouldn't be still sleeping after being stabbed twice in the chest, and proceeded to role-play asking if this person was a friend or not as he was being stabbed.... We went back and forth for a bit, but in the end, I decided to give him one extra attack action during his normal round which seemed fair to me, and what he ended up doing was pretty funny so it worked out. Was I right? Was he right? Were we both way off and confused? I await your just verdict and any punishment you decide.

Will the Wraith Dad

may it please the court. this actually just happened today. i am the (fairly new) dm of a party of four, a gnome wizard, half elf ranger, lizardfolk monk, and human fighter, most of which are new players and one of them being an experienced dm who hasnt been a player very long. because the only one with heals, the ranger, isnt super interested in healing, i offered them a cleric dmpc, which they accepted. they are all level one and sent on a mission to get a clan of bullywugs to stop attacking the locals. they walked into the heart of camp and claim they were messengers sent by the lady of the swamp (a deity that they knew nothing about beyond that the bullywugs worshipped her). they rolled okay on deception but the bullywugs rolled a natural 19 on insight and saw through their lie. the party apologized and then told the truth, getting a middling roll on persuasion, but the bullywugs were willing to listen. during this conversation, the ranger stepped on a spot that i had put a modified version of gas spore on (and visually on roll20 had a green marker on that i thought would clue them in that something was there), basically a poisoness mushroom that would explode and infect everyone within 20 feet if they failed a con save. i had him roll a dex save, which he succeeded, but before i could say anything else, another question was asked and i forgot to actually give any hints as to why he made a dex save. no one made any perception checks or even asked what was around, and i was busy trying to give them a fair chance to not get cut down by bullywugs that i didnt manage to really slip it in there, especially since i expected them all to stay in their places while they talked. that is until the gnome wizard decided to crawl onto the ranger, and when i asked him to make a dex save (with disadvantage since they were standing on unstable rubble and he was climbing on someone else), he rolled a nat one and landed on the fungi, causing a poisoness gas within 20 feet. this particular affect you can look up, the creature is a gas spore in the monster manual, but basically if you fail the con save, you roll a d12 +con mod and thats how many hours you have to live. i had intended for this to be a hazard in the fight, and my dmpc was going to spot them and give a general warning, but i hadnt had the chance to do it. all of my players managed to save, naturally, but the dmpc (again, the only healer of the group) and 5/6 bullywugs were poisoned (with at least 5 others around) and nearly one shotted with the gas. the bullywugs attacked, of course, but i let them roll persuasion with disadvantage to try to convince the bullywugs not to kill them. the ranger rolled a middling roll on persuasion, but i was being nice because i didnt want a TPK so the bullywugs agreed in exchange for bringing them to someone who could heal them. my question is this: was i fair to my players? should i have been tougher on them or am in the wrong for not immediately pointing out the visible markers on the roll20 app as being dangerous?

Jonah Wilkinson

May it please the court, First of all, I would like advice on this issue, but preferably not on the podcast, since my friends listen and this is a sore spot right now. I am currently running a a modified curse of strahd with a narrative that I am adding into it to make this classic a little more complex. One of the people in my party can’t make it very often, so we just have her come in and play NPCs every once in a while. She made an original character she wanted to use that was an arcane trickster rogue/creepy doll. She wanted to earn the party’s trust and secretly loot them. While we were talking about this, I mentioned she should steal our clerics amulet, since it had plot relevance but he would never acknowledge it or use it. When the time came, our creepy doll rogue had a series of incredible dex checks to steal the amulet and get away before she could be grabbed. Everyone thought this was a fun twist, and I thought it would make a great revenge mission. However, the following day, the person who plays said cleric came over to my house and we had an hour long conversation about how he felt I tricked him into trusting an evil character because it was played by our friend, and how he felt like the game wasn’t cooperative and that now he feels he needs to be paranoid about every character. I was caught off guard because he seemed fine in the moment and it seemed interesting. He did make a good point that I neglected to ask for an insight check when the amulet went missing, but I also felt like that was something he could have asked for. Am I just being too moody about this? I want everyone to have a good time, but I also feel like I was just setting up a cool arc and not trying to target him specifically.

Zac Hardy

May it please the court I recently ran a session where the players entered a dungeon that was full of mimics. They were devouring adventurers and and the loot would get left behind. One such object was a home brewed mimic egg sac disguised as a health potion. when they picked it up I had the player mark the potion down with an asterisk next to it. The next time said player used a health potion they had 4 in their bag including the mimic potion. I had them mark the mimic potion as 1 and the rest 2-4. They rolled a 1 and ended up drinking the mimic potion. When they went to sleep I had that player roll a con save which he could have passed with his stats and a roll above 10. He rolled poorly and I had the mimic eggs burst out of him a la chest burster style from alien. It didn’t immediately kill him, but the mimic babies being hungry began to devour him and his screams awoke his companions. Not knowing what to do they set him on fire to try to burn off the babies. His character ended up dying from a mix of my doing as the dm and his companions setting him aflame. Did I act too harshly with my concoction? They never inspected it and were given ample time to investigate the potion, but he was sulking the rest of the night. He likes his new character but I feel like he still holds a grudge and thinks I targeted him.

Al Ludwig

May it please the court, If someone from outside the party asks to 'sit in on a session' do you assume this to mean that they will be listening to the session or that they will be playing in the session? I, the DM, figured the former, while a mutual friend and the rest of the party figured the latter. We're still really early in our campaign and currently have 4 players, so I don't mind adding another player, but it really caught me off guard. Was I wrong to think that this person was going to be listening in rather than playing? Who's right and who's wrong?

Sarah Sherman

Honorable Justices and baliff, may it please the court... In a module I am DMing, there is a particularly deadly trap room which begins filling with wine, and then is occupied by "wine weirds" (a reskinned water weird) who attack players who have not managed to escape the wine get on their turn. As the tides were turning against the party, I tried to find a way to narrate that there was not only 1 dead wine weird, but also 2 more alive wine weirds. I asked for perception checks, and the sorcerer rolled quite well. I said that he noticed, as he scanned the surface of the wine, that the water was somewhat more still in two large sized spaces in the room, since wine weirds are invisible but I figured that anything with mass would affect the flow of the water. The sorcerer then stated that he wanted to cast Telekinesis on "the stillness" to bring it out of the water. I ruled that he could not do this because "the stillness" is not a creature he can see. The player contends that he should be able to cast it because he can see where the creature is. I maintained my ruling, and he picked something else to do on his turn but this event still comes up in conversation which has be starting to doubt my decision. What do you think, is targeting a creatures' known location sufficient for spell cssting?

Mackenzie Nelson

May it please the court: Justices Murphy, Axford and Tanner- and Bailiff Jake Picture this: we’re playing a homebrew game and our PC’s are in a physchological combat simulation in some other plane of existence with floating islands. If we fell off the rocks, we were sent back to the starting point in a Minecraftian-esqe style with full hp but with a level of exhaustion. Our rock Goliath Paladin (who had just taken a few levels of wild magic sorcerer) was sent to her negative max hp (granted we were all sent into this combat with 1hp) and died. However, she had just wild magic surged and randomly happened to roll for the reincarnation spell (which she was unaware of?). When she “died” the DM ruled that she was reincarnated on the spot. We as a party argued that she should have just popped back up at the beginning of the course as her Goliath self because we were in a simulation, but he ruled against it. After the encounter was finished and the PCs were sent back to their bodies, her actual body on the material plane had also been changed. Since this was a psychological simulation, should she have remained a Goliath? This goes right along with other problems that we’ve had in this campaign with our Warlock loosing her patron (who her character was literally designed around) and our Wizard loosing her magic. We as a party feel like we aren’t getting to play the characters that we wrote.

neal adams

May it please the court, I was dming for the first time in a campaign for all first time players. They were fighting a gelatinous cube, when the rouge landed his first crit on it. He wanted to move away because of low hp. I said, the cube would get an attack of opportunity. We decided a different player could scoop him. A bard tried to & rolled a nat one, I told the rouge make dex save, he rolled a nat one and I said he was pushed in the cube. No one pulled him out and he died in his first session. He never came back to the campaign. Was I too hard on him?

Rachael Lovely

May it please the court, I recently played in the Candlekeep setting with a group of friends. I was playing a Reborn Order of Scribe Wizard. I rolled like garbage for my stats. I rolled 4d6 and dropped the lowest. The only reason why I had two positive modifiers was because of racial modifiers. Ending with a -1 strength, 0 dexterity, +1 constitution, +4 intelligence, 0 wisdom, and -2 charisma. At session three my dm realized that my stats were so low and I was just very lucky that none of the enemies had managed to hit above my 10 AC and allowed me to re-roll but I still feel kind of iffy about if it was okay for me to have done that? Should I have just stuck to my original rolls or taken the offer that my dm made 3/5s of the way through the game?

Scrotie Pippin

May it displease the court, A guisarme is more commonly known as a bill-hook or a bill. I propose the motion that Hank having a weapon called Bill should be RAW.

Sam Burgues

May it please the court, I was DMing a game where my party had just finished an epic battle against an army of slug assassins and were now alone in the assassins hideout. I asked them to do an investigation check to see if they could uncover some information about who had hired the slimy mercenaries to kill them. The whole party rolled poorly (5 and under) and so I told them that they didn’t find any clues and would need to move on. One of the players asked if they could roll again as they were out of battle so there was no time pressure. I argued that even though the players knew that there was probably something they had missed because of bad rolls, their characters weren’t aware that they had rolled badly so they would feel as if they had already looked everywhere and wouldn’t choose to look again. Was I too harsh, or do you agree that it would break the game if you could re-roll checks any time you’re out of combat?

nik ducheny

Day 2 asking about Jake's mom's cookie company

Nick Zarakas

May it please the court, I was playing a game where the party encountered a giant ox creature. I used speak with animals to talk to it, befriend it, and invite it to join us. It couldn't because of it's size, so my druid friend cast polymorph on it to turn it into a gnome. Now a humanoid, I placed the circlet of human perfection on it, which turns any humanoid into a human with peak physical attractiveness. After one hour, the polymorph spell wore off and my new husband turned back into an ox, shattering the circlet and my dreams. The DM ruled that since without polymorph, the creature was not a humanoid, the magic would not work without the spell. I think that since the circlet specifically turns the creature into a human, it would remain a human while attuned to it. Do you agree with the DM, or do you believe in love? ps I cannot love the ox in ox form because it has 2 intelligence and that seems unchill

Jonathan Yarberough

May it please the court but I have a question. How has things been regarding the video game announced last year?? How far into the campaign has been scripted? How's the music planning?? Pleeeeease I almost cried listening to the announcement that I somehow missed!

Jonathan Yarberough

But I want to here them talk about it, their voices make it more excoting!

Raiden Reeden

May it please the bailiff I am not asking this question on my own behalf but on behalf of my DM. He has currently out of the kindness of his heart taken over the campaign previously run by another. In the final game of the previous DM the party was given loot well above their level. The current DM has not complained and has done very well at creating encounters and dungeons to accommodate the uneven balance. The problem is one of the players. Whenever he attacks he does not say his over all attack score. Instead he will say his base attack, then add weapon bonuses, then ability bonuses and so forth. The problem is that none of us are sure if he actually has all this stuff from the previous DM, or if he is just adding numbers until he hits. I can tell it frustrates my DM but he has yet to say anything. I leave this in the honorable hands of the court

Katerina Bynum

Didn’t even make it to the campaign. My boyfriend’s friends were starting a DND campaign that they invited us to join. I was excited but my boyfriend was wary about the whole thing since I didn’t know anyone and he didn’t know one of the other players. For character building, the DM hosted the adió chat an hour late. We both worked in the morning and it was already 9, so we asked how long do they think it would take to build character since there were 3 players who have never played. The DM said an hour and a half max. The call ended up being almost 4 hours when we had left. That entire time was spent building one player’s character. When they asked us to start building, we asked we weren’t sure if we wanted to play at that point with our schedules. They were completely understanding on the call but then once it ended we were immediately removed from the discord. In the morning my boyfriend messaged the DM asking if we could rejoin just under a different schedule because I really wanted to play. He left him on read for a few hours then said they had already found more players. Since then the DM and a few players haven’t talked to my boyfriend after having a daily active meme Instagram group chat and super awkward when we see them. We both know we were to quick to say we were out but they also replaced us in less than 24 hours. Are we being petty or are they over reacting a bit.

Annie

May it please the court, My party and I are currently in a disagreement over whether or not my character (Level 9 Bard Level 3 Diviniation Wizard) could potentially be taught the scry spell by the parties druid. We've been on a back and forth about how magic fundamentally works all morning. They are arguing that Druids and Wizards cast spells differently because the druid received their power from a god whereas wizards learn from studies. My argument is that magic is fundamentally the same across the board, the difference is how a caster learns to gain 'access' to the magic and use their spells. My opinion is that because Wizards have a RAW mechanic to learn spells, if they really want to learn a particular spell they will. The only thing that holds them back are time and money, so it would be more narratively satisfying to learn the spell from a party member than by going to a big city, finding a wizard and copying their homework. May this case cause the court great pleasure.

Andrew Davis

May it please the court, A player is taking the DM reins in one of my groups to run a dungeon from Tales from the Yawning Portal to give the main DM a break. It is very clear that this player is inexperienced as a DM. We as players were forgiving in the first two sessions, but we had 3 character deaths in that time partly due to suspect rulings, especially pertaining to the surprise mechanics. In last night's session we played cautiously, and, after being surprised by a grey ooze that looked like a harmless puddle, I cast "sacred flame" on a rock that stood out from the others in the next room to test if it was something. Nothing happened so we kept moving only for the rock (actually a Roper) to catch us by survive and nearly kill us. The DM ruled that the Roper took damage from my attack but was still hidden. We as players are trying to convince the DM that that was an unfair ruling and they seem resistant so far. I get that the DM enjoys the game in a certain way but these kinds of rulings will lead to us playing cautiously with 10 foot poles, which isn't a fun way to play. I don't want to create bad blood in the group since this is a temporary DM though. Am are we being pedantic rules lawyers with a just case or does the DM need to go back to rules school?

Snugglegurts

Not a case but a plea for help from Poppa Murphy. I’m running a campaign with EIGHT PC’s! It’s been a bunch of fun our first few sessions. I’m running into issues with balancing but also trying to give each character their time. I feel like song people in the group aren’t fully comfortable with RP either. Just looking for advice on how to manage a larger group or just any tips to help with balance or RP. Thank you for doing this show I listened a bunch when I was going through some stuff and y’all really helped. Also congratulations Caldwell on becoming a dad!

Anthony Mertson

May it please the court, My DM listens to other D&D podcasts and gives show recommendations but refuses to try NADDPOD without reason. Do I have to listen to the obviously inferior casts? Or should I pull Bahumia shenanigans, in our campaign, with my Teifling paladin?

Camila Neyra

May it please the court, honourable judges and baliff.My half orc fighter has recently multiclassed into a warlock (all planned with the DM so it made sense in the story). However another player has decided that her character is against my decision and spends the whole time trying to stop me from doing the things I need to inorder to please my patron. I really dont like having that much pvp conflict and have rpd my character using her powers to help hers and release her of a curse and to use her new powers mostly for good. The other player keeps confronting my character and trying to get PvP. I have tried everything to de escalate but the DM won't intervene. I really like this game and we had no issues until I became a warlock. How do I get through to this other player, or do I count my losses and get my character to leave the group and roll a new one. With the way things are going it makes no sense for my character to stay. What's your verdict of inspiring on PvP if the other player isn't into it?

Molly Oxenfree

If it pleases the court and their esteemed bailiff, I’ve been stealing ideas from a podcast of intervening fame and WotC keep stealing the content from me and placing it books like Tashas and Van Ricktens (such hits include hexbloods and the scribe wizard to name a few) I am seeking damages and back pay as well as royalty rights please help!

Etienne Galarneau

May it please the court, I’m a long time listener and first time caller. Our year long lockdown D&D campaign took end recently and the party already knew it would be the last session, as the DM told us many times that we would either be TPK’d or we will just save the day and end this adventure for a while. This campaign started as a one-shot in which we rolled some small criminals, I rolled Nico, an halfling druid con-artist loosely inspired by Grendan Highforge, Nathan Yaffe’s character from Drawtectives. So the tone of the campaign, at least the PCs, is a bit goofy. Since it’s all fun and games, the DM and I established that if and when I cast Conjure Animals, I get to choose which animals gets to help me. The party is fighting an aboleth and, since it’s the end of the campaign anyway, I asked him if I could cast 64 octopi to help us end the final boss. The logic is simple: although the wording of the spell specifically says that you can cast a CR 2 creature, 2 CR 1 creatures, 4 CR ½ creatures or 8 CR ¼ creatures, I argued that implies that I could conjure 16 CR ⅛ creatures or, even better, 32 CR 0 creatures. With a 5th level druid spell slot, I can double the amount of creatures conjured. He did refuse - as the rules are quite strict about this - and we ended up being TPK’d. Even though it was a stretch, should the DM rule of cool’d it and allow us to get saved by a stack of 64 octopi smashing the aboleth, and then save the entire plane, as anyways we would have ended this campaign after the session?

Les Éditions Déjà Mort

May it please the court, I am the "no 64 octopi at my table" DM and I juste want to say thank you to Murph in advance for having my back on this.

Error

Might be late, and may it please the court. I’m dming for a party of 6 and after the first session I was shocked/pissed/flattered to find out a player was recording the session. It took awhile to process all the emotions but what are you thoughts? Am I just being a diva?

Frank

May it please the court, you up ? ;)

Josiah Muskrat

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) I BRING YOU the Case of the Muskrat vs. The Raging Hawk I was running a horror game. One player was a detective from the “big city” come to an Alaskan town searching for a missing reporter. The rest of the party were local townspeople 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 voodoo, murder and such. OFC the party solved the mystery with only two of the clues, confronted and killed the Doctor, and cut the game several hours short. JUST AS the voodoo Doctor was killed, outside, the Vietnam vet failed his checks, was surprised by another cast member in the dark, and killed them with a crit. 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 one of them and dealing 1D4 of damage. At which point, that player stood up, slammed their laptop shut, and loudly proclaimed “This is NOT how you play DND!” They then scooped up their stuff, their dog, and left. Do I, the DM, or the “player-turned-big bad”have any guilt to bear for this situation? Or is this as silly and ridiculous as it seems? P.S. (He is 52, and forgot his dog on his first storm-out.) - Sincerely, J. Muskrat

Bastet

May it please the court, I stand accused by my table-mates on one count of animal cruelty, but I hold fast to the "The horse should have tried harder" defense. While traveling across the countryside, our carriage was beset by a group of Bulettes, savage shark-like creatures that burrow through the ground on dry land. Our Archer took the high-ground atop a nearby hill to secure a better vantage point on the ongoing battle, but this backfired, as the burrowing beasts had no trouble reaching him and he found himself isolated and backed into a corner. My character, being the group's cleric and a proficient athlete, knew he had to leap into action to save his teammate. The only way he could reach the top of the hill and heal the archer in one turn was to use his full movement to return to the carriage, detach one of the draft horses, and ride it to the top of the hill- cutting a steep ridge with a timely jump to make the distance work. It was desperate, and the DM cautioned me that it was unlikely, but it had to be attempted or the archer would go down. What follows is a short tragedy. When I commanded the horse to jump the ridge, the DM asked me to roll an athletics check for the horse, and it rolled a total of 7. It attempted the jump, but careened directly into the side of the ridge and crippled itself. I was unable to reach the fighter, but pertinent to the facts of this case is that this maneuver still saved the archer's life. The Bulette smelled fresh blood from the injured horse and chose to leave the struggling archer and pursue the easier kill, giving my cleric enough time to reach him. The horse... did not survive the encounter, to put it simply. My cleric serves Kord, a mighty god who respects physical prowess and achievement in battle before all else. He holds that the horse would have lived had it not failed to perform its duty, and therefore he bears no responsibility for its fate. For my part, I stand by my character's decision, as it's the one that made the most sense for him. My fellow players, on the other hand, have never let me live this incident down. Who is right? Do I bear responsibility for the fate of that horse?

Santiago Prado

May it please the court, I DM a campaign in which the players stopped an assassination attempt against the High Council President. The assassin attempted to escape but was grappled by both the fighter and the Entangle spell. The assassin had orders not to be taken alive so they used their action to bite down on a poison pill they had in their teeth. I let the Fighter do a DC 20 Medicine Check on their turn to try to save the assassin since he was the only one within range. When he failed I said that he couldn't save the assassin's life. The player was really mad that they didn't get any information out of the assassin when they had him so thoroughly. Was I in the right to do this? The party will come to realize later that the assassins from this Guild are all hypnothyzed to be extremely loyal so I don't think it's too much of a stretch to have a teeth poison pill.

Final Girl

May it please the court, In a long running campaign, our characters had acquired an airship which he had been using to traverse the countryside on a long quest. We also had a party Pet/ mascot - a small colour changing lizard named phteven (Steven with a ph). During a sidequest stop we as the party hadn't wanted to make as we were more worried about a time sensitive issue with the big bag, but the DM kind of guilted us into doing, we returned to our airship to find it had been ransacked and our beloved phteven taken, with the DM saying that we 'hadnt said we were locking the airship' when we left. At this point we'd had the ship for a year and left it parked in plenty more obvious and dangerous places, never before needing to specify that we were locking it up as we left as it seemed a given. We argued that point but the DM would not relent, insisting it was our own faults, despite never once prompting us to see if we were locking up or not, which we obviously would have said yes to. Was it fair for the DM to punish us for 'not locking up'? P.S. when attempting to get phteven back from the random group of goblins who'd taken him, my character was killed by the DM just throwing minion after minion after minion at us and the entire campaign ended up pretty much derailed as there were huge plot points the rest of the party had no reason to engage with after my character had died.

kroggydo

Slapping the deck of many things To the honorable Justices and Bailiff may it please the court. I was part of a campaign for a short while with a group that all had some experience with D&D except for one newbie. Our DM had constructed a homebrew world where there was a form of curse on playing cards that they could at a random moment become a deck of many things. When the deck of many things would appear in someones posession it would also attempt to charm the person into drawing one of the cards and activating the said effect. As we were travelling between towns on our caravan all of our players were partaking in their downtimes activities, the monk meditating, the cleric was praying, the palading reading, my sorcerer practicing magic, and our rogue was playing cards. When in the middle of shuffling the cards the cards became a deck of many things, charmed our rogue attempted to declare and draw a card before my character went to stop them. After a few minutes of my friend and I continuously fighting over the deck, the new player (our paladin) came up and slapped the deck of many things onto the ground. The DM then had the new player roll a d20 and said that was how many cards landed face up and took effect. The group and I tried to argue that since the player was new and didnt know the rules of the deck that it was unfair to draw that many times, and that she had not intentionally declared any draws. The DM argued that they didnt need to declare a card and that if a card ends up face up the person to cause it would suffer the effects. Was the DM fair to do this or just acting wildly chaotic? Ps. After like 6 draws out of 14 the paladin drew the donjon and was trapped in a extradimensional space, we were only able to reverse it because in a hail mary attempt our rogue drew a fates card and undid the event.

CarpeLiam

The Bridal Adventuring Party V The Maid of Dishonor May it please the court, I call upon honorable Bailiff Jake and the Supreme Crit Justices to determine the fate of Eden the Paladin by answering the following question: Can a player character receive a happy ending, even when the player and the party are no longer on speaking terms? The backstory I’ve been DMing a game for my fiancé and her friends as a method of escapism for her during her time in law school and, of course, the pandemic. A small, silly game that was initially meant to last four or five sessions turned into an adventure that has been running for two years and counting. Our friendships have all been made much stronger by the campaign, to the point where my Fiancé asked one of the players (the aforementioned Eden) to be the maid of honor at our wedding. She happily accepted, and all was well, or so we thought The Inciting Incident In a truly shocking and completely baffling move, Eden abruptly cut everyone in the party out of her life. The circumstances were really hurtful and confusing, and quite honestly, sound so stupid and unrealistic that even we have trouble believing it. Suffice it to say, she betrayed my fiancé so deeply that she went from “Maid of Honor” to “No longer welcome at the wedding.” A maid of dishonor, if you will. We still love and miss our friend, but because of how she cut us all off, we have nothing left to do but honor her wishes The Dilemma Eden the player made it clear she was leaving the campaign, but the character she played, Eden the Paladin, had been with our adventuring party since the very beginning. She was involved heavily in the plot, and my players feel it would make the previous story elements weakened by having her character simply disappear. I considered keeping her character around and running her as a DMPC of sorts, like Balnor, but this felt uncouth. It only served as a reminder that we had lost our friend, as we couldn’t think of Eden the Paladin without thinking of Eden the Player. Herein lies my dilemma. My players feel great sadness but also great anger. Should Eden the Paladin be spared the actions of her player and be given a happy ending, or do the sins of the player fall upon the character? One final note. I have asked my players their preference and they all said they would trust and get behind any choice I made to handle Eden the Paladin’s fate. I appeal to the highest court in the land for guidance.

Jack Campau

May it please the court, I present to you the case of advantageous head trauma. I am the DM in a campaign where they players are trying to take down a tyranical queen in a Feywild setting. There is a nearby town just ouside of the queen's fortress and they created a plan to kidnap and replace the town mayor with the party's changling sorcerer named Ja Rule. From within they planned to start a revolution. They managed to kidnap the mayor and make the switch without getting caught, but I informed Ja Rule that he would be rolling his decpetion with disadvange when speaking to the mayor's close friends and family. This of course cancels out the changling ability to always have advantage when trying to impersonate someone. After some close calls, Ja Rule proceeded to go to a public area while in disguise as the mayor and have a horrible "accicdent" where he smashed his head into a wall running full speed and then convinced the town doctor and the mayor's wife that he had amnesia. After the incident, I let him return to rolling deception with advantage. Was I to lenient, or was this the right thing to do?

Andrew Hurst

May it please the court, I am running a campaign set in modern London in which stories are true. My players, seizing on a joke from a previous campaign, are now declaring that Shrek is Canon at every possible juncture. Am I being a spoilsport by denying this or should I invoke a Stay-Puft Marshmallow Shrek to be my BBEG? With warmest wishes to Crit Justices and their Bailiff

Eriks Svarcbergs

May it please the court, I'm running a homebrew mystery based D&D 5e game for 4 friends who are all first time players. I set up the stereotypical "you meet in a small town" beginning, and put clues *about locations to travel next* to continue the main plot. Session 1 they found one big clue (a note pointing to NPC's in nearby city) in a weapons factory in town, but failed a roll to get more detailed info from the related NPC (factory foreman). They really wanted that extra info (even though they didn't *need* it), and decided to "investigate further" by applying for jobs to work there. As a 'no-railroading' DM, I roleplayed interviews, hiring, and 2 days on the job (~3hrs over 2 sessions) and they proceeded to sneak around and talk to NPC's in-between actual factory work (with rolls and RP) before they realized there was nothing else important there and quit to continue the story. It was funny but totally unnecessary... It's been a year since, and they raz me about this "ridiculous" start to the game all the time, still! Was I wrong to let them figure out when a part of the world is fully explored on their own? Should I have just told the players there wasn't any other plot relevant info there, even if other clues they had already pointed to ways to continue the story? I humbly await your judgment, honorable Crit Justices and baillif.

Mattie Honda

May it please the court, even lowly Bailiff Jake: One of my friends is running a Resident Evil themed campaign, and it's been a blast. She's still learning the ropes, and bends the rules a fair amount, but it's evident that she has a sincere love for the source material and prioritizes player enjoyment over mechanics. There's another DM friend of ours who isn't in the campaign, but we invite him to listen in because we like hanging out with him. Unfortunately, the issue is that he has to constantly fight the urge to criticize our DM on her style. He's so bothered by it, that he's requested to be stripped of all chat and unmuting abilities. My question is as follows: if you are invited to another person's table (as a player, guest, etc.), what is the etiquette for wanting to correct a DM if you disagree with their decisions? We await your ruling, o gracious justices (also i was jk, ily Jake)!

Heidi Artigue

May it please the court, I DM for a group of players playing their first campaign. They made characters about six months ago and I have allowed many shenanigans because they're just here to hang out once a week online. The problem is the Ack Ack the aarakocra bard. His player is desperately in love with him and (due to the deck of many things) he's a level above the rest of the party. Sound overpowered? WRONG. The player loves the idea of a bard, but actually wants to be a tank. His standard turn is to use his action to make a 1d4 dagger attack, then his bonus action for two-weapon fighting to make a second 1d4 dagger attack. The party is losing even simple battles because he refuses to use bardic inspiration or any spells. One time when the wizard went down he used his turn to make a dagger attack and healing word himself. He wants to be more effective on the battlefield, but refuses to change anything about his character, even after I told him he can just be a level 7 fighter instead of a level 7 bard and keep his bagpipes. What should I do?

kieren casey

May it please the court, I like to make unusual encounters with combat rules but often does not involve any combat, I recently made one that most of my players loved. A pyramid scheme sales pitch. Lots of events happened during this but during the encounter players had to roll intelligence checks, and each time they failed one they invested into the pyramid scheme, losing more and more money as it went on. It wasn't too much money, 100gold here 200 gold there. But one player was really unhappy about this. She was willing to roll, but after failing she just kept saying that is not what my character would do. I told her this is part of the encounter which I did not force her to take part in. After an incredible twist the players ended up in charge of this pyramid scheme but they did not get their money back was I too harsh to force my players to lose money instead of HP when I ran this encounter.

DowdMusic

May it please the illustrious judges and the stalwart bailiff, I come to you as a humble DM who gave their PCs too many toys to play with, and I ask for the courts council in avoiding future incidents like the one I have come to present. I run a high level campaign (currently level 16) in which the party had recently received a large payout for their endeavors. One of my players decided that instead of spending all of his hard earned loot on weapons, armor or magic items he wanted to buy two things. One - a bag of holding and Two - as many bombs as he could possibly fit into the bag. He spent about 100K gold on bombs - an obscene amount of money he has been saving up all campaign. While this was a neat way to switch up combat a bit it really wasn't over powered in any way compared to 8th level spells flying around. Additionally he put so much of his saved wealth into his big ass bag of bombs that I thought it was fine. A few sessions went by with a firebomb or four and it was good times. Enter the current wearer of the hand of Vecna. The party was engaged in an epic battle against the chosen of the Lich-Lord and his party - one of which was straight up a full efreeti lord riding on an advanced Nightmare (something I am sure pentagreens would love painted on the side of his van). After the bearer of the hand of Vecna caused one of my player's dragon companion to implode with a 9th level spell the party knew that things were not going to go well for them. In reaction the PC with a bag full of bombs flew above the big bad cleric of Vecna and proceeded to turn his bag of holding inside out. Relevant text from the item: "If a bag of holding is turned inside out, its contents spill out, unharmed, but the bag must be put right before it can be used again". This means everything fall out, including all 100,000 gp of contact fire bombs. When they all hit the ground the cumulative blast damage was over 3400! I made the whole party make saves to try to shield themselves from the explosion and several got seriously injured by the blast even tough they were far away. The local environment, and all of the remaining enemies were decimated - all except the efreeti lord who is immune to fire. Following the blast the efreeti threw done his sword and offered the party 2 wishes to spare him. I am now concerned that this is going to be something that the party wants to use again. I set up the rules of this world and told them they could have bombs, but 3K+ damage is ridiculous. This is the 2nd time something like this occurred using a stock pile of explosives. The kicker though - the real kicker is that my players love it. They love to just blow shit up and I don't want to take that away from them. Unfortunately for me, as level 16 PCs they can definitely fill that bag up with bombs again. This leaves me questioning what to do. Should I nerf their bombs? Should I just plan for this nonsense and make encounters too spread out for a single nuke attack, or have a 2nd wave of baddies? Or I was I wrong to let them do this in the first place and now my players have toys that simply can not be put back in the box.

Lizzy Presland

May it please my fair and righteous judges, and the omnipotent bailiff -- I have a case of sorts that I could use your advice on. I am running a game in a homebrewed version of Appalachia, set in the mid 1920s. It is a really cool setting, with lots of interesting social themes related to labor organizing, industrialization and the destruction of nature, and the rise of capitalism. There will also be cryptid monsters and whatnot (they already glimpsed Bigfoot in the mountains of TN, and Mothman is in the cards for the near future). I and all my players are excited to RP the creation of a better future, and we are all staunch anticapitalists, antiracists, and climate conscious millenials. The question I pose to you is this -- as the DM, I have not had cause to directly address racial issues in this setting, and as a white femme, I am a bit hesitant about how to do this. I could make it DM Law that racism doesn't happen in this setting, but much of the setting closely aligns with other difficult, contentious, and unjust elements of American history. If it is an element of the social landscape of the setting, I would like to be able to address questions of race and antiracism respectfully and with sensitivity. I would also love to give the players opportunities to effect meaningful change in-game, just as we put the work in in our real lives. Do you have any advice for me? PS -- Thank you Jake and the Headgum team for recommending and nurturing Three Black Halflings. I am listening and learning, and absolutely loving every minute of it. This is a question I'd love to pose to them as well.