Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

D&D Court Cases! (Patreon)

Published:
2021-06-18 12:38:21
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Court is BACK in session! We're here to dole out justice for those of you have been unjustly maligned at the table. Please comment on this post with your story so we can try your case.

As always I implore you to keep your submissions BRIEF!

Your less and less humble bailiff,

Jake

Comments

PandoraS117

DnD Court May it please the honorable and esteemed justices Axford, Caldwell, and Murphy. During my camp...huh? Who? He’s still on the show? Woooowww...well okay I guess. And the bailiff Jack. During my campaign one of my players attempted to wield and extremely powerful relic that no mortal had ever used. A gauntlet to be more precise. When she put it on I made her roll death saves to attune herself to it. The risk is very high yes, but this relic gave her a home-brew version of finger of death. Where she could cast said spell on any creature she successfully grappled for one turn. She failed her saves and died. The players tried to cast certain spells and I told them that it would not work because the relic was now a part of her even though she was dead. Well our Druid, Elyssa. Calm down Emily. Had devoted herself to the goddess “Destahnia” who over saw fate. The gods are forbidden from interacting directly with mortals so when I had Elyssa faint and speak with her goddess she then faded in nonexistence because she broke her oath. When Elyssa awoke I had the fighter reroll her death saves and she passed this time. Well Elyssa had 5 levels in Warlock from her goddess and I then explained she no longer had a goddess, therefore no pact, as well as no levels in Warlock. She went from 15 to 10. May your judgement me true and honorable. P.S. I know this wasn’t very short but that’s okay because Jack is the one who reads them.

Melanie

I wish there was a follow up with the blasting grandma

BigPidgey

Honourable, venerable, magnificent and all knowing judges, and hot boy Jake, may it pleasure you all; I had an issue that struck me right in the middle of suffering DM drop after a session. The players were fighting in the guild forest in my world, and for a little scenery I placed a statue in the forest. The party was instantly taken by the statue and half of them wanted to investigate that over the objective. I told them it was a regular statue, but they continued to investigate, even leaving party members behind to face a very tough boss so they could look at the statue. The fight spanned two sessions, and after the first I told them away from table that it's just a statue, despite this the second session was much the same. I had to pull a lot of punches to not TPK them because of them not focussing on the fight. After the second session while suffering from the usual "I'm a bad DM" vibe, I brought up the statue and one player said it should have done something, and that as DM I should have made the statue do something. Should I have made the statue do something? PS there was also a magical red glow behind the trees that summoned the boss which they ignored completely, I gave them something to play with which was ignored for the statue. Go figure.

JR Lonergan

May it please the court and the esteemed bailiff sir Jake I have a player who is a min maxer at my table. All well. But as we've advanced through the module we are playing (Dungeon of the Mad Mage) it's become obvious to everyone that he's reading the book ahead and knows everything. I can't really drop him as he is a friend of the host, but the min maxing has made it hard to balance for the other players and I can only change so much in the published scenario. Any good ways to circumvent this egregious foul?

Jeremy Brine

May it please the court. This is a slight take on the 'Caught someone cheating on zoom'. I have had my suspicions on a player for a bit, but because this is ultimately a low stakes game, only really confided in one person. Well that one person has secretly been tracking everyone's rolls this entire time, and it terms out I am vindicated, as I roll online, I have an almost perfect average of 10.5, while the suspect player has 15, with one roll out of 50 being below a 10 (other people where close to normal). I'm running the next campaign, and suggested we video take our stats rolls. Everyone agree and sent timed videos, while he sent only a screenshot of honestly outstanding rolls (3 16's, and other good scores). My question is, should I force him to re roll before the first session, or just let it be because it honestly might be more trouble than it's worth.

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. 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."

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?

Kay

If it pleases the court, and jakeypoo, i have a dilemma. Our crew has only played together 4 sessions, 4 out of 7 of us are noobs. The DM's girlfriend (an experienced player) made a very specialized, flying, magical character who is way more powerful than the rest of us. However, she never actually DOES anything. Once, as a meteor was falling onto a town and we were simultaneously battling some baddies, she refused to come out of her room at the tavern and kept sleeping for the entirety of the encounter. Since she is the DMs girlfriend, he will not do anything about it and acts like this is totally normal behavior. What can the rest of us do to encourage her to actually play?

Nicholas Badtke

May it please y'all honorable court peeps, and make Balif Jake chuckle. My dm has given me a crown of duck summoning as a punishment for missing a few sessions. (He tweaked it so that I have to roll a d12 instead of an d8). Long and short of it, my group wants to make a "duck cannon" by passing the ducks around during combat so they build up momentum. Then we would have our goliath, Hue Munggus, yeet said ducks at our enemies. It would kill the duck in the process, but just imagine the clouds of feathers and piles of bodies! Forever nerdy, a dud(e).

Thomas McComb

Honorable justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner, and the lowly bottom feeder bailiff Jake, our party was about to begin a stealthy scouting mission around the outskirts of a town. With stealth in mind our Sorcerer asked our Druid to cast Pass Without Trace. He had casted this on us several times in the past so we all know he has it. Upon the request however our DM objected that this request was meta gaming and cheating. I, the fighter, sided with the Sorcerer saying we all know our Druid has the spell. The other 3 players at the table all agreed with the DM that requesting a spell is meta gaming. Our Cleric called it “the definition of meta gaming.” In the end the spell was not cast and nothing happened on the stealth mission anyway. Were we wrong to request a spell we KNOW that a party member has or is that meta gaming? *It may be important to note that he did not use his character voice when he made the request.

Erick Loya

May it please the court. My DM's bbeg tried casting an attack spell but it got counterspelled. He then said that his bbeg cast misty step right after being counterspelled. I argued that he already cast a spell so he cant cast another this turn. He told me that since it was countered, he didn't actually cast the previous spell and but he did use up an action and still had a bonus action, allowing him to use misty step. My party and I argued and the DM did eventually take our side but we were all left unsure of who was wrong or right. My DM usually will take our side to keep things smooth but I'm worried we may have cheated. I humbly await your verdict

Lucas Bond

May it please the court My roommate wanted to get into D&d recently and asked if I could dm for her. Since it was her first time playing dnd and she hasn't fully grasped the mechanics I decided to make a more adventurous and puzzle driven campaign rather than a combat heavy one. I had fun puzzles and tricks with some fun stuff like racing large animals. I made this campaign revolve around her two favorite books. Alice in wonderland and coraline. So it was mystery and wonder with a creepy vibe to it. That being sad there wasn't anything in this world that would ACTUALLY hurt her. Also there was no form of currency since all the NPCs are animals. I was really excited to run this campaign with her and hopefully get her attached to D&D as much as I am. I didn't want it to just be me DMing and her playing a character though. I wanted at least ONE more person so they can solve stuff together and have conversations via roleplay. I decided I wouldn't invite any of my friends because she's not to close with them. She hads a friend that plays dnd that said she would play so we just invited her. So Everything was set. Everything was good. The characters where made. The adventures where about to begin... That's when the problem arose. Her friend ONLY did stuff for gold. Which if you remeber this world HAS NO GOLD!!! I told her this repeatedly and since she was the one with dnd experience she took charge of there party, skipping 3 of my puzzles. I was kind of irritated at this time but whatever. I had this race planned where you can choose and animal to ride I thought it would be really fun and my roommate was excited to do it. We got to the race and her friend refused to do it. Even after I offered her 10 gold. She said if I brought the price up to 40 she would consider it. I ran the race just me and my roommate and she had a lot of fun, everyone was laughing and wanting more. This was the only golden moment and right after her friend tried to steal the prize that my roommate won. At that point I told them I didn't have anymore planned and that we would play when I have more planned. So my predicament is, Do I keep playing with her friend even though she doesn't understand how my world works and just cater more to her? Or do I just drop her and run the campaign with just me and my roommate?

Brayden Rittner

May it please the court, the bailiff may be pleased at his own discretion: My party was hired by a shady organization to steal a chest from an orcish boat in a harbor. Our specific instructions were to ‘make it look sloppy’ so the organization that hired us wouldn’t seem suspicious, as they were known for being thorough and discreet. I summoned my octopus familiar as a parrot for recon, and during the fight i sent him off to find a real dirtbag to be the fall guy during the battle. I ended up rolling low on a perception check and finding an upstanding citizen giving money to a homeless person, but I still went through with my plan to lure him to the harbor so we could leave behind a human body to make it look less like planned attack on the boat and more like a skirmish. My entire party was appalled when he got to the boat and I killed him, but I maintain to this day that if there were no casualties on our side it wouldn’t have seemed sloppy enough, and since I was raised as a pirate with a CN alignment, kill people and make money was pretty much my whole worldview. I felt like I was playing a young pirate rogue truthfully. Was I in the wrong here?

Gianni Pappas

If it may please the honorable bailiff and possibly some pretty good judges. May I present the case of the TGI Monday’s Mystery. I am a DM for a home game and in the first town they visit I mention the regional famous restaurant TGI Monday’s a depressing version of that other restaurant. This makes everyone laugh and of course they try to go see if there is anything to it. When they get there and are eating the ask you do investigation/perception checks. I allow it and two players happen to roll nat 20s and I give them a long winded description if the restaurant even with that nat 20s thou there is nothing special about this restaurant. They were a little annoyed cause I mentioned it twice seeming like pointing them here. Am I in the wrong for just making a stupid name for a place with nothing happening?

James Lloyd

If it pleases the court (including Judge/Bailiff Jake, I simply have a story, a story of a Taruk clone (but for good). I started playing/DMing 2yrs ago after listening to NADDPOD and one of my players is also a NADDPOD fan (Perth, Australia). We texted about how funny the Taruk story was and I remarkrd that his Tiefling Rogue should totally become the villain for a alt universe one-shot. Then my health declined as work got more intense so session prep for harder so I asked him if her would take over as a DM for a week to ease the pressure from me. He agreed and I started the session out as DM with an NPC Wizard calling the party to examine a strange passage in Book Of Demons (OP magic book I gave them, the PC and his player was happy for me to put in an archive). Wizard said PC's name had appeared in the book. So they went to investigate it. After his PC touched the book, we swapped seats and he DM'ed a wonderful session where I got to play my Favourite NPC (a low confidence Cleric) and the Player had custom challenges for each player (including me) and connected them to some past event or joke. Then we moved onto a combat with a level 20 version of his PC who was actually a Demon Prince pretending to be him. Everyone had fun and it was great for me to take a break. The tale of Taruk keeps giving.

bbyfendie

if it pleases YUGO BABY, I'd like to bring the case of DM v Players. I'm a dm running a curse of strahd campaign for my characters. you had another submission mention that there's a moment in the campaign where the party stumbles upon a carriage that has a tiger trapped in it. my players decided to see what would happen if they put a headband of intellect on the tiger. I decided that it would not only bring great intelligence to the tiger, (named Xavier) but sentience and an understanding of his own existence/mortality and was terrified to be returned to his animal state. Not only could he feel love and hope and pain....but he could ponder on it. He had dreams...he had nightmares. Fears, ideas, the ups and downs that make the human experience...human. Once they took the headband off I made a quip that the tiger now knows what life could be and wants the headband back, similar to the first taste of meat. they argued that once he took the headband off he should immediately return to his animalistic state and shouldn't crave this fast and loose lifestyle we bipedal humanoid live. Is this fair? does Xavier have no recollection of his time w the headband? in the end its my choice because who are my players to stand up to God? THANKS GUYS

Allie Rosner

Venerable judges, may it please the court (and may it gently tickle the bailiff), I'm playing a level 3 bladesinging wizard in a friend's campaign. He's a relatively new DM, and is historically crunchy with rules. We all started out in jail for our first session a few days ago. On the eve of our first night in prison, my friend asked if any of us wanted to stay up to see what happens. I, being a curious little halfling, and another member of our party decided to stay up, and learned that the guards' shift change occurred at 4am. Without any warning, the DM told us that, because we stayed up all night, we earned a level of exhaustion, and so our ability checks for the rest of the day (and thus the session) were to be made with disadvantage. I and my fellow bard felt like this was too severe a punishment for such small potatoes. Am I wrong to be miffed about getting exhaustion with no prior warning and virtually no payoff? Or is his crunchiness to be respected? Humbly yours, a very cranky wizard.

Casey Fenton

If it pleases the Esteemed and Honorable Court (+Jake), I ran a game with a few friends of various experience with a semi-home brewed short campaign I was running. However very quickly one player seemed to make it their mission to assert their world building into the storytelling. Which normally I would be thrilled about but his suggestions would almost all be attempting to place a contemporary or modern thing into the fantasy world. I’m of the mindset to “yes and” as many suggestions as possible but his character, named Gereagh (“Greg”), would try and add Cheesecake Factories to abandoned towns, wears a full Reebok track suit, the big Bad gets called Jeffrey Bezos for no reason, etc. How can I balance allowing my players creative freedom but not wanting my setting trampled over by cultural references and immature jokes? Thank you!

JesterTheCleric

May it please the court, especially the wonderful bailiff, may I present 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 after I got asked, but I feel bad for saying no, since I told him no and then ruled it out instead of the other way around. Should I have said yes and allowed the OP feat to make sure the player was having fun? I accept any punishment deemed necessary.

Sahara

May it please the court, and disgruntle the bailiff. I present the case of the flavourful ravens: The party I gm for arrived at a new town which I described as being covered in ravens. Every surface was covered in them, purely for flavour, they had no real meaning. The party made a big deal about how every surface must be covered in bird poop and one player shouted 'bullshit!' when I started making up something about the ravens being magical. I gave in and said that the town was inches deep in poop and we moved on. Later, they attended a banquet at the Town Hall and I had them roll constitution against psittacosis (a disease that you can get from eating/inhaling bird poop). Uproar ensued and I was accused of taking out my frustration at being 'caught out' on my PCs. Justices of the court, I ask you this: did I go too far in the name of the realism that the party asked for? Was I too salty? Or did they deserve their dastardly disease?

Ricardo, devotee of dice christ

May it please the court but most importantly bailiff jake. My case is not against a player or dm, but against the dice gods themselves. I have a dice that has been blessed with holy power and always delivers in the most critical moments and also happens to be the first D20 I bought. I love them dearly and have great sentiment for them but at the same time I became suspicious of them. I checked my dice, rolled them many times and tabulated the results. My table revealed that most of the rolls were over eight, I also rolled 16 and 20 a lot of the time. My question is this: should I accept the blessing the dice gods have given me or should I relinquish this power for the betterment of storytelling and my conscience? My fate is in your hands venerable judges and powerful bailiff.

Alex Attwell

May it please the court, and the honourable Bailiff Jake, My party is currently playing through the Frostmaiden campaign and I am playing an Arctic Foxfolf (I’m using Tabaxi stats) who has antlers (Fey Wanderer Ranger). My character is without a name because I was raised by the Yetis up in the far North, until they rudely kicked me out due to territorial issues. The other players simply refer to me in a collection of wind noises and “whooshes”. Anyways, recently, we encountered a yeti and her tike and while our DM allowed me to learn Yeti due to my upbringing, I tried to persuade her that we were friendly as to avoid a fight. However, our DM said I wasn’t allowed to persuade her because I’d startled them and my other party member had already proven to be hostile. I was thoroughly disappointed as I have very good persuasion and well, my character was literally raised by yetis so I’d hoped I’d have some leverage! I was thinking at the very least I would have to beat a very high DC. Should I have been able to try and persuade the yetis, and was I wronged of what could have been a miracle (or terrible) moment? Or was my DM right for saying we’d already ruined our chances and not letting me?

Derek Johnson

If it may please the court and tickle the honorable bailiff’s peach. I as the DM had an encounter where my players fought a bunch of gnomes. My player attempted a really cool move where he jumped on another player’s hippocampi from mid air and trampled one of the gnomes, knocking it prone. He then proceeded to attack it with his melee weapon. The issue we ran into is he wanted to attack with advantage because the gnome was prone. I argued that being on top of the horse meant that he’d had to reach down to swing and even though the target wasn’t moving, it should be a regular attack roll since he was mounted and up a few feet. I feel bad because after doing such a cool maneuver, I had to take the wind out of his sails by not letting him complete the whole move the way he imagined. We couldn’t find anything specifically stating either of us were correct, but the rules as written seemed to imply he was correct. Am I a butt-munch for not letting him attack with advantage, or was I justified in making him do a regular attack?

Klanin IceCrushner

May it please the court I’m playing a dhampir gambler cowboy bard in our current campaign. We recently where tasked by the local adventures guild to track down a drake that had been pillaging the country side. Over the course of the battle I became low on hit points and I asked our half elf communist sorcerer if I could bite his draft horse “Trotsky” to replenish my hit points. He agreed and the horse survived but then he became very passive aggressive about the situation. Was it wrong of me to partake in a draft of his draft horse or is he betraying his communist ideals. I leave myself at the mercy of the court.

Judson Whitfield

May it please the judges and also the very handsome, smart, and talented bailiff: We were missing a player but wanted to still get together and have a session. As such, we decided to play beach volleyball. The party wasn't even (5 players level 4) so the DM made our boat captain npc play. He also gave them the most incredible magic items. +10 to all strength checks, +15 to all dex/strength saves, etc. which were the mechanics of the game. As a side note: Myself and my partner (oath of glory paladin and echo knight) absolutely smashed the other team. It was a glorious victory. As a party we briefly discussed murdering the boat captain and taking his magic clothes because what was he gonna do? The DM got really nervous and upset that we would contemplate murdering someone in such a cold, heartless manner. Were we in the wrong for CONSIDERING murdering/stealing this gear and taking advantage of the DM or was he being a cry baby?

Danny Summers

May it please the court, I have recently introduced my chaotic good Necromancer into our long running campaign. My new character gets along well with the party, however, my DM recently ruled that because certain PCs in the party are "Good" aligned, they cannot abide my PC's necromantic ways, and must attack her zombies on sight. I feel this makes it difficult for me to play my character at all, and question why I was allowed to make her in the first place. Honourable judges & bailiff, I defer to your wise judgement in this matter.

Olivia A

May it please the court (and Bailiff Jake, who chooses these court cases so I’ve decided not to bully him). I’m currently playing a Raven Queen Warlock-Grave Cleric multiclass in a Curse of Strahd campaign, and as part of my warlock subclass, I get a spectral raven companion that I named Morrigan. According to my class abilities, when Morrigan is perched on my shoulder, I gain darkvision up to 60ft and add my charisma bonus to my perception. I can also choose to see through Morrigan’s senses like a familiar. However, RAW states that Morrigan has the stats of a regular raven which doesn’t have darkvision. My DM says that I shouldn’t be able to have darkvision when seeing through my raven’s senses because that would be game breaking (usually when she’s not perched on my shoulder), but I argue that this doesn’t make much sense, given that she’s a spectral raven who can grant me darkvision anyway. I even offered to trade Morrigan’s “mimic” ability for darkvision. Though of course I’m respecting my DM’s ruling, I can’t help but feel like this is a bit unfair. Am I just being a brat or does this rule really not make sense?

Robert McDaniel

May it please the court, I will be running a Battle Royal one-shot soon as the second part of a 1v1 tournament one-shot. My girlfriend is running a Barbarian/Fighter who absolutely destroyed the 1v1s. I have allowed each player to select a legendary item (excluding one-shot items and wish related items) to find in the arena. She has selected the Potion of Giant Size from Storm King's Thunder. If you are unfamiliar, it doubles the consumer's max HP, triples their melee damage, and gives them 5ft reach as well as making them Huge sized. What do I do to make sure the others players are not completely outclassed by her massive, 520HP Minotaur? I implore you, noble judges, and the slightly less noble bailiff, help me find a way to make this a fair fight. If it helps, I have a Trickster diety who will be hosting this event and could be a wild card.

Drew Fitzpatrick

May it please the justices and supreme bailiff...we had some down time in our quest to stop a dragon cult, so I asked to spend a week hanging out with a friendly dragon to learn dragonic. Our DM said in a week I could only learn to recognize when draconic is spoken, to which I respectfully disagreed. I felt that in 7 days of 12 hr language tutoring from a gold ancient dragon, I'd be able to at least understand and speak some dragonic. I accepted the ruling and just bought a ton of comprend language potions instead. In a world of full of magical bullshit, was I wrongly punished for trying to learn a language the hard way?

Evolet Harris

I have a homegame where my dad plays a dwarf. He is extremely rude and interrupts me all the time. He makes poop jokes for some reason too. My sister joins in on his joking so we had to make a rule that he shouldn't interrupt anyone unless it's for roleplay. He still does it and now we literally have to do training to make him stop doing this. Am I the one wrong here? I'm just so tired of him playing his dwarf character as comic relief when his backstory is a sad war story.

Luke Polito

May it please the court: For the last few months I have been DMing a game for some friends of mine from back home in NY. I've had a great time building the world and making custom art for all of my homebrew monsters and dungeons (I'm an animator by trade so it's been a great outlet for me, as my current gig is less fulfilling creatively). Unfortunately due to some summer scheduling conflicts the campaign is on "hiatus" until at least September, and I'm not super confident the original group will all come back together at all. This is a bummer for a lot of reasons, but I also just finished mapping and designing a sick volcano mine that we were about to get into before the hiatus. There's part of a legendary sword in there, just waiting to be reclaimed! I have been talking to another friend group and they seem potentially interested in playing, but I'm torn. Would it be okay for me to recycle some of my design work from my old campaign into a new one? I'd feel like a jerk if I ran this encounter or setting with another group, only for my current campaign to start up again in a few months. On the other hand, I don't want all of the work I've put into it to go to waste. Is it uncouth, a punishable offense, for me to re-use DM prep for another group if the first group is disbanded? Your wisdom is needed.

DanDân

If it may it please the court, I DM for a group of 7 of my friends going through a little campaign that is loosely based on the hellfire chronicles. They’re going through the 9 layers of hell which have been themed after the cardinal sins. As they entered the first layer, which is wrath retextured as a burning man event with the main focus being a battle of the bards with headliners Lich Astley, Blob Marley, and several more, we ran into a scheduling issue where we split the party for a session. Half of the group met one day and the other half the next and I messaged all of them asking if there was anything they wanted to do as the party was being separated from one another that I could bring up at the start of the session. I was thinking they’ll shout something to one another like “we’ll meet here” or “take care of X, Y, Z”. Most of them did just that. One of the, my brother, had another idea. He threw a small rock which had magic mouth cast on it to the other group. The phrase to activate it was “Marco” and it responded “Polo”. He then spent the next 1 and 1/2 sessions randomly stopping and yelling out “Marco.” Each time I told him there was no effect. Eventually when the party was together again, he got mad that the rock never replied polo. I explained to him that Magic Mouth has a 30 foot radius and until your lost party members were 30 feet away the rock wouldn’t work. He disagreed, saying that as long as his voice travels into that 30 foot range that the mouth should respond, and since he was yelling as loud as he could magic mouth should reply in turn as loud as possible. I told him no and we moved on, but he questioned it again at a family party and hasn’t really dropped it since. He’s asking about hiding objects with Magic Mouth now too, using the mouth as a pocket. So, esteemed Supreme Crit Justices, what exactly does this 30 foot range mean when discussing magic mouth? -Dan [ps- I’m glad you got the off brand lucky charm marshmallows in a tube. I forgot to put a note on it]

Madeleine Smith

May it please the inimitable, honourable judges Axford, Murphy and Tanner, (and bailiff Jake), I have a case of PC betrayal. My party was in a standoff with a town’s guards after we freed a wrongfully imprisoned family from stocks in the middle of the town square. Myself and two of the other three players were ready to fight, but the fourth player, lawful good bard, insisted on a peaceful outcome - she even went so far as to cast Calm Emotions on us, her fellow PCs. It failed on my character, a chaotic neutral rogue, who immediately fired her crossbow at one of the guards - who the bard promptly healed before running away from the fight. The rest of us were almost killed in the aftermath, ultimately thrown in prison. After the session, this player accused all of us of ganging up on her and forcing her to make out-of-character decisions, and has demanded apologies from all of us. Do we need to apologise, or is she being unreasonable?

Al Ludwig

Honorable Justices and Loyal Bailiff Hurwirtz: I am currently running Storm Kings Thunder for a new group of players. I noticed that my players weren't vibing with the module as written as they ran away from most plot hooks I put up for fun but ultimately non-fruitful diversions (most notable the rogue and wizard looking for literal Giant shit to try and push each other into). After every session there's plenty of smiles and laughs from my party so I know they're having fun, but it's frustrating for me to have them go so far away from the main plot. I chose a module so I would have to do all the world building and storylines myself, but if my players aren't vibing book as written, how can I let go and give the players what they want, but also feel like I didn't waste $30 on the module/be able to have fun myself?

Nick Mooneyham

Most honorable judges Murphy, Axford and Tanner and the ever radiant dungeon bailiff Hurwitz. If it pleases the court…. I recently was added into a 4 PC group who are around level 10. The party already had a lot of damage output so I decided to take a page from Fia’s playbook and build a Chronurgy wizard to bring to the table in order to add some support to the group. I rolled my character and went to my first session. During my first session with the group I found out that each PC has a “sidekick” basically that they also control and that because there are so many characters involved in initiative, our DM had long before I joined up, decided that instead of 6 seconds per round, each round would instead be 30 seconds due to there being so many characters during initiative. This results in spells I cast, such as Haste or Slow only lasting 2 rounds instead of the 10 rounds “normal” time would give me, including the round I cast it on. Judges, I don’t want to make a fuss at a table I just joined, but I also feel like this 30 second rule breaks spell casting for my character a little bit and I don’t fully understand the reasoning behind it. Is there an alternative solution I can bring up in order to meet my DM somewhere in the middle? Or should I ask to be killed only a couple sessions in so that I can Reroll a character who’s spells aren’t based on time duration instead? I await your benevolent judgement and accept whatever punishment befalls me.

jacob brewer

May it please the court My case is player vs dm who is my brother the party are level 15, I am playing an inquisitive rouge that has a capped wisdom modifier the dm has changed my inquisitive fighting to be unable to work when I am hidden and I have to be in melee to activate it, the dm says that makes it fair when I said your nerfing my character there has not been any restrictions to any other player and their classes as well as a sidenote every magic item I find is cursed and any magic item the others find is fine. Am I right to go bull and be annoyed or is it fair to deal with a character with a lowest possible stealth and insight check of 27

qbull

May it please the court, A few sessions ago, my players encountered a cave dragon (from Kobold Press's Tome of Beasts). Cave dragons have a blindsight of 120 feet. My players tried to exploit this by taking a magical whoopie cushion they had previously acquired, moved it to the other side of the cave with mage hand and squeezed it to distract the dragon so that they could flee. I argued that this is very cool but not how blindsight works, as the dragon can still sense their footsteps and hear them casting the spell. They argued that I am full of shit, but went with me anyways. Should I have let the rule of cool reign supreme? P.S. the only magical properties of the whoopie cushion is that it can cast thunderwave once per day when someone sits on it, but it's charge was used before the encounter occured.

Nick Yorio

May it please the court, both the highly esteemed justices as well as the lowly bailiff, for I have been wronged! Our party had been tracking a young red dragon that had made its lair deep in a cave high in the mountains, and to protect the party as they climbed my half-orc war cleric and rune knight fighter multiclass had been first up the rope to stand guard. Suddenly two red dragon wyrmlings emerged from the cave, causing initiative to be rolled. The dragons went first and attacked with their breath weapon. My heroic war priest rolled his dex save, nat 1. My grievance is with what happened next. Not only did I take full damage from two breath weapons at the same time, apparently my half orc was thrown off the mountain to his untimely death. I argued with the DM that while I did roll a nat 1, the save was in no way related to my war priests position on the mountain, it was only to avoid the flames. These were also baby dragons, making it seem highly unlikely that they had the power in their fire breath to launch a fully grown half orc in full plate mail off a mountain. My DM only shrugged and said, nat 1 is a nat 1. I would have gladly accepted additional consequences for a nat 1, but the outcome seemed far too severe for a single dex save. Honorable justices, please ensure that justice is done this day and that my deceased half orc finds his day in court.

Cameron McEwan

May it please the most honourable and desirable judges and Jake. Presenting the case of DM vs. the dice. I created a session of encounters for my players based around rolling a d100, with each number representing something the players would come across in the enchanted wood they were lost in. Some were good, some bad, in no particular numerical sequence. Each time they rolled above 50, they would become less lost. Below 50, more lost. The idea being that if they rolled well enough they would escape the woods and if they rolled poorly, they would end up so lost they accidentally find themselves in the fae. Now being the merciful DM I am, I wanted a Nat 100 to feel like an accomplishment, so I made that encounter them finding a path out of the woods. I believe in letting the dice tell the story, however the very first roll made was a Nat 100, this would have instantly ended what was going to otherwise be a several hour long session, so I quickly substituted it for another ‘good’ encounter. The players were none the wiser but the dice knew of my treachery. The second roll my players made was ALSO a Nat 100. Profusely sweating, I came up with a magic item the players got to find. The session then ran smoothly from there but I need judgement. Am I in the wrong? Or were the dice?

Scottee

May it please the court, tease the bailiff, and lead to a satisfying climax for all- I wanted to share an update! Rudy the sensual firbolg has gotten a happy ending! With some reasonable debate about character-building and having some fun with new and unusual things plus being more flexible with encounter designs, Rudy's rippling muscles can now use his absurd carrying capacity to its proper potential without a need for Strength checks, save for extreme cases. After doing some number-crunching regarding what his damage output would be if he went straight Fighter, he also now has a giant-type rock-throwing attack when he's in his enlarged form! Thank you for your legal counsel, for justice has been done.

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.

vinicius fernandes

Most honorable, all- knowing, and mostly all-powerful judges (and also Jake), May it please the court: My dnd group consists of me, a veteran player, and 3 brand new players. One of the 3 brand new guys keeps metagaming and looking up the monster's stats every combat encounter. He uses this to know which type of spell to use on that creature. For example, if it has low dex, then he'll use a spell that calls for it to make a dex saving throw. So on and so forth. He even does this to track the creature's HP himself and gets upset when I say that it's still alive or change its abilities on the fly. "But it can't do that!" He'll often loudly exclaim during a session. Is it wrong for him to do this or am I just being a control freak? - the "doesn't want to yell at his players" DM

Alex Jones

May it please the exalted justices of the high crit Axford and Tanner, the powerful and handsome bailiff Herwitz and the pebblepot justice Murphy. Update on blast'em grandma, flavored chaos bolt with her magical story telling book and glamor weave cape which she uses as her instrument however I feel like I have another losing cause on my hands. Latest part of the campaign had them battling on the side of 3 eleven conquest kings who had (without the players knowledge) imperialistically took over the homeland of a group goblins led to a peasant uprising. During the battle(using mechanics used in crown of candy) an elf who had ent companion died and blast'em grandma wanted to take the ent on as a mount. I offered she could have a familiar like baby Groot but she rolled a persuasion check stupid high to persuade the ent to come along with her. What do I do she loved the original ruling but I fear the supreme crit justices Axford(her favorite) and Tanner and pebblepot justice Murphy have created a monster who might end up being my own personal bbeg. What do I do?

Leopard

May it please the sweeties, and to whom else it may concern. I had a brief discussion with my DM about the casting of Dimension Door. I play a Clockwork Soul sorcerer, and have the Twinning Spell sorcery ability. I was trying to get some members in my party out of a castle-turned-cult hideout while we were being searched for, and planned on using Dimension Door to get me outside the castle walls. I wanted to use Twinning on the Dimension Door cast to target another willing creature, as the ability says it targets another creature with any spell that does not cast on self. My DM argued no, it would not work. I didn’t push it, and my party did manage to all escape safely, but should I have been able to do that and bring my friends to safety. Thank you

Hannah Speidel

May it please the court and especially our esteemed bailiff - a dark cloud hangs over my DnD group. Myself and another party member decided to join a tavern fighting tournament during downtime, while running though Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Quick background: the entire party was extremely chaotic and generally evil. I played Tiefling Necromancer, Pumpkin, who was extremely greedy and impulsive. So, predictably, I lost the tournament pretty handily, and thought that the natural next move would be to convince my partymate to help me assassinate the winner. They, being a chaotic evil warlock, naturally agreed. But it turns out that a level 5 Wizard and warlock are no match for the town guard who suddenly showed up. DM decided that rather than sending up to jail for prisonbreak antics, we would be knocked out and sent straight to the BBEG (we were, for reference, in the 3rd level of the dungeon) at the start of the next session. We were given the chance to roleplay to convince the BBEG to let us go, and the BBEG tried to convince us to join him, but when I asked what check to roll, the DM stated that there would be no checks because we were doomed, and proceeded to have out characters mind-wiped and turned into mindless minions that were then cryogenically frozen. The other party members didn’t get a chance to try and rescue us, and the DM proceeded fo get annoyed that I didn’t have a backup character at the ready as I “should have known that this would be the consequence of the last session.” My question is this: was my DM in the right to nuke our characters for our chaotic criminal behavior, or does this punishment vastly outweigh our misdeeds?

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.

Patrick O.

An update to the case of Auto, the Warforged who got into a fight with the DM over having Heat Metal cast upon him: I was unable to leave a dark stain on the carpet of Auto’s player as instructed by the Judges, as Auto’s player is currently on a road trip across the country, working for a camp that teaches children how to make video games. Fortunately, our DM also works for the camp, and was able to break into his hotel room with a large bottle of wine. He poured wine on the carpet, forcing Auto’s player to quickly clean the stain or be fined for damages to the room. While he cleaned, they reignited the argument, but THIS time they came to a peaceful resolution, and shared the rest of the bottle as friends!

Yusuf Qureshi

May it please the court, and Jake but only if its a hung court. First time DMing, one of the players was a forest golem (made of stone, weighing 2000lbs, this is necessary). A load of drowned ones and zombie, trapped on the ground floor while the party was attacking from the floor above. The golem has no ranged, so decides she wants to belly flop onto the zombies, we calculate the damage for something of her weight falling down (20d6). I saw the enimies have to do a dex save, while she will take half damage anyways. This decision lead to a near tpk, judge whether this was an appropriate ruling, don't let me get blasted by a grandma

Aaron Sterne

If it may please the court and the semi honorable semi dirty Baliff Jake, I am in a party with a high elf named Arnold Timothy Fice (pronounced as if it were Italian) Robert Kemsly, Aka Ar. T Fice R. Kems, who is of course an Alchemist Artificer. Our Dungeon Master, bless their soul, is extremely gracious and allowed this player to play this ludicrous character concept. The problem they (and honestly the rest of the party as well) now have to deal with his shenanigans with the grease spell. At 11th level, artificers gain the ability to infuse an object with a spell. There is no limit to the amount of times you can do this, so whenever we have down time (which is quite a lot due to the nature of the campaign), Arnold infuses as many objects as he can with grease. He then gets us to lure the enemy into a long hall or alleyway, or even a medium sized room, where he has meticulously covered every square with his grease spills. This means that whenever the enemy charges at us, they have to make about 5-10 dexterity saving throws or fall prone, sometimes more depending on the amount of down time we get. This obviously allows us to pelt them with ranged spells, and the only thing our barbarian, who has taken great weapon master, can do is throw javelins, instead of swinging her great-sword. This is obviously very situational, but has trivialized 3 encounters that were supposed to be challenging, and at least somewhat plot important. Our dm is very polite and has unforcefully asked him numerous times to consider other strategies, which he has refused. Should we actually get him to stop, or are these shenanigans valid?

Ally W

May it please the court - may I present the case of lawyer bard vs naive Aarakocra. In one of our first sessions playing together, my friend, who plays a 5 INT Aarakocra, successfully stole a shiny pocket watch off an innocent guy we happened to be walking by. My boyfriend, who plays a lawyer bard named Trippen Fawle, witnessed this happen and tried to convince the Aarakocra to return the pocket watch to the man. Our DM had them both give 1 minute persuasion speeches to him, then both roll opposing checks to see who was successful. The lawyer bard explained to the Aarakocra that the watch was the only shiny decoration that the innocent man had to attract a mate, and was crucial to him having a successful mating season. The Aarakocra squawked in response for one full minute. The lawyer bard won on the roll off, but the Aarakocra refused to return the pocket watch to him and instead, chose something else shiny she had in her pocket claiming she was too low intelligence to see the difference. The DM did not step in and say she had to give the pocket watch back. This was a moment irrelevant to the entire campaign, and the Aarakocra eventually gave the watch back of her own accord, but months later my boyfriend is still disgruntled by this incident every time we have a session. Please, judges, settle this once and for all so my boyfriend can move on. Was my boyfriend right that he should have received the pocket watch the first time around? Or could the Aarakocra have actually been too dumb to realize she gave him something shiny in place of it?

David Wieland

May it please the court and kiss the bailiff on the cheek! My case should be a classic Legolas vs Bugs Bunny case for you to decide. In my homebrew campaign, my players went on a roller coaster through hell and came to a halt, when they noticed that the rails where broken and a huge abyss seperated them from the other side. They started planning using a loop they encountered before, as start-up to cross the abyss with their cart, which they would've had to manually push up the loop. I made them do a flat intelligence check, which on a success, told them, that they wouldn't be able to do that, because the cart was too heavy and the distance from one side to the other was too big. Now here's the problem: The barbarian of the group rolled a nat 20 on an unasked for athletics-check, through which he believed he could propel the cart hard enough, to make it jump to the other side. He was sure he could do it, because I let them do similar, but not equally shenanigansy, stuff before. Am I at fault and should've let him do it, because my setting was too wacky or did I use my right as DM to say no to my players, because they may be Legolas from the Hobbit movies, but still no Bugs Bunny? Humbly yours, a tired DM

The Great Zarquon

May it please the Right Honourable Bailiff and maybe those people on the bench: We were deep into a dungeon that we had spent the last three sessions exploring. I am playing an Artificer who has a mechanical hand that can function as a grappling hook that was capable of supporting my weight. We were holding a narrow hallway against a small horde of zombies, and I used my grappling hook arm to create a tripwire that would cause the zombies to fall prone, giving our fighter and paladin advantage on them. However, after a group of three zombies all hit the tripwire at once, our DM ruled that my wire broke since the combined weight of the zombies exceeded my weight. I argued that since they tripped on it that their full weight wasn't on the wire, but he ruled against me and I lost my mechanical hand. Was I in the right, or was my DM being a stick in the mud?

Clare Gaskin

May it please the court, This is the story of how we were TPK'ed by illiteracy. We were playing in a very realistic medieval setting where only 1 of our 5 members were literate. At the end of our 2nd session we split the party to explore undead rumours. Two members went to the cemetary and while there went to explore the mausoleum and were unable to read the name on top. The door was trapped and they were overpowered murdered by guards pretty quickly. The dm revealed to the players that the name was of the BBEG of the arc. The next session started and the only person who's character could read was away for the day and so the remaining party member and I were left to find our lost members. When we explored the graveyard we discovered scorch marks around the mausoleum and once again were unable to read the name on the top to warn us. I tried asking the dm if the only literate character would be there to read the name at the top which they said that no her player was gone so the character was not able to be used. We then asked if our other player's new characters who had not been introduced yet would be able to deus ex machina us out but they again said that no, they had plans for the new characters and where they were at that time. Some bad investigation rolls later me and my companion sticking to our characters who wouldn't realise the danger tripped the alarm and were also killed. We had to end the session there and call the player who wasn't there to say the same thing happened again and that their character was the only one left alive (at the end of session 3). My question is, should the dm have given us more chances to live or should I just accept that no one's to cool for school and that adventuring is only for the bourgeoisie who can read?

Matty

May it squeeze the wart, I'm DMing for my step-sister and her partner. We're playing a campaign based in the Eldermourne universe, and their characters have bonded over their love for the Trickster. So much in fact, that the characters are constantly flirting with each other and wanting to hook up every time they take a long rest. They've even asked if they can roll for various sex acts and their "success" in doing them. Should I ask them to tone it down since it makes me uncomfortable, or am I being prude? Thank you.

Sara Wisdom

If it pleases the court, the most honourable judges, and most handsome bailiff, may I present the following case: Our party had been invited to a soirée on the behest of a gnome artificer who enjoyed making sculptures of sea creatures out of clockwork mechanisms. Having reason to suspect she was up to something nefarious, we set about exploring her mansion in an attempt to find some dirt. During this reconnaissance mission, the party got separated. My party-loving paladin and his best friend, a bard, encountered some knockout gas. The bard succumbed, and, unable to wake him with a gentle shake, my paladin went back to the soirée in order to find someone to help. He saw two people he knew: the first was a very hot, buff tiefling fighter who works for the government, whom he had only met briefly, and the second was an artist whom he had spent a very nice dinner with, and trusted. He chose the artist, who ended up giving his bard friend a bit of what can only be described as fantasy cocaine, which, well, woke him up and also gave him advantage on attacks. The rest of the party says he should have approached the fighter instead, because 1) she is known to be extremely competent and could have helped in a fight, 2) they were on the mission on behalf of the government, and 3) one of the other party members had a crush on her. My argument is that their mission was to sniff out a mole, and my paladin trusted the artist, and he knew the crushing party member was in a bit of a flap (thanks to some messages she’d been sending) and didn’t want her to look bad in front of her crush. Did I make the wrong decision?! We ended up flooding the tunnel on the sea floor so maybe they were right. I await your judgement with bated breath.

reading list

With thanks in advance to the magnanimous justices and the essential though diminutive bailiff Hurwitz, I plead my case. A forever-DM, and with an ailing loved one in my life affecting my prep time / general psychic bandwidth, I’ve finally wrangled one of my usual players who had experience DM’ing years ago in 3.5 to run a small stretch of sessions in his own world so that I can recuperate with a kind of player sabbatical while not totally dropping out of game night. I’ve helped my substitute wherever necessary, teaching him roll20, making maps, and brushing up on the rules. Our first session I was role playing as my very straightforward fighter (what a blessing), the black knight “Sable Noir,” and I improvised a bit about his long black cape getting splashed by a passing cart hitting a puddle, and I asked if I could roll an athletics check to punch the nearest building, and what the building looked like. My DM had been a bit scattered so far that night, and hadn’t been painting a picture, so I thought making up the puddle and the cart would add some energy, and then this would give him an opportunity to share a set piece. I get a nat20 athletics, so a 29, and he tried to crush me with the building falling down on me. I get a second Nat 20 on a dex save, but he still added up a ton of dice. I survived just fine because I’m a DM and built a frankly unkillable boring fighter, but was I unfairly unpunished for doing a low-stakes bit that A. offers the necessary humiliation any edgelord one-shot character needs and B. helps show us the town in a lighthearted way so the DM can step away from anxiously scrambling through his notes to spend the time with the characters inhabiting themselves? Another expression of the question is thus: was I being a dreaded backseat DM by inventing a puddle and then asking details about the wall I punched, and was it fair that I punched a wall so cool that a whole building fell down on me? I worriedly await yer judgement.

Rowan M

May it please the court (and the honorable bailiff): Our party recently fought a hag and two basilisks in order to rescue a banshee. The lair was inside an enormous tree, so our elf sorcerer climbed up up the tree above the doorway to the lair to try to get out of the hag’s way. She didn’t explicitly say how far up she was climbing, and the hag attacked her the next round. She argued that the hag couldn’t attack her because she had intended to climb high enough to get out of reach, and the dm said that the hag was 8 ft tall and large enough to be able to reach her on top of the doorway. They argued over this for about four and a half minutes, at which point the dm said “okay fine, you’re safe, she’ll take out your cleric instead.” The hag then proceeded to knock my character (a halfling cleric) completely unconscious in two hits. I thought it was funny and didn’t mind taking one for the team, but this conflict between dm and sorcerer has left a hag-shaped stain on our party and probably an even bigger stain on their IRL marriage. I implore you, please save a party in crisis by resolving this conflict: How much reach should an 8-ft tall hag get for attacks? Could the sorcerer climb out of it in one round? Did she have to say how high she was climbing, or was it implied?

Steven Hoffart

May it please the court, and also Jake is there. Recently in my campaign the party came across a travelling Drow bard who offered them a ride on their cart if they rode during the day, and he during the night. One of my players, the paladin, rolled insight. I told the paladin that Drows had the stereotype of being bloodthristy but this Drow didn't seem like that at all. The Paladin then looked up Drow on their phone and was convinced this was a trap and the Drow was going to kill them. After the rest of the party argued with the paladin that they were being bigotted toward drow, they went on the cart and rode away. The Paladin is now walking to the next two and is 3 days behind the rest of the party. The Paladin insists I write in another cart or way for them to catch up to the party. Am I right to punish a player for playing into meta lore?

John Stasicky

May it please the court and honorable bailiff: My fiancée ran a campaign for me and a few of her old coworkers (whom I barely knew) at our apartment. I'm a man role-playing as a female Druid Elf, named Dariaxus. I'd pre-warned the party that I would be role-playing as a woman and would be putting on a "southern bell esqe" accent. I was super excited to play her, as she was highly inspired by Moonshine Cybin. All seemed fine until my character met up with one of the other characters - a male Dwarf Barbarian who claimed to be "highly racist" towards Elves. He kept making comments about my character secretly being a man, how much elves suck, etc. Though it annoyed me, I let it slide to not cause any tension at the table and I understood it was just the character he was playing. The player brought over pizza and all, it was nice. But then our 2nd session comes around. The dude comes in with a bag full of burgers and cookies. Awesome, right? Well we start playing, and this dude just starts pounding back these burgers. Without offering anything to anyone. One after the other. I kid you not, there were at least 6 of these big burgers. It gets so bad to the point he starts doing this weird heavy breathing while eating them. We stop the game and ask if he's OK. He says he's "just excited". This happens for half of the session. Eventually the cookies come out and he offers them to us. We all take one, but then he keeps the rest to himself. We don't mention anything and continue with the session. We're in the middle of fighting off a hoarde of goblins and this guy is sitting on his phone, barely paying attention to the game, licking the burger grease and cookie crumbs off his fingers. I end up having to waste all of my spells to heal the party because the Barbarian barely paying attention to the game leaps into the hoarde thinking he could take all of them on. He goes down, I heal him up, he doesn't care cause his "character doesn't like elves". We get through it, and the session ends. The guy leaves and the rest of us talk about how rude we thought he was being.. That was the last session we played because we couldn't stand the guy. Are we in the wrong for stopping this campaign, or did we just take it too personally?

BoPro

May it please the honourable court and lowly bailiff, I’m playing a Hobgoblin Artificer in a high-level (12) mini-campaign. Myself and another PC were in an aerial pursuit of a Bheur Hag on a Flying Broom. As she was attempting to escape, I cast Dispel Magic on her Broom of Flying to ground her and expected to have to roll for it. However, the DM denied it altogether arguing that because it was not a spell cast on the broom but a magic item I couldn’t pause the Fly-spell type magic even temporarily. Should I have been allowed the opportunity to send the witch, and my DM’s hope and dreams, crashing into the ground? P.S. The voice I use for this character is 100% a Kugrash ripoff. Thanks y’all for producing an awesome podcast that kills me every damn time.

David P

May it please the court: Juicy judges and Baileys Jake, I present to you the case of the maybe-too-strict DM VS the perhaps-overly-inquisitive player. I am DM for a group of 3 players who are my friends. During one of our recent sessions they were fighting an evil wizard who was concentrating on stoneskin, cast on itself. After a good perception roll, I told one of my players that the wizard's skin looked stony, to hint that the wizard had a concentration buff going on. Instantly, my player took out the PHB to check out the spell and what it did. It didn't make much of a difference for the fight - the wizard lost concentration the following round... I'm a first time DM and I'm often unsure to what extent I should push for my own interpretation of the rules, since we're having fun anyways. The atmosphere during our games is very good and I don't have any complaints about my players, but I'm not sure it's ok for characters to search for that kind of information in the middle of a fight. We talked about this and he mentioned that the PHB information is available to all players, to which I couldn't find a suitable reply. Do you think this should be allowed? Was my player too keen to get that extra information or am I thinking about this too inflexibility? I'll humbly accept whichever punishment the court decides on, and make sure it's executed to its ultimate consequences.

Milk Teeth

May it please the court, I am in a home campaign with a few of my buddies, we were playing a session in which the DM described large trees reaching up into the sky. One of the players asked if there was fruit at the top of the tree and the DM rolled for it, there was. The same player then casted shatter at a high level, the tree began to fall on top of him and the DM asked him to roll a red saving throw, he rolled an 11 or 12 and failed. The tree fell on top of him doing 60 damage. Was the DM too harsh, or was it fair for the player to be punished for his shenanigans.

Charlie Sainsbury

Your most honourable justices and esteemed bailiff, may it please the court: I present a question of horse fortitude. After a successful jail break our party fled into the nearby woods on our horses. It was night time and we prioritised getting away quickly over trying to navigate through the woods. After finding ourselves trapped at a bend in the river, with enemies in hot pursuit, I suggested casting water walk on the whole party: horses included so we could ride straight across the river. However the DM made it clear that without a hefty animal handling check (not something anyone in the party excels at) the horses would either refuse to walk onto the river or freak out so much that they’d be useless. Thus we had to abandon our horses and sail our folding boat down the river. Surely the horses wouldn’t be this reluctant to go on the river or prone to being spooked!! Please reaffirm my assertion that our horses should have been more brave, like the heroes they were. Also, my horse’s name was Pablo. Many thanks from Melbourne

Siana Kerley

May it please my favorite court (and Jake, of course), I'm playing a Paladin/Bard in a long running campaign and ever since I had access to the spell Find Steed I've always had a mount with me. The DM allowed me to summon the same spirit but in different forms. When the party is traveling my mount, Blizzard, is in horse form and when we're exploring areas he's in Mastiff form. Because of low ac and low hp I don't use Blizzard in combat unless he's in a beefy form. Now, onto the incident, the party was traveling through the Underdark and we got ambushed by giant plants that almost killed us multiple times. Naturally, I had Blizzard hide during all this until only one plant was left. When I had him attack, he whiffed a couple of times but eventually landed a bite on it and did max dmg. I then joking said 'Oh, it needs to make a Strength save, DC 12, or Blizzard knocks it prone'. The DM was silent for a moment before leaning in super to his mic and said, in his most exhausted tone. 'The plant automatically fails it's save cause Blizzard hit the exact amount to kill it. How does Blizzard want to do this?' My party fucking lost it as I said that Blizzard was going to be a good boy and fetch the plant for me. The DM, now upset at this point, said 'Your mastiff uproots a 1,500 pound plant monster!' After this incident the DM instituted a rule that Blizzard, no matter what form he was in, could only knock something prone if it was exactly one size larger than him. I argued that since the DC was so low, and on the actual stat block it doesn't state a limit for creature size, that anything bigger than Blizzard should naturally pass the check unless the DM was having bad luck during the session. The ruling is still in place however, Blizzard has sniped some incredible kills throughout our campaign and our DM always tries to get rid of him as soon as he can once combat starts. (FYI, he's not a vindictive DM and we all take this in stride but he does get upset when Blizzard kills a giant or gargantuan creature lol). So, to the esteemed court, how would you have handled this ruling? Would you also have instated the limit or would you have left it alone as it's hilarious for a dog to knock over something so much bigger than itself?

Jake Andrews

May it please the court and confidently pat Bailiff Jake on the rear for reassurance; I was DM'ing a one shot with some friends and we were playing in a massive fantasy city. I had set up a "Hangover" style session where the party had to remember what they did the night before and what had happened. The city guard was on edge because of some of the events the previous night, such as a bar burning down and the culprits still being at large. So when my players went to a train station and had one character try and buy 6 tickets for that train for just himself, I had the guards become suspicious of the character that did that. Of course they were buying tickets for the whole party, but only one of them was willing to be seen. My players immediately became upset stating that "People buy large amounts of tickets all the time" While I said that it was for concerts and such, not travel, and insisted if you walked up to the gate at JFK and tried to buy numerous tickets for a flight in an hour by yourself that it would be suspicious. After a bit of arguing I ultimately ruled that there were no consequences of the train ticket scalping and nothing bad came of it. However the players still joke about that situation quite often, poking fun at me whenever we travel. Honorable Judges and Handsome Bailiff Jake, do I deserve the consistent ridicule or did the suspicious station sheriff do his job correctly?

Christopher Lasasso

May it please the court and sultry bailiff: I am DM'ing a Fast & the Furious campaign, set in the year 2000. One of my players wants to play a character who films Jackass like stunts and uploads them to the internet. I told them no problem but they'd have to pay some sort of fee per month to rent server space (as this is 2000 and free video hosting sites are not yet a thing). They seemed interested in taking the character in a different direction once I suggested this. Was I being too harsh? Where should a DM draw a line when it comes to integrating flavor into something with stakes?

Steven Hamonic

May it please the court, or not, I'm not a cop. The case of: "DM's Ridiculous Monster" vs "underleveled party" Justices: our party has been eternally blessed by the Online Dice Gods, and roll phenomenally way too often. Our DM slowly started bumping up the difficulty of encounters because we just kept rolling really well, which we expressed concern about, because eventually our luck is bound to fail us. The Event in question: An attack on the city by a huge monster. This massive creature had a 14d8 breath weapon, a bite + swallow attack combo, legendary actions, legendary resistances, and an average damage per attack higher than an adult red dragon. At this point we were 7th level, and anyone outside of our super tanky cleric had about a 50% chance of instantly dying to this monster if hit. I suggested we try and run, maybe lure it away from the city somehow- but our DMPC companion insisted we fight it. So we fight this monster, and with three very lucky critical hits, and one person going down and almost dying to massive damage we win. Everyone else is excited but I was left with a bad feeling- so I talked with my DM. The response I received was that [we] won, so what did it matter if the fight was imbalanced- that nothing challenges [the party] anyways because [we] just roll so high that it doesn't matter. Justices, Is a fight against a monster ten Challenge Ratings above the party's level something I should be mad about? Is luck a crime, or a justification? Is "you won, so it doesn't matter" a good enough justification? Thank you Justices for your consideration in this matter, and thank you Bailiff.

David Donnel

May it please the court and also a polite hello to the servants. I am DM’ing a campaign based in the real world where my players are themselves with their own stats. I tried to be fair and give them the same score on average, but gave one player higher intelligence than the other. He thought his stat should be the same and wanted a chance. I felt bad, but I stood by my decision. Should I have fudged the stat for the player or was I right to dole out what I think is the correct number?

Jessy G

Honorable Judges and Jake, May it please the court, I present the case of the Gnoll Patrol. Our party of “new to 5e” players was faced with 100 gnolls rampaging. A plan was formed to have our Druid summon their pixies and have the pixies cast polymorph on all of us, turning us into gnolls. This would let us communicate and move through them, as we try to figure out the source of their anger. There are many issues with this if you look at RAW, but the DM was there and gave us the impression that it would work as we hoped. We would just have to do the usual checks to talk to the gnolls. The time comes, polymorph is cast, we’re now gnolls. Only now does the DM read the polymorph spell, and suddenly states that we cannot speak or even make any sound, nor use our stats, communicate with each other or even act like ourselves. We used this to at least try to move through the horde, but only after justifying why our gnoll brains would want to leave the pack. Should he have enforced the rules so literally after seemingly “rule of cooling” our plan? Should the Druid have just read the spell in the first place? Is it right that our DM faults us for not getting information out of them after he whomped us so hard? I’m at the mercy of the court, Jesymka.

christien

May it please the honourable judges and the bailiff I guess. I present to you a conundrum. My players cast Tasha's hideous laughter on a pirate captain who then failed a dex check fell over the airship into the poison cloud sea. Several months later I had him reappear in command of a fleet scarred by the clouds and unable to stop chuckling. I was attacked! Not for the obvious reference but for allowing him to live and bringing him back into the campaign as a villain. They said it was unfair I'd allowed him to live and they felt cheated of their cool win. Am I the jerk?

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 the players are trying to take down a tyrannical queen in a Feywild setting. There is a nearby town just outside of the queen's fortress and they created a plan to kidnap and replace the town mayor with the party's changeling 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 deception with disadvantage when speaking to the mayor's close friends and family. This of course cancels out the changeling 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 "accident" 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?

Michael Conrad

Yo judges and Jake, my group and I found a magical item called a Portable Hole. We tried to open it and use the hole in the corner of two walls of a small 5 by 5 square elevator. However, our DM said that we couldn’t do this because we weren’t laying out the portable hole on a flat surface, and thus the item wouldn’t activate. We were trying to use it to make space for a short rest, which would have saved my character from dying 15 minutes later. What do you think? Should we have been able to use the hole this way? Thanks

Jeff T

Lofty justices and lowly Jake may it please the court. I've been a player with an online dnd group for the past five months. We are all strangers who met through reddit but luckily us players have all had really great chemistry. Our DM on the other hand has been showing some concerning signs... it seems to me that the DM really wants to be a player and he constantly shoehorns overpowered NPCs into our game to steal the spotlight. Allow me to give you a few examples. We once had a wizard who he admitted was his pc from an old campaign show up out of no where and cast disintegrate to kill a demon we'd been wearing down for several rounds. The wizard proceeded not to give us any new information or leads but simply said "it looked like you all needed help" and then tried to hit on the female characters. Another time he was talking about how badly he wanted to play a Halo ttrpg to which we weren't very interested. The next session we visited a city that he had populated with aliens from Halo who he made way stronger than us and forced us to go to battle with while he piloted 3 friendly NPCs and all of the monsters. But the most egregious example is an NPC that he added to our party that I would call his DMPC. This NPC is an ancient Warforged life cleric with 23 AC and is a level higher than us. He originally stated that he added her to our party because we did not have a healer and that she would only focus on heals and buffs. But here's where things get a little crazy. As time goes on he interjects her into all of our roleplay moments, starts pushing elaborate plans for us to use instead of the plans we are already creating, and most egregiously spent 20 minutes roleplaying Kord the god of thunder coming down from the heavens, scooping her up, and having a detailed self roleplay session where he reformed her into a storm cleric so that she could do mighty amounts of damage. All of this while us players sat on mute the entire time. Following this we all came out and said that we thought he had jumped the shark and voiced our concerns about this npc becoming to central, focused on, and powerful. We told him that we'd like it if this character was able to be left behind in a way that was narratively satisfying in the near future. For the rest of the session he role played the NPC as if she were very sad and felt unappreciated by the party because our characters never asked for her input or invited her in on plans. The next session we found another warforged ruin where we discovered an airship. The only way to get the airship working was for this NPC to merge herself to the ship becoming the onboard intelligence and it was explicitly stated that she didn't think she'd be able to rejoin her body. Justices of the court, we the players were pleased. We thought this was a really cool way to keep her personality in the game while letting us reclaim our autonomy... BUT! At the end of the session the NPC returned to her body and declared "Great news! I was able to learn how to move between the ship and my body!" And now we are stuck with her if we want to keep using the airship. Justices of the court. Was my DM right to renag on this move and to disregard our concerns? Am I being overly critical and not letting him run his game the way he wants? And what would be the best way to form a mutiny and take over the game Taruk the Tiefling style?

Jarrett Fravel

May it please the court, and of course the honorable bailiff. In session two of my recent campaign my player characters came dangerous close to an all out battle with each other. What started as a disagreement in morals of looting the body of a npc in front of their grieving friends that was secretly murdered by one of the the players evolved into a civil war style stand off. The Kobold artificer and the Warforged druid vehemently opposed this looting. While the human rogue crime lord and the warlock vampire Tiefling were for the looting of Marco Brandwhip (the npc). And finally the human fighter paladin was conflicted as he is partially under the power of the rogue but morally against it. What ensued was multiple attempts to subtly and forcibly loot the body from the warlock. The artificer firing his canon at the paladin for taking a step towards the body. The rogue being grappled by an ally npc then pried from the arms of that npc by the paladin. The rogue threatening and harassing the two npcs. And finally a debate over whether I should allow the warlock to Eldritch blast the body and misty step away. I stated that this would start initiative and he could only chose one of the spells to cast before rolling for initiative. This encounter ended with the rogue yelling about how none of this mattered and walking away which fizzled out the aggression and everyone went there separate ways. After the session the rogue and warlock players came to me with complaints that they felt I framed a narrative that they were the aggressors solely because of their immorality. Which I eventually agreed with. Luckily since we are all friends in the group no one was mad at each other and we found a happy middle ground albeit with a lot of narrative acrobatics I'll have to hash out in my own time. Although I do feel like my hands were tied in the moment with all of these moving parts and being fully off the session outline. I believe it is unrealistic for me to rule this perfectly. That being said how would you have ruled a session two player fight, and how the hell am I gonna get the gang back to together!

PandarZanta

May it please the court, and Bailiff Jake. I ran this campaign and had a pc was hellbent on being a loner. She was a druid who’s whole tribe of wood elves was killed by humans so she stayed away and treated all humanoid terribly even other playable characters that were mostly dragonborn or other wood elves leading to her going of on her own a making it so no healer was present in a big battle. Which meant almost an entire tpk. I tried to explain why characters like that can be problematic but I’m not being listened to. She wants to join my campaign I’m making now but wants to play the same type of character. Am i wrong for trying to dissuade her from doing so or are her characters perfectly justified to willingly join a party and then abandon them before big battles?

Nicolas P.

May it please the court and may it please the bailiff but only a little. My players were investigating a giant stronghold to find a sword. They also had a broom of flying and a portable hole (it’s very similar to a bag of holding). Instead of exploring the normal way, they put everyone with bad stealth in the portable hole, and rode around on the broom while invisible. While this was creative, it felt like some of my PCs were put on the sideline just for the sake of not getting into a few fights. If I was playing, I wouldn’t want to be stuck in the hole the whole time. The combo also allowed them to skip 75 percent of what was planned. Seems a little too broken, but I think is was above the board RAW. Was it okay for me to allow that? I await your swift and true justice.

Will

May it please the Court and the His Excellency, the Baliff. In an old campaign, my party was unexpectedly teleported to an unidentifiable location. Inside the building we found what seemed to be cultists and a distressed hostage. Peaceful negotiations went nowhere so we felt required to free the hostage through violence. After investigating the house to find nothing but more cultists, we led the hostage outside and they suddenly burst into flames and died. We were then told by the DM that the hostage was allergic to the sun and we had killed their whole family which was trying to protect them. Am I crazy to think we were put into a situation that railroaded to be murder hobos for the DM's sick enjoyment or did we simply fail to resolve things another way?

James Ekstrom

May it please the court, I would like to file an amicus brief on behalf of a voiceless member of the court’s jurisdiction. I am filing on behalf of a player who has a casual home game with three of their friends from work. They relatively recently started in on their second campaign after a very successful and emotionally satisfying first campaign, where the player had a buff human fighter who was extremely hot and extremely strong. To change things up for the second campaign, the player decided to make a character who was “Medium” in every way. As the campaign started in earnest, some of the other players and the DM assumed that “medium” meant “not hot at all”. I would like submit for the court’s consideration that the world of this campaign may just be filled with people who, by our Earth standards, are all incredibly hot. This means that as a medium character, the player is perfectly within their right to be pretty hot but a little disheveled. Thank you for your time and objectivity in considering this case.

Michael Critz

May it please the court, and a glance over the rims of my sunglasses towards the bailiff: I’m the DM. A year ago a player couldn’t make a session so, I had a Wizard grab her character and blink her away in front of the party. When the player came back, I had her character stumble back to the party injured. The party healed her up assuming she fought herself free of the wizard then we moved on for months. Last night the party went to battle and fought the very same wizard from a year earlier and his army of magical terminator killbots. Right at an inopportune time, I revealed that the player had been replaced by a killbot replicant a year ago. I turned the player into an NPC on the spot and awoke the player on initiative in the wizard’s dungeon. I provided easy escape opportunities — including ones that would have recruited other prisoners as crucial allies for the fight in the castle above. But things didn’t go well for her escape attempt in the dungeon. And the party, facing an army of killbots — including one they thought was their barbarian — was unable to win without her escape. The party was upset because they feel I had set them up to fail. I’m upset because I tried too hard to hand-hold our barbarian to an escape that they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) execute. And the player was SUPER upset because she couldn’t (or wouldn’t) accept that her gear was gone and a bunch of other things that amount to her expectations of the battle not being met. I’m asking the court to rule on two counts. First count: the party must acknowledge that the barbarian, not the DM, ruined the fight by failing to escape a paper bag of a dungeon. Second count: the barbarian must acknowledge they were being a doofus during the dungeon scene and doofus by flaking out on a scheduled session a year ago.

Alexander Hammond

May it please the illustrious Court and big booty Bailiff Jake, I have a complex issue and I need justice in London. My players were in the goblin's cave in the mines of Phandalin starter set, and in our third session. The players had been bullying the dwarf character for being a dwarf (short etc.) They climbed a cliff to ambush some goblins, when one of the PCs, called Simon, failed and fell, taking 1 point of damage. He was so enraged, he proceeded to shoot the climbing Dwarf Cleric in the back, taking him down to 1 HP, which meant they had no healing left for the boss battle and all died. It has been a sore point in the group ever since. Should I have let Simon shoot Antle Whitetail in the back or enforced his alignment? Should I have put my foot down? He argues he is using the starter character and didn't get to pick his alignment, but was he wrong for letting the banter turn to murder? I await the court's alignment.

Arwyn Robinson

May it please the court. I was in a campaign where I was Co dming because the group was so large. I ran the story, he ran the combat. We were in a fight on an island surrounded by lava and one Druid went to cast reverse gravity and the other Druid prepared gust of wind to blow all the bad guys off the island into the lava. The Co dm used counterspell which made my group very sad. I looked over at the monster stat sheet and saw that the bad guy didn't have a high enough level counterspell to instantly counter. It should have been a roll off. I whispered to him that my druid should roll for it and he was firm that it was counterspelled and there would be no roll-off. To this day my group is still very upset about the situation and it kills me to know that they were jipped the chance to roll. Should I have stood up for my players and made the other GM be true to the stat block and made it a rolloff? Was I in the wrong for staying quiet?

Olivia M

Dear Honorable Crit Justices and my favorite Bailiff Jake, may it please The Court. I have an ability question that has stumped even the most lengthy Reddit forums. For context, I am playing a Totem Warrior Barbarian/Arcane Trickster Rogue who is absolutely awesome. My party almost had a TPK last session, despite both of the other party members having a level of cleric. To improve our healing abilities, I want to take the Healer feat. I think it would be particularly useful because as an Arcane Trickster, I can use a mage hand to manipulate objects with a bonus action. Therefore, I think I would be able to use the Healer’s Kit with a bonus action (if the mage hand is active already). However, my DM disagrees, as they say the mage hand would not be proficient in the kit. But I believe it would be, as you can do things like pick locks with the Arcane Trickster mage hand. Even the Reddit forums disagree on this, so it must go to a higher court. Thank you for your time, and I await your just sentencing.

Daniel L Hodson

May it please the Crit, i was playing a Wood Elf Sorcerer named Beedle in a curse of strahd game that my brother was running. We got up to 7th level, and Eventually we came across this tower in the middle of nowhere with tons of weird runes on the door. I knocked. Lightning struck me. my HP was almost halved with no save. I figured i had already triggered the trap so i knocked again and he looked at me like i was a complete dumbass and struck me again. now, almost dead, i backed off. Then our paladin, who is my brothers friend, ran up and smashed the door with his hammer. Without warning the entire 100 foot tower collapsed on us, killing me and only me instantly, again with no save and seemingly no remorse from my brother or the paladin. Was i murdered or was i stupid?

Beav

May it please the Bailiff and the lowly judges…just kidding, I hope it pleases everyone. I bring to you yet another case involving a bird race PC. In one of my campaigns, a character plays as an Avian Ranger. Like aarakocra, this race gets a fly speed at level 1. However, I have been homebrewing what i believe to be reasonable mechanics related to flying. For example, I make them make athletic checks when making long distance flights with the possibility of exhaustion if they fail. Additionally, though i am not usually a stickler for things like carrying capacity, I often consider what this character has on them if they are planning to do some flying, as i would imagine flying is an incredibly strenuous task. These are all mechanics that i implemented outside of combat (when initiative is rolled I try to stick as close to the holy 5e texts as possible). However, the player recently mentioned the aspect of carrying other players during combat as a fighting tactic, which I feel like I will flat out not allow. Much like judge murph, i am not a huge proponent of flying species, thus I request some objective guidance. So honorable bailiff and judges, am i being unreasonable with these homebrewed mechanics and how much flying shenanigans should I be willing to tolerate? Any guidance or suggestions would be appreciated. Respectably, JBeav

Tenaya F

May it please the court and most esteemed bailiff Jake, I present to you an update on the life of Gilbert, my wizard's intern! I'm proud to say that his boss did in fact become his intern of sorts following Gilbert's death, placing him in charge of training a small army while they gathered information and resources to arm the soldiers. When the final battle came against the BBEG, Gilbert played an instrumental role by almost singlehandedly defeating the minions and creatures that the boss summoned, though he was still 6 (previously 5 but lost another level due to his death in the endurance challenge) levels below our 21st-level group. In his epilogue at the end of the campaign, Gilbert opted to continue working with the wizard he'd been traveling with but not as an intern—rather he now serves as the head of recruitment for the wizard's extraplanar library and also as an important political advisor for the rulers of the world he helped save. (He did also receive plenty of pay for his internship as well as the promised university credit.)

chlo!

May it please the court (and bailiff). This is less of a submission of a case and more of an ask of your opinions. Recently I went through a bad breakup (as if they can be good) and I only briefly mentioned it to my group, since I don’t get to see them very often. My character Thallan, a tabaxi circle of stars druid, had a s/o named Bursa in our campaign. That was until shortly after my irl breakup, when my GM decided that it was a good time to also have Bursa tell Thallan they couldn’t stay together. Ouch! Do y’all think this was an attempt to make me feel through my character more, which I respect, or just a dick move?

Beav

THE CASE OF THE STONER DRUID May it please the court. 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 would’ve rendered them totally unconscious, but i disagreed. 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. So my honorable judges and bailiff, did i not do enough to honor the nat 20 or is Purp being a lil’ diva? Honorably yours, JBeav

Matthew A Newkirk

May it please the court and the sometimes honorable bailiff Jake. Some friends and I play a campaign where we are sentient children's toys. During our first fight with our big bad he was flying around on a drone. My character (a sorcerer and warlock) used an older unearthed arcana spell (that the dm gave me) called "remote access" that allows me to take control of electronic devices as if I was using them in my hands. This spell does not specify that any skill checks are necessary to operate the device. The dm said that because this drone was a sort of mount that was bonded to the big bad, I was going to need to make an arcana check to control it. I argued that if the electronic device was not being actively controlled by the bad guy using the same spell I should be able to control it according to the language of the spell. I would love to get the opinion of the highest court in the land. Your humble plaintiff Matt N.

Havix

May it please the court and the cuckolded Plaintiff Hurwitz (Tucker says Hi) My party just arrived to a walled-in capital city and were barred from access by a guard who wanted a bribe. After handing over 30 gold, one of my players (a changeling College of creation bard) wanted revenge on this guard. They rolled for and found a loan shark (aptly named Barry Cuda) and - while impersonating the guard - took out a loan of 1000g, flashing their captain badge (created via their subclass ability) as collateral to show that the guards owed Barry a favour. Now my player wants to continue this "get rich" scheme by impersonating other townsfolk. He also has the keen mind feat which helps the impersonation. These people are going to end up getting killed by Mr. Cuda while they run off with sacks of gold. Should I have them reconsider their alignment? Was I wrong to "yes and" their idea of a loan shark within a city?

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?

Rachel From Animorphs

May it please the justice, judge, jurer, and Jake. The case of the conjured fey. I casted cloud kill on several players in a small area together. On their turns, they all moved out of the way except one. He claims he had to step away for a second and didn’t know, but he somehow still heard the damage he was to take. Fast forward: on his turn he casted conjure fey to summon a young dragon. Fast forward again to his next turn: he was still standing in the cloud kill and took damage causing him to go unconscious. I looked up conjure fey. Turns out, the dragon starts attacking everybody. He was mad that he somehow got distracted and didn’t know he was in the cloud. Since it was endish of the campaign, I’ve been trying to be more strict on stuff like this. I said it’s up to you to pay attention and we moved on in a huff. Was I unjust? Does a dragon now need to attack me as punishment? Should I have allowed him to simply say he moved on his turn or should he be paying attention? Clarification: we play on a digital platform I made with similar functionality to Roll 20. He could see his character and I put a picture of a cloud on top of the area it was cast.

Seth C

May it please the court as well as the ever righteous bailiff! The party was fighting 2 clockwork soldiers. After some checks we deduced that their power source was behind their front chess plate and that the plate was made of one solid metal. As a wizard I attempted to use the spell Fabricate to transmute his chess plate to expose its core. The DM ruled that I couldn’t do that since the soldier’s form couldn’t be altered as stated in it stat block. I argue that since I’m not changing the entire being just the front plate I should be allowed to do so. To me that’s like saying a barbarian can’t rip the plate off “since you can’t alter their form”. Should I have been able to Fabricate this robot or am I just being a bitch baby?

Cristian Herrera

May it please The Court (and lowly Bailiff), My friends and I are playing through a Curse of Strahd campaign. While the module can be intense, every so often during a short or long rest I will challenge another PC, Blade, to a round of chess.( My character Elar has the far traveler background, giving me a game set that I have proficiency in). The problem arose during one of these games. Chess matches are settled with an opposed intelligence check plus proficiency. Blade rolls first and gets a nat 20, with no bonus to intelligence or proficiency in chess. The final score is 20. I go next and roll a 16 on the dice, adding my intelligence and proficiency making it 21. The DM initially ruled it a victory for Elar, but Blade disagreed, saying a nat 20 here should make him the victor. The session came to a halt as the party and DM debated what the correct move was. It was even suggested at one point that we settle the match on chess.com, but in the end we decided that Blade was the winner for his nat 20. We recognized Rules as written, nat 20 is not an instant success in skill checks My question for the court is: How would you have ruled? Does rule of cool trump rules as written? Is there another mechanic we can implement for our long-rest chess matches? Thank you for your time and consideration,

Amber Schneider

May it please the court, I present the case of: Sould Ned be dead. We were exploring an abandoned mansion on a hill where many townsfolk had gone missing. While in the house we found a man named Ned tied up, who claims he just a townsfolk that woke up that way. We decided as a a party to un tie him and send him on his way. Fast forward, and we have found caves under the house with a smugglers ring set up. We end up fighting the smugglers, one of which turns out to be Ned (so understandably the party is mad he lied to us) By the end of the fight it's the party vs Ned, and on my turn I say "I dont want to kill him, we need to question him." Before firing an arrow. Turns out it was the killing blow, and the dm pronounced him dead, while the rest of the party cheered. I tried to argue that I didnt want to kill him, but just bring him down enough to question. The DM said that since I did not state that it was non lethal damage he is dead, and I am still salty to this day. Am I in the wrong? Should he truly have died or is my dm just being technical. Thank you all Brooklin247

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? Thank you your Honors, I await your swift justice

Mak

If it pleases the great, honorable and quite beautiful judges of the court and their fair bailiff and sometimes Judge when Emily is busy and the cats wont come on mic Jake, I would love your input on a sorcery conundrum. In a campaign I am currently playing in, I am playing a 7th level sorcerer/2nd level cleric. As you know, with your great and mighty knowledges of all things DND, sorcerers have the unique ability of Metamagic. In a recent battle, my sorcerer had used storm sphere, which has saves to avoid continuous damage within the sphere. I had taken Careful Spell, and my DM and I got into a discussion on if Careful Spell could apply to continuous areas of effect. Initially, I'd suggested spending metamagic points every round that I gave my crew protection, but the DM turned that down. I'd like you to weigh in - how would/should metamagic play into areas of continuous effect ie storm sphere, wall of fire, etc? Thank you Judges, Bailiff, and the numerous cats of the jury. May your judgement be swift, fair, and filled with references.

kieren casey

May it please court, the great justices Murph, Axford and ... Hurwitz. And the slightly less honourable than Jake because he gave up his power, Caldwell. May I present the encounter pyramid scheme. My players got involved in a pyramid scheme and I set up a non combat encounter to see how much money they would invest/lose. The encounter was very fun and most of my players laughed. One of the legendary actions that "Karen our none-cremancer" would do would involve individual players making an intelligence saving throw and if they failed they wouldn't lose hp but rather gold. How much they failed by would correlate to how much gold they invested. Most of my players were fine with this but one of my players failed the saving throw then argued that this is something her character would not do, and it was unfair of me to force her character to invest in something she did not believe it. Using what should have been a roleplaying section as an encounter. Most of my players enjoyed bthe ridiculousness of the situation but was I wrong to manipulate the players choice for a joke encounter

Dan

If it please the Court and the Great and most Gracious Justices and Baliff that reside therein, I humbly present a case of little consequence overall, but one that would help salve the wounds of a lost in-game friendship. I currently play a bard/druid multiclass as a 15 year old half elf enrolled in a magic school. I had a great bard friend with whom I would jam and perform with regularly at the the nearest town's tavern, but unfortunately this character has left the story. So, I had the idea of using the Unseen Servant spell to try and create a jamming partner to make some music with! Unfortunately my DM says that the Unseen Servant is a temporary thing with no object permanence so I can't "teach it" to get better at, saying, hitting a wood block in time for rhythm. Is this true? The letter of the spell DOES state the unseen servant is a mindless force, but isn't that open to interpretation? I've heard many a drummer or bass player be called mindless (which I do not agree with, by the way) so can't my unseen servant be one of their tribe of back line rhythm masters? Thank you to the Court for considering my case. May the crits roll over in your favor!

ryan

May it please the court and the honorable bailiff Recently my DM decided to implement a critical fumble table, for Player Characters only, midway through our campaign (we are level 7). The most recent nat 1 effect that happened was the paladin stabbed himself for 3d6 damage, fell prone, and then became unconscious for 1 minute. Many of the critical fumble effects are you lose your turn plus get disadvantage in some other way such as taking damage or disadvantage on attacks/saving throws or losing some of your movement speed. As I said he does not use the table on monsters when they critical fail, despite our protests for him to use it in fairness. We have also argued with him about how it doesn’t make sense that a fighter or paladin, who have spent their entire lives training, could essentially kill themselves vs a training dummy if they critical fail enough... He hasn’t budged and said that he likes the randomness of the table for us because we are “too strong”. Other than this unexpected critical fumble table we love playing with him. Honorable Judges, what would you recommend we do? Attempt to sway him again to drop it? Try to get him to make his monsters use it? Or just say fuck it and roll with the onesided critfail table?

Liam Howard

May it please the court, I was a player in a friend's campaign. My friend group is composed entirely of scientists (physics, materials, mathematics, biomedical, etc.) and RPGs we play tend to have a scientific aesthetic which we all love. We were on a long delve into a millennia-old laboratory recently overrun by mind flayers when *the incident* occurred. Our party was in a tight spot and so our sorcerer decided to use fireball for crowd control. They wanted to pick an explosion radius that would hit enemies, without hitting allies (lacking sorcery points for careful spell). The problem was that some allies were flying above the fight and the battlefield was complicated with no obvious safe blast radius. Our DM decided to spend *twenty minutes* using trigonometry to determine the optimal placement of the fireball spell! When this didn't yield results, our fighter volunteered to take the hit and we limped away from the fight to lick our wounds. I deeply respect my DM's effort to provide a versimilitudinous game but it was flow-breaking in a moment that should have been fast and frenetic. Supreme crit justices, what is the maximum amount of time they should have spent, and how would you have handled this?

Lauryn

Your Honorable Supreme Crit Justices, and may it please the court, My brother wants more luck points. He uses them incorrectly by shouting "Luck Point!" whenever I roll a Nat 20 against anyone in the party. I've let it go because I figure it means he's invested in the well-being of his companions. Recently it has become a point of contention. He and another party member decided they weren't ready to take on the Beholder taking over the Feywild and their best course of action was to split the party to find help. The two of them realized their error when they got into combat balanced for five PCs. My brother burned his two remaining luck points in one turn of combat when I rolled a 20, a 19, and finally another natural 20. When he saw the last 20 land he declared this to be bullshit and demanded to be given another luck point. I said no, too bad, so sad, suck it up and take your 10d10 damage, and he doesn't use his luck points correctly, so why should I give him more? He argued that not using them correctly is the reason he should get more. He uses them for the party, so to be fair he should get three luck points to use on himself and three for the rest of the party. He's picked dumber hills to die on, and when he uses luck points for someone else in the party it always gets the table animated. Should I cede and give him a party pool of luck points? I await your judgement. -Lauryn

Laura Born

A quick one: My DM is vetoing the name for my detective character, Nancy Druid. His argument is that (modern) people aren’t named after their class/profession and that it would be too meta. While this campaign is in a modern setting, names are historically derived from professions (smith, baker, brewer, etc). Could you provide a judgement and determine whether or not Nancy Druid can get back to cracking cases?

Kevin

May it please the court, First of all, I am a child protection lawyer in Canada, and I wish the courts were half as swift as they are in your jurisdiction of Bahumia-Eldermourne. This matter pertains to my group’s campaign in the Candlekeep Mysteries. I play Skelderetch Bookbinder, or “Sketch”, a teenage shithead son of a Candlekeep librarian, who is sent on the journey to “build character”. He is of course a wild-magic sorcerer who has never read a book in his life. Our party ended up in a reverse-siege, when we took control of the enemies’ tower and waited for them to come for us in the night. We were in a bind because I was the only character with an area-of-effect spell. While I was throwing down firebolts from the second-story window, I noticed the enemies were gathered in a horizontal line, and I thought to get in a position to lighting bolt all of them (just like Emily in Dimension 20 as Saccharina Frostwhip). I told my DM that I was going to use quickened spell to cast Invisibility on myself as a bonus action, leap from the window invisibly, use my reaction to Feather Fall, and then use my remaining action and movement to dash through all the enemies so I could light them up the following turn. What I then learned from my more experienced friends is that when casting a bonus action spell, I couldn’t then cast a reaction spell like Feather Fall on my turn, so I plummeted to the ground. I took the blow, but after realizing the falling damage would break my concentration, I asked if we could retcon my turn so that I cast Invisibility after the fall, because I did not know the reaction spell rules. My DM deliberated, and she ruled that because my character is an established moron, I should roll a wisdom-saving throw to determine if he’d be smart enough to wait to cast Invisibility until after falling. Fortunately, I succeeded on the roll, and the enemies watched as my character leapt from the window, sprained his ankle on the landing, vanished, and then 6 seconds later burnt them all to a crisp with an empowered lightning bolt from the side. My question for the court: if one of your players doesn’t know a rule like this reaction spell limit, would you a) allow them to retcon their entire turn, b) have them live with the result, or c) have it decided by a roll like my DM? Feel free to roast me, but please don’t tease my DM too much as she made sure that the whole session was a very fun encounter, including this funny mishap. PS: Please come to Toronto. I have slides.

Tonks

Honorable Masters, In a short campaign my friend is running, he brought out a horde of creatures along with the BBEG and on my turn I cast Banishment at a 9th level for my turn. The creatures had to meet a DC 19 Charisma check and our DM said 4 of the 5 creatures including the BBEG passed the save. I was a bit questioning of that answer, but went along with it because Dice are Chaotic Storytellers. The DM went on to explain that because the creatures didn’t exist in that plane of existence, he rolled with advantage on their charisma saves which is why they passed. I debated that it shouldn’t matter if they exist in that plane or not, that doesn’t justify advantage. Of course they don’t exist there. That is why they are in my face bothering me. It felt like my DM was mad I had found a way around his BBEG being a powerful force and just wanted to stop me from ruining his game. Our DM also curated this spell list specifically for our adventure. Why give me the spell if the creatures would be basically immune to banishment? What is the highest court in all the plane’s ruling for this? Thanks!

David

To the honorable judges, and the handsome bailiff Jake. My players keep eating every monster they kill, it’s getting frankly, insane. Please help. Ps. The townsfolk are happy to be saved from a giant squid but terrified when a cat person starts eating it’s flesh.

Zac

May it please the court. My older brother recently started a 5th level campaign for us to play when I was visiting. I created an axfordian multiclass 3 levels of blade singer wizard and 2 levels of paladin so I can smite all day. My brother says it’s divine smite so I can’t use arcane spell slots to smite. I say the wording only states burn a spell slot up to 5th level it never specifies if it needs to be a certain kind. Is he right or just sore that I smited his 1st boss to death in 2 rounds

Jelly

Honorable judges and bailiff Jake, if it may please the court. I am in a campaign with my coworker as my DM. The rest of the party I’ve met in passing/I don’t know well. I play a battlemaster/bard multiclass, made soliloquies for all my spells, and am really exited to RP my bard classes. The problem is, one of our party members won’t stop harassing my character. They poke fun at me when I do low amounts of damage, have cast an AoE spell that almost killed me, slapped my character in the face after I RP’d them being upset over their childhood mentor dying, and said that “they f*cking hate the rest of the party”. I have privately spoken to my DM about it, because I was nervous of muticlassing into bard and getting made fun of for being “over the top”, but my DM responded “that’s just how they are, it’s all in good fun”. I am getting really discouraged because it’s not like my character to razz back and be catty to another party member. I’m also upset because they are almost exclusively doing this me, and it is obvious. It does not seem like the DM cares, and I am debating leaving the party. So my question is, is this something my DM should help me out with in private? Or is this responsibility on my shoulders to deal with? Would it be unreasonable to leave the party with this as my explanation? Thank you for your time, I love you guys!!

Ilana Galpert

May it please the honorable justices and stenographer Jack Hurtwince, I wanted to player an oblex character in one of my campaigns. My dm, who is very kind and considerate, was cool with it. But a couple of days later, he messaged me saying one of the other players didn't think I could play an ooze. My dm very graciously helped me build a homebrew race alternative, but my grudge against the anonymous player still festers. Were they right? Are oozes unplayable? p.s., oblex have the power to eat/erase memories, but my character would have indulged in consensual eating only. Edit: I'm sorry Jake, you're not a Hurtwince, you're a Heartwits.

Sander Goldman

May it please the court, even lowly bailiff Hurwitz. I was playing a pickup adventurers league game at a gamestore with a bunch of strangers and during a dungeon crawl my illusion wizard Quaytheleine(pronounced Caitlin) cast Tasha’s Hideous Laughter on an Animated Armor. The DM said it had no effect because the armor was immune to charm effects. I argued that the word charm appears nowhere in the language of the spell and the only condition it applies is Prone, so that shouldnt matter, but he maintained that an empty suit of armor cant be made to laugh so I dropped it. Was he right? Or is a hollow suit of armor allowed to experience laughter and joy once in its life?

FumblesOBrian

May it please our lovely court, and Jake too I guess. In my home game, our DM recently enacted a rule that he, the DM, would roll players stealth checks instead of the players. He argued that as characters, we wouldn't know how stealthy we were being and that it would make for good RP. Us, the players, went into an absolute uproar, saying that he is taking away our clicky clacky shiny math rocks, and our counter argument is that we don't know enemy perception rolls and that is the balance. As a heavy armored dwarf cleric, this didnt affect me, but I was definitely the most vocal, saying that him taking our rolls away was unfair. In response, our DM said, "well too bad, we're using this new homebrew rule, its my game" was he right in adding in this new homebrew rule even though the entire party is against it?

CarpeLiam

The Bridal Adventuring Party V The Maid of Dishonor May it please the court, I call upon the stalwart and ironclad 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? Greetings, Jake and Justices. I have been DMing for a group for a little over two years now, and my fiancé is one of my players. Her former maid of honor was also once one of my players, but recently, she decided she no longer wanted to be involved with the group or the wedding, and made this known to us in a remarkably cruel way. I’ll spare you the details, but she committed a betrayal so severe that she went from “maid of honor” to “no longer welcome at our wedding” in the span of a day. Herein lies my problem. 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.

maria

May it please the court and the members of the court only, This is not really a case you can try, per se, but perhaps more of a palate cleanser for when you need a break doing really hard Judge Things: trying cases, figuring out appropriate punishments, or roasting Bailiff Hurwitz. My friend - who is an experienced D&D player and DM -- recently gave his five-year-old-son graph paper and encouraged him to create dungeons. And create he did. The enterprising DM-in-training encourages his Dad to play characters and try to survive his dungeons. His most recent dungeon includes a first room where Dad is faced with one ooze. One ooze. Then, the next room houses Tiamat. (Yes, that Tiamat which generally ends a campaign, not found in the second room of a dungeon.) After that, there is a Beholder, a Demogorgon, and a tied-up Pegasus which Dad is tasked with rescuing in quick succession. Dad’s character traverses these dungeons alone. Occasionally, the five-year-old tyrant allows Dad to bring a squire, but “usually not.” Unsurprisingly, Dad never survives and the Pegasus remains unrescued. Obviously this behavior should be encouraged, to ensure the next generation is full of strapping DMs ready to pull out a dice bag at the first lull in a social gathering. But, Dear Justices of the Court (not Jake), how would you try to explain to a wily 5-year old the importance of balance in a dungeon? (Especially curious how Justice Tanner, as a recent father, would handle this.) (Especially not curious at all how Bailiff Hurwitz would handle this.)

JakeF

May I surrender myself to dungeon bailiff Jake, The case of the Stolen Elevator Kill In my current campaign my players were making their way through a thoroughly League Of Legends inspired dungeon. They cleared the first two levels in one session and they left the basement for next time. The technology warlock used On/Off cantrip to stop both elevators every so often while the party took inventory outside..I told my players out of session that anyone could be in the elevator, even the Boss, and to remind me next session. My players did remind me and I set the percentile DC to a 2% chance in my head. Well they hit that nat 1 on the d100. I said yup a light up sign appears on the elevator says “boss in here get out of the way”. The players had resumed service to it and here was my thought process: players don't REALLY want the goofy kill, they think they do, but they would lose the whole boss fight I had prepared. So well, the boss was a crazy paranoid duergar whose men WERE ACTUALLY planning on couping him. So the players rose the elevator to half height with the intention of nuking all their abilities into a doorway firing squad. I described a sound of the Boss blasting through one of his men (and the elevator floor) with his (Recharge 1d10) ultimate move and the sound of him scuttling down the elevator shaft. The players were confused and discussing it, and they seemed disappointed with no ideas on what to do next. So I changed my direction and had an NPC with the party slash at the elevator cables, dropping the thing. With a big kathump the boss was dead and the party was happy. But my DM PC getting “The Kill” on the boss will always be my dark stain on that happy moment for the players. None of my players have ever mentioned what I did as bad, but I know it in my heart. I await your punishment for my crime, esteemed bailiff Jake.

SessionSunny

May it please the court and the honorable bailiff Jake. I allowed one of my PC's (a paladin) to do an animal handling check on a swarm of rats in a goblin cave as their party had split up and I thought they could use a little back up. Through some very good rolls on their part these rats proceeded to eat about a third of the goblins they faced before I said they were full and made them scatter since the goblins simply couldn't kill them. Afterwards a different PC (the fighter) allowed a high ranking member of the goblins (a spiritual adviser/shaman to the leader) to escape right before we ended our session for the day. I proceeded to change about half of the remaining goblins to hobgoblins and upon our return I put my PC's on the ropes and laid a beat down on our fighter and his kobold companion "kobold number 5" since the remaining goblins were allowed to regroup with their newly added hobgoblin allies. Should I have let my party have the womp from the swarm of rats, or was I right to womp them back? P.S. The party won and the goblin's families now live in a refugee camp at their manor. P.P.S. Jake becomes Chief Justice of the court for picking this question. Sorry, I don't make the rules, I just DM them.

Luke Cullen

May it please the court and the soon to be usurper of the court Jake. Can you please settle an argument that has plagued our table, in an adventure can you hire any NPC from a bard college, temple etc to replace a dead character? My theory is yes because in the world you can't be the only people doing anything surely other people exist who are also wannabe heroes. My DM however thinks that none of them would want to come on an adventure because it'd be too dangerous. Thanks for helping out

Marcus Heer

May it please the two honorable, the one somewhat honorable, and the other guy. 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 fire 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?

Lou

May it please the court and that other guy, I have some issues with a slight railroading dm. He’s very enthusiastic, but he clearly knows exactly what’s going to happen, where we are going and what we need to do and how we should do it, otherwise the story doesn’t go forward or we die. For instance, we had to cross a magic bridge that didn’t allow magic items on it right before a boss fight. Other than stripping, which apart from being highly erotic would render us kind of useless, we tried yeeting the dwarf with everything on him, blowing up the hinges of a huge door to make a bridge as it fell, and flying around it the bridge. The dwarf fell in the lava, the door was made of an unbreakable material that none of us could do nothing about (we’re level 16) and flying didn’t work. After laughing at us a bit, the dm suggested we piggyback with the items on top. Surprisingly, it worked. It’s like that with pretty much everything. It’s fun, but our very creative crew doesn’t have much space to be creative. Do you have any advice? Thank you very much!

Austin Johnson

May it please the court A friend I play with is mad because the DM won't just let him have find familiar. He is playing a Hexblade and the DM told him he if he wants a familiar he just needs to take pact of the chain instead of pact of the blade, or just take the ritual magic feat at 4th level. But the warlock says he needs pact of the blade for his build to work and just wants a familiar so he can have a smaller version of himself running around. The party is divided and I'm the only one who agrees with the DM. Was he wrong to squash this ridiculous ask?

Audrey

Your honorablenesseses and Jake, We are pleading guilty and asking for guidance. Last summer, a friend of ours ran a campaign for my wife and I as well as her (the DM’s) boyfriend. It had a really cool storyline about a secret society but we entirely derailed it. We created a multilevel marketing scheme where we would enhance value on gems and jewelry and get people to buy them from us to then sell to others after the spell wore off. I, a bard Assimar, became a pop sensation, traveling the country to spread our MLM far and wide. After a while, I think we frustrated the DM and we stopped having sessions. How do we apologize and start these back up? Or is this just our punishment for goofing off a little too much?

Audrey

Honorable judges and slightly less honorable Jake (sorry dude, I need the advantage), I play a bard, Davina Mae, who’s a southern belle and a complete flirt. I would flirt with characters to get what I wanted, and my DM would have me roll charisma, which completely makes sense. But then I flirted with a barmaid, and she said she had to roll a luck check to see if the barmaid was gay. She didn’t roll a check on the sexuality on any of the guys I had flirted with previously. I argued that I should just have to make a charisma check, or at least that she should roll a “sexuality check” on everyone and not assume straight as a default, but she disagreed with the mechanics. I already feel like I have to roll luck checks on sexualities in real life, so I’d rather have an escape from that in D&D. Was my DM fair in this ‘sexuality luck check’ mechanic, or is it total BS? It’s been an absolute pleasure gettin’ to know y’all. (Do a southern belle accent, Jake, please, I need the win). -Davina Mae

heyguyguys

May it please the court and the honorable and attractive bailiff Jake. I'm playing a character that's actually inspired by the hexblood episodes you did with lue Wilson, he's a awakened tree communist sorcerer with the draconic blood line. So I'm playing using a homebrew race and I happen to get hit with a fire ball, but because of my class I'm resident to fire damage, however my dm said I was in fact, week to fire damage because of my race, i told him it didn't say that on my race but he didn't budg, I ended up dying that fight. i feel like I got did dirty for no reason. (Ps the character was inspired by Emilys characters flower)

Vonvonvon

IF IT PLEASES THE BAILIFF ONLY: GIVE US CHARACTER VOICES. WE NEED PAWPAWS INPUT IN THESE CASES. REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRREEEEREEEEEEEEEEERREREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRREEEEEERRRREEEEEEEERRREREEERREREREREREERRRRRRRRREEEEERRRRRRRRREEEEEERRRR

Connor Noonan

To the honourable judges Axford, Tanner, Murph and I guess bailiff Jake (jk I love you). My DM/brother has been running a one shot where 4 of us are different species of Mephits. I’m playing a gross Cheonogu wizard Mud Mephit named Geoshrew. Recently us PC’s have been sent to prison for the murder of the Red Dragonborn prince that we didn’t commit. It all kicked off because I as the wizard was seeking help from some shady individuals that killed the prince (I didn’t know this at the time) and now the other PC’s are hating on my character for getting them caught for doing nothing. There is one Player at the table however who seems to be treating my character a little harsher than the others and I can’t help but feel personally attacked sometimes. Long story short, am I over thinking that this player is being mean to me or just the character? How would y’all deal with a situation like this?

Klaas P. van der Werff

If it may please the court, and most well spoken bailiff who is best suited to articulate my plight. My group is a team of adventurers, registered with the local guild for quests and whatnot. Later another player joined the game and insisted he did NOT want to join the guild, and was just a combatant consultant for the group that got paid under the table, also said to the entire party that he's not part of our group, he just happens to end up with us. This also has lead to him having a side story where he spends 30min or more 1 on 1 roleplaying with the DM to do his own side story. It leaves the rest of the table just twiddling our thumbs or just walking away from the table until he's done and wasting our time. This is a first time DM and doesn't know how to tell this veteran player "No." How can we help the DM reel this stray PC in to focus on the story that is somewhat beneficial to the rest of the party, even if we're not directly involved?

Ben Delahay

May it please the court and also Jake. I need some advice for my table. Recently, two of my players asked if they could do a private RP with their characters so they wouldn’t hold up the group. I allowed this because I don’t see the harm in private RP and thought nothing of it. I find out that the two had a romantic candlelit dinner in character. I assumed this was a joke and thought nothing of it. I am told that they have “faded to black”, my asexual brain assumes that the two have just finished the private RP and I think nothing of it. I did not supervise this private RP because I trusted my players to not do anything to wild and thought it was more just something for the characters to bounce off each other. I knew one of the players was an avid RPer and the character is already one of their OCs. Anyway, the next session starts and it is at the top of the session when I find out that these two characters have fucked. This threw me for a loop because I had no idea even if the person was hinting at it through text. That isn’t something that I think about often, and it isn’t really something I have a problem with. I just didn’t think it would happen after a day of these two characters knowing each other. It also wasn’t something any other player was made aware of until that moment. Am I wrong for being a bit confused and upset? As the DM, I would have liked to know in case inter-party romance was something my entire table didn’t agree to. I’m willing to accept that I might be a bit of a prude here. It just really came out of nowhere and I wish they had been a bit more explicit with me about the fact there characters fucked rather than being cryptic if at the start of the next session they walk out of their room on the boat and announce they had sex. Thank you for help. My table has been wrapped up in this love affair for two months and I just want to rest and know what to do if my PCs fuck or want to duck in the future.

Brie R.

May it please Baliff Jake and the Honorable Courtiers. I am a very new DM, running a game for complete new players, so sometimes things get a little wacky as well figure out what the heck we're doing. In our last session, my players met with the proprietor of the local brothel, "The Silver Flute," and she tasked them with retrieving some supplies and such from an alchemist located on the opposite side of the city that is essentially held hostage by a violent thieves guild, "The Fencing Men." My players decided to take a long rest in the safety of the brothel prior to executing their mission at night. During this time, two of my players both asked the proprietor, Madame Mother, if they could work for her during the day. Madame Mother declined to employ the elven sorcerer, but eagerly agreed to employee the fire genasi warlock, because he would be considered an "exotic" service. My party's elf felt that she was discriminated against, and that she should have been allowed to work a "shift." Was I in the wrong for assuming the genasi would bring the brothel more customers than the elf? PS: At the end of the his "shift", I had the fire genasi roll for both tips and whether or not he caught syphilis. He got 12 gp and is STD free.

Eliana Lazzara

May it please the court and the Honorable Bailiff Hurwitz, In a short-lived campaign I played in just over a year ago, our DM had a very strict no-metagaming policy. This was not limited to the typical rules around meta gaming in most campaigns - we were not allowed to discuss the events of the campaign outside of gameplay (no group chats, no pre-planning, no revealing character builds or plans), and in any instance where a character was alone, they would be pulled aside for a one-on-one scene with the DM. It also turned out that during these one-on-ones, the DM was secretly leveling individual characters up ahead of everyone else (we played milestone leveling), encouraged them to multiclass without much of the players input, and then would get mad if any of the players tried to reveal anything from a one-on-one. The campaign fell apart largely because of this, but as someone who is beginning to DM I want to know what your thoughts are on where to draw the line with meta gaming.

Jack M

If it pleases or excites the court, Im a DM I made a homebrew mechanic, a sword had an ability that on a hit the user could inflict upon themself 1d6 damage and can also inflict that extra damage to your opponent, and impose disadvantage on their next attack if they fail a constitution save, my Friend failed the save, he was a gunslinger/wizard and used magic missile on their next attack to avoid disadvantage, the attack after it I asked, not argued, if my player thought that they should have disadvantage on their ranged gun attack because they were given disadvantage on their “next” attack roll, he said that since he used an ability with no attack roll he shouldn’t have disadvantage since he cleverly got around it and also used an ability he usually wouldn’t use, I ended up siding with him because It was a good point, but would love to hear the justices and Jakes thoughts on it. If the ability states “give disadvantage on the next attack roll” is that for THE next attack roll, or is that only affecting the next turn. Thank you all love you all

Dayton Miles

If it pleases the court or really excites the Baliff, I’d like to present a case for you. It involves DM vs. the player with the effects of the Deck of Many Things. After one of my players received the Wish card and had three wishes(you have to roll for the amount). On his final wish, he wished that the attack on his village never happened. This changed a few things. For one, his red eyes from the trauma of witnessing this event goes back to his original blue. His parents were never killed, therefore his skills in forging are affected. Finally, his motivations on the current quest changes since his past desires changed. I had him roll a d100 to have these take place, but he argues that the impacts shouldn’t be this bad and he should choose what happens. I told him that changing the past has lasting effects. Am I in the right for those changes or should I have approached it differently? Thank you, but more importantly, thank you Bailiff Jake!

Artie Cardenas

May it please the court; I am having some trouble with a problem player at our table. Our current table consists of five party members, including myself, our DM, and our problem player whom we shall call CJ. He showed up quite late in our campaign, a typical human fighter, and unfortunately did not seem to do much. Then he unfortunately came down with an illness and decided to stop for a few weeks. Those few weeks turned into a couple months, with him still responding to our group chat messages but not really showing up. It got to the point where the rest of the party canonically dumped his PC in some town and we continued on our merry way. The next session after this, he shows up halfway through, no explanation for why he left, and just tries to pick up where we left off. Our DM told him he could be at 6th level like the rest of us, despite missing out on about two months of sessions. This irked me, so I asked my DM and he said while he is also annoyed by this, he also wanted CJ to be somewhat engaged and didn't want to handicap him. While I understand why, it still irks me. In the end, it didn't even matter, because he stopped showing up again, but says he also plans to show up at a later date when another campaign wraps up. My main question to you is this: should we welcome him back into the party, or do we perhaps just kick him to the curb if he ever does show up? Humbly yours, Cherry (she/her)

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. I run a high-level campaign 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 fire 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. A few sessions went by with a firebomb or four and it was good times. Then in one particularly dire encounter the PC with a bag full of bombs flew above the big bad cleric 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". These are on contact bombs dropped from a height. When they all hit 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 though they were far away. The local environment, and all of the remaining enemies were decimated. 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 large stock pile of explosives. The problem though 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 high-level 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 cannot be put back in the box?

Edwin

May it please the court, I am bringing this hypothetical court case to the fore so that it may be discussed amongst the group. There is a DM that I have met once that is doing a sort of publically accessible DND campaign where anyone can listen. I am a big fan of this DM and the characters, emotional moments, and highs and lows of their campaigns. I love this campaign so much I introduced several friends to it and continue to recommend it constantly. Here is the sticky part though. After some time, there was a character introduced. One by the nickname Horseshit. This character is long gone and into the annals of DND history after a bright, spectacular and embarassing end but he remains fresh in my mind because his real name was dropped just prior to death. My questions: How much razzing is it reasonable for me to expect once my friends catch up to this point in the campaign? Is there anything that the court can do to redeem my sullied name in DND podcast history? Am I without recourse? I throw myself at the mercy of the court and since I am the only party to be judged, I will accept my punishment accordingly. -Edwin

Michael Boron

May it please the court, Now this is not a case that I have run into personally more of an abstract thought experiment that spawned into existence after casting haste on another PC in front of a beholder. So in an encounter with a beholder if a caster successfully casts slow on the beholder while outside or the antimagic cone and the beholder on its' next turn moves its' antimagic cone so that the caster is now in the cone is the slow dispelled? Because on the one hand anti magic cone makes it so no magic can be used in the cone. However is the spell truly within the cone when it is just the caster concentrating on the spell

tim randall

May it please the court, Thanks to lord bailiff Jake for taking this case to our justices on high. I present to you a case from your resident swim instructor IRL, Timmy R. My character is a lvl 9 echo knight//bear totem barbarian aarakocra, zeeku flockins. I flew up to the enemy ship to take advantage of my abilities with my broken character build and whale on my enemies that the DM thought were lying in wait. Towards the end of the round of combat one our captains crew rolled a nat 1 on a cannon shot. The DM rules that I was hit by the cannon ball dealing 100+ damage to my character in one turn due to friendly fire. After this zeeku pretty battered and I was forced to fly flew back to my crows nest (my roost) to recover from my wounds which prevented my character from having any impact on the combat due to another players bad roll. Was he correct in his ruling or did he take away my agency as a player?

Evan Spears

Supreme Crit Justices Axford, Murphy, & Tanner, Bailiff / Supreme Crit Justice Hurwitz, 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 rolled my first and only 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 IRL 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 dark stain of an experience turned me off of 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. 

Nathanael Scott

May it please the court I need litigation in matters of curses and a DMs responsibility of care to their players. I had a DM who loved to curse his players. It started with me being turned to stone for a full session for looking at a basalisk, which forced me to sit unable to play for three hours, and ultimately escalated with a rage curse for picking up a well earned axe after defeating a big boss minotaur. The rage curse meant that whenever my oath of protection paladin would take damage (which as the class would imply was quite often), they had to make a save or be sent into a murderous rage, attacking anyone within 60 feet. The rage would last until there was no one in range or be knocked out. The 60ft range meant that even a full dash action wouldn't get players far enough away to stop the curse and usually meant every fight ended with other players trying to down me. As a result I spend every session looking for someone to break the curse. I started to feel bad because I was prioritising this over other missions, but a full calendar year later when the campaign fizzled out, my paladin was still searching for a cure to the curse. My DM felt curses were a natural part of play and a good punishment for reckless play and that finding someone who could cure them should be rare. Where as I felt at some point they kill the fun, and besides, it was his imagined world and the only reason there wasn't someone to cure the curse is because he's a jerk. So I throw to you the court, can a DM take a curse too far or is it just punishment for reckless play and fun flavour for a world.

Dalton Elliott

Honorable Bailiff Jake and little sweeties, I am about to DM a DieselPunk campaign for my girlfriend and friends. My girlfriend, level 1 artificer, turned to me during our session 0 and said "If I roll a nat 20 right now, can I start with a jetpack." I said, "Sure" and then she proceeded to roll a nat 20 right in front of me, first try. How am I to proceed in paying off this debt? Am I now obligated to give her the dream jetpack at level 1, or does she need to take whatever item card I hand to her on session 1?

Katherine Clarke

May it please the supreme crit justices and the esteemed bailiff, The case: Bard v Sorcerer turned Bard & Sorcerer v DM Original brief: Sorcerer knocks out Bard with an area damage spell with no regret. Bard is clearly upset and RPs this with another character while all players present. Sorcerer reacts in game with petty behavior, defensive. Bard punches Sorcerer so Sorcerer Shocking Grasp's Bard. Session ends sullenly. Lower court ruling: First time DM speaks to both players separately, knowing Bard prefers to avoid direct confrontation. Rules a compromise: two new rules: avoid extended RPing something that would upset another player when their character is not present to speak up and do not harm other PCs unless given direct permission or in an emergency. Neither player seems thrilled by the rule that directly addresses them but neither objects to the other rule. The group as a whole is quick to give permission as needed. Final brief: Two months later, Bard answers check-in survey with complaint about rp specific rule. Just feels too restricted On follow-up, informs DM of separate conversation Bard had with Sorcerer in which they settled outside of court and agreed they disliked court ruling. DM recinds ruling. Honorable judges, was I, the DM, unfair?

Nicholas Elmitt

May it please the Court, the bailiff in particular. I implore the right honourable judges to relitigate the case of Mambo No. 5. I fear that the judges have created a dangerous precedent which will allow players to leave the table for increasingly spurious reasons. Judges, I ask you to consider what this means for the thousands of hard working DMs out there. When our DM revealed that the leader of the Trolls who had been stealing our treasurer was named the Ayatrollah, should we have just got up from the table? I fear that Justice Murphy has heavily swayed the Court on this case. It is easy for him to say that DMs shouldn't be allowed to tell jokes because he isn't funny - Emily, Jake and Caldwell provide enough humour for his campaign. Some of us need to inject the comedy into our own campaign. Judges and Bailiff, please do what is right and honour a genuinely funny joke.

Kestrel

A friend who plays a druid/monk multiclass was wildshaped into a spider. They needed to convey information as a spider, but also couldn’t risk coming out of wild shape because they needed to be a spider for a rescue mission. They pitched the idea of “Charlotte’s Webbing it”, arguing that, while in wild shape, they retain their mental stats and thus would be literate and know how to write. The DM said no. Should this druid have been allowed to emulate Charlotte?

Avelyn

May it please the court, and especially the honorable and noble bailiff Jake. I recently concluded a modern fantasy campaign using a different system than DnD. One of my players wanted to be from the past, and I allowed it, explaining that he had to erase himself from history to end up in modern times. In the finale, he used a spell to send himself back to his own time in a decisive play to defeat the final boss, effectively dying in the process. The problem was that after this, a couple of my players, one being a magic user immediately talked about reviving him. Figuring this would cheapen the moment, I explained that there was no magic capable of reviving him without also bringing back the big bad. This shut down the conversation, but I worry that there may be some lingering resentment and disappointment about me not allowing them to return their fallen friend. My question to you is thus; should I have allowed them to, even as I was trying to draw the campaign to a close, revive their friend? Or was I right to shut down that opportunity, and tie off the story with a neat, tidy bow?

Frank Askvig

May it please the Court, as I hope this message finds you under a container of ethereal chicken wings with Frank's RedHot sauce, enjoy while you ponder this dilemma. A two player combo one having the sentinel feat stopping an enemy in its tracks followed up by everyone's favorite Flaming Sphere, ramming this creature right up the backside. The question is if the enemy's movement is at zero would it automatically fail it's dexterity save, and if not could the sphere repeatedly attempt to ram the enemy until it's 30ft of movement is extinguished? Thank you for you time don't let the redhot burn you up.

ThatManGareth

May it please the bailiff Jake and the Honorable Crit Justices Now presenting the case of sorcerer v. DM There are two charges placed against the 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 the jump on him. The DM claims the villain noticed the lack of background noise (Torches crackling, water dripping, ect.) and noticed us immediately despite the spell. My sorcerer casts the 3.5 version of phantasmal killer spell a round or two into combat 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. Offense 2: 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 (which is also supposed to lower their level for each one made) 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 jerk 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 accomplishment, or does the use of the 3.5 rules make Phantasmal Killer too unfair for him? I eagerly await your response, Sincerely The Plaintiff Sorcerer.

Jane Hughes

May it please the court, Last month the court ruled on the question of DMs rolling death saves with a very special coin in the favour of the players. My table is dealing with a similar issue however I wish to put forward more facts on our specific case before I take the precedent back to my own table as I worry the court did not consider all the arguments. I am new to my group who have been playing fortnightly for at least a year or so. Just recently, following something the DM saw online, they have made the choice to roll our death saves for us behind the screen. Their logic (as based on this online advice) is that it prevents the meta-gaming that occurs when players are made to choose between healing/protecting a downed party member or fighting a monster. (ie. it’s okay guys, I have two successful saves and only one fail, you don’t have to help my character out this round) While I like the logic in theory as it increases the uncertainty and reality of the stakes, I agree with the precedent set by last months case, mainly because I fear that I might lose my character and have no idea it’s happening. I know dice rolls are random but if my character is going to die I want to be part of the tension as it builds and even get a chance to RP some goodbyes. In light of this new argument regarding meta gaming, where do the honourable judges reside? Do they still agree with the precedent of the cool coin case or should we allow these DM controlled death saves to continue to up the stakes of combat?

Paul Brady

May it please the court, I am running a 5e campaign set in a homebrew world. I have a trickery domain cleric run by a player who has caused some minor issues in this campaign and the last, so I do try to be extra patient with him so he doesn't feel singled out. In the first combat encounter he used his channel divinity to summon a duplicate. The wording of it says "you concentrate on it as if it were a spell". He then cast shield of faith on the next round which is concentration. He said that he interpreted the wording to mean that you have to make concentration checks like a spell, but it didn't prevent him from casting a concentration spell. Not wanting to bog things down I said let's go with it, and we'll look it up after the session. On sage wisdom it says that if you concentrate on it, you can't also concentrate on a spell. I communicated this to the player. So this past week we had another combat encounter (combat is pretty infrequent) and he tried the same combo. I reminded him that we looked it up and it couldn't be done. He replied, "well I built my whole character around this concept". I told him that he can't do it, and combat proceeded. Am I being unfair? I, frankly, can't think of a way this or any other concentration combo is game breaking, but this is only the second campaign I've dm'd. I humbly through myself at the mercy of court... Regards

Jeremie Berneche

May it please the court, oh, and Jack the bailiff too, I present the case of the Sassy Kobold. I was running a game for colleagues and friends, and they were fighting a Deva and two Helmed Horrors. Now it must be said that the party has been fighting the same group for a while and overusing some spells for my taste. Helmed Horror stat block states that the horrors are made immune to the effects of three spells and proceeds to give a list of common immunities. However, since the creators have been constantly attacked by the party, the three spells they were immune to were Fireball, Lightning Bolt and Disintegrate. Our kobold wizard kept attacking the Helmed Horrors with those spells, pouting when I showed him the pre-written list of three spell immunities contained those. After a while, he just wall of force'd and skipped every turn, removing himself from combat. Near the end of the combat, one enemy spellcaster cast a spell that would have turned the tide of combat, but the kobold wizard just snapped "fuck no, I counterspell". I paused the game for a second to tell him to remember I was playing the bad guys and that him snapping like that, which had happened a couple times already, was really spoiling the fun for me. I told him I was happy that he had counterspell prepared and that it worked and he had probably saved his team. Was I a dick for calling him out in front of the others or was his sassiness deserving my "stop"?

SomogyiAnita

May it please the court! Can an elf have a beard? My player's character is an elf that was turned into the new hexblood lineage from Van Richten's guide, which changed his biology, making his skin lilac, giving him a hexblood "crown" and making his hair extremily long and regrow upon cutting. This happened when the character was an infant. Now that they are an adult we debated if the character would be able to grow a beard. I argued that elves do not grow beards, and that it's unlikely that being turned into a witch-folk would change this. My player disagrees, since they are not technically a true elf anymore. I have allowed the beard since it's just cosmetics and would be an annoyance to the character IC. Still, I wish to know, could elves grow beards in this instance and how luscious would it be?

Jose Nuñez

I love you guys and I love dnd court.

Ruben Cabrera

May it please the court, and the honorable Bailiff, I am running a curse of Strahd Campaign, Consisting of a Glamour Bard, a Hexblade warlock and an Arcane trickster Rouge. I’m generally pretty Lenient on shenanigans the group can perform but I generally draw the line at loony tune mischief or super hero over power. The group knows this and they are pretty good about staying in those lines. In one case the party wanted to combine all their abilities of Minor Illusions to basically pretend to be a well known NPC and walk around town. I quickly nixed it because it seemed strife Perception rolls from other NPC’s and I also did not want this precedent to influence other Situations. Was I too quick to destroy their plans? Did this seem reasonable? PS. Day 1 Fan of the Podcast. I have been blessed with the fact that Covid did not mess with my work situation. Because of that I do travel a lot. It’s been nice to hear great DND games played by Friends when I’m traveling up and down all of Southern California. Fair Winds and Following Sea, Ruben

Jennifer

May it please the court, I entreat you to consider the case of the Drow V the Dragon. My players were fighting a clockwork dragon in an arena, in order to prove their worth to the Monster Hunter's Guild. In an attempt to show off to the crowd, our drow rogue leapt onto the dragon's back and tied herself to it with a length of rope that she'd tied around herself earlier. As DM, I responded by having the dragon immediately fly its speed straight up (80 feet) and repeatedly smack the rogue with its tail until she was knocked unconscious. The other party members were melee fighters and not able to attack the dragon at that range. They complained that the dragon wouldn't be able to fly with the rogue on its back, and if it could, it wouldn't be able to attack her. I responded by saying that I'd described the dragon as huge and magical, and it would be silly if it couldn't reach her. Imagine some small rodent was clinging to your own back, you could reach it quite easily and you don't even have tails. Was it unfair to have the rogue's bold move backfire so disastrously? Or was I too merciful in only knocking the rogue unconscious, and should I instead have thrown her bloody corpse to the ground to teach the party never to underestimate a dragon?

ZZYZZXX

If it please the honorable judges (and that one guy that reads them the cases) I present the case of short boy vs a Medusa So in a campaign I was playing a gnome for the first time that I had said was around 2-3 feet tall and our party came across a cave with some statues outside of it. Stupidly I didn’t connect the dots and realize “oh Medusa lair” so I bravely took the front position. I snuck up to the cave and peeked into to see what I could and the dm said that I was instantly turned to stone as I saw the medusa and died. I argue that because I was sneaking and was such a small character that I should’nt have been turned to stone as a medusa wouldn’t be looking for a 2 foot tall creature but would probably have her eye level at an average of 5-6 foot range and therefore I could’ve had a chance to close my eyes. Was I improperly stoned or should I have gotten a chance to roll for eye closing???

John Larson

May it please the court, I DM’d a one-shot with my group of players who were all humanoid monsters with stats and quirks I home brewed. Since it was a one off I let a lot of stuff fly because the rule of cool, however one player was playing a war forged named Johnny5 with an ability called Swiss Army Bot. Basically I made them roll a luck check to see if they just so happen to have the tools they need for any specific situation and if they rolled high enough I’d let them have it. By the end Johnny5 had a built in toaster, a tuning fork that attracts wolves, an electric whip, and a radio that only plays kidz-bop versions of songs since he didn’t roll high enough to get the licensing. Here’s the dilemma, I wanted to start a new campaign with the same group so I scrapped most of the home brew mechanics because they were over powered. But Johnny5 insists that he starts this new campaign with the same war forged character with all the abilities he gained in the one shot. Do I let my player use Johnny5 in the new campaign with his broken mechanics and unlicensed music or should I make him play a new character which would be more fair for the group?

Stephen Burns

May it please the court, Should a character being dragged through fire instantly take damage? Our druid scouted ahead and was ambushed. She ended up down with two death saving fails on top of a fire. The barbarian was the first to reach her and wanted to drag her from the fire. The DM said this would cause her to take fire damage and die. We argued she had already taken fire damage on her turn and she had only spent one round of combat in the flames, so would not be actively on fire. He said the act of someone's flesh being dragged across burning wood should cause damage. If it matters, the fire was caused by the druid's flaming sphere spell which ignites objects not being worn or carried. After much debate, the DM did not kill our druid, but was that the right call?

JD

May it please the court, This is more of a request for DnD "legal advice" on whether our possible future actions may be in the clear. I am in a group with a fairly new DM and he introduced a purposefully overpowered NPC with a legendary weapon and god-tier stats at level 3, we are now level 9. The NPC is tagging along with us despite us not wanting them to both in and out of the game. The NPC was meant to be a neutral party just for extra damage during combat when there were only two players, but now we have five, and combat goes quick. Also due to the overpowered nature of the NPC, they have taken more than their fair share of kill shots in the game, lessening our desire to try as hard in combat. The NPC has even attacked one of our players to force them to end concentration on a spell summoning demons that were released into the forest to cause mayhem within 1 mile of us where there were no populated areas at risk, all because the DM didn’t want said player to do that. The NPC has been used many times to push forward the campaign when we are trying to roleplay figuring something out but taking longer than the DM wants. One of the players and I have discussed whether our characters even like the NPC since he has gone against us several times and we are debating fighting the NPC to the death. We have spoken to the DM more than once about how we feel about the NPC, but he just told us he wanted to be able to play the game as well and the character is his way of doing that. I sympathize fully with the DM learning as he goes and I don’t hold anything against him, but I feel like what the players want in the game is being ignored. We have played several games with this group, taking turns at being DM, so we don’t want to just leave. Would we be in the wrong for attacking this NPC that both we and our characters dislike because the DM won’t keep them out of the game?

Cayden pruiett

May it please the court, My girlfriend and I regularly play dnd with some friends of ours, and I normally help her create her character. The problem is that whenever the time comes for her to come up with a name, she always names her character the same thing. My grandfathers full first and last name. One time, I asked her what her characters backstory would be, and she said that he would have been in the military, and has 2 kids and 3 grandkids just like my grandfather, and is even married to a woman with the same name as my grandmother. I’m normally able to talk her out of this by claiming that it would ruin both of our immersion in the campaign, and would honestly just feel a little weird to call her my grandpas name, but last time she seemed genuinely upset that I wasn’t ok with it. I wouldnt mind if she wanted to play some sort of joke character, or even some other generic grandfather. I just would just rather she doesn’t play MY grandfather. Should I allow my girlfriend to roleplay as my grandpa, or am I right in thinking it’s kinda weird? Thanks!

Josh

May it please the court, but especially the honorable bailiff. Me and my friends just started a campaign of Curse of Strahd, I'm normally the forever DM, Which i never minded but this time one of my newer players wanted to try his hand at it! I've been excited to play, and he had pulled me aside beforehand and asked me to help out when i get the chance, like helping him remember rules and potentially calling out things that the other players might do wrong, as most of them are pretty new to dnd. We got into the game no problem, had a fun session 0 with interesting characters, but one of the players wasn't able to make it. We got into session 1 and we found out he was playing a fallen aasimar oathbreaker paladin named Grimm, at the end of a fun first session he mentioned that he felt like his idea for a character wasn't working with his class, he had wanted to play more of a front line necromancer but paladins aren't the best for making minions, since they're only half casters, i offered to help, giving ideas for cleric or warlock that might fit it better, the DM said it would be fine to redo his character since we want everyone to have fun and it was so early on. He said he didn't want to redo his character, since he thought paladins were cooler than clerics (debatable but go off). He counter offered, asking if he could once a day cast the spell Danse Macabre, as it would better fit his character. I tried to bring it up nicely that it's a fifth level spell, and paladins wouldn't get 5th level spell slots until 17th level. He got angry at me and said I'm not the !DM so I don't get to make the decision. Which is fair so i backed off, our DM decided to let him have it, as everyone at the table was a little uncomfortable at that point and we just wanted to get past it. I brought it up with our DM later and he just didn't want any conflict in his first campaign so he ran with it. My question is, should I have tried to do more, or just let it slide? P.s you don't have to read it outloud I was just wondering, for Emily, you might have answered it before but i couldn't find it, what program do you use to make the music! You've inspired me to write music for our campaigns and i was just curious!

Griffin Ellis

May it be pleasurable to those in court, I submit my case of demoted demon. I play in a group of friends where we alternate between myself and another player for which campaign we play in every week (a sort of DM 69 if you will). One week his character tried to convince an angry dragon to let him ride it, at which point the dragon nearly killed him and permanently scarred his character. A few weeks later when I was the player and he was the DM I used a summon greater demon spell to summon a demon that I held the true name of (Tanner, no relation to Caldwell) I'd used this spell previously and Tanner had died honorable deaths but this time when he died my Friend DM said that Tanner had been demoted and would come back as an even more lowly demon, sort of like a judge being demoted to a bailiff. I argued that in the monster Manual it says if a demon dies it just reforms in hell as it's regular self to which my DM said if that's the case then it would instead be banished for 1000 years. Is this just blatant retaliation for me whomping his character or is there truth to my demon demotion? Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to your deliberation.

Rae

May it please the court, I'm a DM and in two separate campaigns I have a friend, let's call them Allen, who plays useless and counterproductive characters. For example in the middle of a large battle to defend a city in campaign 1, his (lawful evil) character sat down cross legged on the ground because "there was nothing else he could do". More recently in campaign 2 while in a bar where the other players were gathering info and playing games he pretended to be wallpaper for most of the session. The other players are irritated and I'm not sure how to move forward. Is cutting him out of the games too harsh?

Adam Wong

May it please the court. I present the case of the unseen octopus. I am a dm for a campaign with six players in total and recently we had a session where the party was stuck in a protective underwater dome covering a city protecting it from and invasion of unknown assailants the dome is normally perfectly clear but the assailants had put a dark black film over the dome so you could not see outside the dome until it was broken. The wizard asked if he could use summon familiar outside the dome to see who was outside but I argued that he couldn’t see through the dome therefore he shouldn’t be able to summon the familiar in the end it being 6 to one of course I decided to let it slide and because of it the large difficult encounter ended much easier than expected. Should I have let the octopus slide or should I have been more harsh in my judgement?

Nicolas R

May it please the judges and their lord the high and benevolent bailiff, im running a campaign set in mtg's Ikoria world (sorta a kaiju planet) and have built a monster customizer for the players to make custom monster pals for their characters. This is the first time I've built something this big game design wise so I'm basically using my dnd group to play test it. My problem is that I feel very guilty about nerfing the stuff that my players have built into their monster buddies. It feels a bit like im giving them a toy and then im breaking it when I see their having too much fun with it.

Cody Clinton Wood

May it please the court, presenting the case of Old Blue, the luckiest single Die known on the plane. I have a light blue glassy/sparkly die that rolls incredibly well. Im talking mulitple nat 20s a session... its truly not loaded and when other people roll it, it doesn't preform. My group insists that i sacrifice this die "because the honorable justice tanner did" when he had a broken die. I dont think i should give my sweet love old blue and have given them many options. How would you deal with my luck streak? Are they being sassy and spicy for no reason?

Annika

May it please the court, I present the case of Lyra and the magic beans: My gloomstalker ranger PC (who adds +9 to initiative) was trying to get out of a secret basement chamber with no doors having freed 2 NPCs who were going to be sacrificed in there for a ritual. After trying to escape for a bit, I planted one of my magic beans (from the bag of beans) to see if I could potentially creatively use a random result to escape. I rolled 95 on a d100 and it caused a 60 foot base PYRAMID to erupt from the ground and through the building. My DM said that the two NPCs got immediately crushed against the ceiling by the pyramid rising, and didn’t allow me to roll initiative against the rising building or do anything to attempt and save them. I wanted to try to feed them the last two bites of my gaseous form apple so they could escape through the cracks formed by the apex of the pyramid and save their lives. Was the DM unfair to not allow me to even try to save them, or should I just mourn silently for my friends that I inadvertently killed?

Jochebed Cho

May it please the court, (Pronounced Jaw-kuh-bed; but this is her boyfriend speaking) This is the case of the Pepperoni vs. the Peppewoni. I was running my first homebrewed campaign as well as my first campaign ever (Murph and Brennan inspired me). The PCs were walking along a path and found themselves bargaining with a merchant. They had a choice to buy from Imu, the Peppewoni Dealew (baby voice). The PCs investigated the peppewonis and rolled awfully. As a DM, I chose to take that as "they do not see anything wrong with it". They proceed down their path, ate a peppewoni, and they are hurt. The peppewoni is basically an anti-health potion made by a mischievous A-Hole. Later in the campaign, the PCs, a tad more wise and higher in level, meet Umi, the Pepperoni dealer (Pepperoni being magic potions) . The Party is immediately on guard and accidentally kill Umi. The PC who committed the killing blow, later said they were confused and misunderstood. Was the pronunciation too close or was I allowed to absolutely PUNISH this dirty city pigeon? Many praises to the Supreme Crit Justices and Venerable Bailiff, Joseph

Slippery Pete

To the esteemed Crit Justices and Valued Balif Hurwitz.... May it please the courts.: the case of the self-sabotaging Warlock. I was DMing for a group of friends. One of my long time good buds had been theory crafting a warlock character to play in a campaign for some time. When I ended up running a module we ported the character into this new campaign. The essence of the backstory was the same with some minor changes. A kenku named Hush, who was born with their own voice. Two sessions in, during a fight with some oozes, the player tells me that Hush lies down prostrate in front of the oozes. He is an experienced DnD player, so I was initially intrigued. A round of combat goes by and on his next turn, the player makes no moves, just passes on his turn and keeps taking damage from oozes with movement speeds of 10ft. It became obvious to me what was going on, but I wanted to respect my Player's autonomy to make their own choices... Hush failed their death saving throws and died. While that was happening, the Tortle Cleric had been hiding in their shell and was also making death saves. The Tortle cleric died as well, attesting that Hush, a Celestial Warlock was responsible for healing. Only the Druid survived by simply WALKING AWAY from the oozes. The Warlock and the Cleric Players got into a fight, everyone left early and I felt strange. I think about this wild scenario often. Should I have prevented my buddy from spontaneously killing his character? Am I guilty of not pausing the game and having a chat? It felt really weird and while I still DM, I have not played with those friends again since. Undying reverence to the Supreme Crit Justices and the Tireless Baliff, Pete

Adam

My newest character, the smallest tabaxi rogue with a Scottish brogue wanted to make poison with a poisoner's kit, dip the arrows of his shortbow with poison for an added something poison damage. Apparently this was a contentious issue and that poisoner's tools were traditionally used only for colour... But if this was the case what exactly is the point of such proficiencies? I don't wanna be rules boy and I usually stand by the "dms game, dms rules" mantra but this just seemed a little harsh. Thoughts?

Anton deGroot

Hi! I realize this show is already in the feeds, but here is a case for the next sitting of the Supreme Crit Court: May it please the Justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner, and Hurwitz: I present the case of the People v. Counterspell. In the heat of battle, a nefarious Aarakocra spy called Rook had ambushed our party in a place we thought of as safe from outside influence, bringing a small army of shadowy demons to rout us out. Emotions were high, and in an attempt to help my party flee, my Bladesinger wizard Martyn cast Banishment on Rook, to which he cheekily chirped 'Counterspell!' Having not taken my reaction that round, I petulantly responded with a counterspell of my own against his in an attempt to allow the initial Banishment to succeed. Not knowing what to do, our DM improvised and had me roll an opposed concentration check against Rook - which I won - and so allowed the Banishment spell to work, letting my party escape. Rule of cool. We all realize this isn't exactly rules as written, and there has been much discussion since as to whether or not this should have been allowed. We've consulted forums and found conflicting reports as to whether this is allowable or not, and see that the controversial hangups are that Counterspell is instantaneous, that reactions are also instantaneous, and that the only component of Counterspell is a hand gesture (somatic). So we turn to the authority: what say you judges? Can a counterspell be counterspelled by the person the FIRST counterspell was being initially cast on? Thanks for everything you do!

Avogobble

Can a We’re-shark fart? If it pleases the court, but displeases the lowly bailiff, During quarantine I started DMing for my 4 and 7 year old sons. During a session my 4 year old’s Wereshark, named Sharkbait, was attempting to sneak behind some goblins, but after failing his stealth check I said he farted and alerted the goblins. My 4 year old retorted that sharks can’t fart, I said that he could since he’s a wereshark with human like legs, he would have a human like butthole. My 7 year old after recently learning about sharks, came to his brothers defense saying that since his character had a shark tail he would have a cloaca and anal fin and his farts would be silent. So which is it, does a wereshark have a human like butthole or a shark cloaca? Also would this ruling extend to other were-beast?

Boofoe Dibeppo

To the court of the pod. May it please dungeon bailiff Jack and Supreme Court justice Murph and judges Tanner and Hurwitz. I bring this case. I am a celestial warlock pirate using a pact weapon. I took the arcane gunslinger invocation to summon guns for my pact weapon, along with that I took the gunner feat to ignore reloading and to stop disadvantage at close range. Now the problem is I wanted to take the invocation thirsting Blade. Which lets warlocks attack twice with pact weapons but my dm says I can’t use that for my guns since it uses the word blade in the name of the invocation and saying that my character is reloading during times it’s not my turn not during my turn. So to the court I ask. Am I being a trigger happy pirate or is my dm wrong for taking the double attack with guns away?

Tom

May it please the gracious and honourable judges, Axford, Murphy and Tanner and the other guy. My group of friends have been doing some one shots and our never dm decided he wanted to give a level 5 Mario themed one shot a go. The story began in peaches castle where bowser loudly grabbed peach and ran for his airship and began to leave. Our group of Mario, Luigi, Toad, Lakitu and me, donkey Kong, chased after the the fleeing ship and jumped on it before it was able to leave. At this point there was some obvious confusion from our DM, as this part of the Mario games would traditionally be a cutscene where the players stand and watch, our DM was not expecting us to chase after ship and was not prepared for us for initiate a fight with bowser and his children immediately. I should mention that in the group, the DM for this one shot by far has the least understanding of the game. We ended up womping bowser and his children by throwing most of them off the ship at high altitude and saving peach within the first 2 hours of the game. We’re we wrong to abuse or ability to be apart of a cutscene and interrupt the DM’s obvious plan? Ps - the DM had peach be kidnapped again that very night and the adventure went from there.