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Dungeon Court Cases Pleases! (Patreon)

Published:
2021-10-18 12:15:29
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Helloooo NADDPOLES. Jake here seeking to right the wrongs committed at your table. Please comment with a (brief, I BEG) description of the event and I will personally deliver your case to The Highest Crit in The Land.

Yours in humility,

Jake

Comments

Jakey

May it please the court and any and all esteemed bailiffs. I am a player in a campaign with some friends, playing an Aasimar College of Eloquence Bard called Asriel. I was taken in for questioning as a routine check to enter the capital city and placed under Zone of Truth. When asked about, and I quote, "Significant events that have happened" regarding a certain character, Asriel wove a half-truth and said, "No, I do not recall anything significant", having judged it to be insignificant to avoid divulging anything. My fellow players loved this, and so did the DM, but I could tell that he wanted the campaign to progress with the authorities knowing what had happened and did not expect for me to skirt the questions. Later, Asriel and the rest of the party were arrested for a misunderstanding and had metal circlets placed on our heads. When a police captain asked us for some kind of deal, the DM asked, "What would Asriel be thinking as he asks you this?" I replied honestly and said, "Backstabbing him after we get our side.” I asked to make a saving throw to resist the mind-reading magic, but the DM said, “You can’t, it just works.” Is it wrong to annul my articulation, or is the DM allowed to eschew my eloquence? P.S. No hard feelings, I’m good friends with the DM, but this is a worrying precedent for a character whose focus is weaving words.

Anastasia Keelor

My DM used mage hand to unlock my characters memories and her name is now Clove Garlic. It’s not a problem I’m just still mad about it

Lucia V.

May it please the esteemed justices and the bailiff, who is also there. I recently played a one-shot as Captain Bingo the Tiny, a goblin Fighter with swords for arms (starting just below the elbow, which may be relevant). At one point, Captain Bingo fell into a pit. In trying to save me, the other three members of my party also fell into the pit. In a bid to escape an impending gelatinous cube, the Captain offered to climb out and hoist up the party. However, as I did not have hands, my DM ruled that I could not climb. I argued that I could use my swords as pitons, but he disagreed. In the end, I was thrown out of the pit by Korg (a pacifist Goliath Paladin with two shields and no weapons) with a rope tied around my waist so I could act as a grappling hook for my party to climb. I accept my DM's right to lay down the law as he sees fit, but I still feel that my character should be allowed a climbing speed due to the Piton Defence. O noble court, please rule on this technicality once and for all.

Alex Woodbury

If it may please the court and the lovely bailiff My sister played her first game of D&D with an established group. She played as a cleric. As they were exploring a maze, one the npcs was taken down to critically low hitpoints by the party bard (thunderclap). She, of course, heals him.. Sis, being the only character with darkvision, scouted ahead in a pit and dealt with a problem, calling to the others that it was safe to jump down. Despite a character having featherfall prepared, the bard decides to push the still-somewhat hurt npc into the pit, and then when he jumps down makes sure to land on the poor sap, making him take the fall damage twice. My sister asks if he was pushed, is lied to be the bard, sees through the lie, and decides to (in character) leave the group that is obviously willing to throw their companions to the wolves. So the bard casts hold person on her, to "stop her from fleeing combat," despite no combat currently happening. As she finally shakes off the effect, another character sleeps her, to "stop the fighting." At the time, her cleric had 42 hp, and the person who cast sleep did not roll any dice, merely telling my sister that she is now asleep. She's able to wake up and sees the bard, with - 1 to intelligence, trying to win a game of chess, and she commands the force on the other side to forfeit, which works and causes a rope ladder to fall down from the ceiling. Her and the abused character climb up first, and she cuts the ladder behind her to distance herself from the people using hostile magic on her (a dick move in some circumstances, but she had been asleep for over 20 out of game minutes, doing nothing and being unable to contribute).  Later on as she finds her way through this maze with the rest of the party hot on her heels, she finds a large door and is slept by her party again, except this time she is down multiple hallways, likely out of spell range, and definitely not in line of sight. When they catch up to her as she wakes up, the bard throws a dagger at her, and that's when the session ends. I told her that if I were her I would not be returning to the next and final session. I personally would have kicked up more about the rules, but it was her first game. The dm is a first time dm and they have only played a handful of times. The bard and spell caster(sister doesn't remember the class) apparently play often. The other player seems to be on my sister's side and told her later that they were being stupid. She's afraid to say too much seeing as it's a group of her Co workers. She's would like some advice on how to handle the next session, hopefully this is read and uploaded before then.

Aurora Koch

May it please the benevolent crit, and give mild inconvenience to bailiff Jake. I present to the case of Omicron Vs. Free Will. Within a military campaign I was a part of I played a lawful neutral warforged gunslinger named Omicron. As a part of the campaign, Omicron was “made” in a military academy and trained for command, and he would always follow his orders without exception. The group itself involved a lot of secrecy, and some of the players would talk in private with themselves and the DM. After an argument with the other players over the justness of the military, they decided to reprogram my warforged to change the alignment, so that I would be free to not follow orders, without letting me know. At a point in which I assumed the group engineer was installing a microphone in my head so we could silently communicate, they all changed my alignment instead. I was shocked about them betraying me, and I disagreed with it happening, but the DM allowed it, as I had to make a constitution saving throw for them to work on my head to stay powered on and I failed. The question I have is what follows: Can a warforged alignment be changed with programming? I argue it cannot, as they are sentient beings. As I character I still had the firm belief in following orders no matter what, even if I did not like what I followed. But as it is a robot created with a purpose, I can see the opposite still being true. Thus, I would like to hear the courts opinion on the matter, and I leave myself to the justices mercy, As I side note, due to me not liking my character changing drastically, my DM agreed for me to create a new player, which I based off of moonshine and her spores as a way to silently speak to other people in their head and influence their decisions to help me. Also the group has since split apart for player disagreements and general bad vibes, and I harbor no ill will against the friends I played with that did the reprogramming.

ThatManGareth

May it please the figure-painting bailiff Jake, Now presenting the case of Sorcerer v. DM There are two charges placed against the DM. We have our first encounter with the main villain of our campaign, former DM party member, a 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. The DM claims the villain noticed the lack of background noise (Torches crackling, water dripping, ect.) and knew something was up immediately. My sorcerer casts phantasmal killer spell (We were playing 3.5e) a round or two into combat. Villain crit fails the first save and fails the second save by 1, so is instantly killed. 2nd Offense: DM claims villain had a nearly endless supply of clones using the Clone spell. We neither get experience nor loot because we didn't destroy the soul and the body disintegrated when we tried to inspect it. Was our DM just being a jerk since we upended his story, or was what we did irredeemable? Does the use of the 3.5 rules make Phantasmal Killer too unfair for him? I eagerly await the Justice of the Crit, The Plaintiff Sorcerer.

Matthew Tittle

May it please the court, I have been the regular DM for my group for years now and I love my group. Changes in jobs and life have created session issues regularly. I truly don't want to hang up my campaign but I struggle to keep planning to have the group cancel at the last minute. I've had conversations to try and schedule better to suit everyone but to no success. Do I keep hearing my head against the wall or try and find a new group and where do I begin? Thank you

emilythecoffeewench

Dear honorable Court Justices and okay bailiff, My DM Grayson (who listens to this show) just started DM-ing this summer. We play on discord and despite schedules and mental health, we have played 16 weeks in a row! But, he is hard on himself after tough sessions. However, he has created a world and plot so intriguing, I fully made a Pepe Silvia board. Please remind him that dnd has to be difficult sometimes and that he is doing Dice Christ's work.

Sophie Geffros

May it please the court: I am the DM in a campaign with a Dragonborn barbarian and an undead human fighter, among others. While fighting a dwarven cultist in a subterranean lair, they were both engaged in close combat while the other players attacked from range. The Dragonborn was facing the cultist head on, while the fighter was attacking from behind, when the Dragonborn wanted to use her breath weapon. I said “sure, but you’ll definitely hit Lucia (the fighter)” This caused an immediate outburst as the players passionately argued that, although the description says a breath weapon is a 30-foot cone, the Dragonborn could just angle their attack and not hit Lucia. I said no, you’re attacking a dwarf, there’s no universe where you can angle your breath weapon on a downward diagonal to someone 5 feet away without hitting someone who is taller than your target and who is 6 feet away. They accepted my ruling with some grumbling, but who was right?

Dylan

May it please the court, and the very funny bailiff that deserves a hug. 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. They made temporary characters and they went in a quest to get their original characters back. 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 were under my control and then take them away?

PupKailash

May it please our Highest and Honorable Crit Justices, and that one bailiff in the corner: I bring you a transgression against the mighty Dice Christ, or so we believe. I played in a Pathfinder campaign turned virtual due to the pandemic, we all utilized the Roll20 platform. During the course of the campaign, our Elven Sorcerer, whom was their first time playing DnD ever, started "rolling Nat 20 after Nat 20" throughout the course of the campaign. Our DM never made it their initiative to ask the player to display their roll over camera, but both myself and the other experienced players noticed more Nat 20 rolls than our own game play. My plea to the Justices is simple: Does it seem suspicious to have more than 3 or 4 Nat 20 rolls during game play? Could it be that this player committed acts of tyranny against the mighty Dice Christ? How can I as a player prove or bring to light their transgressions? I humbly throw myself before the court! May the gods be merciless.

Rena DeLorenzo

May it please the court! We have a player who made me feel rather uncomfortable during our newest campaigns. He made a half orc half elven man who’s goal in life was to find his mother…and women. (Great combination I know) Every time he saw a woman he would make a point about how he would stare at them and wouldn’t look away. (I was happy he missed my intro and didn’t know I was playing a lady) Later on we met another player who he tried to flirt with, she said to bug off, he said and I quote “I like them feisty.” (Mind you this was the dm’s girlfriend so ye.) He also commented that he made his character particularly dumb to explain why he acted this was, because he said orcs are known for being dumb and would mistreating women. (He had an intelligence of 12 and it was just a bad way to generalise a whole race) My bf and I are new to the friend group and we weren’t sure if we were in the right to ask him to change his character or to maybe just not include him since his characters were always…well bad. Either they’re gross like this, or complete edge-lords who don’t take the group’s goals into account. And most infuriating of all he doesn’t stick to character he just does what he wants!

Jake the Snake

Dear magnanimous Judges and the rightfully discarded ex-judiciary Jake. I submit the case of Call Lighting V The Sun. I am the DM of a long running campaign in which my players lived in a steampunk haven above a thick layer of clouds the separates them from a wasteland underneath. About 1/3 through I had planned to unleash my BBEG who was the God of the Sun. After preaching his totalitarian beliefs in a sealed cathedral of the moon, he began ritualistically separating ground as well as the layer of clouds so my players would fall through to the apocalyptic hellscape below. In order to prevent my character from leaving the chapel (we play with minis) I had Sun God's portal appear on the one and only door. He then use his ranged attack after combat initiated which were tiny pieces of the meteors falling from the sky. This was all going according to plan, however my tempest domain cleric dragonborn (Letrik) had a different opinion as he attempted to cast Call Lighting. I replied "you're indoors" which was followed by him claiming he could "see a point in the sky where the meteor fell through." I responded with "You can't call Lighting down on someone with a roof over their head." He said "have you ever seen lightning, it goes horizontally too." Our entire party began making defenses in his favor but ultimately I directed him to using his breath weapon as it could still be paired with Thunderous Strike. His intention was to force him back 10 ft to his divine plane so the concentration on the cloud separation would dissipate. Which didn't work due to distance rules. This is still a sour spot in our campaign. Was I being to strict with my decision? They still occasionally mumble call lighting should have worked and it is a running joke now. I prostrate myself humbly to the will of the court.

Ellie

May it please the court! This is not my story but my partners; in a campaign we are both in our dm privately asked him if his character could die in a fight (I know because I happened to be the room when it happened) with the promise that his character could come back as some kind of spirit/force ghost. However, the campaign took a hiatus and our DM asked my partner to make a new character and now will not tell him explicitly if his og character will come back. My partner feels betrayed and I want to punch this guy in the face. Do I have the right? Or is this fine in the eyes of the court?

RotiniWeenie

May it please the court and may it tickle the stinky binky boy Jonk. I was playing in a Dragonlance campaign my DM converted to 5e when my party and I killed some draconians that were hunting us. We looked them and I picked up a katana one of them was using, to which I was then told to make a DC 20 charisma save. I passed and my DM told me that I had visions of this sword being used to slaughter baby dragons and draconians, but I resisted the urges. Being a Drakewarden I wanted nothing to do with this so I went to put it in my bag, but my DM told me that I couldn't take it out of my hands because it was now bound to me even though I had passed the save. He told me I had to make another DC 20 charisma save in order to take it out of my hands. We are all level 9 and I feel like I there was no point into making the first save if I got bound to it anyway. I patiently await your wise judgment.

Jean Corbally

May it please the beautiful justices and the lowly but charming bailiff. My party recently had a quite violent PvP (my character was brought to zero by a player character who then killed my adoptive snake god son). This was done to try to get some powerful relics that I was carrying (he did not succeed). The player who instigated it says that it was a natural progression after some evil choices by his character, but the rest of the party feel like the character went from a bit power hungry to murdering fellow player characters very quickly. However, he had been becoming more evil which we did notice but let slide. So he feels that this was telegraphed and we could have just given him the artifacts or shared them between us to get power (they belonged to the aforementioned snake god son). This character has now become an NPC and the player has rejoined the party with a new character but I am having a difficult time playing in a friendly manner with this new character as I personally am kind of mad at the player himself. Are my feelings on this valid? I miss my snake son :( but I will get over myself if I am being petty P.S. The DM has assured me that there will not be any more PvP when I said it made me uncomfortable after this event which is good. (I don't know how to change my name so just use my first name if you read this please ❤️)

G.X. Barnett

If it pleases the benevolent judges and the esteemed beloved fellow Brooklyite Baliff, In a recent one shot, my party was set to be villains who needed to take out an eleven encampment to gain a magical item in their possession. It was pretty common knowledge that the encounter was going to end in a 7 player pvp, however one of the players decided in the opening moments of the game to alert the camp to our presence in attempt for them to take us out. As we escaped the game progressed until we came across NEGG (Nice Eleven Good Gal) to whom he told our plans to and vowed to protect. When both he and the entire Elves guard came down upon us, with the aid/disruption of some demons that a warlock summoned, I was ready to leave the game as we were never going to make it to the following 2 rounds, knowing we were walking into a a TPK orchestrated by someone on our side, but held out making it known that this stopped being fun 4 rounds earlier. It wasn’t until the player texted me, seeing how upset I was, to inform me that “this is what a villain would do,” at which point I unceremoniously rage quit the session. Should one leave after an individual player decides to go rogue and ruin an entire groups fun or did I overreact and how long should one stay if they’re not having fun? All I’m asking is… remember Amir? The guy who’ll be in the back row at your NYC show, GX Barnett (Permission to use my name granted)

Jo Bunkle

May it please the court of most wise; fair; and on occasion divinely appointed justices and that Jake guy. This happened almost 2 years ago but I was sat in the pub when the memory of my wronging hit me like the apple hit Newton. Despite having almost exclusively DM'd myself, this case comes as myself as a player against my friend DMing. In my friend's homebrew campaign we found ourselves in a demi-plane, attempting to rescue one of our party from interdimensional imprisonment (still a little fuzzy on the details of why they were there.) Our party came to face off against a dinosaur on a giant chessboard, where we won, myself striking the final blow. My DM then for flavour said that it was down but not fully dead, so I said for flavour I wanted to shoot it with my hand crossbow like a broken-legged horse at the track (I wish to make it clear this is not something real me advocates for.) My DM ruled however that if I stood within 5ft of the downed dino to shoot it in the head it would be rolled at disadvantage as I was too close for a ranged attack. I argued that was stupid but my pleas fell on deaf ears, so I saltily shot at 10ft. It is silly; dumb; and petty but I still get a little annoyed to this day. Oh quasi-divine Justices, is my salt valid? Or am I just as petty as the thing I rail against? I await and accept your decision readily - Joe B

Gianni Pappas

If it may please the amazing wonderful spectacular judges and the also super spectacular bailiff. I was playing in a all monk one shot and we were cruising through having a good time. Before this moment there were some calls me and the other players thought questionable but left it to the DM. This ruling thou really shifted the mood and I would like your opinion. In the final battle I was hit with a dagger that poisoned me and gave me a point of exhaustion due to the poison. Here is the thing at the level we were playing, monks are immune to poison and I didn’t take any of the poison damage. The DM ruled however that I still took the point of exhaustion, all of us were confused because since it came from a poison I shouldn’t have taken it. It was a full table vs the DM and he wasn’t backing down. Luckily it was a one shot so didn’t have to play with him again but do you think he was right or just wanted to stop us from whomping him so damn hard.

PartTimeGamer

May it please the most high or courts, and the most righteous of bailiffs. I present you the case of the Mantle of Faith. I, the player, am apart of a homebrew campaign, in an apocalyptic world, playing a soul knife rogue. Our party ventured into the market district of one of the few cities remaining and the owner of a shop displayed a cloak, but said it was not for sale. At the DM’s discretion, he mentioned that stealing the cloak could lead to imprisonment or death...I decided to do as rogues do. Once the party left the shoo, I turned invisible, rolled a 27 slight of hand and 29 stealth check, and swapped that cloak out with my own. Later finding out this cloak gave resistance to non-magical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, I was ecstatic. More defense for the squishy. However the bard of our party determined it would be much better suited for our party’s tank to wear to essentially make him unkillable. I disagreed that I took all the risk to acquire the cloak, and it would allow me to get in the fight and stay alive when needed. From that point on there was resentment that I didn’t give up the cloak to allow our tank to use it. The bard would always bring up the cloak, and tell me to go tank the fight since I had it. It became a topic of every session, and became a constant nagging from the bard to give my cloak up. Was I selfish and wrong to keep the cloak, or could I be more of a team player and give it to the tank? I humbly await your most fair judgement.

gab

Hello esteemed judges and the wonderful baliff! I present my case as follows: My party and I were headed towards a cave dungeon with an NPC guide. He kept talking about how dangerous the cave was and how he'd probably die inside, so once we arrived, I offered that he return to town. The DM asked for a charisma check, my swashbuckler rogue got a 23. The DM then played the NPC as rejected and heartbroken that we didn't want him to come, and my party got super angry at me. I asked for a persuasion check to have him stay but the DM wouldn't allow it, and the NPC returned to town. My party still razz me about it and for the whole cave dungeon my DM made snide comments about how helpful the NPC would've been at various moments. Was I in the wrong?

Mich Blackie

May it please the supreme crit justices and our hella rad bailiff The current campaign I’m in has a three player party, with all of us playing elven triplets. The DM has based the story around our family, friends etc. The problem is I am not feeling my character. I’m the oldest sibling and a fighter, but I cannot get into her character. A lot of my character choices were to balance the party for both RP and combat,so she’s become a distrustful, defensive snob. We RP a lot in our game and I feel like my inability to connect with her is holding me back and stifling my participation in the story. I also prefer casting classes, but the other two are a druid and a sorcerer so her being a fighter is important for combat balance. When I told the others my issue, one told me she didn’t want me to change because she liked the dynamic, one said he didn’t want me to change and if I did, he would too. The DM said he would prefer it if I didn’t but we could look at some tweaks to make her fit better. Am I wrong for wanting to change something so fundamental for our joint story because I’m not inspired? Or should my party respect that I’m not enjoying myself as much them? Should I give it longer and “will” my character into something I like better? Help me judges!

Boofoe Dibeppo

May it please the bailiff jake and maybe the judges of the court. I the player bring to the you case of the trigger happy pirate. This is my first time playing dnd and the first time for my dm dming. I play a half-orc celestial warlock pirate( Captain Bubbles) in the campaign. I took the pact weapon subclass and pick up the arcane gunslinger invocation to be able to summon guns for my pact weapon and the gunner feat, which allows me to not have to use a turn to reload my gun. Now here’s my problem. I wanted to pick up the invocation thirsting blade which allows my pact weapon to attack twice in one turn. However my DM believes that I can’t use the invocation for my guns because in the name of the invocation it says blade and also that for the gunner feat that I am reloading when it’s not my turn, so I wouldn’t be able to attack twice. Is my DM being unreasonable or am I a little to trigger happy?

Alex aka Zol Ark

May it please the Bailiffs… Oh and I guess the rest of the court. I was running my second campaign ever and as I was running it 2 of the players kept talking about how much they hated playing 5e because of how much they couldn’t do in it for combat like in Pathfinder (think 3.5). I kept trying to make the story entertaining but there was a moment that I was trying to describe a scene with a dead Troll and one of the players started freaking out saying that it is not dead so I had one of them roll medicine but it just irritated me that I was trying to describe a scary moment and it was ruined. Maybe I should have communicated more but I was still new. I leave this to the court and I will gladly take any punishment!

The Sandreyan

May it please the Court and the Beautiful Bailiff Jake Flavour v Function, or the Capsule Magic Case A few months ago, me and my party were in a modern/near future setting campaign, fighting a wizard flavored as a scientist. This wizard/scientist used fireball, and the DM flavored it as the wizard/scientist throwing a capsule at us, that then exploded to do the spells damage. My character, a sorcerer, was using Gust of Wind, and I argued that since the spell was in a "capsule", the strong winds should have deflected or moved it. I will also mention that i was aiming the Gust of Wind directly at the wizard/scientist, so I argued it should be blown back into them (perhaps an argument too far). The DM argued it was still a fireball spell, and unaffected by the winds, and my sorcerer ended up taking it into the face and dropping to 0hp. The party still survived though, and the wizard/scientist ended up being drowned/strangled to death by a water snake wrapped around its face. I dont deny that a Gust of Wind spell wouldnt effect a Fireball spell, but was I right to argue that the strong winds should have blown a capsule off course, or even into the wizard/scientist? How much does flavor of spells effect their function? I leave it up to the Courts to decide.

Tyler Jackson

May it please the court and also the ever stalwart bailiff. I was in a high level oneshot with some friends, including one who hadn’t played much and certainly not to level 16. He was playing a battlemaster fighter, and we were fighting a large monster called a behir that was clinging to a cave wall 20 feet or so above us. Since he had thrown the single javelin he had brought for the adventure already, he decided to try and get a running jump to attack it with his maul. After the DM figured his jump distance he was still about 5 feet short, but realized he had taken the lunging attack maneuver, so he could increase his range. The DM said that since he was jumping, he could only take one of his three attacks before he started falling out of range and would roll for fall damage, and possibly trigger an attack of opportunity for leaving the behir’s range. We argued that he should be allowed to attack all three times, if at least for the cost using three superiority dice, and that since he was not controlling his movement while falling, he didn’t trigger an attack from the behir. We managed to come to talk down the opportunity attack, but the memory of the oneshot remains stained with 20 minutes of staring at phones for rules, and we’d like to put this one at the feet of the justices for ruling.

Salil

If it may please the court and the lowly bailiff who makes amazing wallets: I had my players visit a tavern, the intention was that if they rolled well on perception, they would notice some shady characters who they could follow or would be important later in the story if they didn't follow. However, one of them noticed some drunks harassing a waitress on a low perception score (someone else noticed the shady group with a higher one). This guy mage handed a beer on a drunk's head, and a barfight ensued in which the party insta-killed 4 drunks (commoner stats) with Arms of Hadar and Firebolt. I felt like no one would just stand around if you came to their bar and straight up killed 4 people in a fight so I had a mob of 50 commoners chase my 3 person party. This almost resulted in a TPK and the party considering leaving someone to die (I would have given them the opportunity for a rescue/escape had that happened). Should I have sent that mob after them to keep the realism (mobs chase murderers)?

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). Not a confession but I seek sainthood for my player. 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 an alt universe one-shot. Then my health declined as work got more intense so session prep got 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.

Danny K

May it please the Noble justices and lowly bailiff of the court. My question is whether or not I the DM should have allowed a persuasion roll to happen which I refused due to what I believed to be an absurd argument. My party were investigating some horror shenanigans in a "hot fuzz style" village. The party immediately became suspicious of the local priest (kinda due to genre savvy) and they had in fact guessed correctly! But rather than fully investigating the priest they decided to skip to beating him up for information while he was out walking at night. I rolled to check if the party was spotted and they were indeed. This resulted in the village becoming an angry mob. Herein lies the problem. The parties high level eloquence bard disguised themself as the priest, and then went to try and calm the crowd. The rest of the party assumed they would try and say they had successfully escaped. Instead of this the bard decided to say that they enjoyed partaking in play wrestling and fighting at night. Myself and the rest of the party were kind of baffled. And I said the mob descended upon the bard. The bard protested that they should have been allowed to roll deception as their character is specifically built for persuasion and arguing. I ruled as DM that this wasnt allowed because there was no chance of success. My question is was this an acceptable ruling. Had the bard hit a nat 20 they max out at 34 or 35 so feasibly the dice could have allowed the shenanigans. The party accepted my ruling, but it still haunts me as I believe in the dice christ. I await your judgement!

Tommy G.

May it please the court, I humbly bring before you DM Vs player: the soap key case. I am a new DM running out of the abyss where the players start off as prisoners of the drow in the underdark. I mentioned to my players that the guards have keys on their hips, thinking they would use this opportunity to pick pocket a key. My rogue decided instead of pickpocketing a key, he wanted to take a bar of soap and push it into a key to get an impression of it while it was on a guards hip. I thought this was unrealistic given the guard was awake and it would take too long to push a key into a bar of soap without the guard noticing. My player disagreed and grabbed a bar of soap IRL and pushed a fork into it to prove his point. I countered the soap from his bathroom was soft from a recent shower, and a fork provided a handle to push it in. My player ended up rolling really well on sleight of hand and I let him have his imprint of the key, but was I within my rights to say this wouldn’t work?

Tyler Willits

If it may please the all-knowing court and the hero bailiff. The bailiff is a hero in these times of global crisis and should be praised as such. He will have to work double hours with no extra pay as the Supreme Crit Justice takes a vacation and bonus. Praise the Hero Bailiff! I bring to you today not a case, but Dice Christ Confessional. Over a year ago, my players were going through a tower that used to be run by a lich. One of them encountered a Shadow. A notoriously strong low level creature. The bard had a series of bad rolls and was killed by this Shadow. It led to them meeting the God of Death, which they have oddly become friends with. She was revived and we now have a ongoing story of her and the God of Death which has been great. But my sin was not running the Shadow correctly. On hit, the Shadow drains Strength by 1d4. I was accidentally running it by damage, 2d6+2 which 2-shot our dear bard. In the end, it all worked well and it's become a bit of a thing that the bard knows the God of Death, but I still feel guilty about it. Thank you for your time. Bailiff Jake will have to work late tonight to make up any time this has taken from you. He's a true and essential hero!

Andrew Whitford

To the honorable justices and weak, milquetoast bailiff. I’m currently running “The Ghosts of Saltmarsh” for my party. The were tasked with taking down a smuggling ring by boarding a pirate ship and eliminating the pirates. After disguising themselves as smugglers and getting aboard the ship, the bard of the group managed to charm the pirate captain. The captain then invited him back to his quarters for a drink. The bard wanted to incapacitate the captain so the party could easily take out the rest of the crew, so he tried to convince him that he had a cool trick to show the captain. He asked him to hold his hands out so he could tie them up, to which the captain said “Aye I’m not gonna do that for ya sonny”. The bard was upset that he didn’t agree to be tied up because the captain had been charmed. However, as the DM I argued that while the captain saw him as a friendly acquaintance, he wasn’t under mind control and wouldn’t just let his friends tie him up regardless. We moved past it, but I wonder if there was some way I could have let my bard use the benefits of the enemy being charmed in some way (e.g. let him make a persuasion check with advantage). However, I ultimately think that the party didn’t have a solid plan to incapacitate the captain and maybe Charm Person wasn’t the best or most useful spell to use in this situation. I kindly await the input from the Supreme Crit, but whatever you decide please don’t murder me or my friend thanks.

Jessica Cooper

May it please the court, I bring forth the case of the Harpy over the Fire. I'm dm for a homebrew campaign set in a world where almost all monsters were sealed away with their queen until the party accidentally released them session 1. I have taken great care to emphasize to the players that none of their characters have ever seen most of the encounters they are going to have for a while. While travelling to the nearest city to request aid on behalf of the small village I used as the starting point they rolled their first encounter with a group of harpy's. After they were scolded twice for calling them harpy's they decided to play dumb. Reeeeeaall dumb. So they killed the harpy's, and then proceeded, to eat them. I did everything in my power to make it clear that these were just women with wings by appearance, but when they insisted that they wanted to eat them I made them roll con checks and 3 of them were poisoned. My table was in an uproar because "harpy's aren't poisonous" and "it's just like eating people" . I pointed out that they had never encountered harpy's, and would have no idea if they were cooked properly, or inherently poisonous but we could not calm down and ended up stopping there for the night. So I ask, was I right to dole out consequences, or did my displeasure in my players actions cause me to be too harsh?

Heidi Artigue

To the bailiff, strong of body; and the justices, strong of mind, may it please the court: I bring forth the case of the Bard Who Won't Cast Spells. I DM for a first-time player who desperately wants to be an aarakocra bard named Ack Ack. He says he loves playing support classes and wants to fly around the battlefield inspiring his friends with his bagpipes. The problem? What Ack Ack actually wants to do is be a tank. As a level 9 Bard, his normal turn is to use his action to stab a monster with his dagger. Then he uses his bonus action to try again. He also doesn't heal anyone--one time the wizard was down and making death saves, and he used his turn to stab a monster with a dagger, then healing word himself. I've offered to let him reclass as something else, and try to nudge him towards using any of his class abilities at all, but he's adamant that he wants to be a bard. Should I just kill this foolhardy bird? The player seems to really love him. What do I do to make sure the party has fun even though one player is effectively level 1 forever?

Nicholas Badtke

May it please the court, and my favorite bailiff. In my absence of a session, my DM has given my character, Astor, a crown of duck summoning as a punishment. He has stated that it is fused to my body, therefore I am unable to remove it. It isn't much of a problem (my party and I have tried to utilize it, in fact). The only grievance I have is that my DM won't let us use the ducks in a party move we call "Duck Death Cannon". In combat we pass a duck around between us to build up momentum before we have our goliath barbarian yeet it at an enemies head. We know it would be considered an improvised weapon, and that duck would definetly die, but the image of a kobald's head exploding in a cloud of feathers is quite funny to us. The DM says it's too ridiculous, and too much work. I argue then that if he doesn't want to put in the work, he shouldn't have given me the crown. Thoughts? (If I must be punishd, I request to die in a poof of duck feathers).

Kay

Honorable Supreme Crit; May please Caldwell and any fellow under-appreciated civic employees/HeroForge connoisseurs who may be reading this, I present to you the case of the Monk-ey. One of my players is a homebrewed Slothfolk Astral Self Monk with a huge emphasis on his psychic abilities. It’s actually pretty cool. But that’s not why I’m here. This character is like Sid from Ice Age, if he had a podcast. After his entire race vanished, he began chronicling his journey to find them in a series of journals that he publishes and distributes under a pseudonym. My question is this— While I understand the potential for awesome roleplay because of how this character could have impacted the lives of A NUMBER of NPC’s through his writing and his travels, how do I surprise my player? They supposedly traveled for like *30 years*. That’s a long ass time. It’s difficult to justify them NOT having visited most typical locations— cities, regions, et cetera. I’m having trouble coming up with ways to say “You’ve definitely never been here” and “this person has never read your relatively prolific series of novels.” I don’t want to accidentally make this player the main character of the story. I love everything about it, I’m just having a lil trouble finding a balance! I await your judgement, and if you must punish anyone, punish Blue Sky Studios for milking the Ice Age franchise. Thank you, and may we ALL Crit on our homework on this blessed day.

Howling Salt Sam

To the Divine Justices and Benign Bailiff. May it please the court. I write to you today about the case of the Magical Skirt That Didn't Do Much Of Anything. A few years back, I was playing in a 3.5e campaign where we had just finished our first major quest and the DM offered each of us either a low-level magical item or a soul stone as a reward. The DM noted that attuning ourselves to the soul stone would require investing some EXP but would create a magic item that would grow with our characters as we gained more EXP (basically the item would level up with us). A few of us jumped on this opportunity. When my magical item finally manifested in the next session, it came in the form of a leather gladiator skirt, which seemed fitting for my Dwarven Fighter, Roderick Tallblade. I asked the DM what the magic item did, and he simply told me that I don't know yet, which seemed odd. I spent time in game trying to study it and meditate with it, but he still wouldn't tell me what it did. Eventually, I discovered that I could move the skirt like a prehensile tail or sorts; however, it offered no mechanical advantage and as the DM said, "was not strong enough to hold anything". I took this in stride and mostly played it up as having my skirt flow in the wind dramatically ala Sailor Moon or flashing my dwarven ass at enemies. It was fun, but not what I thought I would get when I invested in the soul stone. Meanwhile others had magical items that improved their spellcasting or other abilities. As sessions went on, I pressed the DM and asked if the skirt did anything else, and he said that it did have other abilities but I hadn't discovered them yet. This continued and I eventually resigned to the fact that this was a dud magic item, and I'd never learn its true power. And I never did! The campaign fell apart due to scheduling and people moving away. I'm still a bit salty over this dud of a magical item (even though it was fun to flash enemies as a free action). Justices of the Supreme Crit, was I right to be frustrated in this situation?

Nebulous

A while ago, during a friend's birthday party, they decided to do a one-shot. The party was quite big with around 10 people playing, several being new players. The DM was the sister of the friend and, from what we were told, has had experience as a DM. When we began the one-shot, we were introduced to a town where all our PCs meet up. However, this town had an outlaw on magic, basically making any magic detectable and punishable by the mayor of the town. None of that information was relayed prior to the session, especially since 7 out of the 10 players were primarily spell casters. I, as a player but also someone who has DMed, got up and refused to play in the one-shot and only be a spectator. I found it completely unfair that we were not even provided crucial information about the setting, making well over half the party significantly inabled to do most of what they could do. Was it wrong for me, as a player, to refuse to continue playing? As well, was it wrong for the DM to not provide setting information to the players, especially considering most were new players?

Katy Tacik

May it please the court, This summer, I ran a one-shot for my partner and his family, including his 10 year old niece and 8 year old nephew, both of whom were playing bards. Niece said she wanted to perform somewhere, so I told them they found a karaoke bar. With her modifier, she rolled above a 20, so I had 1d8 audience members throw her gold for her incredible performance. Nephew then rolls performance, and gets a 14. I tell him everyone enjoys his great performance (but no one throws him money). Nephew gets very upset, and leaves the table after a few minutes, refusing to play anymore. Judges, should I have rewarded my nephew more for his 14 performance? Should I have rewarded his sister less for her superlative performance? I await your judgment. (Additional dice christ confession: I was honestly glad when nephew quit. He was more interested in talking about his character (Robin from Teen Titans Go!) than he was in playing, and with 6 other people at the table, I wanted as many folks as possible to have fun.)

Kal and her cats Portland, Star, and Berlin

what is up crit justices and equally critical bailiff. my case is one of emotional insecurity - my players are trying to stop the four horseman from bringing about the apocalypse in unsleeping-city style modern day vegas. they’ve had to flee the city and go to one of the players’ ship off the coast of california (she was a pirate). while there, the pirate has had to deal with abandonment baggage from her crew, and the rest of the party has had to come to terms with some personal trauma. I’m worried that the story is starting to focus too much on the tragedies of the past and less on the hope for the future. I feel bad putting my friends through that:( How can I make sure their reward is worth their journey to give our campaign a satisfying end? I don’t want all their characters’ suffering to be for nothing and I eagerly await the court’s (and bailiff’s) input

Sametc

May it please the court and baller bailiff. My incredibly attractive tiefling bard (Canaan George Michael Abel) made the objectively rad move of thunderstepping themselves, solo, onto an enemy submarine that was about to attack a port city. After some close calls and standoffs, Canaan got the big bad in range to cast 'Calm Emotions' in order for them to feel indifference towards the city. A charisma saving throw was needed from the bad lad Gloom Weaver. The DM did not roll the save and instead said, "He was already indifferent to these people and he REALLY wanted to test his weapon". (Please note that Gloom Weavers are immune to being charmed but 'Calm Emotions' is not a "Charm".) Should the DM have fucking rolled or is a baddie being a sociopath a solid enough reason for the spell to have no effect? The DM would like to note he did not expect my PC to teleport to the biggest bad and might not have had all details fleshed out but like, that's not my fucking problem. PS The DM and I have made peace that one of us might perish and is comforted by the life insurance payout the other will get, as spouses.

Wzrdkng

I humbly seek the guidance of the highly esteemed bailiff Jake and the Supreme crit justices Caldwell, Emily and Murph. I, the DM, was having a small shopping session for my players. My campaign is built around there guild so they all wanted to spend money from the jobs they'd finished. The cleric named Splez was looking at a crossbow of warning, it was priced a little high for what he had so he wanted to bargain. Mind you he has a -2 to charisma, he had offered to give the shop keep all the money he had on his person, so I let him roll with advantage and he succeeded with a 15 so I gave it to him and then moved on to the next player as he said his character went outside. Now I go through a couple more players and before I can make it to the next one he chimes back in asking about the slippers of spider walking, they're priced about the same as the bow and so the shopkeep looks at him lile he's crazy cause he had no money, turns out he hadn't added the gold from their previous job which would give him about 200 gold less then what he needed. This time I told him to roll with disadvantage since he had previously told the shopkeep he had given him all his money, I contested it with an insight check as Splez tried to say he "forgot" about having an extra 1000 gold, highly unlikely, he didn't pass his check and became noticeably upset when he couldn't buy the slippers even though he was 200 gold short and none of the other players would loan him their gold as he had been talking smack to them prior. So after several minutes of him grumbling I finally caved in and gave him the slippers. Did I do the right thing? I feel as though I dishonored dice christ but I wanted to make my player happy. Was I right to café or should he have accepted the way the dice landed and continued on with the game.

Carbonostin

May it please the court, titillate the bailiff, or even downright turn on the justices. We set the scene, it was my first ever real session of dungeons & dragons and I was ultimately excited to be a part of shenanigans, most of which has been inspired by your own hijinks on the pod. I was playing a automaton Monk, (automaton being from The Homebrew section of d&d beyond) and we had just finished our first encounter with a minor bad guy, (think Galad or someone of his level compared to Theala). We were exploring his lair and came across a locked door which tempted us with anything that could be hidden behind it. Here is the part where I may have stepped out of line, i, being a punchy Monk, before I could really think about it, heck or even anyone else could think about it, decided to punch the door knob in an attempt to open the door. Luckily I rolled well in the mid-twenties with bonuses, and blew the door knob with a small portion of the door out of place, allowing entrance to access the goodies within. Only afterwards it was pointed out that the rogue was about to reach for his thieves tools to pick the lock, and I feel like I trampled on his scene, we were able to have a laugh about it, and even made a few gold out of selling the door knob to someone claiming it to be a dimension door knob. But I still feel bad about taking away from my fellow players opportunity to do his rogish activities. Was I in the wrong for overstepping into someone else's action territory, or was I all right because it all turned out well in the end and we had a good laugh about it. Ready to accept your Justice or your mercy, humbly, Carbonostin.

WunDarWun

May it please the crit and the most especially honorable and beloved bailiff. I put before you this question: can Mage Hand drown a man? Specifically, the level 15 penultimate evil boss. Our campaign had us adventurers traversing a sprawling tower at the delta where two rivers met. Hovering above the tower was an apocalyptic raging storm stirred by a doomsday cult. The entrance to the tower was guarded by Starkhad- a hulking orc that was the cult's head enforcer and 2nd in command. He had been the bane of our party's existence for the whole campaign, and this fight was a long time coming and cinematic as fuck. Instead of a climactic charge, however, our bard used intimidation and persuasion checks (with some wild luck) to convince Starkhad that we had already beaten the head of the cult (and Starkhad's lover) and left her for dead a mile away. Despite my DM's obvious disappointment, Starkhad boarded a boat and traversed the river. At which point, our spellcasters used lightning to sink the boat. Once he was in the water, they alternated casting Hold Person to paralyze him, ultimately using Mage Hand to hold his big sad head under the water until he died. Our DM argued that Mage Hand could only lift 10 pounds, but we rebutted by saying that 10 pounds of pressure was enough to hold a floating, rigid body under the surface of the river. Ultimately our dm conceded and we watched our most hotly anticipated antagonist slowly drown as he floated down the river. So, do you think we abused Mage Hand? Thanks!

Benwahah

The case of the DM who wanted to be a dragon May it please the court and best guy jake. I had recently started a dnd group with a friend and someone that my friend knows. I. Was a player with my friend. The stranger was the dm. Session 1 started with me a paladin and my friend a fighter both of us at lvl 1. But with 50HP each.. we were Getting attacked by a cult groups who wanted a dragon. He made us fight a beholder that was a pet to the sorcerer cultist. We then found out. The dragon they were searching. Was with us all along. It was cursed to be small and defenseless during the day but at night it would go back to its full size acient dragon. Stats. When it came to travel and escape. He would have us travel at night so the dragon would be big and strong. And any challenges hed send our way he would just one shot them himself. Not letting us play. I personality felt like he wanted to just be strong and did not enjoy my time at all. So i decided to not continue with em. But instead of telling them. I just never planned another session with em. I still feel bad for how i left the thing but it was the worst dnd experience ive ever had. Were my actions justified. For how bad it was. Or shouldve i had tried to talk to the dm and friend first. I am willing to take the punishment however you see fit. Thank you.

HonestLad

May it please the court and the wonderfully lowly bailiff, I offer new DM vs experienced player. I (the newbie DM) was trying to put together my first campaign party with my friends. I thought it would be a good idea to have an experienced player in the party to keep things on track (and give me advice since he was a DM in his home campaign). He asked if he could play his same character, which I allowed, but refused to make it 3rd level like everyone else. I told him if he wasn’t willing to adhere to my world he didn’t need to play. Was I way too harsh on him? Should I have tried to reason more before throwing down the gauntlet? I humbly await your judgment and any punishment you place upon me

Ben Roberts

If it may please the court of honorable judges and the downright rotten bailiff. I DM a homebrew campaign online with some friends, one of the those friends is a Gloomstalker Ranger/Assassin Rouge with the feat Sharpshooter. Whenever there is combat he will bonus action dash as far as he can away from the fight all the way off the map without fail every time due to having a longbow and can just hit enemies up to 600 feet away, It even happened on a planned small ship fight! He would request for the other players to stay within 600 feet of the shore while he pelted the enemy ship with a rain of arrows this has led to multiple arguments where I borderline beg him to stay on the map and he refuses everytime, sometimes i'll explain there are enemy reinforces in the direction he went but then he says im ruining his fun. Worse yet is when Comabt ends hes the first to loot aswel! While our friends stand around from him to jog or swim up. how do I deal with this map dodging scoundrel or am I the one to be judged for not tying down this wild beast, I have tried cave maps but then the gloomstalker is Invisible to darkvision! I eagerly await for the courts firm but fair ruling. -Ben R

Jake Andrews

I need to hear Murph get mad about this gross misuse of mage hand please

Adam Michael

I have a confessional for the Dice Christ. Last time I played my game that I DM (campaign is going on 3.5 years), I should have killed my partners tiefling warlock/paladin. I lied on the damage and they were healed. I feel conflicted, my partner loves this character and has dozens of art of them made and a custom dice box, but I feel like they would be mortified if I said I lied. How do I move past these horrible thoughts, humble priests?

Poching Bailey

May it please the high honourable justices of the crit and may it be brief enough for the attention span of the lowly Bailiff Jake. My table recently ran a one shot where we, as characters from the Forgotten Realm partook in a Night-At-The-Museum style adventure set in our own real world museum (shoutout Auckland Museum) where the exhibits came to life. The interesting part is this: when one of the players cast “speak with animals” on an animated Moa (extinct NZ bird), the DM said that the bird could speak. My argument is that the Moa is not a Moa, more of a possessed puppet, and so we shouldn’t be able to talk to it. Is that too pedantic for the world of the adventure?? Or is this kinda scrutiny necessary.

Nathan Perez

To the EVER MAGNANIMOUS Supreme Crit Justices and the bailiff who has the fate of my case in his mighty hands, I come seeking justice. I played a level 3 Firbolg Forge Domain Cleric named Tungsten Copperwood and was in an encounter where the captain of a group of bandits had our party surrounded. I was able to fend off the weenies through use of Word of Radiance and my massive AC of 19. I felt this immediately set off alarms in my DM's head. On one of my turns, I used Spiritual Weapon to try to attack the captain, flavoring it as me throwing a spiritual hammer "Opa Thor Style". The DM said that since one of of my party members were right in front of them, I threw it at their head by accident. They failed a dex check to get out of the way and not only did I do my damage to them, but they also had disadvantage on their attacks and checks since they were walloped in the head with my hammer. This happened many moons ago, but I am still miffed about it. Am I right to be upset by the ruling, or should I bow to the DM and stuff my gullet with humble pie?

Eric Nesser

May it please the Court and the fallen judge now baliff once again, Jake. I bring you Fusion Dance Denied v. GM. I am playing an 14th level aasimar Sorcerer/paladin in a campaign and recently I pissed off a mostly forgotten god by not cowering in her presence and subsequently calling her a washed up has been. To punish me she split me into to separate beings, one a fully human 7th level version of the sorcerer part of character and the other a fully celestial 7th level version of the paladin half. She then banished one to the ethereal and basically said one would remained trapped there at all times until I learned my lesson. The GM said I can use a bonus action to have the two switch locations whenever I wanted. Also if I was ever able to get both on the same plane I could do a "Fusion Dance" to become one being again. The party had no planar magic so we had no way to get both of us on the same plane until I realized I had banishment. Banishment says you can banish a being you can see and they return to their home plane of existence. So i switch my human sorcerer to the ethereal and then had my paladin cast banishment on him. The GM said that won't work because I couldn't see him to which I countered, yes I can as the party had received a major boon recently from a powerful being and I had chosen a perpetual ability to see invisibility as per the spell which also allows you to see the ethereal plane. The DM looked annoyed, reread the spell and then ruled that he didn't think the banishment spell was meant to cross planar boundaries like that and ruled it would not work. I let it slide til after the session and asked about it, as I thought it was a clever work around and he basically admitted that it was done because my build was too powerful for the upcoming fight and he wanted to weaken me to make it more challenging for the party. I was pretty upset to find out his ruling wasn't based less on the rules, and more on how he wanted his story to go. Should the spell have worked like I thought? Am I being unreasonable or is it okay for a GM to rule in such a way based not on his beliefs of the intended rules but what was convenient for his story at the time?

Micah Goebel

May it please the beautiful and sultry justices, and whoever else happens to be in the room that day. I was play a campaign where I was a Loxodon giant soul sorcerer named Ondros. Because this campaign was set in the Forgotten Realms, I had in his backstory that he was teleported to the tower of Zephyros the cloud giant because he was a distant relative. I also had that Zephyros had raised him like a son and taught him some of his spells. My second session into playing this character,e and the party were in Zephyros' floating tower when the DM looked me dead in the eye and said "Ondros Awaken" and proceeded to narrate a 5 minute scene about me being a robot and taking commands from Zephyros. Another player obviously saw the shock on my face and asked if Ondros would know what's going on, and he said no. Sound pretty cool on the surface right? But this kind of destroyed the back story I had about my kind and loving parents teleporting me away from Ravnica as a baby to protect me from an attack against our clan (which the DM knew about). The party eventually ended due to another player getting angry at the choices the DM was making for his character, and I was happy for it, but I never really got closure. Was I wrong to be as upset as I was? Or was it within my DM's power to do this without telling me ahead of time?

ELISA PAGNI

May it pleases the righteous bailiff and the handsome justices of the Court, I bring to you the case of the fleeing Aarakocra. I was DMing for four friends and I prepared a dungeon to explore, pretty standard dungeon since it was my first time as a DM. Before entering the dungeon one of them, who plays an Aarakocra wizard, said that she didn't want to go to the dungeon but to procede to a city where her character grew up. The rest or the party wanted to explore the dungeon, but the Aarakocra insisted she wanted to go on her own. I panicked a little, but I decided to use a village and some bad guys I created for the next adventure and said that because she knew the road was very long she thought it would be wise to stop in the nearby village to rest. My main goal was to be able to have the party riunite before the end of the session. But the Aarakocra insisted she didn't want to stop to the village. I said that it was her choice, but that it could be dangerous to travel at night, but she insisted. Then I said to roll for initiative so that I could go back to what the Aarakocra was doing during her turn and still have the others explore the dungeon. When it was Aarakocra turn again I had her encounter some bandits, she got captured and after the party got out of the dungeon they came to rescue her. I thought I handled the situation pretty well and made everyone happy, but the Aarakocra player at end of the session complained that I railroaded her and the rest of the party. Should have I let her go to the city and kept her away from the party like she wanted?

Behind My screen

May it please the highest of courts and even the bottom feeding bailiff Jake, I dm for a group of 7 was 8. In a recent session I had 3 dragons go after the party on behalf of the bbeg, two young one adult. The party was split and this resulted in a tpk. Instead of killing them all there I had the dragons knock them out and capture them to take to the bbeg. I stripped them of their gear and put them bound and gagged in a holding cell, I them had a villain ( the players in question previously played pc) take them back one by one to interrogate them. When his time came, he refused to answer questions and even mocked this villain while bound and threaten With death. Needless to say the villain killed him. Having been his previous character he made who was nothing but a problem to the party with his greedy evil ways. He felt this was unfair and got mad and never returned to play again after. Was I too harsh on him, or was this just a consequence of the roleplay? Ps if it helps his new cleric soul was trapped on death in a gem to give him some hope. Thank you supreme crit justices and even the lowest of low jake.

Ben Maerzke

May it please the court, I DM for a party of very beginner players. They understand the rules of the game, but they are so shockingly bad at tactics and combat strategy that they struggle to survive medium-difficulty encounters. The problem is that a player recently joined the group who is pretty experienced, and so his character (an optimized Bear Totem Barbarian / Moon Druid) seems unbelievably overpowered compared to the rest of the party, despite his character being one level lower than them. To correct what the group perceived to be an imbalance of power in combat encounters, I started gifting Very Rare and Legendary items to the rest of the party. The group seems to feel more balanced now and have stopped complaining that he is overpowered. He hasn’t complained and seems to be having fun, but I can’t help feeling like he is being punished for simply understanding how to play the game. Judges, was I right to resort to unfair distribution of resources to try and balance the party, or am I guilty of neglecting a player whose only crime was joining a group of blundering beginners?

Nick Powell

May it please the court and the bailiff's wife's boyfriends - I have an amazing DM, but sometimes it feels like he is worried the players are going to pull something he doesn't want them to do, and overrules RAW as a result. A few months ago, my party was exploring a bazaar/market in a new town looking for clues and just doing mostly mundane item shopping to grab spell components and reup on arrows and the like. My lore bard knows detect magic, so I asked if I could cast it in order to determine if there were any potion shops in the market to buy from, since we were out of healing potions and had a bad habit of going down in combat (unusual for this DM actually, normally his games are not as lethal). I used the spell slot, which should have simply told me if there were magic auras nearby and acted as a compass of sorts. However my DM asked that I also make an investigation check, one of the few skills my bard is not proficient in (yet..). I flubbed it, and he ruled that detect magic didn't work and i didn't know if there were potions. I reasoned that since I used the spell slot it should just work according to RAW, and that if he simply wanted to rule there were no potions in the market, that would have been fine. But to make me roll for it, and to make it so the roll determined whether my spell slot worked as written, rubbed me the wrong way. Am I a dickling for trying to find potions and using my magic out of combat? Should I work on my communication skills in helping understand what my DM will allow before trying to attempt something? Should I be asking my DM if my spells need rolls to work before declaring that I use them? Thanks to the 2-choo-crew for helping me be a better player for my group, cheers.

Eric Udy

If it pleases the court, I am in a campaign that my friend started and we have a player who seems uninvested, we had a session zero two weeks before the campaign started and this player did not give the DM his character sheet until an hour into the first session meaning the DM had nothing to give the player narratively. After the first session we time jump from level 1 to 5 and the player didn't decide his subclass until the day of the next session nor tell the DM anything the character had done in the past 10 years. The player seems unbothered by the lack of story for his character but the DM is very frustrated by the lack of participation making his job harder. I ask the court, would it be okay to kick this player from our game to make the job of the DM easier?

Guildedfangs

May it please the court and the honorable bailiff Jake. I present the case of instakilled barbarian. While chasing shards of divinity from a forgotten god, our party came to a mindflayer human farm. While investigating we found out there was only one left due to some infighting and a neolithid. We cut a deal with the mindflayer that we would take care of the worm in exchange for the divine shard and went to work. During the fight our barbarian got hit with feeblemind and my character led them to safety a chamber back. When we finished the fight thanks to the wizard polymorphing it to let the rest of the party snag a short rest we went to check on the barbarian to find them dead and missing the back of their skull. The mindflayer we had agreed to help had betrayed us but it felt more like the DM was tired of the barbarian and killed them offscreen with no rolls or chance to save. This was a few years ago but the fallout from this event was so much that I promised myself I wouldnt play with this DM again unless it was a module. Do you think Im over reacting or does this seem like sething that should have never happened in the first place? P.s. this DM will also allow rule of cool for bad guys but not players at time even if its the same actions.

Jessy G

Honorable Judges & Handsome but less powerful bailiff, may it please the court: My party recently had a fight with a strong, tough enemy. We fought him as the rest of the port town folks fought off lesser guards. It was a full rebellion. I play a wildfire Druid and was having a hard time even hitting him. One of our party was feared until the last round, our paladin got hit and had some kind of darkness spreading through them, and the other was a rouge, hiding Johnny style each round. Two of us were almost down. Here’s the case: I used my spirit to teleport us past this enemy so we could dash to a boat (our objective) and peace out. I did tell the party “come to me and I can get us out of here” but as we were in combat didn’t get to discuss it with my party. After we escaped, on to the boat, I pushed it off with tidal wave after another party member cut the ropes holding us to the dock. As we left the baddie turned away from us to launch a fireball at NPCs fighting on the beach, as well as his fellow guards and obliterated them all… Our paladin stating after everything that we could’ve won if we didn’t flee. The ending was cool from a storytelling stand point, but was I right in getting my team away or should I have checked in more or with my fellow players? The DM loved the moment but there wasn’t a feeling of triumph at the table, more conflicted emotions. Long time listener, thank you all for sharing your joy and talents with us. Jess G

Tyler Cheek

May it please the Supreme Critters and the Bailiff of Bailiffs, I submit to you the case of the railroading robot. I am DM'ing a sci-fi campaign with the Hyperlanes system and 5e, set in a space station city designed after Walt Disney's Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (the original EPCOT city, before it was a theme park). Early in the campaign the party adopted a robotic concierge of the city's hotel, Nick, and brought him along on several adventures against his will (he is very timid and just wants to manage the hotel). As part of the story, the party made their way to a new area. Nick, who has an ongoing plot about looking for some missing hotel androids, attempted to break away the party after learning where they might be. The party insisted he could not leave, so I rolled a Dexterity saving throw for Nick to see if he could slip out of their reach before they could grapple him. I rolled Stealth for him as he ran into a crowd, and allowed the players to roll Perception or Investigation to look for him. One player rolled a nat 20. Here is my question. I needed Nick to leave the party to set up a plot hook later, so I told them it was not good enough. They got very upset that I was negating a nat 20. So was it wrong that even with my player's Nat 20 Perception, I told them he had fully disappeared? I am willing to accept any punishment for my actions, but my humble defense is that if it's for the good of a story, saying a nat 20 was not good enough is still acceptable. If this makes any difference, the player in question was also my wife.

Samual brewis

Dear honourable bailiff and greatest court May it please the court this is a dm vs forever dm turned player, I (the forever em) was playing with a group consisting of three of my friends, my sister and a friend of a friend (the dm) my friends are rather new to d&d. And I often gave advice and tried to push the totters into learning about the variety that dnd can bring, shortly after our first campaign I received a message from the dm accusing me of trying to push him out of dming and forcing the others into doing stuff they didn’t want While I do recognise that some of my suggestions and info dumps could seem metagamy at times it wasn’t my intention or idea to try and take command, this has caused me to feel unwanted and uncaring for the campaign, am I wrong for feeling this way and should I apologise or should I call him out for his harsh words I leave this in your amazing hands supreme crit justices and best friend of Tyler bailiff jake

Malt!

May it please the humble and handsome court, and employees thereof, was I wrong to start a subgame with some of my players? For background: I was DMing for a group of six, four of those six separately and privately told me that they wanted a more tonally 'serious' game. The other two expressed - without prompting - that they would not enjoy that type of game. So I started a secondary game to which I invited the four to play at, one of those four elected to drop out of the first game and only play in the second. So I now DM a group of five, and a group of four. I didn't reduce how often campaign one was run, I just DM more. Campaign one now has fewer players, so more spotlight for everyone else, and the four have the opportunity to do more serious roleplay, and I finally got the chance to DM the homebrew world I'd been working on for the last couple years - win/win/win I thought. However, when the two that were not invited found out about the second campaign they were unhappy about not being invited. I really didn't expect this, and I think I really hurt them by not asking. So, was I wrong in starting the second campaign and if so what can I do to atone for it?

SJ Faubert

May it please the Court, the benevolent Crit Justices, and the affable Baliff Jake, I bring before you the case of the mercy-killed mom. I was playing in a new campaign of the Dragon Age system with a GM I had only just met. I brought to the table an outgoing but sheltered dwarven ranger, optimized to win drinking contests, with two loving mothers. Now, an important feature of the Dragon Age setting is the Blight, a wasting disease caused by enemies called Darkspawn. In the second session of this new campaign, my character brought her new party to her home in the woods outside of town to check on her beloved moms only to find one dying of the Blight. We ended up having a party member perform a mercy-killing on her to prevent further suffering while my character watched, completely changing the tone of my character to this day. I ask you, in all of your wisdom, was this as wack as I felt it was? Or should I have expected to lose my mama given the brutality of the property within which we were playing? Was the DM right to set the tone this early in the campaign by presenting such an unwinnable scenario? I await your judgment.

Annabella P.

may it please the court. I’m playing in a campaign with two close friends of mine. Because our party is small and consists of my witchy Tiefling sorceress and my friend’s Dwarven ranger, our DM thought it would be a good idea to start our campaign with a healing based NPC, a human cleric named Zach, already in our group, and we agreed. However, over the last year, we’ve started to wonder if this NPC is truly the ‘main character’ of our campaign. Because he’s a Cleric, he’s is the most powerful of us by far, generally gets the killing blow in our battles, and the main story elements always seem to revolve around him. However, story stuff aside, I’m not sure our DM has actually ‘cheated’ to make Zach overpowered. Clerics ARE an incredibly powerful class, and sometimes it really does come down to the rolls. I recently started DMing my own campaign for the same two friends, with them playing an Aasimar warlock and Kenku rogue. I understand the importance of having a party healer in a pair of none, but because of Zach I’m apprehensive to bring clerics within 1000 feet of my PCs. I’m wondering what the honorable justices think. Should we just be more grateful to have a powerful healer in a small party? Or is there a way to strike a balance between healer and op main character? I eagerly await your judgement.

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?

Highlanderri

May it please the court, and the no good, terrible, very bad bailiff. I was DMing a group that were working to recruit an NPC to help pilot their airship (the entire party came with characters who had absolutely no idea or skills to pilot a ship, let alone an airship despite the many times this was explained as a core mechanic of the game prior to session 1). The NPC was from one of the player's background, so I gave him the fact that the NPC is holding out hopes that his father will return, despite the common acceptance that said father had passed away at sea. In order to recruit him, the party would need to push his held beliefs and convince him to accept his father's death. The party did not do a great job investigating the manor for information to help, but the Bard was confident when they pointed out they could not roll lower than a 20 on (Cha) persuasion. The Bard was shocked when, at the end of one of three meals (their opportunities to recruit the guy) I asked for an Intelligence Persuasion check. The Bard was confused, and I explained that normal buttering-up and sweat words will not work on this NPC; you would have to logically breakdown his walls and help him come to his own realization that he needs to leave; hence the gathering information stages before each roll. The Bard was upset, and then the party proceeded to ultimately fail to recruit the guy, after ignoring or not using alot of the clues they found. Was I wrong to ask for a different stat for a roll?

Galen Graham, Local Talent

Forgive me dice christ for I have sinned!! It has been too many days since my last confession. I bring to you the sin of the overexcited DM desperate for a cool moment. I was running a home brew campaign for my friends, and was super pumped when I discovered the mechanics for an in-game chase, where players roll for things that get in the way and slow them down in trying to catch someone running through a city. I immediately planned for the players to go through this, but had completely forgotten that one of my players was a super fast monk, and I had allowed another to begin building an absolutely broken rogue/fighter halfling who, using the rules as written, could travel hundreds feet in a single round. When we got to the chase and I realized my mistake, I committed terrible sins— I fudged dice rolls and even the stat block of the villain just to squeeze out some action for the chase and prevent the players from catching him right away. My players could very clearly tell something fishy was going on behind the screen, but never said anything about it and seemed to simply do their best in the chase regardless. I of course let my players capture the evil guy in the end, but was it unforgivable for me to cheat my players of an easy win simply to try and have a movie-like chase? I’ll pray on the beads of my dice bag as I wait for divine judgement. Have mercy on my soul!

Allie Rosner

May it please the Crit, and may it lightly confound the bailiff, I present the case of Darkness versus Prone. My level 2 party was fighting a drow NPC in the module Waterdeep Dragon Heist. Our fighter had him grappled and prone, and we were steadily doing damage to him with advantage. The drow eventually cast Darkness, and our DM argued that we all had disadvantage on the roll, because we couldn't see. We argued, however, it would be a plain roll, because Darkness cancels out the advantage of prone, plus we knew he hadn't moved from our fighter's grasp. I employed my sugar glider familiar to cancel the disadvantage. Who was correct? I readily accept your punishment, for our DM or for ouselves, so help me Dice Christ.

SoupLightning

May it please the court and thoroughly satisfy Baliff Jake so much so that he doesn't think about his divorce with Jill, I am taking pebblepot DM Brian Murphy to court!  On episode 28 of Eldermourne. Jake rolled a nat 20 in order to find his old jean jacket and had in mind his own ideas of the jean jacket, but instead of honoring the nat 20 and giving the player his dream jacket he gave him a sad ill fitting jean jacket. I think Jake was slighted by Murph and should have recieved the jean jacket he desired and not a bizarre version of Murph's creation. For comparison, Brennan Lee Mulligan, on Dimension 20's Mice and Murder, changed more than a 1/3 of his story to honor Rekha Shankar's nat 20 roll to see a ghost. I feel Murph could have given Jake the jean jacket he wanted ON A NATURAL 20 ROLL and it wouldnt have affected the game only made Jake that much happier than the jacket described to him in the episode. Murph awaits your just and sensible sentencing judges.

Tarren

May it please the wise and handsome court. I’m DMing for my friends who are new to D&D. They love the role playing aspect but aren’t very interested in the game mechanics. The Bard especially can’t be bothered to the point that I need to stock their spells for them. I remind them to look up the spells before the sessions (all on dndbeyond) but they won’t. In the last session the bard used their only 4th level spell slot to cast thunderwave on a group of gnolls attacking a noble that they were sent to save. They wanted to hit all the gnolls and I warned him that they’d also hit the noble. They ended up killing the gnolls, the noble and the noble’s guards. Everyone got annoyed at the bard and the bard got really annoyed at me for not warning them enough. They also had dimension door stocked which would’ve been very handy later in the session. I don’t think I was too unreasonable DM wise but at the end of the day it’s just a game and I don’t want anyone to be genuinely annoyed. Should I have explained more emphatically? I await your swift judgment.

Steven Hoffart

Honorable justices, If it pleases the court. I started a DnD campaign for three friends who are new to Dnd. One of them, who is a plumber in real life, made a plumber character. We are 5 sessions in and he asks every NPC if they need plumbing help. I’m already out of plumber related tasks and puzzles to engage him with. I asked him if after playing a few sessions if he wants to tweak the character to something different and he has no interest to. Did I allow silly into my house of DnD by mistake and now must pay for it? Or can I force his hand to be at least a general inventor.

Squiffy13

I’ll keep this short and sweet for my beloved boisterous Bailiff. Can I shape water on holy water to coat my blade in it? To be clear this is the Holy water created by ceremony and while yes it is probably overpowered, is it legal. My DM is kinda throwing a tantrum about this move and although I will listen to his and your ruling I still would like to prove he is a knob. Thanks and Emily release Doomsday Diaries the Sequel

Donovan Brendler

May it please the court and that other guy Jake I guess, One of my players gives me a hard time when a natural 20 is rolled, since I don’t always give a lot of information. Ex. Searching a section of wall for a secret passage way when there is none And maybe telling them how old the wall is or who built it but not finding a secret passage. So I’ve started putting in more things that I haven’t planned for when natural 20’s are rolled like adding a secret passage when there really wasn’t one. This has led to a lot of fun and cool moments. But a few sessions ago someone rolled two natural 20s (w/advantage) do I have to tell them everything I know? Do I send all my players my notes? Do they automatically level up? Please help, that same play said double natural 20s should tell then way more and they were right the first time….

Anne Luca

May it please the court, and any cats nearby, My cat Wendy insists on sitting in my dice tray when I play DnD, and interferes with my rolls by attacking my dice. I know TECHNICALLY, I can lock her out of the room when I play, or use an automatic roller, but Wendy hates closed doors and I like my my math rocks. I play online, so I'm the only person at my table who has to deal with Wendy's interference. So I'm looking for a ruling on what to do Wendy interferes with my roles. Do I accept the number she creates, or do I re-roll? Or, do I do as my table suggests, and take a level of warlock with Wendy as my patron? I can provide photo evidence if the court requires.

Jake Klopfenstein

May it please the court. Recently, I ran a one-shot with my normal crew of 3 PCs but we also had a brand new to D&D player. I had them at level 5 and the night ended in a pretty quick TPK from the CR12 BBEG and his Weeping Angel minions. WITAH to the new guy?

Owen Rath

Honorable justices and sweeties of the court, may it please you: Am I a bad DM for not letting one of my players play an "evil" PC? They have a history of being a problem player and honestly, I just don't want to deal with it. He made a big deal about it during our session 0, saying things like I'm "suppressing his creative freedom." He relented after a while but I could tell he was kind of checked out. Should I feel bad about not letting him play the character he wanted to play, or am I in the right to not allow his anti-party antics to play out? I humbly await your verdict. ps. come to Cleveland, you'll love it

Hannah Cat

Benevolent, bodacious justices and the ever solid bailiff, may it pleasure the court. This is the case of bewildered DM VS a literal shit player. This story comes from the first time I ever tried my hand at DMing. The Greek-mythology inspired one shot mission boiled down to finding a small band of hunters in the forest who had been killing off weaker volunteers of the Caledonian Hunt and looting their items. The party consisted of a monk, rogue, and two druids. We were using roll20, so I used a bunch of free assets to display tents and a few piles of looted items. The rogue (as much as I hate to add to the stereotype) made the bold decision to slide straight down into the camp and spend every single round of combat looting through the piles. I narrated that anything of value was either on the bandits or sold, he was finding mostly food scraps, torn clothing, broken weapons etc. After the fight ended he was free to make one last check to loot through the final pile. He had already looked through everything else, found their food scraps so what else was left? Their shit rags. The rogue investigated the final pile of clothing to find that he had sifted through the scraps of clothing the bandits had been using to clean up after themselves. But it doesn’t stop there. In an attempt to turn things around yet again, the rogue asks if he could pick up one of the rags and surreptitiously hand it to a fellow party member. He wanted to roll Persuasion, presumably to convince his party member that the cloth was in fact not covered in poo. This was the final straw, and the mission was basically over, so I refused to let him roll, explaining through nervous laughter that nobody in their right mind would take a poop napkin from another person after watching them find said loot. My question to the court is this: at what point is it ok to just put the kibosh on the whole acting out? Patience was fully tested that night, I tried to engage the rogue as archers were shooting arrows at him the entire time (he did go down at one point, other party members were very hesitant to bring him back up). In the mission lore, the bandits had stolen goods of value, was it wrong to then have the assets out and continue narrating various miscellaneous items the rogue found as he looted? What do you do when you try to punish a player for insolence but they keep popping back like hot grease in a pan? Thank you generous judges for your time.

Gabriel Mauch

May it please the court. I come to you on behalf of my sister who plays in another campaign. She, a dwarf druid cast thorn whip on a baddy from the top of a 20 foot pit. She pulled the creature 10 feet, but the DM ruled that it wouldn't take falling damage when fell back down. Was her DM right or are they a confirmed fun hater? Fun first. Fun forever.

Nadja Nordstrom

May it please the court and the humble bailiff Jake, My low-level party were traveling through spooky forest when we were surrounded by thousands of spiders. My dm had set up a non-combat type encounter in which we had to make skill checks to flee. Our Goliath barbarian, however, was too proud to run and so we entered combat anyway. As the cleric, I ran back, saved him from being caught in webs, and made a back-story informed impassioned plea to him to live to fight another day with the rest of us. We agreed I should roll persuasion to see if my request worked. I argued to the dm I should have advantage for my roleplay, was denied, and rolled a 4. The encounter ended up being fun anyway, but Most Honorable Judges, should I have been granted advantage for saving our barbarian's life and nailing my first big roleplay moment, or was this a deserved punishment from Dice Christ?

tacticalgrandma

May it please the court- I offer the case of "How in character is too in character?" Another player in one of my games is very dedicated to doing "what my character would do." However, that often means acting in ways detrimental to the party. Recently, while charmed by the boss enemy into attacking the party, they were immobilized by an ally. The DM acted as though they would simply not act on their turn, other than making saves against the charm. However, they vociferously argued with him that they should be allowed to try to make their saves on paralysis too, and continue attacking the party. They eventually wore him down, made a save, and we barely survived the fight. They've also claimed that their character would be "too dumb" to realize they were hurting the party with AOE- but have acted strategically when it's just their life on the line. I ask the judges- should fidelity to the character always triumph? Or should considerations be made so the party can literally just live?

Morose Psych

Dear honerable Sir's, Madame's, In-between's and out-side's. My favourite party that I listen to as an audience member graciously and benevolently grants other players of this amazing and versatile game the opportunity to air their grievances over issues that arise from this game. This wonderful party assists in illuminating fault in these issues with their greater experience and holy candor under the condition that these grievance be brief. So few of these queries are as requested, what should be done about this transgression?

Jor Elare

May it please, perplex, and pique the interest of the court (and the other guy) Might I bring to you the case of the Rogue™. I run a campaign of 7 players and that gave me the inspiration to use the 7 deadly sins as in game fiendish npcs. Wrath is a warlock patron, Lust was a honeytrap that nearly caused a pc death, etc. My rogue has played her character as a cliche greedy klepto (hiding gold found from the party and such), so when they interacted with Greed, I gave her character disadvantage on a wisdom saving throw against his initial possession ability. She rolled a nat one and spent the majority of the fight unable to do anything except try to break the effect and when I explained why her character had disadvantage she was upset. Was I too harsh with my quick fingered friend?

Alex Attwell

May it please the resilient and humble bailiff Jake, The DM in our party has BANNED us from playing rogues in any of his campaigns because he says they're overpowered and impractical; specifically their Sneak Attack feat. He argues that rogues can't just 'hide' wherever and whenever because their Cunning Action allows them to with a bonus action, and that it doesn't make sense for them to duck behind a barrel in the middle of battle, gain advantage and get to do a bunch more damage. The opponent would be able to see the rogue do this and wouldn't be surprised. Myself and the other players have argued that words as written supports these actions, we'd still roll stealth checks and that it's really the only way Rogues get to do damage, but he got too heated in the argument and just banned rogues from his campaigns all together. This is super disappointing because I LOVE rogues. Is he in the right and are rogues really overpowered, or were we right to stand up and want to play a cool class? May the Supreme Crit find justice for this quarrel.

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?

Ursa

May it Please The Court: I present the case of Rogue v DM! Several years ago during my group's very first campaign, there was a combat encounter we had with some vampires. Our rogue had been grappled by one of them, and got hit with a bite attack that would have dropped him to zero. I chimed in that he can use uncanny dodge if he still had his reaction, and he did. This sparked a 30 minute argument between the DM and the rogue, because the DM said that if he was grappled, how could he have dodged? The rogue argued that the feature didn't specify, so he should be able to use it. Who is right?

Chelsey

May it please the high court and honorable bailiff. My character Trash Panda was raised by raccoons and finds most of her items in the trash. I asked if she could have a defective bag of holding. The bag is connected to every bag of holding so what I pull out comes out of someone else's bag. If I put something in it goes into someone else's bag or has a 10% chance of going to the astral plane. My husband our DM said yes and made a list of things she can pull out. He used to let me have 4 pulls a day from the bag but has since changed it to 2 saying it takes to long. I asked if I could have 3 pulls as a compromise and he said no. No one has complained and our friends love it, should I be allowed 3 pulls instead of 2?

Kevin Crist

If you use this, please just call me Kevin, from south central Pennsylvania. May it please the downtrodden yet unbroken hero of the legal system, the honorable Bailiff Jake; the beautiful and kind Justice Axford; the handsome and fair Justice Tanner; and He Who Is Unloved By Dice Christ, "Brian" : A number of years ago some friends and I were playing a fairly chaotic campaign, and were (admittedly) freshly out of the murder hobo phase that often befalls young D&D groups. I mention this because our DM still had a tendency to punish us severely for slight mistakes, as he was used to doing it to us back when we deserved it. At this point in our campaign, we were aboard the lead airship of a rival kingdom that was seeking to destroy our home kingdom. This airship had the majority of the heavy weaponry and most of the military leadership aboard. Our goal was simple: do not let this airship reach its target. As you might imagine, this took many real life months of work to uncover this plot and to figure out how to sabotage the plan, all with very good, un-shenanigan-y sessions. We were behaving. Our crew was myself, an Air Genasi Eldritch Knight, our Elven Paladin, a Gnomish Rogue, and a Human Druid. Rogue and Druid had infiltrated the engine room because they were capable of doing so, while Paladin and I were making ourselves busy trying to secure an escape boat. The plan was simple. Druid goes elephant mode to wreak havoc, then they would rendezvous with us to escape via sneaky shenanigans. We were thorough in our planning and had a number of contingencies set up. The issue begins with the Druid critting back to back to cause damage to the engine. Apparently, he had caused too much damage to quickly. Simultaneously as that happened, me and Paladin were fighting above decks (due to poorly rolled persuasion checks), and through a series of bad luck, he was shoved off the back of the airship, so I immediately jumped off after him. During our fall, we had cut back to the Druid and Rogue, and they had successfully escaped by polymorphing the rogue into a mouse and the Druid wildshaped into an eagle to fly off, but they couldn't catch up to us. At this time it's important to note: my DM and I had homebrewed that my Air Genasi had a ring as a boon from my parentage that gave me the flight rules of an Aarakocra for a total time of ten minutes per day, in lieu of getting the levitate spell. My DM ruled I could burn half my to fly time to quickly catch up to our heavily armored Paladin, and left my ability to help him in any way to the dice rolls. I said I would wait til we were getting dangerously close to the ground, and burn the remaining amount of my fly time to slow our combined fall in the hope of getting a feather-fall like effect. I crit, and we tumbled to the ground taking minimal damage as the trade off. We were told to both roll a perception check, and we both rolled ones. At this point, he dropped the airship on our heads and killed the Paladin and I. My plea is this. Was it not nuts to drop a freaking airship on our heads after all the stuff we went through successfully, considering we fell off the back of the airship, and surely the momentum of the airship would have carried further away from us, simply because the Druid had caused "too much damage too quickly"? It felt like we were punished for being successful.

Branson White

To the 3 Regal god-emporers and the lowly serf, I bring to you a case of whispers and discontent. I am usually the forever DM but one of my players graciously took up the mantle of DM for our newest game. Everyone was very happy with that world and characters and the game seemed like it was going to be a blast. But then, dungeon-mania. The DM became lazy, stealing dungeons online and throwing them on the screen forcing us to act like we couldn’t see the exits and, for his sake, going into every room on the map. Then came the fighting, where the DM constantly changed HP, saving DCs, and damage dice in order to make poorly planned combats for faster. And lastly, the story began to falter as it was clear this DM had given up. The worst part of this last piece is that he was leaving no room for roleplay as it was, and now the story wasn’t helping us either. Of course, the players (me included) whispered in the night of his failings and prayed that he would learn from his mistakes at the table. But alas, he has not. My question to you is such, do I confront the DM and let them know that we want time to roleplay and to stop doing dungeons? He may be sensitive to the criticism, especially from me as the last DM. thank you graciously, I await and accept your almighty judgement.

Caleb Treaster

I think that what you're describing is a very common experience among beginner DM's, and the way you're handling it is a step in the right direction. I've only DMed a handful of times but I've thought a lot about the same subject, and as I think about your case I think that planning secret COMPARTMENTS with some pre planned treasures could be a good reward that doesn't make your session go too far in a direction you weren't prepared for. On a Nat 20 you dont always have to give the players what they're searching for specifically, but you can narrate them finding something unintentionally that reveals something about their environment, like how many people are occupying the dungeon or clues to the weakness of a stronger enemy they haven't encountered that would be just as valuable as finding an entire secret passage. Hope this is helpful!

Logan Henning

May it please the court, the bailiff and judges equally. In a game I was hosting one of the my players ended up dying after a long hard fought battle. Taking inspiration from NADPOD I decided to offer him the chance to bring his character back to life but randomly kinda like Hardwon. He declined and said that he rather start a new character and told the rest of the players not to worry about it. Here is where the trouble happened. Later on I had them fighting a necromancy cult in a city close to where his first character died so I thought it would be interesting to have his fighter be the champion of the cult after being raised from the dead by them. The player for very upset and didn’t come back during the next session. A week later he contacts me and says that I should have asked his permission to do that to his character. I argued that he said he didn’t want to bring his character back to life and let it die so now it was part of the world making it under my control. While I understand where he is coming from it also feels very unfair as he didn’t want to play that character anymore. Did I over step my boundaries as a DM by doing that or should have I asked his permission first and risk losing all the surprise? Your wisdom would be much appreciated.

Alex Attwell

May it please the court, bailiff and mostly the beautiful and charming Justice Axford, My party and I are currently playing through the Icewind Dale campaign. My character is a arctic foxfolk (we're using Tabaxi stats) that was raised by yeti's in the wilderness. Since I was "kicked out" by my parents, I had joined a party and we started completing quests in the area. One of the quests brought us to an encounter with a yeti and her tyke, where my character got excited to see others of my 'kind' and ran to go introduce myself and play with them. Our DM stated I frightened them and started initiative. I argued I wanted to talk to them (since I did give up all my other languages aside from Common in character creation to know Yeti, through DM's discretion), and he said no, that they were too scared and wouldn't reason with me. I didn't even get a chance to roll a persuasion check or anything of the like. Was I wronged and my characters heritage unhonoured or was the DM right? I was so upset as it was our first Yeti encounter in the campaign and my character is so heavily intertwined with them. Please bring justice to our table, oh mighty Supreme Crit. 🙇🏼‍♀️

Beav

A MODIFIED DICE DILEMMA Forgive me justices, for i may have sinned. I know there is no separation of church and state in this court, so i lay before you a potential transgression. I am conflicted regarding a bbeg I’ve designed for a homebrew campaign that takes place in a magical New York City in the 1920’s. The ultimate villain is a mastermind halfling gangster by the name of “Lucky La Flora” who has trapped the god of luck in a gem and constantly siphons their power. In addition to several other feats and abilities, I had originally decided to represent this aspect of “godlike luck” by making all of his rolls with a modified d20. It is not weighted but does not contain a 1 or a 2 and instead has two 19’s and two 20’s on it. However, my conscious is beginning to eat at me as my players draw closer to the final battle. So your Honors, i ask you: Am i spitting in the face of dice christ if i chose to roll with this powerful d20 or is this, in fact, a rad mechanic? Please guide me in this moral quandary.

Jerrid M

May it please the court and displease all the haters, I bring you the case of the “Always the DM, never a Player!” As the first of my friends to get into DND (thanks to NADPOD!), I Became the DM. Since then I have NEVER been a player and always a DM. Am I doing a disservice to my players by DMing without the knowledge of what it’s like to be a player? Thanks for the addiction! Walls up!

Scott

May it pease the court and my mancrush the honourable bailiff, Jake. I come before you only half a man. A dm that has committed a heinous crime in the name of my future story lines. I dm a very casual group and am a novice dm myself. My players know that and just want to have fun while we play. To keep the fun going I created a healbot dmpc (a dwarven cleric named Stumbles Firmfoot). During a particularly intense fight with falling debris a character fell unconscious and got hit by falling rocks while down. Everyone was too far away to use a potion and Stumbles was out of spell slots. He failed his final death save and was done. My player put a lot of himself into this character and I had planned big things for him so I brought him back saying Stumbles prayed deeply to his god granting him an extra spell slot to revivify him. We all knew it was bullshit but everyone was just happy to keep playing. I feel like I took away from the game in that moment and must make it up by sacrificing my dmpc. Hopefully the enlightened court has some wisdom for how I can atone.

Dave 3D Art

May it please the courts, and the honorable bailiff. I quit an in-store campaign as a player because potions only came in the form of enemas in his setting. Was I right to consider that a deal-breaker or are healing enemas an acceptable surprise to come up in a pirate campaign without warning? I paid money for this. Thank you very much for your insight.

Jen Barnes

Highest Judges in the Realm and of course Bailiff Jake: May it please the court. I have only ever been able to play via virtual table tops, as i just started this year. I have been a Forever DM for many months but i recently was able to join in a campaign with strangers online. The issue, with playing with VTT you must have good internet. Usually we do, but during this game i had some lag. I rolled a 4 on an attempt to hit a Manticore and of course ot failed, which i knew before he said anything, and as i was begining to say i wanted to use my inspiration the DM said that my attack didnt hit and then said that i should have said i wanted to use inspo before i knew the result. I am here standing before the mercy of the court, as a DM myself i would have allowed the inspiration use, but i am not sure this DM factored in lag. And just as an added measure I will not that when i left the campaign for personal reasons the DM attempted to flirt with me in his sendoff message, thank you wise judges and wonderful reader of cases Bailiff Jake.

Zoe the Smallest

May it please the court, and the diligent and hard-working bailiff. I am a bystander player to a situation between two other players and the DM. For some context one player is the other player's son in-game so I'll refer to them as Son and Dad. The Dad character is deliberately over-bearing of his Son, who became a pirate so he wouldn't have to take over his father's monarchy. Anyway, we were in a house waiting to be taken to a castle, so began exploring. We entered the kitchen, and it was filled with tins of soup. Son decided to pick up a tin of soup, a ghost appeared and attacked us in response, we defeated the ghost, and Son kept hold of the tin of soup. Dad decided to "protect" Son from the soup by taking the tin of soup, and for some reason, Son got extremely mad about this. They did opposed strength checks, Dad won and Son tried to argue it should have been dexterity or some other skill check, but the DM and Dad said strength made the most sense. Son, both in-game and irl, sulked by locking their character in a bedroom, not speaking to anyone until the DM furthered the plot. Who do you guys think was in the right, and was Son right to sulk about the decision that was made?

Nicholas Strange

Historically accurate Flaming Sword May it bring unparalleled pleasure to the court and to the generous (and may I also say, handsome? Did you do something different with your hair today?) Baliff: Recently our party’s minis suffered a TPK (total party Kitten) courtesy of the DM’s cat (who shall remain blameless), and all were broken in some way. We decided to make new minis and I gave mine a flaming sword because A) it looks sick, and B) the flames made the sword stronger and less likely to be broken by cats.The only problem is my character doesn’t have a flaming sword and the DM said as much when they saw it, and said I would need to figure out an in-game way to get one. I play an artificer and love coming up with unconventional ways to “cast” spells and make items, but due to my previous shenanigans and schematics the DM has ruled I have come up with a historically accurate way to get one. In real life phosphorus was discovered in 1669 by a German alchemist who thought he had discovered the philosopher’s stone but had actually discovered phosphorus using comparable tools to what my character has access to. Phosphorous + sword = all manner of flaming and explosive possibilities for my alchemical prodigy. Problem is that the German Alchemist made his discovery by collecting and fermenting human urine. My DM found this out and said I could keep the mini and sword but would have to convince my party / NPCs to pee into an alchemy jug to get enough to make it work. I mean a LOT of pee. Just. . . So much.. I want my sword and mini as is (I already painted it and everything) but having to roleplay soliciting piss is less than ideal. There are already enough table jokes about my inventions as is. Please advise.

Tyler W.

May it please the court and venerable bailiff: I present the case of the encouraging DM turned difficult player. After getting into a handful of D&D podcasts, I decided that I would like to try playing myself. Luckily, I have a friend who DM’s and he was very encouraging when it came to getting me to play. he helped me and a few friends to make characters, and ran a fairly simple one shot for us. After that I decided that I would like to try MY hand at DMing; my DM friend seemed excited to play as a PC, but was absolutely relentless in telling me that it was very very difficult to be a DM, and that you had to be prepared for players to go off the rails constantly. I wasn’t too worried about this, and I started preparing for the session I was going to DM. So when the day came, I had him and a couple other players meet up in a small town where there was an NPC with a handful of help wanted fliers frantically trying to get the attention of anyone who would be willing to help him for a reward. Everyone wanted to talk to him, as it was obvious that he was the one that was going to get the story rolling. Everyone except DM friend. He went out of his way to do everything in his power to ignore my quest giver, absolutely grilling me about what other things were in the town, looking for everything from taverns, to casinos, flagging down random people in the street and trying to get deep backstories out of them, even at one point trying to turn the entire group away from the town completely much to everyone’s protest, as everyone knew this NPC was intended to get the session going. When I finally got him to talk to my NPC, he took the stack of help wanted fliers from him, and explained how he wanted to meticulously fold each one into a paper airplane, and stand there throwing them at my NPC’s face. After this first session (which ended much sooner than I intended, because we wasted so much time in town) my other friends didn’t want to play anymore. Honorable judges, I ask: did I underestimate how much I needed to prepare for, or was my friend simply trying to turn me off from being a DM by deliberately avoiding playing the game I had planned for them?

Sseajay

May it please the court, the almighty justices and regular bailiff (I love you Jake sorry) I bring you a dilemma of interpersonal communication. We had been playing a semi-regular online campaign run by our friend for a few months. We all signalled in the group chat if we were available during the week to see if the planned session would go ahead. One week when our DM asked who was available no one replied to confirm, and when the time came for the session he sat in discord for a full hour before realising none of us were available. Realising our mistake we all apologized to him for wasting his time and he accepted. However he has refused to plan a session since despite us asking if he could as we are keen to play again. This was 7 months ago. We see each other regularly and this is a regular point of contention, please might justices, help us settle this debate as to who is more wrong.

SpoiledMilque

May it please the honorable crit judges and the insightful bailiff (Todah, my friend). I DM for a party of three in a homebrew game, where I have a Wild Magic barbarian, a college of Eloquence Bard, and a Wildfire Druid. In one of our earlier sessions, I mentioned that they were surrounded by dry, tall grass as they approached a combat scenario with some bandits. The wildfire druid used her class ability to summon her wildfire spirit with this text: (Each creature within 10 feet of the spirit (other than you) when it appears must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw against your spell save DC or take 2d6 fire damage) so I had her roll a dc 10 luck check. She failed, and the grass started to burn every round, like a lair action. It was almost the death of our barbarian who tried to put it out with his body. No spells including water were prepared as well. The next session the same thing happened, even with my warning of tall grass and hints towards a path where that may not happen. At the end of the combat, I had a small rain cloud come by and put out the fire, since the temperature difference may cause some rain. All in all, was I being too harsh in this situation, or were my players asking for a large bonfire?

Joshua Robinson

Honorable justices and bailiff of the crit. I present to the court the case of the Bless spell vs. Turning Lewks. During our current campaign our adventurers stumbled upon an underground ball (for the straights, think legendary on HBO not Cinderella). Needless to say we simply had to compete. Our incredible DM designed mechanics for us to use a series of skill checks in order to earn scores from the judges. I, as the party’s cleric, cast bless on us in hopes of boosting our scores, but our DM noted that bless only worked on Attack rolls and saving throws, and that guidance would be required for the ability checks, I argued that if turning lewks and throwing shade ain’t an attack…I don’t know what is. Honorable justices I leave it to you, are cutting words and pointed side-eye and attack, or an ability. PS I am so excited that you have decided to reopen live viewing sessions of the justices at work in New York, I look forward to beholding the the serving of justice live and in person.

Bulbarat

May it please the honarable Judges Murphy, Axford, and Tanner and the peasant baliff Jake. I was a playing a Centaur Barbarian named Steinhoof in Out of the Abyss. My character was very combative and was always ready to fight at any moment. There was an NPC that liked to make bets, and the DM used this NPC to make a bet with Steinhoof that he wouldn't push a guard off the cliff. Being the character I was playing, I knew I couldn't refuse, as it would be metagaming to go against my character for stratagy. We got into combat and when people started dying, everyone was angry l actually took the bet. They said I should have just used my head as a player instead of correctly roleplaying my character. Would it have been metagaming to break from Steinhoof's character? Should I have ignored the way I knew he would react for the sake of strategy?

Emmanuel Trammell

May it please the crit and the honorable bailiff Jake, this is the case of the DM vs Magic item Retconning. The DM gave my rogue a dagger that has 5 charges and on a hit I may expend 1 to mark a target and for the next minute I can teleport to that target as a bonus action and on the first hit from teleporting I get advantage. Fast forward to our BBEG fight I mark him, but save my teleport for the right moment. I go down and the party is trapped by a wall of force as BBEG escapes, cleric brings me up and I teleport to attack. I get a crit with advantage and players cheer, but DM says I wouldn't get advantage because the BBEG was aware of me and I argue that feature isn't mentioned in the item description and he says he meant to add it. I miss my crit and BBEG escapes. Should he be punished for retconning the items ability at the last minute or is the DM allowed to augment the ability of weapons he's made?

Dina

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and Lord Bailiff Jake, May it please the Court, first I want to take a brief moment (and feel free to skip this first part in the recording if it's too long and go straight to the question) to let you know that I am an interior designer, and my area of focus is Civics and Justice projects - that means I'm designing both the courthouses and the jails. Currently, I'm working on a courthouse where the bench seats not only the Judge and the Clerk, but the Bailiff as well. Just wanted to let everyone know that the Bailiff is responsible for courtroom security, escorting detainees into the courtroom, managing the jury, and protecting the judge against security threats. I have a lot more to say about bench design and how a D20 could be the Court Seal on the feature wall behind the bench, but I promised to be brief. I do actually have a case to put forth. My childhood friend and I are in a campaign being DMed by my fiance who has played all versions of D&D from 1e to 5e. Having forged his D&D skills from a young age on the impossible standards of 1e, he is miffed at how much easier PCs have it in 5e, and he takes every chance he can get to make combat more difficult. In our current campaign, my friend plays Siobhan, a level 4 Halfling Ranger with the Colossus Slayer feature. We were fighting 3 goblins in a room of a castle, and Siobhan rolled a Nat 20 on her attack on an already injured goblin. She rolled 24 damage on the attack, which I presumed would obliterate that goblin, and I lobbied to be able to apply the cleave rule so the Nat20 and all that damage would not go to waste. As I said, my fiance prefers the raw grit and challenge of 1e, and opted not to apply it. The best defense I could come up with was, "Well, NADDPOD does it!" My question is this: is the cleave rule an official D&D rule, or is it more of a "house rules" type thing? Was Siobhan robbed of the satisfaction of seeing her crossbow bolt pierce through 3 goblins at once? Thank you all for hearing our case, and I await your ruling. Dina Kanawati P.S. My fiance and all his Long Island friends play this wrestling RPG that one of them managed to find somehow. If you're interesting in trying it out, I can find out what it's called and share the info.

garett144

May it please the court and especially Caldwell for I have committed some Looney Toons shenanigans. In my friends campaign we had a guest player who instead of rolling a character sheet for the session just used a statblock for a clay golem. So the party and the golem were fighting a giant purple worm when an attack does something screwy to our golem player. Out of nowhere the golem gets angry and starts attacking the party too. I ask to do an insight check to see what happened with our golem buddy. Rolling a 22 the only info the DM gives me is......He just looks really angry....now in hindsight yes this is a clue that he is suffering an enrage mechanic, but my Looney Toon brain, a little annoyed that thats what a 22 got me, hung up on the words "looks angry". So being a rune knight with double tool proficiency decided to hold down the clay golem player and carve his face to be a smile instead. This obviously didn't work. So I ask the court, was my interpretation of "He just looks angry" justified in turning the golem into the joker, or should I be punished for the shenanigans. Was that info for a 22 insight justified or should the DM have thrown us a bone? I feel like I was a bit salty. PS we ultimately all had a blast about the session and laugh at it in hindsight so there is no hard feelings.

Figgy the Cat

If it pleases the highest of justices but even more so the lowest yet handsome bailiff. I bring forth the case of the battling best friends. Our DM was a first time dm but long time player who had a quest that was to just sit around as 2 kids in a trench coat scared an old man. My character being a bounty hunter killed them. The rest of the party including my best friend wanted to kill me for it, but didn't want to have me roll another character. The tides of the campaign changed from playing her game to thinking of the best time to kill my character. Was it right of me to kill those kids and steer the party away from her game? She rolled with it and at the end my best friend and I battled to the death after killing the bbeg. I feel like it added a much needed layer of darkness and connected the characters more, or was I being selfish?

Max Piper

To the Crit justices and the pulpit of Dice Christ, I prostrate myself before you with a confession. In the first campaign I was in many years ago, I fudged a roll. We had been running the campaign for a long while, and our DM brought in a friend as a guest PC. Our session involved all of us chipping in to fortify our home and village from an attack from the BBEG. The guest kept a sour attitude, and it reached a peak when they told me out of character to “go make myself useful”. I was really hurt, and in response, I gave myself advantage on a roll when I didn’t have it, and got a nat 20 to set up defenses that ended up being critically helpful in the fight. I ask if the church and of the state: am I forgiven in your eyes for this crime of passion, or do I accept my damned fate for having committed a cardinal sin?

kevlar basin

Your honorable judges and wonderful bailiff I present to you my case. So my friend keeps showing up with characters that have ten to twenty more hitpoints than the rest. Hes aware that its because the app he uses is kinda messed up but he refuses to roll his own hp. How do we tell him he needs to use physical dice to roll his hp?

Ben Kloosterhouse

To the honorable judges and the lowly bailiff. The DM for our group has modified the rules regarding recharges on magical items. He states that an item no longer has recharges. It simply has the original charges and when those run out, the item reduces to dust. For example, my Wand of Wonder has 7 charges to begin with and should be recharged 1d6+1 at every dawn but according to his rule it is 7 uses and then is no longer usable. Would you deem this fair? Or should the DM not try to fix something that isn’t broken?

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.

Francesca Ely-Spence

May it please the court, especially sweet baby bailiff Jake — I was in a campaign where we had the option to worship the gods of theros. My character was a follower of Nylea, the goddess of the hunt who specifically does NOT like sacrifices in her name (Melora vibes). Another player decided quite suddenly, after switching gods a couple times, to join me as a nylean worshipper. A couple sessions later, we were in a dungeon and found dozens of people trapped in cages. My character tried to free them and, to her horror, they all died as soon as she opened the cage door. The other character made direct eye contact with mine and then opened the other cage, killing everyone inside. Another party member, shocked, immediately shot him in the head and killed him. The murderous party member later claimed that he had done it as a sacrifice to Nylea, even though we had explained previously that she hates that, and he remained pissed that we had killed his first character for the rest of our ultimately short-lived campaign. The query: were we wrong to kill this character when he had deliberately done something so heinous?

Andrew Hansen

May it please the Crit Justices and the bailiff who's wallets are dope. I am a forever DM who's been gifted the honor of being a player. This dark campaign has been going on for 2 years (which is so rare) and I usually enjoy it. I say usually because our DM has an infuriating way of "cut scening" our major character moments. He subjects us to his take on our characters and bristles when we attempt inject ourselves into our own story. Its bad enough that other players have left over it and friendships have been lost.. I spoke with him and his reply was "if people aren't having fun they don't have to play". This is obviously not the best dm practice but it begs a decision which I lay respectfully before the court. Is a long campaign that is 50% enjoyable and 50% infuriating better than no d&d at all? Am I being picking when I find myself not enjoying the game and is being a player for once worth the struggle? My character sheet sits near the shredder hoping for reprieve. We both await the courts decision.

Figgy the Cat

I would like to thank yall for these cases. This is one of my favorite part of the month hearing these funny weird scenarios in everyone's campaigns. Thank you NADPOD for always doing court cases!!

Stuart Everett

May it please the all-knowing Supreme Crit Justices Axford, Caldwell, and Murphy & pique the interest of the wisest baliff in the land: I write to seek your ruling on the case of Pumpkin Kegbottom (a 4th level drunken monk halfling) versus the assassin’s poisoned crossbow bolt. Pumpkin and his crew were ambushed on the streets of Waterdeep by an assassin who took down the party’s bard/healer with one shot in the surprise round of the encounter. The assassin used a hide action to evade the party for a round before being revealed by the artificer’s Faerie Fire. Pumpkin boldly charged toward the deadly opponent who shot him a poisoned crossbow bolt (23 to hit). Pumpkin said he would use “deflect missile” and our zoom-session table cheered! It seemed like a great move because the bard situation clearly indicated these were deadly. Things went pear shaped when I (the DM) asked Pumpkin to read me the mechanics of deflect missile. He replied with “go ahead and give me the damage first, then I’ll tell you how it works.” I felt a bit miffed/disrespected but went ahead and rolled the damage. “The assassin hits 4 piercing and 22 poison damage.” Pumpkin says “Hold on, hold on – what’s the damage from the arrow and what’s from the poison? Because if the arrow doesn’t hit, the poison doesn’t’ hit.” I, once again, asked “how does deflect missile work?” He finally read it – “you can use your reaction to deflect or catch the missile when you are hit by a ranged weapon attack. When you do so, the damage you take from the attack is reduced by 1 d10+8. If you reduce the damage to 0 and have a free hand, you can spend 1 ki point to make a ranged attack (as with a monk weapon).” He then proceeded to explain “I’ve already caught this arrow, it didn’t hit me. I caught it out of the air.” I countered that it did actually hit and did 26 points of damage that he could reduce with his deflect missile reaction…. He insisted that this skill allowed him to catch the bolt out of the air without being hit and began to argue that my interpretation would mean he gets hit, then rips the bolt or arrow out of his body and throws it back and dug his feet in with “that is B.S.! That is not how this works!” My question for the justices are twofold: Firstly - Was I in the wrong here? I was excited along with the rest of the table at the timely use of deflect missiles but I felt disrespected by Pumpkin telling me to roll before he would read me the mechanics of the skill, and then him telling me how things worked and that my interpretation was B.S. Was I being unfairly harsh to Pumpkin because of the perceived disrespect? Secondly - How would the court, in their eminent wisdom have handled this situation? May the blessings of the Dice Christ protect you all from sneaky poisoned bolt assassins!

Alex Cooper

Most esteemed judges and simple Jake, my older brother has wronged me and I seek justice. I’m playin a reborn “Frankenstein type” echo Knight fighter. Along with my sick backstory where my pieced together body are the remains of a TPK, I escaped from the facility where I was created by ripping the chains from the wall I was bound to. I wanted to home brew my weapon to be a ball and chain weapon. Using the chain still attached to my wrist that now had a clump of wall at the end of it. My brother (DM) and I agreed to use Glaive stats with bludgeoning damage. Every time I’ve attacked I described my character hurling, swinging and yes, throwing!!! The rock at enemies with my 10 feet of range. At level 2 our Artificer offered one of his infusion to me and I was incredibly excited to use the Returning Weapon Infusion. I even asked my brother if I could use this before the next session. He did not reply. When it was time to level up, the artificer and I described how we added collapsible links to my chain to give it 50 more feet of reach and reinforcing the rock to add my +1. It was then when my brother read the description of the infusion. The infused weapon required the Thrown property. I pleaded my case that it was a thrown weapon but he was adamant that it remained a Glaive in all aspects but flavor and damage type adding that ranged weapons are far weaker than my D10 and it would be OP. I had to settle for a simple +1 weapon and was told to be happy about it. For the rest of the session I was inconsolable. Robbed of a truly awesome combination of story, character, player and mechanical collaboration. Was my brother wrong for this deliberate betrayal of the rule of cool or am I being a little bitch?

cx

I come not with a case but a confession for a pre-meditated crime. My housemate's boyfriend has started playing dnd with us during the pandemic, and he's very keen and really throws himself into each session, both the long campaign and our seasonal/celebratory oneshots. Now, an important piece of context. Every game we have ever played, campaign or oneshot, he has played an aarakocra rogue who insists on flying in every combat regardless of whether we are in a confined indoor space or not. The one time our DM had specific races in the oneshot for plot reasons, he argued to get an aarakoocra regardless. He has had to be forcibly shouted down from suggesting or implementing torture techniques because "you can't trust goblins". All of his characters pronounce their name the exact same, whether he has chosen to spell it Dook, Duhk, Duk, Doohk, you get the general idea. They also have all started to have the same bright valley girl accent (we are extremely from London, he cannot pull this off). Our standard DM wanted to be a PC for a change, so for his bday we're doing a oneshot, and this bf offered to DM it. It'll be his first time DMing, and he's been taking it very seriously, and doing lots of research. This is, obviously, a very nice gesture, and I know I should encourage him as a new DM and as a friend. Instead, I convinced him to let us all be level 5, and then spent the next two weeks researching the most game-breaking min/max PCs out there. I am debating trying to persuade everyone to play aarakocra. I write, to seek confession for my misdeeds from dice christ, or perhaps an intervention before it's too late. I know that traditionally you confess after the fact, but confessing for a pre-meditated crime seems like it should be an option nonetheless.

BenMightSmite

Maybe it please the court and bring the bailiff over the edge. I present to you the case of artificer concentration. I have a traveling cursed shop in game run by a friendly mind flayed named dugrass everything in his store is cursed from a doll that’ll switch bodies with you to a flaming plus 3 sword that’s actually just illusionary cardboard so the players know to be careful but after some nice buying dugrass offered them the deck of many things now all my players are new and I described it to them as a fun card game as a game of chance the only person who knew what it was,was my brother (whos very shy but also showed me y’all so shoutout) but one person drew 5 cards and another threw 3 long story short the artificer on her last card drew the void card. Here’s where it gets tricky should all of her tinkering she cast on the party end? She’s in a gem on another plane after all. I’m awaiting your sentence

Ethan Skinner

If it may please the the most esteemed judges and the most honourable bailiff. One of my fellow players in my campaign was frustrated when the rest of the party decided we shouldn’t be fighting a Kraken at level 8. Our DM was introducing both myself and said friend - from now on to be referred to as Brad - into the campaign as we had joined an existing session. They had us cross paths with the rest of the party on ships, and then be attacked by this Kraken encourage us to group together. Our group quickly started planning ways out of this. Myself being playing a level 8 half orc Bard named Bonk, and Brad playing a Tiefling Swashbuckling Rogue/Gunslinger named Rook, we did not have a ton to offer in fighting back against the beast, so our group decided to run. After a few rounds of our boat and our ship taking damage, I managed to polymorph the Kraken, turning it into a very large, but otherwise harmless seagull. As we started to make our escape, a frustrated Brad insisted on shooting his pistol to kill the bird, even making contested rolls vs the party to do so. The Kraken returns to the fight and again I successfully polymorph it. Once again Brad tries to shoot and kill the Kraken’s polymorphed form, now a very large tuna. He again gets away with it from the party. Our Warlock then banished the Kraken, as I was out of 4th level spells to try and polymorph it agin. Brad then tried to attack our Warlock, trying to break his concentration to bring the Kraken back. This time our DM intervened, and we successfully escaped. For the rest of that session, and a few days afterwards, Brad was visibly upset and was considering quitting the group as we didn’t want to try fighting a very difficult encounter and risk losing a PC during the introduction of us new members. Were we in the wrong not letting him fight the Kraken? Or could should we have tried to take on this creature way above what we could handle? We await your judgment.

Patrick Schiller

May it please the crit and the lovable scamp known as bailiff Jake… the case of the publicly shamed player I DM an online game with some friends and my players were recently ambushed in the forest on their way to meet a Pegasus oracle. Player A, the cleric, went down early and was not too happy about it. Player B, a Druid, was next. She took a long time with her turn, the Cleric was visibly irritated with that (because he wanted to be healed) and rudely started trying to tell her what to do. I just put a timer on and told her she only had 1 minute to decide her move. She did make a point not to heal the cleric because he was being an ass, but after that combat was smooth sailing. I thought everything was fine but at the end of the game, when we discuss what we liked and what could have been better about the session, the Druid brought up how she didn’t like “some people” being pushy and bossy during combat. As the DM I decided to hash it out right there and called out the cleric for being kind of an asshole. He’s showed this behavior before with my wife when we played a one shot. I thought it’d be best to air this dirty laundry as a group even if it was a little uncomfortable. I did make them say one nice thing about each other at the end to try and ease the tension. Me and the Cleric hung out later that night and he still seemed peeved and a little embarrassed. Was I right to publicly call out his poor table behavior in hopes of shaming him into being a better teammate, or should I have talked to him one on one to be more attentive to his feelings and save him some embarrassment? ( I did get very drunk and told him I was sorry if I embarrassed him and we hugged it out so it is all good now )

Evan Spears

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

Matthew McDowell

May it please the crit and the tacky wanker bailiff Jake. Im playing in a Star Wars 5e campaign where i have the more experience with ttrpgs than my other players. The DM likes to use a mechanic i believe from an older edition where if we drop below negative con score hit points we totally die, and we simply don't do death saves. I didn't like this rule because when we reach higher levels and enemies are dealing upwards of 30 damage we are for sure going to die no question. Well my character made it to level 3 when we encountered the bbeg for the first time. We were obviously supposed to run but, my character needed to cast sanctuary on a teammate to free them from being choked. So the sith had to attack me instead, crit and i died in one round at full health. Im not annoyed that i died because sanctuary says they must attack someone else. I am annoyed at the rule that does not fit with the rest of the game. Are there better ways of increasing steaks around death. I leave this to the honorable servants of dice christ, and except any punishment if im being a whiny little toad.

Jeff T

May it please the court. I lay before you the case of the buttholed blade. I DM a game for a party consisting of a druid, rogue, fighter, and barbarian. Recently the party leveled up to level 5 meaning that between multiattack and sneak attack damage the druid quickly falls behind in combat if they're low on spell slots. Because my druid player's backstory involves them studying under a master botanist I allowed them to use some of their time in camp during long rests to forage for toxic plants and to brew a poison they can apply to their scimitar. It's been a great chance for the player to develope a niche and the poison is limited to 1d6 charges that add an extra 1d4 poison damage to their melee attacks which expire at the end of the adventuring day. The problem began when the rogue asked the druid to share some of their poison which the druid didn't want to do since they can't produce very much. The rogue stood up from the campfire, dropped his pants and defecated on the ground. He then smeared his rapier through the poop and insisted this should have a similar effect. I protested but they went on to argue that this was a historically accurate technique that had been used to poison enemies on the battle field. The Druid was very quiet through all of this but the fighter and barbarian got behind it right away and joined in on the poo smearing. We ended the session shortly after but now 3 of the party have scabbards full of feces and are attacking a bandit fort next session. I don't want my druid to lose out on their specialty that they enjoy roleplaying so much. Would I be a bad DM if I had this backfire on my martials causing them to get sick/poisoned for marching around carrying shit covered accessories? I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Jonathan H.

May it please the honorable court and some guy named Jack? Jeff? I think? I dunno. I present the case of the liquid loot. As a new DM, I run a game with a couple of friends who are, for the most part, new to DND and all new to 5e. Wanting to keep things simple for first timers, I bypassed a lot of mechanics like gold, encumbrance, ammunition. However, most of my players think video games and expect loot around every corner. At first, I homebrewed a couple of, what I thought were cool magic items (e.g. a ring that quicken spells, a collar that can wild shape a pet, a drone that mirrors cantrips and holds concentration on spells, etc.). We’re now 20 or so sessions in and, unfortunately, none of these are used and they are all replaced by more common passive attribute or resistance items. This kind of makes sense as my players don’t really seem to take the time with their character sheets and often forget even basic class abilities (I have to remind the bard of bardic inspiration almost every turn). Seeing this, I started to move my loot to just a bunch of potions with various effects and other basic magic items which also go unused. No one seems to mind so far. Did I give up on my players too fast or am I right to just cut corners where I can in my prep?

David Moelker

If it may please the Bailiff and if the Judges are there to rule. I present, Zeus vs our table We were playing D and D on a rainy night at my friend's house and we were nearing the end fight of our campaign. The DM set the scene using the environment around our actual table by saying that it was raining. As I was giving my speech to the BBEG we saw a blinding flash if light outside and our eardrums blew as lightning apparently struck a tree a little outside his house. We paused the game but since we couldn't do much about the fallen tree that night in the storm we went back to roleplaying the DM then said that lightning struck our party and told us to roll initiative as one player instantly went down from the strike. We all protested but he simply said "take your damage, my tree is gone". We then proceeded to get whomped and ended the night losing our characters of 3 years. On top of it all my characters final speech was cut short. Was the DM right to play God? And also, for the record, he told us that it was a random lightning strike not a spell of any kind...

Porfo

Most honorable Crit Justices and fair, noble Bailiff, I lay myself at the mercy of the Crit. Over the course of a two-year campaign, I semi-unintentionally tortured my DM with my roleplay choices. The DM in question was my brother, so at the time I found his complaints hilarious.

Natalie Stokes

May it please the court, and the beige bailiff, Jake. I’ve been playing D&D and various other RPGs with my group for years, and we’re all mostly friends. However, there is one player who makes the SAME character type every time—a stoic war veteran who doesn’t want to talk to anyone, help the party, or give up the spotlight during sessions. It feels like everything is always about them no matter the RPG, party makeup, or DM. How do we deal with this???????

Edison Nori

May it please the court, the eloquent bailiff,and the most anointed chairs; I bring a case of highway robbery. During my last campaign my party and I, the players, were driving a carriage to the next town to stop an assassination we recently caught wind of. While driving hastily through down the dirt roads we were stopped by two soldiers on horseback. Come to find out, they were basically motorcycle cops. They held us there and questioned us, even asking for our license and registration, before attempting to give us a speeding ticket... We decided we'd had enough and knocked them out and continued on our way. When we made it to the town we discovered that the assassination had already happened and that if we hadn't been stopped we would have made it in time, as the assassination was set to happen at noon. My question is, was this not just intense railroading or just a gag to by my DM to delay the party long enough for us not to stop it?

Porfo

Most honorable Crit Justices and fair, noble Bailiff, I lay myself at the mercy of the Crit. Over the course of a 2-year campaign, I semi-unintentionally tortured my DM/older brother with my roleplay choices. It was a Pathfinder campaign and I was playing a charlatan rogue who was perpetually lazy and disinterested with most things. He also refused to carry a real weapon, since two of his feats were in improvised weapon fighting, which made it very difficult for the DM to include any good loot for me (my brother is very giving). My DM/brother hated this character so much that he begged me to at least make a second character that would more-or-less take my rogue's place in combat, which I did but I refused to let my first character go as I should have. I now realize that I've been a bad player and perhaps brother in the past, but have changed and wish to be absolved. Praise Dice Christ, may he be merciful.

Harecule Poirot, the Rabbitfolk Detective

May it please the Supreme Bailiff, Jake. And also the other three lowly judges. I present the case of the Almost TPK by the Party’s Balnor. I was DMing an introductory module for three of my friends. They were playing a Barbarian, Sorceress, and Bard, and I decided to round out the party by including an NPC, a halfling monk named Panfire, who could assist them in combat when needed. In session zero, I explained that Panfire was a wicked drunk, and she would be perpetually sleeping off a hangover. But if things got too rowdy, she would wake up and join the fight. I also warned them that I had built her with combat in mind and she was very dangerous for her level. Fast forward to the first few minutes of introducing characters in session 1. The characters each entered the tavern, met one another, and looked around for the things that interested them. Normal player things. The Bard, of course, made a beeline for Panfire, who was described as drunkenly cursing at the barkeep. The Bard attempted to hit on her. I decided to let them roll a persuasion check to see how charming they were when making their move. A Nat 1. Given the bad roll, and my desire to shut down this interaction, I described that Panfire grabbed a bottle off the counter and smashed it over the Bard’s head. A tavern brawl might be fun and get them into the action a bit faster. I forgot two things in the moment. 1. These were level 1s. 2. Panfire hit like a truck. She immediately did enough damage to render the bard unconscious. The Barbarian, seeing their new friend get attacked, charged forward to join the melee, missing wildly. Pan spun and hit him twice taking out all but 2 of his HP. Fortunately the Sorceress stepped in and managed to calm the situation down (no roll required). But had she not, I was ready to kill off all three and call it a day. Was I in the wrong for almost TPKing my players using an NPC I built to make their adventure easier. I await your judgement, Jake. Yours is all that matters. PS. The players went on to successfully sideline the whole campaign in order to form a band, which ended up with them competing in a Battle of the Bands competition to get a coveted recording contract. So all's well that ends well.

Nurse LaCroix

May it please the court: In my last campaign as a player, my Githyanki barbarian Aargaath, the only non-caster in the (level 13) party, was constantly overshadowed by the various magic and otherwise min-maxed shenanigans of the other players. I made up for this in role-play wherever I could. During a shopping trip for magic items, I picked up an Alchemist's Jar, an interesting item that gives a set daily but otherwise unlimited quantity of several different liquids, including necessities such as lamp oil and fresh water. One of the items on this list is Mayonnaise, which the jar produces a whopping two gallons of each day. (This is an official item in the DMG). Aargaath would often drink straight from the jar, always to the dismay of my fellow players. ("Hey, I'm bulking right now" I would say.) As the meat shield for the party, I wanted to have some fun with this and always kept several 1-gallon jars of mayo in our bag of holding. The mayo jokes eventually upset my party, so I agreed to stop making them. Later, we were fighting a gemstone dragon and during the fight I crawled up to the head when I stated that I brought up a few gallons of mayo to smash over the dragons eyes in an attempt to blind it. This was not only not done as a joke, but I was willing to separate myself from something precious in an attempt to have a bigger impact on the battlefield compared to my very-strong caster friends. My DM halted the action, stating that I had to use a spell or something that explicitly created the "blinded" condition in order to pull this off. Was my DM being a stick in the mayo or where my antics too saucy to be taken seriously? Go bills, Phoenix Buffalo, NY

DnDiplomacy

May it please the court, the crit justices and the honourable and diligent bailiff: I present the case of the group chat removal. A few months ago, our small home game (developed to encourage new players and new DMs) had a guest DM. We invited him to the group chat, and our forever DM was excited to play. During the game our usual DMs character was accidentally caught in our wizard's spell and the guest DM told us they had fully died (without asking HP and no saves). He also said their head cracked open, completing the blood ritual we were trying to prevent. Afterwards we removed him from the group chat after thanking him for his time (but didn't give him a chance to reply or ask to stay/DM again). Were we unreasonable? Were we doing our best to avoid further slaughter? Are we just being too British by worrying about this? May dice Christ have mercy on all our souls.

Teive

May it please the Kooky Kaldwell, Massive Murph, Axciting Axford, the Justices of the Supreme Crit [also Jake]: I have a Mechanical Query and an Potential Interpersonal Problem. A little while back I was running a game in my buddy's backyard. He was playing a Sorcerer, and had used Roll20's inbuilt character creator to make his sheet. He was making a check at disadvantage, and failed. he said that he could use Magical Guidance from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything to reroll the lower die. I stated that he'd have to reroll both. He asked me to read the ability more closely. Question 1 [Mechanical]: If you use Magical Guidance to reroll a check made at disadvantage, do you reroll one or both of the D20? I had read the ability and knew that it came from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything [pages 65 and 66]. I also knew that it was an optional class feature--Roll20 included it automatically, but RAW these features can only be gained after consultation with the DM. We did not consult. And this is where I went... a little over the top. I said 'Read it more closely? Oh, sure' and I went to my bag where I had a physical copy of Tasha's. I turned to page 66 and had him read 'Magical Guidance' outloud. Then I said 'What heading is that under'? He took a few seconds to understand what I meant, but eventually got to 'Optional Class Features'. I then had him read that entire paragraph out loud. I then said 'since we didn't consult about it, you don't get to reroll anything' and moved on to the next player's turn. Question 2 [Interpersonal]: Was I in the wrong to force my player to read his abilities out loud after he asked me to read it more closely?

Alexandra Ferguson

May it please the Court, I humbly ask for a ruling on xp gain. At our table, in an effort to maintain attendance, our DM is pretty strict about xp only being awarded to those involved in each fight. Miss a session, and you miss out on any experience that may have been doled out. This seemed fair to me, and I had no complaints. However, the rule then escalated. Our high damage dealing party got into a fight on the edge of town, and my fighter crit failed their initiative roll. Fresh for the day and secure in the knowledge of another long rest, everyone went nuts in round one, and the last enemy was killed trying to run away on initiative 5. When splitting the xp, my DM pointed out that I had neither attacked nor been hit, and therefore did not participate in the fight. Despite my protests that I was in initiative and wouldn’t have been surprised if attacked, I was overruled, and got no xp. Was my DM right, or was I part of the fight (even if useless)? PS While low, this missing xp did mean I just missed out on levelling up with everyone else at the end of the session and, the next session, died and had to make a deal with a shady god to get back, so I might be a little saltier than I should.

Haley Anne

Dear most honorable Supreme Crit Justices and that other guy: How to handle an unsafe table - I am a perpetual DM and was invited to play as a player in a Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign. I built an amazing character - non binary changeling aberrant mind sorcerer. I was soo excited to play. During our second or third session one of the other players - a dragon born fighter with an attitude problem picked a fight with my character because I was being 'bossy'. I had roled a nat 20 insight about a warning written in blood on the wall of the tunnel we were exploring. I advised the party not to travel a certain direction - he decided to go anyway. He got attacked by rat swarms. Afterwards when he finally came the correct direction I made a comment about trusting me. He responded "ok whatever princess! ..." then proceeded to throw a fit 'in character' misgendering me multiple times. I tried to interrupt but it was over discord so audio was hard. He probably only ranted for a minute or 2. Eventually I cast mind sliver on him and the DM shut it all down. When we gathered for our next session he sent me this message: 'It was brought to my attention that I misgendered your character by calling you "Princess"...to be clear...bc I don't want there to be a mis-perception of actual disrespect ...I'm trying to play character as accurately as I can.....' I myself am non-binary. He is a friend of my husband's and knows this. He correctly genders me IRL but for whatever reason the character he is playing is a dick. After 2 more sessions and more mis gendering I quit. The DM was nice and tried to be helpful but she is very inexperienced and let the behavior fester too long. I no longer felt safe at the table. Did I do the right thing? I could have fought back but honestly I am newly out and it's hard to defend myself. P.s. I think dice christ is on my side because when the Dragonborn refused to help fly me across a hole after flying ever one else over. I mage handed the end of a rope to our barbarian on the other side, shape-shifted into a gnome (to be smaller and lower the strength save DC for the barbarian) and rolled a nat 20 athletics to jump and swing across the hole. Thank you for any words of wisdom. -H

Gumbercules

A second nat 20 wouldn't stack on the first, but if they're doing an investigation only on one wall, with a nat 20 you could give them something else they notice in the room. Maybe this wall didn't have anything, but by comparing this one to the one across from it, they can spot a difference. Something to that effect.

An_Armed_Bear

May it please the court, I present the case of the Santa Claus Spoiler. Around last Christmas during a campaign I was in, our DM had our characters go through a dream session where we had to rescue Santa and save Christmas. The session was a blast, but at the very end once we had rescued Santa, he suddenly revealed an extremely important detail about one of the player characters' backstories. Said character was a Warforged Bard with amnesia that was trying to find out about their history, and Santa offhandedly mentioned he had died once before in the past before giving him a Christmas present. After the session, my friend playing the Warforged and I talked about how it felt kind of anticlimactic that this big reveal for his character was done in such a casual way in what was effectively a filler episode. In the end we just rolled with it, but it's always bothered us a little. Were we wrong to be unsatisfied with how that reveal was handled?

Cuttlefissure

Supreme Honorable Crit Justices and Supreme Honorable Baliff, thank you for hearing my case. I'm playing an 8th level druid and we were fighting on an air ship. In the battle I ended up needing rocks - like actual stones - so I wanted to cast Erupting Earth on the deck. The Rules-As-Written wording of this spell is relatively vague, and I discussed with my DM what "on the ground" meant. It was a friendly and relatively quick discussion, but our group was split about whether it made sense or not. Ultimately, the DM let me get away with it with the consequence that it would damage the ship, but that we wouldn't have to deal with it until after the combat and I happily agreed. What do you think? Was this ruling fair? What would you have allowed your players to get away with?

Cuttlefissure

In the case of a court divided, here is what we were thinking: RAW, the spell reads: "Choose a point you can see on the ground within range. A fountain of churned earth and stone erupts in a 20-foot cube centered on that point." Those of us on the "pro" side argued that by the lack of stipulating it had to be on-the-Earth ground meant it was intended to be used in more or less any situation, because other spells that require acutal stone/etc stipulate it (such as Wrath of Nature, Meld into Stone, or Transmute Rock). We proposed that Erupting Earth was more akin to Wall of Stone, with the "fountain of churned earth and stone" being conjured by the magic of the spell. The "nay" side had a relatively simple but very persuasive argument: the boat was very clearly made of wood and not stone or earth, so why in the world would a spell called Erupting Earth work? They did try to propose that it would cause a fountain of wood to spring forth with the same impact, but we didn't end up discussing that too much since I needed stone. I was only going to cast the spell if I understood if the earth and rocks were conjured or not as opposed to just manipulated by the spell (at our table, we often discuss what the consequence/result would be before we have to commit to the tactic if it is reasonably something your character would know ahead of time, such as if stone is magically conjured by Erupting Earth or if it's just used in the spell).

Jason Rodriguez

May it please the court, I bring forward a stacked case. I am a player in our weekly game of Icewind Dale. My white tabaxi druid strangely was the only pc that didn't have cold resistance. All the other party members got it either from their subclasses, race, or magic items. Throughout the campaign however, the DM ruled that even if we succeeded on saving throws to resist cold damage that it doesn't stack. I got around it a few times with the help of absorb elements, but for everyone else when they succeeded they still took the regular half damage and not halving it again from their natural resistance. When we were facing the Frostmaiden herself, I explained to the DM that succeeding on a saving throw doesn't grant resistance, its just the PC's enduring the damage so they can half the damage. He allowed it for the final battle and we were victorious. Am I correct to assume that my ruling was correct, or should our characters be laid to rest behind 6 feet of ice? 🧊

Alex

May it Please the Court, I have a question about the use of Detect Thoughts on members of the party. In my last campaign, a party member of mine used detect thoughts on my character while she slept. By doing this, I was forced to reveal an important part of backstory (that my character had secret children). Which was information I wanted to keep hidden from the party. Am I just salty that my backstory got revealed early, or was I wronged by my fellow PC. TLDR: Can a PC use detect thoughts on a fellow party member to prematurely reveal secret information

Alexander Haley

May it please the court, the honorable and fair crit justices, and the most honorable Bailiff. I have recently begun dming for my group of friends, and we are all relatively new to playing the game. Ive been listening to naddpod for awhile now (im onto my 3rd re listen) while i work, and it gave me enough confidence to do some research and run a home campaign. My very first campaign i had set up a few different areas and paths the group could take, and everyone was having a good time (I think). They ended up exploring a cave i had planned further along the campaign, but was not about to tell them they couldnt go in anyways. I set up many warnings that this was perhaps an area of danger, using bones of previous adventurers, loud shaking tremors, and a large door. I also warned them with some NPC's, but they were not discouraged, and in fact later told me that their characters would of gone in no matter the danger. They fought a much higher CR rating then they were prepared for, and would have died if i had not brought in the NPCs that warned them beforehand to save their lives. Was this wrong of me? Should i have let them die after giving them all the warnings or was it correct so early on the campaign to give them a deus machina? Thank you Honorable Crit court for your time.

Patrick Crowling

May it please the most honorable Bailiff and High Crit Justices: I'm a first time DM running a game for a bunch of first time players. I was inspired to take up the mantle of Dungeon Master after binging the entirety of the first NADDPOD arc while up late with my newborn son. We're all pretty green, but everyone seems to be leaning into the inherent silliness in the game and not taking anything too seriously, so a grand old time has been had by all thusfar. However, a recent incident has threatened to alienate one of my players and possibly cause him to leave the group. He plays a half-giant Ranger and his character is basically a big, jolly Ghost of Christmas Present type of guy. I had arranged for the party to meet an informant with crucial information for their mission at a local Tavern. As soon as he hit the tavern door, the Half Giant started carousing, tossing back (IN HIS WORDS) "flagon after flagon of ale" and trying to lead the room in group singalongs. He was making it very hard to conduct the meeting and (I will admit to getting frustrated and wanting him out of the room for a bit) I told him that after that much ale that his character had to pee. He adamantly disagreed and said that his abnormally large bladder could handle that much drink. I told him he had essentially drank a keg all by himself and no bladder in the multiverse could hold that much. He said, "Fine, then I hold it." I them made him do a luck roll, which he failed, and I informed the party that the unmistakable smell of half-giant urine came wafting from his direction. He got comically incensed and started demanding that he DID NOT pee himself. I told him that I gave him several warnings that he chose not to act upon and the die determined his fate. Worse than that, the other characters have taken to calling him "Piss Britches" in the game and whenever they do he accuses them of meta-gaming as his character DID NOT pee his pants. He is now threatening to leave the game because he thinks I am picking on him just for playing his character well. Esteemed Justices, am I in the wrong for forcing a pants-wetting on my player, or did he tempt fate and lose??

Oldworlder451

May it please the court and upset the Bailiff, During a Tomb of Annihilation campaign session, our thief had failed to pass a very hard DC and caused a trap to lock him inside a chest - the chest itself falling to the bottom of a large pool which threatened to drown him. If left there, he would eventually auto-fail his death saves and be gone forever, so the other players and I tried the best we could to free him. Predictably, our rolls were terrible, and we squandered most of our time. The outcome was looking bleak. Desperate, and being a level 8 Tempest Cleric, I asked my DM if I could use Control Water to create a whirlpool with the Chest at it's center, then push the chest to the outer ring of the whirlpool and catapult it against the cave wall in order to break it open. The DM was quiet for about 15 seconds before flatly telling me no, and did not elaborate on why when asked. Luckily, the thief was able to free himself during his last round conscious, and we were able to move on from there. Now, I do understand DM's have final say in all matters, but I feel like I should have gotten at least a chance to succeed or fail as it was thematically appropriate to my class's Flavor and level. Regardless, I spread myself before the court's decision and eagerly await your justice.

Sam Ninegar

May it please the court. This is not a current case. No crime has been committed. I beg your help in preventing any future crime, Minority Report style. Note that I believe this is an impossible case that I have no faith that this court can solve. I am about to begin DMing a 13 PC campaign, spread across two groups, set in the same world, at the same time. Each groups' actions will impact the campaign of the other group alongside a variety of background NPC factions goals and actions playing out. I am planning to conduct two sessions (mid-point and finale) with all 13 PC's present as the two groups converge. So anyway, how do I deliver on this promise of a campaign premise which is equal in its coolness and absolute impossibility to execute? I humbly lay myself before the Minority Court.

Frank

My fair justices. I present a crime of heartlessness. Our dm created a wizard tower full of very annoying tricks. No one was having a good time, but we played along in the hopes things would improve. One of our party was a foxy centaur lady named Cherry who was the absolute heart of the group. During one encounter, it was revealed that we needed to take off our shoes to proceed. However, cherry was only wearing horseshoes. We offered to help remove these, but the DM told us that was not an option. We tried to think of other solutions and eventually he intervened, saying that the only option would be for the player to roll a new non-centaur character and abandon cherry. We were all annoyed by this, but the player relented to keep the story moving, and now we have a cherry-sized hole in our party. I ask? Was the dm within his bounds to ask this? Please, dear justices, throw down your judgement.

Jeroen Willemse

Holy shit, no, you should absolutely be salty.

Jack

To the honorable, honest, and dashing supreme crit justices… and lowly bailiff, may it please the court, I present the case of the year built one shot. I play with a group of people in a continuous weekly home brew campaign that has been running for about 3 years. Over the coarse of said time I(player) started building a home brew one shot that I have put nearly 100 hours into over the course of a year, about 3/4 of it was spent building the maps and encounters, 1/4 balancing, for a party of 5, level 10s, to traverse. The premise of the one shot was that the group of adventures were individually teleported from somewhere in the world to the treasure room of a dungeon and had to fight there way out starting with the boss and working there way towards skeletons and rats. After nearly three months of trying to plan starting this one shot we finally got to begin the dungeon, and all things seem to be going well until one of my pc’s was killed by the “final boss” in the first fight. It was an intelligent ice devil home brewed as a champion with legendary actions. After the fight was over and they defeated the ice devil, we had to take a brake for the night to pick it up next week, due to a late start because of several work related issues on my end and another PCs, and a pc(not the one killed by the ice devil) decided they didn’t want to play anymore because if it was this hard off the bat then they were all just doomed to die anyways. I tried to tell them that this was the hardest fight, and that there was a lot more going on in the dungeon than just fighting(I didn’t want to spoil that there was a glyph with basically a reincarnate spell in the next room) but they were adamant that if I killed someone right away that I was a bad dm. So I present this case to you all, was I a bad DM for attempting to change the way dungeons go and starting with the hardest enemy, or was my player in the wrong for not seeing how it played out until the end? P.s. this was my first time DMing and I was super excited, then a bit heart broken, to see how things shook out as I planned the dungeon to be about 12-15 hours of play and we only got through 2. P.p.s I love this podcast so much thank you all for all the laughs!

Marcus Heer

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

Luke Shealy

Honorable crit justices and beautifully bearded bailiff Hurwitz I present to you the case of the the Pacifist Paladin versus the DM I am playing in a new campaign as a Pacifist Paladin. Well not really a Pacifist since I will fight I just won't kill anyone. In our second session we were fighting some rioters who had killed the guards outside of our friend's manor and I hit and knocked out a rioter, but rather than being allowed to do nonlethal damage like we had decided beforehand my DM decided that 8 damage was enough to kill him outright despite his max hit points being closer to 14. I called him out on this and he allowed me to do non-lethal damage but on the condition that I did lasting damage to the man's body. I accepted but then the next rioter that I attacked I crit. Despite the damage still not exceeding his max HP my DM then decided that I was unable to do non-lethal damage with a crit. I protested saying that the crit would probably give me even better control of my attack but he would not budge and I had to give up on it. So my Pacifist Paladin immediately broke his oath and became very sad. Since it was an accidental kill my DM did not make be lose my oath but it still seemed unfair. Am I in the wrong or am I justified in thinking that it is unfair to keep me from playing character the way I intended? I await your ruling

Holden

I’m having issues posting this so so sorry If i did this more than once. May it please the Venerable Crit Justices , the incorrigible bailiff, and all litigious possums, cats, and CRITters in the court. I come before the court on behalf of what I believe to be a true injustice. My friend has been in a wheelchair since birth so when they were invited to join a DND party they also wanted their character to have a wheelchair. Wonderful right? Well their dm, in every encounter they run into, has had his monsters rip their character out of the wheelchair, throws the chair far away, and reduces the pc’s speed to “crawling speed”. This has made it almost impossible for the pc to help their party. They came to me, a dm of my own party, miserable, asking for help. Their DM‘s excuse is that he is running a gritty grimm dark campaign and that’s what they signed up for, which I find unacceptable. The first thing I did was invite them to join my party but they don't want to abandon the party they have spent over a year playing with. So we went over a resource for a combat wheelchair highlighting specific rules, (I’ll connect below) but I am a new DM myself and I fell my knowledge is inadequate to really help although I’m still on the search for information. So honorable Justices and bailiff the case I present is, how far is too far when it comes to crunchy games with grizzly storytelling? And how does one deal with a DM who is actively trying to, and I QUOTE The Dm in question, “traumatize” his players. My heart aching I await your judgment.

Holden

Wheelchair resource

Holden

Also I have the permission of my friend to share this story. They also await your judgement

Nathan Durhamwood

May it please the Honorable Crit Justices and the oddly wonderful and pathetic bailiff. I present the case of the Dino Taming Twelve Year Old. I DM'ed my first D&D campaign for my uncle, mother, and several cousins a while ago. It was all their first time playing D&D and I did my best to teach them and give them the full experience. In their first session, they battled a group of Gnolls employed by an evil corporation. After I described them as "Dog People", my 12-year-old cousin's 3rd level human fighter Dom wanted to tame them. He stated he had animal handling so he should be able to tame them. I explained how everyone has animal handling and a +4 is not that helpful against aggressive and intelligent beings. He seemed disappointed when I told him He couldn't tame them. In the following sessions, I brought them to a chaotic dinosaur island so they could get a better understanding of the dangers and mechanics of taming animals. Dom and his dad insisted on trying to tame every dinosaur they saw, including ones actively attacking them. I would explain to them that they couldn't adopt every wild animal. A passive dino may allow them to touch them but most aggressive animals would attack them if approached even with a high animal handling check. Chris Pratt raised the velociraptors in Jurassic World and he was only able to command them for a couple of seconds before they lunged at him. This all came to a head when they were confronted by a 30ft tall spinosaurus currently destroying a gnoll hunting camp they had snuck into. They devised a plan to use my uncle's wizard ability "Hypnotic Gaze" to daze the massive beast and give Dom a chance to tame him. I got frustrated and told them it was a bad plan and I was done protecting them. If they actually wanted to do this they could try and I would punish them and have the spinosaurus kill them when this impossible task failed. The rest of the party agreed with me. They ended up dropping this and my uncle was still almost killed before the party had a chance to flee the base. Was I too hard on them? Should I have let them tame every creature they came upon or was I right for stopping them from getting themselves and the party killed? I still think about if I spoiled their experiences because we haven't played much since. I accept any punishments and I hope Dice Crist smiles upon me.

DnDiplomacy

No, I've edited to add. Just said the character was dead without checking whether it was negative max (it wasn't). We did protest but were overridden.

Alex DiFiore

~~TRENT UPDATE~~ Most esteemed judges! Before I got a chance to tell Trent that our story got featured on naddpod, one of my friends sent me a naddpod subReddit post FROM TRENT. Again, he’s new to dnd and not a naddpole. Trent begged for sympathy from the naddpod community as he proceeded to tell a ludicrously incorrect description of what happened, painting me as a bumbling idiot dm who was extraordinarily unreasonable to all the pc’s. The post got over 300 upvotes and 60 comments. Most of the comments were people slandering my real life name (while trent’s identity remained confidential) and demanding a mistrial, while some knew that Trent was clearly lying and acting exactly as I had described him. The next night, Trent texted me, “Hey did you see the latest Jake and Amir”. We don’t text and never talked about Jake and Amir before. I said no but I will soon. The Reddit post was mysteriously deleted by the next day. I get anxious just thinking about this lol, my worst nightmare is you guys seeing that post and thinking differently of me. Hope you enjoyed the Trent update! P.S. I was sent the Reddit post the same day I asked a girl out on a date and it ruined my mood for the date. Trent strikes again.

Canadian Schubert the Mushroom 🍄

I will say, you use the term "conjure" a lot, when erupting earth is a Transmutation spell. So, I'd say the argument to be made would be a bunch of the wood is turned into stone. Effective, but much harder to fix.

Cuttlefissure

To The Great Sage Bokonon: that's a really great point we didn't even think about. We just finished the combat and will be facing the consequences later this week, so I might actually point that out to our DM ahead of time and he can decide if he wants to change how the ship is damaged!

Dermoptera

Most esteemed justices and somewhat honorable bailiff: In a recent session, one of my players drew from a modified Deck of Many Things, and the card he drew got him transported to a far away shore. In order to keep him in the action, I had him roll up a new PC (a dwarf college dropout Evocation Wizard) to be introduced in the next session to help the main group find his main PC. In the scene where the new character was introduced, the other PCs were constantly trying to leave the interaction and abandon the new character (mostly as a joke), with the in-character justification that their characters are regionally famous in the world and wouldn't care about this random dwarf. In order to mitigate this, I had a group of bandits run up to ambush the group, and the new wizard was able to fireball all the bandits, essentially one-shotting them. The other PCs agreed to have the dwarf come with them, but the players grumbled that I had fabricated a situation to make them take the new PC with them when, in reality, they had no reason to want them to come. Did I wrong any or all of my players? Awaiting your fair judgement, Dermot

Decker Ames

May it please the majestic crit justices and the most humiliated of baliffs, Lumberjack Jake. This is the case of the Plunging Paladin. I was the DM in this situation. I had the party go to a living, 500 ft tree to battle the cultists attempting to corrupt it. During the climactic battle in a hollow towards the top of the tree, the main cultist attempted to flee by leaping from the tree to featherfall to the ground. The Paladin chased after the cultist, but by also leaping from the tree. I double checked to make sure this is what he wanted and, without any way to stop his heavily armored fall, he jumped. I informed the party this would likely kill him because we established as a group we don't cap fall damage. I ended up caving and letting him live by one of the players (still in the hollow) throwing a potion of gaseous form down to the paladin. Should I have allowed this? Or should I have made the paladin suffer the consequences of his actions?

Noah Johnson

If it may please the court and that one guy who reads the questions, I guess. I humbly come before the court with a case of overzealous player vs cryptic dungeon master. I am a lv.6 player in a campaign and during a recent session, we were transported to a strange place using a tent that functioned similar to a Tardis. After talking to a few people and investigating the town for a while, we were able to determine that we were in some sort of simulated fantasy world. We determined this because the NPCs gave simple predetermined answers, there were magical boundaries that prevented us from leaving the town, and (most damning) we met another character from a different plane that had been here for a while and noticed that we weren’t “normalized” yet. We obviously probed this character (Shaggy) about what he knew about this place and what he meant by “normalized”. He explained to us that this was like a video game world (which our fantasy characters didn’t really understand) and he used to have a talking dog that came here with him but that the dog (Scooby) was normalized by a figure that only came if things got too unnatural. We continued to investigate what we thought would be important places in the town but really weren’t getting anywhere and kept getting answers that just confirmed this was a simulated world and there was some figure that kept this world normal. After a long while, I thought let’s just summon this “normalizing” bad guy. We were trying a few methods of summoning this dude (causing non-harmful chaos) and nothing was working, so my character who had recently turned evil due to some story stuff said “fuck it” and shot a fireball into the crowd. That worked… but the bad guy summoned was an upgraded illithid that rolled higher on initiative than most of us and immediately did a move that downed half our party and those that weren’t downed got stunned. Needless to say we all died from this encounter and were pretty bummed. When talking as a group afterwards, the DM indicated that he wasn’t planning on killing our party but that the action of shooting the crowd with a fireball was so outrageous that the big bad of the arc was the one that came to address it. Was I wild for preforming an admittedly dramatic action if we weren’t getting anywhere with other clues and all of our less dramatic attempts didn’t summon anything? Should we have continued to explore the town after visiting all noticeable landmarks and talking to tons of different people? I feel as though I was punished in a situation where I was role-playing my alignment and I was attempting to summon the enemy he foreshadowed. In general, what should a group of players do in a situation where the DM hasn’t given a clear objective and they don’t know what to do next? Probably not fireball a crowd but now I, at least, know that. Awaiting your response and the inevitable harsh punishment for the DM who was clearly in the wrong.

Jon Eastman

May it please the court, I present the case of the players vs the arsonist. I play in a group of 5 which has swapped a few players in and out over the last few years. During the first campaign one of the players decided to retire one character in order to play a new one. The group and DM had no problem with this as we'd finished one story arc and were moving on. Their new character was where the problem quickly started and finished. The character they built was an Armourer Artificer with a suit of fire producing armour which they used to cast their spells. This quickly became an issue as we travelled to the next city as they decided to continually light the forest on fire under the guise of "my character is an arsonist, it's what they would do in this situation". The group quickly got sick of having to babysit this new character and put out the fires they were lighting every couple of minutes. After some strongly worded conversations, they messaged the group chat the next day saying they were no longer going to be playing since they were busy on the scheduled afternoon. How far is too far when sticking to your characters flaws? As a bonus, they loved at the house where we played and we saw them every session for the next 6 months.

Haley

Jake: please comment with a brief (I BEG) description. Everyone: To the court justices and that stupid pice of shit Jake, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Relevant bit blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

ML Allswede

May it please the honorable court justices and the credible bailiff, I seek counsel on the matter of learning tool proficiencies and languages in game. At my table we have a home-brew rule that picking up a language happens in three steps: after 20 hours you can speak it, after an additional 40 hours you can read, and after an additional 100 you can write it. Meaning total fluency comes after 160 hours of in game study. In the campaign I play the party Rogue, who I built to be a researcher/archeologist archetype rather than the typical assassin. Last session, my character decided to try and pick up a proficiency in Navigator's tools, since we were preparing for a sea voyage to Hell Isles (aka fantasy Australia). My DM initially ruled that my rogue would not be able to gain proficiency in Navigator's tools, since we were in a mountain and nowhere near a boat. I conceded as I think this is fair and tend to follow my DM's rulings. When I asked how long it would take to gain the proficiency while on a boat, the DM responded that realistically, it's harder to learn how to use tools than it is to learn a language, so the time would be double. That means it would take 80 hours to become proficient and 200 hours to gain expertise. Unfortunately, I overreacted and came off as passive aggressive and immediately gave up on learning Navigator's Tools (my apologies to the Justice Murph). However, my character has been consistently practicing with a Disguise Kit and a Forgery Kit to gain proficiency, originally under the impression it would only take 20 hours to gain the proficiency, similar to a past experience when she gained proficiency in alchemists supplies in 20 hours. My question is: is my DM right in her judgement changing our previous homebrew, and if so, how should I approach her in regards to maybe working around the high number of hours so that my efforts towards learning the other tool kits won't be in vain?

Nathaniel Thomas

May it please the court, and master bailiff Jake. I present the case of the overwhelmed DM vs his meme-ing nephews. During our first game; me, a first time DM and my nephews; (5, 8, and 10) first time players, I blew them all up with the equivalent of five 3rd level fireball spells. However, prior to this, what should have been 5-10 minutes into the start of the campaign was literally 4 hours, as my nephews, the lovable scamps they are, proceeded to fight with each other, parade around with tiktok memes, and insight check every npc they came across "because they couldn't be trusted". One went so far as to ask a weapon merchant if he sold any dragon eggs that could be hatched. Needless to say it was a long and tiring start. When a failed stealth check led to a goblin ambush, the younger 5yo fighter threw the only magical item I gave him a necklace containing beads, with each bead containing a fireball spell. I asked if they were sure they wanted to launch it, and then pulled out the ruler and did all the math, a described the glorious flume of fire, a blazing tornado that burned everything in the radius to ash. There was much crying. Did I go too far, allowing impatience and frustration to result in an harsh ending? Or did I instill the values of consequences dnd holds? There's a time to fight and a time to fortnight and nary a two shall meet. In the end I used the clerics divine intervention to rewind combat 5 minutes prior and flavored it as a premonition. And they are looking forward to our next session.

Darth Kuruptios

May it please the court, and gruntle the bailiff. I am a DM who was running a campaign based around a grim-dark fey wild influenced world. I was playing with 3 people. One who had played back in 3.5e and then one who had played 5e, and finally one who had never played. The first session was going well. However about an hour in I had noticed that none of my players had used a single spell. I had assumed that they were simply being conservative with their spell slots. Once we had reached the big battle that would set the stage for the first major plot hook. After about 4 rounds if combat in a relatively easy encounter nearly TPKD them. One player was completely dead, one was unconscious, and the final one fled. The one that fled only survived because I decided to let them run. This entire time no one had used a single spell. After the session was over I asked the players why they had not used any spell. The reason was because they didn’t know how to stock them, they had told me that they had in session zero, as well as in the conversations we had about character creation. I ask the Honorable Crit Justices, should I have TPKD them all? Or was I right in my kindness? Also since this was a magic rich campaign, how should I have acted with them not using any spells? Many thanks to the Court for listening to my case.

Jason Clopper

May it please the court, honorable justices and distinguished bailiff, I put forth the case of the salty player and his salty barrel. My party and I entered a storehouse filled with salt early in our campaign. We encountered an enemy, meant to be the sort of mini-boss of the encounter I believe, in a room that we had previously established had large barrels of salt on shelves. My friend and fellow party member decided he wanted to push one of the large barrels of salt off one of the upper shelves to fall on to the enemy (almost Donkey Kong style). Our DM required two checks, one for the strength to push this heavy barrel and another for accuracy. To our happy surprise, he rolled highly on both checks. Our DM then let the player know he had inflicted 6 points of damage on the enemy. The player was upset as he believed 6 points of damage was too small compared to how much damage a large barrel of salt should have done. He is still 'salty' about it to this day and will occasionally search for videos of barrels falling on people. Was my DM right to keep the damage low, or should my friend's salty barrel have inflicted more damage upon the enemy?

Jack McAlevey

Not a crit justice but I just wanna say that everything about this situation objectively rules

Beav

A DM v. Another Flying PC May it please the Bailiff and the sick, lowly judges…just kidding, I hope it pleases everyone. Yall are great. I bring to the court 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, they make athletic checks when making long distance flights with the possibility of exhaustion if they fail (same for other pc’s attempting incredible feats of running, climbing, or swimming). 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 implement outside of combat (when initiative is rolled I try to stick as close to the holy 5e texts as possible). However, the player in question has clearly gotten pissed off by these new mechanics when they come into play. So honorable bailiff and judges, am i being unreasonable with these homebrewed mechanics? Though it upsets one player, it aids my general session prep, and I believe it gives other non-flying players a chance to shine in RP and puzzle scenarios. Any guidance and suggestions would be appreciated.

Bo Jack’s Personal Steed

I am a first time DM attempting to run a self written campaign that was absolutely thrown into shambles on the first couple sessions. I set up the classic “you meet in a small town tavern” where the party gathered and learned of the threat within the town and set off to begin their quest. The rogue of the party, the level 1 rogue at that, had an assassination contract on the leader of the local bandit group that was the cause of the problem in this town. (His reason for being at the tavern) Upon exiting the tavern the other 2 in the party decided they should venture out to the underground resistance as they were tipped off to go do. Our resident game wrecker decided it was a better idea to immediately attack the nearest bandit to which I told him that there were 10 or more in the area as well as a large bell in the center of town to call for reinforcements. His response, “Do I get my sneak attack bonus” I figured whatever sure, as the fight resulted in a tpk in the first session we ever played, my first dm experience. We tried to restart the next week with new characters and I made him change from being an assassin/bounty hunter. The next session same exact thing…his reason was he wanted vengeance for his rogue…who never existed In this new restart we had. He told me I was the worst dm and he’d never play with me again…am I wrong for killing them not once but twice despite warning them explicitly? Should I just put down the DM job and go back to being a PC from now on? I throw myself at the will of the court and Tucker.

Preston Taylor

To the Honorable Justices of the Crit, and the plain vanilla baliff, may it please the court. I'm a DM who runs a weekly online game with a group of friends. We just started a new campaign and during our last session I designed a simple random encounter with some Grungs and a Bullywug Knight (who's personality was Ren adjacent). I clearly needed to adjust as the encounter ended up downing most of the party. After the enemies were defeated I suggested the initiative order should continue for death save rolls as the threat of death is not gone for those fatally wounded once the enemies are dead. I was going to allow those alive to still have turns and make medicine checks to stabilize. My friend became upset; he felt initiative should end when combat ceases and continuing death saves was an unnecessary risk to his character. Was I too harsh? When should initiative end and players stop rolling death saves? I await your just ruling.

Navar Keelan

To the venerable judges, and esteemed ballif Jake I present the case of the jilted pirate. In a home-brew campaign created by an excellent DM. I play the fantastical, dashing pansexual pirate Captain Amadeus Glitterbeard. He is a level 18 Swashbuckler Rogue. We are currently in the shadow fell. Half of our team was split up. The half I was not in were in danger. After rushing to save them we encountered an encroaching army. My character decided the best he could do was help by utilising his best talent his unparelled charisma. I made a speech to the army as to why they should turn around, or not go a certain way (to save my team). The DM asked me to roll for it. I started that due to expertise the lowest I could roll on a performance or persuasion is a 24. The DM considered this and then did not let me roll and simply stated the army could not be convinced. (In this case all the magic users were in mortal danger and I was simply attempting to utilise the only skill my character had to help) Judges, has the Captain been keelhauled, or was this a case of x marks the spot?

Peter Mundell

If it may please the court (it might not), A year ago, I was in the midst of my first campaign playing a half-elf Oath of Heroism paladin in a game where combat rules were so far gone out the window, they might as well have been in a different country. All cantrips were bonus actions, extra attacks were extra actions (so having three attacks meant you could dash, attack once, and then disengage), and there was almost no limit to what you could do with your reaction. At the same time, our DM never used multiattack with monsters, and never used legendary actions, lair actions, legendary resistances, or any of the like (though I once offered to help teach the DM how to make combats harder and he declined). You can see how the game weighed pretty heavily in the players' favour every time and how we often managed to finish any combat in 2-3 rounds max. Our DM became tired of getting whomped, and in retaliation while our 4-person party was level 6, we were suddenly attacked by a full HP adult Kraken. I tried to protest that this was far beyond our level six abilities, but the DM and even the other players said that it would be fine and continued. After a long, grueling hour, I began to protest once more about how the Kraken was unbeatable even for us, and eventually the DM relented and changed the combat. The game dismantled not long after and I have since found new friends to play with. Still, this game haunts me to this day. All my friends know of the legendary tale of the Kraken DM. Was I being outrageous like everyone else at the table claimed? Was this Kraken defeatable with our whack combat rules? Will the nightmares I still have of this game ever cease or are they justifiable horrors I must endure until the end of time itself? Please, help me sleep soundly once more.

Mak

To the esteemed court, I have a BRIEF question that has confused myself and my DM... I currently play a Sorcerer with Metamagic, specifically Careful Spell. While fighting a hoard of enemies, my character cast Storm Sphere. At the time, I realized that the wording of Careful Spell suggested that I could expand one metamagic point and excuse my team from the damage of the storm. My DM thought that was overpowered (I agreed, as another DM) and I suggested that I expand one metamagic point per round that I protected my team. My DM said I can't do that, either, as it was too complicated. I'm curious to hear out a third party, so, my dearest judges and the beautiful bailiff, would it be fair to allow me to use Metamagic Points equal to the rounds that I use a concentration spell? Or should it be banned all together?

Bastet

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

ChromaticMars

If it may please the gracious, extraordinary, benevolent, and sometimes sensual 😏Justices... oh yeah and I guess hi 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?

Caitlin Knoedler

May it please the court and the disgraced justice Hurwitz. I was running my players through a haunted house when there was a disagreement between myself and a player. In the scenario, I had books fly out of the shelves and attack the players. The plaintiff player (a gnome bard called Orson Scott Bard) cast Illusory Script on a page of one of the attacking books. He said that he had the words "I am your friend, don't hurt us" appear on one of the pages. I told him that the words appeared but otherwise had no effect. He argues that the book should have been able to understand the writing or at least the intention/message of what he wrote based on how the spell's rules were written. He quotes this specific line from the rules: "To you and any creatures you designate when you cast the spell, the writing appears normal, written in your hand, and conveys whatever meaning you intended when you wrote the text." I argued that the book did not understand any languages (see its stat block here: https://www.5esrd.com/database/creature/animated-book/) and furthermore, the book had no eyes and couldn't read the text. He continued to argue that a book, by the very essence of what it is, can understand what's written in it. While I appreciated the player's humor and creativity, I don't think I buy that reasoning. He eventually agreed to defer to my ruling and we moved on, but he still brings it up every now and then, which makes me think it still bothers him. Please help lay this matter to rest once and for all. I anxiously await your judgment.

Chris Broderick

Forgive me supreme crit for I have sinned. I am a dice fudger. Before all of our sessions our dm has us roll. Whoever rolls highest does the recap. I have a terrible memory and every time I look at my notes they are awful so I bump my number down a few if I roll high. I'd never commit this sin during actual play. Can I right the most wrongful of wrongs?

Izzy R

If the court thinks it’s cool or whatever, Last week I dmed a game for some classmates of mine who wanted to get into dnd. One of them is a human ranger whos favored enemy is goblins and kobolds. The player wanted to speak horse as a language in addition to common and goblin. I said fine as long as he got rid of goblin as a language. Later he said it was unfair since he got two other languages from being a human and a ranger. Should I let him have horse and goblin and common as languages or should I stand my ground

Ilana Galpert

Players' sex dungeon vs. DM's patience May it please the court, I'm a girl running a LoTR campaign for all boys (you'll see why this is relevant in a second.) My players are currently attempting to find evidence of a secret plot between two political officials. Their answer to this problem was a series of sex parties (yep, sex parties.) They're trying to lure out the officials...? honestly it's unclear. I'm letting them have one, but this party is going to be *punishing,* with several high level enemies sneaking around their sex dungeon (yep, they wanted a sex dungeon.) My players are particularly fond of the phrase "dommy mommy," using it on a regular basis. I'm finally going to give them one (old woman in spandex) and I'm throwing in a leather daddy for the sake of gender equality. Am I punishing them too much or not enough? Thanks Jake, you're a good lad

Dugong

May it please the court and the 3 of you that are wisest, I’m a DM and a while ago ran a heist one-shot (that turned into a 5-shot due to overplanning) where the level 6 party escorted a kobold through a mansion who highly overestimated his own strength. The kobold had his sights set on the owner of the mansion who ended up being an archmage who knew they were coming (inspired by Emily’s fantastic finale to Hot Boy Summer). The reason I bring this to the court is that I made a decision that I wrestled with for a while and I still feel unsure about. The circumstances are that I had one of my four players playing a Soulknife rogue from Tasha’s but the Archmage can cast the spell Mind Blank on themselves before combat. Mind Blank makes the target immune to psychic damage and the Soulknife rogue pretty much only had attacks that did psychic damage. Also Mind Blank is not a concentration spell so there was no way to break it. If all the players had relied on psychic damage I may have felt less conflicted about it but I worried that it would essentially make this one player useless for the epic final battle. In the end I couldn’t find something that I wanted to replace the 8th level spell with and have a similar effect so I had the archmage use it and the Soulknife rogue didn’t do any damage to the archmage directly. The players seemed to enjoy it and possibly did not even notice but I still feel as though maybe there was something else I could have done. Oh great justices, and bailiff, what would you have done in this situation?

Paige

To the honorable judges and the equally honorable bailiff, my husband and I would like your input on a current dnd disagreement. My husband has been dming a group of us for several years and we have a campaign where we are all movie theatre employees and have to go into various movies and live out tropes and fight bad guys etc. We have it open so other people can join for a session or so and so it’s all pretty fluid. My husband has always made the character sheets for each player for this particular campaign so that there are various different tropes (burn out, jock, nerd, and so on) and it’s never been a problem. I asked him if I could dm a session and he enthusiastically agreed and made himself a character. The session went great but a week later he was talking to his brother and said if he wanted to play with us then he (my husband) would make him a sheet. I argued that because I was the dm he should have let me create his sheet and choose his trope. He disagreed saying that he earned the right to make his own character. Neither of us are really taking this disagreement too seriously but we would appreciate your input.

Britney

May it please the honorable justices and the handsome, capable bailiff. I recently DM’d a one-shot with my partner’s (much younger) high school brother and his two friends. They were all first time players and it was only my second time DMing. The party rescued the person they set out to save, a polymorphed and imprisoned wizard, and on the way back to town one of the party tried to change the wizard back to his true form. Conflict broke out when another party member revealed that he only rescued the wizard to use him in a ritual sacrifice, while their companion opted to sit back and watch his friends’ dramatic, impassioned fight. During the ensuing struggle, the rescued wizard died in a tragic magic item misfire. While the party seemed remarkably unperturbed and continued back to town to grab a drink, I feel like I did my players a disservice with this ending. Should I have tried harder to engage the neutral player? Given the party more options to save the wizard instead of letting him die essentially by accident? I humbly await your judgment.

Canadian Schubert the Mushroom 🍄

Metamagic nerd here! Careful spell only allows the people you choose to automatically pass their saves, distinct from taking no damage. Most of the time, they will still be taking half damage.

Canadian Schubert the Mushroom 🍄

You are no bad DM, and there's no issue with you flipping the one shot script. Campaigns crumble a lot of the time, and one player just didn't have enough faith in you. <3

Canadian Schubert the Mushroom 🍄

Buddy, you're running a game for some kids. You gotta give him ONE Dino. If they try it multiple times after one success, then you can punish.

Sian Utton

If it may please the most illustrious of crit justices... and that other bailiff dude. I present to you a light offering, a palate cleanser, if you will. This is not a judgement against any players but against myself, and whether or not I ruled correctly or whether I should have gone with the spirit of the spell. I was (first time) DMing a level 15 PvP one shot in between our regular campaign that had PCs from across the 'multiverse' pulled into a game show style battle to the death. The main rules were simple: get to each of the checkpoints, don't be the last one there, and have no mercy on your fellow players. In amongst all the other ridiculous shenanigans (including one of the players riding a mini tidal wave across half the arena) there developed a vendetta between Yoko, the fallen aasimar paladin and Rhad, the aaracokra monk/rogue. The paladin was out for blood and so was pursuing the monk with a vengeance. Of course the monk had a ridiculous speed (something like 60 ft) and so was able to get well out of range. The key thing was that the paladin was ignoring all the other easy targets around him, and focusing solely on the monk. The monk chose to take an opportunity to tease the paladin and flew in, got up in his face and attacked, and then dashed away out of sight. In retaliation, the paladin asked if they could cast Locate Object on one of the monks feathers to track where he had gone. Though the spell says it can "locate a specific object known to you, as long as you have seen it up close", I said that it would have been a bit difficult in the moment to get a good look at one specific feather. He argued, I said he could roll for it, he rolled low, so I gave him the general direction but not anything too specific. He gave up on the hunt and instead went for an easier target close by, which I later rewarded him for in the form of a healing potion. Basically, should I have ruled that way, or should I have given him the exact whereabouts of the feather (and in turn, the monk)? Half the party was with me, half the party was with the paladin, but no-one was mad about it, so I leave this in your infinitely more knowledgeable hands.

Tosti

I pray to dice Christ that it pleases the court, honorable justices and the other one that reads these things. I'm a new DM running a post apocalyptic, dystopian-esc game (that one of my 3 sisters wrote) for my other two sisters. During some introductory investigating to find where they were, the PCs come across a few desiccated bodies along with a gross fleshy machine with 30 saw hands attached. This is my issue. One of my sisters wanted to investigate to see how old the bodies were and I let her. I replied that her character assumed it would be a week or more old by looks and stench etc. My other sister claimed that it would be impossible to get an exact date unless her PC was a doctor of some sort. Was I wrong for saying that she would be able to tell it was maybe a week or more old by her investigation? This is my first time DMing and I think I maybe messed it up.

Mak

True. The area of effect damage for storm sphere, however, states that if you pass the save you take no damage. If you fail, you take something like 2d4 bludgeoning from things flying around in the sphere. The spell's big damage comes from it's bonus action effect - each round storm sphere is up, you can shoot lightning at a target as a bonus action, which does something like 6d6 lightning damage, and the storm itself is difficult terrain.

Caleb Treaster

That's an awesome move that you made to save that player! And I'm glad your DM honored your decision, and it's really cool that you did something both heroic and also very cold. Hope most of your games are this fun!

Caleb Treaster

Absolutely do that, ALSO give them disadvantage on stealth rolls since they will be absolutely reeking of shit.

lois

i plead to the court, especially our lord and king brian murphy that we all bow down to and adore, that thy majesties use thee eyes to read the following case: this one’s short, but my friends have been bothering me about it for two years now. a few halloween’s ago i thought it would be a fun idea to have an npc that was essentially a walking and talking pumpkin head. one of my players saw him, and immediately said that they wanted to attempt to seduce them. i let them roll for a raw charisma check, and when they failed i said that the pumpkin denied their advances. my friend then got upset, and said that since he was a punpkin he would not know the typical forms of courtship, and would then be flattered by the flirting and immediately accept them. should i have let them romance the pumpkin instead of shutting them down?

Alec Guerin

If it would please the court, I would submit for decision the case of Shark dick v. DM. Some context: in the pre-session hangout, the DM told us that sharks have two dicks. It was an interesting, if random factoid. CUT TO: The first encounter in our session was a shark attack. The party took the encounter as very light hearted, riffing and being silly about the sharks having two dicks. Good times were had by all. Except maybe the DM, who asked us to stop, and said it was a coincidence that she told us about shark anatomy at the outset of the session. Unfortunately once we got going it was hard to stop. Until my character died. We started this session at the end of our combat day and we were all pretty low on resources. When I got knocked unconscious, the DM said I was dead. No death saves. No healing. We had just used our only diamond on a greater restoration on someone. It was a huge mood whiplash. We asked why this had happened? The DM said it was because of my cursed dagger, but I had gone unconcious in combat with it a handful of times before with no issue. I know I should have stopped when the DM asked. But my question to the crit is this: Was my learned friend justified in killing my character because I as a player made one too many jokes in the encounter? P.S. in case any of you need to recuse yourself, I cosplayed King Bullywog at your first live show in Seattle.

Laney

Hi Mr. Bailiff Jake. I hope you're having a good day. You too cool cat crit justices. I got a crunchy question I need resolved. I ran a campaign where in the final fight there were several camps of people who were fighting, none of which allied. However an npc was attacking another npc, to which the party monk decided to hop on the other side and flank. I of course let this happen but looking back the language of flanking says it has to be an ALLY you flank with. Does the fact they are still enemies negate the fact that they're attacking the same target? I await your judgement patiently.

Sander Goldman

May it please the court, i was playing in an adventurers league game at a local game store when my illusion wizard attempted to cast Tasha’s Hideous Laughter on an Animated Armor. The DM said that spell had no effect because the armor was inanimate and therefore immune to charm effects. I argued that the spell makes no mention of “charm” and is instead an illusion that imposes the prone condition, but he was unmoved so i let it go. So i ask the court, can a soulless walking armor ROFL?

Calvin

If it may please the honorable Crit Justices and okay(if Jake) or legendary(if else) bailiff, I bring you the case of the honorable duelists fist bump. Our high-leveled party was on a quest to steal a magic helmet off a powerful giant made of pure dark energy. Upon arriving to his lair, the giant challenged the Paladin to a 1v1 as he was looking for worthy opponents à la a Dragon Ball Z style. I realized immediately that the Paladin was going to get his ass kicked, so I devised a devious plot. The Ancestral Guardian Barbarian has an ability that the first monster they hit has disadvantage attacking anyone else but the Barbarian and all damage halved if they do end up attacking anyone else. I decided to ask the DM if I could go into a rage and fist bump the Giant out of respect and to honor the duel, and the DM accepted, meaning I technically hit the Giant first. After the first round when I told the DM what just happened, he very, VERY quickly retconned the bump. Judges, was I too technical and abusive of the rules? Or did the DM not want to face a whomping? I will not rest until I seek justice. Thank you.

Andrew Goolic

May it please the High Crit Court. In a game a few years ago one session turned to an all out screaming match. Our DM had us encounter a Sphinx. The idea was that we would give a riddle. The DM had to figure out the riddle or 1 minute on google to solve it. If he didnt, we passed. We have a player who is very into riddles so he gave one that was very difficult. The DM narrowed it down to 2 options and admittedly took a guess. The riddle was essentially having to figure out which coin in a pile weighed more then the rest. His guess was correct and he said that we failed. We claimed that he didnt solve the riddle. He had a lucky guess. This ended up with us getting thrown into the future by the Sphinx and killed a lot of the vibe for some of the players with getting thrown that much ahead. Did he solve the riddle? Or should we have gotten to pass through?

Calvin Tran

May it please the court and the most honorable bailiff, my dragonborn monk was scouting ahead in a forest while the rest of my party made camp. In a series of unfortunate events, I found myself rolling for initiative staring down a huge bear wearing a belt. Alone and too far to call for help, I decided to run. To get away, I decided to run across the nearby lake as I was a 9th level monk. To my surprise, the bear was carrying a shark on its back the entire time and proceeded to swim after me using the shark. Eventually, my movement ended and my DM told me that since I didn't end my turn on solid ground, I would fall into the water. I argued that since round order was more like a point in time rather than my character just standing there, the momentum of my run would carry me through the next turn. There was some back and forth but eventually, I accepted my fate and my character sunk helplessly into the water as both bear and shark began to maul me to death. Honorable judges, was I correct in that I should have been able to continue running across the water or should I have accepted the fate that no one escapes from BearShark.

Dominic Stacey

Hello esteemed Judges, and the great Jake, if it may please the court I once played a high level Wizard in 3.5 who focused on summon monster spells but my DM wouldn't let me summon a great blue whale 200ft in the air above a dragon to do ridiculous amounts of damage due to the whales weight and falling from that height. She said the creature summoned needs to be summoned in an environment it can survive in for the spell to work but I thibk because it's a mammal the whale would survive being summoned outside of water. Was I too greedy in my thrust for damage? I await your judgement - Dom P.S. I was allowed to summon a triceratops instead

Figgy the Cat

If it pleases the great dice christ! This is a heartfelt prayer, instead of a confession. Some of my friends don't have dice and use online rollers. Knowing how much more fun and how the great dice Christ works, I sent all 6 of them their favorite dragon pouch and dice set to add to the fun. After doing so I cooked my dice on the window closest to nature to gain favor. Our first session starts today and I pray that the DC grants me favor as we play God's creating the new world.

Figgy the Cat

That's such a sneaky player. I like the move there because then it forces the conversation and more role-playing as you explain why you wanted to keep it a secret and when you wanted to reveal it. Unless they were a dick about it, then that's rude.

Figgy the Cat

It's hard being the DM to make everyone happy. I don't think your wrong for making a second campaign especially if it's a different setting and tone. But maybe invite them to a game to see if they would be interested in a more serious game, and if not then they can't be mad at you and the others. Keep being an awesome DM who tries to make the best for your players!!

Jess Little

I mean, it can be both being salty and wronged. That's the kind of thing to discuss as a party before the game starts, or speak up about in the moment if you're really not cool with it. Also, sometimes we don't know if something irks us until we have hindsight. Personally? I'd probably be ticked too.

Jess Little

Sounds controlly. Also, steal that no-save-mind-read circlet and use it on every single one of their NPCs.

NotAFrog

I present the highest greetings to the esteemed judges Murphy, Axford, Tanner, and the hardworking and overseeing bailiff Hurwitz I present the case of Ü (pronounced like the world of ooo from Adventure Time) vs. the DM and his punishing crit. I was playing the character Ü, a bald chaotic neutral dwarf who wielded two chian whips. The DM created a world that was a toxic wasteland besides our camp, a very cool idea that everyone was into until we started to get side effects from venturing into the wasteland. The DM took the side effects to essentially alter our characters into his versions of them, making drastic changes such as giving Ü feathers, making our Tabaxi Bard invisible except his bones, and more. One of Ü's mutations was that he got his teeth replaced with shark teeth. A few sessions later Ü entered an arena fight where no weapons were allowed and no killing was allowed as the population was limited to the people in the camp as far as we knew. He was aptly winning and rising through the ranks. On his final fight, being a little chaotic, he decided to bite the opponent to finish him, and I rolled a nat 20 on the attack roll. I got super excited, as I knew this was enough to finish him off, and I wanted to deal a non-lethal attack to win the tournament. The DM instantly insisted that I did not deal non-lethal damage as I bit the man's neck with my shark teeth and killed him with no opportunity to deal non-lethal, getting me DQ'd from the fight and almost exiled to the toxic wasteland. I argued that I rolled a nat 20 and that I should not be punished for rolling high but he would not have it. I got him to not exile my character, but I still was DQ"d and did not receive any rewards all because I rolled a nat 20. Esteemed court, I beg you to judge if what happened to Ü was lawful and deal the punishment to the guilty party accordingly. May Crit be with you. Sincerely, Aaron Dickrede

Nate Bateman

May it pleas the court and also Jake, I run a community and fantasy high inspired campaign. As it is college after all, we’ve introduced arcaine with incredibly fun and chaotic results. Recently while at a crusty dive bar in the under dark, the parties very type 1 aassimir cleric; qyynyth (have fun with that name) excused herself to the bathroom to eat (she hates doing so in front of people). As ladies often do, the hobgoblin; klonf joined her and had a very nice bonding moment as they scarfed burgers in adjacent bathroom stalls. Then as is want to happen the arcaine was busted out by klonf who began pressuring qyynyth to partake. Qyynyth not only refused but cast command on klonf trying to get her to not do any herself. Klonf rolled a nat 20, and immediately cast command back on qyynyth telling her to partake. Qyynyth rolled a nat 1. Here’s where thing get…. Dicey. It was qyynyth’a players birthday, so I offered advantage as a one time birthday reroll. She immediately rolled a nat 20. From this point the session itself became utter chaos due to both the rolls and birthday celebrations Klonfs player and I still regularly argue about whether I was being too nice in this instance. Did I break the rules or did I let the dice speak their truth? -Nate bateman (P.s. maybe come back to crittsburgh and let us plead our cases live)

Kinzie

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Axeford and Tanner as well as Supreme Bailiff Hurwitz: Case: Items to new and old players I play in a campaign that is mostly new-to-DnD players who have very little experience with the game, the expectation of my myself (a player) and the DM. Recently, we completed a boss fight and were collecting the loot. The other players were given various items for their characters (magical armor, weapons, and clothing) that were interesting to both players and characters but I was given a Decanter of Endless Water. (We rarely play in a way that requires us to announce we're eating food or drinking water.) When asked why I was given the Decanter, the DM said "As the most experienced player I'm never going to give you good items." Is the DM wrong for not giving out items that our characters would find equally interesting or is it fair to give new players better items that give them more obvious ways to be useful role playing or in combat and force more experienced players to be more creative with less interesting items? I willingly accept the decision of our Honorable Justices and Supreme Bailiff. Thank you! Jameson Coslow

David Moore

Honorable justices and mediocre bailiff, Jack or whatever. May it please the court. I threw a wildly high Challenge Rating boss fight at my party of 3 level 15 players. Two liches (that were lovers), and 3 challenging monster minions. Oh and one of the liches had a simulacrum of itself... My wizard PC had a simulacrum of their own who cast globe of invulnerability first round. And the Wizard stood hand in hand with his simulacrum casting spells, protected from within the globe. I attempted to counter spell the wizard's offensive spells with one of the Liches and they informed me (with a fat grin) that you can't counterspell through the globe. This made me sweat, since I didn't realize this and all my baddies were spell casters. I made the call that the Lich would have known this and wouldn't have counterspelled through the globe and instead dimension doored to enter melee with the wizard. This PC then said "shouldn't the lich have wasted their spell since I tricked you into counterspelling?" And I claimed that it was me, the DM they tricked but not the Lich who is a spell casting mastermind. I was legitimately proud of my player for pulling one over on me (it was a great move), but didn't want to shortchange the threat of this final fight. Was I wrong to ret-con my Liches spells to be more effective? I'm afraid it took the wind out of my player's sails. Oh, the PCs kicked the Liches butts anyways. CR 28 fight, my ass.

Michael K

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Axeford and Tanner as well as Jacked and Yolked Bailiff Hurwitz: I was new to a group who had been playing a campaign for a bit already, so I was joining mid campaign, around level 8 or 9. I made a Gunslinger/Rogue multiclass, a-la Deadeye, working with the DM to along the way, making sure everything was OK to play in his world and setting. My first session with them was great! We had a wonderful time and I fell in love with the group. Things fell apart by the second session. The group embarked on an underwater mission, that would take multiple sessions to complete. Cool. We were all given water breathing by a mage, and ready to go on our adventure. Double cool. Everything was great, until the first under water combat. My DM told me that my guns would not fire under water. My character, who did not have magic, strong melee capabilities, or any way to use his class features (none of which work without the ability to fire a gun), was essentially neutered. I had to resort to using a slingshot, which for some reason *did* work under water in the DM's eyes, and deal minimal damage for multiple sessions until the mission was completed, while being bored out of my mind. I was not upset with the decision to make guns not work underwater, though I do feel that the Rule of Cool should have allowed guns (MAGIC GUNS) to work underwater, I was more upset that the DM allowed me to create a combat focused, gunslinger character, knowing full well that we'd be going on a long, multisession adventure where I would not be able to fire guns, immediately after I joined the group. I feel that he either could have made an exception for these magic guns, talked to me about playing another class, or recommended some other items that would have made up for my entire lack of ability to use my class features and abilities, instead of allowing my character to essentially be useless in our combats for session after session, so soon after my time joining the campaign. I await your judgment for what you feel would have been fair. I should say that the next adventure took place in Space, and he tried to tell me they wouldn't work AGAIN, until I looked up that guns do, in fact, fire in space.

E. Vandenabeele

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and bailiff jake: My party and I were about to fight our campaign’s BBEG and our DM claimed it would be an extremely difficult fight. Roman, our eccentric and self-centered sorcerer had previously taken the feat “Inspiring Leader” - which allows him to give a ten minute speech that gives the whole party temp HP. Right before the fight, he gave such a speech, but it was very self-centric - you know, talking about how great he is - and our DM said that since the speech was only inspiring to him, we would all only get half the temp HP that we were supposed to get! We ended up arguing for a while and eventually the party gave up and only took half the hit points. Should the party have willingly taken only half our temp hit points for the half-assed speech, or should our DM have just let Roman be Roman and give us the full temp hit points?

Jak Johnson

Dear dungeon bailiff Jake and the SUPREME court justices: I am a first time DM and am enjoying it, however I’m trying to figure out the line between giving consequences to actions, and punishing my players. A player of mine made a deal with a fairy to become a warlock, and the fairy is classically a trickster. Because of this, I had her roll a wisdom save when she was near a “deck of many things” which she failed. So I had her compelled to pull a card. The card she pulled destroyed all of her magic items, did I push too far? Should I not force players into a decision like this? Second question- this player is the edgiest rogue and makes party cohesion/diplomacy a fuckin nightmare. She actively told the king of the dwarves to go fuck himself in his courtroom, the first time meeting him. I had to come up with some bullshit reason he didn’t execute her on the spot. because I don’t wanna murder PCs before they get any type of arc… is it OK to kill a PC even if it isn’t quite right for “the story”?

Juhmes(Jums)

May it please the court and the honorable yet lowly bailiff. I would like to bring to your attention the case of the destructive wold builders. In our last session I was playing an absolutely ancient, chaotic good celestial warlock eladrin who was a swamp witch healer. (shit saying it now I guess I made a blasting grandma?) My party was exploring in a partially abandoned town and we came across a secret passage into what turned out to be the complex for a drug lab. We didn't make it past the first storage room before we saw alot of bandits coming and decided to flee. I used wall of fire to block off some of the passages and set fire to some crates to distract the bandits as we were running away. As we made our escape the DM made us do checks to see how far we were getting then openly rolled 120d6's! Apparently the drugs I had set fire to were Incredibly explosive. The resulting explosion destroyed about a quarter of the town and threw us hundreds of feet into the harbour and we ended the session there. However, as we laughed off our shock the other players in the group kept making jokes about how many people I had killed and how I was going to defend myself in court. These jokes then progressed into how far the cloud of drug fallout would travel and how many more people it would kill. The DM laughed along as well but was mostly quiet as he sorted out his notes from the session. I argued about a few points and I admit that in most other situations I would be the first one to make the jokes but in the moment I was in a panic spiral, I was struggling to see how I can continue to roleplay a 'Good' character in the face of inadvertently killing so many people. And I now feel that that character is unplayable. We have been on a long break due to scheduling (my fault as I moved halfway around the world) and this has yet to be resolved. Should I have known better than to set fire to drugs? Am I just a butthurt idiot? At what point does collaborative storytelling become problematic.

Cannon Mayes III

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices, and Ex Justice Jake, may it please the court: My players were fighting a basilisk, and a PC with a multi-class in rogue, decided to hide as a bonus action at the end of his turn, and immediately afterwards succumbed to the petrification. He rolled a 31 on stealth, and then froze where he was hiding. No one has a high enough perception to find him so theoretically he’d be lost forever. I allowed them to find him thinking that eventually they would find him considering he hid within the area of the battle during his combat round, but I wonder if it would have been more fun or interesting if I left him lost… I humbly await your judgement. -Cannon

Jay C

Honorable Justice's and bailiff Jake, and may it please the court. I'm struggling with one of the other players in the campaign we're currently in. His demeanor is generally very negative (super sullen and arguey) and he usually doesn't interact a lot, in or out of game, with anyone. During our last session everyone was having a Convo about how to attack some cultists down a windy hallway and we all thought player in question should make the first move. He's a variant human rune knight (UA version) w/sharp shooter feat and we were in dim light. There was some conversation about whether he could or couldn't see them. I went to look it up and since we play virtually and we all have access to each other's character sheets via d&d beyond I just pulled up his. His stone rune gives him dark vision so so he would be able to see clearly even in dim light. I tried to tell him this but it did not go over well. I couldn't get much out because he kept talking over me and after about a minute and a half of this he asked the DM (also his wife) to come talk to him. A moment later our DM told us that his character disappeared to the plane of mass. I know sometimes I can be a bit of a rules lawyer (I do always try and be the good kind) but was I wrong? Was I the asshole the whole time? Am I the curmudgeon? Please I must know. Sincerely and with all the love in the world JC

Nat One Studio

Oh, great Pontiffs of the Church and the Supreme Crit of Dice Christ, I come to you with a confession and seek your guidance! This is a case of Player BBEG vs Party, and I am the one who has fallen. I messed up during shenanigans and triggered the endgame early, though the rest of the party was asleep at the time, and are unaware even as players. I am now corrupted by the spirit of the BBEG and will now slowly turn more evil as time passes. The DM gave me a choice of handing over my sheet and thereby letting the party in on my gaff or playing it out until the last moment, noting that I would be getting progressively worse urges as time passed. I seek absolution for my shenanigans, but also, what should I do If I'm faced with the urge to eliminate another character or TPK? I feel bad, but in a "I'll still happily do the deed" way, that I will inevitably betray them.

Kake

Honorable judges and also the bailiff: I am DMing for the first time for a group of 5 Guys. One of them is playing a Drow Half-Elf Warlock Hexblade Faction Agent of the Zhentarim, a shadowy organization that seeks to exert secret control through wealth and influence. On several occasions he has been the one to sell a high priced artifact Every s i n g l e time he tries to keep some of the gold for himself and hide it from the group It gets worse: last night this player saved an NPC from orcs, helped him outside, asked if there was anything left in the house, learned that the NPC’s life savings were left in the office, went back inside, claimed it for the party, rolled well enough to convince them to play along, and then got mad when I made him roll deception with disadvantage to tell the NPC the money was gone and they couldn’t retrieve it. His explanation is that he is roleplaying his character honestly I object to this -however- having played over 100 hours of Divinity with him, and knowing full well that he is the type of dude that will rush into a room and loot everything as quickly as possible leaving nothing for other characters. Is this Grade-A Roleplaying? Or does this man deserve punishment? -Not having a Hot Boy Summer

Lucia V.

In case of relevance: Dex is Bingo's highest stat, Strength is his dump stat

Nat One Studio

FRIEND OF THE COURT BRIEF: In the first instance, if you'd intentionally destroyed the players items, then yes, but because of the inherent random nature of the DoMT, they could have drawn really really well. It just sucks they drew poorly. If you continue to feel bad, you might provide some opportunities through loot to recover a helpful item or get a better item, though I wouldn't go as far as staging a good draw of the deck...keep it pure chance. As for executing players, they must know there are consequences for actions. They may be the protagonists, and some degree of plot-shielding applies, but I would have had the offending character arrested and put them on trial for a fun roleplay side quest event. From there, enjoyed how it went. Maybe they escape in the night, maybe they fail to defend themselves with persuasion and deception rolls and are executed, maybe the party barters and negotiates with the king/guards for their release. It shows punishment for actions while providing more story.

Nat One Studio

Ughhh! This ruffles the feathers!!! There's dozens of other "interesting" items they could have given you that have a narrow functionality while still being cool and fun to receive if they're worried about you overturning the game. Still, even that is annoying. As a player, you put in the same if not more effort in reaching success as anybody newer to the game, and then to have your reward stripped from you because you're "too experienced" is crappy. Get a new game

Nat One Studio

I get the crap on Jake joke...but calling him a piece of shit feels too far. It crosses that line from funny to hurtful.

Nat One Studio

It's all fun and games until the command spells are busted out. Being honest, it sounds like this was the best outcome and a clever way around what could have been a soured in-and-out-of-game friendship. Nobody likes being forced to do something against their will, especially regarding topics like drugs. (Second, yes! We should have a live d&d court session! But not in crittsburgh, you already got a live show 😝)

Nat One Studio

I think the word "assume" and "a week or more" are the keys to the answer. You didn't give an exact date, you gave a window based on assumption.

Nat One Studio

I think that was rather well done! *Applauds* Especially rewarding the player with a healing portion. I would have also noted that I don't think you can separate the feather from the bird, while it's still a part of it's anatomy, and call it an object. They would have had to use a different spell to find a creature.

Ryan Sullivan

Dear Honorable Crit Justices ... and Jake... I guess I bring before your court the case of a new DM vs. New players A couple of years ago I DM'd my first ever campaign with 4 of my friends who were playing for their 1st time. We played for a couple of months but then it happened. I accidentally had a total party kill on my hands. The party was fighting a black ooze and when their healer went down and got gobbled up by said ooze they tried freeing her. I tried many times to tell them "it's okay to run away and come back later to collect the corpse" but they weren't having it. Instead they were all stepping in the acidic slime and taking damage every turn until they all went down and failed their death saves (I had only gotten them to level 2 or 3 at this point). With a mixture of me trying to follow the rules the best I knew how and the players having fun role-playing and trying to save their friend. This eventually led to a TPK and the burning of the sheets. I haven't been able to forgive myself and can't help but feel I had done something wrong. Should I have adjusted the oozes 70 or so hit points down more so my players could fight it off or have the ooze run away with it's prey? My players took this acceptionally well and were fine with rolling new characters but we only had 1 session after that and I haven't DM'd since because of the guilt. Am I in the wrong for this events or is my party in the wrong? I believe your ruling might bring peace and clarity for me so I may be able to DM again.

Greg Lohman (tsarducci)

I set a no PvP rule for many games, which includes stealing from/hiding loot from other party members, but NPCs are fair game.

Kake

Thanks, that's helpful! I guess when I agreed to try on the DM hat for my pals I imagined it would be a short and sweet campaign full of camaraderie and companionship - it has definitely been a learning experience.

Luke Johnson

May it please the court, but most especially his and her reverences Emily the luminous, Caldwell the fair, and Murphy the just. Hey Jake! I calling upon your guidance as I am not sure if my DM was focusing me unfairly. I had been playing in a online campaign for a few months and my 7th level sorcerer had recently gained access to the spell Armor of Agathys. Our characters were fighting in an arena, and in a 1-on-1 against an npc, I cast armor of agathys at a 4th level, giving me 20 temp hp and 20 damage to anyone who hits me with a melee attack. The issue then arose when I was hit twice, once for 7 and another for 12. After the second hit, I mentioned that the npc would take 40 damage total as per the spell rules, but the dm disagreed saying that they would take the amount of damage equal to how much temp hp was left, to which I verbally disagreed with since it’s not rules as written. He ultimately said that the spell would work the way I said for this round only, after which it would work his way. I contacted him after letting him know my reasoning for disagreeing, just that it was against raw and that I don’t know any 1st level spell that has the potential to only do 1 point of damage bar any resistances. He said that the spell was too op in the situation my character was in, and I just dropped it. After a few months I stopped playing for school but had rejoined for the “finale”. During which, another spellcaster cast armor of agathys and, to my surprise, the dm allowed the use of raw spell mechanics, even applauding the use of the spell. My question is, dear judges, was I being unfairly focused by my dm? Or am I just being a wee babe?

Logan

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and Mighty bailiff. I’m a DM for a relatively long running game with my friends and husband. My husband loves playing bits but sometimes that get him and the party into tense (but never outright dangerous) situations. A recent session was very tense, the long and short of it being that it dealt with discrimination against owlfolk and solving the murder of a mousefolk that was being blamed on an owl. When talking about the game I called the session a “murder mystery” which was my first mistake. My husband took this to mean a “Golden Girls” style Clue game with a high camp factor, and framed the character accordingly. My husband decided that his character had misheard “this is our last resort” and was going to treat the whole thing like they were at a Disney resort and vacation (including Hawaiian shirt, Fannypack, and goofy dog hat). I didn’t mind that and thought it would add some laughs to lighten up the overall mood. They other player got a good kick out of it- but then my husband tried to make jokes to a gruff bouncer. This guy essentially said “get lost, and don’t start any trouble”. They went into a bar as part of the investigation and met a few more gruff bouncers and my husband started pushing their buttons, I tried to make it clear that these nameless mean guys would not be able to take a joke with about three variations of “stop/get lost/just go to the bar” and still the pushing persisted. So I had the bouncer make a big deal to up the tension and had the other character get the insight that if they drew any more unwanted attention this area would no longer be viable because the mousefolk were already suspicious of bigfolk. For the rest of the game my husband was completely disconnected. Wouldn’t talk, when given scenes said one or two words. I had to pause the session (easy since the other player was on zoom) to address it. He basically said “I thought this was going to be Clue, not SVU” and felt stupid with the character choices he had made for this session. I felt pretty gutted and brainstormed ways to help him feel more engaged, saying it wasn’t the bit but what characters he was pushing that was the problem. He didn’t have fun basically the rest of the night which in turn made me have a pretty bad time as well. I never like the feeling of players straight up not having fun. I want to make some kind of visual “bit barometer” or “ shenanigan scale” so that players can have fun but also show when a bit is flying too close to the sun. Am I pushing my players too hard? I humbly turn the case into your hands.

Pedro Gomez

May it please the court, specifically the wise justice Murphy and venerable brooklynite bailiff Jake. I am a DM and I humbly request your divine judgement. My players recently returned from the abyss and our cleric lost his goddess’s favor after completing a quest for vampiric Dua Lipa resulting in the minotaur fighter becoming a creature of the night. The cleric’s casting was taken away and prayers were left on read. In an attempt to regain favor while also caring for their bloodthirsty minotaur they came across a greater soul devouring demon. His cause now just, I was waiting for the cleric to cast a spell to return their power. However the breakup from his deity led them to attempt this fight without magic. The power reawakened as the fight became desperate and a TPK felt imminent, however the cleric was killed and another pc offered their true name in exchange for renewed life. Having proven themselves it was granted though the minotaur enraged at the pain inflicted attacked the demon and the demon plane shifted to the abyss with the cleric in tow. Is this fate worse than death justified? Should I have provided other ways for the cleric to regain their power, or do the players deserve death, does the cleric deserve the fate as a result of his party’s actions? I graciously request your wisdom in this matter.