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

Court Cases, Plz! (Patreon)

Published:
2021-11-23 18:20:05
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Hear yea, hear ye! Crit is soon to be in session. Submit your (BRIEF) cases here on this thread and I will bring them before our Justices!

Your Cool Bailiff,

Jake

Comments

Arwyn Robinson

May it please the court and the average bailiff. I bring an unusual DM vs DM case. I was in a campaign where I was Co-DM because the group was so large (I was OG DM). I ran story, he ran combat. We were in a fight on an island surrounded by lava. one Druid went to cast reverse gravity and the other Druid prepared gust of wind to blow all the bad guys into the lava. The Co-dm used counterspell which made my group very despondent. I looked over at the monster stat block and saw that they didn't have a high enough level counterspell to instantly counter. It should have been a roll off. I whispered to him that the druid should get to roll for it. he was firm that 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 not given the chance to roll. Should I have stood up for my players and made the other DM be true to the stat block and made it a rolloff? Was I in the wrong for staying quiet?

JustMithais

May it please the court, the undeniably charismatic supreme crit justices, and the honorable and beautiful bailiff. I present the case of Religion, Charms, and The Greater Vampire. I was the DM at the table, but the case is between two of my players. The Monk and the Paladin. During the party’s earlier days of adventuring, they came across a crime lord greater vampire who resided in a city of monsters. Initially before the first meeting the Vampire refused to work with the party unless they provided a vial of their blood, for his insurance, in case of betrayal. During this first interaction, the paladin’s divine sense revealed the vast amount of undead present in the vampire’s lair, causing them to have a panic attack (the character, not the player). The vampire lord, being annoyed but doing his best to appear sincere, cast dominate monster on the paladin in order to silence the panic attack, claiming to be “helping”. Much later in the campaign the Paladin had adopted the worship of The Raven Queen, a goddess who despises intelligent undead, brought about by the meeting of the party’s favorite NPC, a cleric of the Raven Queen. The party also came to conclusion that the BBEG was able to scry on the party due to, most likely, having blood sold to them by the Vampire Lord. The party’s cleric friend (along with a handful of recruited NPCs since the vampire lord had numbers of undead minions) and the Monk were very in favor about wanting to kill the Vampire Lord. However, the Paladin was adamantly against fighting them, citing the first meeting where the vampire “helped” the Paladin and previous jobs they have done for said Vampire Lord and the fact they party could not come up with any hard evidence that their blood had been sold (no zone of truth or locate object prepared etc). The Monk and the Paladin got surprisingly heated in the decision of whether or not to fight the vampire. I ended up having the NPCs who canonically hated the vampire side with the Monk to bring the argument to a resolution. Was I wrong to do so?

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?

Grnt

Not quite a court question but a general one, I’ve been dm’ing for a little bit but with each new group I dm for one always wants to do backflips, is this a really common thing or are my friends just obsessed with backflips?

Michael Singer

May it please the gremlins. And Jake. I am a new DM and I struggle to come up with ideas for the campaign on my own, my party and I are very big fans of the dark souls series and I used a boss fight from dark souls, the ceaseless discharge, as an almost improve fight in a dungeon and they seemed pretty peeved off about it. What are your opinions on reusing encounters and fights from movies and video games in a campaign?

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 looted 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.

Andrew E

May it please the great and powerful judges of the Supreme Crit, and the humble bailiff Jake, I humble myself before you with this short altercation I had. I am the DM of a long running game with a group of old friends. The other day the party was fighting an evil cleric. It quickly became evident that the cleric was not going to win this fight, so he attempted to flee, casting Guardian of Faith behind him to cover his escape. The Guardian appeared directly adjacent to two PCs. The wording of the spell seems a bit unclear, but I ruled that those two PCs would get hit on their turns, since it was their first time in range. One of my players argued with me that they never entered the space, they were just already there, so they shouldn’t get hit. I ended up going with my original interpretation of the spell, but I’m still unsure. Who interpreted the spell right, me or my player? I will humbly accept any judgement you bestow upon me.

Warren Springer

May it please jake and also the court I guess, A friend wanted to play a barbarian frog man, about 1 foot tall. He took offense to me saying that Blunt attacks would send his 2lbs flying through the air. He said I was being unfair, even though I let him use his frog tongue to grapple to objects every time he was sent flying. Who's in the wrong?

Kayla Bella

May it please the court, I've been DMing a little monster hunting module for my friends recently and during our most recent session they cooled down after a fight with some displacer beasts in a nearby stream. For flavor I added that they noticed a snail was napping on a rock below the water and they were so obsessed with it he became a full NPC with a backstory. Honorable judges, how do I get my players to care about the story I actually wrote and not abandon everything for the chance to once again talk to Jerry the Snail?

Luke Shealy

Honorable crit justices and just Bailiff Jake 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

Fighting Favorites

Most honorable High Justices and the Cool Ballif Jake If it pleases the crit: I was the DM for a homebrew campaign for my world Cerulea the Sky Nation. In the campaign I adapted my own version of Mage Madness from Bahumia. Before the challenge I announced that it was a challenge to test cleverness. They were transported to a plane where 4 monsters with a high CR spread into the four corners of the map, all spaced about 500 feet from where the party sat in the center. I narrated that the goal was to find the key that unlocked a door that sat 100 feet in front of them. I then said each monster came with a riddle, that if answered, the monster would disappear and they could then see if it possessed the key, otherwise they would need to fight it to discover whether or not it held the key. They solved two of the riddles, with the monster disappearing, and no key revealed. They then went on to fight each of the monsters, and after killing them there was still no key. Confused they went and checked the door which had held the key in the lock the whole time. I had been playing with them for a year at this point and I am not exaggerating when I say they were more outraged than I’d ever seen. They said it was a stupid puzzle and that checking the door was not a test of cleverness. There was only one player that thought it was funny but the other five were super mad. This was almost a year ago, but one of my friends gets mad if I even bring it up. Was this a bad puzzle? Should I have just stuck with the premise of the puzzle as they had understood it and given the key to them on the last monster they beat(which would have gotten them through the door around the same time), or was my puzzle okay? I throw myself at the mercy of the crit.

K

Bailiff Jake! I always see you passing through my snackbar here, just thought I'd offer you some water and a snack, on the crit house.🤫 😉🥤🍿

Keanu DRAMAFACE

May it please the court, The Magniloquent Justices and The Rad skateboard kid bailiff, I feel I was robbed. For context, our characters are fighting in a theater but combat started with us all scattered. I played a Half yuan-ti/half tiefling circle of stars Druid and I was in the catwalk. I cast Conjure Animals to make 4 giant eagles appear. My plan was to have my eagles grab my arms and fly me down to the stage. My DM said no because I don’t have mounted combat. I said I just wanted to use them to safely get down and they would just be holding me. He said no. I think those eagles could have grabbed my arms in their talons and flew me down. What say you? Love you guys PS I saw y’all first time in seattle and I can’t wait to see y’all again in February! Gonna but Jake a Whiskey, that’s a promise.

Myles Lee

May it please the court and the most honorable bailiff. I am running a, relatively new, campaign in which my party was defending a magical temple from marauders. When the enemy leader entered the central chamber, my player (a Gnome Arcane Trickster Rogue) crit on an opposed athletics check to grapple one of his lackeys and put her sword to his throat. At this point I told everyone to roll initiative as this was clearly an act of aggression but she claims that she just wanted to talk and that this should have given her advantage on some kind of intimidation roll. What do you think? Was I in the wrong? Can one have a meaningful conversation while threatening someone? I throw myself to your mercy

King of the City Pigeons

May it please the supreme crit justices and the bailiff who is trying his best, I present the case of the tongue tied bard. I have a player who wants to play a smooth talking bard, but when it’s time to be charming she rolls a high charisma check and then puts her foot squarely in her mouth. I keep telling her she could change classes, or we don’t have to role play exactly what she says, but she is dead set on making this works. It’s getting a little awkward around the table when everything falls flat. Should I be more asserted in making a change or see if she can find her way? (Worth noting…she’s been trying this for over a year).

Christopher Hayes

May it please the honorable court and baliff This story is an older story from one of my first times playing. I already know this DM wasn't much fun. He cancelled several session and almost every time we got together we just played a new campaign. So this time was like normal we drew up new characters and 3 of us in the party looked at a quest board. There was one in the Forest near by and had a good reward. So naturally the 3 of us took it. Anyways we go in only to find ourselves faced with 4 mechanical bulls. Realizing we were put mached since we were a LEVEL 1 PARTY we tried to run and hide. He ran up different trees only to realize these bulls had a spell that, when failed turns said person to stone. So still all of us being level 1 and in a tree we all failed the save. So in some forest somewhere there will always be 3 idiots in stone statues. My only request is to give the DM a harsh punishment for he never warned against us going on this quest and we were new players.

SrS Blu

Pretty cool Justices and Magnanimously Quintessential Bailiff, if it pleases the court I have a quite simple quandary. I am a first time DM and have created an entire world, heist, and pantheon for my players (yes I am pretty pleased with myself). However my party and I have reached an impass on One Small thing. Almost everyone in the party dual wields. In the very first encounter I allowed the players to attack twice per action (once with each weapon). However I realized after the fact that we needed to specify the off hand and use a bonus action. The resulting conundrum being presenting is that BECAUSE I started the campaign with one set of rules surrounding Two Weapon Fighting that it's unfair of me to change them now. I personally think that we should follow the rules as set by the manual because I feel the players would be too overpowered otherwise (especially the fighter that has THREE flipping actions), and I even created new weapons for them to use in their offhands that are virtually guaranteed to hit plus do a little extra damage, to balance it out. Am I in the wrong for being too.... wishy-washy?

Crimson Claw

Present Judges; Am I wrong for trying to rip my arm off to get rid of a curse? My GM in Pathfinder 2e tried to curse the party, and I endorsed it b/c it's fun and it was his first game. However, what I thought would be a standard cursed bargain became a party wide curse when the target called my character (a stranger to her) her "friend." I just feel like most people would make a voluntary curse only affect the target and at best someone they specifically add in. I tried dispelling and using the curse's own logic to remove it but the GM days it was impossible. Because the symbol of the curse appeared on my arm I tried ripping it off as a last resort, and I'm still salty about it to this day.

Roxie the Bard

May it please the court, This is the case of the ALLEGED murder of my husband. It was our first campaign on roll20 and I played a greedy high elf rouge named Nigella and my husband played a tabaxi monk named Shadow of the Mountaintop. It was literally written as Nigella's character flaw that she was too greedy for her own good. So when our level 3 party met up with a young dragon, they wanted to take the diplomatic approach and run away. The dragon said that they'd let us go if we gave it all our gold. Everyone said okay, but Nigella, with her flaw being what it is, yelled "NEVER!" And shot it with an arrow. The DM and everyone was shocked but as that was exactly what my character would do, we're now all fighting this dragon that we have no hope of winning against. Long story short, my husband was fixing something to eat and told me to get Shadow "out of there with his maximum speed", but I heard "get him out of there" so I got him out the front door with the rest of the party, but Nigella goes out the back door gets a 21 stealth check to hide. The dragon, unable to find Nigella, then breaths his poison breath weapon and hits for over double the amount of HP that Shadow has instakilling him. My husband comes back and sees that if he ran his full speed that he would've been out of the breath weapons aoe. To this day my husband accuses me of killing him, but I argue that it was just a case of miscommunication. Can the court please put this story to rest and let Nigella mourn in peace or bring Justice for Shadow. Thank you

Kevin Alman

May it please the court and the animal loving bailiff. I present the case of the attempted shrunk mage tower. I was DMing a session and when my PC came to a wizards tower the sorcerer said they wanted to cast reduce on the tower. I told them to do an arcana check and they rolled well enough for me to tell them that the tower was very magical and this would most likely not effect it. She still cast it anyway and I said that I would roll a save and if it was a one I would allow it. I rolled a 15 so it did not take effect. But the conversation started about if this could work since the spell doesn’t specify object size for reduce. So I ask you, should I even have had to roll for this? Can you reduce a building with this spell? In you humble opinions what is the largest thing that can be reduce?

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 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 at the second session. The group embarked on an underwater mission, which 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. However, 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, but forced me to 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 also say that the VERY next adventure was to take 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.

Jim Faris

May it please the court; and I guess the bailiff too. How looney is too looney in your opinion? I DM a campaign and my players are currently running a heist. Instead of finding some guards to knock out, they insisted this town has a laundromat that the guard uniforms are sent to and they can just steal them from there. I had a cocktail or two earlier and I said “I dunno, let’s roll if one exists” and they either rolled a 19 or 20, so there’s a laundromat now. What followed was 90 minutes of catastrophic shenanigans of trying to rob a laundromat to get guard uniforms so they can break in to said establishment. Am I being too lenient with what to allow/what I have prepared, or did I throw up a prayer to Dice Christ and follow Their Great Words? I await any judgement or punishment for my actions. Warmest Regards, Jim

Austin Johnson

May it please the court Is it wrong to make constant musical theatre references to annoy a DM who hates musical theatre? The players just turned his entire one shot taking place at a magic highschool into Highschool Musical and he went along with our nonsense, but I could see him get more and more bummed out as we kept doing big dance numbers. Should I feel guilty? I feel a little guilty but should I?

Declane Gilhooley

May it please the court, undoubtedly fantastic bailiff Jake, and Supreme Crit Justices, At what point should the DM stop helping the players with their abilities and leveling up and the like? We have been playing since May and we are all new, including the DM. All characters are at level 4 now and the DM had asked that we have all the character sheets done and sent too her to make sure it was done right before we played next. We play Bi weekly. 2 players didn't have them done so the DM took 2 hours helping and rebuilding characters because she found other things that needed fixing. WE go into combat, the other players forget to add bonuses or special abilities like sneak attack. The Dm reminds them everytime but I feel it's slowing combat down as well as bothering the DM. Not this this should matter but the Dm is also my girlfriend.

AnonymousDM

May it please the mystically wise justices and dashing bailiff. My players and I have been sporadically playing in my homebrew world for about a year now. We were all interested but new to d&d (though I’m a big fan of naddpod and understood a lot more to be sure, so I DM), and playing rarely, I struggled to properly balance encounters for a long time. This, combined with the fact that they all googled optimized builds in character creation and rolled insanely well for stats, has made my players insanely cocky, with whomping after whomping, even as I’ve escalated the difficulty. They’re now level five going on six, and no one’s taken Revivify, because why would they?! Clearly I could never successfully kill one of them. However, we’re playing again after a long gap, and I’ve been doing some studying up. They’re going into a series of encounters that are finally balanced for them, and the odds one (or many) of them die are high! As much as I warn them that it’s *actually* gonna be lethal this time, they just point to all the binds they just blew past before. Do I just kill them to prove a point? I’m worried about killing both beloved characters and the vibe. Who knows? Maybe I’ll just do some Caldwell (in NADDPOD) or Murph (in D20) rolls again and get whomped anyway.

Jake de Medeiros

May it please the court, a few years ago I was DM’ing a one-shot on Halloween. While my players were working their way through a puzzle, a sharp leg on one of the chairs we were sitting on badly cut one of my players feet. The game ground to a halt. She insisted that we should keep playing and that she was fine, adding that the blood from her foot added to the Halloween ambiance. I - a reasonable human - insisted that we stop the game and make sure she was okay. The party took her side and wanted to keep playing after she wrapped a towel around her foot and said all was well. I ended up stopping the game, but to this day the party insists we should have kept playing. Was I wrong to have not wanted to keep playing after such a massive energy shift? She was also my ex-girlfriend.

M. T. Kadisin

Oh, ye harbinger of justice, the Baliff Jake, take up my cause! Oh, perfectly weighted High Justices hear my plea and judge accordingly. Who killed the fun? I had just joined a campaign that was heading to Ravnica. We fought a demon on the sea and my hopes were high! First thing the party wants to do, when arriving in the continent-city was go shopping. Our barbarian, my friend who enticed me to join this game, bought an axe. Turns out it was cursed with extra rage! The party and I do our best to get the money back or have the vendor remove the curse, only to have the DM play dumb and rebuff any attempts to right the situation. Our Barbarian was a kind and gentle soul, and the idea of flying into a rage that might hurt her companions was anathema to her. The plot progressed into a fight. The barbarian just sat down not wanting to get in a fight, even as the fight moved farther and farther into the city. She continued to sit and do nothing the whole rest of the game. Her fun ruined, she left the game and I, ever loyal, went with her. Tell me, oh highest Crit, who was responsible for killing the fun? The intractable DM who refused to let us correct the curse or my friend for not rolling with the punches?

Ben Delahay

Supreme Crit, I have a case that may violate the Will of Dice Christ himself. My DM wants to roll out Death Saves for us. About three months ago, three of the party members put our foot down and said we wouldn’t be having fun if this rule happened. I didn’t want anyone luck’s but my own to decide what would happen to my character. We thought that would be the end of the discussion, but then a month ago they brought it up again. They said that we had shat on their idea and that they just wanted to change the world like I had (I’m a player who likes to make up lore about my home, family, and interests). But, a DM can change the world however they want? It’s completely different to force in mechanics mid campaign when not everyone wants them. I said, “I wanted to control my character’s fate, Death Saves are the last thing you get to do as your player theoretically”. I was told, “Well, do you control when you die?”. I then said, “No, but it’s a game where everything up to this point has been decided by my luck and rolls.” The DM has forced the issue about four times now, has ignored our attempts to compromise (rolling in secret but still rolling), and now I don’t feel comfortable with them DMing for me. Am I in the wrong here? Either way I’m out the door because I’m no longer having fun, but I want to know if I was being too sensitive along the way.

David Donnel

NOW COMES Plaintiff Player David before this honorable court and complains against Defendant DM Andre. During our most recent session, our wizard casted Arcane Eye, which is essentially an invisible probe that can move into spaces as small as one inch, but not through “solid” barriers. When our wizard tried to move it through a wall of fire, the DM ruled that the fire was solid. This is an affront to the court. Fire, much like very hot air, is high in temperature but is not solid in mass like stone or wood. Plaintiff asks for relief in the form of a reversed ruling for future sessions and that the DM is pushed into a fireplace.

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?

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. 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.

Cuttlefissure

Also, I want to be transparent that this is a resubmission from the last call for cases. Since then it's come up in our group again as playful banter, but since we're still split, I would love to hear your opinions.

Bud_Cubby

May it please the court and the almighty bailif Jake. I bring you the case of the fat old druid. I was once playing a druid who found himself in a situation where my group was fighting a pirate captain to steal his submarine so I decided to polymorph myself and eat him to finish him off. This was fine at first until my DM ruled that reverting back into my non polymorphed form caused me to gain about 200 pounds and instantly become out of shape. I would have been fine with this but my character had already been aged from about 23 to 57 because he ate a bad wild magic pickle, effectively turning my hot young mountain climbing druid into a sad old man. Is it fair to say that eating someone in polymorph carries over after the spell ends?

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. Also, someone pointed out in the original posting of this case that it's a transmutation spell, not a conjuring spell; which I think could mean that the wood gets transmuted to stone. 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 [transmuted] 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 [transmuted] by Erupting Earth or if it's just used in the spell).

Gabriel Felix

May it please the court, I recently played a session as an Ehladrin Bard where our party was attempting to descend a mountain when we were attacked by a white dragon. After a lengthy fight it grabbed our unconscious time wizard and took off several hundred feet into the sky. I dimension door to the dragon and freed his body, sending us plummeting to the ground. A featherfall later we were back in the fight. The dragon then attempted to flee. I cast Hypnotic pattern on it. It failed its saved and used all its legendary resistance in the fight. The dragon was then unable to move. The dm however said that because it was flying it would stop flapping its wings and smash into the ground, which nullifies the spell. We argued that the dragon would simply hover in place, but in the end we respected our dms decision. Who was in the right here? P.s. our time wizard unknown to us had died before I was able to reach him with dimension door.

Eva Johnson

To the honorable Crit Justices and incredibly handsome bailiff, may it please the court. I come before you today to confess my sins as I believe I have used a spell incorrectly and have not been penalized by my DM. In our campaign my Tiefling Warlock was trying to finesse his way inside of a vault guarded by two soldiers. After a failed deception roll I instead cast the spell Command where I am allowed to speak a single word command that they must follow if they fail their rolls. I chose the word “sleep”, hoping to make them pass out for long enough for my party and I to sneak in. The guards failed their save, and the DM had them pass out as I had commanded. Since their is already a spell called Sleep, I fear I may have misused my commanding powers and should have been imprisoned after flubbing my deception. Was I wrong to accept this victory and the spoils inside the vault? Have I misused my dark gift? I place myself at the mercy of the court.

Gianni Pappas

If it may please the court and any bailiffs who are just a supreme. Am I wrong for letting 3/4 of my party fall to their deaths? In a campaign I ran we had an encounter with a dragon and a dark deep hole. When they were winning the dragon and crew decided to fly down the hole to try and escape. The dragon flew just beyond the range of the all of the PCs dark-vision and they couldn’t see the bottom. I made it VERY CLEAR, they had no idea how far the bottom was. They also knew no one had anything to slow/stop a fall. One player decided to jump, I allowed him to use his “dash” to get on the dragon and an athletics check to grab in which they wildly succeeded. At this point I mentioned he still couldn’t see the bottom then 2 other party members decided to follow but didn’t make the check to grab on. On the turn of enemy who was riding the dragon he made a shove attack to push the PC off, he beat the AC and so I had him get shoved off. The player argued they should have been trying to beat the athletics check not their AC. I argued that the check was to be able to just grab on not how hard they were holding on at that moment. They then fell 170ft and took the 17d6 almost instantly killing them, they all saw the dragon fly into a side tunnel and the other 2 also took all the damage. None of them made their death saves, lucky we decided to end it there cause there were some other issues between PCs but was I wrong for the shove and not trying to stop them from jumping harder?

Alexander Mullarkey

To the Cool and Sexy Bailiff and the Radical Judges, I present the case of the Whining Rogue with Main Character Syndrome. This campaign I am DMing has been going for a year and a half. We have an inquisitive rogue, a great old one warlock, a monster slayer ranger, and an artillerist artificer. Previous arcs have focused heavily on the rogue and her family. Our current arc features Hadar, a Great Old One, attacking the town where our ranger and warlock are from. I recently presented a skill challenge that revolved around closing a permanent Gate spell. They had to remove 6 gems and then Dispel the Gate while also forcing enemies back through. Our Warlock is the only one with Dispel Magic. Now, the artificer gave the help action, and the ranger, realizing the gems were a strength thing, distracted enemies. Now, I set the DC at 20 to remove a gem. Not impossible, but hard for a party like this not specialized in strength. The rogue got very frustrated when she could not pull it out first try. She asked if she could use her grappling hook, which uses dexterity, and I said yes. It did not work immediately, and she got more frustrated. When all the gems were removed, and she did grab some with her grappling hook, all that was left was the Dispel Magic. I asked everyone what they wanted to do to Aid the warlock, a man named Potato. The ranger offered to push enemies back through the portal, the artificer gave the help action, and the rogue threw a fit, saying she didn’t know what to do. Later, after the session, the rogue accused me of purposefully sidelining her character. She said that I was focusing too heavily on the warlock and ranger. Am I doing so, or is this rogue simply bitter about failure? Thank you, and have a good day.

Mariah McGregor

Forgive me Dice Christ for I have sinned against my friends and seek judgement on how best to repent from the Supreme Crit and also Bailiff Jake, I guess. While playing with some of my best friends in high school we ran a mission that involved traveling to a remote island to retrieve the last of a set of magic jewels. Two of our five party members decided to roll new characters for this mission specifically to replace the characters that they'd gotten killed earlier. A battle ensued and our party was getting whomped, our DM was taking much pleasure in watching us die. As the barbarian I had gone down and healed several times, finally our ranger used their last spell to cast long strider on me and told me to flee, they (the 3/5 of us still alive) would follow. I did as I was told, with our treasure tucked under my arm like a football. And I kept running; letting the rest of my party die after they rolled horribly and got stomped on by a giant statue. I retired my character and we started a new campaign after that session but to this day, nearly a decade later my high school buddies still give me shit and I know I should have tried to do more to help. How best do I repent for this sin of abandoning my crew and putting stuff over people?

HolyFatFish

Honorable judges and otherwise blasphemous members of the court, who have had the gall to preside over cases yet refuse to swear the royal oath, May it please the court. I present to you the case of disintegrated absentee. One of my players missed our last session, and instead of having his character, a Warforged Artificer named Eight sit out, it was decided he would be controlled by another player since the session was starting off with a dangerous battle and they needed his support. Well- in a last ditch effort to take one of the party members with her, the enemy wizard, with 2 HP left unleashed a Disintegrate. I rolled randomly to see who it would Target. Of course it was 8 and of course the player rolling for him failed the save miserably. The session went for about 10 more minutes before we called it quits. We were very quiet those last 10 minutes, save for a few comments thrown my way about His player not even being here. When I told the player what happened, he ask "did you try using my luck point"? We had all forgotten about the feat. I'm kind of a stickler for continuity and insist we need to move on, but 3 out of the 5 players think I'm being unreasonable and need to let him re roll with his luck point.

Malakai Wade

Dearest justices and most honorable bailiff. This is the case of a DM far past out of ideas, and in need of a little advice. I’ve been running my first home brew campaign for 1.5 years with a great group (no complaints). But I’ve always felt like I bit off more than I could chew with the world, making the story too complicated with a lot of characters doing big things. I’ve run out of ideas for the story so far so I’ve been running some cool modules and fitting them in the world. My players are cool with this and support me taking a break. However, I have a fantastic idea for a second campaign that is much more buttoned down and the story is a hell of a lot simpler. So, my problem: my players LOVE their characters in the current campaign. But I feel like I’m failing them as a DM and would like to take a break from campaign 1 and do something different where I feel like I can really give them a great story. It wouldn’t really work to just pick up and drop their characters into the second campaign unfortunately. I humbly ask your advice on this matter. Many thanks.

Robert Aronowitz

May it please the court and neg the “could be better” bailiff Jake. I call this case: Roc v Wall of Force As a party we were foreshadowed with a MASSIVE bird in the area that the DM did such a great job teasing that we wanted NOTHING to do with a fight at our current level. We avoided an encounter with its babies, snuck to a structure to hunker down for the afternoon to wait for it to leave, we even sent a sac of meat decoy on a horse in the other direction when we finally did leave, but lo and behold it still came after us. With some clever thinking our wizard used wall of force to create an impenetrable sphere around it and our DM wasn’t having it. It turned into a big debate. The wizard argued that even though it is such massive creature he has a high enough intelligence to know that he could time the wing flaps for when it wasn’t at full extension. That way, as the wording of wall of force is written, anything that occupies where the wall ends up can be pushed to one side or the other. Well he created a sphere and chose to push it on the inside of that sphere. With much disdain and minimal fanfare, we were eventually let to escape by trapping that sessions big monster in a giant sphere but it still continues to be a subject for debate. So what’s the thought here Supreme Crits? Were we right to get away with this, or should we be Roc food?

KelCello

May it please the court, I throw myself at the mercy of the justices. I was DMing a session, and during a combat encounter involving a lot of moving parts, I had an NPC spellcaster cast Silence on an area containing the entire party, effectively neutralizing their own spellcasting for an entire round. Later, one of my players, a warlock, moved outside the zone of Silence and cast Toll the Dead on a target still inside the silence. Toll the Dead describes the ringing of a bell, and I mused out loud that I wasn’t sure the spell would work because of the Silence. My players and I had a small argument about that, and I ultimately ruled that the enemy had advantage on their saving throw against the spell, and combat continued from there. In retrospect, I think I made the wrong call, and I await the justices’ punishment.

Matthew Morgan

May it please the court, the sweet justices and the aggressively mediocre bailiff. I DM for a group of 3 players, one of which is a Circle of the Moon druid. On a number of occasions he has used one of his Wild Shapes to turn into a Spider to scout a building or area that they plan on infiltrating. At first I thought that it wouldn't be too bad since it's a tiny spider. Well, spiders have 30 feet base movement speed and people arent gonna notice a tiny spider. His Wild Shape lasts for 2 hours which means he can essentially look pretty far. I know I can't use some Dispel Magic shenanigans since Wild Shape isn't a spell. How do I keep the group from learning everything and keep things a surprise if he continues doing this? I await the court's glorious decision.

Dominic Valentini

May it please the court, I humbly submit myself to judgement in the case of The Players vs The Spell Storing Ring. I, the DM, had prepared a combat encounter between my players and a high level sorcerer. To help make the encounter more of a challenge for them I prepared the sorcerer to have a single charge of “Dominate Person” in a Ring of Spell Storing which was used after casting a spell through the use of the Quickened Spell metamagic. One player protested the use of the item since RAW states that spells stored in the ring act as if cast by the user and Quickened Spell doesn’t allow for 2 leveled spells to be cast in one turn. I argued that the ring is a magic item and items can be used on the action. I also argued that this boss was designed to be extra challenging due to the narrative weight behind them. Despite my alleged bending of the rules, all players walked away alive. Still though, I want to make sure all players at the table are happy and so I turn myself over to you. Am I in the wrong for using this item in this way to spice up what otherwise might have been an easy combat?

Zach VanMatre

To the Illustrious Supreme Crit Justices and regular old down-to-earth working class bailiff Jake, Recently I joined an online game that was advertised as roleplay heavy. All the players and the DM were strangers prior to the game. We got through character creation and were very excited, only to have the DM immediately erase and rewrite key points in our backstories in a way that fully changed all of our characters' motivations. "Ok" we thought "we'll roll with this" (two of us were forever DMs just excited to roll some dice on the other side of the screen) But then as we tried to get in touch with our newfound personalities, we discovered that none of the npcs would engage with us beyond very clearly giving us information needed to progress the story. It became quickly apparent that the DM's style was very crunchy with minimal roleplay. At that point, we had someone leave the group, as this was not the kind of game we were originally looking for. But fellow forever DM and I? We stuck it out one more session. In this session, we had nothing but DEEPLY flat roleplay encounters, until it was cut short when the DM abruptly went off mic. His partner came on 10 minutes later to tell us that he was too drunk to continue. We called it at that point, and we found a new DM. But it still sits wrong with me that we left our first DM without having a conversation about what we felt was missing from the game. So, are we guilty for ghosting a DM without talking out our issues, or is drunk and disorderly conduct a good enough reason to have fully pulled the plug?

Foolnif

I love you, judges and bailiff I ran a short campaign that petered out with my housemates. One housemate was playing for maybe his second time ever, and was not bad at it. But his character was very much the aloof asshol type (a archetype which I love) and frequently tried to ignore problems the party came across. I had to, multiple times, steer the plot so that he was included in the actual RP and combat. The final session he played he basically said fuck off to the literal Call To Action to defend a city alongside it's citizens. At that point all I could muster to say was "are you here to play the game or not" I could have been kinder, but I had been trying so hard. I feel I am guilty of being a bad DM that did not let a player play how they wanted.

Derek Zickert

*The case of Mirror Image vs DM* May it please the court. I play an Emo Tiefling Bard with a flying broom and fireball wand (both DM gifted). On multiple occasions now, when I’ve cast Mirror Image on myself and have been hit, the DM rolls low to hit a duplicate instead of me, but then has decided to eliminate 2 or even all of my duplicates on a single hit, claiming it was “area of effect” or “it was a nat 20.” Is this fair? Is he just trying to compensate for the broom and wand (which has already been debuffed)? I leave my decision in the hands of the intelligent and upstanding judges.

Andrew Schiessl

May it please the court, I was DMing a home game and my players have been giving me shit for having too easy of encounters, so I put them against a warlock of the fiend. Now keep in mind it was a party of 5 level 5 characters against a CR 7. They were proceeding to whomp my character so I decided to cast finger of death on the half orc barbarian, and due to a brutally high damage roll, it killed him outright due to the nature of finger of death. Now the barbarian argued that because he’s a half orc, his relentless endurance would pop him back up with 1 hp, but I said because he was fully killed from the spell, he couldn’t come back. Arguing ensues, and people are getting very heated arguing back, so I rule that instead of fully dying, the barbarian is just knocked out. Everything kinda calms down and they proceed to brutally kill the warlock. After the session they said it was bullshit I knocked the barbarian unconscious, and he should’ve been up with 1hp. Judges, I beg of thee, who was in the right in this scenario.

sad rad

May it please the court, the honourable mighty crit justices on high and the hardy handsome bailiff! I bring to you, not a case of dastardly DMs or pernicious players, but a quandary to ponder as you take your recess. I have been playing in an online campaign for just over a year now (our anniversary was this week!!!) and, while we are all having a lovely time and becoming good friends in real life, we haven’t been able to create that good-good found family relationship between our PCs. Our characters basically met as a group of hired hands (in space!), and are all socially anxious loners, so even though we’ve been playing together and having adventures for 40 sessions, our characters haven’t become friends. The most we’ve had is some strong PC-NPC friendships, but no PC-PC friendships. We don’t want to play our PCs in an unnatural way or force them to suddenly change personalities and be super friendly. How do we organically get them to be buddies?

Omar

Player's Handbook (5e) (2014), p.198 ("Knocking a Creature Out"). An attacker who reduces a creature to zero hit points with a melee attack may choose to knock them out instead of kill them. - There is literally nothing in the rules about overkilling meaning you can't deal nonlethal damage. If you reduce their hit points to 0, you can choose to knock them out instead of kill. Having "lasting damage" and accidental killings is just your DM punishing you, and idk why. I would tell your DM to actually read the rules of the game he's playing

inkdrasil

Honourable justices and kinda self-important bailiff if we're honest, I submit the case of the Uncomfortable Old Dad Roleplayer. We're playing a campaign set in a post-apocalyptic Northern Ontario and one of our players is a druid named John Macdonald who is the ultimate manifestation of Old Dad Energy: wears flannel and levi's, gets up at the crack of dawn, considers Maxwell House to be "the good stuff", and is incapable of getting in touch with his feelings. (He also doesn't realize he's a druid and thinks the Goodberries that appear in his pocket every day are just leftovers from the day before). The issue is that John's player is TOO GOOD at embodying John's dad energy, to the point where everyone at the table is constantly uncomfortable about his presence. It's like playing with an Actual Old Dad at the table who polices your swearing and slows down the fun. This causes an issue for our DM as well, who is irritated that despite John's charisma stat being terrible on paper, he can't say no to John because he feels like he's talking to his own dad. Is it unfair that this intensely accurate roleplaying is overpowering their shitty stats? Are we in the wrong, or should John's player dial it back?

Corey Morrill

Honorable Crit Justice, and I would go so far to say cool-EST bailiff, I present the case of the PVP Christmas Massacre. May it please the court: I was running a Christmas themed one shot for my friends last year that involved hunting down an evil version of Santa Claus. It turned out Santa was being controlled by a crown connected to some elder god or another, and his mind was not his own. After defeating Santa and claiming the crown, one of my players asked if he could put it on. I told him that he could, but that he would have to roll a very high DC save or be mind controlled. He failed. Now here's where I may have messed up. Instead of taking control of his character, I allowed for Player Versus Player combat. I figured, "hey, it's Christmas, this will make it an extra memorable one shot to remember”, and to that effect I succeeded. He killed us. He killed us all. I had an Artificer DMPC in the battle as well so he got me too, gang. I gave him a modified version of the Evil Santa’s stat block, HP adjusted because of the recent battle, but he was BRUTAL. Knowing the rules of death saves, after the first player reached 0HP the possessed player immediately followed it up with two additional attacks. His target only got a chance to roll one save and it was a fail. The player whose character died first was shocked. We all were. But the smile on our possessed friend was BRIMMING. In the year since, this story lives on. It echoes at our weekly games. The player who died first usually brings it up first and will act as if the rest of us didn’t all get brutally killed as well. In his defense, the possessed player regrets his attitude but not his actions. Should I have allowed my players to PVP? Or does everyone need to move on? My head is bowed for your decision.

Jot

May it please the court! Me and my D&D friends have a major analysis paralysis problem. One time, after a session where 40mins were spent discussing whether to enter a dungeon (and then a further 30mins debating whether to leave the first room) I offered to DM a one-shot as a break from the campaign. I designed a scenario where they were trapped on a self destructing space station with a real world timer counting down to the final explosion. Everyone seemed to have a great time and made loads of great split second decisions! The party actually survived! Unfortunately rather than ending the indecision, the next time I DM'ed as soon I presented ANY kind of threat, the party gave up on the scenario, expended all their resources trying to escape, jumped in their ship and git as far away as they physically could. Once in safe waters they used up the rest of the session debating what to do next!!!! Was I wrong to try and help my players play just a little bit quicker, or should I accept indecision as a natural part of the game? I throw myself on the mercy of the court. I'd throw my friends on it too, but presumably they're still trapped the antechamber to the courtroom, debating whether or not to come in ...

Bryce Baker

May it please the immensely powerful Bailiff and Omnipotent Justices of the Supreme Crit Court. Several years ago I was a player in a dungeon crawl themed campaign. The DM was obsessed with traps and put several in every room. Every door, hallway, chest, blind corner etc was trapped, and we spent about half of every session constantly checking for and disarming traps. Note we had no rogues or any proficiencies in sleight of hand, so it often just entailed us constantly rolling and re-rolling until we scored high enough to find the traps, and then again to disarm them. I eventually got bored and made my fighter walk blindly into every room to trigger all the traps, then take long rests every few rooms. I roleplayed it by saying my character was stupid (he had a Wisdom of 6), and voiced him being surprised about the trap every time. My fellow players found this hilarious and went along with it, but the DM was not happy, and told me that I was not allowed to purposefully set off traps and instead needed to search for, and attempt to disarm the traps. I disagreed, and this argument ended up causing a rift that broke up the table and ended the campaign. Should I still feel guilty for ruining his game, or was I in the right? I prostrate myself upon the mercy and eternal wisdom of the court. Forever trapped.

Rachel From Animorphs

Honorable Justice, Judge, Juror and Jake, my players have decided I go too far in restricting their creative solutions. I present the case of The Guard Grifting Geniuses. The last time I quelled my player’s creativity was during an encounter bypassing guards. Two guards stood watch at a castle wall. Six players decided to use pass without trace on four of them and transform the two non-stealthy players into beetles that can fit in the other’s pockets. When I said the guards would roll with advantage and needed a nat 20 to detect them, they decided to also cast invisibility on the group. They argued since it should be harder now, the guards should at least roll flat. Fair. I told them to stop there, as they would not be able to make it any harder for the guards - since they really wanted to walk right passed the guards through the entrance. I was told I was stifling creativity and should let them keep going. Typically, I consider if the same tactics can be used again when determining if I allow them to break the game. In this situation, I enjoyed their engagement but don’t want them to have an end-all stealth maneuver to get past anybody. So now I need guard’s armor to exude fairy fire on future sneaks so my players have an in-game reason they can’t do the same thing and go even further.. is it up to me to continuously come up with these mechanical reasons to restrict players or is it okay for me to tell them when something is not going to happen because it’s game-breaking, even if it’s creative. Or should I just let them do whatever and stop worrying about it?

Jayce M

May it please Mighty Justice Murphy, Wise Justice Axford, Biggest Boob Justice Tanner and THE QUAD GOD HARDWON SUREFOOT(but if he can't be reached than Bailiff Jake will done...I guess). I am the forever DM and human DnD 5e wiki(not a rules lawyer I swear) for 3 players, they're great but 2 of the 3 have me make their characters sheets(they tell me what they want) on my phone and send them screenshots this includes their spells. This wouldn't be a problem if they didn't also ask me what every spell does and how it works during the sessions, if I don't know off the top of my head they have me look it up and it to them. I have asked them to get the app I use for sheets, DnD Beyond, or actually paper and keep notes on their spells or just look it themselves so the game fault 1 minute into combat, but they both say "It's just easier for you do it for us." Am I right for feeling upset? If I am to be punished I ask to go out via Blasting Grandma.

Dylan C

May it please all persons in the court, I bring up the case of a puzzle room. Our DM had us in a room that had a depiction of each season on the walls and a single little plant in the middle of the room. All of us players had made the connection between this plant and the pictures of the seasons but after doing a bunch of different ideas, we were still stuck. Another player asked if they could do some kind of check to get a possible hint of what needed to be done to satisfy the room but the DM said no and that we had already made the connection and that there wasn't anything else we could do mechanically to get more hints. We eventually figured out after almost 20 mins. Should the DM given us a hint on successful skill checks or were we all just idiots who don't to do puzzles. Just an FYI, the puzzle was kinda of simple, we just had to mimic the environment for the plant. Example: hit it with a ray of frost to mimic winter or hold a torch to it for summer. I await your fair and impartial judgment.

chronicsunshine

May it please the court, the honorable justices, and daddy/bailiff Jake as well. I bring to you the case of the stinky stealth check. I’m currently playing with a random group on Roll20 and we’ve actually been getting along swimmingly up until this last session. I’m playing a Half-Elf Druid who was raised by bears and doesn’t feel the need to bathe due to his heavy connection with and preference to reside in nature amongst the animals. (THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR LATER.) My party and I were recently tasked with retrieving an item buried with a long forgotten king in his royal crypt. It was heavily guarded by the spirits of his ancestors, and the party decided it might be best to sneak by them and try to grab the artifact without being detected. We all rolled decently well on stealth checks (I rolled a 24 after pass without trace, this will be important later), and we decided to send our rogue to retrieve the item while the rest of us hid. HOWEVER, the problem comes when the DM decides that because of my characters stench, the spirits immediately smell me, our stealth rolls are for naught, and that we need to roll initiative. I argued that the spirits are dead and probably don’t have the equivalent of human senses, but he just retorted that I shouldn’t have played such “a skunky fuck”, which I did laugh at but I still felt like there must be some kind of perception check at the very least to detect us, regardless of my smelly ass character. Please let me know what you think! I prostrate myself in front of the court, I’d love to be vindicated (or punished) for my belief that my stealth roll should’ve at least counted for something, anything! Thank you, and may your Justice shine bright :)

Lars Cook

To the glorious, magnanimous, and beautiful justices and the lowly albeit incredibly muscular bailiff, I present to the Crit a 15 year old case that haunts me to this day. Back I'm high school, I had a group of friends that we would spend one weekend a month playing DnD non-stop. One of these occasions, we were hitting about 3 am and tensions were getting high. We stumbled through a dungeon and found a room occupied by a sleeping ancient black dragon. Mind you, we were all level 2.... Before we could even discuss a plan, our rogue announces he is rushing in to attack the dragon. We all shout "wait!", but the dm said that he had already started his attack. I attacked the rogue as a ranger to stop him and got my first critical of that session. We all started laughing at how I could only crit on a teammate.... except the rogue. He steadily got angrier and angrier as the dm told me to roll my damage. Unfortunately, I rolled max damage. The rogue lost his ever loving mind and started cussing at all of us. I asked the dm if he could use his godly powers to undo my attack so that the rogue would calm down and we could continue playing. The dm agreed, but the player was down. He stormed out of the room and went downstairs. We all awkwardly looked at each other, shrugged, and switched to video games. Was I wrong to have responded to his foolish attack? Should I have let him doom our party. I will accept any punishment for my wrong doing because I still feel guilty to this day 15 years later.

GurberBurger

Your Honors... Jake, I submit a request for your judgement: Our group of 5, myself as the DM and four players, started a campaign in Spring of 2020. We were on a roll with great sessions for a few months, but around Fall of 2020, our Transmuter Wizard dropped out with little word. Recently, they reached out, wanting back in. I obliged warmly, but the little, nasty DM inside says to punish them in some way. I would like them to be the same level as the rest of the group as to avoid power imbalances, but I feel they need to pay for abandoning their party. What would be a fitting punishment for abandoning your party only to ask for their forgiveness? Or, is this even a just act on my part? Should I accept a willing player, no matter the circumstance? I eagerly await your judgement, fully prostrated.

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 committing a cardinal sin?

Tim C

May it please the court, I present the case "Spoiled Berries vs Spoiled Fun". I DM an adventure in a frozen tundra environment. The players at one point befriended an awakened shrub who produces 1d4 goodberries a day. My intention was to give them more access to healing options. At one point, they left the shrub behind in town. After about a week had passed and before a big fight, I mentioned they didn’t have any goodberries on them as they go bad after 24 hours as written. They argued that the freezing temps would preserve the berries. I decided it's the magic that disappears after 24 hours, not the berry's edibleness. During the fight, the one healer in the group went down and the wizard asked to bring him up with a goodberry. I relented and allowed them to role a luck check to see if the berry had kept fresh due to the cold. They rolled a 9, the berries had spoiled, and several players spent the rest of the fight unconscious. Did I ruin this players fun by being too harsh? I'm worried that everlasting goodberries on demand is too powerful, but am open to sentencing if it is so decided.

Richard Jacob Meadows

If it may please the court.... and the other little bailiff guy. With the release of the new Fizbans Treasurey of Dragons, we got a whole bunch of new gem dragons and the like. I am running a campaign centered around them and one of my new players about to join wants to play a home brew dragon born race. Essentially it's a mix of dragon born with celestial heritage. The only issue is, her character is 10 feet tall. So far it's been okay but she is wanting to make an argument that because she's a much larger, her movement speed should be longer since she takes a bigger square on the board. I couldn't find anything that changes that based on a creatures size, so I have brought it to the honorable Supreme Crit Justices

Cole Cypher

May it please the crit and my boy bailiff jake. I was playing a dnd campaign with a buddy of mine during that time we were in a demons realm trying to save a dying god unknown to me one of our party members was the demon in disguise that player played exactly how he would normally play so I didn't know. But later we got to the door where the god was sealed we spent about 10 minutes trying to open it so I finally said jokingly can I roll a charisma check on the door to see if anything happens the dm allowed and I rolled a nat 20 he made this big deal about how the door opens up to me about its trauma and then it finally opens... then he said I woke up and was hallucinating and foaming at the mouth on the floor also the door didn't actually open. We talked about it after the session and he admitted there was no way to open the door since the demon was with us. my question is do I have a right to be upset about that or am I being crybaby piss boy? I await a fair and even trial!

The Great Zarquon

May it please The Crit and the Right Honorable Bailiff: I'm playing a Goliath Fighter in a new campaign, and during an excursion to rescue kidnapped children we encountered a kobold camp. They had a crude watchtower set up with a lone guard in it, which our ranger handily dispatched. Our next move was for me to throw our halfling monk onto the top of the tower so he could get a lay of the land. I crit on the throw, but our monk didn't roll well on the "stick the landing" check. Our DM ruled that because the monk bricked the save, instead of tossing him onto the tower in a less than graceful but still dangerous fashion, I instead yeeted him into the side of the tower, knocked it over, alerted every kobold in the area and caused the monk to take 4d6 damage. Did the DM rule accordingly, or did he royally bone us?

Star_Drek

To the magnanimous court and ascendant bailiff: I bring you the case of Scaraducci v Lord of Snails. I am the player (he/him) and my DM (she/her) threw a lord of snails at us. We have another paladin in this story. We were running yawning portal and we ran into this giant snail in a cave, who the DM described as “intelligent” and could speak in primordial. His name is Tecuziztecatl, Lord of Snails, don’t ask me how to pronounce it. I, a wild magic sorcerer named Lars Scaraducci, ran up to it and attacked it (don’t ask me why I went into melee range, okay?). The snail attacked me with two swipes of his pseudopods, and because I was low on health, the paladin cast Shield of Faith on me to give me +2 AC. The snail then chose to cast Spit Acid on me to get around my AC (dex save) and downed me, leading me to my eventual death, and to the DMs credit, dramatic plot armor revival. The DM posits because the snail is intelligent (int 13), he would see the shimmering wall around me and decide to acid spray instead of swinging at me like he was to get around my AC boost. I argue that this snail lord was metagaming, because regardless of any lands or titles he may have claim to, he has lived in a cave his whole life and wouldn’t know what shield of faith looks like. He also would not know to change strategies from attacking AC to using dex saves just because a shimmering wall surrounded me, and I argue a more reasonable strategy would be to attack someone else or just hit me harder. We both await your swift judgement and long for our worthy punishment. P.S. we will both be at the Chicago live show in January, very hype.

Owen Rath

Honorable Judges, Justices, and Jake: I bring forth to you the case of the missing session. Recently a player of mine had to miss a session. No biggie, since his character was already in a different place than everyone else. At the end of this missed session, the rest of the party infiltrated a masquerade party thrown by the richest family in town. I hinted during that session that they saw their other party member there. Cut to the next session. This player is back and I fill him in on where his character is. He respectfully flipped out, accused me of railroading and said that his character wouldn’t have gone to the party. He insisted that his character was somewhere else doing something else. Things were tense, but it didn’t derail the session. I hate being called a railroader, so here I ask: Is what I did okay, or should I have asked the player to make decisions for himself? I humbly await your ruling.

Squinch

May it please the winsome justices and beautiful bailiff, I was running a game in which one of my players, wearing both the Boots of Elvenkind and the Cloak of Elvenkind, was attempting to sneak up on a creature that was blind, but which had tremorsense. The player flubbed their stealth roll, even with advantage, so I said that the monster was aware of their presence and could sense the character. The players cried foul, since the text of the item states that the character's footsteps make no sound when wearing the boots. They claimed that tremorsense is sensing vibrations in the ground, which are sound traveling through a solid material. I ruled that tremorsense is more than just hearing audible footstep sounds transmitted through the ground, and would include the ability to sense things like the character's heart beating and breath. So, esteemed justices, what say ye? Should the boots of elvenkind provide cover for tremorsense, or is that too much of a stretch?

Michael Kessler

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and bailiff Jake, I humbly present: the case of the soggy chain lightning. Our high level party was deep in the bowels of the Underdark when we found ourselves standing in a brine pool fighting some watery foes. At the start of the storm cleric's turn, the DM mentioned that he recognized a shape approaching us from the depths – an aboleth that had tormented us a few months ago before escaping. Not wanting to let the opportunity slip by, the storm cleric used his once-a-week domain power (from Colville's Kingdoms & Strongholds) to cast chain lightning on the aboleth. You may have guessed where this is headed. The DM very deliberately warned him that he was wearing metal armor and was submerged in water, but he said that his character (with –1 intelligence) wouldn't think anything of it. So, the DM ruled that everyone and everything in the water would need to save against the spell. As he, the monk, and our other cleric rolled their saves, I jokingly asked if he was going to maximize damage on the spell. To our horror he said "that is what my character would do, so yes." I should point out that he made his decision knowing full well that our half-orc fighter/barbarian who can do 100 damage a round AND CAN FLY was actively being mind-controlled by one of the enemies. Both clerics failed their saves, took 80 lightning damage, dropped to 0 hit points, and instantly began drowning. It took an incredible amount of shenanigans to make sure no one died, and we ended the session with the aboleth once again getting away. Let the record show that I believe no one was at fault here. This was, to me, peak D&D. But I can't help but wonder how the Crit Justices would rule on this case. Was our DM too harsh in making everyone save against the lightning spell, even if water isn't mentioned in the spell's description? Did the cleric take his roleplay choices too far, knowing that he was in all likelihood about to derail the encounter and possibly kill someone? I driplessly await your judgement.

Gabriel Wykle

May it please the court, and it's tepid bailiff. I present the case of Josephus' Horse Cum. I am currently running a campaign loosely based off of Hot Boy Summer, where my entire party play recently graduated fuck bois who's friend Chadley has gone missing after a night of heavy drinking. After searching around my players were led to the Alpha Sigma Sigma fraternity house where I planned on having them drink a specific type of alcohol and flashing back to the previous night. To accomplish this I devised a game similar to the Josephus problem in mathematics wherein a group of Jewish soldiers decided that they would rather die than surrender to Roman soldiers. This takes a bit to explain but basically Josephus needed to figure out what chair to sit in so that he was the last person alive. Now this is where the horse cum comes in. I decided that rather than executing the person next to you, you would shoot a doubleshot of horse cum in their mouth with a shot roulette gun opa 2007's American Pie's Beta House style. The catch was that they didn't have enough horse cum for everyone so the last few people would have to just use liquor (the liquor that would prompt the flashback). However once the game started it became clear that none of the players had solved the puzzle, all of them had to roleplay drinking a double shot of horse cum, and I had to scramble to figure out a different prompt for their flashback. The problem is this: after the session I talked to my players about the game and they said that their shitty fuck boi PCs wouldn't have been able to solve the puzzle themselves anyway, so they didn't try and just picked random chairs. I told them that this campaign was essentially a pseudo murder mystery and that it relied heavily on puzzles. They insisted that to properly RP their characters they wouldn't be able to solve puzzles, so I should still include the puzzles, but assume the party would always fail. I told them that I would try, but it would be prohibitively difficult for me to keep coming up with clues and story beats that rely on the party *not* figuring things out, and that they should still try to solve the puzzles. Who is correct here? Should I submit and try to think of more reasons why the party bumbles their way to a solution or should I insist that solving some puzzles is necessary to figuring out the mystery? I humbly await your wise ruling

Bound

May it please the supreme court and the most magnificent bailiff, i present to you the case of the heretics. I recently DMed a one-shot for some friends, where they would be bounty hunters, investigating a demon hidden in a city. They were to investigate, find and defeat the demon. It all turned to chaos when one PC yelled out that another PC was a heretic, while they were behind a crowd watching the execution of a heretic, following which the deagonborn in the party cast mass fear into the crowd, causing a mob and absolute chaos, even after I told him this was a bad idea. I expected shenanigans but not this. Long story short they were seperated by the chaos, hunted down by the high-level guards they were never meant to fight and were all captured and killed. The other players were very unhappy with the two players who completely derailed the game 10 minutes in, and though no one was angry at me, i did the best i could come up with at the time but as the DM i think i should've done better, because no one had fun. What could I have done better? If I am judged guilty of being a bad DM and running a bad game, please give me the worst punishment you can think of. Thank you.

Nurse LaCroix

(Do you want a re-post if we submitted last time and it wasn't selected? If so, read on and if not, ignore me!) 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

vinicius fernandes

May it please the court and the lowly, yet powerful, bailiff, I present to you the case of the "stuff not picked up." The year was 2018, and I was with my second group of d&d friends. We had come up with a plan that I would DM one arc of my campaign and then another person from the group would switch and DM one arc of his campaign. During his first Arc, I played a Wood Elf way of the Shadow Monk. He had given each of us a homebrew item. Mine was a wooden statue of a raccoon. Whenever I got hit by an attack, I could use one charge from this item to use a reaction to have the statue take the hit for me instead and I would appear somewhere within 30 feet of it. So after sleeping in the woods, we woke up surrounded by enemies. One of them held a spear to me so I just lunged at the spear to take the hit and reappear 30 ft away. The enemies turned out to be friendly, so they gave us a tour of the forest. This is where I had a disagreement with the DM. While walking through the forest, another player kept writing a note to the DM and looking at me as they passed it back and forth. When we got back to the spot where they had first encountered us, the other player says that he picks up my raccoon statue and hands it back to me. The DM said that I never mentioned picking it back up so that it was still on the ground there. I argued that if that's the case, then I don't have any of my other items with me either and that neither do the other players because no one explicitly mentioned packing their things back up. It all turned out okay in the end, but am I wrong to still be salty about this almost three years later? I humbly await your judgment. -The Salty Monk

ChromaticMars

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

Skyler Morford

Forgive me dungeon daddy’s and doula, I have unknowingly sinned with to many Natural 20’s! I play Griffena Starlight a Tabaxi wild magic sorceresses who has to much good luck, allow me to explain. During our last session I started off with a natural 20 on perception check, I thought I had wasted a 20 so early now all of my rolls would be bad, but I was wrong!!! After one or two minutes I rolled another natural 20 on a very important attack roll, sweet I thought, but then it happens again and again and again. In total I rolled that dice 18 times and 7 of those rolls were natural 20’s. It got to the point where I stopped using that dice half way through the session because I felt bad, especially because I play on zoom and use physical dice so I didn’t want people to think I was cheating! This dice has been rolling fairly for the last few months but last session it just went off the rails with these 20’s. Please I’m I blessed with the power of Dice Christ, or have I been cursed to look bad in front of my zoom friends by the Dice Devil!!!!

Kaylie Elise

May it please like, whoever is there today. I bring the case of the 13 year old newbie loot goblin vs the veteran party. My regular group of 20 to 30 somethings recently brought in the DMs 13 year old nephew to show him the DnD ropes. He's a very sweet, very smart kid who started with all the newbie slips; reading his whole backstory from his sheet during introductions, naming his edgy fighter Assasin Murderman, checking every ( and I mean every) crate and barle for loot, etc. It was all fine and dandy till we had our first boss fight. To summarize, Assasian left myself and our other player to fight the boss while he ran off to try and tame a wild wolf. He failed and myself and the other player defeated the boss just barley. As soon as the DM mentioned loot on the bosses body, Assasian (who wouldn't have known about the defeat or the loot) rushes back to the party demanding a cut. I have my cleric explain that because he abandoned the fight, it wouldn't be fair to share the loot. Our barbarian was not as chill, having his character yell at Assasian and blaming him for us almost dieing. Nephew was extremely pissed and narrated Assasian chopping off our characters heads. The DM had to pause and defuse the situation, but nephew was extremely sour for the rest of the game and was a little more dishearted the following sessions. My question is this; should we have been more lenient on the nephew and shared the loot with him? I feel like that would have been the wrong lesson to teach and encourage poor player behavior, but he's also brand new and I want to show him how fun and rewarding DnD can be. Please help us figure out the best way to teach a preteen DnD etiquette.

Alex Blanke

May it please the court, Some friends and I have been running campaigns online since covid started and have been trading off DMing after our campaigns end. I ran the first one and was a "yes man" to my players. Basically I tried to make whatever hairbrained schemes they thought up work. I only bring this up to show how wronged I have been. We are about to start our 3rd campaign, and my DM won't let me play as an awakened beaver. I have asked a few times and asked if I could just reskin another race as a beaver or do anything just for flavor but he won't reason with me. He wants all of our campaigns to be in the same setting so even by those rules it should be possible, because in my campaign that I ran the DM pc that I essentially played was a group of 4 awakened raccoons called the Racc Pack that they all loved. How can I talk reason into him? Please deliver the justice Gideon the awakened beaver paladin deserves.

Mikey Ambrowiak

The Case of the restrained beefy fire newt. Dear honorable dms judge Murphy, chaos judge Caldwell, thiccc thighed bailiff Jake. And my Queen Emily. I humbly ask for your verdict. My players are running through a series of tunnels when they got ambushed by a group of Fire Newts, they soon realized that one Newt was their commander. Not half way through the fight, My warlock casts Suggestion on the commander advising it to drop their weapon and call off the other Newts. My Beefy Newt Commander failed his save and did what the warlock suggested. My Rouge then quickly tackled the Commander and the party started to talk to him. Putting a pause in combat. My warlock tried convincing the Fire Newt Commander to lead them through the tunnels, but after failing several persuasion checks, I advised the warlock that the Commander refused to help them due to the way the party was now treating him. My Warlock got upset by this and stated he was going to kill him. When I advised him to roll his attack and then we would go back into initiative. My warlock got mad, stating that they had him restrained and that his AC should be 0. I told him that the Newt still had an AC but that the restrained condition gave advantage to attacks. My warlock then immediately started to rifle through his books to try and prove me wrong. After allowing 2 of my players to attack the Newt before going back into initiative, my Newt tried to scramble away from the party. My warlock then got mad when I told him he could not make an opportunity attack with a spell since he did not have the feat that allowed it. Was I in the wrong? Should I have allowed my players to wittle down my Fire Newt when he had over half his HP left and or just kill him outright. Or was I right in my ruling about him still having his AC and giving him the opportunity to run away. I give a deep bow as I await your swift verdict.

drmimms

May it please the court, and the be-muscled bailiff -- I throw myself on your mercy. I have been DMing for years and finally got the opportunity to play as a PC again. This was a friend's 1st time DMing; my character was peak chaos and I accidentally nerfed some of their monsters with well-worded charm spells. I felt awful and apologized, but I still seek the arbitration of the supreme crit. How can I atone? I await your judgement.

Mikey Ambrowiak

P.s. I did have the rogue and Newt make opposed grapple checks to see if my Newt could get away

Kay

Is he a bully, or was this justice? Honorable Bailiff and Righteous Justices, I bring to you a very uncomfortable session that ended in weeping and gnashing of teeth. We play in a public Westmarch style game at my local nerd store. My boyfriend (dwarf barbarian level 11, with a legendary fire hammer, important later) and I (human paladin level 11) have been playing since week 1, six months ago. Another player joined about a month after us, playing a human cleric of mysterious origin. He consistently fudges rolls, monopolizes the play, and tries to railroad the party into doing his will. Our DM is amazing. He puts so much time and effort into each session (twice weekly!) building huge setpieces and creating memorable NPCs. Because of him, we have tried to keep peace and enjoy the ride, not causing drama. We figure that the DM will take care of problem players. Well, until last night. Our cleric player brought a new PC out to a special session. Long story short, I have a special bond with an Orphan NPC who wants to be a pro-minecart racer and I spent a bunch of gold getting her set up and it was finally time to do the team race. His new character was Doc, self described as "an annoying, manic guy in a plague doctor mask" with a mystery backstory that he wouldn't share. He sabotaged a competitors cart before we were even introduced. Jumped under our cart and started "improving" it, then decided he would be the driver.  We vetoed that, but he jumped on anyway as a rider ... annoying stuff happened, too much to write. We win anyway. As we were being hailed heroes for closing a demon portal and kicking ass,  Doc hijacked the game again, loudly requesting that every other NPC pit crew member join us.... The driver is a 12-year-old homeless girl with no means to house or pay these people. We try in-character ways to dissuade him. We outright sat no. My barbarian bf, out of character, says, "Is this a one-time character? You have like 3 hit points left, right?" The barbarians' legendary weapon makes him do "rash actions without thinking" (as written by the DM), and he was trying to point out that he was at his nonsense limit. Instead of chilling, Doc yells "I am trying to do us a solid!" over and over out of character. In character, he is bragging (in an illegal racing venue, surrounded by teams that just lost a ton of money) that he cheated and helped us win by sabotaging people's carts. Role-playing wise - we have known this player for 30 minutes, and it seems that he is trying to get us killed. My boyfriend says, "Welp, I hit him in the face with my hammer. 28 to hit, I have a plus 9 to my damage before I roll any dice. Are you down?" Doc responds, in shock, "You killed me." DM says, "No, you are just down." Doc says, "I only have 18 hp total." Another player volunteers to heal him. Doc starts saying, "I'm good," repeatedly. Takes his token off the board, packs up some pieces of leftover pizza, and LEAVES THE STORE. I never got to celebrate with my ward or discuss her monetary reward. We just got the f outta dodge before everyone murdered us. We all sit there for a bit, mood killed, session incomplete but clearly over. Judges - Is my boyfriend a bully for murdering someone's level 2 creation, or is he a hero for doing what he felt was right, in and out of character?

Woody

I prostrate myself before the High Crit, to bring a case before you. May it please the court, the Magnanimous south bearing Justices, and the wonderfully balanced bailiff. I have been running an (almost) weekly game for our group who at the start none of us had actually played before, with me as the (to be forever) DM. In the time we have been together, about a year, we have all learned so much on how to play and how much fun this game is and we all love it. I have another friend who has recently taken an interest in DnD and he is so passionate, and I love his energy. I offered to DM for him if he wanted to get a group together but he says he doesn't know people who could or would hold a campaign with him. In the interest of trying to help him, I went to my current group and asked if we could add him to our primary campaign as a Trial guest arc, Oppa Mavris Style, and if everyone was happy we add him to the game permanently. Most of my group were fine with this, but one of my players told me he is uncomfortable with adding new people, as the party has found their rhythm and now they are all comfortable with role playing with each other, which was an effort to be honest. He argues that adding a new and unknown person would be too much of a disruption to the "ecosystem" we have cultivated. I argue that the addition of a new player, even on a limited basis, would not damage the "ecosystem" but would make it better and I really don't want this new player to lose interest due to accessibility issues. Am I being to callous about party dynamics and the RP of the group, or is he being too conservative about new additions to our group? I await your just and careful judgement

Kymberly King

Benevolent justices and delightful bailiff, A rag tag band of adventurers enter a cave. The barbarian, rolling a nat 1, tripped over a string attached to cans resulting in a 60ft fall. He survived the fall landing on his backpack at full force. Upon being asked multiple times where his pet monkey was, he insisted each time that the monkey was in the backpack. The entire party was against him having the monkey in the first place, so no one was really upset about the monkey being declared dead. However the player insisted that the monkey should be allowed his own dex roll to avoid the fall and be allowed to live. The question is should the monkey suffer because of the stupidity of its owner.

Feldannis

May it please the court & the humble and hard working bailiff, I bring you the case of the "Paladin of the greater good". I'm running a campaign for a group of my friends, and one of my players is playing a Lawful Good oath of retribution paladin of Bahamut (The Dragon God of Justice). The case comes down to the player, and I have a difference of opinion about what constitutes "good". In ONE session, this player has suggested setting up forced labour camps, enslaving a sentient crab and forcing him to attract other crabs so they could be killed and eaten & collecting donations at a temple and keeping the money for himself. I've suggested that if the player keeps taking these "Evil actions", their alignment might change, or they may even become an Oathbreaker however the player defended their actions as good because anything that improves his character is "for the greater good". This behaviour has really bothered me to the point that sometimes I no longer feel like running the sessions, and I had to send my talking crab away for their safety. Am I wrong to push a moral standard on a player? Should I let them play the way they want? I humbly submit to the judgement of the Crit and fellow good boy paladin and follower of Bahamut Justice Murphy, my fate is in your hands.

Amber Schneider

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

Madison Hendry

May it please the calculating and captivating court, the jaunty and joyous judges and the bewitching and benevolent bailiff: I recently DMed for the first time for my regular group because I wanted to give our DM a break. I was really nervous but wanted to try something new that I thought my players would find fun. They came across a cursed goblin chest at the beginning of the session and when they opened it they were transformed into goblins. I handed out new character sheets, thinking it would be fun to mix it up and have them go on a quest to reverse the curse. They did not feel the same way and were pissed at me, making snide remarks about wanting to play as the characters they loved and had taken them years to build. We ended up still finishing the session and they got their characters back at the end, but things were pretty tense for a while. I think that once they got into it they started having fun and thinking out of the box, but I don't know how to feel about the whole thing. Was I in the wrong here? Also, not super relevant, but we may have overstayed our welcome at the restaurant we were playing at (we left several hours after closing and while the owner assured me it was fine I still feel a bit bad about it). [This is actually the plot of a recent Bob's Burgers episode, I'm sorry I couldnt help myself]

BigBoodyDaddy

May it please the court, and feebled ankled, but beautiful bailiff. In the most recent combat of the campaign in which I am a player, we had a small disagreement. The player in question is a werebear. When a werebear transforms into their full form the are immune to ALL forms of damage expect magic damage. Our DM casted a 9th level meteor shower and we all took a massive amount of damage. The werebear argued that since the damage was bludgeoning, he should only take half. My DM said it would be considered magic, since he did indeed cast a spell and I did agree with him. But the other half of the table agreed with the werebear. My dm, being reasonable decided to just give the player in question half damage. It really wasn’t a big deal, our party won the combat a few rounds later. But I’m curious what your verdict would be? Campaign 2 was amazing and I’m hoping to hear a continuation of Hot Boy Summer. Thank you for all the hard work you all do, especially Murph! My thanks -Wes

Kelley40k

May it please the glorious and all knowing court as well as ....... jake I present to you the case of the Warforge Turtle Lich. In this campaign we were playing evil characters working to bring back an ancient evil. The idea behind this campaign was that for campaign 2 set x amount of years later we would play as the heroes fighting against our old characters to get to the ancient evil destroying it once and for all. I decided to play a turtle wizard (Necromancer) / Artficer (Battle Smith) named Grom. Through this campaign I worked with the Dm in finding ways to upgrade/modify my steel defender such as using different metals (Mithril..etc) and magical infusions. All with end goal of having Grom construct a perfect body (Ultron style) then having this ancient evil teach him how to become a lich. So that he may put a phylactory in this perfect body and become a sorta Warforge Lich. Cut to the end of the campaign and the DM telling me that while i can become a lich im not able to become a warforge lich. Reasoning being the ancient evil can only teach me to become a Lich. After all that work with the DM on my steel defender and Grom experimenting it feels like a let down. Personally a warforge lich ripping the souls out of people and stuffing them into mechanical bodys he controls seems like a awesome future villian. What do you think? Should i have been able to become a warforge turtle lich or was my mad schemes asking to much?

Michael Colin Kennedy-Yoon

Hear ye, hear ye, may it please the court, including the Worm-Made-Man Bailiff Jake. I played in a short campaign where my Paladin and party got teleported to a new plane at the beginning. As we arrived, my DM told us to all make a dex save, which everyone but me passed (thanks to my aura). He then told us that all of our non-magical items were destroyed if we failed. This included my plate armor and all my weapons, leaving me naked, and dropping my AC by 6. I was built as the party’s utility tank, so I was interested to shift roles to a support-y healer as I scavenged my way back to having items (I had no gold, and there were no towns), however, my DM then told us that this fey wild gave us an illness akin to an STI, which would dwindle our HP by 5 every morning, and was transmitted by healing spells and abilities. Only a few players failed the con save and contracted this Illness, so I, as a Paladin, volunteered to be their healer, since I’m immune to disease. My DM then said if I healed a sick person, I would become an asymptomatic carrier, and my heals would transmit the wasting disease to my unaffected party. In addition, he said that I could not use my “five points of lay on hands” to cure the disease, but that I could use them to stop the morning dwindling of HP. All this meant I couldn’t effectively heal, and I couldn’t effectively tank. I tried to be a good sport, but the fun of the game really flagged for me, and after 5 sessions where we found no blacksmiths for armor or weapons, I asked him if, because I had no weapons, I could bite people for a dagger’s worth of damage (I usually use a long sword) and he said no, because other races get bite attacks, which I understood, but no one else had any restrictions placed on their play style. I feel like my DM saw my build and made a setting designed to nerf me in particular. Am I being overly sensitive? Or was the removal of my items and healing cruel? I await your judgement.

Sean Durham

Forgive me parents for I have sinned. I bring to the righteously corrupt court a confession of guilt that has haunted me for many years. Back when my group first started playing like 5 years ago we would struggle to keep attendance so we adopted a fairly loose “mission based” structure so that if someone couldn’t play it wouldn’t make for awkward story telling. One session we were playing, my wife wasn’t able to make it so she let us play without her, unfortunate, but fairly common at the time. The trouble came when an old family friend dropped by and noticed we were playing dnd and asked if he could join as he had played since the nineties. We had no problem with it except he didn’t have a character. This is where I committed my greatest sin of all. I allowed this man to play my wife’s beloved rogue, her first character she’d made. And to top it all off it became a running joke that he “played her character better” as he knew how to take advantage of rogue abilities. My wife was very clearly upset by this when she found out. I await harsh and severe punishment for my crimes and justice for my wife. Thank you.

Victoria Shotts

Just came here to say YES to cool bailiff Jake 😎

Jordan Clement

May it please the Glorious court, and I'll assume Jake is somewhere. In an older campaign, I had a party tasked with stopping Demonic Hobgoblin assassin pirates. We struggled to find the black, speedy and utterly silent ship.. We climbed the ship and were greeted by enemies in the midst of a raging storm. Our wizard shot a fireball on top deck and our DM said that because one of the components of the spell is a small red bead that the wind would blow the spell away. We argued and gave up. We continued fighting but 3 of our members were killed,(2 by me because of a homebrewed bugbear mechanic). We all ended that campaign afterwards. That fireball would've changed things because it would've hit 6 targets. Were we childish to argue or did the DM wrongfully get fired up? P.S. my low intelligence fighter killed 2 members because they got choked by bug bears and when I attacked, they bodyblocked the swings. I had to escaped with my cloak of Manta and do a redemption arc in another campaign. P.P.S. much love for the bailiff.

Peter Jozwik

May the court be as pleased as I have pleased myself, I bring forth my case: I am currently part of a group getting ready to set up a weekly game. We are creating characters and speaking with the DM about what will work and what we all are looking for for the game. I want to play two halfings stacked on on top of the other because they think they are a human. They are brothers whose mom died during childbirth and their father, in his grief, forced them to pretend to be human. So now they cannot think otherwise and share a mental link which means they essentially have two brains but one mind. Their journey might lead them to resolve this mental obstacle and become individuals. Anyway, I was hoping for some homebrew rules that the DM is not open too: -they would have double attacks and do double damage on attacks -advantage on rolling for stats during character creation - double their ability modifiers -double hp (they share hp) -disadvantage on all rolls that require stealth, dexterity, constitution, wisdom, intelligence,  and death saves. -Advantage on strength and charisma -any additional advantage or disadvantage would count as double advantage or disadvantage -No more halfing nimbleness -considered human size and stout -lower walking speed -class: fighter or rogue The rest of the party would not know unless they roll an investigate specifically for whether or not this human is actually two halfings stacked ontop of each other. My character would be very private and sleep alone. My DM says I'm being ridiculous. I'm wondering whether I'm being fair and balanced in my character creation or if the DM is right and I'm an idiot.

BenMightSmite

May it please the court(specifically Caldwell) and may it bring the bailiff over the edge. I play a game at my local game store with a bunch of old people who’ve played since first edition so it goes without saying they are crunchy and sweaty and not flexible on rules. In the middle of a dragon war we needed to collect grab the necklace to de-animate a dracolich and in turn we had to climb a tower while dragons fought but instead of waiting I decided to fly my griffin up instead as it would be much faster but the dm said “oh cool the dragons have a sandwhich” saying I’d risk all the dragons attacking me and Razorlight(strike true) but I insisted that they wouldn’t stop fighting other dragons to take a bit out of some griffin while fighting other powerful dragons but in the end he said if I continued I’d be attacked so I was forced to take two whole turns of dashing up a latter in a 9 person game. So I beseech thee honorable crits should I have been forced to take a slow route and would it have made sense for a single paladin and griffin to be singled out

Steven Hamonic

To the Honourable Justices, (and the Bailiff): May it please the Court- I am playing in a superhero themed 5th Edition game set in "Sharn" (A city from Eberron that's like Magical 40s New York). Our group is a Warforged Forge Cleric/Fighter with 24AC, an Aaracocra Evocation Wizard, a Human Hexblade/Echo Knight with crazy damage, and a Warforged Bard. We are in the final arc of the game, having to save the whole city from a massive war before the military shows up. We -the players- have been planning our strategy in a secret group chat and just unveiled the first piece of our plan: Everyone in the party has access to Animate Dead, so we spent two days animating skeletons and zombies, while our Forge cleric makes armour and weapons for them. Our DM wants to overrule our plan to have our own scary army to go up against the bad guys with and basically told us out of session that we're not going to get to use any of our Undead at all in this final day of fighting. We, the Headliners of Sharn- beseech justice from the court. (Also our Bird Wizard is a Lawyer, and she checked- undead are completely legal pets to own in the city)

Andrew Heller

May it please the court, and pleasure the bailiff: Is it acceptable to allow homebrew for one player, but not the rest? A few years ago I DM for a group of close friends who was introducing a friend of ours to the world of D&D. However, the new player is not used to TTRPGs and as such felt very overwhelmed with choice, and just stated she wanted to be "a pixie that blasts the shit out of people". So I had her search the internet for a homebrew pixie race, and made her a custom Pixie with the Warlock class, front loading her damage into Eldritch Blast so she didn't have to worry too much when levelling. Other players asked for homebrew as well, but I denied it as they were veterans to the game and wanted her to feel impactful to keep her desire to play. While there were some disagreements, the campaign went fine and the group now regularly plays. But I am constantly razzed for my special one-time homebrew permission. Judges, was I in the wrong for buffing a new player's character to highlight the fun of D&D but not the rest of the party?

Linus Lindblad

May it please the court! To the honorable Crit Justices and the good-natured bailiff, I bring you a case of mismanaged damage. My gnome wizard Boulderdash's party were recently in a fight with wraiths who frequently attempted to reduce our HP through their fearsome Life Drain ability. Before the battle, we had all been given temporary hit points. When my unwounded wizard was hit by a wraith, the DM ruled that his max HP should be reduced by the total damage of 16, although he had 14 temp HP which were also depleted by the attack. I tried to argue against this but another player stood on the DM's side, citing previous rulings from campaigns they have played in together. I would not have reacted myself had I not DM'd another campaign where wraiths showed up and personally ruled to only reduce max HP by whatever damage was taken after temp HP had been depleted. Have I been wronged or was I too nice to my own players? I humbly await your judgment. PS. Boulderdash was knocked out in the fight but according to my calculations, this would have happened regardless.

Stanarchy

Oh magnanimous justices and plebeian bailiff. I come before the court with the case of the unhittable warlock. Some friends and I are playing through Princes of the Apocalypse and have accidentally skipped past much of the story when we stumbled upon a vast network of dungeons meant for later in the game. Our benevolent DM has done his best not to TPK us with stone golems and a dragon turtle but my squishy changeling hexblade warlock simply cannot stand up to the damage output, but I have discovered a solution. By stacking mirror image and blink (and blowing my 2 spellslot load) I am able to avoid taking damage in battle while spamming green flame blade. While this is great for me, it means that I am unable to provide extraction when necessary, via dimension door, thunderstep, mistystep ect. My character, Fam of the Alam clan, and his shadow clones just blink in and out of the material plane leaving my teammates to take the brunt of the damage. Am I a selfish player for using all of my spell slots for the sole purpose of preserving my characters life or is the best offense truly a virtually impenetrable defense? I humbly await your honorable and just verdict.

Adrian Velos

May it please the court and that sweet sweet boy of a bailiff. My DM asked me to run a one shot, I am a DM for a different group. During the session they decided to play Firbolg druid. They decided to use disguise self to blend into a tavern and meet our existing party. When a fight ensued at this tavern the Firbolg could not be grappled because disguise self made their character 3 ft shorter, this happened because I stated that a baddie grabbed them by the shoulder. I argued that grappling would have worked regardless if they were 8 feet or 5 feet. This was before the strength check, which I of course failed. During this fight they decided to tell people what checks they should roll and then narrate the effects after i said the result. If they are the DM for the general session should they hold this much power in this one shot or am I just complaining. I await your judgement.

Leith H.

Oh most honorable judges and resplendent bailiff, I present the case of the too big brained aboleth My party and I were in the cavern of a significantly homebrewed aboleth, we were taking hits left and right from it as well as its minions, and the sorcerer in the party cast polymorph, managed to get past its spell resistance, and the aboleth failed the save (one of the first failures of the fight) and was polymorphed into a chicken. We rejoiced, as we had a moment to heal, and buff ourselves before going back into combat, but on the legendary action following the sorcerer, the chicken attempted to drown itself. when we pushed back, the dm's explanation was that the aboleth is so smart that it knows how polymorph works, even as a chicken. Needless to say, the chicken drowned and the fight became a long drawn out affair. We ended up winning, but that instance felt like our dm not accepting how the dice landed because he didn't like it I humbly await your ruling, was this metagaming, or a fair move from a very smart opponent?

Sean Durham

PS, we were all super new at the time so my wife had maybe played as a rogue for 2 sessions tops at that point and still hadn’t gotten used to all the little ins and outs yet

John Heater

Dear most honorable judges and the disgusting, lowly, pitiful, insignificant worm baliff If it should so please the dice gods and the crit, I present my case before you So, I was running a campaign that wrapped up a few months ago, and one of the most notable points in the campaign was the following sequence of events: So, one of my PCs had perished previous to a white dragon after a particularly suicidal maneuver- they really liked this character but nonetheless had to make a new one. What they came back with, was a human monk who seemed... unassuming on the surface. I didn't read much that indicated they would be a problem with the rest of the party from the small backstory the player provided. They were chaotic neutral- basically an old, easily irritable hermit from what I gathered. Oh boy, I was in for something else. So, things go fine for a bit after the Monk (we'll call him Jimbo) gets introduced to the rest of the party- a dwarf ranger, a tiefling rogue, a dragonborn rogue, and an elf wizard- as well as an NPC Kobold cleric (To make up for them having two rogues). Things get a little odd in the next part however- the party is hanging around a dwarven city, and they spot a very suspicious figure- a decaying blue dragonborn in a robe. Now, to preface- the BBEG of this campaign is a Blue Dracolich. They know this at this point. Well- instead of immediately doing anything about him, they followed him as he walked to the town center where the king was giving a speech after a demon attack on the city. The party, watching the obvious disguised dracolich slip into the crowd stand by and watch the king come out to give his speech... and the dwarven king instantly being killed by a Power Word Kill from the Lich. He dies, obviously. Everyone panics- a quick and messy combat is had with the lich who "dies" laughing. So, quickly, the dwarven government is scrambling to find a replacement for their king but luckily his successor is in town- the price of the dwarven kingdom. Kind of your typical big-headed jock who probably wouldn't be an amazing ruler, but not evil. The party is called to help guard over the prince whilst the crown gets things sorted. Well.. this goes poorly very quickly with a heated argument breaking out between Jimbo and the prince over something I can't even remember, which ends up becoming a fist-fight... which Jimbo ends by killing the prince (He was given an option to make this non-lethal but instead opted to cave his skull in). Naturally, they are bum-rushed by guards. The wizard and tiefling rogue at this point abscond from the party, seeing stuff has gone FUBAR. The rest of the party stands and fights, loses, and gets dragged to the dungeon whilst the next, NEXT dwarf in line gets elected and decides their punishment for being accomplices in regicide. Naturally, the Dragonborn rogue decides it's jailbreak time. Fair enough.. however their rolling goes SO POORLY they simply end up getting spotted, and the ranger and cleric do no better and are also recaptured- their punishment having been decided by the new much crueler king (A cousin who is from a much more barbaric tribe of mountain dwarves). Meanwhile, Jimbo- once he gets free from his cell- naturally makes no attempts at stealth and kills like 15 guards before going down himself and being captured and dragged to their punishment- execution by spectacle. The party now is thrown into a coliseum- mostly unarmed aside from basic weapons given to them by the dwarves to make it more entertaining, and completely unarmored. The coliseum has a moat with running water in it (Which would lead to the sewers for an escape route)- and on the opposite side of the moat, accessible by crossing a thick bridge were a group of ogres. The party ignores the sewers, fight the ogres, and win, albeit badly, badly injured. The next creature they are to fight is brought out- a Fire Giant Dreadnought. Think a fire giant, but with two gigantic tower shields and full plate armor. They STILL try to stand their ground and fight, even after I try and narrate the thing's introduction as it being clearly far and above too tough for them to fight, especially in their current state. Naturally, they TPK Am I justified in this TPK? (I suppose partial TPK). I feel like I gave them SO many outs that were either ignored or flat out not even looked into. My players generally weren't too bent out of shape over it- they made new characters and met up with the two survivors (The elf and tiefling from before), but occasionally I get some grumbling from them about it. Should I have laser-focused the punishment more on Jimbo or was what I did alright since most of the party went along with it?

Donny

Juicy Justices and Bootylicous Bailiff, May it Please the Court: I run a one-on-one game for my Nephew every now and then. Its fine for now, but I am trying to teach him that rolling low, missing attacks, etc. is one of the fun parts of d&d. Otherwise, I am worried he will develop main character syndrome if he tries to play the game with his friends. Do you have any tips for this? P.S.: my nephew is 12.

A Peeling STicker

Howdy Honorable Supreme Crit. Justices Axford, Tanner, Murphy, and equally as honorable Bailiff Hurwitz: I come before y’all with part one of a long line of cases. I play with my first group of friends from high school with a few friends from undergrad added. My rock gnome bard, Metro Coda Bellowbelt is my second PC in this campaign. His whole story sums down to his immediate family being cursed by a seven deadly sins-esque curse. His mother who was marked with and succumbed to despair after seeing the rest of her children and husband succumb to the curse decided to shelter, last child Metro who was marked with sloth, away from the world. Though lots have happened and with support from his party, Coda (Metro) has been fighting against his curse and trying to track down his family members and the origin of his curse. Fast Forward: Coda and his party are in the midst of breaking down an underground drugged fighting ring, that was releasing tons of crazed individuals into the streets. Pretty much-kidnapped individuals are given Arcane-like drugs and fight it out for money or survival, when they were “useless” they released them back into the streets. While meeting with the head honcho of the ring, Coda discovered his older brother, who was cursed with greed, was the alchemist behind the Arcane-like drug. However, he followed the practice of never using your own product or making tampered products. Just clean drugs, and fighting in return he could have all the money and equipment he needed for his endless search for knowledge. Metro sadly vowed that if he didn’t stop, he would have to stop him. They both vowed as brothers that they would have a fair fight. A few sessions later, the party launched a crackdown with the local guards. It was going well until the Head Honcho released a couple of arcane fuelled NPCs into the rink WITH Coda’s brother as well completely pumped full of the drug. After talking to the party over the table and in-game, Metro decided to take a few vials of arcane that the party was holding. So he could have a final fair fight with his brother, knowing fully well that he could possibly die. Now, it was starting to get late and another player, our Ranger, had to head out but we were all still in combat. The DM gave them the option to hide or run away but they didn’t want to miss out on the end. So Metro and his brother were both pretty close to dying and were pretty much trading arcane fuelled blows. When it was the ranger’s turn they decided to shoot Metro’s brother killing him instantly. Then mentioned over the table that they were trying to end the encounter but also their PC wouldn’t sit there and watch a party member just die. I argued that this was a big moment for my PC and he just took it from him because the fight was taking too long. I eventually got over it since it’s not that serious, but I wanted to know: Was what they did wrong, or was I just overreacting? Many Many Thanks, STicker

SpoiledMilque

To the honorable Crit Justices and the handsome Baliff Jake (to-dah) I bring to you the case of Scruntly The Minute V The Town of Ardev In our second session in the Eberron campaign, we added a new character, a Level 2 Gnomish Artificer named Scruntly the Minute, who wanted to, at Level 3, have a construct. We worked out a method to make his construct a suit he wore to make him seem less short, but it was purely cosmetic as discussed. One of the party members was a goblin cleric named Zublix who started off the campaign by being hunted at a tavern. Scruntly decided to try and threaten the party into letting him in and they naturally took it poorly. Scruntly then decided to flee the party into the streets and start casting spells at the party, who did so in return. It turned into a massive shitshow, towns people got grappled and the town guard ended up getting involved and kicked them out. Scruntly then decided I was being too harsh, and since he is a gnome, not a construct, he would still have passage into the town. I told him that with his construct they would at the very least recognize the metal man. I also told him the guard could have easily just killed them instead. Who was in the wrong? Was I too harsh or was Scruntly being a RoboBaddy who shouldn't be let back in?

Tim S.

Hey there Cool Bailiff, long may you reign. I have committed the sin of homebrewing abilities before Dice Christ and am paying for my crimes in the form of a too-powerful mouse. I seek your comfort or your condemnation. I like to give my players homebrew skills or weapons based on their backstories or character personalities. I have a first-time player who is playing a "very brave and strong" mousefolk (reflavored Halfling) Monk, and she was somewhat frustrated by the lack of long range options. In order to blend the "bravery" from her backstory into a skill, I gave her an AOE ability where once per short rest she spends a ki point to roar to end frightened effects on her allies, and on a failed save Stuns enemies in a 15-foot radius around her for a turn. I knew it was a little broken at the time, but the character also was not exactly optimized, and was a bit of a glass cannon, so it was fine. The problem is now it's been almost two years playing this campaign and the player has become too good at the game. The brave mouse's ability has turned the tide on many-a-battle and is clearly too powerful. But the players love it and I won't take it away, no matter how much Dice Christ may punish me for it. Please forgive me for my hubris.

Jarod Brumley

May it please the court, the extremely muscular and radiant bailiff, and our benevolent, Dice Christ blessed justices. I am a brand new dm, and i started a campaign with all of my room mates of the time. Everything started immediately with immediate red flags as the amnesiac bloodhunter player who asked for a small kid companion, Rick and morty style. Without realizing what his intentions were, I gave him the companion, and he immediately started verbally abusing him. The rest of the party quickly put an end to this by making the companion more included and loved. Later on, the same character, Peileos, keep making bold decisions that would immediately danger the party. The other three (including tobi the child companion) later cornered and confronted Peileos and told him if he kept it up, he would kill himself or the others. I was sure this was about to turn into a PvP slaughter, but it resolved in tense, untrusting agreement. After a months long break from sessions, I prepared the party to take a day long ferry ride to be ambushed. On board they met kratos and atreus as 20 level characters. They were met at night by 20 bullywug warriors, 3 big bullywug big bois, and one queen whose sole purpose was to deliver Peileos to the adolescent kraken below that was an avatar of Cthulhu. Cthulhu would question Peileos on why he has not retrieved the item they requested and essentially instakill him. My plan was to have Peileos agitate kratos or try to steal from him, but he never did any of that. He was to be tossed overboard by kratos or killed by a psychic kracken. Months away from the table he turned into a nonproblamatic pc, and I was stunned. Should i allow this PC with a untrusting past to live on or instakill him and make him role a new character?

Milk Teeth

Greetings to the irreverent omniscient judges and Jake I guess too I come to you with a problem, I am the DM at the dnd club at our school. Our party is fairly big and they have all played DND together for nearly 2 years. I have never met these people until 2 weeks ago. In our party is a pact of the fiend warlock and when I asked him about who his patron is he said “I dunno probably a devil” A week goes by until the next session. I go around the table giving little prologues to all the characters in the party and when we get to the warlock he goes into a whole spiel about how his mom is Zariel the fallen angel and he was sent up from hell to find his dad. Sure whatever, a little annoying that he didn’t tell me this at any point before hand but whatever. After the prologues are done and they are all whisked away to a cave via magic beetle. They all awake in a cave. First thing that Warlock does is take his daggers out and throw them at the other party members because his character is “spontaneous and erratic.” The rest of the session goes similar. What do I do, I don’t know these people and they have all been friends for years. do I continue letting Warlock do these things? I wasn’t even planning on having hell in this world! Help me out of this predicament please.

Andrew

May it please the court and the beneficent bailiff, I present the case of the Biggest Brick Ever Shit and the Loot Hungry PCs. So I gave my players a bag of beans, which was my first mistake. My rogue, after being incepted by a night hag, planted one in her basement (by pooping on it) and annihilated her house (and my encounter) with a pyramid containing a mummy lord. Honestly this was great, and it will remain one of my favorite moments from our campaign. The next session I built a dungeon crawl through the pyramid for my players and I may have overdone it with the loot. I built a room full of golems that were covered in gold and magic items that when removed, animated the statues who would then try to kill the players. They played around with the puzzle a bit, and figured out they the statues only animated when stuff was removed. I figured they would just take one or two items and run, seeing as they are a 3 person level 5 party without a healer, but ever the creative lot, they figured out how to clean out the entire room. They just destroyed the statues by slowly melting them with acid, only removing the loot when the statues he fully crumbled. In short, I underestimated my players and gave them way to much stuff for a side quest. Now I think I need to take some of it away to keep my games balanced. How do I take away their ill (but cleverly) gotten gains without being an unreasonable asshole?

OkaySo

To our most esteemed and honorable Judges and Bailiff Jake too this is an interaction that happened years ago when I first started my journey as a DM. About 4 years ago I started running Lost Mines for a group of beginners at my LGS. I was also a pretty new DM about 6 months or so experience. I had a group of 8 lvl 1 characters and session 1 began with the goblin fight. player A (with another player) controlling a cart with horses decided to drive past while the other 6 fought. The passenger player B asked twice for Player A to stop the cart but player A ignored B. B then decided to cast command on one of the horses for them to stop. The horse failed the save and stopped and how I ruled it because one horse kept running as one stopped that the cart flipped over (dealing no damage to the players). After the session the player driving the cart told me I was rail roading the session 1 after a small argument post game he admits to metagaming and purposefully avoided the goblins and claimed to “continue to avoid/spoil the dangers of the module”. And then said i was “the worst DM ever”. I just thought this would be a funny story to tell and if I was wrong to rule it that way. I trust your judgement

Coal

Forgive me Dice Christ for I have sinned, For my first time DMing, I had my players make their characters and one decided to use a Homebrewed race that they had found online. One race trait of this homebrew was that one could heal by touching fire. I allowed this, but after the first battle the party encountered in the labyrinth, the player asked what kind of lighting was in the next section of the labyrinth. I knew the reason he was asking was because he was hoping to heal from a torch or fire that was lighting the room. I quickly said there was magical floating light in the center of the area and moved on. The player proceeded to ask what the lighting was like everytime the party entered a new area! Frustrated by this I cruelly hatched a plan to ruin this players dreams. In the next section of the labyrinth I had the party face fire elementals. My player was delighted and on his turn tried to heal while punching the fire elemental. I claimed that the elemental's fire contained magical properties that were different than regular fire and rolled fire damage for the player. Disappointed and upset the player got quiet and barely participated the rest of the session. I feel terrible for ruining this players first experience playing D&D and cringe at the lack of flexibility I had when I first began DMing. I await your punishment O' Holy Dice Christ

Turner Tush

Honorable justices, benevolent jurors, Amir’s business partner, I present to you an open and close cantrip case. May it please the court. I was playing a one shot as a Goliath Druid which I picked from a list provided by the dm. This was one of the first times playing with this group of EMT coworkers. Long story short it was near the end of the session and the whole party was split up or dead and it was all wonderful chaos, until… I found myself across from the boss of the dungeon (I Believe it was an ogre, creature size large) with a chasm in between us. I was alone and hurt so as a last ditch effort I calculated my long jump which put me perfectly in range for a thorn whip, I jumped, I hit, I rolled damage and waited for the ogre to fall with me. However, the dm ruled that since I was in mid air when I cast the cantrip the creature would not be pulled 10 feet towards me because I did not have footing on solid ground and I instead swung on the thorn whip and slammed into the wall of the chasm taking damage, and then falling several hundred feet below when the thorn whip disappeared. Meanwhile the ogre watched from above, unmoved. I briefly tried to protest but didn’t feel like making a big deal of it and no one came to my defense. I accepted my fate and we ended the session without confirming wether my character died or not. Was the dm within their rights to add a mechanic to a cantrip mid game or am I rightfully peeved.

Scott M

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and Lowly Bailiff Jake, if it please the court, I have the case of the Existential Misty Step... I was DM'ing for my party and they were fighting a monster called a Cloaker that is able to "attach" to a player when it bites them. From then on, when the Cloaker takes damage, it takes only half damage and the other half is transferred to the player. One of the players had this happen to them and asked if they would be able to Misty Step out of it. Misty Step states that "you" teleport up to 30 feet away. My initial reaction was to say no, because the Cloaker was "attached" to the player, intertwined with their flesh, as opposed to just having them Grappled. Moreover, they were sharing damage, implying a sort of parasitic relationship. My thinking was that if you Misty Stepped away, you would not leave behind parasites. There would not be a pool of tape worms where you had just been standing on the basis that only "you" teleport away. In retrospect, I think I was incorrect, or at least too harsh. At the very least, I should have given the player the opportunity to role a Wisdom check to see if he could distinguish what was actually part of "himself" in that moment. Regardless, what do you guys think? What is part of "you" when you Misty Step?

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.

Lobbying for another Atlanta Live Show - Mr. Adams

If it please the court, the bailiff, and Dice Christ himself, I bring before you a case regarding… let’s call it artistic license. Oh and two giant cats. I am a relatively new DM, hosting a semi-home-brewed Level-1 campaign set in the Forgotten Realms, but on a second continent. In order to get to this continent, my players (in their backstory) had to book expensive passage (to the tune of 500 gold) on a ship owned by an empire that is already established at their destination. In lieu of the 500 gold, a passenger can instead be indentured to the empire for one year. Two of my players’ characters are Leonin brothers (Emily, here are the giant cats), kind of outcast from their pride, and, according to their typed out back story, said that “Our pride sent us, and paid our passage.” Through a series of events, it was discovered that their pride had not paid for their tickets with money, but signed them over to serve the empire for a year. My players were baffled and dumbfounded that this was the case as they claimed their pride paid gold for their tickets. I told them that they didn’t say how their tribe paid. I tried to reassure them that I have worked out an interesting arc for them and that unknown twists were part of good story telling. Both players settled down, one seemingly excited for this plot twist, but the other I think is still a little miffed. Am I wrong for adding this to their backstory without permission? The fate of these giant cats lies in your hands.

THEJordonBrown

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and just a real dog of a bailiff, Jake, may it please the crit in recess to offer some troubled table tidbits: I am a fellow player at a table where someone clearly is stuck in “main character syndrome” in which they believe everyone else at the table to be side characters for their main narrative story. This is now the second game where this player has made a character who isn’t particularly interested in party dynamics, other character’s narratives, or attempting to bond as a group. To the credit of both our DMs for these games, they have not let him disrupt the table too much. Here’s where I’d like your advice: As DnD to me feels like a game that is so strongly about found family, I don’t find myself connecting to this player’s characters or even the player himself. How can I subtly push for the player to be more of a team player and less of a “solo protagonist”? Ideally, without having to sit down and be like “Hey man, quit being a dick.”

Noah Soule

May it please the court and Jake. My case is a question of alignment. During a recent session myself and two other members of the party were trying to steal a boat to travel to the next town. We had just finished a quest and had some gold but we wanted to save it for something cool. So, we distracted the boat salesmen and had our goblin rogue, Chuffy, steal the boat we wanted. When we were all getting on the boat, Devrix, our human warlock, said he could not board. As a lawful good character he was physically unable to board a stolen vessel and he would need to find another way to town. We begged and pleaded for him to just get on the boat and we would return it later but he wouldn’t budge. He defended himself by saying Robin Hood wouldn’t steal a boat from just anyone. He would steal Prince John’s boat but not a regular guy’s boat. Our DM allowed us to say that we were just discussing the plan and hadn’t actually stolen the boat. I then spent 50 pieces of my own gold to buy a row boat that we used for two minutes to travel to the next town. It has been a few weeks now and we have moved on to another town leaving our boats on the shore. Was he overreacting or is this how alignment works? PS he was totally silent for the entire boat heist and only mentioned his issue after many stealth, deception, and sleight of hand checks and about 20-30 minutes of our time.

copperdragon

Honorable, dishonorable, and other judges, may it please the court. I’m currently trying to start a campaign with some friends. Through all the stuff I have to do (trying to find a platform for everyone, scheduling, planning, etc) my brother (11) has been trying to convince me to let him play with us. He isn’t the most mature, but has played before, and has gotten a bit better about not constantly bugging me about it. I’m torn on if I should let him play with me and my friends, or just dm a campaign or some one shots for him on the side. I know that if I full stop don’t let him play I will a)get my parents mad and b) wound him terribly. He told his teachers that a moment of inclusion he felt was when I said I’d consider letting him play. I humbly await your judgement. (P.s.I believe your stance is that teens are above tweens, if that aids your honors)

Sean Marshall Jr.

Honorable Crit Justices & Dear Sweet Bailiff, May it please the court - I am playing in a 2-person party as a Totem Barbarian. My friend is a Genie Warlock, we're both level 5. Last session we were knocked out, captured and imprisoned under the dessert in an ancient dungeon. All of our items and gear were taken, leaving us in loin cloths. Our DM ruled that because the warlock doesn't have his magic lamp, he has lost connection to his patron so can't cast any spells (not even cantrips), can't summon his Pact Weapon, can't use his Pact Boon. Meanwhile I haven't lost any of my class abilities as a barbarian. He's not too salty about it, but I feel it's way too harsh a punishment for only one party member to basically get stripped of their class. Is our DM justified in his ruling? He warned us it would be a difficult campaign, but this is ridiculous!

Whistler

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices (and Jake I guess), may it please the Court. I am a professional GM who runs D&D for groups of kids at a local library. Over the pandemic, we've been doing remote sessions on Discord, which have gone pretty well! We're using a Discord dice bot called Dicemaiden to roll our dice for us. However, one of the kids – for the sake of anonymity, let's call him Reginald – was having a tough time of it. He'd get his expectations really high for the session and then be totally crushed if he rolled poorly on the couple of turns he could get in our short two-hour sessions. When I say totally crushed, I mean crying, tantrums, even blaming Dicemaiden for his problems and calling her rude names. I don't blame Reginald, I know full-grown adults who act like that. It sucks to be punished for bad rolls with boredom, especially if you're a kid. So I offered to let him roll his own dice at home, instead of using Dicemaiden. Now, I played with this kid before the pandemic, and I know he is 100% a stinkin' cheater. He tries to fudge his dice rolls all the time. I wondered, going into this, if he'd use this opportunity to cheat up a storm. And sure enough, ever since I let him use his own dice, he hasn't rolled below a 14. He's also using this opportunity to lord over my villain NPCs and call them weak as he destroys them with top-roll lightning bolts. As long as the only one suffering is me, I don't mind too much. Life's too short. But I've noticed the other kids, who are still using Dicemaiden, are feeling a little impatient and jilted by Reginald's mysterious stream of good fortune. Should I call him out on it, or call attention to it? Should I ask him to return to Dicemaiden, or allow all the kids to use their own dice at home? I ask the court, when they're considering punishment, to please keep in mind that the defendant is 12.

Raymond

May it please the court. I am new DM running my second campaign. Three person party. One brand new player. I’m not exactly sure how to help her but when she gets into combat her character just seems to be built... wrong? I love her character concept (a fairy, ferry-boat captain) I feel bad saying it, but she was persistent about playing a way of mercy monk (oppa Corbeau style), yet she also dug her heels in about wanting a pistol. She plays a new race the fairy from the new sourcebook. She says the most effective thing to do is to just use her pistol, but the monk features (especially this subclass) requires you to be in melee range. i just don’t know how to get her more interested or involved when everytime her turn comes around she says “well... I guess I’ll just try shooting him again” in a very passive tone. Should I suggest a new class? Should I try to make melee somehow more desirable than her pistol? I feel pretty lost as far as how to help and I love the idea of the character but just feel like none of this meshes. Please any help you can offer ❤️ P. S. We talked with eachother before the campaign to limit the Fairy ‘flight’ race feature as to avoid any kind of “Aarokocra with a Bow” situations. Now she can fly for 1 minute a number of times equal to half of her proficiency bonus per long rest. It’s turned out to be a pretty balanced way to include races that start with flight at Level 1.

Hijodeagua

Honorable Crit Justices and that other guy, I bring to you the Leif the Warlock/Figther v DM. I am in a 5e campaign with some friends with a first time DM. I used to be the DM but I don’t have as much free time to plan, so the new DM graciously took over. (This may be relevant). He’s freaking killing the game and I love playing in his campaign. But I do have one ruling question. Our party was ambushed by some red dragon wyrmlings in the snowy mountains. Right before killing the last, it screeched, presumably calling to its mama, so naturally the party was ready to run. We had a magical “bagman” that was able to eat the carcasses but we still had to deal with the blood. It was strongly implied that we had about an 1-2 hours before the mama made it to the site. I found a cave to hide and I wanted to stay back and use prestidigitation to kind of “clean” the snow. He mentioned it was around 60 sq ft of blood everywhere and I hoped to at least make it a little harder for the dragon to find the battle scene (since we dealt with the carcasses). He said that it would at least take an hour if not more to do, but I disagreed. I think with an action being around 6 seconds to do means I can “clean” the area relatively quickly. I can clean around a foot of snow (flip the cleaner part to the top, bloody to the bottom) with an action, at least that's my reasoning. I Admit i was being a little cute with the rules, but I figured why not try. When I DM'd the party rarely used spells out of combat, and I always wondered why they hadn't. The current DM often checks with me and another old DM in the party, to make sure he isn’t being crazy with home brew or missing a clear ruling. He ended up relenting and allowing me to do it but I fear I may have bullied a new DM into letting me do what I want.  So Supreme Crit, was I in the wrong for trying to be cheeky with a cantrip?

Ben Okin

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and Resplendent Bailiff Jake, I present the case of a sling too strong, may it please the court. I am running a homebrew campaign for a bunch of friends and early on got a bit permissive with homebrew magic items. Our Rogue/Artificer Mapach (racoon person) named Trinket was gifted a family heirloom sling by a halfling for saving their children. It was a +1 sling that did an extra 1d4 damage for every size class larger the target was. Trinket soon fell into a hole of optimal play where they felt they couldn’t do anything but chuck rocks on their turn. They would loudly sigh when their turn came around and use their sling for big damage then move on. Noticing they weren’t having any fun, I offered to nerf the sling which made them even more irritated at the thought of becoming less powerful. I tried brainstorming other options for fun stuff on their turn but all suggestions only seemed to incense them. I beseech the court, what should I do about this frumpy player and their inability to find the fun? (For what it’s worth, I have already found new people to play with, but Trinket continues to be a thorn in that one campaign.)

Kpickle

May it please the court, plus the respected and loved bailiff: My DM is drinking hard from the Murph soda and wants a PC with the party, her very own Balnor. Unfortunately, her PC is a broken homebrew “pixie” named “Ms. Rainbow Butter”. A name we must repeat fully or she will not respond as her PC. She refuses to share her character sheet and based on play she has unreal stats minus STR as +5 and what must be proficiency in almost everything. Dumb name and stats aside, our issue as a party is her PC is designed to essentially bypass, overcome, or trivialize any event she throws at the party. Complaints from the party are met with retaliation in the form of more broken fights and events. The party as a whole is losing enthusiasm. She claims she does not want to stop b eing the DM but refuses to let Ms. Rainbow Butter die for the sake of the party. Lastly, she feels as DM all snacks and treats brought to the campaign (her house) are hers by right and will take all the brownies or cupcakes, allowing everyone to have one but she will eat/take the rest. Even hiding them from everyone, including the people that made said treats. Should we mutiny against her PC and dessert tyranny?

David Silva

Honorable Crit Justices and Pretty Okay Bailiff Jake, This is a case of DM vs Player. My uncle was starting a campaign for my two cousins and I. The player of relevance is the younger cousin playing a Cavalier Fighter who owned a horse he has a close bond with. The beginning of the campaign was the end of a drunken bender our characters had just started recovering from. We were making our way down the road to the next town on our map only to find an old man trapped in quicksand begging for help. One shenanigan later, our rogue was also stuck in the quicksand. My cleric got some rope and with the fighter's aid, we freed our companion and the old man. The old man thanked us and began telling us he was a merchant of some sort when the fighter's horse reared back, kicked the old man in the head (killing him instantly) and knocking him back into the quicksand. The fighter was outraged that his well trained horse had struck a civilian unprovoked and the DM simply stated that the horse was under DM control and that it didn't do it for no reason. The horse continued to act out and the fighter was unable to stop its rampaging even with decent (15 or better) Animal Handling rolls. The horse was not allowed to be in on the adventure and at the end of it, my cousin left the game and has refused to play since. The DM later told us it was because the horse had been cursed during our bender, but it kind of seemed like he was just trying to placate. Was my DM wrong in taking the power of this trained stallion into his own hands or was the player wrong for not trying harder to figure out why his noble beast was so unhinged?

Timothy Hardy

Honorable Crit Justices and the venerable Bailiff Jake, May it please the Court. I recently attempted to use a tweaked version of Dead Eye Cybin in an evil campaign. After a few DM suggestions for balance, He approved my character for use in his campaign. However, the other players voted me out for being to power gamey and too high initiative (+14 with advantage). Do you think it was right for the DM to kick me out via player vote after already approving my character for use in his campaign without even offering me a chance to change my character?

Krombop

If it pleases the court and the venerable bailiff, I bring to you the case of the subtle spell. I'm in a five person party that consists of a druid, rogue, wizard, cleric and my Gnome wild magic sorcerer (teehee). Long story short, our wizard wanted to attempt to cast prestidigitation in a sneaky manner, i.e prestitigitate a playing card to cheat in a game of cards. However our DM told him the only way to cast a spell with any sort of secrecy would be to use a sorcerer's subtle spell meta magic thus making impossible for our other spell casters to even attempt a sneaky spell. As a new DM, myself (with a different group of friends) I find myslef disagreeing with some of the calls my DM makes... I don't want to undermine his authority in our campaign however this call sets a precedent for the whole campaign that effects most of our party members. Are we wrong for wanting an option for casting sneaky spells without being a sorcerer? Or is our DM in the right for shutting us down and possibly preventing us from pulling dumb shenanigans?

Adah Kinzer

**Case AND Dice Confession: My DM is running us through a module (Forgotten Realms) and flat out refused to discuss lines/veils (topics we wouldn’t address to keep everyone comfortable) with us because everything was prewritten. This has lead to a lot of uncomfortable bits, mainly goblins/weenie creeps being very flirty towards my halfling rogue. I’m not comfortable with the RP but my DM doesn’t see that. At one point it was so bad I lied and said I crit on an intimidation check to get them to stop. (Dice Christ forgive me. 👏🏻) It’s gotten to a point where it’s no longer fun for me but it took a lot to find this group and I want to get to play. (Everyone else is chill and because we meet over Zoom I try to give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to reading body language.) Please-justices, bailiff, and patrons- advise me on how to proceed and/or punish me. (And let me know if any of this needs clarification)

Calvin Tran

If it pleases 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.

Jerrid M

May it please the court, the coolest baliff and the hottest judges. I present the case of the escaping dragon. I was running the lost mine of phandelver starter campaign with a group where it was Al of our first times playing. The players encountered a young green dragon and the rule book said that when the dragon got to half hp it flees. The problem is that one player tied himself to the dragon and was carried away when the dragon flew away. The dragon was 17 points away from dying when the player cut himself loose and fell in his final initiative attempt with the dragon in range.. He missed his last shot at the dragon and was knocked unconscious upon hitting the ground. He argued he should have been able to take another shot as he fell. Myself and the other player agreed it was fair to follow the initiative order and that the dragon got away. Did I violate the rule of cool by sticking too close to the script?

Taylor Colton

Cool Bailiff and Hot Judges, I humbly present the case of the brutal barbarian brawl. My friend (a new DM) set our former-gladiator barbarian in a 1v1 encounter in a fighting pit while the rest of the party explored a town between adventures. Fun, until I realized the DM was pitting two barbarians against each other in full-fledged combat without weapons. I commented it would be a long and brutal fight, and asked if he was using any brawl mechanics. The DM said he wasn't, but he created the opponent especially to fight our barbarian. He was excited and I didn't question more - just settled my paladin in the stands with a hefty bet on the barbarian. What followed was an absolutely brutal brawl between two barbarians in rage, resorting to eye gouging and nose biting and lasting nearly three hours in real life. My friend did not cut away from the fight to visit our warlock’s shopping spree, and my paladin was bound by the laws of the pit from interfering. The barbarian's glee faded to frustration, as did the players. He finally succumbed to his injuries, losing the fight, and the DM cut to the rest of the players for the last bit of our session. He apologized then and after, explaining he thought it would be fun to match our barbarian's stats. We've had many great sessions since then. Judges, I do not call upon your judgement and wrath to fall upon my friend, for who among us has not made mistakes as an inexperienced DM? I feel I am the one who must be judged. I was the most experienced player at the table, I knew the fight was a bad idea, but I didn’t truly try to dissuade my friend from his path nor suggest we cut away from the fight. Should I have interfered and undermined his authority, or is the good, bad, and ugly of a session all on the DM’s shoulders?

Skoty

Smooth supreme justices and cool bailiff: here is a case regarding custody of the wonderful horse/pegasus Bandit. Our paladin first summoned Bandit using the Find Steed spell - Bandit is a majestic white horse with dark colorations that make it look like he is covered in spiders. This paladin eventually goes through a personal crisis and fully reclasses into barbarian, so no multiclass and no more Find Steed spell. A few levels later, our lore bard learns Find Greater Steed and resummons Bandit to be their mount, also now he has wings and is as intelligent as a person and gets his share of loot. The paladin says it's "like seeing your ex with your friend," and their relationship remains awkward and strained. Court: does the paladin have any rights to custody over this steed? Where should Bandit's loyalties lie? Who must make the first move towards reconciliation?

Taylor Colton

My two cents before the Judges take a look - double attacks and double HP does seem very OP, even with the disadvantage for some ability checks, especially if your ability modifiers are going to be doubled. If they're pretending to be a human, I imagine the lower halfling wouldn't be making any attacks as their hands are staying inside the clothing. As a DM I might allow the doubled HP, but one of the halflings would have to go unconscious if you fall below half health. I think if you want your DM to approve this you might need to go more the route of flavoring human stats and switching around some advantage/disadvantages instead of so many things doubled - after all your other party mates won't have that advantage.

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 Loony 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 or should I be punished for the shenanigan. Was that info for a 22 insight justified or should the DM have thrown us a bone? PS we ultimately all had a blast about the session and laugh at it in hindsight so there is no hard feelings.

Classic Vlasic

May it please the court and the diligent, tireless bailiff. I bring to you the case of the Established Party vs. the Chaotic Rogue. I'm a player in a group that has had regular sessions for nearly 4 years. We've played, on average, twice a month in that span with our same 4 PCs (with exceptions for PC deaths) and we are now level 13. A few months back, our DM asked the group if he could add a new player. We all knew the person and agreed that it was okay for him to join, despite some reservations about the impact it would have on scheduling sessions. The new player took advantage of starting at level 13 to build a pretty broken rogue, but none of the group minded since it filled a needed role in the party (our fighter had died a few levels back and the player created a cleric for their new PC). Fast forward a few sessions in. The Rogue is really only interested in combat, and fully checks out of RP-heavy sessions. We haven't started back in person sessions, and he was just turning his camera off for most of the night while we all played. He often joked about killing people or animals for experience (we level by milestone). He was also regularly 30 minutes late to the calls, which was a problem since our sessions are typically 2 hours max on a week night and we all have work and/or kids. It was getting somewhat frustrating, but it wasn't malicious enough to cause outright conflict. Intro the Deck of Many Things. Two years ago, the whole party was given a chance to pull from the deck by a trickster god, and we all learned our lesson in one way or another. The DM decided it was time for the Rogue to get the opportunity. He decides to pull 6 cards (the player is not new to the game and is well aware of the risks) The second one is the Void card. His soul is ripped away. He doesn't seem bothered, and just chills with his camera off for the rest of the session. A week later, we got together as a group and decided to let this be a sign that he didn't need to be in the party anymore. We felt our characters had no reason to try to rescue his, and he didn't seem engaged in the game. So... We played our next session without him. So, Justices, were we being exclusionary assholes here? Or are we doing the right thing to preserve our long-running, super fun campaign?

foster the boneless duck

O Divinest of Judges and Most Venerated of Bailiffs, I bring forth the case of The Flashback v The Wings for your revered judgement and blest advice. One of my players plays an orphaned Dragonborn Barbarian that was raised by Awakened Ravens. She has stated that her character wants two things; to find her parents, and to fly. Once the party got to their next ASI, we went on a hiatus and I let her know about the feat that would allow her to fly which she didn't know about. In-game they had also just met a friendly dragon and she was overjoyed and took the feat. For our first game back two players were unable to make it last minute, which happens often and is always the same players, including the Dragonborn. I messaged the players letting them know the in-game reasons I gave that they were absent and told the dragonborn that I would work on a way to have a flashback for her acquiring wings soon. With her consent I narrated how the players all met up and had a fun moment where the Dragonborn surprised her party with her new wings, which was a secret from both the characters and players. She asked a few times when the flashback would be happening in the next three sessions so I gave her a heads up when the flashback session would be and reminded her she could take as much time to play out the scenes as she wanted. The party encountered a mist guarding something that communicated through memories and it asked the dragonborn for her happiest memory and she gave up the memory of them being adopted. I was a little miffed but figured that it was my fault for assuming getting the wings would be her happiest memory. That was our most recent session- since then I received a few messages from the Dragonborn asking when the flashback would happen and I haven't responded (in part to frustration but also general irl chaos). I've decided to just start the next session with a full cut scene of her getting her wings. So I guess my question is; was it wrong of me to assume that this mist would resolve the flashback request and should I have done it the old-fashioned cut scene way the first time? I await your judgement with a bowed head and an open heart if you should have some advice for the future. PS: This is an online game, we've never met IRL.

technomancer42

May it please the court and bailiff, I come before you with my case of the unfinished sessions. While I have had an interest in the game for some time, I have only ever ran two one shots, both which were never finished with people who never played before. First time was with people who I pushed*coughcough* I mean persuaded to play, the second was during a weekend trip where it was an extra thing that was happening because I had several people in a house for two days. The first session started late with about half the people missing, and had to conclude early because it was at my job and we were going to open soon. The second ended halfway through about because we did it first chance we could without interrupting other events, and was the night before everyone had to leave and be out a bit early. While I will admit I could have done more to prepare, and tighten the games up a bit, should I hang up my DM’s robe and leave it to more skilled people or should I focus more on trying to keep my games as tight as possible so I can not need to rush? I humbly await my punishment from the court.

Dangerously Dave

If it pleasures the court and punishes the bailiff, I come before you the case of the Jealous Junslinger. (Gunslinger) I am a first time DM, 4 months into running my home brew Nautical campaign. Our fighter is using Matt Mercer's gunslinger, which after spending weeks of downtime crafted a "Pepperbox" (gun capable of firing 6 times). After the level 5 gunslinger did 40 damage in a single round, our artificer thought "Oh hey guns are cool, DM can I have one?" and he got a musket for 200g. No problems so far. However the artificer decided he wanted to use one of his infusions called "Repeating Shot" Which allows the artificer to ignore the "loading property." Our fighter said that this does not apply since under the Exandria gun rules, guns have the "Reload" property (which is significantly different) and therfore the ability should not apply. He further argued this would be very unfair as his character was specifically built around creating this cool gun, and the artificer got to do it "for free" As the DM I ruled in my Artificer's favor, as guns are cool, and the class ability wasn't made with this special gun in mind. Please do not punish my players, as they are also new and hopefully I did not guide them astray. I will accept any judgements in their stead.

Jan F.

May it please the court and the cutest of bailiffs. I bring to you not a case but a beautiful bud. A while back a couple of friends and I joked to each other about playing D&D. We fantasized about how it would basically be like Skyrim except we all had no idea how to play the game. At first our one friend said that he could DM since he thought it was easy to come up with something to do on the spot. So logically we planned to go to his house the next day and told us to chill for a bit while he finished the rest of the script. Keep in mind our character sheets hand nothing on them besides our names. So he intros us into the world of Skyrim and are suddenly thrust into this arena like room where this massive ogre is our BBEG. We take our turns rolling the one D20 we shared between us and never made checks for anything only rolling damage on our turns no advantages, disadvantage, or bonuses. We kill the BBEG and our rogue decides to take all the loot for himself and begins stabbing my party while I’m still stunned by the wall from a throw i couldn’t save from. Our Dm then says “And yeah that’s pretty much it!” and head outside to smoke a bowl and had an adventure of our own. The session couldn’t of lasted more than 30 minutes because the script only took like 2 minutes to read. We joke about the session not but looking back it was the most scuffed game of DnD i’ve ever witnessed but was ultimately a great experience since I got to see people who didn’t talk much interact with each other. It also led me to discover Naddpod which is a plus right? PS Great job on Eldermourne everyone throughly cried at work 10/10

Emma

The Case of the Transporting Tarrasque Tummy To the esteemed supreme crit justices and the mighty, lovely bailiff, I come before you to ask: Where does a creature end and their stomach begin? I am the DM for a longtime group, and we’re reaching the end of a 4 year campaign. As part of the finale sequence, I threw a genetically engineered Tarrasque (slightly altered stats) at them, and over the course of the battle the Fighter was swallowed. The cleric’s solution was to cast Banishment on the Tarrasque, claiming that the Tarrasque would vanish and leave the fighter behind, as the spell only targets one creature. I claimed that even though he was only targeting the Tarrasque, the contents of its stomach would go along, as they’re inside the banished creature regardless of his targeting. This spawned a (lighthearted) table-wide argument for about 15 minutes, where I ultimately informed the cleric that if he cast Banishment and the Tarrasque failed the save, it would simply use a legendary resistance regardless of the mechanics of Banishment. Who was right? Should a banished creature lose the contents of its stomach when it’s transported? Or would they go along for the ride? I await your honorable decision.

Nathan Booth

May it please the court, Supreme Crit Justices, and (arguably) Cool Bailiff Jake. I bring you a case of The Rule of Cool vs. Player. My very first and only campaign I’ve played so far as a player involved a very short session zero with my DM explaining to him my gnome bard with a Beverly-like personality had a very close relationship with his grandfather, who taught him tinkering by them building a metallic songbird familiar/companion together that collapsed into a shiny feather the gnome boy keeps in his hat when not in use. I imagined the songbird would strictly be used for flavor to help make bardic inspirations more narratively pleasing, but my DM explained that the area we were starting the campaign in was a very snowy climate and that my companion bird would rust and become ruined in the nasty weather. My bird eventually got a fun introduction a couple of sessions later when we traveled to a more favorable climate, but I had built my whole character’s class around the familiar and was so excited to show my friends my fun character and sidekick. Should Rule of Cool overruled the DM in the first couple of sessions letting me use a fun narrative point, or should I just enjoy the fact I got to use my familiar in the end? (Long time fan of you all. ❤️ I actually started listening to you guys as inspiration and exposure to D&D before playing for the first time a couple years ago and haven’t stopped since. I just finished my third listen through of campaign one with my first listen through with the Short Rest. My wife and I love you all so much and hope to see you in Chicago soon!)

SkySoup

May it please the court. My players and I recently finished our first campaign, and are preparing for our second. I like to think of my self as a very lenient DM, I always try to say yes to the player's ideas, and if one of them wanted to play as a made up race of shadow creatures or something like that, I would find a way to make that work and establish these homebrew creatures as an important part in my world. However, one of my players, who happens to be my sister, is insisting on playing "Papa Smurf". It started out as a harmless goof. We were all joking about how insane it would be for Papa Smurf to exist in this semi-serious fantasy setting, but it has gotten to the point where she genuinely wants to play a full campaign as Papa Smurf. I've tried compromising with her, saying she could play as a blue pixie from the Feywild or something like that, but she INSISTS that she has to be THE Papa Smurf from the original Smurfs franchise, and wants all the other characters from the series to canonically exist in the world as well. I feel like an asshole saying no to her, but I feel like having The Smurfs™ exist in my carefully crafted homebrew world would just be totally immersion breaking. Any advice from you wise and noble judges (Jake included) would be greatly appreciated.

Sarah Schooler

May it please the court- This is more of a general question rather than a specific scenario. How do you all feel about DMs imprisoning players? Or, players "pretending" to be prisoners even though they're taken and locked up? Is this an OK think for a DM to do, or should it be generally avoided?

Jennifer Bakst

May it please the court, the honourable justices, and I guess Jake is also there. So I'm playing in a campaign that my lovely partner is DM'ing. I'm a halfling druid called Freckle Snook (a vegan pot-smoking hippie who has rejected her inherited fried chicken empire fortune), and last session I wildshaped into a spider to scout out a dungeon for the party before we headed in. However, when I was alone in the dungeon and in spider form, I stumbled on some big bads who were about to murder the captured dwarf we were supposed to rescue. Naturally, I unwildshaped and tried to intervene. Surrounded by two big bads and tasked with dragging a heavy unconscious dwarf out of a dungeon full of critters, things were looking pretty bad for me. I had a crazy plan to get us both out safely that involved burning every spell slot I had, but I knew there was a chance I might die here. Still, I felt my character really wouldn't let an innocent dwarf die when there was a chance of saving him. The DM intervened and railroaded the situation to lock me in a room away from the action and make sure I didn't die - no rolls involved. I appreciate that he didn't want to potentially murder my character, but being railroaded that hard made me feel like I was being cheated. I just felt like my choices as a player didn't matter and that there would be no consequences for risky decisions - it sort of took the joy out of things for me. Am I being a sensitive snowflake and really I should be grateful to a generous DM, or am I right to feel cheated of an opportunity to execute a risky but exciting plan? We both await your judgement and defer to your wisdom. Ps JK love you Jake and I adored the Eldermourne campaign y'all are the best, love from London.

Waddle Bawddle

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the wise bailiff, may it please the court. I come to you with the case of thievery and betrayal. I am GM’ing a game for my friends in the video game Divinity Original Sin 2. (I know it’s not DnD exactly but it works very much the same in video game form). In this game they are allowed to roam free in the loaded level and do pretty much whatever they want. I can only stop them by pausing the entire game and telling them to stop. Well, one of my players, the wizard, goes around and takes as much gold he can find as soon as he loads into the level and gives none to anyone else. Then one time, the rogue pickpocketed him and stole 600 gold. Upon numerous requests and attacks the rogue didn’t give back the gold. The wizard killed the rogue. At that point, I paused it, told them to stop fighting and give the gold back. The rogue was then resurrected by me. I guess my question is, who was in the wrong? The rogue for stealing gold they should’ve been getting too, the wizard for killing the thief, or me for intervening?

Daniel L Hodson

Just entering this thread to say i have no stories cause i cant find a game to play so if someone is needing a player HMU!

Tyler

May it please the court and lowly… yet respectable bailiff. I bring to you the case of players vs the dodgy DM. I’ve been playing dnd for a little over a year now with the same group but we’ve hit a bit of a snag in the last few months. Our DM has been consistently cancelling sessions last minute. His reasons for canceling is almost always some variation of: “sorry I guys I stayed out too late and got too drunk and I’m hungover and I lost my voice.” The first couple of times it wasn’t a big deal but it’s gotten to the point where he cancels more often than not. We’ve come to expect it at this point. One of our players even took it upon himself to reach out and have a conversation with him about it and he told him it feels like he’s canceling because he just doesn’t wanna play with us anymore. Our DM assured him that’s not the case and he even messaged all of us in the group chat to apologize for “being a shitty friend” and told us that he would be better at prioritizing dnd from now on. Well we ended up playing the following weekend and it seemed like we might be getting back on track right?…. Wrong! The next weekend he cancelled again because he “was starting a new job the next day and was stressed about it.” Normally I would kinda understand but given that he’s already known for canceling about 85% of our sessions, I kinda feel like it’s another bullshit excuse. It’s so bad that the other players and I came up with the idea that I was gonna learn how to DM and we will start another campaign that excludes our current DM and we’ll just run the new campaign on the days that he cancels. As I’m writing this I am realizing I don’t have a question but would like to hear the courts thoughts and judgment. Love you guys! Love the show! You guys are the reason I started playing dnd in the first place and I cannot thank you enough for that. Sincerely, A guy who just wants to play some fuckin dnd

Audrey Wermager

May it only please the most honorable Baliff, After playing the same campaign for a year and a half, and despite being leveled up quite high, I fell into a trap and my DM killed me. No death saving throws, no nothing, just instant death. He claims I wouldn’t have been able to escape with any health and my fellow party members wouldn’t have been able to help me either. I ask you is he just being petty and spiteful, or should I have at least had some sort of chance to save my character. Sincerely, Raditz the screwed. P.S. cannot wait to see you guys in Minneapolis in January.

Josh Frigo

May it please the court and the overqualified bailiff, I submit the case of "To Chill Or Not To Chill" Over the past year and a half of our campaign, our DM has steadily been collecting NPCs who have joined our PC crew. At first it was no big deal, an odd character would join for a short quest here and there. But over time they've added up and now our group of 5 PCs also has 4 NPCs one of whom is an adult dragon. I've been a little annoyed but chill about it so far, but last week we had a battle to complete a HUGE story arc in which a group of mind flayers stunned all of the PCs and DM proceeded to continue and complete the encounter all on his own while the rest of us were unable to roll well enough to break the stun. But here's the thing: all of the other party members seem GENUINELY thrilled to have these extra NPCs. After that encounter they were all saying things like "Wow, what an awesome fight and thank goodness we had the extra party members to get us through it!" I want to tell the DM that I'd prefer if we had fewer NPCs but I also don't want to ruin any of the other players fun who seem to really like these extra compatriots. Should I chill on this one or not chill? I humbly put it to the court.

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.

V1KT0R

May it please the Court and the estiemed balif, I bring foward to you all the case of "The backstory re-writing DM". I was playing as a changling Artificer, who's main story comes down to, "Was born into a family of powerful Mages, but was unable to Use any magic themself". Originally, I put down in my characters backstory that one of his sisters, who was a master at enchantment magic, helped teach my character the method of drawing magic out of mundane items, and even enchanting some with different arcane runes, drawing in the magic around them instead of themself. Imagine my shock then, when during an important in game meeting with my characters family, my DM reveals that, "No, it wasn't your sister, but this other person that I have never heard of". Not wanting to cause a scene, I rolled with it, and we had to end the campaign a few sessions after that due to schedualing conflicts, but it still bugs me after all this time. So I ask the court, was it okay for the DM to change a part of my back story that was so closly tied with my character, or am I justified with feeling as peeved at this as I do? I leave both my own, and my former DM's Punishment in you're trustworthy hands.

Steven Hoffart

To the honorable justices and Baliff, May it please the court. My favourite character I have every played, A Yuanti Druid named Bodhi, died when he interrupted a villain's monologue and power up sequence. She was talking of her ending of the world while activating power stones that would float around her head. Bodhi Misty stepped and grabbed the stone, swallowing it before she could activate it. The battle begun and she spent the fight attacking Bodhi, eventually ripping the stone from his dead body. My party since has agreed this was a stupid decision on Bodhi's part. I stand to this day Bodhi died in a heroic way. The DM admits she punished Bodhi for being annoying, but the fight was easier because she did not have all her powers. Was it a noble death or one brought on by dumb shenanigans?

Miles

I feel like this scenario has similar themes to the Dragon Age question in which the DM killed the PC's mother without any warning. The court essential ruled that for major events like that, which I imagine could be extended to rewriting backstory, it's best practice to obtain consent from the PC first.

Dominic Stacey

To the honorable judges and the stupendous bailiff, I give you the case of the falling blue whale, may it please the court. Years ago I played a D&D 3.5edition game with one friend and his then girlfriend/now wife DM. With it being just the two of us I built a Wizard that focused on summoning creatures. As the game progresses I stumbled upon how falling damage works and how you can stack the weight of an object or creature onto the falling damage as well with falling damage maxing out at 20d6 but creature weight didn't have a max limit, only to add 1d6 for every 200lb the creature weighed. So for one mission to kill an ancient dragon who was sleeping I tried to fly up really high in the dragon's lair and summon a blue whale to fall on it. The DM said I couldn't do it because the spell Summon Monster, says the creatures have to be summoned in an environment they can survive in, and that mid air was not the ocean for this poor whale. I tried to argue that it was a mammal and thus would survive the initial summoning but they wouldn't relent. Was I wrong and just greedy for the absurd roll that would've been? Or was I right to make the argument. I await your response

Angel Ramirez

Should it so please the honorable and handsomest bailiff and maybe interest the judges, I was running a homebrew campaign (western/sci-fi/apocalypse) where it was Android cowboys vs airship mutant pirates. The party was being boarded by pirates and in an attempt to free their ship from the harpoon latches that kept them in distance, one of my players decided that they would jump towards the ship and yank it off. It would be a difficult jump (DC 15) about 30 feet to get there, but they assured me their character had a double jump ability in their class. So naturally I gave him advantage. He jumped and failed the check to which I opened the floor for everyone to be able to save him. They all failed their rolls (DC 12) and with that I described that his character plummeted hundreds of feet down to the desert floor. After that session I assured him we could re-roll a character or work something out but he then NEVER CAME BACK. I felt pretty confident in my ruling but that detail haunts me every day. Even throughout the course of the campaign, referencing his rotting corpse in the desert as a comedic cutaway became a bit, but I still felt a little guilty. Was I right to even allow that kind of chicanery? Should I have been stronger to advise against? Or was I correct in my judgement? I await your sentence.

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? Please settle a story I still razz him for to this day. I eagerly await the Justice of the Crit, The Plaintiff Sorcerer.

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?

Austin Clark

May it please the judges of house crit and the dashingly handsome bailiff; this case is called New DM Adds Acrobatics Roll. I am new to DMing but I’ve watched all of dimension20s campaigns as well as some critical role so I feel comfortable and confident going into it. I decided that I would allow my players to do an acrobatics roll in place of a dex roll for when killing the specific creatures they were fighting. When killing these creatures they puff up and release a toxic gas adding extra damage a successful dex saves you take half damage but I added if they roll a straight acrobatics roll no modifier they could completely dodge the extra damage totally but the dc was higher than the dex dc. The dc to save was 10 so I made the acrobatics dc 15. Am I wrong for making it higher? I was just trying to add some flare to their combat allowing them to;(on a successful acrobatics roll), move five feet in any direction.

ananarama

May it please the court and the honorable bailiff. I come not with a case but with the hope that some kind words will make our DM understand he’s absolutely fantastic. My fiancé is the DM for me and my group of friends and he knocks it out of the park (juggles work on top of classes for his master’s degree on top of DMing for a somewhat chaotic bunch). The past two sessions he’s been down on himself saying our awesome airship battle with pirates was a bit of a slog and that he’s worried we haven’t had enough fun combat. I’ve tried to tell him it’s been fantastic but i don’t think he believes me. if you have time during a recess, would you help him to see he’s being a dingus and is the best DM a gang of friends could ask for?

Jacob crocker

May it please the Crit House Justices Axeford, Caldwell, Murphy and the downtrodden bailiff Hurwitz. My closest friends and I have been playing in a campaign for the last 3 years and recently one of our friends brought another one of our friends and told him he can join in our waterdeep dragon heist module. Which was great! I love getting new people into d&d, but this took a turn when in the middle of some seriously beautiful RP our new addition is watching the saints game on his laptop. He never pays attention and is always on his phone when it’s not his turn in combat. It really throws the table off when he interrupts with “wait who’s this guy?” Or “are we going to the heist?” Our dm has messaged him privately about the issue and it seems to last about 2 sessions before he’s back on fantasy football and not paying attention. What should we do? He’s our buddy but when it comes to d&d he really throws off the flow. Any advice?? Thanks guys love the show

Santiago Trujillo

GOAT bailiff n honorable judges, I started playing with my friends for the first time ever for all of us. I'm leading the game n gave them some magic items to have fun with. One of those being a bag of beans. They failed arcana checks n were trying to figure it out. One of my players told the other to eat a bean n as soon as I heard this I cracked up laughing in horror n said "god no. Please don't eat that bean ". Thank fully they took my warning. They decided to feed the bean to an owl out of a bag of tricks n their bean turned into an animated statue that hated my players inside the owl. Sending feathers n red mist everywhere of course. The best part is my players insisted that I turned their cool owl into a dick even after I told them they killed their owl n the statue was something else. Should I have let my players eat the bean n let them kill them self? We're all happy at the table with our outcomes, I really wanted to hear your perspective. Much love n respect everyone.

Josh Gettys

I was a part of a lengthy one shot a few years ago, and we started our characters at level 5. I chose to play a home brew tanuki (raccoon) fighter, and then multiclassed bard. I made a joke about him being a chubby little guy, and “playing his tummy like a drum” and the other players loved it, so I ran with that. I ran the character by our DM before we played, and asked if since it was a one shot if I could actually play “drums” on his stomach, and he said he loved the idea and gave me the OK. We start playing, and during combat I went to use my bonus action to use my bardic inspiration & as I’m describing how/what I’m doing, the DM interrupts & tells me I can’t do that— I wasn’t allowed to use bardic inspiration on my turns, and also couldn’t play “drums” on my characters stomach, despite that being his whole thing (and a big reason why I kept with the character). One of the other players called our DM out, saying that since we all made the characters together, and he gave me the OK to play my character that way, he shouldn’t be stopping me from trying to do what I was doing. DM argued saying he “changed his mind and now didn’t want to let it happen” because “the idea of a raccoon using his stomach as a drum is dumb.” For context: we were probably two hours into the one shot and my character ended up dead by the end of it D&D court- who was right in this situation? Was I wrong for playing a comedic character?

Rob T

BRIEF CASE Dear Honorable and dare i say sexy Supreme Crit Justices and Bailiff. I rolled a nat 1 on an attack against a hag and my DM had my shot kill a tied up child the hag had stolen and hidden in a wagon. I feel missing was bad enough. Did my dm go to far with my failure?!

Joey

Dear honourable justices and bailiff, Do you guys have any tips on finding good dnd groups past the usual 'asking you local game store?' I feel like I've only played with aquaintences that I don't have a high level of trust with and I yearn for a group of close friends to play with. Coming together for authentic connection is so much more important to me than coming together for the sake of the game. I really admire the chemistry your group shares. Any tips on finding my own group of lovely people? Thanks!

Agents of DAMNED

Honorable crit justices and also Jake, I present the case of "The astral hole and the ancient dragon's butthole". I DM for an actual play podcast (Agents of DAMNED), and we recently had a battle against an ancient red shadow dragon, and our cleric had the idea of ending the fight by crawling up its gargantuan rear and putting his portable hole inside his bag of holding, thus opening a portal to the astral plane. He wanted it to rip out the dragon's insides, killing it instantly, but I told him that it would instead simply teleport both of them to the astral plane, still ending the fight instantly, but not killing the dragon. He changed his mind, saying that "if it doesn't kill it, there's no point", seeming rather dejected for the next few rounds. We ended up cutting the scene entirely, but was I wrong to deny him his gory self-sacrifice, or was my compromise fair? We eagerly await your harsh but fair judgment as we prostrate ourselves before the court. - the sometimes benevolent, often malevolent dungeon master

Aust

Dear honourable justices and the wonderful bailiff! I decided to DM a group of experienced other DMs in order to give them the joy of getting to play for once. They taught me how to play and I figured they can help me out in DMing games because they are all experienced and I am just starting out. One of my friends plays a Hexblade Warlock who took pact of the tome. He took the aspect of the moon so that he no longer needs to sleep during long rest, but instead spends all the time writing down scrolls. And now here's the problem. He creates shield spell scrolls every night and uses them during combat. RAW he's allowed to do this because scrolls use the regular action time, meaning he can read the scroll and cast shield as a reaction. Again RAW I think everything's legal, but what the heck is the point of a long scroll to read if you can take it out of your backpack and read the same time a sword is being swung at you? Am I insane in thinking that no one should be able to read that fast or am I just not understanding the point of a spell scroll? They're more experienced than me so I imagine everything here is cool but am I missing something?

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.

Santiago Trujillo

GOAT Jake, if you really read all of these comments, give us one single "kaw-kaw" during the episode. Love you 😘 😍 💗 💓

Zacharythefish

Honorable justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner(and very sexy bailiff Jake). May it please the court. My players are consistently forgetting key details about the campaign. For example when they met the Holders, an honorable group of beholders trying to uphold justice and protect the world from evil. They told them that the force that was causing chaos in their world was some kind of powerful deity. When it was brought up later they did not remember that it was a deity that was causing problems. Is it my job to help them remember these things? Or should I just let them forget and not have enough information when they really need it.

Nicolas R

To the honorable presiding judges and also Jake, I bring you a case from the lost annals of 1st edition play back in the 1970's. This is a story my dad told me about a player from middle school that joined his friends' campaign for one session. Apparently, it was either common custom (or this child's whim) to bring his character from another campaign and friend group, rather than make a new level appropriate character for the party to join in with. Supposedly, the character was significantly higher level, had a +5 vorpal sword, and enchanted chainmail that could turn him invisible. The session ended hours earlier than it was supposed to be as the newcomer immediately slaughtered anything the DM could throw at him, and my dad's group never played with that guy again. Times were different back then, but I feel that there needs to be justice, even half a century later.

Evilbob02

Honorable justices and baliff jake. as a relatively new dm i was running the forge of fury, in 5e format, for my experienced dm friends. One of my pcs wanted to use magic missle on some enemy npcs that were located behind arrow slits, i asked for her to roll an attackroll as i feel being behind arrow slits they should be harder to hit. Pc got discouraged a bit and decided on something else. Should i have instead asked for a perception check to see if she could see them then cast magic missle?

Isis

If it may please the justices and honorable bailiff, I bring to the court the case of the misaligned warlock. I am the DM of an Ice Wind Dale (IWD) realistic campaign - tracking food consumption, inn fees, feeding mounts, etc. Currently I had them leave IWD as it was getting bleak, & sent them on a short Fey realm journey that landed them in waterdeep, two years after they set out ( but only a week for them) Along the way one of our PC’s lost his 3rd character to magical enslavement by Baba Yaga and Tasha. (1st trampled by mammoth, 2nd killed by the rest of the party) this pc came to me separately and asked if we could recover char. 3 as he really liked him. I contrived a puzzle using witchlight carnival (wc) and a groundhogs day trap to return the enslaved pc. The problem comes when the warlock pc isn’t actively participating. To pass the puzzle all the PCs need to participate to raise the mood of the carnival (using wc mechanics) but the warlock is spending his time playing games on a second monitor (it’s a zoom campaign). He also loudly objects anytime he fails a roll, he used all 3 luck rolls last session on an insight of the goblin doorman to try and get a 20 and break the puzzle. How do I engage the warlock (who also doesn’t take notes) enough to pay attn to important interpersonal RP? -Velociraptor DM. (PS all PCs are 2 couples so kicking out isn’t a thing)

Ross

May it please the esteemed court, and may the bailiff sit idly by since this case has nothing to do with the fighter class. I was a player in the final session of a 2 year campaign for our rugby team in college. Kalarel the Undying was our bbeg and we tracked him down to his tower for the final battle. We beat him down to a near pulp after he had used two of his three wish spells given to him from a magic item. 3 of our 5 party members were down, and it was just me and our Aarokokra monk remaining. I, the level 17 Moon Druid of the party, had true polymorphed into an adult gold dragon on my previous turn. On Kalarel’s turn he tried to use his final wish spell to summon the demon Baphomet to his aid. I used my reaction to cast counter spell. The DM allowed it at the time and I rolled a nat20, thus preventing him from summoning the true enemy of our campaign. On the next turn our monk did the finishing blow to Kalarel and we succeeded in saving the world. As we were unwinding after the session it was brought to our attention by another player, the barbarian who went down first in the fight, that in my true polymorphed state, I shouldn’t have been able to cast spells. I argued that since dragons had innate spell casting that a nat20 should have allowed it anyway. Our DM, clearly tired after our 5 hour session allowed it in order to finish things up and not have to backtrack. But as I look back on this memory I feel a deep guttural guilt in my stomach for having possibly cheated in the pivotal moment of our entire campaign. My question to you, esteemed judges, is do I deserved to be punished for my transgressions? Was I a dirty cheater? I await your humble ruling.

James

DND court spam feeling lazy tbh. Trinyvale and mavrus chronicles are absolute bangers, idk why they don’t do those instead

James

How dare you

Drew Honson

To the esteemed Supreme Crit Justices and the noble bailiff Jake. May it please the court: My players collectively decided that the warforged starry druid of the party named Worf Orfed has a monster schlong. Being a gracious DM, I decided to let the dice tell their story, and let him roll a d10 plus a d4 from Guidance to determine the length of his hog. He got an eleven and now all my encounters are sidetracked because my players can't stop giggling about Warf's massive member. I have attempted to reason with them that the roll was a joke, but they insist on making his literal and figurative wood a lead-in to many social encounters. How can I move past Warf's forged phallus to get my campaign back on track?

ShrimplyAwesome

May it please the highly esteemed crit justices and the honorable bailiff, whom toils tirelessly picking up the Cheerios thrown by the justices from their highest of high chairs, I bring to the courts attention The case of the “one player army loot goblin” I play a reborn twig blight cleric in an “Out of the abyss” campaign with some friends. The module is very fun and the DM is great the issue is with one of my fellow party members who plays a symic-hybrid fighter/rogue. The party is currently level 8 and this player already has a 25 ac with a shield, a passive perception just as high as their ac and their other skills and saves aren’t far behind, and they deal enough damage in single round to half a bosses Hp without criting. Now I’m not against power builds but in this circumstance I feel it’s a bit too much. On top of them being practically unkillable. They consistently roll checks without asking or being asked or even when another player was asked to roll specifically. They have also on multiple occasions abandoned the party mid fight to grab loot before anyone else, they got their current weapon by abandoning the party mid fight with 3 PCs down to grab it first. On top of all this they’ve also tried to skip other players turns to deal the killing blow to a boss and complained after the session when another player got to deal said killing blow, and during a shopping session convinced the party to pool our gold only to turn around and try and use 2/3 of it to buy themselves an item that only they could use and preceded to throw a fit so bad we had to cut the session short when no one would let them. It’s gotten to a point where me and my friends are thinking of leaving the campaign as we feel like the only reason the rest of the party is around is to give the bad guys someone else to hit when they inevitably miss this other player as they can basically do every classes job better than the actual class and do so every chance they get and even on chances the don’t get. I await your benevolent ruling oh great justices. Please what should I do.

mugabi rubamba

Dear esteemed and benevolent crit-justices,(More so Daddy Murph because he inspired my current campaign) and that lovely bailiff in the corner. If it may please the court: I am currently running a game for some friends where recently, I had intended for my high level evil artificer bad guy to send one of his automaton clones to appear during a prison break they were performing, to monologue and taunt them with some lord and story hints. Instead, they immediately grappled the robot and attempted to beat and break it. During all this, one of my PC characters who is playing a blood hunter, attempted to use one of his abilities to deal psychic damage to my bad guy, but I said he was immune given he was a remote controlled robot. However, he argued that with he a feature with his power of his power to ignore immunities, he should still be able to do it. This argument happened in the middle of combat so I eventually just vetoed him so that we could move on. My question to you wise judges is should I have let him deal the psychic damage? Or was I right in saying being a remote controlled robot prevents that? Thank you so much fir hearing my case and I await your absolutely correct decision

Eugene

Here ye here ye May it please the court I have a DM versus player problem. So I have something that happened to my group and I a while ago but I just found out about the dungeons and dragons court. So my character had got killed by werewolves we are still a little bit triggered by them by the way. Before that my other player and I had used the marriage ritual to get the plus to AC and other benefits it gives. We discovered that when one person dies that is part of the ritual you can preform it again………… We just happened to have 3-4 scrolls of revivify and had a thought. We asked our dm if he would allow us to slit each other’s throats and die so we could always have the marriage ritual. I think we almost made our DM sick af he wasn’t a happy camper. Is it really that fucked up? Is it even more fucked up my friend and I had the idea at the same time. Sounds like true friendship to me.

Justin Gayler

May it please the bailiff and the lowly crit justices, I present a case where my DM designed an encounter in order to force a player death. After solving a puzzle that forced my character to enter a ruin alone while the other four players held up the door, I met a witch made of black goo. The witch turned amorphous to try to fly into my mouth to possess me. Being a paladin, I cast a spell that prevents me from being possessed. The DM said it didn't work. As I came out of the cave the witch took over my body to use all my spell slots to hurt other the party members. They dispatched me easily, but the goo witch infected another player. That player used the feign death spell which imitates death to try and force the witch out. The DM decided that wouldn't work. The group also tried to summon animals such as a goat or frog to become infected instead, but the DM killed the animals. At this point an hour has passed where I am down but stable along with a nother player who is effectively dead and nothing is working to eliminate this witch. Finally we ask the DM for a hint and he states "I thought one of you would have sacrificed yourselves by now, you can only get rid of it by dying." Everyone in our group is very attached to our characters and some of their backstories have yet to be told. I feel this was unfair and quite frankly, unfun behavior by the DM. What say ye?

Taylor H (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-05 07:00 To the honorable justices and baliff, I come to you with a case of the player who refuses to learn. I’ve been playing with the same group of four guys for the past three years and two of which were brand new to D&D. In classic new player fashion they both wanted to play murder hobos in some capacity and kinda goof around. Knowing it was their first time playing, myself, the other experienced player, and our DM were more than happy to give them the opportunity to play that way while we supported them through the story arc of the campaign. We both would have their character sheets open to help them out as well to make sure the knew how to navigate it since we were playing online. Once the story took a more serious turn, and backstories were revealed, one of our murder hobos decided he wanted to take the game a bit more seriously and began to play with the same tone the rest of us were playing and didn’t need help with his character sheet. We still had one murder hobo in the party, but he barely participated in role play after this tonal shift and after two years still didn’t understand how to navigate his character sheet, or really anything about playing d&d at all. He didn’t know what dice to roll, where his stats were, or even what his own character could do. Majority of the time I’d have his character sheet open and would be helping him play. I chalked it all up to just being a new player and chose to forgive him for it all. Once we wrapped that game we choose to move into Curse of Strahd and I assumed he wouldn’t be joining us because he didn’t seems all that interested anymore. However he did and decided to play a bard. I warned him that support spell casters are a bit challenging when you’re still not used to the game but he INSISTED on taking the class anyways. Fast forward to the first combat and he has zero idea what he can do, doesn’t understand spell casting even though we’re trying to help him we can’t playing his character for him, when we’re trying to play our own. At this point I want our DM to kick him out. But we’re all childhood friends and I don’t want to hurt his feelings. Should we boot him from the party, or am I just behind a dick? What say you supreme judges of the crit court?
2021-12-02 02:30 To the honorable justices and baliff, I come to you with a case of the player who refuses to learn. I’ve been playing with the same group of four guys for the past three years and two of which were brand new to D&D. In classic new player fashion they both wanted to play murder hobos in some capacity and kinda goof around. Knowing it was their first time playing, myself, the other experienced player, and our DM were more than happy to give them the opportunity to play that way while we supported them through the story arc of the campaign. We both would have their character sheets open to help them out as well to make sure the knew how to navigate it since we were playing online. Once the story took a more serious turn, and backstories were revealed, one of our murder hobos decided he wanted to take the game a bit more seriously and began to play with the same tone the rest of us were playing and didn’t need help with his character sheet. We still had one murder hobo in the party, but he barely participated in role play after this tonal shift and after two years still didn’t understand how to navigate his character sheet, or really anything about playing d&d at all. He didn’t know what dice to roll, where his stats were, or even what his own character could do. Majority of the time I’d have his character sheet open and would be helping him play. I chalked it all up to just being a new player and chose to forgive him for it all. Once we wrapped that game we choose to move into Curse of Strahd and I assumed he wouldn’t be joining us because he didn’t seems all that interested anymore. However he did and decided to play a bard. I warned him that support spell casters are a bit challenging when you’re still not used to the game but he INSISTED on taking the class anyways. Fast forward to the first combat and he has zero idea what he can do, doesn’t understand spell casting even though we’re trying to help him we can’t playing his character for him, when we’re trying to play our own. At this point I want our DM to kick him out. But we’re all childhood friends and I don’t want to hurt his feelings. Should we boot him from the party, or am I just behind a dick? What say you supreme judges of the crit court?

To the honorable justices and baliff, I come to you with a case of the player who refuses to learn. I’ve been playing with the same group of four guys for the past three years and two of which were brand new to D&D. In classic new player fashion they both wanted to play murder hobos in some capacity and kinda goof around. Knowing it was their first time playing, myself, the other experienced player, and our DM were more than happy to give them the opportunity to play that way while we supported them through the story arc of the campaign. We both would have their character sheets open to help them out as well to make sure the knew how to navigate it since we were playing online. Once the story took a more serious turn, and backstories were revealed, one of our murder hobos decided he wanted to take the game a bit more seriously and began to play with the same tone the rest of us were playing and didn’t need help with his character sheet. We still had one murder hobo in the party, but he barely participated in role play after this tonal shift and after two years still didn’t understand how to navigate his character sheet, or really anything about playing d&d at all. He didn’t know what dice to roll, where his stats were, or even what his own character could do. Majority of the time I’d have his character sheet open and would be helping him play. I chalked it all up to just being a new player and chose to forgive him for it all. Once we wrapped that game we choose to move into Curse of Strahd and I assumed he wouldn’t be joining us because he didn’t seems all that interested anymore. However he did and decided to play a bard. I warned him that support spell casters are a bit challenging when you’re still not used to the game but he INSISTED on taking the class anyways. Fast forward to the first combat and he has zero idea what he can do, doesn’t understand spell casting even though we’re trying to help him we can’t playing his character for him, when we’re trying to play our own. At this point I want our DM to kick him out. But we’re all childhood friends and I don’t want to hurt his feelings. Should we boot him from the party, or am I just behind a dick? What say you supreme judges of the crit court?

Logan

May it please the Supreme Crit Justices and the Most Honorable Bailiff, I bring before you a grave sin against Dice Christ. I present the case of the Rampaging Ranger. This happened a while ago, but this is still a call I question as a Dungeon Master nearly two years later. My friends and I were playing a homebrew game that I was the DM of. Our party at the time consisted of a Fighter, a Ranger, a Cleric, and a Bard. For context, a session before the incident, part of the Ranger's character arc was that his sister's soul was stolen by a demon and the demon told him that if the Ranger brought him souls equal in value to that soul, he could have his sister's soul back. The Ranger was given a cursed dagger to use toward that end. Fast forward to the incident. The party was sieging a city in order to liberate it from a vassal of the BBEG and after defeating the vassal, they broke into his castle. His wife and child were in there. The cursed dagger made the Ranger have to roll a WIS save to avoid being influenced to kill the civilians. The Ranger passed by a high margin. The Ranger's player, however decided to intentionally fail the save and kill the vassal's family. I want to emphasize that the player had earlier said that he had no interest in killing innocents, hence the save. In the resulting fray, PvP occurred and the Bard was killed by the Cleric. The Fighter was so distraught by this that he decided to leave the party all together. To remedy all of this, I had a Demi-God show up and send them back in time so that the Ranger didn't commit the murders. My question to you dear Justices: was I right to railroad the campaign like that or should I have allowed the game to continue in the darkest timeline?

Joshua Levy

I think if you post in the naddpod Reddit or Facebook groups people have had luck finding groups that way (common connection of naddpod being just dnd); else easing friends in with some dnd episodes of tv (or comparing it to LOTR depending on the friend group) and then suggesting that you all try it is a way I personally have had success starting games as well. Either way good luck!

Jonathan Charlton

I think that's less railroading and more getting the train back on the tracks. You wouldn't want the players to stop playing with each other over this. But I'd suggest this all goes back to giving the Ranger the cursed dagger in the first place and setting up the deal with the demon. If the Ranger player is true to his character, of course he might end up killing innocents to save his sister. So as the DM I might have made the deal a bit more alignment-friendly: perhaps taking down a rival demon, or retrieving a cursed relic from an ancient labyrinth the demon can't access.

Logan

He did have the option of collecting the souls of monsters and evil humans as part of the deal. I really appreciate the feedback though!

Darth Jeeling

May it please the Court, I bring a D&D grudge from 2006. Much like the recent case, Dead Warforged vs Substitute Player, my character was also unjustly killed while someone else was controlling my character. In my case, I was playing a six-armed Insectile Gnome Ninja who could alter self at will into any Monstrous Humanoid. My character sheet had several years of illegible pencil marks listing all the stat bonuses from different monster shapes, and the player controlling me did not notice my tremorsense ability that should have allowed me to detect the burrowing Nightcrawler that ambushed me. I respectfully request that you ignore this extenuating circumstance and inflict a terrible punishment on everyone who was present at this session, all of whom I am still in contact with.

Star_Drek

To the magnanimous court and ascendant bailiff: I am the player (he/him) and my DM (she/her) threw a lord of snails at us. We have another paladin in this story. We were running yawning portal and we ran into this giant snail in a cave, who the DM described as “intelligent” and could speak in primordial. His name is Tecuziztecatl, Lord of Snails, don’t ask me how to pronounce it. I, a wild magic sorcerer, ran up to it and attacked it (don’t ask me why I went into melee range, okay?). The snail attacked me with two swipes of his pseudopods, and because I was low on health, the paladin cast Shield of Faith on me to give me +2 AC. The snail then chose to cast Spit Acid on me to get around my AC (dex save) and downed me, leading me to my eventual death, and to the DMs credit, dramatic plot armor revival. The DM posits because the snail is intelligent (int 13), he would see the shimmering wall around me and decide to acid spray instead of swinging at me like he was to get around my AC boost. I argue that this snail lord was metagaming, because regardless of any lands or titles he may have claim to, he has lived in a cave his whole life and wouldn’t know what shield of faith looks like. He also would not know to change strategies from attacking AC to using dex saves just because a shimmering wall surrounded me, and I argue a more reasonable strategy would be to attack someone else or just hit me harder. We both await your swift judgement and long for our worthy punishment. P.S. we will both be at the Chicago live show in January, very hype.