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

Calling All Court Cases (Patreon)

Published:
2021-12-14 15:38:49
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Hello! Tis I, the SUPREME Bailiff Jake. Crit is soon to be in session so please submit your (BRIEF, I beg!) tales here on this thread and we will try your case.

May Justice Be Soon Served,

Jake

Comments

Robert Aronowitz

DND Court 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?

Alex Woodbury

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

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. Reaoning 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?

Lizzie Tredinnick

Dear Honorable Powers that Be, I bring to your attention the case of the Dubiously Divine dice! While I was DMing the starter module for my family (first time playing/DMing for all) my sister's boyfriend made the decision to try and "win" at rolling the dice. Somehow he managed to find a way to near consistently finagle a roll above 15. After the 3rd time he managed this, I started making him roll with disadvantage, but he continued rolling really well with his "method," while my dad (using the same dice, we only have one set) couldn't roll above a 10 for the life of him (no really, I almost inadvertantly killed him in our first round of combat). Do I take that as a sign from Dice Christ ordaining the boyfriend as Their Prophet, cursing my dad in the meantime, or do I just need a more creative penalty? Please lend me your wisdom, Powers of the Crit! (All in all, we had a great time playing, shenanigans were plentiful!)

Nick D'Angelo

May it please the honorable Justices who’s rulings should never be questioned and Bailiff who exists. I present to you a case of DM v DM conflict. I have been running a campaign for my friends for over two years now and am known to be very tough on rules. One of my players from this group decided that he wanted to give the dm chair a try and took over a different campaign I was running that I was running another campaign for. Being happy not needing to run two campaigns I stepped aside and joined as a PC. This campaign has been running smoothly for months now, and from time to time I can act as a reference for our Dm when he is unclear on something. The incident in question happened in our last session. While running an encounter that had PCs in multiple areas, with conflicting goals happening simultaneously, I suggested that the DM have everyone roll initiative to keep track of who knew and did what, when. My character was not involved in the scene due to the fact that he was in an impromptu therapy session about his dreams of demons shooting laser beams at him. Fellow members of the party who are familiar with this court’s standing precedent that everyone should be rolling initiative all the time agreed initiative should be rolled. The DM in question also had just listened to this case. However the dm refused to do citing that this was his campaign and he did not have to roll for anything. He even admitted that this was out of spite for my rule following style he had to learn to play under and would fight against it to his own detriment. So I bring the case before you was he right to not roll initiative because it was his game, or are there rules so sacred they should never be broken?

GC

hello supeeme justices and vouyeristic bailiff jake. i had run a two shot for two close friends (a beloved ex and one of my best mates) and had prolonged the drop or climax of the story to prolong suspense and build tension. my Kue (wuestion) is, is it permissable to drop or elongate plot if you feel that you have underdelivered in the setup. I regret not fulfuling the chance while i had it. my utmost respect to the justices and their adorable bailif. KGC

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.

Nicolas P.

I offer a confession: Forgive me Dice Christ, for I have committed dice fudgery against one of my players. I was running a gnoll encounter and my player’s Warforged Battle Master was going one on one with a flind (AKA Deeprag). They used their disarming attack three times and it saved on the first two. On the last one however, I rolled one below the DC needed, but in a moment of hubris, I lied and said the flind passed the save. I selfishly put myself above my players and their cool abilities. Please find it in your heart to forgive me.

Jake Murray

I was DMing a camping in which my players were investigating a large tower that was a city’s bank. The bank had been evacuated due to unusual plant growth through the tower. Upon entering the tower my players found a large tree residing in the lobby fountain. After the sorcerer hit a nat20 perception check, I told him of the things in the room but neglected to mention the tree in the lobby was a tree-any since tree-ants are indistinguishable from normal trees while remaining still. The party was ambushed by the tree-ant and took a good bit of damage from the encounter but now my player never trusts a nat20. Was I too strict on the perception check? Or was I justified to keep the tree-ant a secret based on its description?

Devin Gardner

Honorable and esteemed justices of the Supreme Crit, the dashing Justice Murph, the radiant Justice Axford, the handsome Justice Tanner, and the beautiful and mighty Bailiff Jake, I humbly come before you today seeking your incomparable wisdom on a most unpleasant incident that occurred 10 years ago. I was playing a dragonborn paladin in a chaotic evil campaign with "friends", and had dumped as much as I could into charisma. Another player, a real knob of the "um. actually" variety, was playing as what can only be described as a succubus from one of his favorite "animes". He had been causing us all headaches the entire campaign and I decided I'd had enough. He and I were offered 50 gold a pop for sets of organs, "no questions asked." Naturally, we went to the town orphanage that night. I used my charisma to lure the kids, and he did the dirty work. We ended up being paid 1000 gold. I say we; he took it all for himself because he said "I did all the work." I pulled the DM aside and asked if I could roll to steal the gold when his character went to sleep. He had me roll for it in the kitchen and asked the other player his passive perception. First he tried saying he used magic to lock the door, then he tried saying his character slept with one of her eyes open, and finally said that she kept the entire bag of 1000 gold coins in her bra and thus I couldn't steal it. This is AFTER I left his character 300 of the 1000 gold. Was I in the wrong? Did I do a bad by pulling the DM aside and robbing another player? Or would I have been justified in taking even more of the gold?

Josef Jozefowicz

I don't have a case but love yall keep up the great work

HolyFatFish

Hello there bailiff Jake I have a follow-up Pup for you concerning the Case of the Disintegrated Absentee from a few weeks ago. I headed the courts advice and allowed Eight the war forged artificer to roll his luck check. Well low and behold Eight survived. It turns out in a last ditch effort he managed to sneak into his own bag of holding. His legs were still badly damaged from the blast so our druid casted regenerate and Eight has grown two beautiful tree limb like legs. I had him roll an Athletics check to see how well the new legs suited him and a Nat 20 awarded him a permanent + 5 to his speed. I bow gracefully to the court and will be forever thankful. However Emily when I did not show up to our no holds bar match on pay-per-view there was no need for you to glote for six straight minutes. They showed a promo for the next match and when the promo was over you were still making fun of me my parents are not proud.

ThatManGareth

May it please the figure-painting bailiff Jake, Now presenting the case of Sorcerer v. DM We have our first encounter with the main villain of our campaign, former DM party member, a fighter turned Warlock. The party noticed the villain first, so my sorcerer used zone of silence. The DM claims the villain noticed the lack of background noise (Torches crackling, water dripping, ect.) and knew something was up immediately so we didn't get a surprise round. My sorcerer then casts phantasmal killer spell (3.5e version) Villain crit fails the first save and fails the second save by 1, so is instantly killed. Our 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 campaign, or 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.

Abby Reeves

I am a dm who has been trying for the longest time to get my friends to play D&D. A few of my friends have agreed to play, but not really enough for a group so any games we try to play end up falling apart. Just recently, I got them all to agree, but on one condition: I have to run a Boss Baby campaign in which the Boss Baby has risen to power as a Dictator and a the players are a ragtag group of toddler rebels. I told them that this was absolutely insane and that I had too much pride to run such a game, but they have insisted this is the only way they will play. Should I cave and run the game or find other players?

Avelyn

May it please the glorious court, and the extant bailiff Jake, Before the pandemic, I was running my second ever game as Dungeon Master. The group largely had fun, but during isolation, my group decided to play different games and save our prior games for the table. I've now run several more games, and having revisited my notes for our old game, I can confirm that it was very, very bad. It frightens me to return to this mess of DMPCs, railroading plot elements and unbalanced combat, but a few of my players have frequently told me how excited they are to return, my sister even threatening my life if I prematurely ended the campaign. I am at a loss of how to proceed, because I'm not sure if a good campaign can be recovered from this. Should I let my players down, or bite the bullet and bring them to a world I find very, very bad?

Billie Ash

Greetings beautiful people of the court and handsome bailiff, this is only a short question but I feel important all the same. We have a slightly forgetful Sorcerer who might skip out on using shield or sorcery points. One time I spoke out on her turn and said she should use shield, but was given a little tell off by the DM and told not to metagame. I don't really think it's bad to help remind a buddy to use spells, given that I was also a Sorcerer so I kinda knew what she was working with. What do you think, royalty of the court?

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?

Dave 3D Art

May it please or displease the court, Was in a situation a while back in which a Dungeon Master purposefully ignored my character's backstory to fit their story. Now, that wouldn't be great in most situations but i had the backstory approved by him previously, and extensively used the resuorce document he provided about his world. I made my character to adhere to his world at the expense of my original ideas. Now I left that store campaign fairly quickly for numerous reasons (Potion enemas, and mediocre house rules), but is it right for a DM to approve a character concept/backstory only to ignore it in game? I am at your mercy.

Dave M

If it please the Crit, In an old campaign, my party and I came across a legion of roving goblins waving the flag of the Big Bad Evil’s army. After a brief standoff we ended up fighting, and they absolutely wiped the floor with us, almost leading to a TPK. We, the party, thought this was weird given that they were just a few goblins (maybe 5?) and we were level 6, but the DM told us that in this campaign goblins were more powerful than we may traditionally think. Were we the party wrong to assume goblins’ strength, or if this was common world knowledge that our characters would have had, should that have been indicated in some way before we fought them?

Ellie

May it please the court, one time I was in a campaign and part of our party was kidnapped by an underwater ship of these sea creatures who only spoke aquin. One of my party members was a tortle, so he was able to communicate. The sea creatures said that if we tried any funny business they would kill us. While we were their prisoners, the ship was attacked by a squid and we went into initiative. I was playing a human rogue, and since the battle was outside and under water there wasn't anything I could do. My DM told the party that there were a bunch of levers that we could pull that were guarded and did different things. I told him I wasn't going to go pull random levers since last my character heard they would kill us and my DM got very upset. He kept asking me when I would pass my turn if I would go pull a lever and I said no. Other players who couldn't do anything also skipped on the levers and did other things. This was the last session of the campaign, as the DM said he was just too busy to keep planning. Judges, I ask of you, was I in the wrong for not playing with my DM's mechanics for the sake of roleplay?

Nathan Durhamwood

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

Tyler Cheek

May it please the Court and beloved justices and bailiff, I bring to you the case of the Dyrrn and the centaur girlfriend. Last weekend I was DMing a session in which my party went under the sea to face off against an eldritch god with a legion of Triton cannibal followers (with the god modeled after the Dyrrn from 5e's monster manual, but locked in place inside a gem). Because the Dyrrn was locked in place, I thought I had nerfed him a fair amount for my level 9 party of 3 players and 3 Npc's (basically if you don't get close, he can't eat your brain and kill you). In my haze of controlling 3 Npc's and the boss, I foolishly let the centaur NPC girlfriend of one of my characters rush in. She was promptly tentacle whipped (naturally) and killed instantly by the Dyrrn's "Extract Brain" feature. I was mortified and tried to play up the moment for drama, before suddenly remembering the Dyrrn had disadvantage on the initial tentacle attack and would have failed, so he couldn't have grappled and devoured the girls brain. I tried to play it off and reversed her death scene by saying the Dyrrn had made them hallucinate to scare them, but the players were in a bad mood the rest of the night, and it didn't help that one of the player characters was also killed in this way (with no way to reverse it in his case). Should I be punished for my hubris in designing this complex encounter and bringing down the mood? I submit myself for judgment.

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?

Signe Krantz

Honored justices and any present bailiff, if it please the court. I bring the case of restrained VS invisibility. While on death's door, in an attempt to trick the party, a green hag turned invisible while being restrained by Maximilian's Earthen Grasp. The party simply killed her anyway, but was astounded that I ruled it as a straight roll (adv. from restrained VS disadv. from not seeing her) rather than adv. They still argue that even though I was right RAW, invisibility shouldn't have given her any benefits since she was restrained and locked in place. I argue that it makes sense due to them not seeing her weak points and not knowing precisely where to hit even though she couldn't move. This still comes up and I humbly ask the court to settle the debate. Regards, the DM of The Chainmale Gayze.

Thomas Donovan

If it may pleasure the court and withhold pleasure from the lowly bailiff Jake. I present to you the DM versus Sparky the fire genasi. After a quick TPK in the first fight of LMoP against 4 Goblins we rerolled characters and tried again. I was playing a fire genasi sorcerer and after the humiliation visited upon us by these 4 lowly goblins I was out for blood, instead of attacking them directly I spent my time setting fire to the woods on either side of the road to cut off their escape. We dealt with the Goblins, however, apparently my flames had covered the path that we were supposed to take next. the DM then said that I'd stopped us from being able to progress and made us start the campaign AGAIN with new characters. I think that we should have been able to keep our characters and proceed regardless of the missed section of the module and that I was showing creative play rather than ruining the game. I await the courts decision with anticipation

Ian Hudson

Hon. Justices / DMs Murphy, Tanner and Axford. Non-DM Jake pls leave the room. I’m at a bit of a crossroads in the story for my players. I’ve got general plot hooks for things for them to do in the city they’ve arrived at, but I’m drawing a blank on the actual encounters. What can I do to kickstart fleshing out the next sessions? Im asking the court to issue a judicial opinion, so I don’t know who this is against, per se, but if someone must be punished make it Jake for not DM’ing yet. (J/k love you jake)

Jim Faris

May it please the court and the abnormally gorgeous bailiff, I come with a potential dice confession that wrought chaos, but how looney tunes should you allow a session to get? My party was about to run a heist and they had to knock out some guards and steal their uniforms. Instead they strongly suggested that the guard uniforms could just be stolen from the laundromat, and i allowed them to roll a luck check which ended up being a 19. The next 90 minutes was utter ridiculousness of trying to rob a commercial laundromat and somehow leaving unscathed. Was I right to allow a luck check and throw out my pages of notes and ad lib such absurdity? It didn’t matter because they entered the casino they were going to rob and rolled a NAT1 on deception, which delighted me. Did I follow the teachings of Dice Christ by leaving it to Fate, or am I just as chaos allowing as Justice Axford? I leave myself at the mercy of your wisdom. Jim

Dave 3D Art

I should note that this backstory wasn't terribly elaborate, but it sucks to put the work in to make use of an established world only to have my relationship with my Warlock patron completely overhauled.

Jason Clopper

May it please the honorable justices and the bailiff described as you see fit, I present the case of the salty barrel and player. In the early part of a campaign, we were all level 3, we entered a salt warehouse by some docks where the DM described shelves going high with large barrels of salt on them. After some RP shenanigans to and some initial combat. We attracted the attention of the 'boss' of the warehouse. One my fellow players decides to climb up the shelves (passed an acrobatics check) and push a barrel of salt on to the boss (passed a strength check). The player was ecstatic when the DM said it hit, but was quickly saltier than the barrel when the DM said it only did 6 damage. I understand why the DM had to keep the damage minor to fit the confines of the game, but I can also see why the other player is upset over the outcome. I believe he's still trying to find videos of barrels falling on people to prove his point several years later. Should the barrel have done more damage or even squashed the boss? Or was my DM right to curtail the damage?

A Random Yeti

May it please the court, and the normal bailiff. Case: Protagonist syndrome. I am a DM, and I have 8 people in my play group, as one can imagine it is very difficult to DM such a large group well while including everyone. I have a Player, let's call him Chet, that is a very loud obnoxious player. He talks over people all the time, splits the party when they don't agree with his plans, and just a general d-bag. On one hand this is aggrevating as a DM because I want a diversity of opinion, but on the other hand, my group of players doesn't RP much and he is the loudest in the bunch. What should I do with such a player? PS. He also only cares about his turn in combat and is cross-talking at the table or on his phone otherwise. In his words, "I don't care what you all do in combat, I only care about my turn."

DowdMusic

May it please the illustrious judges and the stalwart bailiff, I come to you as a humble DM who gave their PCs too many toys to play with. I run a high-level campaign in which the party had recently received a large payout for their endeavors. One of my players decided that instead of spending all of his hard-earned loot on weapons, armor or magic items he wanted to buy two things. One - a bag of holding and Two - as many fire bombs as he could possibly fit into the bag. He spent about 100K gold on bombs - an obscene amount of money he has been saving up all campaign. A few sessions went by with a firebomb or four and it was good times. Then in one particularly dire encounter the PC with a bag full of bombs flew above the big bad cleric and proceeded to turn his bag of holding inside out. Relevant text from the item: "If a bag of holding is turned inside out, its contents spill out, unharmed, but the bag must be put right before it can be used again". These are on contact bombs dropped from a height. When they all hit the cumulative blast damage was over 3400! I made the whole party make saves to try to shield themselves from the explosion and several got seriously injured by the blast even though they were far away. The local environment, and all of the remaining enemies were decimated. I am now concerned that this is going to be something that the party wants to use again. I set up the rules of this world and told them they could have bombs, but 3K+ damage is ridiculous. This is the 2nd time something like this occurred using a large stock pile of explosives. The problem though is that my players love it. They love to just blow shit up and I don't want to take that away from them. This leaves me questioning what to do. Should I nerf their bombs? Should I just plan for this nonsense and make encounters too spread out for a single nuke attack, or have a 2nd wave of baddies? Or I was I wrong to let them do this in the first place and now my players have toys that simply cannot be put back in the box?

Tyler Jackson

May it please the court and send neutral acknowledgment to the Bailiff. Several years ago the party I was in was trying to escape a collapsing hallway. I had ninety feet to go and as a Human Oath of Vengeance Paladin, I had 30ft of movement and the Misty Step spell. I claimed that I could use my movement and dash action to get 60ft, and bonus action Misty Step the remaining 30ft to clear the collapsing room. The DM and other members of the party claimed that’s not how Misty Step works, that it still uses my movement but just allows me to teleport. Given that the Direct Messenger does get to decide what spells do in their world, I agreed and ended up taking a bit of damage but making it out ok. I ask the court, should I have been allowed to clear the 90ft or was I misinterpreting the spell. I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Rose Smith

May it please the Supreme Crit Justices and the Fallen Judge… or Bailiff. I present the case of Tiny Boots and Big Bear. I DM a fairy tail inspired campaign and my players were facing a boss battle against a gravity controlling wizard in a cube room with each face being a different hazard. One of which being lava. The case comes in with two of my players one of which a bear barbarian and the other a Tabaxi fighter (the size of actual cat). The barbarian was about to fall in lava on his turn so the cat fighter wanted to give him his boots of the peagsus. I said no since the boots sized for the cat would have too small for the bear sized barbarian. My player argued the boots were magical so it should grant him the power but I said no in order to continue the fight. They got through the battle with only the loss of one beloved NPC but this ruling still haunts me. I prostrate myself before the court was this ruling fair or did the barbarian deserve to swing his axe while wearing cat booties.

Samuel

May it please the court and the under appreciated bailiff Jake: I present a player vs player dispute: Last week I was a player in a session where a “battle of wits” tournament was held in-game. We all signed up and by roll of the dice, our Barbarian was chosen to compete. I bet 50 gold against him and the Wizard and Druid each bet 50 gold for him. Our DM then announced that the “battle of wits” was the poison wine glass game from Princess Bride. And he joyfully proceeded to come around the table and sit across from the Barbarian to play. Our Druid and Wizard then announced to the table that they would use their telepathy and message spells to just tell the blindfolded Barbarian which cup had the poison. I could see our DM visibly deflate and begin to get up and walk back behind his screen. I said no, come back, and used all my spell slots counter spelling and casting dispel magic on all their messages and telepathy. The other players were furious and said I was being unfair just because I was about to lose 50 gold. They threatened to start using harmful spells to knock me unconscious. I used the in-character justification that I didn’t want to lose my 50 gold, but I really just wanted my DM to play the game. Was I in the wrong? Should I have let the scene end and let my team win their gold or was I right to counterspell and let the scene play out?

McKinley Case

Greetings royal justices, and pretty ok baliff. It goes like this - we are playing a campaign with 4 people including myself, 3 players and 1 dm. Dm is my girlfriends brother and I try not to question/challenge too much out of wanting to avoid conflict as he is very competitive/argumentative. Just the other day in our 2nd last session he lets slip that he has been splitting the exp (since we aren't doing milestone leveling) with other npcs that are not even around for the whole campaign - taking away our already very little XP. It has been over a year and we have barely passed level 4... I finally contested because we were 15xp away from level 4 and he was trying to give the rest of the xp to 2 different npcs. Was I right to contest? Or should I have dropped it because he had already been doing it the whole time unbeknownst to me. Much love

DowdMusic

Side note- I have submitted this to each and every dungeon court. I still desperately request the advice of the Holy High Crit, and possibly Dice Christ if nessisary.

Grayson Murphy

Dear beautiful and wonderful Crit Justices and honorable bailiff Jake, I bring before you a case that might be an overreaction on my part. I was switching off to being a player and letting one of my players (a self proposed expert dm) dm a short campaign. Then in the second session, shit went down. I had built my character to be a very loving rogue. An orphan taken in by a good order of knights, mainly made up of women. My character mentioned offhandedly things like therapy and a strong sense of community. In the second session, my character comes home to a chapter of her order only to find that the organization is mainly made up of men and has a frat vibe. The magnificent entrance hall has spilled beer, the men are playing beer pong, the hall smells of spilled food, beer, and unwashed men. I tried to play along, but things got even worse. They put me and my guests in basically a boiler room. I was shaking during this. (I also have specific issues with men/frats) I was so upset and uncomfortable that i stopped the dm and said “We need to stop, I’m not having fun right now. I’m really uncomfortable by the changes you have made to my character’s only semblance of family” He tried to make it into a recent change but I was still so upset by everything. He had never brought this idea up beforehand but I might still be overreacting. He ended up hand waving it and going into an extremist view where i had total control over anything to do with my character. Which is not what i requested and not what I want overall. I just wanted to play the game. Have I overreacted or is there actually something wrong with what he did? Thank you for any judgement you send my way

Court Davies

May it please the saucy court, and the even saucier bailiff, My good friend DMs for us, but is a huge romantic when it comes to fantasy. He loves the traditional party dynamic of a bunch of regular folks and one big Beasty type. Take the Han Solo and Chewbacca dynamic, for example. He prefers this trend so much, that when we build characters in session 0, he tells us that only one of us can be an "unusual race" like a minotaur or kobold, but the rest of us have to stick to races from the core player handbook. He tends to be stubborn and we just want to play, so we go along with it. But I ask you, is this bullshit? Should we mutiny against our DM or should we accept that this is just the way he wants to run his campaign?

Matthew Jordan

Honorable Justices & Off-Putting Bailiff, I co-DM an extended campaign with a large group of players. At the outset of the campaign, all of us were completely new to D&D and so the campaign's primary storyline is from adventure books and modules. Several months in, however, we began to develop and run original multi-session "side-quests" that explore each PC's backstory and give each an opportunity to shine and develop narratively. Typically, some unresolved issue from their early days is resolved and some boon (like a cool magical weapon) is received. One of our PCs is a bit hard to describe succinctly. He's sort of a vagrant dirtbag Pact of the Fiend Warlock. Think Little Nicky crossed with Ben Mendelsohn’s character in “Killing Them Softly”. He’s challenging to DM, as he often undermines the group—turning on and attacking PCs mid-battle, wandering away from the group alone, stealing magic items from other PCs, etc. His side-quest played to this tendency, creating some narrative grounding for some of this behavior. Turns out: his fiend had been imprisoned by a faction of evil wizards, and they threatened to kill the fiend – thereby stripping him of his warlock powers – if he didn’t act against the party’s interests. The quest was to rescue the fiend and defuse the kompromat. Relatively early in the epic final battle to rescue the fiend the warlock was petrified by a basilisk’s stare. When the player asked if he could communicate with the party, I (not expecting the question) asked him to Google whether or not Han Solo could communicate while frozen in carbonite. The player refused, saying that was far too nerdy and he wouldn’t lower himself to it, and so I decided that he could definitely not communicate. Meanwhile, the fiend – watching from a magical cage – became highly interested in and started cheering for the other PCs, and in particular our Aarakocran thief. At the end of the battle, the fiend was freed and offered up the side-quest’s boon: an additional warlock spell slot. But the warlock was turned to stone and unable to communicate whatsoever. And the Aarakocran thief, it turns out, was the only PC with a means to turn the warlock back to flesh, as nobody had stocked Greater Restoration and he had pulled a Wish card from the Deck of Many Things some adventures back. The thief negotiated with the fiend that, in exchange for burning the Wish card on the warlock’s petrification, the warlock spell slot would be his. As this happened, the warlock could only sit there deaf, motionless and, most importantly, mute. So now we have a thief with a warlock slot, and a warlock who saw no benefit from his side-quest. Honorable Supreme Crit Justices, the question I humbly lay before you is this: Which one of us is the asshole?

Ben Delahay

Happy Hedgehoglidays to the Court Justices and a Beary Newt Deer to the Bailiff. For three months, I was in hell. Three months ago my DM tried to take away our ability to roll our own death saves in a game we had already started. Two other people and myself objected to that because we felt like our own luck should decide whether our character lives or dies. I also said that mechanically it wouldn’t be fun to do nothing throughout a combat while your character was dying without your knowledge. I thought it was over after that. Then, one month ago we’re basically told fuck it we’re doing it anyway. Once again, another argument breaks out especially since we already said no. We were guilt tripped. I specifically got mentioned because I like to make up lore for my character’s hometown and backstory. The DM wanted to “be able to change the world like that too”. But…she was the DM, she can change her homebrew setting however she wants. I also didn’t add any Homebrew mechanics that change the fabric of the game when I said time sharks were a thing. We were just kind of treated like crap for disagreeing with a mechanic we didn’t want in the game. Was that wrong of us? I think Death Saves are a sacred thing that shouldn’t be touched. I’ve already left the game because I didn’t feel like my opinion mattered at the table. I’m willing to be punished and become a martyr for arguing though. Hope y’all had a Crazy Crittermas.

Corey

May it please the court and the illustrious Bailiff Jake, I present the case of the deck of many things: I have a player who drew from the deck of many things for the first time ever. She drew the talons card and all of her magic items vanished. (A staff of fire, a necklace of adaptation, and a greater healing potion.) Another PC asked for a chance to reverse it with a counterspell. I said I'll let him try but it will be hard since it's not technically possible. I called for a DC 30 Arcana check with his counterspell. He managed a 27. I went a step further and said roll a d4: on a 2 the potion reappears, on a 3: the necklace, and on a 4: the staff, but on a 1, nothing happens and the counterspell fails. He accepted and rolled a 1. The two players involved in this were rightfully bummed but thought it was fair. The dice had spoken. But another player who was uninvolved spoke up and said I was too harsh. I ask of you, oh just and mighty Justices and Bailiff, was I too harsh on the players?

Christian bowlus

To the court of supreme crit justices and the completely average bailiff. I present to you this case. I am a the DM of a campaign for my friends 3 of which have never played before. On character building for them, one of my players wanted to be a barbarian that never backs down from a fight and never loses, no matter what. I said that is totally fine, but just remember character building wise, that would mean the entirety that your character has been alive he has never lost a fight. To which he responded “exactly”. I mentioned to him don’t you see how that could be dangerous in a game if you have no option for a retreat, and he said that’s how he wants to play the character. I conceded and we went ahead, Because I know it’s his first time and I love my friends and want them to all have fun. Come the first session They do an encounter check they roll in nat 20 and have to face a revenant. While the rest of the party retreats and runs away he decides to stand his ground and fight this revenant, alone. Unsurprisingly he died. And here brings us to the dilemma, during the next character creation phase for him, he decides he wants to be a warlock who asks everybody he encounters to convert to his demons religion, and if they say no he kills them. I then again mentioned don’t you see how this could cause a lot of chaos and maybe put you in situations where you can’t win, and he said that he thinks it would be funny. Him and I came to a happy medium, where he would roll a persuasion check to try and convert them, and if he failed he would roll a D 20 and on a nat one he could try to sacrifice them. Was I wrong to nerf his idea? For what it’s worth it has been absolutely hilarious to watch him do these checks and to have actually sacrificed someone in game, but he literally asks everyone he encounters. I leave the decision to you and await your punishment.

Crane

May It please the court of crits and it's bailiff that deserves some good time off. I bring the case of a distracted DM. I was playing in a online game set in a apocalyptic wasteland. During combat with a hoard of evil imps, My DM kept talking to someone who wasn't in the discord call. There was also a constant buzzing sound emitting from his microphone.. I asked him what was he doing and he replied "can you hold on I'm getting a tattoo". He had scheduled a tattoo appointment during our game and kept talking to the artist, completely forgetting what some of the party had said at points. The DM in question also did this twice more in the reoccurring weeks. Thus I ask the court, can one individual Dm a campaign with full attention while being given a tattoo. I humbly await your verdict.

Dean Barr

Simulacrum Slowdown. To the honourable Bailiff and esteemed Judges of the Court, I humbly present to you a case on which I have held my tongue for months but my patience is growing thin. We play a high level campaign and have two Wizards in the party who routinely cast simulacrum on themselves. This means that two players who already take an age to complete a turn in combat due to questioning how every spell interacts with the situation, have double the amount of turns that everyone else has when they control their copies. Outside of raw damage output they rarely take actions to help the party and take a lot of the fun away as they blast stuff down or get advantage on all their checks as they help themselves. Should I say something? Should I point out how much it slows our game down? Our DM also seems to be getting irritated at constantly having to balance around the two Wizards becoming four Wizards but seems too polite to put a hard no on the Spell. I eagerly await the judgement of the court.

Sergio Abreu

If it may tickle the court's fancy, Inspired by NADDPOD I became a first time DM running a game for friends as first time players! After a session 0 we ran Lost Mines of Phandelver. I allowed out Verdan druid Piccolo to turn a wolf into a temporary companion. Our whole table was rolling very poorly on attacks all session and I could not get this wolf to land a hit and niether could our Kenku ranger land anything. In the final bugbear fight our Kenku purposely targeted the wolf sending our druid into disarray and causing intraparty fighting in game. Our druid commanded the wolf to attack our Kenku and I rolled a natural 20 which had enough damage to instantly kill him. This was the last time we played even though I presented a revival option for our Kenku as a half spirit. I know our party is dysfunctional but should I have lied on damage to avoid the instant death? I was still figuring out what my players enjoyed most and don't feel like I provided that to them. I await my judgement

Nolan Hunter McClung

May it please the court and all beloved bailiffs, I dm'd a mini campaign with a friend who was playing a Battlesmith artificer, who had also taken the homunculus infusion. We decided that his organic homunculus "Curo" would fly into a compartment inside his snow fox steel defender "Crystal" during combat, otherwise Curo would be targeted during combat. If Crystal ever died, Curo would be able to eject and fly away. In a fight with a shambling mound, the mound hit both of its attacks against Crystal and thus dragged her inside using its engulf ability. However, the damage was enough to kill Crystal, and I ruled that because she died while being grabbed, Curo was unable to eject and was stuck inside the mound. The party was not able to deal enough damage to remove Curo, so when it was the mound's next turn he died a very brutal death of shambling mound squishing. I offered to my artificer that he could experiment in his lab to effectively rebirth Curo with the same personality, but he decided that this would be wrong, and thus held a small service in the cave after the battle. My question to you all is this: should I have let Curo eject before he was swallowed, or was I correct sending this little man to his doom? My players and myself did enjoy the session very much, it is just an incident that remains fresh on my brain.

Maxwell Haranda

If it may please the court, amd the ever-humbled bailiff. I am a DM, and I am hosting a new campaign for players relativly new to D&D. One of the PC's (Daryl, a drunkerd, halfling bard) was shopping around in a bazaar. Daryl, drunk as ever, was being crude amd crass to many of the NPC vendors. I causally hinted a few times that his attitude was reflecting negativly and that the vendors appeared to be getting annoyed with his antics. He did not relent, so when he approached a Goblin shopkeeper and said, "I never buy anything from you people." I of course had the NPC push him to the ground, point at him and scream "RACIST". This act led to the party recievong inflated prices for all goods and sevices for every repeat visit to the town. Was I too harsh? Or did the drunk bard get what was coming to him.

Armadon the only

May it please the honorable operators of this esteemed judicial body. I was apart of a campaign but had to miss the first session. When I got back my GM/player scene was me talking to my superior officer who informed me I was found in the stable with a goat. I played it off that I saved the goat from a pagan ritual and stashed him to keep him safe. The GM played it that my superior thought I was lying and told me I should keep protecting the goat while I went with the other PCs on a prisoner exchange. I wasn’t bothered by it but the other players kept giving me crap. They were doing it in character but I don’t believe them. Should I say something or make it more my own?

dot

may it please the court and the lowly yet good-natured bailiff, i being before you the case of Svenson and the Svensons. During a two-shot with my sunday dnd group we were hired to clear a cave of a pack of wolves and do just so. We then found a bundle of wolf cubs bunched up in a bed. I was playing a goliath Beastmater ranger with a rat named Svenson ll. I was able to grab one of the cubs before our dragonborn burnt the rest alive with their breath weapon. the cub was afraid but i rolled an animal handling check, saying: ‘there’s nothing more be afraid of, everything you love is already dead’ and got a nat 20, wooing over the little wolf and naming him Svenson lll. later in we were fighting some skeletons who had a dog with them. i made it a point to not attack the dog and once everyone else was dealt with i asked the DM if i could roll another animal handling check to get it on our side. he allowed it and i proceeded to roll ANOTHER NAT 20. the joy that filled my heart was quickly dashed away as, despite me begging on me knees to let me have this, the DM would not allow it to happen. I was forced to kill Svenson IV. I ask the court if my DM had the right to deny the will of the dice and force me to kill one of the Svensons. My fate is in your hands.

Ben Chase

To the honorable and beautiful judges and the homely bailiff Jake, My group recently told a DM who put a lot of work into his campaign and especially his world that we wanted to move on and let other people lead the game again. He took it really well and conversation went smooth enough, but we did feel really bad about having to tell him we weren't enjoying his game (it was a sort of hyper-realistic, punish the players sort of game that we just weren't interested in--the DM was more interested in beating us than playing with us). We lasted 15 sessions, but had made almost no meaningful progress in his story. I want to play other games with other DMs in the future, but I'm worried about situations like this. I reach out not for judgement, but for advice--what have you done when a DM was trying their best but it just wasn't fun? A bit of context/evidence if it pleases the court: I was the previous DM, and the group agreed that I should be the DM again going forward. When we gave up on the campaign, our characters were in the process of getting captured in a chase scene with infinite guards, hawks above us, no terrain we could take advantage of, etc. We asked him to let us know what happened to our characters so we could wrap up, and he told us that one of characters would probably have been captured, killed, had their arms and legs cut off, and then brought back to life to be used as an informant. So yeah.

Seth William Hubley

May it please the Supreme Crit's Justices, and the ultimate Baliff Jake, I would like to come forward about a misdeed I have commited in the past upon any players I have ever DMed. I have ignored their rolls in the past for the sake of delivering the story to them in a way I think theyll enjoy. For example, there was a time I had them in a swamp with a mysterious fog from which none had returned taking over part of a village, my players had sought entering it as planned, but were being cautious and sent in the warforged on a rope, thinking that they would have advantage, which I did give them, but even though they rolled a 17 I had them basically 'get lost' in the fog, untying their own rope and wandering with glazed over eyes. Naturally they followed after and all got seperated due to bad rolls, though I did allow two characters to stick together through holding hands. Was I wrong to ignore the rolls and have the characters succumb to the fog anyways, or is this a good storytelling method, even to this day my players didnt know the DC of the roll.

mel

Beloved Justices and Despised Baliff: my DnD party has come across an issue. We have been playing a homebrew campaign for two years now, and are level 18 (cower before us) and getting into endgame territory. **Party comp is myself (Monster Slayer Ranger 16/Shepherd Druid 2), a lore bard 18, and a devotion paladin 6/hexlock 5, divine sorcerer 7 with an AC of 25. However, we are also getting very sleepy. Where we used to play until at least midnight, we are now ending the sessions at around 9:30 or 10 (with a 7 or 7:30 start, depending on the day). I myself, the sleepiest among us, did climb onto my chaise lounge while playing, and then brought a blanket upon myself, and fully fell asleep during the exploration of an abandoned, ancient schoolhouse, and din't wake up until my girlfriend came home and bodily shook me awake. Be gentle with me, judges, because my usual bedtime is 9 PM. Even if I take pre-workout before a session, I find myself dozing by the two hour mark. Must we return to in person session? How can we keep the energy going through the course of a session, when, at our core, we are sleepy beans? I eagerly await your punishment, judgement, and guidance. May Dice Christ keep you in this, the season of His birth.

Josh Nixon

Feeling Unseen by our DM With the deepest respects to the great and mighty crit justices and the deepest displeasure and contempt to the ordinary bailiff. My long running DND campaign (almost two year now) recently has started to feel like we the players are unseen by our DM. Our amazing and hard working DM has made and continues to make a wonderful, diverse world that we all love and are required to understand, follow, and take note on but in a recent dungeon crawl to get my headless warfoged fighter/ranger a head it has started to feel like the DM does not give us the attention we give him or his world. This came to light when we were getting badly beaten in the dungeon and the DM seemed surprised we did not have any potions or that we didn't buy any potions. We explained we have no money and have not received money for any quest in a long time. This did thankfully lead to a quick heal but there are also some other issues. There are alot of table issues among players that the DM seems to completely ignore and they are fully left for our in game captain to resolve. Players taking forever to take their turn, PVP actions, Player on Player theft, Players demanding the the crew do exactly what they want to do, just alot of issues where a firm word from the DM could quiet alot of problems. Please mighty powerful crit justices bestow upon us the means to get out DM to see us! Thank you.

Em

May it please the court (and the magnificent bailiff). I am currently a player in a 6-7 man party of beginning players/DM and we were tackling a puzzle that involved 3 tunnels with hex codes for colors for each. We had to figure out which colors complemented each other with the odd one out being the correct path. However, we could not figure out what to do with the hex codes given to us. The DM kept insisting people in our party should know how to solve it and wouldn't give us clues on what the provided colors ment, so we ended up splitting the party into 3 groups of 2 to explore each tunnel basically ignoring the puzzle and bombarding our way through it. Were we in the wrong for ignoring his puzzle or was the DM?

Keith Mannion

May it please the honourable justices and I guess be fine with that bailiff guy, James? Jojo v the Windowsill The party I DM for was attempting to infiltrate a military base in the 'Evil Empire' in particular a farmhouse where a spy master had taken up quarters. One of the rogues had decided to try and get into the house alone and assassinate the spymaster in his sleep. The rest of the party waited in the nearby trees. The rogue managed to set off an alarm but through some shenanigans got into the house and convinced the regular guards it must have been the wind. The rest of the party got worried at the alarm so the half elf's adopted druid gnome brother (Jojo) wildshaped into a spider, got on the monk's boomerang and got thrown up onto the roof. Long story short, Jojo was a spider on the window when his brother Vanwa started 1v1ing this spymaster. Wanting to help Jojo, turned back into a gnome. Although he had previously outlined his plan I only realised on his turn that this would cause him to fall from the first storey as he wasn't also Spider-man. Jojo's player argued there would be a windowsill and as a gnome he could fit on it. I did not relent and Jojo dropped. This delay was ultimately partly responsible for Vanwa dying (although he would layer comeback due to a warlock multiclass and stuff). This caused Jojo's player to be quite annoyed with me. Should I have painted a better picture before he dropped wildshape, just gone along with it or did I have a defensible position?

Bryce Baker

To the beneficent Justices and beautiful Bailiff. I DMed a campaign with a group of internet strangers, and introduced the characters as being mercenaries who had taken a job to find a missing inheritance. However, the players thought it would be hilarious to turn the job down, and rejected the quest giver. I tried to have a bartender then push them back into the quest chain I had prepared, as a "lost treasure" quest, but they refused again. Having nothing else prepared, I ended the session saying I needed to prepare a new campaign. They became upset and insisted I should have improvised a new campaign around their character choices. We parted on bad terms and never met again. Was I right to end it there, or should I have tried harder to adapt?

Eric Udy

Dear justices and radtacular balif, my group has been playing a campaign for a few months now and it's great except for one player. He just seems very disconnected from the story and does not participate in anything really. In fact he did not even give our DM a backstory for his character until an hour into the first session. It's really frustrating my DM but nobody else seems to pay him much mind just letting him do his thing in combat. Talking to him he's said he's fine with the game but my DM has no way for him to really interact. Is it acceptable to boot him from the game so my DM doesn't have to worry about making his character involved in the story or should he just give up on trying to incorporate our friends characters and just let him be?

Dylan Spezia

May it please the Honorable Crit Justices and the very average middle of the pack Bailiff, I was recently DMing the first session of the Pre-Made Sunless Citadel from The Tales of the Yawning Portal. This was a first time DM for me so I decided to do a premade for guidance. The Sunless Citadel recommends 4-5 players and I had 3 players. I created an NPC that the party would meet in town. I tried to make it seem like he was important, and I had given him a reason to go to the dungeon that they eventually would to. BUT, I did leave it up to the party to say no and reject the guy. One member of the party was immediately put off by this, and was a little angry. After the other two agreed that the guy should come with them, the angry player got mad at me for trying to railroad the game and got mad that I was just playing a character. These are mainly new players, and I was trying to have a player of reason in the game and give them that 4th recommended player and a way to have a meat shield and healer cuz he was a Paladin. The player almost ruined the first session by overreacting and I had to explain to him that this campaign recommends 4 players and this guy would not interfere with their game play, and it just got very heated and he still was very salty the rest of the session and even the next couple sessions. (The other players were also trying to calm him down.) Was I wrong to try and include a NPC with some backstory and reason to go with them? Or should I have let them go in with just 3 players and let them all die their first session?

Marcus Heer

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

Josh

Dear the supreme court and mighty justice Axford, and Jake I suppose. I’m a player in a campaign of newbie players who have very little experience. We are in a Bioshock rapture inspired world (big city contained underwater) In the first session another player (call him bitch) began hinting to the DM that he wanted to find this worlds version of Adam (the super power drugs from rapture)while the rest of the party was still getting their backstory told through introductions. This wasn’t exactly metagaming because it was a bit of a old wives tale in the city. While the DM let Bitch find the power up drugs by himself, the rest of the party was still getting introduced to one another (and had not yet met Bitch) Later on we are in a difficult battle and bitch shows up with his new drug powers. He easily defeats the enemy and finally joins the party. But Bitch never suffered any side effects from the drug and is now permanently 2+ levels ahead of the rest of the party, and kills multiple enemies before any of us have a chance to fight. We are getting tired of this and even after trying to role play a way for all of us to get access to the drugs Bitch won’t tell us where he got them. My question is, is it fair that the DM allows one player to be permanently higher levelled than us to the point where no one else can really do anything of impact? I humbly submit this case to the supreme crit justices.

JayForce

What's your favorite show and why is it Arcane? ... I don't think I understood the assignment

Josh Gettys

May it please the court and the run of the mill bailiff I have a case that has to do with just how much power the DM can have at the table. It was my first time playing d&d and had gotten invited to play a one shot. My friend who was also a player helped me make my character, an overweight tanooki (which was just a reskinned halfling) bard/fighter who played his belly like a drum for bardic inspiration. We got the DMs okay before hand but when it came time to play he said that it was dumb and that to use bardic inspiration it would have to be a fill action as opposed to a bonus action. I ask the court, does the DM have the ability to nerf such a key role to a class because he feels like it? Or was he justified because "he is the DM"?

Fish Harlan

My dearest Supreme Judges and Sweet, Sweet Bailiff, I bring to you the case of the Super Alien. I was once in a game of Masks, a Powered By the Apocalypse game about teenage superheroes where your stats change to reflect how your character sees themselves, and you level up by failing rolls. My character was an alien named Thornnnn and was very good with one stat, Superior, and so I tried to roll that stat as much as possible. However, the GM kept trying to get me to use other rolls and even tried to give me a penalty at one point even when I succeeded wildly on the roll. I insisted that I kept rolling what I was good at, because that made sense. Do what you're good at. But the GM said you're supposed to roll what you're bad at so you level up more and insisted on the penalty. We don't play together anymore for obvious playstyle differences, but who was right? Should you play to your strengths, or should you try and improve through weakness? PS: I know it might not mean much, but my playstyle was inspired by a psychological practice called Positive Psychology that stats that living according to your strengths is more fulfilling than constantly trying to improve weak points, but the GM wasn't convinced by this.

Tori

To the honorable judges and hardworking bailiff, I present to you the case of the backstory boat. In a long running campaign I was in with friends, I was playing a character from another country. I love worldbuilding, and I've previously had lots of success with different DMs when I would outline details of the country so they could use it for plot hooks if and when we visited. (Think Moonshine mentioning details about the Crick). I asked my DM fairly early if they wanted to take a look at my notes for the country, and they said yes, appearing quite enthusiastic. I shared the doc, which was over two thousand words of the country's climate, provinces (usually summarized in quick bullet points of 'here is what is interesting in this area'), and history. When I shared it the DM said she'd look at it later. When it was time for my character's arc, we visited his country. The DM decided that instead of walking over land, all of our characters would take a boat, effectively skipping anything to do with the country I built, and replacing any potential plot hooks with nearly three sessions revolving around the extremely quirky boat crew NPCs and their love lives. (This culminated in a kraken attack that was won in cutscene when the NPC captain's NPC husband appeared in a scene so cool it took four paragraphs of description, and chased the kraken off). I didn't make a fuss about it for the sake of group unity, but I was extremely put out by this choice by the DM to skip any possibility of exploring my character's place of origin in favor of the NPC Power Hour. My question is this: is my annoyance justified, or was I the one overstepping in the first place by providing the country information? I didn't expect the whole campaign to revolve around me for an arc, but I may have intimidated the DM with the thought I did.

Dakota

May it please the court and also damage the hardy and brave bailiff jake by proximity- I call this case: Green Flame Blade versus God. Near the end of a high level campaign, one of my players (the bladesinger wizard) picked a fight with a pit fiend, calling them ‘stinky’ and ‘fucking full of shit dumbass stupid’. The pit fiend was obviously NOT a fan of this behavior, and after several death threats my player needed to find a way out. My player, naturally, challenged Arthur (the fiend) to one on one combat with one caviat: the first person to touch the other in a fight may kill the other and take everything they own. Arthur grudgingly agreed after the player flashed some of their loot, and the two entered a coliseum that Arthur kept behind a portal in the restroom. My wizard immediately buffed her initiative with Gift of Alacrity, activated her boots that gave her advantage on initiative, and threw her quokka familiar Chaddicus over her shoulder. Now the two roll initiative for their duel. On acting first, the wizard takes Chaddicus, throws him violently on the ground next to Arthur, and tells me “I cast Green Flame Blade and swing at Chad :(“. Green Flame Blade doesn’t require a roll to hit, so I instantly see where the wizard is going with this. However, even an unavoidable attack won’t make fire damage hurt a pit fiend. When I sadly inform my wizard that she chops Chaddicus’ head clean off and that after the burst of fire the air smells a lot like quokka barbecue, she thinks that she should have HIT the pit fiend. Her wording did not say she needed to do damage, just that she needed to hit the devil. What’s your verdict, high and mighty court? Beyond that, how hangs it? Perhaps we grab a drink tonight, on me of course, at whatever bar shows wrestling? I don’t want u to show favoritism tho lmaooooo ;). PS if it affects ur judgement the wizard’s name was Cheeselord.

NajwaOfTheGrave

Merry Crickmas! I am a DM for a weekly campaign with my older brother, his partner and another couple that they knew from college, all are 4-5 years older than me and all of them are engineers. I however, am a Women and Gender Studies Major who has avoided math and physics deliberately for a long time. One of my players is an artificer and very much enjoys coming up with mechanical feats to place traps for foes, using tools like bait and tackle. Which I dont understand the mechanics of, and based on his descriptions makes someone capable of lifting 3 to 4 times more weight than before. I have ruled generously in his favor to the tune of being able to fold trees back for catapult purposes and to be able to lift larger beasts in rope traps. Honorable judges, am I being played? They have yet to demolish a BBEG but I am nervous for the future and expanding possibilities, and possible intent to roleplay that his knowledge grows as he levels leading to more complex feats of mechanical engineering beyond my understanding to adequately rule for or against their legitimacy.

John Boudreaux

May it please the court and the most excellent bailiff, I am DMing the Lost Mines of Phandelver campaign for a few friends. My players came into a dungeon where they decided to throw a crowbar into the a room ahead of them to check for traps, which alerted all the goblins and hobgoblins in adjacent rooms to absolutely merk them. In the ensuing combat, the halfling rogue asked to use an object interaction to tie a hobgoblins shoelaces together after having attacked to trip him. I posited that this bordered on Loony Toons territory, and that the character would have no way to do this in the ~6 seconds of a round of combat. My player countered that a professional rogue could absolutely be able to do such activities. As a compromise, I let my player attempt to tie a shoe as fast as he could, and the DC would be 20 + the number of seconds the player took to tie the shoe. The check ultimately didn't work, but we learned a lot of shoe tying trivia in the process. Was I too harsh in not allowing this roll to go through without stipulations? Is asking for a physical trial to qualify a dice roll going over the top? I humbly await your judgement.

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.

Evan Spears

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

Barbie Pootsky

May it please the exalted High Crit Justices and Jacob. I bring before you the case of the poorly timed Santa. My party and I are currently engaged in an epic battle against forces of evil. We had just fought off a first wave of attack and were preparing the city for a siege when who should sleigh ride in but the Fat Man himself. With a modified Time Stop spell, he froze everyone in the vicinity and asked that we come help him since his Gnomish toy builders had lost their work ethic. Our party at first told Santa to fuck right off, but after being threatened with the Naughty List, relented and joined Kris Kringle on his merry quest. I understand that our DM wanted to do a Christmas themed one-shot, but our dead had not yet been buried. Am I wrong in not wanting to abandon the city to take a jolly red joy ride to the North Pole in order to squash a workers union strike?

Frazthatpays

If it please the court, the three benevolent justices, and the other guy - I recently finished DMing a three year campaign where we had a ship battle against the BBEG and his mind controlled Kraken. One of my players had taken a turn DMing, so I was controlling a lower level PC who I had played as a character during the DM swap. This DM PC and another player had a friendly rivalry going on as they are both Rangers, trying to out track each other, who could build the best lean-to etc... This rivalry had never come to blows until, at the end of the final BBEG battle, this Ranger player decided to turn around and shank the DM PC in the back, killing him. I felt like this completely took away from the climatic final battle and turned a victory into a murder scene. I was at a complete loss at what to say and then the session ended. Any thoughts on how to proceed?

Carly Anne

Honorably smoking judges and saucy bailiff. May it please the court, we recently had a session where our party was exploring a mansion in a pocket dimension, that had a miasma surrounding a bubble around the mansion, several insight checks and items thrown into the miasma told us this miasma was Bad News. While searching on one of the balconies, my friend joked, "I tell Vixie to jump into the miasma," I said no way, but our DM had him roll a persuasion check. He rolled a Nat 20 (22 total with modifiers). I said I should be able to roll wisdom to fight against it, our DM agreed, and I rolled an 18, but with my +5 to wisdom it came out to 23. Our DM then said he had to honor the Nat 20, so I had to do something. I said I would probe it with my staff. This led to the miasma sucking my staff out of my hand and it flying out into the abyss. I was upset. My staff was a family heirloom, and I was using it as my focus for spellcasting. The DM said he was just honoring the Nat 20 and no one told me to use my heirloom staff to probe the miasma. The session went on, but it was hard for me to get back into the spirit. My friend who made the joke thought it was all hilarious DnD play. The rest of the party didn’t really say anything. Should I just roll with the punches and be grateful I wasn't forced to jump into the miasma by a Nat 20, or am I right to feel wronged? I prostrate myself at the mercy of the Crit.

TarantulaFarts

I say good morning/afternoon/night?! and I hope I find you all in good health HIGH crit! And of course the wonderful and sexy bodied Bailiff Jake "Great Hits" Hurwitz. I come to you today with a case known as The Shitty Situation. A year or two back some friends and I were playing a campaign DMed by a friend of mine from high school. This was our 2nd out of 3 or 4 attempts to play with this friend as our dm. We knew he had some moments but this is the one that sticks most in my head because I felt wrongly slighted and was upset to lose this character and never get to play him again. We had been working to find something in a sewer of a non magical city can't remember exactly what but it's not important. What's important is that we were about to head out of the sewer. Our wonderful dm described that above us we had a manhole style opening and a literal mountain of shit was the easiest way we could tell would be our exit through the aforementioned hole. As my 2 friends' characters were climbing this shit hill mine decided since cleanliness comes before godliness he didn't want to dirty his clean paladin armor nearly as much. Once the 1st friend made it up shit mountain he was able to tie a rope above the opening and create essentially a gym class rope climb situation that my character seemed to struggle with despite being nearly all muscle. While my character struggled with the climb the 2nd friend who had climbed up to the about half decided they would throw a small amount of shit to be a goof and add some humor. The dm stated the shit hits me successfully after a good roll from friend 2. So being the petty guy my paladin is he decides to swing from the rope to jump towards the 2nd friend on the shit hill and hopefully both of us go rolling down. No. The dm shuts it down, the shit hill is apparently 20 feet away from the rope and it wouldn't be possible to jump that far without a running start. I argue (I know, I know, I shouldn't have.) that if the shit hill is 20ft away from the rope then it's 20ft away from the opening and hence makes no sense as to how we were climbing up it to climb out the hole. This seems to anger the dm and he goes off on a tirade about he doesn't question my dming and I shouldn't question his. If he says it's 20ft it's 20ft and if I don't wanna listen to him then he doesn't have to DM. He then proceeds to leave the discord channel leaving the 3 of us incredibly confused. This had been session 3 or 4 in a game that was supposed to become a full campaign. The world was a strictly low magic world and made it quite difficult to play a fantasy game. This is also the same world where the random bystanders were able to tell that my character was using magic because he used a paladin ability to run faster. I have gone on far too long now but I ask you great and wonderful High Crit. Did I deserve the tongue lashing and abandonment for questioning my dm? Or was I justified in questioning the location of the shit hill?

Frazthatpays

If it please the court, the three benevolent justices, and the other guy - I recently finished DMing a three year campaign where we had a ship battle against the BBEG and his mind controlled Kraken. One of my players had taken a turn DMing, so I was controlling a lower level PC who I had played as a character during the DM swap. This DM PC and another player had a friendly rivalry going on as they are both Rangers, trying to out track each other, who could build the best lean-to etc... This rivalry had never come to blows until, at the end of the final BBEG battle, this Ranger player decided to turn around and shank the DM PC in the back, killing him. I felt like this completely took away from the climatic final battle and turned a victory into a murder scene. I was at a complete loss at what to say and then the session ended. Any thoughts on how to proceed?

Todd

Dear Honorable Judges and Balif Jake, I present the case of the unburned bridge. I was DMing a session where the players were in a cave with and a wooden brindle spanned a small gap. During combat, one of the players attacked the bridge with a Firebolt cantrip to set it on fire. I set an AC and HP for the bridge and said he could destroy the bridge if he dealt enough damage, but not set it on fire. The previous night I’d spent 2 hours failing to create a bonfire for S’Mores, and came to the conclusion that wood isn’t as flammable as I’d been told as a child. He ended up rolling a nat 1 on his attack role and missing the bridge all together, but I was left wondering: Should I have just let him set it on fire? Am I just bad at building a bonfire? I await your justice.

LARGELinCHARGEL

May it please the Honourable House Crit Judges and SUPREME Bailiff Jake, I have an interesting case that I find I may be too lenient on and wish to have guidance on. I have a party of four that is made up of a Fighter Gunslinger, a Rogue Swashbuckler/Fighter Multiclass, a Paladin Oath of Vengeance and Hexblade Warlock, and the source of my case, a Pact of the Great Old One Warlock, who we'll call Willard. During a boss fight, the level five party encountered a Nergaliid that I gave Legendary Resistances as a Homebrew feature. Since our Paladin/Warlock Multiclass uses his spellslots exclusively for Smite, Willard was using his only two spell slots for trying to cast Bestow Curse on the enemy, who had to burn through his only two Legendary Resistances to survive. Willard was pissed, and argued that he was reduced to nothing, and used the Hide action the rest of the battle, saying he had nothing left to contribute. After the session he said it was bullshit that he was the only one being negated, however he didn't seem to pay attention to the fact that our Paladin/Warlock burned two Blinding Smites and failed due to a lucky dice roll. I ended up making a homebrew rule that allowed him to regain a spellslot in combat if he takes a point of exhaustion. He didn't seem to satisfied with that and instead wanted to homebrew nerfed spells that bypass legendary resistances, which I have made a hard no on. Was I too lenient to offer this incredibly broken homebrew? Or was I wrong to give a Legendary Resistance to a creature that didn't have it originally? I humbly await your judgement.

Alejandro the Golden Dragon

Case: DM vs "the candidate" & Dice Christ May it please the supreme crit court and the bailif. Your honours I come before you for I am a DM with murderous intent. My target is not other than the candidate my party is incharge of taking to presidency. The world is a highly corrupt society in which politics have lead to an uneven distribution if magic and the oppression and inslavement of naturally magical creatures. It is also based in my home country Colombia which has been at civil war for the last 60 years. The assassination of the candidate is inspired by a historical event and thus I believe it must happen. I intent to not consult the will of Dice Christ and not roll the dice for this to happen. Am I in the right to take this action or should I let the dice roll and give the players a chance to rewrite history?

Lorelei and Kyra Newly Weds

May it please the court and Jake if he laughs while reading this, my party has been having issues with ranged combat so I added a second set of rotational party members they could swap from in their "guild" making it more fun to build comps for quests and build the RP of the group. However one player decided that it would just be fun to make his second PC a mirror image of his first with just a few changes (class and background) usually I'd have no issue with this but we agreed that he'd be playing himself as a teenager from when we were younger. He has so far chased a 3 foot lizard into the sewers and tried to teach each other stuff within the first 5 minutes of introductions. So I'm here to ask you merciful beautiful and thoughtful judges, will I be at fault when his new favorite PC falls victim to a Sewer gator or worse, both fall victim to the ToyMaker who's my current villain? I await your judgement however my session will be today, with smiles on our faces we shall weather the storm tonight, thank you

Mary Grace Moser

Honorable Justices and Bailiff, I have been having issues with a certain player everytime I DM. His players are cocky, are almost always of noble descent (making him too good for anything) and constantly negs my NPCs who just want to have a conversation with the party. I know know you're thinking: just kick him out of the game. However, this player is my husband. We are both DMs, but he likes setting scenes and combat, whereas I enjoy the story and role playing more. He is not good at roleplaying and has no interest in it, so my NPCs and his PCs always never get along because the way he plays his characters is just plain unlikeable. Other players at my table find it endearing, but I almost always have a lich on hand to power word kill him if he ever gets on my last nerve (no I haven't used him yyet. His name is Jerry) Justices, I come to you on the day of our second wedding anniversary... is this issue something that can be resolved or is this where we are to part ways? I humbly await your decision, MG

Beav

The Case of BEING PRONE WHILE FLYING Your honors and bailiff, I will keep this brief. I DM for a party with an Aarakocra PC that often whomps me with their ability to fly off whenever things get dicey. Fighting some cultists, the birdman gets low on HP and takes flight. I cast Taseous Hideous Laughter which, on a fail, knocks a creature prone. Reading the 5e definition for the “prone“ condition, I ruled that the birdman fell out of the sky. They took enough falling damage to hit 0, then perspired after 2 death saves (a 7 then a 1). The PC argues they should not have taken the falling damage, and their feathered PC would have glided safely to the ground. I stand by my decision but await yours’. Please rule this case (slips $5 to bailiff).

Holly

May it please the court and the most honorable bailiff, I present to you a case of the charmbot. We started a campaign where one player played a homebrew bard subclass who’s whole purpose was to charm, but little did we expect this to be used against us. The campaign involved political subterfuge between church and state. Another player (the cleric/wizard) role-played as a devout follower of the church while the charm bard role-played as someone wholly out for herself. When presented with an offer from the merchants guild (who was against the church though offered fame and fortune), she happily accepted even though it went against what the rest of the party wanted, especially the cleric/wizard. We refused to which she proceeded to charm us and succeeded against the cleric/wizard. We argued that he would still not agree because despite viewing her as a “friendly acquaintance,” it wouldn’t be enough to go against his core beliefs. In the end, as a party we agreed to go along with it to avoid IRL arguing. As a fellow player, I still believe we should have ruled against the charm bard. What say ye, oh most benevolent justices (and bailiff)? Does charm mean going against what you believe or would you only not follow commands that are harmful to your health? I await your judgement.

Teddy Sergesketter

May it please the just court and the rapidly losing playoff position Buffalo Billiff Jake. I present to you the case of waterworld and the trees that just won’t burn. I was playing in a homegame a few months ago with three of my roommates. One of our party, who has in the past been been in conflict with our DM, was playing a Fire Wizard that relied primarily on fire-based spells to deal damage. Our party cleared a couple dungeons without issue, but eventually found ourselves in a room filled with water. Picture the second task of the Triwizard Tournament, but without Daniel Radcliffe sprouting gills. We came into conflict with some evil merpeople, and upon attack our DM informed our Wizard that his fire spells would not work underwater. Fine, right? From there, we entered a forest room filled with woods-based enemies. Our ever-clever wizard attempted to cast a 5th level Firebolt and burn down the forest with the enemies within. Our DM then informed us that the trees were “magic trees”, and therefore could not be burned down, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Our wizard eventually ended up being placed under the silence spell and, as he was unable to cast, was forced to fight a demon moose with only his dagger. I humbly implore the court – do fire spells fizzle underwater, and are “magic trees” immune to fire? Was our DM right to womp our wizard so thoroughly? I await your judgement.

Jeff S.

May it please the court, the quadicioulous bae-liff, and the benevolent justices. A few months ago, I joined a group of fellow queer nerds playing through the Lost Mines of Phandelver before jumping into our big boy campaign; Rime of the Frostmaiden. Being a fellow DM myself who can confidently say the he can run LMOP with his eyes closed by now, I turned off that part of my brain and just enjoyed it while I got to know these new friends. Early in the campaign, we ran into a goblin servant of the big bad; Droop. Droop was quickly adopted as the party pet and was protected at all cost. Our DM decided that Droops family lived in Cragmaw Castle (another plot beat of the campaign). When we attempted to infiltrate the castle and rolled horribly, we instead decided to storm it. We ran into a 'Welcome home Droop' celebration but the sight of his family confused the little guy so much, that he tried to run off. As he attacked one of my party members, I wanted to stop him in his tracks with a non lethal Attack of Opportunity. I rolled a Nat20, and rolled max damage with my Wildfire Druid Halfling's shillelagh'd quarter staff, bumping Droop over the threshold of his max HP instantly killing him. Since this happened out of sight of his family, I tried to prop him up at the celebration table, and put a little party hat on him. On my roll for deception, I rolled a Nat1, and my DM ruled this as me messing up so bad, I accidentally lit his body on fire in front of his family. Needless to say, we had to fight tooth and nail to get out of the castle, and ended up slaughtering it top to bottom. Was my DM in the wrong to outright kill Droop because it was a Nat20? I called Non lethal beforehand. In his defense, I did flavor it afterwards as the sounds of his skull split open on the marble hall floor, mixing in with the celebrations going on two doors down. I respect your decision, no matter which side it may land on.

Shaquille A.

Good Morning! May it please the court, entertain the supreme crit judges, and tickle the eternal SUPREME bailiff. I am a humble nearly forever DM that tries to mix rules, logic, and fun for my players but I have run into some problems with one person in particular, my good friend. While the party was dropped in a dungeon they were confronted with a gelatinous cube in close quarters. With quick thinking my wizard friend casted Maximilian’s earthen grasp to make a physical stone hand grab the cube and restrain it(which isn’t against the rules at all). I failed my save and I told him that this will hold the cube for the one turn because the cube will just eat the hand that is pressing itself against the cube. He argued that since the cube cannot “move up to its speed and enter someone’s space” that it cannot do its engulf action. The rest of the party was on my side in saying that the hand was encroaching on the cube’s space so it could just make itself permeable and absorb the hand that way. It turned into a 20 minute argument at the table(I shouldn’t have let that happen) where I let the Wizard roll his spell attack for the hand to beat the engulf DC and he failed. I ate the hand (and only the hand on that turn. And they beat the cube before it’s turn came back around) and the Wizard sulks about it to this day. Was that a sensible call? Should I just let the earth hand hold my cube? We’ve but heads many times afterwards about other things where he hates logic/reasoning put into things so the war continues but I hope to win this fight when he hears this episode.

Dean Barr

Apologies if this is a double post but patreon seems to have hidden my first comment. Simulacrum Slowdown. To the honourable Bailiff and esteemed Judges of the Court, I humbly present to you a case on which I have held my tongue for months but my patience is growing thin. We play a high level campaign and have two Wizards in the party who routinely cast simulacrum on themselves. This means that two players who already take an age to complete a turn in combat due to questioning how every spell interacts with the situation, have double the amount of turns that everyone else has when they control their copies. Outside of raw damage output they rarely take actions to help the party and take a lot of the fun away as they blast stuff down or get advantage on all their checks as they help themselves. Should I say something? Should I point out how much it slows our game down? Our DM also seems to be getting irritated at constantly having to balance around the two Wizards becoming four Wizards but seems too polite to put a hard no on the Spell. I eagerly await the judgement of the court.

Dustin Colwell

Dearly beloved Judges and Baliff. I was DMing a fantasy campaign and one of my players changed alignments to neutral evil through magical means. This player took it to an extreme, murdering every townsperson bartender and child they saw, to the horror of the party. I argued with them that even Hitler or Darth Vader could TALK to people sometimes without murdering them. The player insisted this is what evil meant. So later when the entire party was arrested for their actions. I denied the evil player a cool escape scene they set up (because I was petty and annoyed by them) and made the rest of the party come rescue them. They were since cured of their evil curse but I still wonder if I was too harsh, making them sit alone while the rest of the party escaped and freed them. I submit myself to your judgements.

Axel Andrade

May it please the normal court and Supreme bailiff, I am here to confess my dice sins. In the first session I was DMing, my party with experience players who made over powered characters because I wanted to make a high risk campaign. After a few min they cleared most of the puzzles and bad guys without a problem. My only solution to stop them without killing the mood, was have them go on a boat and fight flying monsters that I gave extra hp, movement and damage dice. In the end they all died, no one was mad they actually expected to die. I felt so dirty and not in the good way. I'm here to confess my sins to dice christ and receive my punishment in hell with the dice devil.

NoLifeKitty

In my game my wife ‘Nylah’ an eladrin rouge accidentally rolled a super hard and high charisma check to befriend a Lich in Curse of Strahd. Being a friend to this sad lonely lich was one of the few joys my wife got from roll playing in this campaign and she requested of the DM (my brother) that she stay in contact with him for fun (essentially pen pals) the DM begrudgingly allowed her 3 single use contact spells for him. We believe because he feared using the lich as some sort of meta game breaking advisor. Ultimately in private my wife commented she never wanted to use the lich as a meta advisor, she just wanted to befriend a kind old lonely lich. Was it right for my brother as the DM to limit their contact simply because he worried about meta gaming or does rule of cool apply. Thanks again and may it please the court.

Caleb Owens

May it please the court, and also that other guy. Before you today is the case of the Counterspelled Subtle Spell. Exhibit A: Our sorcerer in the party makes avid use of Detect Thoughts during RP moments, and often uses her Subtle Spell Metamagic to do so without others knowing she is skimming their surface thoughts. In this particular instance, she cast a Subtle Detect Thoughts to read another Player Character’s thoughts, in front of a magic shop NPC, who also happens to be a sorcerer. To our surprise, our DM rolled a dice behind the screen, then announced that this NPC had Counterspelled our sorcerer’s Subtle Spell, sparking much confusion and outrage, as it was our understanding that Counterspelling a Subtle Spell was impossible. Let’s take a glance at some relevant rules. Exhibit B: The text of Subtle Spell states “When you cast a spell, you can spend 1 sorcery point to cast it without any somatic or verbal components.” Detect Thoughts has S, V, and M components, but since it was cast subtly, it only remained a Material component spell, which uses her spellcasting focus, a ring on her finger that was behind her back at the time. Xanathar’s Guide in its section about spellcasting states “you normally don’t know that a spell has been cast unless the spell produces a noticeable effect”, and specifically “If the need for a spell’s components has been removed by a special ability, such as the sorcerer’s Subtle Spell… the casting of the spell is imperceptible.” Counterspell is a reaction the caster takes when “you see a creature within 60ft of you casting a spell”. Exhibit C: The dice the DM rolled was an Arcana check, which the DM was using to see if the NPC knew a spell was being cast. He rolled a 30, which the DM looked down at his DM screen and saw that a DC 30 check is for things that are ‘impossible.’ The text in the DMs guide for a DC 30 check is ‘nearly impossible.’ So, in summary, the DM saw he rolled a 30, determined that means the NPC could achieve the usually impossible in this moment, which included noticing a spell was being cast, and then counterspelling it, even though it has been cast subtly. Overall, this issue really does not matter at all for the campaign, but it has been a common discussion point since then, with the DM confidently standing by his ruling. So my question to the court today is this: is the DM in the right, and the players are overreacting, or are the players right to be up in arms about this issue? The decision lies with you, I trust you’ll make the right one.

Joe Eldredge

May it please the court, and delight the bailiff. We were recently playing a session where we ended up finding a passageway to another dimension, which held an interdimensional vampire named the "blood king". So, before we went in, we headed back to town and started scheming(DM admitted we are slightly under-leveled for this). We ended up having our necromancer craft 2 water guns(which I named the "Soakers of Supras"). I then steeped 4 1 gallon waterskins worth of water in garlic. Then we asked if we could add a vial of holy water to each waterskin for added damage. He said it would not work, that holy water won't work if diluted. We immediately conceded and made no argument(we love our DM) but i'm curious if the court agrees with the ruling.

Screeeeeech

Greetings, honorable justices and lowly but appreciated bailiff! Many years ago I entered my first campaign with a wood elf rogue. As my first real dnd character, I thought the rogue bonus action dash plus the extra five feet from wood elf would be a great combo, and took the thief subclass, as my character was an ex-bandit, which came with second story work. All this meant she could run/climb up to 35, 70, or 105 feet per turn. Many sessions later, my party is kidnapped by cultists and we wake up in carts driving along a narrow cliff. My character is one of the first ones out of the bindings, so I offer to sneak over to the front of the carts to release the Fighter, who she saw. Since the carts were stopped, I thought it would be flavorful and fun to climb along the cliff wall to get to the front of the cart, and hopefully without being seen, assassins creed style. My DM was less happy about this, and stated that I couldn’t make it all the way and then hide again, even though measuring it on the map it was within my climb speed (70ft dash, dash action, bonus action hide). He said I could make it half way or not at all despite my second story work ability. But, I ended up conceding, as a new player, and the Fighter ended that encounter losing an arm…which ended our session and campaign. Years later, I DM sever games in person and online, but I still think about that game and how I might deal with it. Looking back I understand that the move would be a little encounter-breaking. My old DM is still adamant that he was in the right, and we argue (lightheartedly) about it to this day. Please, was i in the right for reading the rules? Or was I pushing too far to get ahead of his encounter? I accept your judgement (and look forward to seeing you all in SanFran) -An elf on the shelf (of a deep ravine)

Austin Tunis

May it please the almighty court and the most noble bailiff. I play a druid in a homebrew campaign. Early in the campaign the wizard in our group commissioned an enchanted staff. Several months later we learned that the creator of the staff was actually an enemy of ours and had been tracking us with an extra enchantment placed onto the staff. I asked if I could use dispel magic and attempt to dispel the tracking enchantment. The DM said that I would have to dispel all of the enchantments (with a single casting) even though the wording of the spell says it can target a specific magical effect. I asked for clarification and he said that's how dispel magic works in his game. Fair enough I thoughy as I bow to the DM Several months later, we were facing a spellcaster who had dropped their arcane focus thanks to a heat metal from the artificer. I attempted to use dispel magic on the staff to cut the spellcaster off from its source of power. I used my highest available slot (6) and attempted to roll for it. He said there were several effects on the staff and I couldn't dispel all of them. At this, the wizard reminded us that per the rules of the DMs homebrew, a single dispel magic can dispel several effects. And the DM said "nope, read your damn spells" to which I got heated since he was the one who altered them in the first place. The other players were getting tense also. I cooled off after a few mins and apologized for losing my temper and then asked why now the rules were changing. To which the DM said he didn't need to give a reason as its his world. Was I being unnecessarily particular and annoying or not? I accept whatever punishment may or may not befall me.

Straka921

May it please the proprietors of Birdlesque and the Beautiful, Hot, and Honorable Bailiff. I am a player in a campaign that has now been running on and off for the better part of two years. A few weeks ago we had our first session in a few months and during which our party got ambushed at night. Creepy vibes etc. The player in question plays a tabaxi rogue named Smouldering Stone. During the first round of combat his character wakes up and proceeds to hide in the tree line to set up for sneak attack the following turn. We make it back to the rogue's turn and we hear silence on the mic. Keep in mind we play over discord with video. After a further silence we realize he is deadass asleep on discord video in the middle of our combat encounter and we can't wake him up. Our DM explained his absence away by reasoning that he is hidden so well our characters have no idea where he went. The worst part of this story is that this is not the first, not the second, but the third time this player has fallen asleep on camera during our sessions! Out of character we now call the rogue Slumbering Stone. The question we pose to the court is this: how do we deal with this problem? Do we simply let our boy get his rest, or must he be punished for being a repeat slumberer and sleeping through our first session in months?

JessMayWin

May it please the court and the criminally underrated bailiff. In a game a few years ago we were tasked with kidnapping the daughter of a wealthy merchant to get information about the location of a valuable artifact - the only problem was, according to the DM, 'she never leaves her mansion and has at least 2 guards with her at all times and if they are alerted or attacked her father and his entire guard force will be mobilised immediately and you will all be imprisoned and later killed'. We spent over 4 sessions trying to solve this issue in a variety of ways, which the DM continued to shoot down (ok can we infiltrate the merchant's militia and try and get on her guard shift? No. Can we pose as merchants and try to get an audience with her? No. Start a fire at her estate to smoke her out? You get the idea). In desperation I suggested that our bard polymorph into a fly and try to sneak through a crack in the window while she was on the loo and then dimension door out of the manion, as I reasoned that surely she would have to be alone while doing her business. The DM flat out refused, saying the guards would also accompany her to the toilet. The whole thing left us feeling pretty.... crap.... to be honest. I humbly ask the court - would someone being guarded at all times expect their guards to be with them when they are on the can, or was my idea, as gross as it was, a viable one? p.s. after this same in game day continued with no further success for another 3 SESSIONS i dumped that group and have found new people to play with - they really are the shit! lol

Penny Garbo

Your honorable judges and beautiful bailiff Jake and if it pleases the court I plead my case. A coworker of mine overheard I play D&D and asked me to join his campaign and help DM as he is a first time DM. Excitedly I agreed and a date was set. The problem is when I arrived at his home his kids were running all over the place, I thought no big deal he'll probably put them away or somthing when the game starts. Nope, the little rugrats ran about cried and were all around a big distraction throughout the whole game. Not only that but the other players struggled to hear the story progression over the baby crying. Finally, we had to call it quits when my coworkers 2 year old jumped on the table scattering the player characters, mat and dice everywhere. When I was leaving he asked if I had fun and if I would be there next week. I said no as I didn't know there would be kids and they were very off putting and distracting. I myself don't have or want children so didn't know how to handle the situation. He was offended and insisted that if I get to know them better I'd feel different and should come back. The next day he blamed me for canceling the game because after I voiced my opinion the other players agreed and didn't show for the next game. Was I in the wrong for not wanting to spend time with his kids? Should I have sucked it up and played along anyway? I await your ruling.

A Peeling STicker

Howdy Most Honorable justices and Equally as Honorable Bailiff. I come to you with the case of : A Counter Spell, A Dispel Magic, A Lost Son In one of my current campaigns, I play Aloysius of the Heffalump Herd, a barbarian cleric loxodon with a haunted one background. He comes from the Heffalump Herd, a branch in a mafia family of loxodons that deals in nightmares, info gathering, and torture. Aloysius...left his herd after seeing too many things he can't forget. During his travels with his party, he rescued and adopted a half ooze boy called Elmer, that was created and abandoned by another branch of his family's mafia. During a fight, we had a Warlock cast Dispel Magic directed at Elmer and the DM said that it killed/ deactivated Elmer but he's a creature/construct. I debated a Dispel Magic couldn't do that but he said otherwise. My party reminded me I had a counterspell stored in my Temporal Pair of Socks. So I cast that but the DM than reaction or bonus action casted Dispel Magic again. The table was pretty annoyed myself included but I decided to move on by gathering Elmer's goo to bring him back later. Was Aloysius' goo lad laid to waste unjustly or is that just the way? Thank you 🙃

Plas

To the Grandiose and Immaculate Judges and pretty Swanky Baliff, I was DMing a campaign with a few friends of mine for the first time. The party was scaling a tower above the clouds that controlled the flow of time in a particular region at a King's request because the flow of time had started fluctuating. When time flowed correctly, the tower was overseen by a Wisp, the Timekeeper, that had been imprisoned there. Recently The Wisp had taken over the body of a powerful Eldritch Knight in the hopes that he could escape the tower and be free, which is why the flow of time started losing control. In the final fight against the Timekeeper, he decided that one of the party members was well suited for him to possess, just like the Eldritch Knight. This PC, Red, was down on his luck and didn't know what his goal in life was, so the Timekeeper rolled Charisma checks to convince Red his new goal was to be the Timekeeper. Red needed to fail 3 times to become possessed. Red failed twice, and then after the player himself debated a little bit, he chose to ignore the third check and give in to the possession willingly. This turned the fight into a 2v2. We teamed up to defeat the other group of 2 PCs and escape the Tower, destroying time. My question is as follows: One of the PCs on the non-possessed side was dealing significant Damage Over Time every round while the other tried to guard him. Red and I's plan was to work together to try and take down the biggest threat, which would make sense from the Timekeeper's perspective, and that happened to be Mr. DOT. We were unsuccessful and the Timekeeper was defeated, but after the game was over Mr. DOT expressed true disgust and anger that he was being targeted. Should I as the DM have tried to more evenly distribute my attacks between PCs, or was I okay staying true to the motivations of my BBEG and trying to bring down the biggest threat to his survival and freedom? I humbly await your judgement, and subsequent punishment.

Caitrin

High and Omnipotent Justices and also the bailiff, May it please the court- I am writing with the question of Initiative Combat Dibs. In a recent sci-fi themed campaign, my fellow players and I found ourselves driving a truck of stolen munitions to a resistance hideout in a high speed chase. My ratfolk artificer, Isosceles, was the last of our 3 party members in initiative. As the first round rolled by, the other two party members got out of the cab of the truck and onto the trailer to go fight the goblins dropping onto the back of the vehicle from helicopters. When it got to my turn, I was informed that I had no line of sight to any of the combatants or their vehicles and was not in range to cast any of my my spells on the helicopters or other trucks. Additionally, because we were being chased, I had to stay at the wheel and use my turn to drive the truck forward. When the next round came up, I tried to get creative and use some artificer skills to increase the maximum speed of the truck, but that was all I did, and it didn't impact combat at all. The combat play went on for over an hour, and I only got to cast one spell in the very last round when one of my party members realized I wasn’t getting to do anything, took pity, and returned to take over driving. I ask the court: am I right to be frustrated with my DM and party members for the way combat played out? Is it fair of my more dexterous party members to bail and leave me in the role of default driver due to my low initiative roll? Should my DM have made it easier to stay involved in combat? Or do I just need to suck it up and drive? I humbly await your judgement.

MJMM

May it please the court I play a Mercenary whose main reason for adventuring is to send money to his wife (Mala). During a quest in the Faewild a curse turned my male Bearfolk character into a female Water Genasi. On our way to reverse this we stopped in my home village to explain what happened to my wife, and with my rerolled Charsima and magical abilities wooed her and had a romantic evening. The next day before we left the DM tells us that my wife ran after us out of the village and said she preferred me this way. I argued with my DM (and are still arguing) that a couple of good charisma checks shouldn't erase the years of backstory relationship my character has with his wife. My DM argues my wife has been unhappy in our marriage for a while (a fact I didn't know) and that this makes for a better story. Do you think my DM is right and I should roll with this for the story? Or should my backstory of my Bearfolk wife guy mean more then one enchanting evening

Those who love and give where they can

May it please the court, and the bailiff (justice in my heart.) My once weekly campaign hasn’t met for a month. This is because the last time we rolled dice my friends got trashed x1000000, and very little DND got done. I have been sober for 6 months now, and I usually don’t mind drinking in small amounts, but seeing people get so obliterated did not sit well with me. Illustrious court, how do I approach getting the group back together while maintaining my sobriety and our friendship? (P.S. we have talked about the presence of alchohol at dnd, and my friends are unwilling to not drink.)

AmberDextrous!

May it please the court and the lovely bailiff: I present the case of Too Many DMs. I began DMing for 4 friends about a year ago. 6 months ago, one of them mentioned they'd like to try DMing. Great! However, the night we played was the only night we could play, which meant for her to DM; we'd have to skip my game. I was okay with this because I actually have two parties playing in the same world where their actions affect each other, and this group was advancing a little faster. So, we agreed to alternate weeks. This was great. It allowed me, a forever DM, to play as well as gave me more time to prep. Flash forward to now - everyone in this group decided they wanted to DM and we now rotate between 5 GAMES weekly. It's exhausting. People are mixing up elements, NPCs etc, and no one remembers their characters and abilities between all the games. It takes us half an hour to recap what happened the last time we played someone's game 5 weeks ago. My other group has absolutely smoked this group in story progression, and it's seriously affecting my game. As the "first" DM, was it my obligation not to let this get out of control or are we all to blame? I accept whatever punishment, because I know I hold at least some blame for all of this.

ChappyThoughts

Dear members of the Supreme Crit, I bring you the case of the disappearing Dragon Turtle. A while back one of my players and I disagreed on whether or not he could track a dragon turtle that had retreated from battle. This was in a viking-style Faerunian adventure and was meant to show the potential terrors of the deep. The party had performed well but they had no chance but I wanted them to feel fulfilled so I had the dragon turtle retreat. One of my players, who is a real-life wilderness survival teacher, claimed that they should be able to follow it. I, a veteran naval submariner, said that the depths of the ocean obfuscated the ability of the party to follow. Should I have let them attempt to follow the dragon turtle and, at best, waste weeks in game on an impossible quest or was I right to stick to my guns? Thank you for your time.

Oliver F.

If it may please the court, I bring you a case of strict adherence to the whims of the dice. When creating new characters for what we knew would be a long-term campaign, I rolled stats that my DM called "painfully average." I asked him if I could reroll the set, but my DM is very strict about honoring the dice, and he said no. Adding to this, another player had insane lucky while rolling his stats. His lowest stat, a 14, was my highest. I was disappointed by this turn of events, but I sucked it up. If you'll forgive me for bring up math, the DM follows the manuel and sets an average DC at 15. Since most of my modifiers are +1 or +2, statistically, I fail checks more than I succeed, even when I have proficiency. Adding to this, the DM nerfed my halfing's lucky ability so that I can only reroll nat 1s once per long rest. I tried to appeal this many times, but with no luck (if you'll pardon the pun). It has been two years. And my low stats have effected everything about how I play, including roleplay, because I have to find a way to believably play a character that obviously isn't pulling their weight. I mostly handle this by falling in love with every god we encounter. So far, I'm up to three. I pray to all three before I roll anything, which at least makes it funny when I fail. However, the DM is not amused, and he's threatened to have me start rolling luck checks every time I invoke the gods frivolously, which each god I invoke adding a -1 to the roll. On a 1, I would take so much damage I'd probably die. I asked if I could temporarily raise an ability score by 1 on a nat 20, but he said no. Nothing happens on a nat 20. I ask the court, it feels like the DM is more loyal to the whims of the dice than to my enjoyment of the game. It may be selfish, but is it unreasonable for me to ask him to provide me some buffer against the negative whims if the dice, especially when he does almost nothing to emphasize the positive side?

Rosanne te Riele

May it please the illustrious court, and also Jake. I ask you: is a boat a location? I play a gnome Divination Wizard, and I have a number of spells that target a particular location, like Scry and Teleport. Over the course of our two-year campaign, there have been a number of times where I wanted to use such a spell to target a ship, but my DM says that because it moves, a ship isn't a location, but rather an object that occupies a location. I think that, while he has a point, I don't feel like a location necessarily has to refer to a *geographical* location. Intuitively, a big ship with rooms is basically the same as a house or similar structure. I've always deferred to the DM to keep things moving, but it's come up a few times now, and I still think I'm right. How rules 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.

Nine

Hail and well met Supreme Crit Court and also the Ballif. I'm DMing my first game soon and I had a weird situation with a player. He wanted to use a fully homebrew class and race and essentially told me his characters entire arc. Asking to start his own cult and achieve God hood with this cult. Not figurative but literal Tiamat-esque godhood. I wanted to give him a fair shake to present his Homebrew and convince me, after a conversation or two I wasn't sold and told him so. Adding that I did enjoy the character but it wouldn't fit into my world or the vibe of this campaign as I see it. He got angry and essentially quit the campaign before. I reached out and explained my thinking, which I think was more than generous, and I put my foot down saying as DM I can veto your homebrew if I don't want it in the game. After some consideration he relented, and asked to join back, and I relented. He once again asked for a homebrew class but this time it was much more reasonable so I allowed it. He's hinted he's still going to try to make a cult and I'm bracing myself to potentially quash this plot thread if I think it's becoming a nuisance rather than enhancing the game for everyone else. Am I wrong for thinking this? Should I have even let him back in the game? I've known about his propensity for obscure homebrew for a while now but didn't expect him to throw a bit of a fit when he didn't get exactly his way. Is this a powder keg I just managed to douse for now?

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 or gorgons. Realizing we were out mached since we were a LEVEL 1 PARTY and these were challenge rating 8.( witch we did not know at the te). We tried to run and hide . We 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 surrounded by 4 bulls.

Casonder Nova

May it please the Court and also Jake, I was running a game and when one of my players killed the first boss that they encountered I asked him how he wanted to kill him and he answered by striking his sword through the Enemy's scrotum. All was fine and everyone had a good laugh about it. With the loot they got from the encounter that player got a +1 shortsword and proceeded to name it Scrotum's Bane. From that point on any time he killed an enemy he made it a point to say he stabbed them through their scrotum, even to the point of interrupting me or other players to make sure he said it. I started to get annoyed by it and so I asked him to stop doing it or maybe cut it down to just bosses. He said no and that it was a defining part of his character and it ended up starting a minor fight between some of the group. Eventually he agreed to only do it for bosses to stop the fighting so we could keep playing, but he still seemed legitimately upset about it for a couple sessions afterward. Should I have just not said anything and let him keep up his scrotum stabbing, or was I justified in asking for it to be put to an end? I humbly await your judgement.

Abigail

Hello honorable Crit Justices and the anything but lowly Bailiff Jake, This is less of a case and more of a clash of ideology, but my dad believes that “you should never, ever, make it to level five” because D&D GB should be impossible and “take a /very/ long time.” I think that is flat out insane, but beyond that he also is a firm believer in requiring the party to purchase and consume food on a regular basis; so much so that when my family began a campaign we had to all sacrifice buying weapons and potions to buy food and cooking gear under threat of levels of exhaustion and eventual starvation. I understand that needing to eat is more realistic and I even understand why he would require eating to make the game more difficult, but I think there’s a line and I’m sure that he’s crossed it. I’d love for him to hear that from somebody else, though.

Lindsey Schick

I don’t have a court case but I do have a confession High priests and priestess of Dice Christ and altar boy Jake. When I first started playing dnd over zoom during quarantine, I completely forgot that a d6 was just a cube and when I asked which die was a d6, no one heard me cause playing over zoom sucks. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out which one it was because at that point I was too afraid to ask. But for several sessions, whenever the DM asked for a d6 roll, I would just roll a d8 and I counted any 7s or 8s as a 6… I’m sorry for my transgressions and for any extra damage I did during fights that I didn’t rightfully deserve. Best Lindsey

The Wizard Syndicate

May it please the court, the wise justices, and the tenacious bailiff. I bring the case of the dm vs the wizard in the case of reasonability. I dm for my friends, and the only time they have ever been openly out of character upset with one of my in game rulings was when the party wizard cast Mass Suggestion on a single priest that was overseeing a group of magical artifacts. The artifacts were great holy relics that were held in display at a church that was overseen by a priest. The wizard cast mass suggestion on the priest and said “Give me those” which I asked him to clarify if that was exactly what he wanted to say since the wording of the spell is specific. The spell says that after failing a wisdom save the character must follow through on any action that is reasonable, and I argued that this command was not reasonable. These holy relics were of great value and power, so just saying “give them to me” is as reasonable as casting suggestion on a mother and telling her to put her baby on the ground with no context. The wizard argued that since the spell can work on up to 12 creatures it should have been 12x more effective in just the one creature since it was his largest spell slot at the time. Instead of having the spell do nothing I had the priest believe them to be patrons of the church and that they were going to have to bring some kind of note from the king or higher power that they needed the holy relics. I figured they’d use this as an out to back out and give them another option if they didn’t feel like just stealing the relics. Instead the wizard cast cone of cold on the priest which was wildly out of character for both player and the PC, and they said we’re just gonna steal them now. I didn’t have a plan for that since the party has never been known to just merc innocent people before, so I basically just gave them the items since I couldn’t think of what to do. We talked about it after and it’s been going smoothly since then, but I’m curious what the court views as “reasonable” for a spell that takes control of another person. Thank you and I throw myself on the courts justice and mercy.

Darin Ragan

May it please the court. I bring you the case of the bloodthirsty arachnid. For about two years I have been running a campaign for my friends in which my brother-in-law plays a home brewed man-spider warlock named Harkonid (think half way between drow and drider). He has been clear from the beginning that Harkonid’s underdark upbringing gives him an almost alien perspective on morality: AKA killing random NPCs for fun. He once went to one of his victims funerals in the fey wild and slaughtered a dozen bereaved pixies. His string of violence has led him to the point where he shares command of a small army of undead Bullywugs with a Bullywug shaman, and with the end of the campaign in sight I asked the player how he wanted to handle the resolution of Harkonid’s story and he is holding fast to his plans for world domination. I explained to him that the party would likely try to stop him, but he says he doesn’t want to have to fight the party- or die. He doesn’t seem to see the potential consequences of his plan, and I want to help him play out the story he wants to see unfold, so my question is this: do I give Harkonid a “happy” ending and risk taking away everyone else’s, or do I insist that my murder hobo becomes a regular hobo? I prostrate myself at the bench and humble ask for your guidance. Kaloo Kalay

Kymberly King

Oh Great Bailiff and wonderful Justices! I would like to file an appeal do to ineffective assistance of council. My mother (we both played in this) posted the case of the monkey murder. She neglected to mention a few things and I can answer some of the justice's qestions. 1) the rope and cans was 4 in off the ground. Dm was going to wave the dex Check cause all score were above 10. - the Barbarian requested the dex check. 2) the damage of the 60ft fall was deal and we were ready to move on. When the Barbarian interrupts with "what about my monkey?" -dm was ready to wave this when he begins to argue about the backpack. If you choose to uphold the previous ruling I will release the monkey unto the dms conversation Pit. Ps -Murph. My mother and I can't get over you saying "oh. No. Dot kill the monkey. -Emily. We will always have a seat at our table for you. -Caldwell. The monkey had been doing nothing. It was all about the Barbarian being in charge of it. Which we were right about. The monkey only lasted about one session. -we are both flying in to see you guys in Boston. Can't wait!

Skyler Morford

Please hear my dice sins, high court members and Jake as well I guess, I have unknowingly sinned with to many Natural 20’s! I play Griffena Starlight a Tabaxi wild magic sorceress who has to good of 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!!!!

Samuel Allsop

If it pleases the court. I bring you the case of the mosterous party. I am DM for a group of close friends, it was supposed to be a normal campaign. It turned into an evil campaign very quickly when one rude town mayor caused my players to become genocidal maniacs. It was still all in good fun but things turned after a recent extermination of a village. After this battle I revealed that a child of one of the soldiers reported there indiscretions. This caused noble adventures to be hired to hunt them down who they defeated. I meant this to make their evil actions a little more discreet, but they learnt the wrong lesson. They have now decided to leave noone alive when they provoke a settlement. And it's gotten quite dark. My players seem to be having fun but I'm finding myself increasingly uncomfortable creating very nice sympathetic characters who get slaughtered without remorse. Am I at fault for not changing the tone of the campaign enough? Its just I don't want my players to torch an orphanage. It feels bad. 😅 I look forward to your judgement. Many thanks Sam

Nicholas Badtke

Not really much of a case, but more of follow up from the crown of duck summoning fiasco. A solution one of my cohorts found to our duck "problem" is slaughtering them every morning (Probably much to Judge Julia's dismay) before the rest of the party wakes up. The ones that aren't turned into breakfast we use as covert spies. Hope y'all are well!

Tristan Tonks

May it please the court and the aggressively dishonourable bailiff Jake. Please can you settle a dispute among among my party about allies and paladin auras. I am a level 13 dwarf vengeance paladin (Fred-a-dick Stonebrow) who had recently vanquished a foe and saved a small village with my sister, the cleric Freida stonebrow. To celebrate our triumph, the local inkeeper suggested a drinking game between us. Mechanically this required constitution saving throws with an ever increasing DC. In the first round I easily passed, due to my +7 to con saves as a result of my aura. I soon realised my dilemma, my sister being an ally in my aura would get a +13 to con and would therefore likely beat me in any drinking contest. I then requested that she not be included in my aura, as we were technically now foes in this contest. Frieda argued I could not realistically 'turn off' my aura against her as she was not an enemy but a sister engaging in a friendly rivalry. The DM sided with her, so I proceeded to try to down my drinks while running around the bar so she was further than 10ft away from me and out of the auras radiant. Frustrated, she chased me while also trying to down her drinks. This eventually resulted in her tackling me through the window of the inn. The DM exasperatedly had to describe a scene of villagers suddenly confused at the so called heroes tense and aggressive vibes that were being put out. My question is, was I in the wrong? Or should I have been able to boot her from my aura as I please? P.s we did pay for the broken window and the players found the whole scenario hilarious (not so much the DM)

Peter S.

This happened to Jake during campaign 1 as well! :-D

v_squared (Vanessa)

Your Honors and kind bailiff, I have no case to try, but I have something for the Church of High Rolls. I think my mother may be an Oracle of Dice Christ. She has not played D&D, however she and I habitually play Yahtzee (yes, Yahtzee) and call to Dice Christ just the same. This past year has been one for the ages. On my turns, she has routinely been able to predict what the dice will do. I've lost count of how many times she has predicted that I will get Yahtzee on a given turn, much less anything else needed (like four 3s to get my bonus on top, or a full house, or whatever). You name it, she's predicted it. Meanwhile, her own games have been ATROCIOUS. Rarely has she gotten a score above 200, which is particularly abnormal. And Yahtzees? Forget it. She's frustrated and I'm just baffled. Now, you could try to placate me with talk of statistics and probability and other such nonsense, but my hypothesis is this: in exchange for her gift of prediction, Dice Christ has cursed her with low scores. Tell me: is this something Dice Christ would do, or are there more sinister forces at play? I bow to you as the High Priests and Priestesses (as applicable) Vanessa

Noah Johnson

If it may please the court and that one guy who reads the questions, I guess. I humbly come before the court with a case of overzealous player vs cryptic dungeon master. My character is a lv. 6 wild-magic sorcerer and in a recent session we got stuck in what was essentially the matrix. After a few hours of investigation all we discovered was the existence of what you could call an “agent” bound to eliminating unnatural elements from the simulation. We weren’t getting anywhere so we decided to try to summon this figure. We were trying a few methods of summoning this dude (causing non-harmful chaos) and nothing was working, so my character who had recently turned evil due to some story stuff said “fuck it” and shot a fireball into the crowd. That worked… but the bad guy summoned was an upgraded illithid that rolled higher on initiative than most of us and immediately did a move that downed half our party and those that weren’t downed got stunned. Needless to say we all died from this encounter and were pretty bummed. When talking as a group afterwards, the DM indicated that he wasn’t planning on killing our party but that the action of shooting the crowd with a fireball was so outrageous that the big bad of the arc was the one that came to address it. Was I wild for preforming an admittedly dramatic action if we weren’t getting anywhere with other clues and all of our less dramatic attempts didn’t summon anything? Should we have continued to explore the town after visiting all noticeable landmarks and talking to tons of different people? I feel as though I was punished in a situation where I was role-playing my alignment and I was attempting to summon the enemy he foreshadowed.

Luke Abramczyk

Bless me Fathers Murphy, Axeford, and Tanner for I have sinned. This is my first confession. Deacon Hurwitz, I guess you can try to squeeze into the confessional as well if you want. Last month our DM was sick and actually ended up in hospital for a few days unable to run our weekly game. I volunteered to run some one-shots while he was recovering. We agreed the other three players could use their current characters and if anything too crazy happened we could always rule that those sessions were non-canon. However, this is where my latent avarice for the acquisition and distribution of magical items got the better of me. After playing 28 sessions of our Acquisitions Inc. campaign we are currently level 3 and have found only two, very clearly cursed, magical items and some sending stones. As a DM I tend to run High Magic campaigns, and one of my favorite things is doling out and finding magic items, (sometimes to my own detriment as a DM). Ran on session with just the three other PCs and DM okayed the potential loot they could find in advance. The next week the DM was feeling better, and was good enough to play, but not well enough to prep and run the session. This is where I saw my chance. By my estimation, giving him a dog in the fight may free my hand a bit when it comes to dispensing magical loot. I prepped a small dungeon for them to explore, and worked out an in-game mechanic for the normal DM to veto any possible magic items that the party found. This is where the dance began. While prepping the session I came up with a number of magic items that fit the flavor of the dungeon hidden in secret rooms and carried by some of the dungeon’s denizens that ranged from uncommon to rare. After using the first magic item as a litmus test for how powerful an item I could bestow, I then made a few subtle changes to the rest of the items to improve their chances of them staying in the hands of my fellow PCs. I would remove an ability here, and change a damage die there, so as to more adequately fit them into what the normal DM saw as appropriate for the party. Over the course of three sessions I effectively doubled the # of magical items in the party's possession, but in the end it left me feeling a little bit dirty. Dice Gods, I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to be chaotic and not and failing to act lawfull, I have sinned against you whom I should love above all things. I firmly intend, with your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin. Our Savior Dice Christ suffered and opted to fail his saving throws for us. In his name, Dice God, have mercy. Amen. I seek penance and absolution, for my sins and will accept whatever punishment or penance is decided for me. P.S. If it makes any difference, I am already paying for my misdeeds a bit. You see, one stipulation made between myself and the normal DM was that I would send them only the info that an Identify spell would reveal, which does not include curses. This way it would not affect his PC’s decision to use one of the discovered items. In the end the party decided to take back one of the cool new magical items and offer it to my PC, there was no way my PC could knoe that this was of course the one cursed item I placed in the dungeon. So now my PC’s who normally acts as the party's face, is slowly having all of his skin replaced with snake scales, which is likely to wreak havoc on future social interactions.

joe farulla

May it please the court, honorable sworn-in justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, and...uh...the other guy. I present the Modify Memory case. I joined an established group when I began living with two brothers who played in a party of 6. After we finished a few mini campaigns, one of the brothers wanted to run a high seas adventure in which we were very excited. He also wanted to introduce a Homebrewed Psionic class that he had come across, and I loved psions in 4e so I played one. Through the beginning of the campaign, we explore different islands after discovering a magical ship that we made our own travelling headquarters. Being the high Int character, I did a lot of research on stuff we discovered ( pearls of power to power the ship, synthesizing fire resistant coating for the ship from a plant we had found, etc.), So it was well known in the group that we had a lot of important and rare stuff on the ship to keep hidden. This group also loved rolling carousing checks (there is a table in the players handbook for d100 results), and one night our typically most disgruntled and edgelord player rolls that he meets a new love interest at a bar. He proceeds to not introduce her to anyone in the party and bring her aboard the ship we had agreed to never let outsiders on. In finding out, the sorcerer and I pay the lover to leave and never come back and I sneakily cast modify memory on his character so that he wouldn't remember meeting the lover. He EXPLODED as we "ruined his player agency" where I thought this was just a funny move to remove an inconsequential character. The campaign ended soon after and the other player still holds a grudge to this day. Was I wrong to make the move I did. I forgot to mention the sorcerer that initiated said plan was players real-life brother (yes our party was mostly compromised of two sets of brothers). Thank you and Merry Christmas too all!

Duke Orterra

Oh, wise and noble judges & hardworking Bailiff! My case is on the ethics of railroading. I (the DM) wrote haunted mansion dungeon that takes place over 5 floors. The layout was such that the party would make their way up to the attic to find a key so that they could get into the basement where the final confrontation would take place. Doing so, they would learn about the tragedy that had befallen the occupants of this mansion over 3 generations of hauntings, betrayals, and heartbreaks. The problem (for me, at least) was when the fighter saw the locked door in the basement, he rolled a nat 20 to kick down the door (literally, the only roll that would have succeeded without the key). This allowed them to immediately get to the end of the dungeon with zero context, skip all the narrative of the mansion, and undoing about 15-20 hours of my prep. My question, should I have made it harder/impossible for them to get through the door without the key for the sake of a richer narrative or should I accept my whomping with dignity?

Nicholas Badtke

For a little extra context for our sneaky ducks, our Paladin can now communicate with animals. I command them, and she is the interpreter between them and me.

JoNathanD

Honorable Crits, and supremely... Uh.. Fun? Bailiff. I present to this magnificent establishment the case of the Good Barbarian v. The Suddenly evil party. (I'll try and keep it brief but no promises when it comes to internalized frustrations) I was playing in a party of what could have been described as generally "good" PC's (as far as alignment and play style goes). During one session that ended in an intense battle, a certain player who will be named "Amir" for their actions to come, began playing their dwarf fighter somewhat recklessly, which was very much out of character and saving the unnecessary details did end up in the character dying. It was sad, but it made for a good motivating factor and we as a group were excited for this players next character since their first PC was our groups leader. The very next session their new character was ready. Jace was an Aasimar Warlock who spent their time stealing, lying, and murdering. I can understand Amir wanting something different but the change was so drastic and so sudden I felt as a player it would clash with the party. WELL Amir had asked our DM if their friend could join our party before the session (how could this possibly be bad we all thought, an experienced friend joining would only be fun). This friend brought in at the same time as Jace was unveiled, a truly evil rogue, Amirs at-the-time-Girlfriend was the other existing player in our group, and their ranger all of the sudden fell in love with the warlock and became evil for, and I quote, "that good fallen angel D". I was left as the sole good PC in a party of murder hobos. Since this was my first character ever, I was reluctant to just get rid of them but there was a moment when tensions in the party came to a head. The rogue and Jace were attempting to kill the all powerful wizard that guided our group and was giving us missions at the time. My PC, as well as myself, finally couldn't deal with it anymore when the rogue attempted to murder the wizards gifted teenaged apprentice as they fled. My character using one of the powerful artifacts we had been collecting to fight the bbeg, snatched the young girl, and jumped hundreds of feet away. I then made the decision for my barbarian to leave the party and travel as the girls protector as they traveled to another city that was under the protection of a God we had saved back when we were good. Amir was livid I had given away such an important game item to the now NPC barbarian, stating that I had betrayed the party, but I defended my actions as my character would never have let them murder someone so openly let alone a child, and that the only reason I had waited so long to do something was that they continually excluded the barbarian so that they wouldn't stop them. The DM backed me up and added that with the artifact boots my barbarian was wearing, they couldn't possibly catch up to him. Was I wrong for this betrayal to the party, or should Amir be thrown to the almighty judgment of the Crits (and their sort of intern Bailiff) for their horrible actions and lack of integrity?

Cuddle-less fish

If it may please the honorable critt justices and the humble bailiff I am troubled and seek to be judged fairly. I've been running my first biweekly campaign for a few months and it's been a blast. However I have one problem. one of my players has abstained from coming for the last few sessions citing the new content for FFXIV as the reason. Scheduling around the holidays is a nightmare anyways so I decided to pause the campaign. When making plans to meet up after the new year this player is saying he doesn't know if he can make time. Would I be in the wrong if I continue without him?

JoNathanD

It should also be submitted as evidence that it was later discovered that Amir had lied about their Dwarf fighters HP to make them die quicker, and was pretty consistently caught lying about dice rolls, even going so far as to permanately roll their dice under the table on their lap. I also worked with the DM and therefore had been able to talk about how neither of us expected the party to become so evil so quickly, establishing that Amir never cleared any of it with the DM first.

Calebowhite

It it may please the Dice-Christ appointed Crit Justices and the Blessèd bailiff. I - a DM - granted my wizard a spell scroll of Power Word : Verb. This 5th level homebrew spell would allow them to use an online random verb generator then explain how it would function as a power word. I gave them complete creative control. To keep it brief, they cast Power Word : Birth on an enemy barbarian chieftain. After a substantial pause, waiting for them to stop laughing, I vetoed the casting. I allowed them to reroll the verb generator. They got power word : top, and teleported the entire party and this one barbarian to the roof of the building they were fighting in. My question is this. Should I have allowed Power Word : Birth? Should I have made the barbarian suddenly suffer the pains of labour and the joy of becoming a new father? Oh wise and worthy justices, what be your verdict?

Dr. Silverback, MD

Why'd you have to go to 30 feet? at level 13 the aura is still 10 feet. you could have just stepped back a bit.

GREYFOX!!!!!

No story just thanks for being awesome.

garett144

May it please the court and especially Caldwell because this is some Looney Toons shenanigans. I present the case of the jokerfied golem. In this campaign I was playing a rune knight goliath, my cousin joined as a guest character for one session but instead of rolling a character he used a clay golem stat block. During a purple worm fight an attack from the worm did something screwy to him and he started attacking all of us. Upon a 22 insight check all the DM gave me was "he just looks angry" what it was was an enrage mechanic in the golem player. Kinda miffed that thats what a 22 got me i decided to hold down the golem and carve his face into a smile to see if that stopped him. It didn't. Was I being salty at the DM, or was my interpretation of "he just looks angry" fair? In the end we all had a laugh at this so there are no hard feelings.

Timothy L

May it please the court and the other guy, I'm a player in a Curse of Strahd campaign. I've been a DM up until now, and I've usually played theater of the mind, but this time around, we have minis and tokens. I'm play with the same group of players that I DMed, and we're all good friends. This started as soon as we got into our first encounter, and has happened in every encounter since. Every other player in our group has moved minis and tokens to be in more advantageous positions, like moving an enemy token and their own mini towards a ledge so they can shove then off, or move another player's mini closer to theirs. They don't seem to know that what they're doing screws up the whole movement aspect of D&D, moving upwards of 40 free feet per turn. I talked to my DM and he doesn't seem bothered by it. Should I just swallow my DM pride and let it go?

Mak

Hello the great judges and their baby/babysitter of a bailiff! Just a reminder to hydrate or diedrate. That is all. Court jester out!

Nick D'Angelo

It went as awkwardly as you’d expect with everyone being slightly confused with whose turn it was and what was happening when. If only there was a system to determine these things!

Michelle Phelps

May it please the blessed justices and righteous Baliff Jake. Help my players adopted a dragon! I DM for my younger step siblings (ages 10-16) a home brew campaign where all the adults in the world have vanished and the kid heros are trying to find out what happened. While attempting to rescue a dwarf trapped by a young brass dragon, the party decided to take a pacificist route instead of fughting him. The party's wizard rolled a nat 20 to convince the dragon she was his mother and scold him into behaving himself. Then the bard rolled a nat 20 to persuade the dragon to join them. So now the party has a pet dragon named Dave. I know as DM, I shouldn't have let just 1 nat 20 give the party a dragon, but the kids were so excited I didn't want to crush their hopes and dreams. Should I be punished for not letting children get a taste of the cruel real world? Or if allowing these player shenanigans is acceptable to the Supreme crit judges, do you have any advice on how to balance encounters when the party has a literal dragon on their side? I humbly await your judgment, thank you.

Pedro Gomez

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

Rae

Case of the Evil Player. In our party one PC is straight up evil and often does unhelpful things during sessions, like sitting down in the middle of a battle because they said there was nothing left for them to do, and once pretended to be wallpaper for most of the sesh. None of the characters in our party would realistically be travelling with this PC and we are wondering what course of action to take. Sidenote, this person is a dear friend. Thank you for your guidance

John Richards

If it pleases the court, and the best hair in the bailiff business, Jake - I present to you the case of the problematic prepubescent. I’m a high school teacher and host a dnd club at our school. We had a first time dm running a home brew campaign, but we had one notoriously toxic player… (he would “roll for stats” at home, make his own perception checks unprompted, and insisted that he only played “chaotic/evil characters.”). With a rookie dm behind the screen, his antics quickly got out of hand. It hit the apex at the finale of our fist act when the party was battling the big bad; instead of helping the party, the player (playing a Warforged barbarian with a negative charisma stat) only rolled to seduce the villain (COURT NOTE: He even acted out his romantic efforts in a robot voice). After about 4 rounds, he rolled a nat20, and the dm didn’t know how to handle it. She ultimately gave everyone a free round to buff or heal while the bbeg was confused. The Warforged acted first, he open hand slapped the bad guy to break his trance, then ran out of the chamber and locked the door with the party inside; He said his goal was to let us hash it out, then he would come in and finish off who was left and collect all of the loot… needless to say, this ended the session. After some deliberation I decided to kick the kid out of dnd club; he claimed it wasn’t fair because “it’s what his character would do!” and then vowed vengeance upon me (COURT NOTE: he started his own rival dnd club in the band room… but I don’t think anyone ever showed up). My question for the court is: this kid sucks right? I’m not a bad club advisor, right?! I leave judgement in your supreme and righteous hands.

FumblesOBrian

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

JuicyKiwi

To the honorable and esteemed Crit Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the dapper Bailiff Hurwitz, I present to you the a simple case, involving inexperience all around, and ask if I’m overreacting. My DND group is new, none of us have played before and we were so excited to play together. However, the DM, aka my best friend and fellow players fiancé, has been making some unorthodox calls. Allow me to explain. Every session we all start off in a great mood, excited to play. It’s a chance to see each other during our hectic schedules and catch up! However I have noticed that our DM is allowing his personal life to affect his calls. If he’s in the dog house with his fiancé, he sets the bar for checks extremely high, even for simple things. He makes NPCs overreact, has a “no goof” (as I’ve deemed it) attitude, and really pulls the punches against us with even weaker foes. My first ever character actually died because of it. (I had two successful death saves and as soon as I was safe he immediately attacked me again with a legendary action and caused me to actually die, when the person who had been attacking him most was his fiancé) If he’s had an argument with a player in real life, he will target said player. He also favors his fiancé, and it has put a strain on the general atmosphere as we play. Would it be right for me to say something to him or my best friend, his fiancé? Or am I overreacting?

Andrey M

Honourable Justices, and that lowly individual who occasionally interrupts you to read cases. My campaign has a narrative character called a Time Keeper, whose cycled throughout generations to maintain a timeline (like the Avatar from Last Airbender). I wanted my PC to play as whatever they wanted so we settled on Phantom Rogue—but too fit the narrative I just homebrew’d that he could have chronal shift. All is well when suddenly my PC uses it to save another—hinting on his narrative significance to the story. The PC being saved whips out Tasha’s Cauldron on camera to argue that he shouldn’t have it. We divulge a bit of the narrative I’d hidden to smooth his frustration that PC 1 has an arguably more powerful character than the rest, and move on. PC 2 now uses this as a platform to ask for the most insane homebrew shit; I’ve so far negotiated a powerful familiar, but had to cut them off. Am I wrong to have turned a narrative mechanism into a playable ability? What do I do with PC 2 since they’re actually very kind and knowledgeable (this helps me DM).

Angel Ramirez

May it please the honorable Bailiff and maybe interest the other people. I was running a full homebrew post-apocalypse campaign complete with cybernetic cowboys and mutant airship pirates. I was DMing and my group's ship was under attack by pirates hundreds of feet into the air and they were being boarded in the first session. A player decided that they would jump 20 feet across to try and jump onto the enemy ship and disable the harpoons. I told him it would be a DC 17 DEX or Acrobatics since this was a very difficult task. They agreed to it despite my warning and rolled an immediate NAT 1. I didn't want to negate his move so I told him he cleared it, but he was hanging on and needed a STR check DC 10 to get up onto the deck. He rolled a NAT 3 and from then I said he began to fall and anyone could try to save him. I made the DC 10 just to make it easy. NO ONE ROLLED ABOVE A 5. And with that my player Elijah Redhook plummeted towards the earth and died. While people enjoyed the session they were shocked that someone died in the first one and told me I should've been more lenient. I felt like I was plenty lenient but I decided to talk to my player and see if he wanted to reroll or do a side story where somehow he survived. He said sure and then HE NEVER CAME BACK. My group still thinks it's my fault for his departure and while his death has become an ongoing bit where we cut to his corpse in the desert, they still think I should have made it easier. Was I wrong to let him plummet? Or was I just in my actions? I humbly await your sentence.

Molly Spruill

The Not so Secret Secret To the honorable Crit Justices and the some-what adequate yet hard-working bailiff, I present the case of the Not so Secret Secret. Over quarantine me and my best friend (who would be dming) organized a campaign with some of our friends who had never played dnd before. When creating my character, a sorcerer/rouge multi class who had run away from home and become a pirate, we came up with the idea that my character was hiding her sorcerer abilities to further hide from her family. And to go along with it a mechanic of my rolling stealth checks to hide me casting and the other pcs rolling perception (if close enough to me) to catch me doing it. In the first combat of the campaign things go sideways and the party’s cleric got cornered. I can’t remember if I had been holding my turn or if i was next in the initiative order but I decided to risk it and cast something on the dude cornering her because she had just missed her attack. Even though no one was close to me when I cast , the DM then the call to have the Cleric roll to see if she notices where the spell came from since it hit the dude in front of her. She rolled a nat 20. Now court, the issue is not the roll itself but the fact that I was under the impression that if one of the other pcs rolled and beat my stealth check the DM would then secretly let them know what was up. Instead my DM told the cleric, out loud, in front of everyone. I was pissed, but when I interrupted my DM and tried to get her to just message the information to the cleric instead, she told me that while the other players (who again had never played before and didn’t understand that they shouldn’t meta-game) would know, that their characters wouldn’t so it wasn’t a big deal. Was I in the wrong for getting upset at the DM for revealing it in front of the entire table or was it reasonable for to argue that only the cleric should be receiving the information?

Tyler Melton

May it please the court and that one guy I was running a campaign and i gave the party a homebrewed dark souls style great bow called the heartseeker. It functioned the same as a vorpal sword except on a Nat 20 instead of cutting someone's head off it would shoot them through the heart instantly killing them. With the ammo being expensive to make I figured this would be fine for balancing. My party made their way towards an epic vampire bossfight and midway through the fight it finally happened and my player rolled a Nat 20. There was cheers all around until i had to inform my players that since a vampire is undead it doesn't need or have a heart in order to live so instead of instant killing my super cool vampire the other property of the vorpal sword stats would apply and they would get to do extra damage to him. As you might expect this caused massive uproar around the table with one of my players arguing that since they need to drink blood they obviously have some sort of bodily functions and may need a heart. Ultimately I stood by my decision but I bring this question to the court. Do vampires have a Heart?

Brandon

I have a very short and simple question. My DM told me that my rogue could not pick up a small pebble and throw it at a guard to get his attention since he was “told to stay on guard”. I said i throw the pebble anyway, DM says the guard doesn’t notice. About 10 minutes later when we had moved on, i threw my D20 at my DM who was immediately annoyed. I asked him how he noticed the small projectile when he was so clearly focused on another task at hand. Was i wrong for rolling a ranged attack on my DM to prove pebbles are tools too?

Tristan Tonks

You're right, it was 10ft, corrected it now, thanks for spotting!

Bret Ryan

May it please the omnipotent crit court and “lunch pail kinda guy” Bayliff Hurwitz I present to you the case of the lost Wish spell. I was a player in our tables long Curse of Strahd campaign. During one of the run-ins with one of the main allies of the group, she presented an opportunity with the Deck of Many Things. My character, being the over-confident Paladin of Conquest that he was, decided the risk is something he would never pass up. I pulled the Moon card, which gives me the wish spell 1d3 times. My DM obliged and I rolled a 2. After immediately having to blow through one of my wishes because a demon was summoned instantly from the next card drawn. I was down to 1 wish. As we were only 5th level at the time, it was still very appreciated and useful. Flash forward to almost 9 months and 10 levels later. My father in the campaign had been killed by Strahd and turned into one of his goon vampires. The DM repeatedly used him to toy with us and attack us almost every session. This made the other players at the table absolutely despise my father. As the weeks went on, they plotted to kill him and absolutely hated his guts. My character was very attached to his father and was hoping to be able to reverse the curse Strahd had put on him with the Wish spell. After one of the fights, I was pleading that the players to not kill my father, as I had this plan. However in a rush of anger they began to push his casket off of a bridge into a rushing river to kill him forever. I quickly reacted and said “I use my wish spell and wish my father was dead”, hoping to send him to the afterlife and give him a proper goodbye. Everybody was stunned and forgot that I had this wish spell. The DM then thought for a moment, and said “technically he is already dead....he is an undead vampire”. This destroyed me in every way possible as my table mates cheered as they dumped my father off the bridge. We never saw him again..... Was I wrong to think that the DM could have given a little grace for a heated moment and a spell I waited almost a year to use, or should I just shut my mouth and think clearer next time. Also, to make things worse, the other players at the table, seemed not to care one ounce.... Please give your harshest punishment to those you see fit. Thank you!

Ian Hudson

I asked what “can I do to kickstart fleshing out the next sessions,” i.e. how can I get some inspiration. Asking them to write my campaign for me would be unhinged haha

Samuel

Yes, and during our break he said he wished he had. Or that he said there was an anti-magic field around the arena. All of which would have worked but he is a new DM and was very clearly flustered. I'm more asking if I was in the wrong for, in their words "not letting my party use their cool magic to win more gold overall" and getting two out of our 4 person party mad at me.

Spenser W Hunt

To the Glorious Lady and Gentlemen Justices...Oh, and the ever dapper Jake. I present to the Supreme Crit the case of DM & Party V. R.A.W. For sake of context, I'm playing a Battle Master Fighter. I was originally the sole frontline combatant in our party. The Rouge stealths off  this and the adjacent planes of existence as the casters and ranger are raining down hellfire from afar, literally and metaphorically. I was the only shiny agro magnet. Fortunately we recently picked up a new member who's a barbarian and sharing the heat with me. We are playing a campaign using a slightly modified version of Gritty Realism (i.e.: a night's rest is a short rest and a full week of rest is a long rest). As a Battle Master, I'm fine with it because the majority of my stuff, like superiority die, comes back with a short rest. The casters in my party however need a full week of rest to gain their spells back. During this time, they have the option to learn different spells as we discuss tactics to be better suited for the situation. This is where things get a little complicated, as Battle Masters have a reputation for being broken. The Battle Master's R.A.W. for learning new and/or changing maneuvers is as follows: Maneuvers. You learn three maneuvers of your choice. Many maneuvers enhance an attack in some way. You can use only one maneuver per attack. You learn two additional maneuvers of your choice at 7th, 10th, and 15th level. Each time you learn new maneuvers, you can also replace one maneuver you know with a different one. Our DM has gone on record, stating it is malarkey to have to wait to level up in order to change maneuver's. For example, if the party knows that we will be facing a group of enemies like bandits or a pack of animals, the casters can learn A.O.E. spells, whereas a fighter with maneuvers would have to wait to level up high enough in order to learn/swap out to the Sweeping Attack maneuver. To remedy this, our DM has ruled that I can swap out maneuvers over a long rest to be, and I quote, "As proficient and versatile as my class' and subclass' descriptions claim to be." That and I can be a better team player. Now obviously it's his campaign and he can run it as he pleases, but after a socratic seminar about this, and coming a unanimous consensus, we believe the R.A.W. is unnecessarily handicapping anyone who uses maneuvers. Are we correct in this assessment, or are we perhaps judging the R.A.W. too harshly? Thank you for your consideration. May Dice Christ and RNGesus look upon you favorably, Lord of the Hunts

Nathan Perez

Supreme Baliff Hurwitz, I come bearing an update on my previous case, and I hope the court will be pleased! I actually work at the church that my DM volunteers at, and I do audio visual as well, so haunting him was relatively easy. I stuffed a bluetooth speaker into a puppet we have for the kids and placed it in his office. I then used a voice changer to project my voice through said doll. When he went into his office, he saw the doll but didnt think much of it until I started whispering his name in a booming voice while hammer sounds played in the background. I never heard someone at a church curse that loudly, but it was a wonderful bonding experience. Tungsten has been avenged and all is right in the world!

Flick

To the sagely justices and the mighty bailiff Jake, I present the case of the Telekinetic Klutz. This case comes from my first ever D&D game with me, my brother, my sister and her (now ex-)boyfriend as the DM. I played a 6th level warlock in a party that had just cleared the Lost Mines of Phandelvar. At the end of that adventure there was loot, including a ring of Telekinesis. My warlock claimed the item and attuned to it, spending the next few sessions learning how to use it. I could lift heavy objects just fine but every time I tried to implement the fine motor control aspect of the spell my DM said some mishap would always occur, all without any sort of roll. That was fine, the ring was new. I just assumed I'd need time and practice to get better. The problem was, no matter how often I used the ring I didn't seem to improve at all. I asked my DM if I could at least roll to practice during our downtime but he said no. Occasionally I would continue to ask. The last time I did so my DM got so mad he said that while my character was scooping up some Ettercap goop with a vial he was trying to levitate, the glass shattered and ended up slashing his hand. That made me mad as well and we ended up arguing. I pointed out that exerting fine motor control over objects is well within the limits of the spell. His oh-so eloquent response was "Do you wanna keep pushing me?" without any further reasoning. Our argument ended with the DM invoking the final say and I didn't bring it up again. I understand now that he was trying to nerf a higher level item, but if it was so game-breaking, why offer it in the first place? Also, he didn't have to be such a dick about it. I ask: was my erstwhile DM correct to put such a restriction on this item or were my requests being unfairly dismissed? I await your judgement.

Chrys

May it please anyone with or without honor, my players play in the Ghosts of Saltmarsh setting but on a much more homebrewed version to which they are all sea captains now of level 17 from level 5 and very much Ill Luck Henry in how much I can throw at them and the campaign has lasted a little over a year. One of my PC’s is a joke character who just calls himself Leroy Jenkins and does the stupidest shit possible. I balance encounters when he runs off and normally run two fights at the same time so no one is bored. Should I just punish him so he doesn’t split the party this way constantly? Any ruling is in your hands

Yuncle Ben

May it please the court and honorable bailiff Jake. I bring before you a case of “Ripper the Dog”. So, we are all fairly new players. We have been playing steady for about 15-20 sessions when the problem occurred. When completing a quest that required us to remove a threat of orcs nearby, one of our players, the warlock, put together that the orcs may be working for the Big Bad. Our warlock acted like we were sent under orders to inspect the hideout and learn about the progress of the “plan”. In order to get the Orcs to believe us the DM had the warlock role for Deception. He rolled a natural 20, it was very exciting. But the Orcs still didn’t trust us. So the warlock continued to try and convince the orcs even pulling out a possession of the Big Bad that we had gathered in a previous encounter. The DM continued to have our warlock roll another 3 deception rolls as the chief orc questioned the warlock. We all watched in amazement as he rolled very well. The DM then had the orc ask us what the name of the Big Bad’s pet dog was. We of course did not know and had not met his animal familiar, which the DM later informed us was named Ripper and had apparently been mentioned once at the beginning of our campaign. This ended with the orcs not believing us and a battle ensued. However, this caused a heated argument between the players and our DM, which has never happened before. We feel that with the natural 20 and the other high rolls we should have been able to convince the orcs. Was it within the DM’s rights to make this decision? I leave the judgement to the honorable Justices.

Kenna L

May it please the court and tickle the bailiff, I present to you a case of murder most foul. I was a new DM, I had created a world of deep lore and complicated politics… and one of my players was an absolute troll. Don’t get me wrong he’s a great friend irl, but he’s that guy who tries to stop every battle from happening and is shocked when is doesn’t. During one of my more difficult battles, a group of opposing adventurers attacked my players in the village they were staying at in order to steal a magical artifact and used a swarm of wild Cloakers as their distraction. Many innocent villagers and allies were lost. My pacifist player tried to effectively tease the opposing party into joining his side by insulting the wizards father (the lich king) and mocking their country and cause (he was a Druid, not a bard so there is no mechanical reasoning behind this)… I had established the evil wizard was emotionally unstable, so I rolled on the table how extremely she would react to the insults. She rolled at nat 1. So I had her cast a cone of cold at her highest remaining spell slot out of spite as she and her party of anti-hero’s made their escape. Except my troublemaker player saved, and my lovely cleric player did not. He had rolled very poorly on all his HP as we levelled up, so it was an insta kill, and a murder most foul on my own hands. So I did what any panicking new DM would do, and I broke the rules of my own world to give the cleric another chance (revivify did not existing this world, so even though he was for realz dead, he still got to roll his death saves and was brought back to life by his goddess) I felt guilty that I had admittedly been trying to (justly…) kill my pacifist PC for a while now and had gotten lucky that the dice christ delivered me a natty 1 to cast my petty little spell... So my question to you all is this, am I an unfair and partial DM for trying to kill one PC while actively going out of my way a moment later to keep another alive? Should I turn in my dice and retire out of shame? I await your swift and brutal judgements… (and plead the leniency of the bailiff who requested brevity...)

Leftovers do no wrong

May it please Jake. I have had a series of games over the past year that have failed due to covid, so to save myself some heart ache as dm I have been using the same setting but moving to different times and parts of the world with each campaign. In my hubris though as the last game started to fall apart due to poor attendance I simply paused it to hopefully pick up later with the same group. But now I am stuck as the events that the last campaign would have tackled "never happened". In order to give my current players the feeling that their actions can truly change the world for years to come should I dictate how the last campaign would have ended? Should I do one last game with the old party to speed run the end of the old campaign? Should Jake finally have a place of honor? I leave it to you oh crit court.

David Hamet

May it please the honourable court and I guess also that one guy who reads the court cases. I present to you the case of "The timeline correction memory loss". Our group of adventurers was transported 3 years into the future through an unfortunate teleportation circle malfunction. At that point in time the main storyline has unfolded in a rather bad way due to our absence. Making the best of a bad situation we fought our way through and even managed to get a valuable but rather useless legendary magic item. Being the resident bard I managed to trade the item for a bunch of cool stuff including one draw from a deck of many things. I, stupid as I am, gifted the draw to our incredibly chaotic and impulsive wizard who managed to get a wish spell. During a tragic encounter with a NPC we knew from the past who suffered a terrible fate during our 3 years abscence our wizard, in his desperation, cast the wish spell and literally wished for "all of this time traveling s**t to never have happened". Our DM took that very literally and threw us right back to the moment just before the teleportation circle malfunction. This time luck was on our side and we stayed in the present. The problem: Our DM decided that none of us could remember anything that happened in the now entirely erased timeline which effectively means that our sessions of the past 1 and 1/2 years irl are all meaningless. We lost 2 levels, cool magic items and even our ship we fought so hard for and worst of all we can't even remember it. After a moment of collective disbelief and a brief discussion where some of us voiced our sadness about the loss and asked our DM if there is any way to at least remember the things that have happened our DM still insisted on his decision. Was he right in his decision or should he give us at least a way to remember our adventures?

Scott Reutter

May it please the pulchratudinous and honorable justices, as well as the fit-spiring bailiff: Background: I had never played D&D before, but decided to give it a try (perhaps after listening to your podcast), and my partner and his best friends also wanted to play. I was the DM, and based the story off of an old Game Boy game called Golden Sun, which has characters that are mostly teenagers. The PCs ranged in age from 12 to 24, and one of my partner's friends was playing a 16 year old and was making attempts to romance a 16 year old NPC. After trying to shut it down a few times, and him not getting the hint, I decided to have her be kidnapped by what would turn out to be the BBEGs as a more incentivized plot hook, and it worked! I had an under leveled DMPC go with the party to keep the thread going who was the NPC's grandfather (and also had heals since the party was severely lacking) The campaign was going great, with the enamored PC continuously citing his desire to rescue his beloved as a driving force in his adventure, and then there was a confrontation with the BBEGs on the top of a crumbling tower. One BBEG escaped to continue their plans, whilst the other stayed to fight. Additionally, the tower split into sections, and I had a mechanic built in for determining how the top of the tower would break apart, and ultimately fall hundreds of feet. Now, during this fight, the captured NPC was restrained and tied down on a far corner of the top of the tower, and in the beginning of the fight her section was rolled for beginning to fall from the main section. Round after round the section fell away from the main section, and I would describe explicitly how this was occurring, and have the NPC scream for help. When no one helped the NPC's grandfather went to help her, was able to free her, but did not have a way to get the both of them back to safety. After two more unlucky rolls, and no help from the party, the NPC and her grandfather fell to their death. The enamored PC was DEVASTATED. Again, the fall was hundreds of feet, and the fall damage rolled more than tripled the max HP of the fallen, so they were instantly dead. This did not matter to the PC nor the person playing them. They would lay into me session after session for killing their "girlfriend" despite her shutting his PC down over and over (mostly because I didn't want to role play underage romance), and soon after the rest of the group would join in on this. This continued even after the party released a powerful Dao (earth genie) that used their magic to produce two massive crystalline trees in memoriam of the fallen. What I pose to the court: Did I go too far in killing off this PC's love interest, despite the repeated reminders of the impending danger? I accept whatever punishment the court finds true and just.

Muqtadaa Miandara

Honored justices Murphy, Axford, Tanner, and any potential guest justices, as well as our bailiff who's just fine I guess - I present the case of the misworded Wish spell. I've been running this campaign for two and a half years, and we are almost at level 11. One of my players had a genie's lamp he'd found as part of his magic-item-seeking ways. His best friend in the party, a dwarven battle master, had recently succumbed to vampirism in a battle against an ancient vampire lord transformed into an ancient vampire dragon. So my player with the lamp decided to see if there was really a genie in there, which I had always planned on there being. I had no concrete reason to keep my other player as a vampire, and so I was fine with him using his wish on removing the affliction. I made the genie a sympathetic character imprisoned to the will of the holder of the lamp, and the party clearly liked him, to the point where my player with the wish said verbatim "Look, I wish you could free yourself of these shackles," to which I felt I had no choice but to say that the genie was freed. I had cautioned the party in advance about contracts and phrasing because they were in the feywild, and they had spent time before summoning the genie discussing the phrasing of the wish, so they knew that their words in character were important. I immediately felt unsure about my choice to take advantage of that moment, and one of my other players at the table thought I was being unfair. The player with the wish said that I had him - it was his own fault for being loose with the phrasing in a moment where the phrasing was incredibly important. I even decided after the fact that the Genie liked the party enough to keep an eye on my player, and gave him a special d10 of inspiration that recharged every 24 hours as a falvorful way of saying the genie was bending luck around him. The other players still give me guff about this so I leave it up to you oh Supreme Justices - do I deserve punishment? PS just a side note but when I started the campaign I was working 60 hour weeks at a restaurant and taking full semesters towards my bachelor's, and somehow we managed to play more regularly then as compared to now with most of us working 9-5 cushy corporate gigs

Eugene

Here ye here ye May it please the honorable justices and the more than less but not great bailiff. 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.

Daigle

May it please the court and the honorable court manager/overseer/custodian, I present to you the case of the Ivory Polymorph. I am a player in a game where we are tracking down the orb of dragonkind in the Feywild. As the party wizard, I wanted to cast legend lore to gain access to information on the orb that might help in our quest. However, our party had no ivory to use as material components. I suggested that our Trickery Domain cleric polymorph one of our party into an elephant, from which we could quickly harvest ivory to cast legend lore before polymorph ends. Our DM's disapproving reaction prevented the party from trying the plan. The question at issue is: Would casting a spell using material components from a polymorphed creature be successful, unsuccessful, or somewhere in between? I humbly leave the matter to the court, requesting your arcanely binding opinion.

ap.cleric

May it please the court, I present to you the case of the flavorful BBEG. My fiance and I are currently planning on playing in a campaign for several of our online friends. My fiance is going to be the DM. We have it worked out that the campaign will have a twist at the end where they find out that my character was the bad guy all along and the big battle at the end will be against my character and her hydra. Right before they find out that I'm the BBEG, I wanted to flavor it that as soon as the party walks into my lair, they activate a glyph that has a Momentary Stasis "spell" with an insanely high save so that most, if not all, of the party will fail for the dramatic effect of the reveal of me walking up to the hydra. He said that it wouldn't be fair to the party and it's... wait for it... RAILROADING the party. Is this truly railroading or is it justified to have an epic reveal to our friends? I am at your mercy

Steven Hoffart

Honourable justices and the Jake that keeps them. May it please the court. I recently started a medieval setting campaign with the flavour of more serious world that my players said they wanted. One player, a bard, has decided to be a Flatulist after seeing the new movie Benedetta. I worry having a farting bard will take out the wind out of serious setting but it is a setting correct performer and I can’t fault them on that. Justices, do I allow a farting bard on the letter of the law of the setting or bar it due to the spirit of the setting?

Nico the Underpaid English Teacher

Dear beautiful baby boy Jake and, well, others, How do I actually garner the initiative and energy required to consistently DM? I'm a forever DM and I'm pretty burnt out. That's it that's the post I love you all very dearly kbyeeee

M. T. Kadisin

May it please the court, Honorable Crits and Noble Bailiff I present you with a case of murder most foul. I had just joined a campaign that featured two of my friends. The first season involved an ocean voyage to Ravnica. It was really fun and saw my elephant-person monk leaping from ship to ship smacking around a demon. Trouble started once we arrived. My friend, playing a gentle barbarian, purchased a magic weapon from shop! Turns out it was cursed with berserker energy! Seeing how much it upset her, I and our other friend, tried to threaten the shopkeeper with taking back the item and removing the curse. The DM just pushed us past it and refused to do anything about the magical and cursed weapon. After that, a fight broke out. The barbarian, afraid of hurting her friends and going against her deepest held beliefs, avoids the combat by just sitting out. As the combat ranged across the city she just... sat there. Trying to hurry up the combat I followed along and did my best to bring peace once more. Once combat was over the session teetered to an ending. We all log out. Then my cursed friend told me she was leaving the game, and with both my friends leaving I left too. Oh Highest Crit in the land, who killed the fun? My friend for not rolling with the punches or the DM for not seeing the signs that a player was really off put by a cursed weapon?

Jack Ganley

May it please the honorable justices and bailiff (you’re all wonderful). I present the case of the backstabbing parent NPCs. I DM a game with my partner and some of our friends. My partner plays a high eleven druid named Rain, who ran away from home to escape her wealthy parents with some “traditional” world views. In our first arc, the party helped defeat an eleven mage with connections to Rain’s family... Thus, upon returning to her hometown a few months later, Rain was summoned by her mother for a lunch. This was a set up for her to be captured to pay for the downfall of the eleven mage. To Rain’s credit, she rolled very high on insight checks against her mother, while her mother rolled a natural 20 on deception. While we had agreed that her family were not great people, my partner was genuinely surprised that they would do something arguably evil. So I ask the court, should I be punished for taking too much liberty in making this decision for a PCs family member or is it a respectacular DM decision?

Austin

Good day justice’s and bailiff, I bring forth the story of the impatient and angry sorcerer. My friends and I are playing Tome of annihilation, obviously a difficult campaign. We have one friend playing a sorcerer named Rubius Falkor, who has a problem with almost everything. It started with how much water needed to be consumed everyday and how long travel took, saying it was “dumb” and “pointless”. He insisted that it should all be skipped so we can get to fights quicker. I am playing a bard named Prismo Dandy, who quite enjoys the subtlety’s of the adventures (talk to NPCs, sitting around the campfire in character, etc). Last session we got annoyed at Rubius once again complaining about travel so we agreed we would hide when we encounter things more to avoid “pointless, dumb” fights. BUT Rubius refuses to hide cuz “that’s not what his character would do”. He also has said that he has the worse character out of everyone for fighting (bard, rogue, barbarian, sorcerer) even tho he picked his character. All this conflicts has led to us starting a new game and playing without him but now he complains about how we’re so unfair constantly when we hang out outside of dnd. We’re we right to just start up a new game or should we have tried to work with him more? Thank you for this ruling and good rolls to thee forever more.

Sara S.

May it please the court and any adjacent entities…. My group (six level 5 PCs) were fighting the BBEG. It was a hard fight, but we were getting creamed more than we should have for the challenge rating. It took me a bit to notice, but about halfway through the second round I clocked that my DM was taking legendary actions after nearly every one of our turns. I finally understood when she said “well this takes two legendary actions, so I won’t go again until after you”. I hesitantly interjected that I didn’t think that’s how legendary actions worked, and after some pushback and her husband backing me up, the DM looked it up and realized her mistake (she thought that you could take as many legendary actions a round as you wanted, and a “two legendary action cost” meant you had to wait until two players had gone before you used another one). She was super embarrassed and I was left feeling like I overstepped. Should I have bit my tongue and let the accidental TPK happen? I humbly await your judgement.

BigBoodyDaddy

May it please the court and the feeble ankled bailiff, I present to you the case of the Halloween murder. This Halloween my DM hosted a Halloween one shot. The premise was that a party of level one characters found themselves in a Squid Games esque compound and we had to complete challenges to escape, if you died then you respawned as a person with a different appearance but still your same character. I was about two hours late due to me taking my niece Trick or Treating. When I got there everyone seemed very annoyed due to the fact that one of my party members played an extremely obnoxious Canadian mountie. My character spawned into the game after the next challenge which took us to Cabin in the Woods esque control room with five monitors. Each monitor had video of each place we had been and places where we were going. One monitor had video of a hulking monster standing in a dark room. Behind us was another door. The mountie decided to go through this door. My character watched each monitor waiting to see my party member. My DM said as soon as I looked back the monster in the dark room disappeared. Not wanting to be attacked my character closed the door with the mountie still inside, this resulted in the character’s death. The player absolutely lost his shit, and when he respawned, tried to attack me… twice. He called me an asshole out of game and I told him that my character also wouldn’t want to die so he would of closed the door. He proceeded to try and sabotage the next challenge to kill everybody, and he was killed by another player, which was maybe a step too far. We proceed with the next challenge and his character respawned. He attempted to out right kill the character that killed him and at that point my DM killed his character and told him he couldn’t respawn till he chilled out. At this point the player had a complete melt down and told us if he hadn’t of gotten a ride to the session he would of left. He blamed me for starting this all, and I told him it’s not a big deal if you die because you respawn. He stewed on the couch for awhile and joined the party again, but didn’t really talk or do anything. This guy has been in our year long campaign and is our DM in off weeks from our main campaign, so as you can imagine, we never bring up this session. I humbly come before the court and ask if it was I who was in the wrong or this Yugo of a man.

Connor McKenzie

May it please the court and the Honorable Supreme Justices Tanner, Axford, & Murphy - I humbly present the case of the Raging Werewolf. In brief, after a series of unfortunate events our session devolved into all party members being infected with lycanthropy during a full moon and immediate PvP combat to establish dominance of our new pack. While normally werewolves are immune to non-magical weapons, we were happy to accept that they could damage each other for just such scraps. The RP prompts from the DM were heavily involving a boiling raging fueling our decisions and clouding our players minds. As a Frenzy Barbarian who was already mechanically raging as he turned I asked if I could still take half damage from the blows as nothing from the rage mecanics would have caused it to drop and it made narrative sense considering the boiling rage. He ruled that the transformation cut off the rages effects and we still had an extremely enjoyable session. I prostrate myself at the courts mercy. Should my rage have continued to help me in my werewolf packs power struggle?

G.X. Barnett

To the esteemed Crit Justices and the exalted Bailiff, I present to you the short ans succinct case of the cursed wildshaper: On a recent adventure, my Druid was infected with lycanthropy, choosing to look on the bright side of things, I took it in stride and vowed to make the best of it and choose to exclusively wildshape into a wolf as there would me sure to have magical bonuses. My DM said that the two things are completely unrelated and that no bonuses would be granted. When I tried to plead my case I was rebuked. What say the court? I wasn’t asking for a special home brew, just something that would make sense to the story. Throwing myself of the clemency of the Justices, GX Barnett

Jason Rodriguez

May it please the court, and slightly uninvolve bailiff Jake. In my recent Sunday game, my scribe wizard had recently acquired a spellbook to copy down new spells and I needed the materials to do so. With the party low on funds, my wizard casted Distort Value on a couple items that the others were okay with selling. When they went to a blacksmith to sell a mace, the shopkeep knew what was going on, casting detect magic, identify, and dispel magic, along with a +5 and expertise in Insight and Persuasion. I told the dm that I was taking this spell at the beginning of the campaign and the reason for its purpose and was fine with it. Is it fair that a shopkeep to be this extreme and to cause the two players selling the items to freak out?

emilythecoffeewench

To the righteous Crit Justices and the venerable Bailiff, I present my a case with my beloved DM's permission (we are going to the SF live show together). At 5th level, we battled some tweens and one of them crit on my vampire party member with guiding bolt. She was insta-killed from the radiant and crit damage. She was also our cleric so no one could bring her back. Several months later, the vampire was brought back through Frankenstein bull shit and the piece of her soul that I captured as a warlock. However! During another battle, my dm tried to kill a beloved npc but had the insta-kill rules slightly wrong. He thought you needed negative half their max HP instead of minus their total max HP. I spoke up, but my dm and the player behind the vampire disagreed. I did not think I was wrong so I looked it up, spoke up again, and then sent the excerpt. It was awkward as we realized that our vampire shouldn't have died all those months ago. The npc lives on, but I feel bad correcting my dm. Should I have done that or accepted my dm's different death rules? I await your judgement.

meaghan sheridan

Good afternoon, your honors. I present to you a fight so bad that it ended the campaign it was part of, and I am asking whether I was wrong. It’s worth noting that I typically DM, but was a player in this campaign. The campaign was set in a magical Boston (a la the unsleeping city), bc that’s where we all met in college. I played a nouveau rich leprechaun (reflavored halfling) Part of the magic of the world was that the regular people/mortals perceived the magical people as regular beings. Therefore, even though I was a tiny little leprechaun, the underage patrons of my dive bar perceived me as a regular sized lady with an absolute dumptruck. I wanted to flavor my character by giving her magical stilts to account for the height difference in how I was perceived. It was pure flavor and had no bearing on stats or abilities. The DM categorically said no because she didn’t like the aesthetic of it. Was I wrong for standing my ground and demanding stat-less, advantageless stilts?

Max Steinunn

Honorable justices Axford, Murphy and Tanner and the normal bailiff Hurwitz I ask you to judge me. I was running a campaign and the players were investigating a town where a lot of the townspeople seemed odd, repeating the same phrases. They found out that people went missing and then came back different. The party split up and ended up investigating two different areas at the same time, one half went to the mayor's office and found some documents about a "education vacation" that took place in the old library and that there was something dangerous going on there (very obviously brainwashing). The other half talked to a man about the working conditions at the factory in town. So fast forward a bit, they meet an NPC that is in two PCs backstories and the PCs start arguing with the NPC. Another PC, a book loving kobold barbarian decided that he did not want to listen to them argue anymore and wanted to go to the library to read and relax. I asked if they were sure, they said yes and rolled well on a stealth check to leave. The rest of the party lost their shit, saying "no it's a bad idea." But I said, "no, Dolto (the barbarian) made his decision and will go to the library." This would have made sense if he had been in the group that did not know what was going on at the library, however was present when the evidence was discovered. So Dolto the character knew that there was some shady stuff happening at the library. Here is where I might have done wrong, I knew that the player wasn't paying attention earlier in the game (it's a reoccurring issue, they have for example played animal crossing in the middle of a session, we play online without cameras). So Dolto went to library. Then the party followed a little while later to rescue Dolto. They fought a mind drinker vampire and another PC died while rescuing Dolto. However I did not find it fair to kill this PC for Dolto's mistake so they were brought back after making a deal with an evil god (multiclassed into warlock). So was I wrong in punishing my player for not paying attention and killing another member of the party. I just wanted to make them aware of the fact that their actions have consequences. I humbly await your judgment.

Destyn Hancock

May it please the court and the promotion due Bailiff. A crunch question your honors have experience with. For our 2 year long pirate campaign I multiclassed my Hexblade Warlock with the Echo Knight Fighter, while insanely fun me and the DM could not deduce whether I could use spells and other features with my Echo. (I.e. using smites on my echos attacks, casting spells from his location, hellish rebukes, etc.) Eventually we decided the language was too vague and I convinced him to do so, making my Triton a versatile powerhouse on the field, so I can't help but feel there was a large amount of excited pressuring on my part, and only more guilt set in when I was elected captain by the party. Justices, with experience in both classes was I in my right to coerce such a character into existence or should I be keelhauled for my transgressions?

Evan Richey

To the Supreme bailiff and his noble justice crew, I beg of you to take this case of character development. The game I play in has been running for almost 2 years now and yet one PC still seems to be stuck in her pre adventure mindset. The elf with a noble background has not learned how to handle much of what the party gets into. She'll complain about camping out for too long or getting into fights due to the party being wanted for arson she committed. She tends to talk over other characters when planning, which is especially not fun since we play over discord. She tends to insult the rest of the party and create fights that take the fun out of the game. It's starting to become an issue out of game and when we bring it up to the player She says "that's just my character, she hasn't decided to improve herself yet" It's been awhile now and she still feels like a character who has no interest in cooperation or party solidarity, telling us "it's fine for parties to fight with eachother" The rest of us are tired of the infighting. Are we within our right to dislike the character to the point of not healing her or should we try to enjoy the flavor she's tried to give the party and give her more time to grow? Merry Crit-mas and happy Two Year

Zacharythefish

Honorable justices, Axford, Murphy, Tanner and sexy sexy bailiff Jake. May it please the court. I was dming a campaign for my brothers and dad. My youngest brother decided to give the awakened zombie bartender Daniel holy water. Being the trusting good boy he is, he drank it without question. Of course being a non combat character it would kill him instantly. I keep around level 20 dmpcs to run these establishments, just because it’s fun to reskin old characters I’ve played to be npcs, and to get the party out of sticky situations if I need to. The owner Favonius of the Leg a Goblin arcane trickster rogue with no arms, was there at the time but not in a position to stop him. Immediately afterward he wanted to take it back and not have done that because then Favonius would TPK their level 3 characters. I eventually did begrudgingly let him take it back so we could keep playing, but I was still angry that he would try to kill my favorite character for no reason being well aware of the consequences. Was I right to let it go? Or should he have faced the consequences and made a new character. I await your judgement. P.S. my fiancé Madelyn is totally in love with you Justice Axford and I’m sure she’d love a shout out

Orangeleader398

May it please the honorable Crit justices and the kind hearted Baliff. I bring before you the case of the DM vs the Un-Religious Paladin. In my home campaign I am the DM and made a portal to a pocket dimension where this paladin’s orders founder was buried with the Holy weapon. He had to pass several trials to do so but even though I constantly reminded him of how “Holy” the place was and his “Blessed necklace” was reacting to things he continued to refuse to do religion checks through out the trials. In the end he complained saying it was too hard “how am I supposed to know to make a religion check?” He did pass the trials but was later killed by a soul lance that session. Was I in the wrong for expecting a seasoned player and paladin to make religion checks in a holy place with hints? I await the crit courts sacred judgements.

Austin

May it please the court and bailiff. My friends and I were playing in a homebrew campaign of my buddys. We were sneaking toward a keep that had been taken over by white tusk orcs. While sneaking we were caught at one point by 12 white orcs (we were a party of 4 lvl 5 characters) and wanted to avoid a fight or worse a TPK. I, a rogue skilled in the arts of persuasion and other charisma based abilities, climbed a tree and shouted in orcish for them to stop and not attack. I added that we brought news that the chief needed to hear (true) and we came in peace ( kinda true). I rolled a 19 but our DM said the orc could tell I wasn’t native cuz of my accent. We asked what needed to be rolled to be successful and he said that none of us were orcs so we would always have an accent no matter what we rolled. I ask, does this seem okay? Wouldn’t any language spoken a race or different origin not work at that point? Was out DM being too hard on us or does that seems reasonable? And just to add we ended up haven’t to run away cuz one player went down in the first round so it doesn’t seem to be story related. I eagerly await your ruling! Thank you.

Canas_Colours

May it please the court and the noble bailiff. I bring before you the Case of Party vs Rope. In our current campaign, we recently had a fought dragon worshippers in a bottleneck situation. We were at the top of a tunnel shaft while the enemies were trying to climb a rope ladder to get to us since most of them were close range combatants. Besides me and my husband all of the players are new to DnD. At the start of combat our rogue tries to cut the rope ladder, to which the DM makes him roll an attack for. On a 17 the DM says that he is unable to cut the rope, which struck me as odd. We were only Level 4 at that point. My sword bard tries to cut the rope next, but while she was able to HIT with her attacks (dealing nearly 20 damage) the DM says the rope is damaged but still intact. Later during the fight my Bard cast shatter on foes climbing up the DM insists that the rope unaffected. After session he said that he intended the rope latter to be made of human leather to explain why it was more durable (because normal rope has 2 HP), but it still seems absurd to me, that this ladder had a higher HP than our party Wizard let alone some of our enemies. Was the DM just trying to prevent us from steamrolling combat? I eagerly await your just ruling!

Andrew

Juicy justices and big boy bailiff, I am the DM. One of my players has an item that allows him to speak telepathically with someone else. This same player is also a rogue. Recently, the duplicitous rogue encountered someone speaking in Thieves Cant. He asked if he could hold a conversation with Thieves Cant and also a separate mental conversation at the same time, so that any listeners would be totally unaware of their conversation. I wanted to ask for rolls because I thought the mental coordination to carry two, or even two "and a half", conversations at once would be mentally taxing. He argued that there's nothing that says he *can't* do that, so eventually I relented and simply allowed him to to talk about one thing verbally and another thing simultaneously mentally. Should I have stuck fast to my initial roll-oriented ruling, or was he right that he could "just do" it with no rolls required? Eagerly awaiting a sentence either way. Happy Hoglidays.

Frank

Most illustrious god king justices and jester Jake, i bring you a case of probability and crimes against dice. One of our players has recently started rolling a d20, even when he isn’t asked for a check, to “bank” the roll. Meaning, he applies the banked roll to his next check. He will then roll again immediately after being asked for a check and proceed to bank the following roll, and so on. He does this through the whole session, but it leads to issues. Once, he rolled a nat 20 and then, essentially, had a free success on whatever he decided his next check to be. I feel that this upsets the flow of the game and takes the spontaneity out of it, but no one has said anything to him to stop. When I raised it once, he rebuffed me, saying I didn’t know how probability worked. So I ask, dear majesties of the court, am I in the wrong? Or is this player tampering with the will of the dice?

Leah

May it please the admirable justices and adequate bailiff. I bring the case of the sleepy PC. Our dnd group have been playing every week for almost 3 years now. Due to some of us moving far away (to Manchester!), we have opted for virtual meet ups. In the last couple months, we have a PC who has apparently lost some of her spunk after she went quiet. Thinking perhaps she’d lost connection, we opted to stop and ring her to see if she was okay. It was then we heard the gentle snoring of our tabaxi monk and realised she must have dozed off. We all found it amusing and moved on swiftly at our next session after some playful razzing. However! It become a far more default occurrence and it is not uncommon now that we assume that she has dozed off and continue playing due to getting frustrated that she’s no longer on our plane of existence. She works long hours but also smokes weed before our sessions. What do we do to deal with this previously very engaged player, with amazing roll play and voices who now is struggling to keep her eyes open in our campaigns… Are we wrong to continue playing after getting frustrated or is it she who needs to invest in a stronger coffee? I humbly await your judgement.

Tyler

Hello Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and Dungeon Bailiff Jake. Today I present the case of our DM’s Girlfriend joining, and promptly quitting, our campaign. A group of friends and I have been playing in a campaign for almost two years now, but recently one of the four PC’s had to drop out. Our DM wanted to keep the party at four players, so he asked his girlfriend if she wanted to join. His girlfriend was hesitant because she had played D&D before and wasn’t a huge fan, but decided to test the waters again and try it out. Our party was just getting back together after a year long time skip in the campaign, and after about 30 minutes of role play involving us all meeting at our designated meeting spot we started heading towards town hall where we ran into a Half-Orc woman arguing with a farmer because she stole his chicken. The woman in question was the DM’s girlfriend’s character and we decided to pay the farmer for the chicken so that she could keep it. After that we tried to talk to the half-Orc about her name, where she is from, and other personal details to try to get some backstory but she was unable to answer any of these questions. This is where things get a bit weird. After a bit of questioning from the rest of the party the DM realizes he did not let his girlfriend know that she needed a background other than just being a half-orc with a chicken. We have been playing over Discord because of Covid, so the DM took his girlfriend into another voice channel for about 30 minutes where the rest of the party sat in shock over the mess that had just occurred. Eventually the DM rejoins the call and tells us that his girlfriend was no longer interested in playing in our campaign. After this, the rest of the session was extremely awkward and we have since asked another friend to join the campaign to fill our fourth party slot. Here is my question, Is our DM at fault for not letting his girlfriend know to make a character background leading to her feeling overwhelmed, or is our party at fault for scaring her off 45 minutes into her first session due to our heavy focus on roleplay and immediate interrogation of her character? We are ready to accept any punishments that the Supreme Crit subjects us to.

Jody Newton II

IMO you're in the right. Things like that need to be talked about extensively. The dm, at the very least, should have made sure this wasn't a hard subject for you to deal with, or something you're against roll playing

Jerry Flint

(Calinus) The case of the whiny stats bitch(me?) May it please the court and that other guy too. ;) My friends and I were about to play some new material that would allow a small group of us (1 DM /player friend, 1 player friend, and myself) to play as dragons. Mind you this was 25 or so years ago on AD&D 2nd Edition and point-buy systems for character creation weren't as common. I was to be a brass dragon fighter, player friend was a silver dragon wizard, and the dm was a mercurial dragon of woods class I don't recall (his characters were typical dm-pc's). My issue wasn't with the dm-pc, however but while rolling for stats... I tanked gloriously. I tanked so hard that it was clear that no matter what I did to advance, the wizard would always be completely and vastly superior in every way, including straight melee. I suggested that adjustments or at least rerolls be allowed to make the party balanced. At this point I was ridiculed for my complaints to the point that we never played the content... EVER. Was I just a whiny bitch to question Dice Christ in the name of balance or did the DMs strict adherence the rolled stats get in the way of a fun campaign?

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.

ChromaticMars

If it may please the gracious, omnipotent and benevolent Justices... And the simple yet endearing 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? I just really want to fart out an army

Matt Varney

May it please the venerable Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner; and the bailiff too, I guess. This case comes from a campaign well over a year ago. For context we were around level 8 or 9 when this happened. My friends and I were traversing an underground maze when we came upon a picture with a moving ship. My Warforged Chronurgy Wizard wanted no part of the magical phenomena but our Fighter decided to interact with it causing the sea in the picture to rush out on our party. Our DM had us all make Constitution saves to deal with the rushing current as we were swept underneath. Most of our party was fine but my Wizard failed his save. As a result, his Constitution score decreased by 3 and I would subsequently autofail any and all Constitution saves for the following 11 days in game. I felt as if I had no recourse in dealing with the effects and just had to take it. My question to you, oh great Crit Justices, is should the players who failed have been given some opportunity to regain their Constitution scores? Was 11 days too long for autofailing CON saves? Me and my Warforged Wizard, who died 5 days later in game, await and accept whatever your judgement may be.

Marianne

May it please the honorable judges and the long-suffering bailiff: I cast Zone of Truth on an NPC who was acting extremely sus. She failed the Charisma saving throw, but then the DM said she just stepped out of the area of effect. This was a seasoned DM, and I was a relatively inexperienced player at the time, so I let it go. Am I right to feel cheated by this technically legal but not at all fun move?

Fia (but not Boginya)

O great and powerful Justices and incredibly average bailiff, please accept my offering. I am the DM for a group in a modern fantasy campaign, a few sessions ago one of my party, a Battle Smith Artificer got his hands on some grenades (reflavoured Dynamite). I didn't think much of it at the time but then in our last session he cast the spell Catapult on the Grenade, and attempted to stack the damage from both effects (3d6 from the Grenade, 3d8 from Catapult), I allowed it due to the rule of cool, but said that it would only be a one time thing because it takes an action to pull the pin on the grenade and an action to cast the spell. He accepted this ruling but the party was definitely a little bummed that they couldn't repeat such a cool move more often. Do you think I was fair in my decision or should I be more lenient on this stacked damage? May Dice Christ bless you in your decision.

Mathew Paulson

(Mat P) May it please the court and Supreme bailiff Jake, I present the case of Boblin the goblin vs sassy bard player: In a recent session with my players I decided to try adding a minion to the party so they could have a guide of sorts by method of minor goblin attack on their camp. My guide of choice was with three other basic goblins and "attempted" to sneak up on the party's camp. Once combat ensued I just had Boblin run around and not attack anybody. By the time Boblin was the only character left I had him drop his weapons and beg to join the party because he didn't like those other goblins. This led to some issues in the form of one player (a kindly artificer named Kothar) defending poor Boblin, and another player (a sassy bard named Tess) coming to blows with the artificer knocked unconscious and Boblin maimed by Tess, while the third party member watched. So I ask, was Tess out of pocket for hurting a party member and maiming Boblin? Or should Boblin have tried to approach the party differently? I humbly await your sentencing.

Peter Brown

May it please the most radiant and wise justices and the demure but dignified bailiff Recently my party was caught out in a lie in a tense situation and my character who isn't good at lying turned to someone else for help. Their player had a mental blank and the only recourse they could think of was accusing my character of shitting themselves, giving us an excuse to leave. Of course, my character hadn't so I had to then roll to shit myself to sell the lie, which I successfully did. Now the DM and their NPCs won't stop making fun of me and my character for shitting themselves. Is it fair that I receive the mockery for a situation I was cornered into, or do I just have to take the grief as a payout for what was admittedly a hilarious moment?

Lach

May it please the court and the goodly bailiff. I bring before you the case of the stolen family heirloom. A friend was running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist for us. He made it clear from the outset that crimes of any kind would result in severe punishment so I made a Tabaxi rogue soul knife named Thimble. This way if he ever had to kill anyone there would be no evidence. Thimble's only family was his grandfather who had kept a rapier from his adventuring days that his son had also used before he died. Occasionally Thimble would ask to borrow the sword but always returned it. One session before a big fight a fellow PC, playing a Changeling, texted the DM something and asked "Can I do this?" The DM said yes. We then all went about preparing for the fight. Thimble went to get the sword only to discover that 'he' had already collected it earlier that day. It was very obvious at the table that the Changeling PC had taken it but none of our characters knew she was a Changeling. Having lost his only connection to his father and being a teen, I felt Thimble would be in a dark place. During the fight he acted rashly, and more or less sacrificed himself. The session ended on a cliff hanger where Thimble was about to die but before the next session I told the DM that I no longer wanted to play because of how the other player had acted. I ask you, was I wrong to leave the campaign, was the DM wrong to allow the secret shenanigans, or was the other PC wrong to mess with another player's backstory? I humbly await your judgement.

Tim C

May it please the Court, to the esteemed Justices Axford and Tanner, the malevolent Justice Murphy, and the rakishly handsome Bailiff, I humbly present to you the case of Saved by the Shark. I DM a campaign for 8 players who are currently level 11. In our last session, the party triggered a series of magical traps that resulted in them getting pinned to the ceiling, underwater, and frozen in by a thick layer of ice. To raise the stakes, I also made some homebrew rules about breath holding when attacking the ice wall. Eventually, our barbarian ran out of breath on his turn, and would have had to start making death saves, but one of our druids cast polymorph to turn him into a shark later on in the round. After some discussion we decided to go with it, because let’s face it, that’s rad as hell, but I’ve been second guessing myself. Should he have remained unconscious but stable as a shark? Or is the expenditure of a 4th level spell slot enough to warrant a free-pass from the trap's danger? Our goal is to get to level 20 by the end of the campaign, and I can already sense the impending whompings from the spellcasters. I await your judgment, and request that if I am to be thrown into a volcano, at least make it somewhere scenic so my party can have a nice vacation after they sacrifice me. Humbly yours,

Stephanie F

To the fabulous justices and the baller bailiff, I present to you the case of the despondent DM. My fiancé spent years creating his own world where magic and technology collide after the God of magic was killed and the God of technology rose. He created his own city with a gold dragon as its protector, the captain of the guard is a mage that is a goddamn weretiger and created a badlands where wild magic storms can wreak havoc on spellcasters. He finally got to see it come to fruition when myself and three of our friends all agreed to play in his campaign. We got one session in, and during so I (and my tiefling sorceress Fierna, thanks Murph for the name inspo) and our friend Dan (Gelbus, the cleric with a literal bionic arm) got into a huge fight both in character and out. My fiancé put a stop to the campaign because he didn't want to have to choose sides, so Dan and I had a talk and cleared the air. However, Fierna and Gelbus have yet to sort out their differences. My fiancé is now despondent, as he doesn't know how to get back into the campaign without ham-fisting a resolution that would cater to one player over the other. Our other friend suggested that we just retcon the whole first session and start over, but I say that we can work through the character drama. My fiancé is not confident in his DM skills to work through it, but I am. He agreed to bring it to the courts and respect whatever justice you may deal out. Supreme Crit Justices, should we retcon the whole first session and start anew, or should we the players who fucked up the campaign work through what happened? I humbly await your judgement.

Roger

If it may please the court and the honorable baliff Hurwitz, recently my level 8 party encountered a pseudolich who cast counterspell on my Cleric who was casting Silence into his smallish chamber. The DM ruled that since counterspell was a reaction spell it couldn't be reacted to by our party's wizard who also wished to cast counterspell as his reaction. His only defense was that the counter happened too fast for a reaction but this was never laid out ahead of time as a house rule. I maintain that as long as our wizard had his own reaction available it would have been reasonable to allow him to counter the counterspell.

Jess Little

If they're unwilling to not drink, despite your sobriety and requests, that means that they either don't care about your wishes and sobriety, or they can't not drink. Either way, bad news. I punish you with getting better friends.

Noah Muruve

Honorable yet corrupt judges and lowly yet prestigious bailiff, I bring forward the case of Vidcen’s broken bow. A while back I was a PC in a campaign wherein the DM decided to make Nat 1s more impactful. A typical nat 1 would leave a PC or NPC prone or something similar. The DM did a really good job with this mechanic and it made combat more dynamic and funnier. The problem lies in the fact that our party had a halfling named Vidcen. After dozens of sessions of re-rolled 1s, Vidcen rolled two 1s in a row which led his beloved, overpowered bow, “Mama’s Longbow”, to shatter. This revealed a crystal linked to his story arc which we never got to see because our DM moved to Denver but I’m sure it would have been amazing (we miss you Nic!). For some players this moment would have been awesome, however Vidcen’s player was quite upset about it as 1. Vidcen was A ranger and his slightly overpowered bow was one of the only ways he could have an impact on combat, 2. He was A first time player who should not have been playing a ranger as he was really into combat mechanics etc. the next character he made was a Druid which I think suited him much better and 3. Although he was all in on roll play, he didn’t seem too interested in this character’s story arc and just wanted to ROLL SOME GOD DAMN DIE. So, was the DM overly harsh in taking away Vidcen’s pride and joy, or was a broken bow a fair outcome for something that only happens 1/400 rolls?

Davy Warner

If it may please the court… I have not a grievance to bring forth, but in fact a demand. While the honorable judges and ravishingly handsome bailiff have upheld justice with appropriate bias and the utmost integrity, I believe the D&D Justice system requires reform. True due process cannot be delivered to a defendant without counsel, and the law cannot be adequately upheld without savvy prosecution. I propose that Dungeon Bailiff Jake receive a long-due promotion to the rank of prosecuting attorney, as he hath brought cases to the court dutifully for an age. Furthermore, in order to ensure appropriate due process to defendants, appropriate counsel must be offered. I nominate none other than Dungeon Daddy Brennan Lee Mulligan to serve as defense attorney for those accused of wrongdoing, for justice without adequate representation is not justice at all. Your humble constituent, Davy (he/him).

Melon Bread

What was the Constitution Save for. Was it because the water was magical, or was it a homebrew drowning rule? There are some monsters that drain ability scores, but they usually restore on a long rest. Also, was your Con so low that you autofailed Con Saves--or was the autofail on top of the draining?

Sarah

Hallowed justices and honored bailiff, if it may please the court, I bring the case of the trapped horse. In my first D&D game, I had a horse mount that I rode everywhere. I loved the horse, named Swamper, but admittedly sometimes forgot about her. For reasons unknown to me, my husband (a fellow player) hated my horse. After the final battle, the party was trapped in a cave, and the only way out was through a hole in the roof; we were able to get a rope up through the hole using magical means and climb up. My husband argued that Swamper was trapped because she could not climb. I begged another player, a half-orc, to help by carrying Swamper up on his shoulders as he climbed the rope. The DM had him roll for it: nat 20. Swamper escaped with the rest of us thanks to my half-orc friend but my husband still claims she should have died in that cave. Who is right?

Melon Bread

human skin isn't that strong--it sounds like your dm was not expecting you to interact with the environment

Melon Bread

It's built into the centaur's ancestry features that stairs and ramps cost them extra movement, so unless they're a monk these would apply. Yes, they're sentient magical fae creatures. Stop trying to introduce pooping into your game.

Tyler Wood

If it may please the honorable judges and the less but still noticably honorable baliff. A while ago my friend and I ran a one-shot for a group of new players, this time my friend being the DM. We progressed conciderably through the dungeon we found ourselves in while guiding the new players on how they play their characters. We came against the gnarled-driud who had dragged us all to said dungeon, who then proceeded to summon a construct of stone. The fight went pretty pourly and all of us but our druid were knocked to zero, in the proceeding death saving throws I proceeded to roll two natural ones and died nearly instantly. Not wanting to bum out the new players too much the DM told them about resurrection magic. With their newfound hope and knowledge they chopped my body into compact pieces to be able to carry me out of the dungeon. I becan cackling to myself in the corner knowing now they need a ninth level spell, True Ressurection, to piece me back together. Judges should I have let these new players carry my rotting body into the sunset or should I have broken the meta to have given these players a chance of bringing me back?

Avia Fuchs

May my humble case please all court members. In a Descent Into Avernus campaign that went on for almost two years and was recently put on recess due to happy circumstances, we had a recurring complaint from the DM. He kept saying we were moving slowly and making fun of us for only completing a fraction of the content he planned each session (so that his preparation for one session would actually last about three-four). After almost two years, we only just in the last session set foot on the grounds of Avernus, and even that with the aid of some last minute storytelling. We kept claiming he is putting so much interesting things in front of us, so how could we not interact with them? His additions of homebrew content made our campaign special, and we like our slow pace, even if it did made “the plot” progress slowly. So, do we deserve the mockery for being slow? Or is the DM at fault for making the world too engaging? Humbly awaiting your righteous judgement.

Abby Reeves

May it please the court: I’ve been searching for a D&D group for a very long time. I finally got some friends to agree to play, but they have a condition: I have to run a 100% loyal-to-canon boss baby campaign. I told that this was ridiculous and I wouldn’t do it, but they’ve insisted this is the only way they’ll play. Should I cave or am I right in my reluctance?

Lorelei and Kyra Newly Weds

May it please the court and Jake if he needs a win today: One member of my party is playing a Homebrew Samurai class with a Masamune built in that does quite a bit of damage however It slightly balances out with the hit die although I think it should be a D6, anyways he recently took the sentinel feat and a feat to improve his range to effectively negate melee combat unless he's the one fighting or the enemy has reach, just reaching level 7 I'm about to start with spell casters and wanted to know, is it unfair to use creatures that don't provoke opportunity attacks or skills adjacent to them to actually make combat dynamic or should I let him hold everything back with a sword until the higher levels when he may get one shot. ( Don't get me wrong combat isn't easy we just had 3 deaths in one Fight due to bad rolls) I await your insightful advice and await my punishment if so required, I wriggle in anticipation

Jules Spider

Dear honorable crit judges and dedicated bailiff; if it may please the court, I bring to you the case of Kuma. I need some help… I have been playing dnd for a year now and decided to run my first campaign. I invited the DM and other players from the game I was currently in. Inviting everyone but this guy, Kuma, would have made things a bit awkward for the game that we are both players in, but he'd said before that he couldn't join any more games so I thought I was safe to extend the offer... I was not. He joined my game and I had now trapped myself due to my own social politeness. Kuma is a player who almost never helps other PCs, instead giving potions and using abilities to help only himself or random NPCs. Even if an NPCs and a player took damage, he would only heal the NPC. He also tries to insert himself into every narrative while being the standoffish character, never sleeping in the same area as the other PCs and going off on his own a lot, even during his watch! However, at the same time he also wants to be in every room that is being discovered, grab all the magic items, and talk to every NPC, even cutting off or talking over other players. It's like he's trying to be the main character all the time and everyone else is a cut-scene he wants to skip. So Kuma came to me with a lawful evil crossroads devil king bard with ties to my homebrew world's near destruction, an angel friend, a mortal charge, the ability to make magical deals for souls, and a disguise as an important lord... all as the level one character he wanted. I said no; but I did end up working with him, blending the criminal background with a patron idea, making him a homebrew devil background. It was weeks of texts until I finally made him happy without his PC being just stupid. Now unbeknownst to Kuma, I plan to have his devil patron-like contact betray him and try to reap him as a Lemure under her service at a higher level unless the PCs all go on a road-trip to hell and fight her, like a sideplot/PC bonding thing. Well... After all that we were able to play; now 8 sessions in as the PCs were getting ready to leave a town, Kuma decided he wasn't gonna go with them unless another PC paid him and made a magical contract. The other players refused and left, but Kuma stayed in town! This is even after several players tried to convince him, both in and out of character for like, 10 minutes. He now wants me to make him a secondary character until the party goes back to get him. Meanwhile the other players don't even want his bard to rejoin their group and I don't blame them. What should I do about this guy? I have tried corralling, confrontation lite, and just ignoring him. Is it wrong to kill his first character so he has to play the temporary one for good and hope it works out better? Should I just let it play out and suffer a bit during the ride? I know this is all my own fault, but I hope you at least can give me some tips on dealing with this type of player. Thanks! - Sam

Nurse LaCroix

May it please the court: In my last campaign as a player, my Githyanki barbarian Aargaath, the only non-caster in the (level 13) party, was constantly overshadowed by the various magic and otherwise min-maxed shenanigans of the other players. I made up for this in role-play wherever I could. During a shopping trip for magic items, I picked up an Alchemist's Jar, an interesting item that gives a set daily but otherwise unlimited quantity of several different liquids, including necessities such as lamp oil and fresh water. One of the items on this list is Mayonnaise, which the jar produces a whopping two gallons of each day. (This is an official item in the DMG). Aargaath would often drink straight from the jar, always to the dismay of my fellow players. ("Hey, I'm bulking right now" they 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

Billy Glosson

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and…sure Jake I guess, may it please the court. I am in a game with three seasoned players and a new DM. I play a Dragonborn Twilight Domain Cleric in the order of Selune. Recently we found ourselves on an island filled with worshipers of Umberlee (an evil sea goddess and enemy of Selune). We took on a task from our local contact to go and inspect ruins. As we began to get deeper in the ruins we uncovered a necromancer and zombies. The necromancer was casting spells into a black pearl that amplified his spells. The party quickly became overwhelmed. I tried to turn undead on as many zombies as I could but we were outnumbered. After a crazy fight where we were almost TPK’d we managed to escape and kill the necromancer. In the process, our party’s warlock collected the black pearl which cause his patron Djinn to perish (forever? We don’t know). The Djinn is a DM PC named Bazaam a riff on Kazam. He lives in an amulet, drinks dr. Pepper and loves Sum 41 and his voice sounds like if Charles Barkley became a surfer. He is the comic relief that we all love. We returned to town beaten down and as we talked to the contact who sent us into the ruins. The party seemed disinterested despite the clear hooks the DM was giving us. We recounted our fight and showed him the pearl and he wanted to touch it but we knew that doing so could go badly. So we stopped him. The conversation persisted but we weren’t making progress so I decided to stir the pot. I asked if the Bitch Queen (a derogatory name for Umberlee) had something to do with this. He seemed offended and almost ready to go to fisticuffs. I rolled a perception check and got a nat 20. The DM told me he wasn’t surprised by the necromancer and seemed to know more. Knowing he sent our party to doom, and that our beloved Djinn was now gone, I grabbed his hand and took it to touch the pearl. Our party lost their minds. Everyone started screaming they wanted to roll opposed strength and dexterity checks. I didn’t want to frustrate or derail everyone so I obliged we had a roll-off and off course a heavily armored cleric loses on the dex check. My question is, was I wrong to be this aggressive? In the fight I had to revive the whole party, we barely escaped and we suffered great loss. But it seemed everyone was so shocked by my sudden willingness to harm our contact. I await your fair judgment.

Magestain

The naddpole definition of "brief" is wild 🤣

Emily E Morris

Dear honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the pretty average yet pretty cool Bailiff, may it please the court. This is more of an advice question than a case. My friends and I are starting our own D&D podcast soon and I was wondering how do we get solid role play out of our recordings? Some of our players are a little more introverted and don’t feel like they “can act”. How do we bring them out of their shells to have a fun, role-play filled podcast. Thanks so much, Emily Allen (yes, my name is different than the username lol)

ThePob

Omg! This isn't about probability, this is about bias! If he knows what roll he has banked then of course that will influence what he tries to do next, even subconsciously! If he knows he has a nat 20 banked then he's not going to waste it on doing something inconsequential. Imagine if in Eldermourne Emily knew she had a 15 banked. Then she says "Fia is going to open up Philip and try to learn a 5th level spell." She already knows she'll succeed because of the banked roll. It's frustrating to read that he condescended to you about "not knowing how probability works" when he should know full well that's not the root of the issue. The issue is that knowing the outcome of a roll before it is used will influence how you use it. In my opinion it's cheating, and takes authenticity away from the game! And his defense for his actions was to put you down? Are you sure you want to continue playing with this person?

ThePob

My understanding of metagaming is that it is when a character acts on knowledge the player has but the character themselves shouldn't have. Your friend's sorcerer definitely knows what spells they have available, even if the player forgets sometimes. I think it's 100% okay to remind a buddy about what tools they have available in their toolbox. I don't think it counts as metagaming if the character would know to use the spell. Playing a spellcaster in DnD is very difficult, especially for someone new to it, so little reminders like that can be helpful. Also, even if it was metagaming, if a little metagaming makes a session more fun for everyone involved, why not let it slide? The point of people playing DnD is to have fun, not to rules-lawyer your friends.

Jan F.

Honourable Crit Justices and cute bailiff Jake. I was part of a one shot my friend DMd on a whim. Let me first say this was our first experience of DnD ever so when 1 of my other friends said he had some dice we said fuck it lets try it out. Little did we know we had to actually plan a session and everything that goes into a DnD session. So the day after, our DM invites us over and finishes the sessions script while we ate pizza. He then asked us what our names were and we just started, just dropped into a scenario where we fight the BBEG. We didn’t roll initiative and raised our hands when we wanted to go. We came up with our own spells (usually pulling from movies or games) and never rolled to see if we hit or not. Damage was determined by rolling the 1 d20 we shared. We didn’t know what advantage was or skill bonuses we just wailed on this sponge while we all fucked with each other which was the real threat. I was knocked backed onto the wall stunned without a DC. Our rogue took advantage of the situation and began stabbing the other party members and came close to death himself. They somehow killed the BBEG and ended the session with me still knocked out. And the rogue being the last one standing. We all laughed and joked about but it left a sour taste in my mouth because it lead me to reading rules and eventually wanting to DM them myself. I really want my players to experience DnD for real and am worried with my session turning out like this even tho i’ve been reading rules and taking notes on what other DMs do

tacticalgrandma

It’s correct rules as written, but gives off strong douche energy with the experience difference.

tacticalgrandma

I’m looking to do this multiclass too! Good to think about 😅

tacticalgrandma

Honestly as embarrassed as she was, I bet she was also desperately trying to think how to prevent a tpk. Unless she’s given any indication she’s mad, I feel like you’re good.

Zacharythefish

Shit, Rian we’ve been found out! You can take off the goblin suit now.

tacticalgrandma

I would think really carefully about this? A lot of groups ban pvp for a reason. I think as a player, if I knew that the dm & player had this big twist set in stone, that would really frustrate me. It would mean in a game all about agency & choices, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything to avert or identify a major crisis. Maybe instead of planning this as a twist, you could plan it as a mystery? Like you consciously play her leaving clues about her true nature, & your partner puts in prompts that could clue the party in. This might mean that twist never happens, but I guarantee it’ll make it much less likely to get a bunch of Murph style freakouts & thrown chairs. & fwiw, I’m playing a module where pc secrets are a big factor. Another pc grew up in the same circles as me, & has twice rolled nat 20 insight checks when talking to me about my background. The first time it worried me, since I wanted this character to play her cards close to the chest. But coming up with hints to give & seeing how they’re interpreted has been a lot of fun! My character has a connection to the goddess of winter & when we encountered ice sculptures that goddess left for us as a warning, the other pc commented, “Oh, like at your birthday party!” If you approach this still thinking of like your friends being able to engage with & enjoy your story, moments like that are pure gold.

Cain Catto

Most honorable supreme crit justices, and also Bailiff Jake, I guess, I bring before you a case of a baby DM worrying about stepping on toes. I have never DMed for a group before, and am currently prepping a modified intro module of Curse of Strahd for my friends. My one friend, who I’ll call R, DMs a separate homebrew campaign for us, which is super fun. My other friend, who I’ll call H, is a more inexperienced player, and seems to have a hard time coming up with new character backgrounds. When H designed her character for my Strahd campaign, she essentially used the exact same backstory that her character in R’s campaign has—her character is orphaned in a similar way and raised by literally the exact same mother figure as her PC in R’s campaign is. I saw no issue with H doing this because I want my players to have as much freedom as possible in making their characters. However, when I told R about this, they seemed very uncomfortable with H incorporating a character (the mother figure) that already exists in their homebrew world. It hadn’t occurred to me that by letting H use the same backstory, it meant that I would theoretically have “control” over an NPC that is already under R’s control in their homebrew campaign. Due to the nature of the module, it’s unlikely that H’s character’s mother will ever really be relevant or present in the campaign. However, I still am worried about this causing tension at our table. I don’t want to tell H she can’t do what she wants, and I don’t want to step on R’s toes. What do you think I should do to minimize tension and maximize my players’ freedom in creating their PCs? Thanks besties! Sincerely, Cain (like the prophet!)

ap.cleric

It is a one shot that may take one or two sessions but will not be a full-blown campaign. Its mostly an introductory course for most of the players and will be filled with lots of shenanigans and fun, we just thought it would be fun for the group to have this twist added because we both agreed that the party (that is made up of a lot of close friends) would find it a lot of fun if they fought and won against someone that has played considerably longer than them. If we truly thought it would be an issue for the party we wouldn't have even considered it to be a possibility for the story. I do understand what you mean, but we know we have a good group that will love it

Elizabeth Lees

Well, you have to give them enough detail to work with, otherwise they can’t make an effective ruling.

Zach Dender

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and “Forever a Fighter” Bailiff Jake, may it please the court. I am the DM of my 5 year long campaign with 9 players and I wish judgement on if my actions were justified or were they too extreme. May I present to you the case of killing a PC off screen. This campaign went from underdark to sky islands and everything in between but one of the main antagonists for the party were Drow. The Drow in my world cannot lie, the truth they say may be misinterpreted or omitted but they can never tell a straight lie. Like a race of people under the Zone of Truth Spell. If they wish to make a deal, they are trusted to follow through with it but only to the letter of the deal. Similar to Devils or Fae creatures. The party is very familiar with Drow tactics and how I play them. We were in-between story arcs for the campaign and the players were returning to their town from an in-game year long adventure fighting in the underdark and, you guessed it, Drow. Because of the Players actions before their last adventure, this town was seeing a large population boom and culinary awakening, They spent an in-game month RPing what they are doing. Cut to the Ranger. The Ranger was using downtime to scout around the wilds near the main town. He discovered a mass grave site recently dug and got a demonic smell from it with a hint of Drow… Inside the grave were 12 bodies. He went to get the Cleric and the rest of the Party. Once the party got there, further investigation revealed this was a Drow ritual and there had been 12 Drow. One body for each Drow. The Party deducted this is some sort of retaliation. Night fell and The Party were surprised when the bodies were inhabited by Dybbuk and instead of attacking, tore off into the forest and sprinted directly towards the town walls. Then the Drow attacked and adding more chaos. It became a race between stopping the Dybbuk from reaching the town and fending off Drow attacking from the forest. I should note, the players are level 15 and there are 9 of them. I modified the Drow poison to be a slightly higher DC from 12 to 15 and if they rolled a 1 or failed the roll by more than 5 they were rendered “Woozy” Speed was halved on top of having the poisoned condition. If they failed the roll a second time by more than 5, they were unconscious for an hour. For every 4 darts they were hit with the DC went up by 1 (more doses more problems). At one point the party got split due to the use of the Suggestion Spell from the head Drow guy “You should run wildly through the forest staying away from here and your friends.” 3 of the members of the party were affected by the spell leaving 6 dealing with the Drow. 3 of them ran for 3 rounds away from the main team and then were shot with poisoned bolts by the Drow. The Dwarven fighter failed 1 of their saving throws by more than 5 and was left behind by the other members(half speed). Then the fighter rolled double nat 1’s (Advantage against poisons) rendering them unconscious, alone, in the middle of the forest, with a Drow hunter within 30 feet of them. The rest of the Party started getting the upper hand and the Drow were in a tight spot. All but 3 of the Drow had been killed and all of the Dybbuk. The head Drow received telepathic message from the hunter and put up a hand, “I have just received word from one of my hunters. We have the dwarf. Lay down your weapons or she dies.” Initiative was suspended for a bit of back and forth dialogue. Then, I went around the table asking what do you do? The 6 players looked at each other and they continued the fight. I immediately had the unconscious player make 3 rolls for me and tell me the result. Nat 1, 19, 7. (They didn’t know it was death saves.) The head guy and the last Drow were able to flee and shake the Party off their trail. The Party went to look for their friends and after about 10 minutes of searching, they found the cut throat of their Fighter laying under a large oak tree, moonlight bleaching the pool of red dwarven blood, black. The table rioted like a group of Game of Throne fans after the Red Wedding episode amped up on Monster Energy Drinks. They stood on chairs, they yelled curse words, one of them left the table, walked outside, and then back inside 3 times and just yelled “Gross” at me each time. It was glorious! They eventually accepted what happened and it’s become a good story but…Were my actions justified?

Bibbobbly

May it please the honorable justices, and any other cool dudes who happen to be there, I submit a case (?) for trial. I have a dear friend who DMs for some friends and I, and they’re truly lovely. The only thing is… they have a background in writing and performance. A theatre kid, if you will. And I find myself taken out of the game when it feels like they consider the most important thing to be that we all play in order to make Their Story the most dramatic and well-written, rather than that we have fun. They’re way more excited to make someone cry than to make someone smile. I know story-driven is a style of playing, heck you guys have a podcast, but I’m just not having a great time. I would make my excuses and drop out of the game, but it’s already got so few people that I’m afraid that’d be the end for it. What should I do? (TLDR, do I drop out and possibly ruin the game for others? How would I explain to my friend why I’m not having fun? ) You guys are stellar, Fake Name Here Because They Could Hear This Uh Oh

Holden

May it please the Venerable Crit Justices , the incorrigible bailiff, and all litigious possums, cats, and CRITters in the court. I come before the court on behalf of what I believe to be a true injustice. My friend has been in a wheelchair since birth so when they were invited to join a DND party they also wanted their character to have a wheelchair. Wonderful right? Well their dm, in every encounter they run into, has had his monsters rip their character out of the wheelchair, throws the chair far away, and reduces the pc’s speed to “crawling speed”. This has made it almost impossible for the pc to help their party. They came to me, a dm of my own party, miserable, asking for help. Their DM‘s excuse is that he is running a gritty grimm dark campaign The first thing I did was invite them to join my party but they don't want to abandon the party they have spent over a year playing with. So we went over a resource for a combat wheelchair highlighting specific rules, (I’ll connect below) but I am a new DM myself and I felt my knowledge is inadequate to really help. So honorable Justices and bailiff the case I present is, how far is too far when it comes to crunchy games with grizzly storytelling? And how does one deal with a DM who is actively trying to, and I QUOTE The Dm in question, “traumatize” his players. We await your judgement . https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/mobile/folders/1Qwz92BW6-sFT8g_iN6XKVuEJuK_5400L?usp=sharing

Holden

This is HYSTERICAL!!! I hope this gets picked for the episode. There’s so much you can do with this. Especially with villains like, puppies, adults who have taken baby transformation serum, ninja and goth babies. You can also draw from the show. obviously if you don’t think you can make it fun for yourself they probably not but I think You can do it I believe in you!!! Please update this story. FUCK THEM UP!!! O

Trent Dowling

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and Jake “the bailiffiscent” Hurwitz, may it please the court. I am the DM of a 5 month long campaign in the Ravnica setting. Everyone is new to the game and TTRPG’s in general but have recently grown into their characters and RP is becoming one of their favorite parts of the hobby. Sadly I fear this excitement for RP has turned and bit me in the ass. A couples sessions ago the 3 player characters, freshly level 8, woke up to find a small Fungal fairy named Mildew watching them. With him being 6inches tall and goofy as hell the party immediately fell in love with him, perhaps a little too much. The chaotic stupid monk decided that Mildew would be his and he would be his mildew who shall permanently reside in his pocket. Mildew obviously had some objections but this attempt to monopolize Mildew drew the ire from the Druid and ranger who both IMMEDIATELY decided that mildews freedom was worth killing their friend over. Cut to my first PvP, with the Druid swinging on the monk while the ranger hid the poor fairy from the monks prison pockets. This lead to a few unfortunate Nat 20s on both sides and a near total party suicide. My question is as follows. Was the player wrong for trying to make a little fungus friend all his own? Or did the zeal of impromptu fungal freedom fighters take it a step too far. Perhaps I am at fault for introducing a guy, just too silly and little for them to handle. I await your decision and may Mildew have mercy on us all -Trent

Aidan Lopez

Honorable Court Justices (and the Bailiff I guess but who cares at this point really), I come to you with a plead of whether or not I did the right thing as a DM. A few years ago I was dm'ing a session for some friends from the Ghost of Saltmarsh adventure book. One of my players couldn't make it to the session but another player volunteered to play that character as well as their own for the session, trusting this player I agreed. Cut to the near end of the session as the party is escaping a capsizing ship from a massive octopus and the absent players PC dies during the encounter (lost all deaths saves, dead dead). The party managed to bring the corpse back to the ship where there just so happen to be a cleric who could bring them back in return for the saving of his daughter. The truth of the matter is that there wasn't a cleric before-hand and I did some rolls for dramatic effect but really just brought the character back because I felt bad in the moment. My question is this: Was it wrong of me to bring back this absent players PC through a self-inserted deus ex machina?

A Spicy Lad of the Shadowkeep

Honourable Crit Justices (and the honourable Bailiff possessed by the Game Boy) I present to you the case of the DM who fudges rolls; for good! I DM a long running campaign that, long story short, sees my players as the champions of Greek gods, banding together to save the world from an on-coming apocalypse. We've recently reached the endgame, with the champions fighting to free their gods from being used as divine batteries for a WMD. To make a long story short, one of my players used a Bead of Force against one of the two masterminds, and we started to debate the language. Would it create a Wall of Force, able to be Disintegrated, or would it be something separate? I said that we'd roll for it, with the PC rolling higher to determine Disintegrate can't break it. Well, I rolled a nat 20, but didn't want to make my player sad for such a good use of an item, so I lied and said that I rolled low! The players were all thrilled, even if one of my big bads is now essentially trapped for 10 rounds. My question is, is it okay to fudge your rolls to help your players and create a false sense of achievement? Or does Dice Christ say that I must let his will be so, no matter how sad it makes my players? I humbly await your verdict, clutching rosary beads that resemble a string of d20s.

Adah Kinzer

Not necessarily a court case, but would love anyone’s opinion: how do you feel about another player piloting your PC in your absence? My group does it and it makes me feel a little weird (By “piloting” I mean play the character for them. I’m sorry I didn’t initially make that clearer)

Drucilla Saxton-Wallace

Dude that's gotta be by consent only, and you should nominate who you want to do it. That said, if you're frequently (ie - more than once in every 4 sessions) missing, you should reconsider whether or not you should continue playing with this crew at this time. One PC makes a big difference to encounter balance and it's not fair to everyone else who is showing up to try to keep your character going if you aren't there. If it's a scheduling thing see if y'all can orchestrate a time that works better for everyone. But if it's just not possible for you to be there at least 75% of the time, then gracefully step down, and try to find a group who matches your schedule more closely 💛

Holden

Like you cant make it to the session so they play your character for you?

Holden

In more serious moments the bard passes the wind or uses thunderous gusts lol

Nicolas R

To the congregation of Dice Christ, I beg forgiveness, and seek guidance. I've had a set of dragon engraved dice for my entire decade of playing this game. I never owned another set of dice until last year my girlfriend got me another set on our first anniversary. The dragon dice mean a lot to me, but there is one problem. They are bloodthirsty. I regularly feel the need to fudge damage rolls to prevent tpks, and to my greatest shame, sometimes I do. I would trust my dice and just let it happen, but I've put so much work into this campaign. At the beginning I built a 10+ page homebrew system that let's the players build their own monster companion and have been updating it over the course of the campaign. But my dice crave only blood, on the second encounter (lv. 2) they rolled 3 crits in a row and only missed 2 times the whole session. Help me. I've lost the light of dice christ and know not which path to walk.

James Lindberg

Due to a medical issue I was unable to dm for my group who still gathered in my absence. One of my players took it on herself to dm the session, without consulting me. There were no deaths in the party, despite the fact that she had a group of level 4 characters engaging a CR 20 monster. Now the players love their new DMommy. Can I reign this group in or must I suffer the justice of the honorable judges and be dragged away by the swarthy bailiff....

Nick

This was about 3 years ago. I was in a dad rock themed campaign and my party and I wandered into a fey forest. We have to cross a chasm at one point, and each of the 3 other members other than myself - a swamp rockabilly lizardfolk druid - fell into the mist below after some truly tragically bad rolls. I was left to march on alone and found my way to a witch's hut, where my compatriots were held in suspended animation by a witch. She told me they could be released alive if I signed my life over to her in service. I agreed, but once she woke up my party, I turned on her and our party defeated her. Turns out the agreement was a Geas, and my DM handed me a curse - any damage I took in battle there on out was randomly given to someone else in my party. This was a big problem since I, as a circle of the moon druid, was mostly there to be a HP tank for the team. We kept trying to to find workarounds to this or ways to reverse the Geas, but our DM wouldn't budge. Eventually, we asked him what it would take - if we could travel to some other plane or something - and he said he hadn't thought about what it would take to cancel the curse, but that he'd know it when he saw it. After about a dozen sessions with multiple attempts at sacrifices, prayers, and symbolic gestures, nothing seemed to satisfy what the DM was looking for. Eventually, I just left the campaign when I conveniently had to move out of town. What should I have done to lift the curse? Was the DM wrong to ask my character to sacrifice his life after the party's tragic rolls?

Bliss

Esteemed crit justices Axford, Tanner and Murphy.. and also.. am I forgetting someone? I would like to bring to your attention the case of the short rest Massacre. My first game of dnd ever I played a wild magic sorcerer who was a dragon born raised by halflings: Hildegarde Hedgehopper. Everything was great. She became a belly dancer and knit sweaters for her baby golden dragon Dahlia (Leah for short). The party came to a mansion where something was homicidal in the domicile. We saved all of the servants and took a short rest.. We began chatting with the servants and one called someone in our party a “devil” as she was a teifling. My character got really mad and wanted to retaliate so I cast color spray thinking it would be like red paint splashed on their clothing. It was not. We rolled the damage and the servants were very mad but alive. We mistakenly thought color spray was a cantrip but my DM told me to roll wild magic because my behavior was so chaotic. I rolled a d100.. and got an 8. I cast a third level fireball centered on myself. The servants all died instantly and my in game childhood best friend- a halfling named cricket also died. My DM ruled that since there was nothing left of him we could not revivify him. I ended up quitting the campaign due to the blowback from the party and my own guilt. Last I heard my Hilda is now the BBEG with her dragon. Was there anything I, or the DM could have done to salvage the situation? Or was it just dice Christ’s will for Hilda to turn to the dark side. I humbly await your judgement.

Jeff Pierson

Honorable and all knowing crit justices, Murphy, tanner, and the mushroom queen her self, and then Jake the bailiff. I bring to you dm vs druid and party. Our group was made up of mostly new players, the only experienced players being me and our dm, I helped with rules and spells when needed, let everyone make their own choices, and reminded them of abilities they had. Everything went pretty smoothly, but there was one spell the dm and the party never agreed on. Call lightning. Every time the druid cast it, we had brief discussions about how the spell works. The dm would say since it's a 5ft point. It was single target, but we argued that the wording of the spell suggests otherwise, in the end, the dm has final say. But we're we robbed of some awesome moonshine like action? Please judge fairly and punish who you see fit, thank you.

TPot Perfecto

To the venerable justices and the chaotic bailer they have decided to keep around, I bring forth a case of a devil dealing Cleric vs the entire party. I run a group of fairly new players but one new player in particular created a death cleric who's sole purpose now is to make pacts with higher beings. He acquired a cursed ring that allows him to contact the lords of hell and make deals with them and long story short cut an archdevil short and got cursed. He then removed the curse by making a wish with Asmodeus and then Asmodeus got to cast a wish of his own at the dismay of the rest of the party. Asmodeus wished for his prime body in the material plane and now everyone is pretty unhappy with his decision. Each player has messaged me outside of the game and said their character has considered killing the Cleric because of the evil decision (they love how greedy he is being since it makes it more interesting but hate they have to deal with the consequences too). My question is this; is there a way to remedy this interplayer conflict or do I just have to keep narrating this story until the eventual showdown of this Cleric vs the party.

Alejandro the Golden Dragon

Let there be conflict. Just allow the cleric to defend himself. The conflict is between characters not players.

Alejandro the Golden Dragon

As a new DM who heavily relies on an experienced player, you are doing an awesome job. Thank you!

Heyyitsphil

From Philip C: May it please the honorable yet sexy court and its honorable yet sexy bailiff! I've been running a game for six of my friends on and off for the better part of a year. When I asked my friends for their character sheets before the start of the campaign, I discovered that one of my friends had written a Warlock with a -2 to Charisma. Since this player was new-ish to DND, I explained to them that a low charisma score would severely underpower their character, and since they had other stats that were great, I offered to let them rearrange their ability scores to be a bit more optimized. However, my friend insisted on keeping his ability scores as is, and while I thought that was a bad idea, I didn't want to be a control freak, so I let it be. Fast forward a few months: I asked a few of my players (including the warlock) to convert their sheets to DNDbeyond so I could give them some homebrew magic items, and discovered that when my friend had copied their sheet over, they had changed their Charisma score (along with their wisdom, which was also bad) to be significantly better. They left her other, already great Str/Dex/Int scores untouched, suddenly taking her from "good but unoptimized" to ridiculously overpowered. I confronted them and they apologized, and told me that they hadn't realized how important Charisma actually was to playing a warlock. I sympathized, but I had already explained this to them months ago, and I made them change the scores back. I offered some other narrative solutions that would let them reroll or increase their character's charisma, but they would be tied to plot points later down the line, so the player would have to deal with bad stats for a few more sessions. My friend was fine with this, and now the party is gonna trek through the abyss, which I see as an absolute win for them, but your honors, I ask: should I have just let my friend change his stats to be more optimized and, more importantly, more fun? Or was I right to take the harsh-but-fair standpoint and make my friend lie in the bed they've made a bit longer? (my friend uses he/they and his character uses she/her, in case the pronoun inconsistency in this case file is confusing)

Kristina LaPointe

Honorable Crit justices and astounding baliff Jake, I present to you the case of Kermit the Hermit vs the DM and the rest of the party. I have a player who build an Grung Oath of Ancients Paladin and wanted him to be deranged. He asked for a doll (living doll from wild beyond the witch light) that talks to him when no one else is around. After weeks of discussion, me setting firm boundaries, and trying to make this work for my game Kermit the Hermit decided to throw everything out the window and be completely chaotic. He chose to not be part of the party, but wreaked havoc instead. During a civil conversation between the ranger and a member of a local gang, Kermit decided to jump out of a bush, latch onto the gang member, lick him, and ultimately throwing the whole party into combat. Once the entire party rolled initiative the Grung ran away leaving the party to clean up his mess. That was just the beginning. At one point it seemed like he was willing to finally be a part of the party. The ranger cast jump on him so he would be able to jump up onto an observation deck in a tower that was over run with bad guys. Once he was up there and the rest of the party was fighting tooth and nail to make it to the top of the tower he told me he wanted to look out over the landscape instead of being a part of the fight. As soon as his turn came around again, he immediately jumped back out of the tower and ran away into the woods. By the end of the session the entire party was mad at him, and the session ended early with everyone abandoning the cleric in the second floor of this tower. Now I have my other players texting me ideas on how they want to see Kermit the Hermit murdered. On the one hand, I tried to allow something potentially interesting and fun in the campaign while on the other hand allowing complete Looney Toons nonsense that ended with all of my players hating Kermit the Hermit as a person. Would it be wrong of me to kill off Kermit or should I try once again to talk to him about how his actions harmed the party and their feelings towards him? I do feel guilty that even when my gut told me allowing his awful character build would be a bad idea I still allowed it and my party suffered the consequences. Please justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner I seek your judgement and guidance. -Kristina L.

Mason Huse

Honorable Crit justices and lowly yet just baliff Jake, I present to you my case, DM vs the perhaps to lucky player. So some very brief background info, I have been DMing for a group of friends for about 3 years now, and together we have made alot of great memories and had loads of fun. Like most group however we have some issues. The big issue in our group is one of my players has some insanely good rolls. I don't mean like he rolls very well alot, I mean he rolls natural 20's like 10-15 times an encounter. This has always seemed wild, but I haven't wanted to cause tension or issues (plus I tend to trust my players) so I haven't made a big deal out of this... well that is until the last session we played. We had a big boss fight and like normal my player was rolling super well. This time however I was prepared, the creature had a special ability to reflect some of his attacks onto his allies. And here comes my problem, the player makes some attacks, one attack hits, and 1 attack is a crit. I use the creature ability to reflect the critical hit onto one of the other players. Now the player rolls damage and tells me he deals 32 damage to the monster and only 13 damage to the player. I accept these numbers at face value, but quickly start doing the math in my head. So he deals 1d10 + 1d4 + 8 damage with his attacks and has a special ability to add an extra 1d10 to a single hit. So assuming he added the extra damage to the monster (which why wouldn't he) that means he rolled maximum damage on all damage dice against the monster and the absolute minimum damage against the player. This result seems improbable, but again I let it slide. I start paying more attention to his damage rolls (let's just ignore how often he keeps rolling nat 20s for now) and consistently he rolls very high damage against the monster, and very low damage against his allies when I reflect. So now I'm put in an awkward situation, this seems super unlikely so I'm beginning to believe my player is lying about his dice rolls. At the time I let it all slide and finished the fight, but I'm worried about letting this possible cheating continue. I have requested that he sits closer to my position at the table so I can view his dice rolls every now and then, but I don't really want to keep doing this. Sorry if this is a bit long winded (I also realize I'm asking for advise more than a judgement) but I could really use the wisdom of the all powerful justices. Should I simply keep monitoring the players rolls, punish the player in some way, or do I just let it go and deal with it for the sake of maintaining peace. Thanks for your help -Mason

Kevin Wixom

May it please the Honorable Court and Respected Bailiff. I'm DMing a Star Trek themed campaign with my friends where they made some choices that had consequences and I am worried I went too far, also wondering what you think of my solution for later on... Long story short, an away mission sent them to the small cheese-making village of Limburger, where they had an encounter with a gang of ruffians in a busy marketplace. They did great in the fight, even called for help in the radio (which was a couple min away) when a zombie Beholder broke through the ground. Our ship's Chief Weapons Officer messages me privately if he can use the radio to call in an artillery strike on the beholder. My reply was, "that is definitely something you can do as the weapons officer." The strike hit the beholder, severely injuring it, and also hit numerous shopkeepers, customers and other civilians, killing several and wounding a lot of others. When the backup arrived 30 seconds later, two of the players ordered the npcs to arrest the weapons officer for the strike. This led to two sessions where the remaining team had an investigation of the battle (they weren't able to play that session) and those involved were court martialed. As they did a terrible job arguing their defense (the Prime Directive being an important part of their Fleet), they were found guilty as a group, stripped of rank, removed from their positions aboard their ship and assigned to the ass-end of nowhere. Now my plan is to have the plot happen to continue where they end up and have them earn back rank. But I did get grumbles that I should've just punished the weapons officer. Did I got too far? Should this be a group thing?

Zach Brown

Now this isn’t a court submission but I hearby challenge the court to a roll off to determine the worst roller. Imagine this brand new campaign so excited to play your super awesome gunslinger named Jebediah who looks like Sam Elliot just to rolls three nat 1s and have him blow himself up and be eaten by a dog. So Caldwell and Murph I challenge you.

SoupLightning

I hope this one is picked and i hope the DM in question gets their legs ripped off and reduced to crawling speed 😏

Rachel Ann

May it please the court. I play a Kalashtar Way of the Shadow Monk named Buttons. At one time the BBEG cast charm person on my character and I failed the save. However, my turn was next and I wanted to use the Stillness Of Mind which a feat that all monks to get at 7th level to get rid of the charm.My DM said no that I was metagaming and that it was too OP. Stillness of Mind is an action and I told my DM that I would be willing to compromise if he wanted to nerf it a bit. ai told him I would be willing for that to be my turn and sacrifice my bonus action as I was going teleport away as a bonus action bc of The Way of Shadow monk. I’m still salty about it and feel I should have been able to use Stillness of Mind as it’s not my fault the DM doesn’t understand how monks work. Thoughts?

Riley Wesson

I don't have a case but I do have a confession that has been eating at my soul. I was playing in a campaign that my friend was DMing for the first time recently, and I'd stowed away in the bowels of a ship and cast invisibility on myself, saying I'd like to look around. My friend said that I "basically have advantage on anything since I'm invisible", which I kept in mind going forward. Later I said I wanted to search the sleeping quarters of the ship, rolling an investigation check. It wasn't explicitly said, but due to my DM's previous words I rolled with advantage, rolling a natural 1 and a natural 20. In a moment of uncertainty and possibly sin, I told her I'd rolled a nat 20, catching her off guard as she certainly hadn't expected me to find anything of value. As a result I found a chest filled with vials that I snuck off the ship through a variety of checks and turned out to be 40 air elementals kept in individual vials. At that point it was too good to fess up and turn back, so I sat on my natural 20 that I rolled with potentially uncalled-for advantage. Am I in the wrong? Have I eternally damned myself to rolls with disadvantage? Can the light of Dice Christ ever properly shine on me again? Please cleanse me of my sins so I can once again roll with a clean conscience.

Nina

That’s just a shitty thing to do. I don’t care how „gritty“ it is. Gritty is not an excuse to be ableist. Gritty is about setting and tone. This DM is just mean and wanted to take it out on someone. Thank you for inviting them to your home game!

ZEEEK

Dear honorable crit justices as well as the bodacious bailiff. I present the case of the glyph of warding, vs the pocket dimension. So in a game in which I play in, we are level 5, and to keep it short, the dm seemingly took our victory in saving a stronghold from attackers by having the BBEG show up to basically tell us to go away, and that we were to be gone before his troops show up, or we will die. I was upset that he would just give us an impossible fight where the only option was to run away, so I started to needle the bbeg until his dragon ate my hand. I then decided I guess I should go, but I would have my revenge. I'm a warforged, so we said that our artificer was able to create a new hand for me, and I started to think of an evil plan to defeat the bbeg, because I was upset his dragon ate my hand. I tried to formulate a plan to store items that have glyph of warding cast on them, but the description of the spell states that if the object moves more than 10 ft from where the spell was cast, it would dispell and wouldn't activate. I thought I could get around this by casting the spell while inside of a bag of holding, therefore casting the spell while inside of a pocket dimension. I argued that while I would be moving, the pocket dimension inside of a bag of holding would not, so given enough downtime, I could store like 200 fireballs in a bunch of glyphs to one shot the dragon that ate my hand. I brought this up to the dm, but they decided that even though the bag is a pocket dimension, it is still moving while I'm moving. What does the court think? Is the pocket dimension of a bag of holding moving while you are? I leave it to the benevolent court to decide.