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D&D Court Cases! (Patreon)

Published:
2022-01-23 19:51:34
Edited:
2022-01-23 19:51:54
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Bailiff AXFORD here! The Supreme Crit will be convening THIS VERY EVE. Comment below with a brief (aka a paragraph or two!) description of your d&d dispute and we will try your case!  Also feel free to still insult Jake, lest the title Justice goes to his head.

May the justices ever rule in your favor...

Emily

Comments

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.

JustMithais

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

Jeff T

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

Josh

May it please the court and the Bailiff however the vibe is on the day. I present to you the case of the dust mix-up I was in a stealth like mission in which the party had to infiltrate a party to gain information. At one point we had been discovered and me thinking quickly decided to pull out our invisibility powder and throw it over the whole party. However my DM asked me if I was checking carefully in our bags as I was looking for the powder and said it would take an action to find I argued I should be able to roll an investigation check and with an 18 believed I had found the powder However after throwing it over our team my DM narrated how we all began coughing and choking and we’re not invisible at all. It turns out my 18 check was not high enough and instead of grabbing the invisibility powder I had instead thrown Dust of Sneezing and Choking. My issue is that my DM only told me the dc was higher than 18 after I threw the powder. I humbly await the court preceding.

BobbyG

May it please the sweetly Court. My party has a Doppelganger who has been impersonating a wizard for the entire yearlong campaign. I've made it so that said impersonated wizard has links to the campaign's story and npcs, so the Doppelganger has been pretending to have amnesia. Cut to our latest session where the party has discovered the corpse of the original wizard. This was a great bombshell moment and we left the session there. Everyone loved the cliffhanger of seeing this Doppelganger flummoxed but the player has been texting to say it was unfair to spring it on them out of the blue. Should I have allowed the player more agency to choose what had happened to a backstory character? Or should I stick to my guns and enjoy stoking the chaos in this party that now immediately distrust each other? I await the judgment of the supreme justices and jake.

Sean

May it please the court the special justices and the fancy bailiff. This has been on my mind for nigh on 20 years and I wonder how I could have handled it differently. I was a very new DM in 3.5 ed. The party was starting out in the main cathedral of the main religion of the world. The High Bishop was actually a pit fiend and the lieutenant of the BBEG. Anyway despite my trying to warn the party the rogue decided he wanted to rob the bishop and through a series of shenanigans ended up blowing the bishops cover. Of course the Pit Fiend immediately kills the rogue and to avoid a TPK I had a solar spirit them away to a safe place and resurrect the rogue. My players were mad at me for killing a player for what they did and I argued I did the right thing. What do you think?

RotiniWeenie

May it please the court and the overpowered bailiff Axford, I bring you the case of the dragon katana. 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.

James Lloyd

If it pleases the court, I believe I was a naughty player (it was past my bedtime) but I would like to know if you will spare me due to the mitigating circumstances. I was playing a aberrant mind Sorcerer in a friend's one-shot that had now turned into a 6 shot. My background I had agreed with the DM was an elf who had become infected with a Mind Flayer parasite that died leaving me unchanged except for physic and magic powers (as suggested in Tasha's). I wanted to RP my own experiences with Chronic pain with this new character concept, he gets powers but also pain from the failed infection. All good cosmetic RP so far. End of session 2 I look through the remains of foe and feel sick, a Con save is failed and I say my character vomits as a result for additional flavour. All good. I then act out being unwell and standing off to the side while the rest of the party decide what to do and in character tell the party I am unwell so they should lead the way. As we enter the next room I decided to "roll a Con save" to see if my RP being ill ends. It was a personal thing for RP as I was not technically using any game mechanic to make me sick. But I say this out loud and the DM tells me off for rolling without permission. I 100% agree with him and the Court's previous ruling on the matter, under normal conditions of play, but as this was for a personal RP decision, I feel that it should be except. Later on, the DM the decides to ask me for another Con save to see if I am feeling better at the end of the session, I ask if he will accept my Nat 1 from before (because it would be funny) and he refuses and I roll a 19, meaning my character is feeling better) but I as a player am disappointed.

Tonks

Honorable members of the court high and low My d&d group was in a mine and we released a fire elemental from a gem at the center of the mine that created a volcanic explosion. Our group managed to escape and help a lot of people, but the explosion destroyed the town and hurt a lot a people. My character wants to stay to help and thinks it is a great story beat, but my party is guilt tripping me into staying with them instead of bringing in a new character including my DM continually not listening to me asking to let me go and one of our party having a full on camera breakdown when I confronted her about what we did. I feel as if this is what my character would do since he cares about helping people and this was mostly our fault. Am I being a wet blanket or is my table just afraid of change?

Daniel Izquierdo

May it please the court, and bless the lovely voice that brings you the case of Schrodinger's card. My party has made their way to a secret pirate haven and a player stumbled into a mystical tent and was offered to draw from a deck of many things. They of course drew 3 cards and their first was the Fool, losing a level and having another card drawn. One of those cards let them undo ever drawing that first card and undoing their lose of a level. This all made sense at the table but looking back, should I not have also undone the extra card that was drawn as a result of that first card and leading us into a dangerous time paradox. Where does the Court land on the card that would be both drawn and also not drawn at the same time?

Eliska G

May it please the court, and the all in all unassuming bailiff, I present to you the case of the Abyssal Chicken. Recently I DMed 'Descent into Avernus' for a group of friends. Our wizard was very interested in the worldbuilding and did a lot of (spoiler free) research before the campaign began. He became especially interested in Abyssal Chickens. I informed him that he could actually summon one as a familiar using a spell, and he became obsessed with the idea. He changed some of his character's personality to fit with his plans, and changed out his spells to stock find familiar. However, the rest of the party absolutely hates Abyssal Chickens. They were sick of our wizard constantly talking about them, and many of their character's backstories included the hatred of demons. As soon as our wizard summoned the Abyssal Chicken, the party began demanding to attack it, and I allowed it, overwhelmed. Eventually they killed it and celebrated the victory, while our wizard sat dejectedly. So I ask you, merciful council: Was I in the wrong? Should I have stood up for our wizard, or even not told him about Abyssal Chickens in the first place? Should the players not have been so cruel to our wizard? Should our wizard have not been so obsessive about the demon in the first place? I await your all-powerful judgement.

Aurora Koch

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

Ayn Like Ryan

Hello gracious crit justices and honorable bailiff axford, I bring to you the case of The Squishy Wizard I was DM-ing a 3rd level mini-campaign for some friends of mine in late 2019. These were all new players who were a little nervous with RP but cosplayed their characters every session, which I found adorable. The Wizard player, when in stressful situations, was more than happy to deal copious amounts of damage yet when they took a hit, would call out (almost yell) at the druid or cleric to heal them (even if they only took 3 damage) without letting the other players actually decide what they wanted to do. I would intervene and remind the druid that she could do whatever she wanted, she did not have to heal the wizard, but more often than not she would end up using her action to heal her friend rather than being a badass druid. My question is, was I not firm enough or is this something that the Wizard needs to come to terms with themself? I leave the decision up to you lovely students of The Law

Luke Johnson

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

Miller Wrenn

May it please the court, the esteemed justices and the charming bailiff, I present to you the case of “Mortent” rolls. My partner and I have a new kitten, named Mort, who loves playing with D20s. For one session, we decided to give him a D20 to roll twice and use them like portent rolls available to the whole party for the session. His first official roll was a nat20! That session went wonderfully but now the party wants Mortent rolls every week. We tried again last week and, lo and behold, Mort rolled another natural 20. I told the group that while I am emotionally in support of the kitten portent rolls, I needed the advice of legal counsel before adding it to the laws of the table. Justices, is my kitten going to break my game or shall I draft an amendment to my table’s Bill of Dice?

Frederick Schemel

Honorable supreme crit justices and spectacular bailiff axford, I come to you with a case of a flying failure. During a long session where I was DMing overland travel the party came across a magic gorge forcing the Party to make athletics checks to get to the other side. One party member is a owlin, think aaracokra but an owl, was still kinda salty that I banned him from abusing a bag of holding to fly the party everywhere without consequences. So after everyone else made the leap across and I was moving to say the party made it across the gap he chimes in that he hadn’t leaped. I told him that he has a flying speed so it doesn’t matter, but he insisted to jump failing immediately because he has a -4 to athletics checks. After he fell he immediately dropped from the call and didn’t come back for 30 minutes. I beseech you was I in the wrong. Ps. The fall wasn’t going to kill or hurt him it would have just got him to his objective in a different way a bit earlier without the party.

Oliver

To the most honorable Judges and lowly Bailiff, I present the case of the horny player. Me and a few friends have been playing through the wilds beyond the witchlight campaign and our Samurai fighter is constantly making lewd remarks about the Rabbitfolk NPCs and my Rabbitfolk Ranger, despite me never getting into any lewd situations and have made it clear that's not what I was intending. I await your most honest judgement.

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.

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?

Eric Udy

May it please the very sensual court, my group has had a problem with one player specifically and their lack of commitment to the game. Our DM had asked for character sheets a week prior to our first session and this player did not submit his sheet until an hour into the first session when he had just finished writing it. He had no real backstory and as such did not have very much to contribute outside of combat for the first few session as our amazing DM scrambled to incorporate him. He is always on his phone posting meme during game time and does not really participate outside of combat. We asked him how to make sure he has more fun and be involved and he said he is fine with the game as is... would booting him from the game to ease the job our DM be reasonable considering he seems to be enjoying himself just fine? We await your verdict.

Artemae

To the Supreme Justices and Humble Bailiff. May this please you. I play an Aarakocra Druid/Wizard. Earlier in our campaign we journeyed into some underground tunnels. One of which was flooded. Our gnome barbarian decided to go into the water to see if there was anything worth while below. He was able to find something but during the trip was attacked by some water creatures. He was at a disadvantage. Luckily I knew to send in help as I used message to communicate with him. However I explained my character cannot swim (and couldn't wildshape into animals with a swim speed yet) and also would not swim as I preferred the sky over water. The others went in and all was fine but my party was angry with me for my decision. I am also the only healer. Which I used when they surfaced. Am I in the wrong to have played my character as such and not help in the fight? I await your merciful decision. - 'Asyila (character name)

8BitBruché

Not only should it backfire, it shouldn't work as immediate poison damage. Sure, if the enemies survived and their wounds weren't cleaned, it would get infected. But to grant 1d4 poison damage? Not even close. Unless their waste is magical lol.

Ligilos

Hello people of the court of various positions of power, I will keep this short, in a campaign where all of the characters were level 15, my DM charmed my character and told me I had to attack my fellow players. When I asked him if I had to go all out just this once he said yes and I proceeded to throw out my highest spells and any metamagic that would do damage, resulting in a player death that had to have some DM interference to stop. Everybody survived but to this day I still get blamed for almost killing a fellow player. Was I wrong to go all out? Thank you for your time. P.S if it changes anything I was high at the time so when my DM starting giving me commands to kill I did not question it at all

Cody Carson

If it pleases the erudite supreme crit justices and the surprisingly flexible bailiff, I present the case of the floor roller. I DM a campaign over zoom with everyone rolling their own physical dice. I have one player who constantly drops their dice on the floor and states their roll out of frame as they collect their dice. It takes much longer and I fear they might fudge their rolls while on the floor. Am I being a curmudgeon for being suspicious of these rolls and should I let my players have their fun?

Tyler

Hello Honorable Justices Murphy and Tanner, Lowly Provisional Justice Hurwitz, and Esteemed Bailiff Axford. My case, May it please the court, is that of the new player v. The existing party. In a long running campaign, we recently had a PC stop playing because they could no longer afford the time, and to fill her spot our DM invited his girlfriend to join the game. We were all excited to have her join, but the day before her first session with us our DM told us she had played D&D once before but was unsure if she liked it, which worried us because we are a very RP heavy group that has accidentally scared new players off before due to getting “too in character”. The day of the session came, and after a bit of time we came across the new PC arguing with a farmer because she stole their chicken. We helped settle the argument and paid the farmer for the chicken, then started asking new PC questions like “What’s your name?” or “Where are you from?”. She did not want to answer any of our questions and because we were in discord, at some point she and the DM left to another voice call. About 20-30 minutes pass and in this time we realize that DM did not tell her she needed to prepare any backstory, which is a difficult intro in such a RP focused group. Eventually DM returns to the main call and tells us that his girlfriend no longer wanted to play in the campaign with us. After this, the rest of the session had a very awkward air to it and DM was fairly stressed, which led to the session not being as fun as it could have been. My question is this: Are our DM and the new PC at fault for not being prepared enough for a group that is known to be heavy RP or is the rest of the party at fault for once again scaring off a new player and not taking their intro slowly enough?

Court Davies

May it please the saucy court and even saucier bailiff, I recently DM'd an encounter with the BBEG in which our wizard casted Otilukes Resilient Sphere, fully encasing the villain. This meant that no solid object or spell effect could pass through the barrier. Fearing that the fight would be brought to a standstill, I had the villain cast misty step to teleport themself out of the sphere. The wizard player argued that the villain should not have been able to do this since that was a spell effect. However I ruled that because the nature of teleportation is the act of disappearing from one place and reappearing elsewhere, no spell effect actually crossed the barrier. Was I incorrect with my ruling? Or should our wizard teleport themselves to a better attitude? I humbly await your judgement.

BertFromOhio

May it please the court, the benevolent Supreme crit justices and our humble, yet supremely competent Bailiff. I come to you today seeking your wisdom. I have been playing Adventurers League for a few months now and have been playing with the same group rather consistently. We've been playing Curse of Strahd and im running into alignment issues. None of them are evil, but they're very chaotic and tend to go murderhobo. A couple session ago we were given options to accept "dark gifts" and while I chose not to accept any(I'm playing a neutral good cleric) our paladin took almost every one of them, and most of the party took at least 1 or 2. I don't feel like my character would be ok with this, and I don't think that even the threat of Strahd is enough to convince him to stay with this party. Am I taking this too seriously or should I just relax, cover them in jam and carry on? Thank you for your time and for your wisdom! -May your rolls always have advantage, BertFromOhio

ap.cleric

May it please the disgraced court that brought Jake in as Justice and to the beautiful Bailiff Axford, I present the case of the "flavorful" BBEG. My fiance is DM'ing a one-shot campaign for a group of friends that consists mostly of first time players. We are a group that collectively loves shenanigans and can just have fun together, so we thought it would be cool to do a plot twist and make my character the BBEG. I wanted to reveal my BBEG status after walking into a cave with enchanted glyphs that would set off a momentary stasis-type effect on the group with an insanely high DC so that I can have an epic reveal. My fiance says that he feels like that would be "rail-roading" (I know, lame right?) the other players, but I feel like its a cool moment to have due to the Rule Of Cool. Who is right? We await any punishment you see fit. P.S. My character has a sick-ass hydra in the cave so I don't know if that gives me bonus points for cool, but it definitely should Quick Edit: our friend group has expressed wishes in the past to "take me on" in a D&D battle for awhile, so that gave us another reason to choose to make me the BBEG.

Matthew Gonzalez

May it please the court and our valued bailiff, when running through the WaterDeep Dragon Heist module. My party came upon some young orphan kids who knew some things about the local goings on in the area. After a decent perception check to see which one carried themselves like a leader. My reborn wild magic sorcerer approached and began to ask questions to one of the kids. After initial hesitation from the child and a ticking clock I casted suggestion on a child to get some information. It was only after that we realized the girl was in fact mute and was looking to her friends for help communicating. My friends will not let me live this down no matter how hard I demand to and I am subjected to constant razzing for casting suggestions on a mute orphan. I humbly await your judgment.

Squiffy13

May the queen of court security hear my call, also the other guys. Recently in my game In where I play a blade singing wizard I got some holy water from a npc cleric. While preparing to fight some sewer vampires I tried to use my shape water cantrip to make the holy water go over my rapier and freeze. My DM said that isn’t how holy water works raw and I called him a dingus. He argues it would be too overpowered to do weapon damage and holy water damage in the same attack. I argued that the cost of the holy water I payed (50gp) should get me 1 free bundle of extra damage. I also called him a dingus again. Who is more in the wrong here my DM for refusing to have fun, or me for reverting to 3rd grade insults? I await the decision of the court.

SinnerVirtue

May it please the court, I present the case of the octopus familiar. I'm playing an arcane trickster rogue named Precocious Jones. I want his familiar to be a cartoon octopus in a bowler hat who's hardened by the entertainment business and chain smokes. My DM insisted an octopus familiar couldn't breath on land, and suggested I make her a barn owl, which is admittedly more useful. I ask the question: Could a magic talking octopus breath on land?

Canadian Schubert the Mushroom 🍄

May I bring a case to confessional, and may Dice Christ bless us all. I built a session around a cult planting a magic bomb within a steampunk refinery. Once it went off, the team had to escape the exploding building while trying to catch the culprits. Every character's turn started with a "catastrophe check" which I'm trademarking. But as the group reached the bomb, and it went off, my one character decided to try and counterspell it. It was a magic effect, so in my panic, I allowed him to try. He rolled a 19, which would beat a 9th level spell, but I told him it didn't work. He was disappointed, but continued on with the cool encounter and everyone had fun. But my brain has not forgiven me to this day. I should not have let him roll if I didn't want it to happen. Please, tell me how many Hail Garys (Gygax) to do before I long rest tonight.

Crane

Case Update. May It please the court and the newly elected bailiff. I would like to ask for a redo on my case of the distracted tattooed DM. He actually never told me what tattoo he was receiving, but I promise it was not a portrait back piece of the party. It was 2 forearm tattoos of cursive song lyrics that were unspecified. If I must receive my court sentence of a tattoo while dming, what will I be branded with? I Thank justice Murphy for your gallant service and being the only justice to side with my case

Emily Lalande

May it please the most esteemed Justices and the most swole bailiff, This is the unfortunate case of a player versus player. I play in a campaign of four players (initially a rogue, a barbarian, a warlock, and a paladin) and a DM. My initial character was an elf paladin created to be the party’s healer. However, one of the other party members decided that she was no longer interested in her warlock character, killed her off as a surprise to the rest of the party (who spent an entire session trying to save her only to find out she didn’t want her character to be saved), and made a new character — a cleric. This cleric had the same spells as my paladin and was announced by the player to be the party healer. She was also a princess that the three of us were assigned to protect, changing the trajectory of the game. After some initial awkwardness and some plot progression, it felt useless to have these two characters in the same party (especially as they had diametrically opposed goals), and so I spoke to my DM about replacing my character. With DM approval, I sent my character off to deal with family problems, and replaced my paladin by playing a sorcerer to be the spellcaster/arcana-focused member of the party. Within the next four sessions, this same player decided that she no longer wanted to play her cleric character, and instead brought back her warlock character only to multi-class her with sorcerer. Once again, our two characters have many of the same spells, and contribute the same skills to the party. If I had known this player would stop playing the party healer, I never would’ve stopped playing my paladin. Now, though, I feel weird about switching characters again, especially because I put a lot of work and care into building my current character. What should I do in this copycat case? Am I being too sensitive about there being two characters with similar abilities in the party? Am I reading too much into things? I leave this case with you, brilliant Justices and wonderful comment section, and beg of you to help this confused player out.

Figgy Blue

May it please the Court of North Critlandia to South [Inset better name here benevolent and fair bailiff Axford] and the cruel, kind, and insane Crit justices and hear my plight. I am a new Dm and recently I've been running the "wild beyond the witchlight" module set in the feywilds. Currently, my party is in a kingdom of animal folk where the royals (bullywugs) are constantly assassinating each other in order to gain nonexistent political power, and the hag is stealing part of dead animal folk to make taxidermied zombies as her minions. Although I am running into the problem of balance in battle. My party recently turned 3rd level and so far every fight has been me sweating to make sure it's both challenging but needing to fudge rolls, stats, and other stuff to make sure no one dies. Justices and bailiff please hear and help my weak baby dm bones. Ps, my party is currently a exiting goth harengon arcane trickster rouge, a french, changling, revolutionary, chef swarm ranger (his swarm is floating pots, pans, and other cutlery), and a divine sorcerer aasimar who’m is constantly in a state of anxiety, and may be in a relationship with a bland as boiled tofu human named todd

Steve Herrera

Can you dispel Divine Intervention? Hello great and wise justices and the most amazing bailiff. My Party was playing a Level 20 one shot with brand new characters where we tried to save Christmas from Orcus. We were getting our collective asses kicked when one of party members who was playing a cleric used divine intervention and succeeded. We got buffs that the DM gave us(full health, resistance to damage and plus 10 AC) and the tide started to turn. Then around two turns later the DM uses Orcus and casts a dispel magic on the divine intervention and took all we gained away. It was difficult DC but it felt kind of petty. Without the buffs we eventually had a TPK and did not save Christmas. Can you even dispel divine intervention or was our DM being overzealous when it came to the power of Orcus. I leave the decision in the Court’s capable hands. Thanks for your time.

Hannah McFarland

May it please the supreme justices and the practically perfect bailiff… I bring to your you a dice Christ confession… it was the third time ever dming and I was getting used to reading monster stats from the Monster manual. My players were level two and they got into a fight with a grick. I didn’t realize their was a difference between a grick and an alpha grick. I killed two players and just announced it dead when the third player hit. Everybody thought it was super weird that the dungeon was super hard and I said I don’t know that’s what the module says happens. I humbly ask for your forgiveness.

Aaron Thomas

May it please the court and the illustrious bailiff Axford. I recently ran my players through Tomb of Horrors. We rented a cabin and it took them 12 hours to beat. They had no idea what I was going to run, and when it was done they all silently stood up from the table and went to bed. The next day they refused to talk to me and one of the players was running a 1 shot the same day, he preceded to kill my PC almost immediately and the wouldn't let me roll another character. After it was done they all started talking to me and said I paid for my crime. I ask you, is just running ToH without telling my players crime enough to have to sit out an entire 1 shot? Or did they take things to far? I await the swift justice the court will bring down on my/their heads.

RetroBoy

May it please the court and wonderful Bailiff, the amazing justiceses and the usurper Jake, i come to you with the case of the mech whale. I am a DM in a mostly sea base campaign, the party is going toward an island full of undead and the warlock made a promise to his patron that after they clear the island he will make it a place for his cult. As such the kraken patron sent a sperm whale that the part met before (and might be in love with the warlock), that now also have tentacles, to help them get to the island safely. the party artificer wanted make a mech suit for the whale using his infusion "arcane propulsion armor" which give creatures +5 walking speed so it can walk on land. He claim that with it being magical armor it can resize to fit the wearer, i claimed it doesn't mean to change that much size as sperm whales are way bigger. am i wrong here in saying that the armor won't work, or should i give in and let them have a mech whale, I await you judgement

Zroozlie

Honorable Crit justices and lowly, yet extremely handsome, bailiff Jake. May it please the court, I present to you the case of the uncaring third wheel. We have been paying for a professional DM to run campaigns for us for a few months now. The defendant known as Devilin, has played dnd with us for years, and always insists on playing in any adventure we are apart of. However, they come to every session barely knowing anything about dnd, despite playing it for years. For example, when asked what class their character is, they have to shuffle through the sheet to find the answer. When asked what race they are, they do the same, searching desperately for the answer, eventually coming back with "shadow" elf...they were a half elf. Eventually we had enough when he responded with a DMs question with, "hey I'm just along for the ride!". Should we stop paying for this player to be involved in our adventures despite their insistence? Are we wrong to have the mood of our adventures spoiled by them?We ask for your advice and fair sentencing.

Malik Everson

May it please the highly favorable and blessed court and. I bring to you the case of hitting to high, while playing a session a PC rolled a 30 to hit on an enemy who's ac was 20, i prompted the PC to roll damage the PC wanted to roll extra dice like a crit for hitting 10 above the AC. i argued that allowing that will decrease the value of a crit, but it would make combat encounters shorter and overall less enjoyable. This argument , I humbly await your verdict and punishment in this matter. Thank you

Dave 3D Art

May it please the courts, as well as anyone else who might be in the room. Played in a short lived store campaign as a Pallid Elf, Fathomless warlock. There were many issues with this particular game, but one in particular really ticked me off. The fact that short rests in this campaign were for some reason two hours, instead of a single hour. There were numerous house rules that were established before the campaign started that I accepted without too much issue. But this short rest rule only came up during our first session. As a warlock this rule seriously affected me. I ultimately left the campaign due to other issues but this rule was partially to blame. So do you think the DM was right in being able to double the length of short rests without warning or explanation? Also potions only came in the form of enemas.

Vie.

I have a confession of great arbiters of dice Christ (also Jake) I'm worried I have been a salted toad and must repent So in a Pathfinder campaign a few years ago my charecter a typical meathead orc got possesed by a demon. The possesed PC lost all the feats that made them any good so they wearnt a huge threat to the party The DM told the other players that damaging or killing my charecter wouldn't harm the demon at all. A sharpshooter in our party on then went all out on a few attacks on my possesed PC well over the insta kill amount It was the very beginning of the 4 hour season and I was being a salty toad and kind of just completely zoned out for the rest of the season. The PC was revived next season and after the fact the dm and player apologized and were very nice about the killing of my PC after which I felt guilty about zoning out so hard. I wholeheartedly confess that it was pretty petty of me to tune out to the action of the season. My dhrist have mercy on my soul

Holly

May it please the court, I play in a campaign with a most gracious DM who often plays by the rule of cool. We don’t strictly play RAW, but sometimes feel other players may take it too far. The problem I’ve seen is one of the players often “cheats” whether they realize it or not. The currently have a max HP that isn’t possible. They roll for HP and even if they were to max out each time, they still have more HP than possible. They’ve also been known to cast spells and use them incorrectly. For example, the other session they casted Heat Metal and told the DM to roll everything with disadvantage, including saves (which it doesn’t apply to). This ended up severely crippling their monster during a pivotal battle. I noticed these problems because I DM a different campaign for this player and usually have to double check their plays. I don’t necessarily think they’re “cheating” on purpose. I feel as though I should say something, but don’t want to rat out my fellow player, especially when it helps us. But I feel a level of protectiveness for my DM and worry he’s inadvertently being taken advantage of. Please guide me into the radiant light of Dice Christ. What should I do?

Tada Mouse

To the Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and a bailiff. A while back my party and I stumbled across a deck of many things. Shenanigans immediately ensued and an avatar of death was summoned by another party member. Throughout the fight our DM let others continue to draw from the deck and in a hail mary attempt to save our hides I drew from the deck as well. I drew Balance. My character is a happy go lucky lawful good oath of redemption paladin who loves people and believes the best in everyone. He even has disadvantage on insight checks for friends- which is everyone. As a player and a DM I am against PVP, but in the moment with the sudden alignment shift to chaotic evil it just felt right and I ended up attacking a party member who was not currently under assault by the avatar of death. After a ten hour session, some more shenanigans, and a dose of DM mercy everything ended up alright, but my friend was a little salty and I often wonder if my gut instinct to attack another party member in that moment was right? I humbly await your judgement.

Stellaluna Lopez-Ramirez

May it please the court (except Jake may he have terrible nightmares), I have been subjected to criticism and regret over this decision in a holiday special, even 2 years later. I was DMing a holiday themed one shot for my party, who had just figured out Santa had been kidnapped by an avatar of Valentine's Day. After information from Ms. Claus, the party was prepared to leave, until the wizard asked Ms. Claus to join them. I, foolishly not expecting this, said Ms. Claus needed to watch the North Pole. The party quickly countered saying the one remaining reindeer (Blitzen) could watch the North Pole. I said reindeer could not open doors, as they lack hands. To prove me wrong, a player proceeded to open a doorknob with their mouth in real life. With respect and fear, I permitted Ms. Claus to go with them. Justices, did I make the right choice or should I have stood my ground? Presentation to aid the court: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1PJnysThXt2iUGa82bfxJuiaC0caiJfvyqd4TFtgTgC4/edit?usp=drivesdk

Alex Ferri

Superior Supreme Crit justices, and Chaos Bailiff Axford, My husband and I were playing in a campaign where a lot of us have had DM experience, me being one of them. We were in a combat scenario, and one of the other players who had DM experience was taking his turn and I was next. He had a very convoluted character with an insane amount of attacks for a L6 character and always held up the combat. He was finally finishing up so I rolled my attack a little early for the sake of keeping the game going. I crit, but then he told us that all 6 of his summoned elementals were going to take their turn as well (they had not attacked the last round). When it finally came my turn, I explained what happened to the DM, and before she could say anything he very quickly chimed in and very aggressively man-splained that my attack needed to be re-rolled because I rolled to early and too much time had passed since it was “longer than one action in between”. I said that I was going to leave the choice to the DM, and because she was new to DMing she sided with him and made me re-roll. Please let me know if I was in the wrong here, because over a year later I still bring this up with my husband and he is tired of hearing me talk about it. I leave it in the courts hands! Sincerely, Alex

Tony Fattooni

Dear Paragons of justice, enlighted ones, great justices of the land... and Jake I guess... I humbly present the case of the Ironman dwarf. I've been running a classic fantasy campaign and even early one I mentioned that guns did not exist yet in the world. Other than that, all official rules are open for them to use with their characters. We're doing an interlude where a trio of dwarves will be sent to explore what's going on in another continent. One of my player has sent me his character, an armorer artificer that is basically iron man. Complete with boots of flight, power gauntlets, and a cool helmet that retracts at will... He's even calling him Sir Anthony Starcaster... Now he's my Emily of the group. Always creative uses of spells and terrain so I don't want to stifle his imagination but is it really ok to let Ironma roam free in this low tech fantasy world when he's technically within the rules. I humbly prostrate myself for the judges and their great wisdom.

Destiny

May it please the court, the honorable judges, and the great bailiff My party member was on a date. She fumbled on her attempt to explain the trinket she kept (She was an elf raised by werewolves. She joked she kept a pocket mirror so she could tell when she reached puberty and transformed). She tried to salvage the situation by playing the flute for her. Something she was skilled in. She got a 12. Our DM thought it would be funnier if she played the John Cena opening on her flute with her nose. She expressed that she thought a 12 was a perfectly good roll for a decent musical serenade. But the DM ignored her. Her and the rest of the group feels like the DM took too many liberties with her character for a joke and it ruined a really sweet moment. The DM went on to describe how the date went badly(but she still was offered another date). So it was not a fail but left a bad stain on an other wise cute character moment. I'm convinced our dm was in the wrong. But is there a polite way to push back against this in the future?

Mason McCauley

May it please the Court, the Supreme Bailiff, and the cowardly lesser bailiff in whatever slimy hole he may be hiding in. I present to you, the case of the Vampire and the Mage. A week or so ago, I ran the first session of a new campaign set in a gothic port city called Lothmar. I started my players in separate locations with some event that would lead them to a haunted house with vampires living inside. During a few of the character introductions I had them encounter a large bat (shapechanged vampire) picking up an unconscious human and carrying them to the house. The last PC introduced was the evocation wizard working in a book shop. I planned to have her be the one kidnapped by the vampire. BUT (in the fantastic style of Emily Axford) the Wizard did everything she could to not get caught. This included casting fireball in the middle of a city street, rolling very well with blink, breaking into a bootmaker’s shop, and pushing over said old bootmaker grandma. This lasted almost an hour. I knew I had to knock her out or it wouldn’t work for the story. But she played very smart and if it wasn’t the first session I would probably have let her escape. Please, Supreme Crit, was I wrong to have this vampire chase this PC for so long? P.S. I don’t know if this matters but this same player peaked at my notes for her character and saw I was going to have her family betray her to a magic inquisition later in the campaign. So, there may have been a little spite in the vampire chase.

Dylan Voth

May it please the court. The case of the collecting scholars. I host a D&D club at school (I'm a teacher). The party loves to collect enemies they encounter. For example, they have tamed an ochre jelly that shapes itself into a slimey pet dog. Another session, the DM made the mistake to say that a player, while in combat, was engaged with an ogre. The player then used ever turn to attempt marry it, eventually succeeding. How do we keep the game balanced when the party keeps ballooning? And how do I deal with the fallout with my students when one of their beloved ogre/jellies invariably dies?

Jason

Forgive me Dice Christ for I have sinned. This doesn't really involve a campaign but rolls of life. In my house we have a bathroom dice that everyday we all roll as we are getting ready to see how the day is going or specific events, such as going on a date or work gathering or such. One day I had a first date with someone and I rolled the dice as I was getting ready and I rolled a one. And I was panicking a bit so I re rolled and got a 20. The date ended up going well but I keep asking myself if I should have kept that first roll and not gave myself advantage

Taylor Hoover

Esteemed justices, and honored bailiff, of the crit, I come to you with a question about rolls vs roleplay. As a new DM, I was running a game for some friends and went out of my way to make a medieval tournament when they arrived at a new city because I knew one player would be quite interested in it. I was using a module's rules for events like caber tossing, pie eating contests, and jousting; the joust required a preliminary round to advance and said friend's paladin rolled poorly. I gave him advantage, because his character had such an interest in raising and riding horses, but he failed the check again. He didn't attempt to roleplay his way in with any other checks, so I apologized and moved on with it. He sulked the rest of the session, didn't participate any other contests, and then stormed off immediately after the session ended. Should I have handwaved the rules and allowed him to compete based on his backstory, or was the onus on him to roleplay and figure out a new way in?

emilythecoffeewench

To the righteous Crit Justices and the venerable Bailiff, I present my a case with my beloved DM's permission. At 5th level, we battled some tweens and one of them crit on my vampire party member with guiding bolt. She dropped, no death saves, taking double because it was radiant. She was also our cleric so no one could bring her back. She was eventually brought back through Frankenstein fuckery though. 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 negative 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 sent a quote explaining the rule. 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.

Katie Utke

Honorable justices of the court, I bring about a very odd case from the olden days of D&D. My Dad was part of a D&D group when he was in high school in the late 1970's. I don't know his class, apart from the fact he had spells he could cast. The DM put his party up against a particularly rough ogre. My Dad chose to cast 'Create or Destroy Water', reasoning that since it's about creating water in an enclosed space, he should be able to cast the spell within the ogre's lungs, an enclosed space. The DM wouldn't allow it, and per my Dad's telling, it's because the DM really liked this ogre and didn't want him to die right away. I have since told this story to my D&D playing friends in Chicago in the modern day, and have heard back from folks who successfully used this tactic in their own games. So, I must wonder: 1. Was my Dad in the wrong here or was the DM being unreasonable? 2. Am I the one in the wrong for spreading this story to folks, thus spreading a story of an unfair DM of old? I bring this towards the court with the ask that any potential punishment upon my father be given to myself instead.

Rory

Praise be to dice Christ! I have a confession to make and I pray that it will be received with forgiveness such that I may live once more in His holy light. Some friends and I got together to play a oneshot recently. We are all relatively new players with varying degrees of experience. For my part, I played a few sessions about 5 years ago and I’m an avid NADDPOD listener. We were on a time crunch so we used a somewhat janky website to build our characters. I played as a half-orc barbarian named Grug Grug (Grug/grugself pronouns) and when it came to weapon selection, even though I was only building a level two character, the website gave me a drop down menu to select basically any weapon in the game. Although I felt it was wrong, I selected the absolute dopest hammer I could find, a +4 magic weapon. I proceeded to absolutely destroy every challenge easily. While fun, I do think my freedom of choice kind of broke the game. Dice Christ, please forgive me for wanting to absolutely decimate my enemy.

Signe Krantz

Well met fair justices and your familiar Jake. I bring you the case of the invisible and restrained hag. A green hag (let's call her Olga), restrained by the spell Earthen Grasp, turned invisible ad a last ditch attempt to trick the party into thinking she had teleported away. They, of course, saw through it and killed her anyway, but were shocked and disappointed that they had to do a flat roll. RAW, as well as my ruling, says that the adv from Olga being restrained would cancel out the disadv. from her being invisible to them. The party argued that she wouldn't benefit from being unseen due to her being restrained and they knowing exactly where she was. I defend my ruling arguing that they would not see her weak points and can still miss attacks by hitting thick skin, bone growths and the like. We jokingly still discuss if they should have gotten to roll at adv. and I'd love your ruling on if this would constitute an exception to disadv. on unseen enemies.

Marcie Terry

Magnanimous judges and effervescent bailiff, I present to you the case of The Gambling Were-Goat. I have found myself in a position, much like your own, where I am in a place to pass judgment and I seek your counsel as to how to properly pass this sentence. I am a PC in a campaign DMd by my brother and play alongside 4 other first time players, including my husband who plays a human fighter named Poggers who is afflicted with “caprathropy”, causing him to transform to a were-goat on full moons. Prior to starting the campaign, my husband was the only person with zero knowledge of DND at all. Amongst our group, he has struggled the most with the role playing aspect and doesn’t engage quite as much as the rest of us do. However, this all changed during our last session when my brother presented the most tempting thing of all: the Deck of Many Things. As an avid gambler in real life, my husband perked up immediately and was the first to enthusiastically pull a card. It ended up being a curse that rid him of all his money, and the holder of the deck offered him another card. Not one to stop playing when he’s down, Poggers decided to keep pulling a total of four cards from the deck. The second was another curse breaking all his magic items. The third bolstered his wisdom by +2, and the final was a death card. The whole ordeal had us all in hysterics as my husband finally got into the role playing while pulling each card and learning it’s meaning. However, the mood sobered a bit when he drew his fourth card where he had to face the aspect of death. Poggers ultimately lost the battle, but my brother benevolently opted to cleave his soul from his body rather than kill him outright so as to not actually kill him, but to still give consequences. My own card from the Deck was called “The Fates” which allows me to choose one event and simply “undo it” and make it so it never happened. I can simply “undo” the draw of the fourth card, but I am frustrated that I would have to use my amazing and potentially game-breaking reward immediately after getting it to undo the result of my husband’s gambling addiction. But on the other hand, I was so happy to see him finally engaging and hate that he now has to play with a shell of a character and start over from a role play perspective. Should I use The Fates to undo his misfortune? Or do I save it for something down the line and make Poggers the were-goat live with his consequences? Is there a third option to consider here? I humbly await your judgement on this matter.

CarpeLiam

May it please the court and honor the illustrious bailiff, I present the case of the Shadowfell Paladin V the Comedy Steed. I (the player) made a Dragonborn Paladin / Warlock multiclass that is both sworn and indebted to the same Deity. Null (the dragon god that lives in shadowfell )has two personalities: one benevolent, and one evil. My Paladin worships the good side but owes a debt to the evil side. Herein lies my problem. When I cast the signature Paladin spell “find steed”, the DM always gives me a goofy giant animal from the feywild instead of a more traditional, thematic companion that would better jive with my backstory. Thus far, the steeds that I have summoned have arrived as a giant snail, a pink, glowing seahorse, a Saint Bernard with a New York accent, and a Moose with a pun name. Being a usual DM myself, I never protested. The other players always enjoy the silliness , and it’s become something of a running joke. For the sake of the game, I always played into it, but I longed for a cooler beast of burden. I’ve asked the DM out of character why my steeds are always so silly, and if I could ever get a more traditional one. He responded that since my character was aligned to a deity that is neither good nor evil, the steed that showed up would be of neutral alignment, and since the options for steeds in the spell are either celestials, fiends, or Fey, I was stuck with the whimsical beasts of the feywild. I ask the court: should I have pressed harder for a regular horse, or am I resigned to a campaign where my signature spell is a punchline?

Cameron Seker

For the consideration of the extremely unbiased, fair, and hyper-religious supreme crit justices and the other guy: I present the case of the Artificer Armorer Infusion Confusion. As a preamble, this case is not a case of player vs. DM, but rather a case of the D&D community vs. Wizards of the Coast. As written in the claimed holy passages, an artificer is unable to put magical infusions into already magical items. However, at level 3 when choosing the Armorer subclass, the ability Arcane Armor allows one to select ANY armor as their core component of this ability. Then, at level 9, the artificer learns “how to use your artificer infusions to specially modify your Arcane Armor”. Due to the abstract wording of this ability, Wizards of the Coast have engaged in stochastic terrorism against us, the players, and have forced the debate of “Can a level 9 armorer infuse their own already magical armor with more infusions?” We the people would love to have this debate settled in court, but even more so would want to know if the court finds if Wizards were too abstract in their official wording of this ability. Thank you on behalf of all players and DMs everywhere who have encountered this confusing rule.

Ben Delahay

Blessed evening to you justices. I am honored to be before you here at the crithouse. This court case I bring before you is one that could define the Critstitution for years to follow as I make the case for an unalienable player right. I recently dealt with a DM who wanted to roll death saves for the players. This was a highly debated rule on top of another and one the DM refused to compromise on. This DM did not trust us players with not metagaming and revealing our rolls. When we compromised and said we’d roll in secret the DM said our faces would give it away. This debate lasted for months. I gave both logical reasons as to why removing the ability to roll our own death saves would be less fun and emotional reasons as well. The fact that the very last rolls of my character could be done not by me, but determined by someone else’s luck. It just doesn’t sit right. I don’t think there’s any reason you could give that would make it worth it to make your players sit for several rounds (which can last like twenty minutes) where they’re doing nothing and they are anxious over the life of their character with no control. Also, this DM saw three people give a definite no to this idea, a month passed, and then they tried to implement it through force. Is it wrong to force a rule that half the party doesn’t want to implement or should players sit down and shut up? Should a DM ever ROLE a player’s death saves? I am willing to be punished for my beliefs. I hope you can make an amendment to prevent this from happening in the future to players like me. I want players and DMs to get along but rules like this should be a discussion and you should listen to your players.

Nick Lindstrom

May it please the court, I must prostrate myself before the court to seek a ruling on my own recent shenanigans. I am a forever DM, but recently a friend of mine offered to DM and I happily took the chance to play a broken warforged assassin named Dex. We were in a post-combat situation where we had just defeated the seven dwarves (of snow white fame) almagamated into a seven-headed flesh golem, and we were trying to determine whether the hole that the creature had just burrowed out of was cleared or not. I had recently acquired an alchemy jug and was feeling a lil silly, so I stated that I was going to pour 2 gallons of mayonnaise down the hole because that would obviously help us gather the information we needed. My DM replied with a classic "just before you do that" and proceeded to describe how a half-spider boy prince (not obviously connected to our overarching plot yet, just some goofy characterization) climbed out of the hole and began to have a fit about the golem being destroyed. I, however, had already mentally committed to my clever mayo plan and just responded with "I pause, look at my party, and dump the Mayo on him." The session was about over at that point and my mayo dump was the button we ended on, but my DM did not seem to be as tickled by my antics as I'd hoped. Should I have reconsidered my plan once he gave me the additional info, or were my shenanigans above board?

Jean Corbally

UPDATE! All hail the beautiful sweet justices and bailiffs of the court. I have an update on the case of the adopted snake God son (and some clarifications) This case concerned a betrayal of another player character who knocked my character unconscious and supposedly killed his adopted son, who was also a former snake God. But our DM is kind and apparently my snake son was merely kidnapped and so we went on a very successful sneak mission (involving potions of greater invisibility) to get him back. We've started the process of restoring his Godly powers and he is now a 300ft snake with all the sweetness of good boy Beverly Toegold. The former PC has now become an evil NPC and I am slowly forgiving the person who played his character this way. My DM has promised that we will get to fight the former character so I am slowly building up a spell list that will be especially useful against him and am looking forward to exacting my revenge. Lots of love, Jean.

Alex Moore

May it please the court and the bailif. But not Jake. May it displease him. I present to you the case of the murdered old lady charity shop volunteer. After an exposition heavy 45 mins where we were regaled by the DM with world lore and introduced to 15 NPCs after being liberated from jail by a secret organisation. We were finally able to start role-playing and let out into the city. Stretching our rpg legs we roleplayed a charity shop entitled "save the owlbears" into existence. The shop second hand items were we were able to buy clothes to replace our prison rags. We spent a little while engaging with a character the DM had to spontaneously improvise - a kindly old lady who volunteered all her time to the charity shop. The DM began getting frustrated when we made them described many different types of handmade scarfs. This frustration was shown when the next day when we returned the DM had had the town guards burn down the charity shop and murder the kindly old lady for fraternizing with escaped prisoners. Even though there was no evidence we were there. I put it to you, Did the old lady deserve to die for our roleplaying goofs? Or should we have been more attentive to the DM on their first session of the campaign and allowed them to get on with it and goof off later in the campaign?

Amber Schneider

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

Posey Mehta

To the esteemed Justices Tanner and Murphy, radiant Bailiff Axford, and Jake, I present the case of Signor Efreeti's Wall of Fire, may it please the court. For our group's secret Santa one-shot, I was gifted a character equipped with a magic item that allowed me to summon an Efreeti, which I promptly did. He was a well dressed Italian gentleman called Signor Efreeti. The one-shot culminated in our characters attempting to disrupt a ritual by destroying 12 beacons all situated in and around the Globe theatre in London. Signor Efreeti almost immediately significantly fucked up our DM's plans by summoning a fire elemental that used its movement to destroy 5 beacons in one dash action by passing through them. On his next turn, I decided to complete the whomping by positionining Signor Efreeti in the air to catch another 5 beacons (in a conveniently straight line) in a wall of fire. Although some of the beacons were inside the theatre and others were outside, Signor Efreeti definitely had line of sight because he was flying in the air and the Globe is famously open air. Our DM, however, ruled that Signor Efreeti's Wall of Fire couldn't pass through walls, and therefore it couldn't destroy the beacons. We argued that the Globe is a wood-frame structure so, if anything, Wall of Fire would be more powerful but were, alas, overruled. As a partial result of this ruling, our party ended up TPKing in a decidedly non-festive brutal massacre that left us all rather subdued and surprised. And so we beseech the court: was our DM wrong to rule that Signor Efreeti's Wall of Fire couldn't pass through walls and, in doing so, turn the tables on a potentially epic whomping?

Matthew Millions

May it please the noble Crit Justices and the gutterborn bailiff. I present the case of The Guest Player Manslaughter. I recently ran a campaign for a group of co-workers where we had a guest player join at the request of the group. This particular session had the party parlaying with an adult Green Dragon. Up to this point, the dragon was hinted to be dangerous, cunning, and short-tempered. It was only about 5 minutes into the meeting where the guest player opened up with moonbeam causing the dragon to retaliate with a breath attack (meant to be a warning blow). I ended up basically rolling max damage and insta-killed one of the core players of the group. Both he and the guest were absolutely devastated. Looking at the anguish on their faces, I decided to undo fate and say that he was merely unconscious. They ended up appeasing the dragon with a magic item for his horde and the player went on to live a long adventuring life. Was I right to let him live? Or should we have accepted the consequences Dice Christ intended?

DJ Campbell

I stand before the court and dice christ as the DM in question. I was running a homebrew and the party was fighting zombies. Well I was rolling to see if the zombie would die or be left with 1. Well one player was hitting 1 zombie left and right but it kept making its save.....but I forgot to add the +5 to the damage to make the con save dc. It made for good game play and the player and one other player had some funny back and forth. But I feel like I need to know if I must be punished or if dice christ shines ever so slightly on me. Thank you powerful justices and the ever so humble bailiff

Nicolas R

May it please the divine justices and anyone who happens to be hobnobbing among them, I bring you the case of the mushroom slave. Back in highschool, I was playing a deep gnome ranger named Gethen, as a gruff detective with a heart of gold. He didn't even have an animal companion until about a couple months of weekly sessions in. The dm presented Gethen with an abandoned small myconid (a little mushroom dude). Gethen asked if they would like to come along with us and because the myconid could essentially rapport spore, he agreed and became my animal companion. The next session, my friends began harshly razzing me for having a sentient creature as an animal companion and said it was basically like keeping a slave. It did not matter how many times I told them that I asked the myconid if he wanted to come and that they could leave if they wanted to, the razzing would not end. That was nearly 10 years ago but I still have a chip on my shoulder and have never since played a ranger. I seek the crit's wisdom and ask for resolution.

Waddle Bawddle

May it please the honorable justices and the immaculate bailiff. I bring you a case of logic over cool a character moment. I am DMing for a group of my best friends. The three of them helped the exiled prince besiege and take a town. This town also happens to be one of the PC’s birthright. He was heir to be lord of said town, but he was usurped by his stepbrother. Anyway, after the battle the stepbrother was captured. The prince gave the usurped PC the choice of what happens to his own stepbrother. But our resident Goliath fighter said “Uh no you don’t leave a loose end.” And proceeded to decapitate the stepbro. Our 3rd PC tried to stop him as long as an NPC. But he passed all his checks. So now, the two PC’s are mad at the Goliath for stealing a cool character moment. My question is, is the Goliath right for killing him outright or is everyone else at the table right for being upset about the stolen character moment? Have a good day!

Wynston

May it please the court, I bring you the case of the Nintendo Switch that ruined our quest to put an end to the Frostmaiden’s Rime. In 2021 I started Dming my first ever campaign, IcewindDale Rime of the Frostmaiden. We started New Year’s Day and played every other weekend throughout all of last year. As the year progressed the party grew and advanced and shared countless hours sitting around the table together. However in the final quarter of the year a few of my players began sitting on their phones for more and more of the sessions despite my nudges and prompts to pay attention. We found ourselves entering into the the battle with Frostmaiden and as God is my witness a player pulled out her NINTENDO SWITCH to play Animal Crossing. I won’t lie friends, I was PISSED, I ended the session as Auril came down the steps to begin the fight and we haven’t played since. Going on our fourth or fifth month on hiatus. And I have made no more attempts to prep or plan for another session because I’m in my feelings about the disrespect. I have spent quite a large amount of money as a new DM to get the ice wind dale blind boxes, Spotify playlists,minis, maps, laser light projectors for above the table etc. to make everything more integrated. And to get to this point I’m just heart broken. So I ask you council, do I get over myself and get us through to the completion of the campaign? Do I confront the problem and let everyone know why I have been neglecting this campaign? (Side note I started a campaign of Strahd on the side with other players to fill my Dnd needs). Or do I just say “it was fun while it lasted”? I thank you for your time and your council on this matter. -Wynston

Amir Madmoune

May it please the court, the stunning baliff, and roughly 2/3rds of all justices (I'll let you figure out which ones), I bring to you a case of bad math, retroactive dishonesty, and the potential fostering of camaraderie. I'm the DM at a table where my players have found themselves in a bit of a predicament. After fleeing an invasion of Eldritch horrors by boat, the party found themselves on an island filled with people and giant goats (this will be important later) suffering torrential downpours and massive flooding. After some investigation, they found that an object had been stolen from a nearby underground cave, an enormous pearl that kept an ancient evil subdued in magical slumber. The pearl was taken by a team of local divers, who were intercepted by a scourge of undead pirates led by Bonebeard, the current Emperor of the Seas, a powerful mantle that bestowed magical powers to it's wielder based on the size of their crew. They were familiar with Bonebeard as he'd already attacked the once, and were willing to lay seige to him on his ship before the island flooded in three to five days. At the same time, the goat population revealed themselves to be weregoats in service to an old goat demon, who was upset with the humanoids for allowing the island to flood by their misguided actions. Since the weregoats were a more immediate threat, I planned on them tackling that problem first before going in search of the pirates and planned accordingly, but instead they chose to seek out and fight the pirates first. I thought that, even though it was a little tough for them, they would ultimately be fine and ran the pirates as a challenge for level 6 players with some decent loot versus their current level 5, and for the most part it went well. When Bonebeard finally took action, it was to deadly results. He hit and crit our artificer, who I initially thought was killed outright, and ran for several turns as such. Before her death, seeing how tough the battle was, oue artificer used her one and only Homebrew Rejuvenation bullet on the Cleric, which gave them the benefits of a long rest, including repreparing spells. The cleric prepared Revivify just in case, even though the didn't have the right components for it, on the off chance that Bonebeard had what they needed. I thought that was a super cool move, and had a jailed NPC inform them that Bonebeard had a treasure horde with a diamond valuable enough to revivify the artificer if they won the battle in time. But when I went back and did the math, I realized that the artificer was actually several hit points short of being outright killed. Instead of retconning their death, I let combat continue and had the party use the diamond to revivify the artificer, since by restoring the cleric as her last selfless act, I thought it would be great for the story that the cleric prepared Revivify to save her in return. It does make me feel like kind of a liar though, and some part of me wonders if it was right to keep up the charade after I realized my fuck up. Was it okay for me to keep the player dead and risk their permanent death for story against the will of the dice, or do my transgressions against dice Christ, even well intentioned, earn me eternal damnation? I await 2 of the three justice's venerated opinions.

Andy McCabe

May it please the court, the honorable bailiff Axford, the all powerful justices Murphy and Tanner, and also Jake I guess. I lay before your court the case of the branded bard. I am a first-time DM trying to get my friends into dnd, most of whom have never played before. I was running the Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign as a way to teach them all the rules while following a prewritten story (and teaching myself how to run the game). Enter Ffarbek (pronounced “fuh-far-beck) a dwarven bagpiping bard who has a bugbear penis in his possession which he took as a trophy from the initial goblin encounter. He walked into the friendly inn and tavern in town and promptly began harassing the bartender and slamming the severed penis on the counter, getting himself kicked out of the bar. He made his way to the bar that was the headquarters of the bandits, persuaded his way into the bar, cast friends on the bartender and once again presented the bugbear penis to the room at large. One of the bandits took exception to this cocky dwarf and attempted to intimidate him by threatening to brand him with a hot poker as initiation to the redbrand gang. Ffarbek agreed and was branded, I described the pain as being enough to force him to black out, and the bandits dumped him in the alley behind the bar, where he woke up the next morning. Now Ffarbek believed that his branding should have given him immunity from any of the gang members targeting him for the rest of the campaign, and i argued that the higher ranking members would recognize him as an outsider and attack him anyway. I as the DM was a bit overwhelmed with the behind the scenes work, and I wasn’t sure how to justify the bandits attacking the party in spite of the brand. He was mad but he accepted and it didn’t effect much of the campaign, but I look back on this as an early failure of mine as a DM to roll with the punches and maybe given him some more opportunities to use the brand for deception purposes. I offer this case to you, venerated justices, seeking your wisdom so that I may one day not be flummoxed when faced with a bugbear penis driving the plot of future dnd games

Drop

May it please the court not including the unhonorable Justice Jake, I bring you the case of a dm player. A friend of mine really wanted to get into d&d and he wanted for me to dm a game for him except we couldn't get any else to play so I made a fighter npc to help him but the fighter was to powerful and to keep balance to the game I way leveled the NPC down with a curse and the game progressed way slower. My friend was complaining about how the ncp suck now and how it wasn't as much fun not to be CRITing everything we came across. We finished the campaign of about a year back killed the devil he started a bar lived happily ever after. But did I do the right thing by nerfing the NPC or should I even of created the NPC in the first place, I look forward to what you decide.

Kymberly King

Wonderful justices and the prettiest bailiff. The case of the non cannon storyline... In our last session 2 of the 4 players couldn't make it, so I announced that the other 2 could still play but we would goof around so it would not change the story and with 1/2 the players missing I felt it was only fair. When we closed our previous session, the group had just started a bar fight. The 2 players at the session, snuck out of the bar unscathed and went to have some fun. They were "gone" from the bar for about 24 hours. They want to keep what they had done as cannon so that when we start the next session the 2 players who missed the session come back to find themselves in the middle of a bar brawl in full swing with 1/2 the party AWOL. The rogue and barbarian are the ones that left. The players that missed the session are a bard and a scorcerer. I don't think it is a nice thing to do, but is totally hilarious. I leave the decision to the wise and handsome Justices.

Michael W

May it please the High Court, and Jake; I play a warforged clockwork souled sorcerer (BTLB, aka Butler-bot) in a campaign to collect a magic wish-granting macguffin. Over the course of the campaign, we've mainly focused our sessions in the wilderness, meaning there is very little gold to be had. As part of leveling up as a clockwork soul, my character automatically gets the spell Summon Construct, which fits my character very well but also has a casting cost of a very expensive box. My DM has said that he is strict about these costs, but among the entire party no-one has gotten that much gold over the whole campaign. I argued that the DM should have either given more gold or been more generous with casting cost requirements, but he held firm. Was he right to do so?

Jake K.

Dear honorable supreme crit justices Murphy, Axeford, Tanner, and the bailiff. I am currently running a now 2-year campaign in which one of my PCs is an echo knight fighter who wanted his echos to be different versions of himself from different timelines. Therefore, his summoning of them was agreed to be the result of reaching through time to bring another version of himself into this timeline. As a home brew mechanic, now that he is high level, I have given him the ability to roll a constitution check (a high stat for him) to be able to channel a specific echo of his choice from infinite possibilities. The more specific he is, the higher the check. My case is as follows: one session my PC, Delaaware Hampshire, asked if his echo could fly based on the wording of manifest echo. Given that he was granted this new ability to chose a possible Delaaware, and wanting him to use it, I said “No, an echo’s movement will be restricted to the summoned variant’s movement.” I then hinted that maybe another Delaaware could cast fly, or even fly himself. However, instead of trying to use his new ability, my PC took to the internet and began referencing and sending forums and quotes from Jeremy Crawford stating that the Echos are not bound to these restrictions! I ultimately played the “DM’s ruling is final” card and it was accepted by the table, but the ruling haunts me as being unjust. Should I have just any of his echos float around with no regards for the in-world lore for their existence, or was I right in sticking with my ruling? I humbly await your supreme judgement.

Bukvar's Assistant Isy F

Honourable justices and the newly queen of balifs, may it please the court. I was playing recently in a 5e campaign where we were battling against a flay wind. Being a Level 5 bard I had only taken spells that required a target of a creature or object. I tried to cast thunderwave to stop the wind advancing on us and was told by the DM that the wind is neither an object or creature but a weather event. I accepted this ruling and moved into supporting my fellow party. BUT a few rounds later our wizard wanted to cast identify on the wind which our DM allowed. I argued that according to the wording of identify, the wind would need to be an object or creature to work. Let alone the fact the wizard would need to touch it. We did end up agreeing that the flay wind was a creature and spells could be cast on it, and the wizard could cast it from a distance, But I never got my turn again as we outran it before I could cast. So I put it to the court, am I an unprepared bard only having spells that target creatures or items, or have I been wronged. I humbly await your judgement and if found guilty will take 1 spell of your choice for the rest of this campaign.

Lobbying for another Atlanta Live Show - Mr. Adams

I plea not to the justices of the court, but to the priests of our holy dice Christ! Long ago, when I first began playing, I, a half elf half orc ranger entered into a in archery contest against another PC. We went arrow for arrow, each shot topping the previous, causing a great scene and reaping the wondrous applause of the crowd. Eventually, the competition was called a draw, and we both won a prize amounting to 500 gold each. The fame that my character earned from that competition profited him throughout the remainder of the campaign. Sadly, I must admit, and I throw myself at the feet of dice Christ, most of those rolls were falsified. A 7 became a 17, a 1 became an 18, things along those lines. I beg for forgiveness and offer myself a living sacrifice to the gospel of dice Christ and the wondrous storytelling that can come from a poor roll.

Thomas M. Pflanz

May it please the court, the most honored Bailiff, and the mostly esteemed judges, I bring to you the case of the Baffled Bard in a Falling Frenzy: In a recent session I ran for my family campaign, my players found themselves in the Feywild, and had a combat where they fought Giant Apes while falling through the air for a mile. They made very short work of the apes, after which they had to figure out a way to break their fall in the remaining 8 rounds they had. Three of my players worked together to break their fall with my Mother's Ranger's gravity arrows, a lucky modified wild magic surge roll from my best friend's Paladin/Rogue, and one of my Sister's Barbarian's 2 remaining rages for the day. My Father's Bard, on the other hand, decided to work by himself and fashion a crude parachute with an old cloak and some rope. He rolled a Nat 20, so I allowed him to finish constructing the parachute in the 48 seconds he had before he crashed into the ground. Here is the dispute: For the group that worked together, due to their actions and their successful rolls, I reduced their falling damage from 20d6 to 14d6. For the solo Bard I reduced the falling damage from 20d6 to 15d6. The Bard argued that, as he had built a parachute, he should have negated much more falling damage, even though he had such a short amount of time. I argued that he, by himself, negated more falling damage than any one person in the group that worked together. Nobody even went unconscious from the fall. The Bard has brought this up to me two seperate times out-of-game in the month since we have last played. Should I have reduced the falling damage more? Or was my ruling just in the eyes of the court? I humbly and earnestly await your honors' ruling.

Connor Raftery

Dear illustrious and resplendent justices and nice in his own way bailiff, I present the case of character death ownership. I let one of my players act as a guest dm in my home brew world. My intention for the short time of being a player was to be an old man Barbarian with a heart problem. Lots of indications that if I didn’t take my medicine after raging was detrimental to my health. After defeating the mini boss at the end of the guest dm’s adventure, I took over the reigns as DM. My first act was to describe my former PC’s dramatic heart attack, much to my party’s dismay, as they thought my character was fun and liked him. They then started making preparations to reincarnate him. Is it right for me to deny them their reincarnation so my personal character can remain dead, or allow them their character agency to reincarnate a favorite NPC? I leave this decision in your skilled, Knowledgeable, and nicely moisturized hands.

hunter vanover

Greatings and salutations high court justices and greatings great bailiff of the court I come to you with a case of high Rollin injustice. I was playing a dragonborn in a 5E roleplay heavy game, in the game we had decided that as a young dragonborn coming of age I would shed my scales as my adult scales grew in. I had been collecting them as a ritual where final maturity is gained with burning your youth scales. So I went out back of the tavern to use my breath weapon to attempt to burn them along with the dragonborn bard to burn them. After adding some flammable gel we had, we used our breath weapon... And rolled double nat 20s Then the dm told us we watched the explosion of fire ignite the Back wall of the tavern. Then watch as the fire jumped building to building as the town began to burn. Thus the reason I'm wanted in the town of tribore My question is this, should we have been punished for the double nat 20, I could see it on a Nat 1 but should we have been punished for rolling high? Sincerely Aspen Roberts The hunted dragonborn

Grant Klein

May it please the court, specifically the normal and cool justices and the salt of the earth bailiff, I have a confession that I must make to Dice Christ. A few months ago I joined a post-apocalyptic western themed campaign, and it was extremely sick. I played an owlfolk detective from the fey, and the DM and I had talked in depth about my goals on the material plane and the implications for the plot, all of which was very sick and I was very excited to see it play out. I am currently taking night school classes to get my masters, and when the campaign began I didn’t have class on the nights we met to play. However, when I signed up for spring classes I discovered that I had to take a required class on the night we played DND. I did not want to force the other players to rearrange their schedules as we have a large party, and it was already a miracle that we were able to find a time that works for everyone, especially since multiple party members and the DM have very young children. Because of this I decided to back out of the campaign. I have felt guilty of betraying Dice Christ and the story that would have been told with my sick character in this sick world with the sick story telling of my DM. Should I have tried to have my party members reschedule or did I make the right decision sacrificing myself for the convenience of my friends? I prostrate myself to the court and to dice Christ.

Gabriel Felix

May it please the court and welcome the return of bailiff axford. last session I used the spell Hypnotic pattern on a bad guy that keeps coming back after messing us up throughout the campaign. The dm rolled a save ( a nat 1). I was thrilled that my spell finally worked after many failed attempts but the dm said he used the wrong stat block and accidently used a minions save instead and re-rolled for the Big bad, this time rolling a nat 20. I ask you this, am I right to be upset about this? Or should I accept this with more grace than I'm willing to give. Ps. This was done on roll 20 where the dm has the stat block built in so he can roll with its modifiers with the push of a button.

Cody W

To the honorable sweeties of the crit court, I throw my Dm cutting out a PC case to the tray. I am the dm to at one point a party of 7, the last person to join was a monk with my own homebrew subclass, way of the substance sage. This player has taken this title far too seriously, and tries to do everything. Stuffing halflings in bags, refusing to peacefully talk with town guards, trying to get NPCs into cryptocurrency, planting and wanting to harvest herbs in the span of an in game hour, murdering sentient rocks. On top of that, they then moved into my basement and spread all of their stuff onto the dnd tables so no one felt comfortable being down there. He has plans to move to the grand canyon coming up, but I and the 4 remaining players have continued the adventure without him, as well as I turned their character into a DM PC, I know this to be the correct decision for everyone, but my heart still weighs on this. Someone was passionate, invested, and had the desire to play with no malicious intent involved. Should I have given them a last conjugal visit with their character, or was it justified to drop them and play behind their back before they moved? I await jusitce

Ajax0fSpartax

May it please the court, the pulchritudinous justices and the bewitching bailiff, I come to you with the case of the perplexed dragonborn. I am playing through a run of the dungeon of the mad mage As a homebrew Dragonborn warlock/fighter. My Dragonborn character Beylise was originally a blue Dragonborn, but after meeting the Dragon that started his draconic bloodline in the shadowfell and forming a pact with the dragon to kill the mage that trapped it there, his scales changed to a pearlescent purple and his breath weapon and energy resistance became necrotic on top of lightning. (The breath weapon did half necrotic half lightning) The disagreement came up when Fizban’s Treasury of dragons came out. I thought for simplicity’s sake I should change the race of my Dragonborn to a purple topaz Dragonborn, making my character lose the resistance to lightning damage and the half lightning damage on the breath attack; my DM however said that we had altered the character enough throughout the course of the game as he met his patron while in the dungeon. It is my opinion that becoming a gem Dragonborn and losing out on the resistance to lightning damage More than makes up for any additional buffs that My character would get by becoming a gem Dragonborn, but am I wrong for thinking this change is no big deal? I will accept any decision/punishment the court would put forward, thank you for your time.

M

A great opportunity for the court to elaborate their precedent #thatsnothowmistystepworks

Alvyn Saltydeck Timbers

May it please the tainted court and forsaken bailiff Axford. I present myself for judgement in the case of infinite gold. I, the player, was gifted a ring by my dm that granted infinite replenishing arrows. My gnome oath of the open sea paladin, Alvyn Timbers, recently became a pirate captain and decided to have a gold arrow crafted, and pay our NPC archer to wear my ring and shoot golden arrows into the wall for a normal work week. My DM allowed it and thought it was funny, but it ended up in me creating a gold empire company named Eternarrow and shifting the campaign into us building our business. Did I take it too far or should I lean into my flourishing business and crash the economy? I await your judgement.

DowdMusic

COURT CASE UPDATE: May it praise the glory of the High Crit and offer a Hi Sweetie to Baliff Axford. DM Tyler D here with a bomb update. I would like to inform the High Crit that their suggestions have been implemented and the baddies now are laden with their own bags of bombs. Furthmore, as per Justice Cobb's suggestion I will be planting bombs on the underside of their magic carpets next session (we do not commute with horses). Thank your for your wise council. Let chaos reign in the bomb campaign!

Steven Hoffart

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

Ben D

To the Honorable Crit Justices Murphy and Caldwell, the dishonorable justice jake, the Supreme Baliff Axford, and any potential esteemed guest justices, may it please the court, I bring to you a case against my old DM, who I believed punished me for choosing centaur as my player race. I was playing a level 3 centaur bard named Aegon Zym. Before session zero I asked the DM if I could play a folk hero centaur and they loved the idea. I was very effective in the first combat and I think I may have been punished for it. The next session, when entering a nautical arc, I was told that since horses can't be on boats, my centaur would have to be kept purely in the hold. I was then unable to participate in most of the roleplay that session and my attempts to engage where nerfed; I wasn't even allowed to use the spell Alter Self to give myself seaworthy legs. Did the DM go to far, or were they rightfully portraying a centaur in the real world?

Seasquidley

May it please the Court and the righteous judges as well as the honorable Bailif Axford. I humbly ask you to tell me if I was an unreasonable DM. I was running a battle royale with three friends I play with often and one I had never played with. This player is a forever rogue and, despite trying to convince him it may not be best for a pvp scenario, he refused to pick a different class. I told everyone they couldn't take two non-combat turns in a row in order to move the game forward. They were all randomly assigned an environment in the arena, each of which had monsters for them to fight first. The rogue hid in a tree and refused to come down for several turns even to fight his monsters. The other players had an incredible battle while he hid for about 8 turns. He got down once, stabbed someone and hid again. I told him he had to get down from his tree for at least one full turn. He did, then hid again. One player used the horn of Valhalla and the vikings chopped down his tree and murdered him. He said they couldn't have done that because they should never have been able to find him and that it wasn't fair he couldn't hide until everyone else killed each other. Was I too harsh in letting 8 vikings destroy him in a single round? I am at your mercy!

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.

Austin Johnson

Honorable justices and disgraced former justice lost forever in the tank. May it please the court I would like to present a case of copyright infringement upon your very own characters. A member of my party recently decided to DM and is really bad at it. None of us can follow the plot, the npcs are all unhelpful assholes, he has sent us dozens of pages of lore dumps a week, and leveled us down mid combat because he thought we were too strong twice. But to top it all off he has blatantly stolen the beloved characters Galear, Riz, and Fabian Seacaster. So rather than hurt his feelings and tell him we aren't having fun in his game could the court issue an injunction to stop this game for the unlawful use of the most beloved NPC in DnD history and two characters he simply can't do the voices of.

Dayton Miles

I sit before the court but plead to Dice Christ. Lovely Justices and the Balif-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, I have a confession for you today. I have been in both the shoes of a player and a DM, but my confession is from a time as a player. We were in a boss fight, one of the big three for the campaign and our party consisted of a paladin, druid, and bard(me). Long story short, we were getting our asses handed to us and our DM wasn't holding back. I knew we wouldn't last long so I just started blasting support spells. Out of seven rolls, I lied and said three rolls passed and one crit as well. In the end, the paladin lived and the druid was uncon but my character died. I know it's better to let the dice tell their story but I felt bad that as support I wasn't doing shit. Please forgive my sins and I can't wait for you're upcoming campaign!!

Faisa Awow

This is less of a dispute and more of a crisis of faith to dice Christ. I seek ur guidance and hope you can dispel my sins. I’m a dm of almost 2 years and it’s been pretty smooth thus far except recently one of my players has picked up a very annoying habit. I’m pretty crap at descriptions and to supplement this they have started throwing me word prompts in a very condescending manner aswell as calling me out when I misuse a word. It’s started as a joke but the amount of times they do it feels undermining and under cuts my authority as a dm cuz it feels like I constantly have to watch my wording. I’m not mad just a bit irritated and it’s slowly making me want to treat their character more harshly which I understand is wrong. Please punish me for being tempted by the power of the dm. I’m a humble woman seeking your guidance.

Richard Brown IV

May it please the courts, andJake. In a campaign that started precovid and has continued since my dungeon master asked my party if we would be willing to bring a new player to the table. We all enthusiastically said yes because the more the merrier. But everything instantly felt off the new PC made no attempt to role play save for instantly trying to rob all the gold from our cleric. But the new player stayed in our party for two more sessions before it really went to hell. At the end of a big boss fights with a local necromancer the new players rouge turned on us killing two of three Original PCs with my Druid escaping via wild shape. I was bewildered and absolutely I’m shock once I actually realized what was going on. As were my fellow PCs. Which is when we found out that the DM brought this new player along to get rid of our characters because the DM didn’t like our parties vibe and wanted to “rebuild it from the ashes” which is an exact quote from the DM. My fellow players have since created new characters and the campaign continues to this day but I still hate what he did here though my other PCs seem unbothered by it and say I should just let it go. So I leave judgment to the courts, did I over react or is my anger justified. Thank you justice’s and jake for your time

William N Wuehrmann

I prostrate myself before the mercy of the court -particularly the Vibacious Justice Caldwell- asking for their divine judgement in an issue that is eating at my soul. I am a DM for a group that consists of my younger brother and his friends. While traveling between towns, I rolled on a random encounter table and got "two commoners who have locked a third commoner in an outhouse and are threatening to tip it over". I described the scene as happening on the other side of a small hill, where they could hear the struggle but not see anything. I asked if anyone wanted to check it out, and my brother, with no knowledge of what was on the other side of the hill besides some muffled cries of help, asked if he could lob a spear over the rise. He did well on his perception check, so I ruled that it was within his maximum range, but the target would have cover and he would have disadvantage. He proceeded to roll two Nat 20's, criticaling and killing one of the NPC outright. The other NPC immediately booked it, and the one locked in the outhouse was left there indefinitely. They are now wanted for the murder of the first NPC. I ask the court, knowing full well that I should reward Nat 20's, if I was in the wrong by honoring his double-crit and the fallout that came from it? I throw myself at your feet, ready to accept your judgements.

Mariah McGregor

To all the rightfully appointed Justices, faithful bailiff Axford and Usurper to the Bench, Jake Hurwitz I come pleading the case of the slow player. At my table there is a player who, while very kind and great team player during combat insists on exploring every single corner of the map like he's trying to 100% video game with too many collectables. He smashes pot, opens vents, and otherwise holds up play even when our DM tells him there is nothing to be found! Both myself and the DM have asked him to please focus more on the major plot beats or at least be more willing to move along with the rest of the group. Am I in the wrong to ask him to hurry up? The player insists he's just being thorough and the DM should reward this behavior. I accept all judgements from you, honorable justices, and also Jake. Thanks! Mariah (she/her)

Garrett Myers

To the honourable and extremely swayable Justices of the Supreme Crit specifically Father Justice Tanner my cohort in child-rearing (really let this one sink in Jake, get Caldwell moved!), and the Baliff, thick of quad. May it please the court: I present to you "The Case of the Dying Breath." I was playing one of my first ever DnD sessions a few months ago (I have since started DM'ing a game, 2 sessions in and killing it), where my level 1 group was walking through the forest. We happened upon some gerblins and were ambushed. After I performed a sweet-ass javelin murder, I was ganged up upon and felled by the notorious "Goblin Number 5." I asked the DM if, as a free action, I could call out to my party druid (who were all within 30-40 feet) and just simply said a pained, "You got me?" as I fell. The only other player in our group that could heal was that druid who was about 35 feet away. The player said, "there no way I heard [you] I am focused on the battle" and refused to come heal me. My corpse was then stabbed by Goblin #5 and I failed a death save rendering my, very rich in backstory, level 1 paladin, dead as fuck. We came up with a way to skirt around him dying (since the DM "auto hit" on the attack instead of taking disadvantage), but ever since then I've been a little salty at that druid for letting me die. Wouldn't have someone heard my death blow from 35 feet away? Especially since I called out to them specifically? Or am I just being a salty little baby and should get over it, because RP? I lay at the suspended from-high-chairs feet of the Supreme Crit. PS - I love ya'll, thank you for the great times and inspiration to start my own 91% homebrew campaign, "Madness!"

Westin Lanser

Stylish, powerful, self-possessed Justices, Bailiff and… Jake, if it please the court, I’d like to present the case of the enthusiastic homebrew DM. I play in a game in a loving-crafted, vibrant world which is clearly the pride and joy of our DM. They have made a book for their world that is over a hundred pages long full of races, classes, feats, spells and lore. The problem is that everything (except the lore) is just flat out bonkers. And the second problem is that I think I’m the only one in the party who has read the book. The other players are doing mostly vanilla characters while I’ve cobbled together a crusty Frankenstein’s monster of the most exploitable part of the DM’s homebrew. The other characters are powerful in their own right but I’m pumping out 150-200 damage a round and I’ve ended the last two fights in a single turn. The DM says that he wants people to play test him homebrew but I’m the only one doing it and last session ended two hours early when I 86’ed a Red Abishai on the first round of combat before half of the party had a turn. We’re level 14, for context. My DM has said that he will change the spells and feats I’m using in his book in the future but also that it would be unfair to me to make me used the nerfed versions. What should I do? I don’t want to trivialize the other characters but I’m drunk with power and the DM keeps buying me liquor. I humbly prostrate myself for your judgement.

W Jackson

May it please the whole court, from its most supreme members to Jake. I bring a brief submission from a novice player. I play in a game run by a DM who is a huge fan of many popular D&D shows featuring professional comedians, actors and voice actors. In gaps between the action our DM repeatedly tries to set up heartfelt one to ones between our characters or romantic scenes that have fallen flat with the players. Our group have not met each other in person often as we only started our campaign during the pandemic, and have not had a chance to develop much chemistry within the group. Even if we had I'm not sure we have the acting, improvising or flirting skills to satisfy our DM's vision for these party interactions. Does the court have any advice for how we can persuade our DM to not try and force these moments (honestly - minimum three times per session) without offending him? Does Supreme Justice Murphy have any tips for generating or pacifying the on-screen and off-screen chemistry of his players?

Christian Alvarado

May it please the benevolent and beautiful court, the stupendous bailiff Axford and Jake, a most solid of guys. I bring forth not a case, but more of a confession of a possible murder of two of my players. This is the story of "The COAL-LEE-SEE-EM" I run a campaign where the players were investigating the disappearances of random citizens and the sudden surge of monster sightings. Their search lead them to a secluded forest inhabited by these monsters and at the center of the forest was a coliseum made of flesh and the rib cage of a gargantuan creature. I described the setting to my players, but was interrupted by the two possible murder victims. They informed me that I was pronouncing coliseum wrong. That it wasn't the traditional "call-leh-see-em" but that it was actually pronounced "coal-lee-see-um." Being the gullible and dumb himbo I am, I believed the words of people I not only thought as my friends, but who were also both English and language majors. Who was I to question their years of study with my lack of schooling? Fast forward two years and I'm DMing for a new group of players as life and scheduling conflicts forced the previous group to end our campaign. I invited back one of the "Literally Judas" to this new group and informed him that we would be just playing the previous campaign again. We have a happy few months until we get back to the forest. As I'm describing the giant rib cage, I confidentally say what I was lead to believe was the proper annunciation of the word Coliseum. There is a brief pause amongst the group before someone turns to me and says, "Umm...that's not how you say that word" I inform them that I was told the proper way to pronounce that word and looked to the English major for back up. I did not find the support I needed but instead found my "friend" already laughing and beside themselves. I was then informed that their "lesson" was a prank and that I was saying correctly before hand, to which leads the entire party in a laughing fit and a new inside joke at my expense So, with that being said, I do plan to take my vigilante-style sense of justice upon my two players. I haven't figured how yet but I humbly and happily await my punishment dispensed by the honorable court.

Declane Gilhooley

If it may please the court the new bailiff Oxford and the Supreme Court justices and Jake I recently had a game here an other PC looked up the stats on a monster we currently where fighting. We play with one pc via zoom, he's a rouge, because of distance, myself, a draconic sorcerer and a Elder's Knight. The Dm left the table to use the bathroom. The rouge player, told myself and the other pc that they looked up the stats and knows how to beat it. Both myself and EK where not happy and told him not too use the information. He didn't tells us stats I ignored that he did that and continue to fight as if I didn't know anything. The DM knows and isn't happy. I feel bad for telling the DM but at the Sametime I don't. Hoe should I handle this going forward?

Your Good Buddy Brandon

To the Beautiful, Blessed, and Benevolent Bailiff, the Just and Jovial Judges, and also Jake, I present the case of Re-specs, Resentment, and Zombie Healthcare. *relevant spells asterisked for carity* My first time DMing I asked my players to be sure of their choices when leveling up as I wanted to avoid a problem in previous campaigns. One player, we'll call him Beau, had a habit of changing his mind and several times asked our previous DM to "re-spec" his character, much to the chagrin of myself and our DM. Fast forward to my turn behind the screen and Beau asks me to allow some edits to take a level of rogue. After a while I acquiesced but informed him that in story he would die and be resurected with his new skills following payment at a shrine. He agreed, and was struck down the following session by and honest-to-Dice Christ nat 20. Here's the issue, the party's trigger happy Necromancer zombified Beau's corpse before the NPC Cleric I sent along could *Gentle Repose* him to prevent this, so now the healing guild's 1,000gp *Ressurection* spell won't work as it can't bring back undead. The only options are *Reincarnate* for 1,000gp (which Beau is against as it would almost certainly change his race) or *True Ressurection* for 25,000gp. Upon hearing this Beau became upset, stomped outside to hit his vape a few times and fumed silently for the remainder of the session while the rest of the party ended up giving basically all the money they had to cover the spell -- but he DID resurrect with his remade character. I fear I was too harsh and throw myself upon the mercy of the court.

Matt M

May it please the court and the unelected judge/bailiff, I present the case of the bug crushing paladin. I was DM for a game in which the party were trying to traverse through a ruined city infested with bipedal bug crabs, a large group of which were pursuing them. The party came to a collapsed bridge and the warlock had the great idea to jump across and silent image a complete bridge so they fell in the river. This would have worked because I thought it was cool. However, the paladin, after heroically deciding to hold off the bugs while the others jumped, decided after killing a couple that they weren't that tough and would just stay and finish them all. The rest of the party had taken shelter over the river by this time and every time it came to their turns they said they wouldn't do anything, waiting for the paladin to enact the bridge-image plan. The paladin then spent several turns on their own killing bugs while I tried to throw "too many" bugs at him, attacking and trying to knock him in the river. A sequence of consistently good/bad rolls meant he felt invincible and wouldn't stop. The encounter ended when the bugs were all dead (I stopped spawning more when I saw where this was going...), and we just moved on. However, I still remember the resigned tone of the other player's voices as they skipped their turns while the paladin killed bugs. I ask you, was I wrong not to fudge something to force the encounter or not? The other players didn't directly challenge the paladin to stop so I didn't want to impose my will. I humbly submit before your wise judgement.

Emily Bishop

If it may please the court, the honorable justices (except Jake), and amazingly talented balif Axford, I present the case of the uninvited player. I've recently taken up DM'ing for my friends last year as they all enjoy D&D and I enjoy story telling. Our last session we had a new player. This player is one of my best friends and I was very excited for her to start playing. Before having her join our table I asked her to do some basic inquiry into dungeons and dragons (i.e. listening to podcasts watching youtube videos etc) and ask me if she had any questions, this way having her join at the table would go a tad smoother than her walking in blind. We come to the start of our 6 hour session and she had done none of that. We spent some time explaining combat, the spells she had stocked, and role playing (also I had helped her with her character sheet a week before this and I figured she'd spend her time working on her character and developing her backstory). Even after explaining the rules multiple times she did not participate in any combat or role play, but she didn't just sit there... anytime a player tried to help her ease into role playing or anything at all she would look at them then look at me and say "now what?" the entire time. Which I thought was strange because she has a lot of improv experience. Needless to say it ruined everyone's time. I figured she didn't have a great time herself and wouldn't want to play again considering how awkward it all was. Flash forward a couple months later she asks me when we're going to play again. I told her I didn't know since I was back at college and work full time and I hadn't been planning any sessions because I didn't have the time. Basically she said I was lazy for not doing any work on future campaigns in my free time and said "she'd just DM herself" (again, keep in mind, she's a beginner player who still didn't want to learn how to play. and now she's gonna DM because I'm not doing enough work for her). She then asked me to TEACH her how to DM and for all my supplies. I told her if it's that big an issue I'll plan something because I don't know how she expects to DM when she's still new to playing. Now I really am planning a long term campaign for my regular players, but I don't want to invite this player to play because she really insulted me and really hurt my feelings since she's been my friend for 8 years. Am I a jerk, petty, or just over reacting for wanting to exclude her from this game? I know she'll be upset if I don't invite her but I also don't trust her to work on herself as a player. I put myself at the mercy of the court and will accept any punishment if I am being unfair.

Edmund Barker

May it please the baliff while they make the justices look good. I'm a half arsed on the fly dm and my players know it (small kids, busy life, but would rather play than not). The campaign centres on a doppelganger takeover of society via kidnapping and replacing key figures with their own. During a longer session, the group fled the city after trying and failing to play both sides against each other and being badly caught out. Once they were out of the city, I borrowed the Fey flower troll prison idea from his honor and grace Murphy. They pulled all the flowers they could and amassed a large number of trolls. The bard then went on to roll a series of insanely high persuasion checks to convince the trolls to join them as an army to lay seige against Neverwinter. While they then got sidetracked by a nearby dungeon (completely improvised) to amass a rare unstable explosive, explodium. They have now finished that and want to reconvene with the trolls to lay siege. I plead guilty to my own shenanigans, exit the court and throw myself at the alter of dice Christ. I have ridden the gravy train of improv for too long, am in a deep hole, and need the light of dice christ and her apostles to guide me. What am I to do?

FumblesOBrian

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

ThatManGareth

May it please the magically musical Bailiff-Justice Axford, Now presenting the case of Sorcerer v. DM We had 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 later 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. Please help settle something we still razz him for to this day. I eagerly await the Justice of the tight Grandma's, The Plaintiff Sorcerer.

Gianni Pappas

If it may please the honorable court and fantastic Bailiff Axeford! Previous DM now player here asking for a ruling on a disintegrated Cleric. I was playing a peace cleric and made an ultimate sacrifice to save a fellow player. We were in the middle of a fight where the rogue was about to be hit by a disintegration ray and as an ability I have I was able to teleport infront of the beam as a reaction. Even thou I saved it was more than my remaining hp and I fully died. After seeing me die the team decided best to run, but 3 rounds later I realized that part of the ability is I become resistant to the type of damage deal which would have kept me up. I pulled the DM aside and asked if we could redo the last 3 rounds. Here is where the issue arose, the DM thought this could be a great point to shift the attitude of the party. With my death the players had already shown to be less impulsive and murder hoboish they were running instead of fighting for once. He preferred if I stayed dead so it could be a growing moment for the players I agreed but miss my peace loving boi. Was I wrong to let this go or is he right to want to help change the group dynamic for better?

Craig

May it please the court, the noble and honorable bailiff Axford. The esteemed and handsome Justices Tanner and Murphy, and the narrow of thigh seat warmer who occupies the third seat until Justice Axford again graces us with her judgment The case is first time DM vs The Ultimate Grappler The ultimate grappler is my character, a level 6 human rune knight fighter. He also has the grappler feat, the tavern brawler feat, and the human prodigy feat to get expertise in athletics. So currently in the best circumstances he has advantage and +12 to grapple checks and can do it on a bonus action. Worst case no advantage and +10. He also does more damage when grappling with the unarmed fighting style. All that to say I built him to do one thing and he's very good at it. I thought it would be fine because even with all that grappled is not a very strong condition and only really helps my character who really can't do anything else. The problem is that my DM has made my character to strong. It is their first time DMing and they are doing a great job to be clear. We started at level 1 and I took the grappler feat as my human variant feat. It allows for an option to restrain both you and the individual being grappled. My DM decided to change it so that just regular grappling would instill the restrained condition on just the grappled individual. I warned them that this might make grappling to strong but they wanted to use it. So now whenever I grapple something it has disadvantage on attacks, the whole party has advantage on attacks against it, it can't move and has disadvantage on dex saves. Needless to say we have been dominating encounters to the point we have been apologizing in character to our enemies for how hard we whomp them. The last one ended after I suplexed 4 barbarians off a cliff one at a time. The DM comments how strong my character is and everytime I offer to go back to normal grapple rules but they never want to. I don't want to push to hard because its their first time DMing and I want to encourage their creativity when it comes to changing rules to fit the story they want to tell. But also I am a monster that can and will grapple anything. I feel like I'm robbing the spotlight in combat and taking away opportunities for other characters to do cool things because having me grapple is just so effective its always the plan we default to. How should I broach this to my DM? Or should I just accept my fate and be overpowered? p.s. it is my intention to take the magic initiate feat at 8th level to get hex so I can impose disadvantage on the athletics checks of my enemies to been an even greater grappler.

Matt Hudson

May it please the highborn judges and the here-by-the-sweat-of-her-brow Bailiff, I present the case of mayor murder. My party arrived in a town where villagers were going missing due to a beast appearing only at night and the mayor was hindering any investigations through the Sheriff. As the party of 7 split into different parts of the town to investigate the members who visited they mayor opened blowing the doors off his front door, dislocating his son's arm, and eventually killing the mayor with a Shatter spell in front of the Sheriff because he declined their help. Amongst this they rolled a nat 20 on a persuasion check to convince the Sheriff to accept their help but my judgement was after seeing all this nothing short of magic would prevent the Sheriff from trying to arrest them. The party insisted that a nat 20 wins out every time and have continued to murder the elected official in every town they visit with a "burn and move on" policy. I seek your judgement: should I have allowed the nat 20 to convince the Sheriff to accept their help or are there some things that a nat 20 can't overcome?

Perryblinkle

Tidings and greetings to those of the court, I lay before you the case of the Double Dipping Diet Deck of Many Things. A few years ago in a Curse of Strahd campaign, I got my grubby mitts on a powered down Deck of Many Things which was described to me as a kind of weenie hut jr version of the big bad Deck. All good so far! I drew once mid campaign (as one is wont to do) and I got a free level up! Sweet! I then pocket and forget about it till we find ourselves at the foot of Strahds castle, where I gather all willing participants for a toast of cards before the final hurrah, which is where the problem arose. The Diet Deck of many things turned out to be the regular Deck of many things but with DM oversight, and he announced that he rolled a card that let me change any event in history, which gave me the power to undo the premise of the entire campaign. My DM sensibly said no thanks to that and at this point I thought he would just underpowered the effect or give me something else cool, but he proceeded to draw again! I dont know if it's my casino caveman brain talking, but the two draws I did felt thrilling and brave and heroic and chill but Three draws seemed like an excessive risk that put me squarely in the devil's crosshairs! I accepted the ruling but inwardly I was really starting to worry for my character's well being. My feelings were then validated by the next draw deleting any and all non magical items on my person! Is my reaction to a third gamble instead of a reflavored second outcome justified, or did Card Christ correctly reward my brashness? What would you guys have ruled in that situation? I rest my head on the chopping block and await your verdict.

Troy Mumme

May it please the gorgeous court and also Jake, the bailiff. I come to you with a possible case of DMUI, DMing under the influence. I wish to turn myself in as to set a precedent. I was running a dungeon crawl where the party comes across a magical farm deep underground that is guarded by giant monsterous farmer wielding a shotgun. The party decides its better to sneak into the farmhouse and avoid him. When they got inside, they find his wife, Aristatalia Klampet, holding a baby and looking scared. The bard decides to use suggestion and tells her “Go into the bedroom and take care of your child the best you can”. I, as the DM, said that she goes into the other room and screams For her husband to come help. My reasoning was that she felt her child was in danger, and her husband would help take care of the baby bu protecting it. The party argued that she wouldn’t do that while under suggestion. The 5 hazy IPA’s that i had drank by this point would not let me see their side. I wouldnt budge. Was I over the legal limit for DMing? I await your totally righteous ruling.

Jor Elare

Oh illustrious and fair justices, I seek your guidance on the case of a big RAW explosion. My players were participating in a seafaring combat in which they were being chased by a ship that was carrying some companions (including a PC) as prisoners when the druid got The Look™️. She wild shaped into a bird and flew near the pursuing ship, because I had set the enemies up manning the cannons her lightning bolt was slated to hit about 15 enemies and would have been a huge moment. However, RAW states lightning bolt sets flammable material aflame, and her lightning bolt was going to go through actual gunpowder barrels, including the powder magazine. I tried to hint that the spell could have unintended negative consequences and finally had her roll an int check. Nat 1, she casts the spell and the whole ship exploded, vaporizing most of the companions and knocking out the PC in the brig who ended up in the water, failing death saving throws and eventually dying. My players were upset with me for ruling that the massive gunpowder blast would do that much damage (15 d6) and blamed me for the unceremonious death. Was I in the wrong? I submit myself to your judgement

Three awakened gooses

May it please the illustrious Justices, lovely temporary bailiff, and well-meaning permanent bailiff. I bring before the court the case of the disappointed daddy. In a campaign I participated in a few years ago a friend decided he wanted to create a character who was incredibly persuasive and would convince people that he was their father. He would then describe how disappointed he was in them in an attempt to influence their actions and make them do what he wanted. None of us had a problem with this. In fact it was a funny idea and we were all for it. The trouble came when the player started trying to convince the other player characters he was their father in an attempt to force the party to do what he wanted. When we told him that persuasion roles couldn’t be used against other players to force them into a particular course of action he became irate and stopped participating in the campaign in any meaningful way. When we stormed a witches tower he stayed outside to watch the horses. We had to cross a forest or go around which would take an extra week. We decided to cross and he went around alone stopping at a brothel on the way and spending a few days there roleplaying while we waited for him to catch up. His attitude caused the game to fizzle out and our group disbanded shortly after. I ask you most esteemed judges, should we have let him be our dad or were we right in refusing to relinquish our agency?

Max

May I please the court, Honorable justices and scrunkly bailiff, My friend runs a campaign where our characters go through different tv shows, movies and/or game shows every session. They get trapped in there until they defeat the “boss” of each session or they die in which case they get transported back to the “real” world. The DM, gave us the option to suggest and vote on which shows we would like to do next and Fast and Furious was one of the top ones. We found a really fun TTRPG system that lets us drive but here’s the catch: we are all raccoons. We suggested this to the DM but they refuse to let us be a raccoon family that drives a car together in the Fast and Furious universe. We (the players) think that since the whole theme of the movies is family, that Dominic Toretto himself would support us being a raccoon family that all drive a car together. Do you think we should get to live our raccoon dreams?

Cameron

May it please the court and the honorable bailiff, I present the case of the fatal sleep spell. My party and I had just finished fighting off a horde of blights and ran around the back of a farmhouse to find the enemy druid that had raised the blights fleeing on horseback. We began to run after them, getting a couple of hits in before they fled out of melee range on the horse. Not wanting to kill the druid because our party had questions we wanted to ask them, I cast the sleep spell because I thought they probably had low health after we had attacked them. I made my roll and the DM determined the druid did indeed fall asleep. But as he had fallen asleep on top of the horse, the DM also ruled that he fell off the horse, the horse kicked him with his hooves, and he promptly died! Should we have been able to put this druid to sleep in order to interrogate him, or did the DM have every right to avoid an interrogation scene by mercy killing this foe? I leave the decision in your hands.

Prof Bubbles

May it please the Supreme Crit and sultry baliff. I present the case of the T-Rex Denying DM. I have a group that I DMed for a while and have been encouraging all my players to give DMing a try. With massive success, 4 of the 5 have at least run a one-shot and we are currently playing a campaign with one of them. I am playing a warforged cleric/sorcerer and have recently gained access to the polymorph spell. I worked with the DM and they have allowed me to select a few constructs that my character can polymorph in to, despite the normal limitation that polymorph can only turn you into beasts, very cool. However, I have access to the twinned spell metamagic feature and twinned polymorph on to the barbarian, a gnome whose primary weapon is his teeth, picking T-Rex as the chosen beast. The player got super excited about being a cool dinosaur, but the DM said no saying that dinosaurs don't exist in this world. I countered, saying that a beast doesn't have to "exist" in order for someone to be polymorphed into it, since the polymorph spell just says it has to be a beast. The DM stood their ground and I respected it, backing off the subject, choosing giant ape instead. But the player that was polymorphed seemed really bummed out being an ape instead of a T-Rex. Especially since my options are outside the parameters of the spell, but T-Rex is well within the parameters Tell me supreme crit, was the DM right for standing on their world building, and I and the other players being little boss babies? Thank you for your consideration.

Josef Jozefowicz

Sounds like the rogues, fighters are jealous of the poison damage even though you gave it to druid to even the playing field. Don't allow them the extra damage, you don't have to punish them for trying so creatively lol, but you can say something along the lines of " there was no extra damage done from the smeared shit but alas the Battlefield now smells horrifically bad" lol that would be funny

Trevgar Beardbrook

May it please the Court and the almighty Bailiff Axford! I bring to you a Siblings Dispute: The Bard Who Doesn’t Perform My brother and I have been playing D&D since the early '90s. He was amazing enough to be my first DM, and has always been a great Dungeon companion! Disputes and arguments in D&D are common…encouraged even!...but as you can imagine conflict between siblings is a whole other level. The Case I recently ran a One-Shot for my brother and a pal. My brother was very excited to play a new Bard character concept, where his Bard does not perform in order to cast his spells i.e song, dance, instrumental, poem etc…etc…, but rather, draws his magic from his instrument as a source. All the spell casting mechanics still apply, but his bard is not a performer, just someone who holds the instrument which allows him to cast a bard's spells. This dynamic wasn’t worked into a back story either, just a fact of the matter. I gladly allowed him to play his bard, and the one-shot was very fun. After the session, we began discussing his bard idea, and I shared that I believed the bard as a class is meant to have a performative personality. The bard does not need to be a good performer, and the player themselves isn’t even required to perform in real life, but I expect them at the very least to explain how their bard is performing in-game. My brother seriously disagreed, saying it says nowhere in RAW that bards need to perform, as long as they have their musical source it is all they need. He associated it with a magic wand or a crystal ball; sources that are necessary to have on a person, but not used in the character's spellcasting actions. I am all for playing fun and creative characters, but I believe fundamentally, bards are performers. I am very confused by my brother's heresy beliefs. I ask your majesties, for your extreme and harsh judgment. Fundamentally, are bards performers? Or, are they simply those who wield instrumental magical sources? (this argument stole many hours of vacation from us..please kill it...)

teethknight

May it please The Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Tanner, the other guy, and Best Bailiff Axley. This is the first campaign I've DM'ed. Earlier in the campaign they were attacked by wereboar bandits and convinced the sole survivor to join them. Several sessions later the party encountered a devil that tried to entice the party into a deal in return for a powerful magic item. One of the three warlocks came up with a scheme to outwit the fiend. Through persuasion checks they convinced the wereboar, Oozywog, to take the deal and give them the item. The fiend had stated "the item belongs to the one who takes the deal." I had the warlock roll insight on the contract, they rolled low, and went through with the deal. Oozywog became a low level barbarian and gave the magic item to the warlock, who later discovered that they were unable to attune to the item. The player didn't protest but I could tell they were pretty frustrated. The character decided to hold onto the item in case Oozywog dies later. My question is, did I give them a fair chance or should I have rewarded the creativity?

Jacob Dewald

Balif forgive me for I have sinned. While playing last night I unintentionally misrepresented the number of spell slots I had available. While in town word came of an attack on the town's refinery. Being a healer I rushed to help the wounded. I asked if any of the wounded could use a lesser restoration to which the DM replied that they could. I told my DM I could cast the spell twice without considering that I had already used a 2nd level spell slot earlier in the day. I was only trying to help but I can't help feeling guilty for casting a spell that I shouldn't have been able to.

JME

To the radiant and joy giving Justice Axford, the best bi wife energy king Justice Murphy, the ultimate dad to us all Justice Tanner and the other guy who is also there, I offer not a DnD case, but a ttrpg storytelling case. I present the case Monster of the Week - Monster Therapy I had a group that played MOTW, and there were two players who each had a different organization they worked for. I didn't really want to favor one over the other, so I made one generally pro-monster and the other one generally anti-monster (pro-human). I had also tried to give an option other than just always killing every monster, so some previous "monster of the week"s had been given over to the pro-monster organization for what we called "monster therapy". This also gets into a whole thing about how I felt like the monsters had to have a real life metaphor, so I had tried to focus on monsters as an allusion for trauma and mental illness, and how often destructive urges that come with mental illness feel like they're just your natural impulses. In the last mystery, the player employed by the pro-monster organization suggested that a victim of a monster attack be taken to monster therapy. I said she could try, but the organization might be resistant to helping a human, especially one who might have something against monsters. She retorted back that in the previous mystery, we had taken a human to monster therapy, but I said it was different because his human part had died and then became a monster. Was I wrong to reject her suggestion of monster therapy? I want her to have a say in the organization she works for, but is it okay for me to still draw hard lines like this?

Eman

To the honourable and admirable supreme crit justices and recently demoted bailiff Axford. May I present to you the case of: A Player Forced Into Cannibalism. Me and my party were rescuing children from the haunted house of a sadistic witch. After meeting a senile old buttler who offered us a drink, inspired by moonshine I rolled investigation on the smell of the liquid, I crit and was told only that I had: "Never smelt anything like this before but it was non magical and non poisonous." Wanting to interact with the DMs creation in a way that seemed non dangerous a took a swig and was asked to make a charisma saving throw which I failed and so was told that I thought the drink was delicious and continued to drink it as we explored the mansion. We found the witch and defeated her, but in her room was a big cauldron which contained the same liquid my character had drunk earlier, the liquid contained eyes and bits of flesh, but more importantly the hand of a human child. Normally I would always side with the DM but seeing as I rolled a NAT 20 I feel like I wasn't given enough information. And I feel like I was tricked into cannibalism. I keenly await your judgement

Fia (but not Boginya)

May it please 2/3rds of the court and the Absolute gift to humanity of a bailiff I bring you the case of the Distracted Counterspell. I was running a combat where my party was fighting a large group of hobgoblins including a Hobgoblin Devastator. The Devastator cast Lightning Bolt and I checked in if anyone had any way to stop her and no one answered me. I got everyone in the range to roll their saving throws and rolled damage when my Warlock suddenly said "wait can I Counterspell this". I turned out he hadn't been listening to me and only realized after I rolled damage what was happening. I reluctantly allowed it, but I felt deep down like he had missed his chance. I ask the Court, should he have been able to Counterspell so late in the game, or should he have been out of luck because he didn't pay attention?

Chelsea

May it please the court! This is the case of a player who no longer enjoyed playing his class. The player in question was playing a level 7 wizard, so his character had already developed a rapport with the rest of the group and many whimsical personality traits (including having a mini clone of himself that followed the party around). However, he hinted many times that if his character died, the group should leave him dead so he could come back as a bard. Rather than target his character to be killed (and have to roll a newly invented character that would be a stranger to the group) I decided to invent an “epic magic” (i.e 10th, 12th level spell) ritual, that was performed by a bear-shaman that changed all the stats and class of the character. Was I right to somewhat “cheat” the game by coming up with a complicated homebrew spell? Would love to know how the jury would handle a character that no longer wants to play their class!

Trisha (Trash Bags) Bagby

Hear ye Hear ye, may it please the court and also Emily, I bring the case of the Grappled but not Touched... I've been playing in a campaign for a little over a year now, and during one of the first sessions, my bard Starlight Havensword was grappled by a monster called a Death Kiss. I wanted to cast Bestow Curse, a spell that had a range of Touch on this creature, (I was going to see if its tentacles would shrivel up and therefore release everyone who was restrained) but the DM ruled that since the tentacles were really long (20 feet) I was not in melee range and therefore could not cast this spell. I argued that I was being grappled by its tentacle, and therefore could touch the creature, since the creature was touching me and using abilities that involved touch. The DM said that since I was 20 feet away from him on the map and had a speed of 0, I wasn't in range to do those actions. Starlight has since survived that encounter, but this came up again when our wizard got grappled by a baby Kraken and tried to stab the tentacle. Though he was being held by the tentacle and being dragged down into the water, he wasn't able to make a melee attack because the tentacles were too far away from its face. What does the court think? If a creature is touching me, doesn't that also mean I'm touching it?

Dominic Valentini

May it please the court and the wonderful bailiff, Recently in my homebrew game my players set off to an island inhabited entirely by monsters. Minutes after arriving on the island they were attacked by a horde of about 15 Cockatrices. The intent of the encounter was to be more of an obstacle than an actual challenge. If they lost if would be from the Cockatrices ability to petrify them for 24 hours, and if they won there’s a chance one or more of the party would have been petrified. Essentially there was multiple outcomes but either way the result would be a new challenge: Either deal with stone party members or awaken the next day in the Cockatrice’s nest. After the battle (in which they won with 2 members petrified) One party member wasn’t happy with the challenge because it seemed designed with failure in mind. I argued it wasn’t failure as much as a new challenge they had to face. I throw myself at your judgement: Should I have planned a more straightforward combat or was the one I did just too overboard?

Matthew Millions

May it please the noble Crit Justices and the gutterborn bailiff. I present the case of The False Memory Murder While delving in an ancient temple one of my players became unknowingly possessed by an evil spirit. To keep up the deception I secretly messaged that player false memories of a secret treasure hidden among the ruins. This was in order to have him convincingly lure the rest of the party into a deadly trap (there wasn't actually any treasure). He sold them on the idea and they ended up triggering the trap as planned. Luckily they managed to scrape out alive and banished the spirit after they realized what happened. The problem is that the possessed player didn't feel like this was fair for him, having preferred to know he was possessed. I argued that it wouldn't have been nearly believable if he had the party's interest in mind while luring them to their deaths. Was I wrong to dupe my player? I await your decision my Lords of Legislation.

Andrew Yeager

Your honorable justices and honorably as you can be for just a bailiff Jake. This is more of a preemptive case I am following. My brother has been wanting to get into dungeons and dragons. I'm willing to DM for him and his girlfriend. The problem is I know how he'll play and it'll make jokes like asking for Chardonnay. Also ignoring my warnings of who to go after and who to not. He won't also trust any of my roles and will demand I roll in front of the table every time. Do I DM for him? I have been wanting to do light DMing but don't have the time with my job this would allow me the opportunity to try. I humbly await your judgment.

Figgy Blue

holl'up. Is the "problem player" your dad?

Felix Principe-gillespie

Honourable and noble justices I come before you today with a case that spans continent and time, a case most complex against another player. Our party was reforming for a one off, out of continuity adventure as I happened to be in the country again (I’m from Scotland and this group is in Australia so meet ups are, understandably, rare). The three of us battled to the top of a snowy mountain only to be confronted by a chained up white dragon and a large magical fire. The dragon insisted he was a pretty chill dude and asked us to extinguish the fire that would clearly free him. Despite playing as a magical conspiracy nutter I still felt it was common sense not to do this, and having knowledge of dragons knew this dude was likely far from chill, but the Dragonborn on our team said we should trust him. Neither of us would back down and eventually things turned to PvP, I was butchered by the party, they then extinguished the flame, and were all swiftly eaten by the dragon. To this day, the other players say I shouldn’t have attacked them and together we could have taken the dragon. I ask you, was I in the right? Should I have ignored my characters knowledge and gone along with them. Please help us find justice!

Gabriel Chavira

May it please the Justices in their high strollers and bailiff Mr. Murphy. I present the case of the Rib Roleplay. During our 2nd session, my moon elf Warlock was able to Barter a deal with a combination Butcher/Sheriff shop. We would get a rack of ribs and sausages if we took care of the bandits outside of town. After dealing with the bandits, I wanted to pick up our free ribs. However, my DM said we will skip the Rib Roleplay and gave us a single rack of ribs and 3 sausages! My character thought we could get more ribs because they took care of multiple bandits, but the DM refuses my character’s right for Rib Roleplay. Is the DM wrong for his refusal or am I simply a greedy rib gremlin?

Sven

Dear Honorable Justices and illustrious Bailiff, My DM was running an encounter for our party against a formidable magical foe in their lair. During the encounter, my monk used his sentinel feat to stop our foe from escaping a cloud of daggers spell. My attack hit and the foe was stuck in the cloud of daggers. The foe then missed all their attacks against me since I had used my bonus action as a monk to defend. It was a great turn, but I felt bad because the DM was visibly frustrated. After the foe's turn the lair actions happened, and the DM asked for DEX saving throws. He told me I automatically failed, since I used my reaction to sentinel the foe. I argued I should have to the opportunity to save, but he insisted I couldn't save because I already used my reaction. I accepted it, so the encounter could move along. I was the only one to fail, and since my monk auto failed he was banished permanently to the elemental plane of Earth until the party rescues him. I beseech you, should I have made a stronger case for my level 5 monk? I miss my scrappy lad.

David Wieland

May it please the court, including bailiff Axford, but not the imposter justice Hurwitz. I bring to you the case of the drunk dm. Until the very session in question, my group and I played all of our campaign remotely. My DM recorded our sessions, so he didn't have to take notes and since we always do our sessions on saturdays we got drunk most of the times playing. We had our first in person session two weeks ago. It was a blast and I got myself a cute little hamster familiar named Humphrey. The problem is, that now that we did it in person our dm kind of forgot, that he couldn't really record it, didn't take any notes and got black out drunk (to be fair me too). At our next session he couldn't remember that I got the hamster and told me I only made that up, so something could always give me the help action. The other players were split on this and no one could clearly remember if I got the hamster or not. Honourable justices, is it really too much for me to ask for a furry little friend and would it be too overpowered?

Luke Avritt

May it please the falsely appointed Crit justices and the one true Bailiff. I bring you the case of the unfulfilled nat 20. I am a long time dm for a group of college friends that really enjoy dnd! Recently, one of my players took it upon themself to dm their own campaign for the sole purpose of giving me a chance to be a player. I was excited and gave them all the materials they would need, which included the adventure “dragon of icespire peak”. They would be running this game for 3 players, myself included. The game started well enough, with us players helping out the dm with rulings and running the game, often using the roses and thorns method at the end of the sessions. In our most recent session out group was traversing through the forest, where we came upon a group of horses that all had a brand on them. My character wanted to tame one of these horses, and the dm said to roll an animal handling check. I obliged and rolled a natural 20 in front of everyone. The dm described that the horse and I had connected on a spiritual level, and that I could ride it. My character was elated, but this wouldn’t last long. As our party moved forward we came upon the ranch where these horses came from, freeing the owner from his basement. The owner proceeded to give out gifts as thank you’s for saving him, but my character just wanted one horse, even being willing to pay for it. Without even asking for a persuasion check, the owner said no. I asked the dm if I could persuade him, because at the very least I thought there could be a chance, and the dm said no. His reasoning was that the owner wouldn’t say yes no matter what, as per the sourcebook. In response, I say that my character pets the horse and asks it to choose. The dm then proceeds to have the horse hit my character and rush toward the owner. Needless to say, my character was crushed and I, as a player, was a little miffed. After the session we talked about what we liked and didn’t like, and I bring up that I thought the dm was too dismissive about my desire to have a horse and didn’t respect the nat 20 check that had occurred. He responded that the sourcebook said the horses go back to the owner and that since we already were getting rewarded that it shouldn’t have mattered that I didn’t get to keep the horse. Should I have been able to keep the horse or had my character been too greedy. I bow humbly before the kangaroo court and await any punishment.

Santiago Trujillo

Magic bean + First Timers = Owl Carnage I prostrate my self infront of the honorable justices and dutiful bailiff. My friends n I are playing for the first time ever n I, dm, give em a bag of beans n they know it's magical but can't identify it. They discus eating one of the beans n I exclaim "oh god, please don't". They land up deciding to feed it to an owl from a bag of tricks They also got. Rolling the shit talking statue, their owl turned to a cloud of fine red mist and feathers as the statue erupted from its belly. They destroyed the statue and insisted I killed their own. I really enjoyed the encounter, though sad for the owl. Should I be punished for murder of an innocent bystanding owl?

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?

Maura O'Leary

May it please and amuse the court: I present the case of The Secret Bard. Prepping to DM my second-ever game (set in an Eberron-inspired steampunk world), I asked all the players to tell me about their characters ahead of time. All but one gave me detailed information and even some clever backstories, which was awesome. However, one player refused to tell me what her character was. After a lot of cajoling, I got her to tell me it was a human bard, but would tell me nothing more. Come the first day of the campaign, she revealed that she was going to be playing Tom Cruise - not a character named Tom Cruise, but the ACTUAL Tom Cruise from our world, who had "been magically sent to this world by his god Xenu to spread Scientology to a new plane," thereby forcing me in real time to modify the world I had created to include multiple planes, one of which was actual Earth, as well as a new deity and religion. She also claimed that she should be able to roll persuasion on every person she met (she poured as many buffs as possible into persuasion) and that a medium success should convert them to scientology. Being a new DM, I was flustered and allowed the character and backstory, but made the persuasion checks more difficult. However, she still passed many of the checks and I had no idea what to do because I didn't know much about Scientology. Was she being a dick? Should I have put my foot down harder? I await the court's infinite wisdom.

THEJordonBrown

No case, but I think Tucker should be promoted to Justice over Jake

Donny

Juicy Justices, I hereby nominate a promotion for the bailiff. Please consider retitling the role to "Attorney General." They shall be lowly no more! Thank you.

discopigeon

may it please the magnanimous bailiff and almighty crit except jake, for i do not care if it pleases him even if it results in my punishment in this ruling, I’m a first time DM with mostly first time players, and on session two, my low-level players got a total party knockout from eating exploding eggs, resulting in my best friend’s wizard PC being killed. My players picked up a bag of dried beans from a mysterious bean salesman, and while in a temple seeking shelter from the desert heat, decided to cook the beans. The casters are all new D&D players, and don’t know that detect magic or identify can be helpful with mysterious items, so instead of my friends exploding from dumping the magic beans out (as it says on dnd beyond), I decided I’d bend the rules of the beans to demonstrate their magic by one falling to the ground and creating an effect (as it says would happen with the beans should they be planted on the ground). A roll on the magic bean table, and there blossomed a sparkling fountain of wine. My best friend, our wizard, decided to toss another to the ground—and a basket of eggs appeared. Then the PCs ate the eggs, which takes a constitution roll to eat them safely, and all but our fighter failed. All the other PCs were knocked out after taking 10d6 force damage, and the wizard, Roscoe Peach, took enough damage to full-ass die. I, in utter shock and panic at killing a PC with beans/eggs, decided that since they were in a temple to Savras, the god of fate, he would intervene and let her do death saves. She succeeded, and the PCs woke up 8 hours later, alive. Should I have let my whole party get blown up by beans in the first place? Should I have just let the wizard full-ass die? I await your wise words. PS — My wizard narrowly avoided (by one on the bean table) getting brained by a 60-foot pyramid to the face (expecting wine). Maybe she was destined to die, and I messed with the fates? sorry if this double posted! my internet is bad!

Cain Bowman

Honorable whoever-is-currently-in-favor and revolting, but in an interesting way, outsider. I present you the case of "Let Her Slide". In our Curse of Strahd game, we were holding out against a lycanthropic siege of a town's wall. Werewolves, including the mini-Big-Bad that ate our gnome artificer's entire family, were running up the backs of dire wolves and diving onto the town walls, attacking our ranged fighters directly. As our frontline maggot-loving paladin was being overran, our monk/warlock decided to switch from casting and slide down to land directly in the melee and help her. Here lies the dispute. The monk moved around the Big Bad (Wolf) and slid down the wall. Until she started falling, she did not leave the range of the enemy. Our DM struck her with an attack of opportunity as she slid that had a grapple effect, which would end her movement. I argued that this was against RAW, as attacks of opportunity can only be triggered by willing movement out of range, which gravity and falling would not constitute, as well as defying the Rule of Cool for the sick action dive. My DM countered that intentionally jumping IS willing movement, so the attack was fair. We argued for a while as I queued up Youtube clips of movies where the heroes jump to avoid attacks that our DM would apparently say are plot holes because OBVIOUSLY they'd be immediately struck. The DM eventually claimed Rule 0, our monk fortunately passed her saving throw to avoid the grapple, and we moved on. What would your rulings be? Surely, anyone can see that she should have let it slide and our monk had been allowed to slide, but I, of course, submit the rest of the group, excluding myself, humbly to your swift, reasonable, and fair judgement.

Dylan C

I have no case to bring just well wishes for all the honorable crit justices and the exceptional bailiff. Hope you year is starting off strong!

kody lanca

If it please the high and mighty honourable justices apart from Jake and the better Bailiff Axford. I bring you the case of being forced to kill my pet squirrel Fabio because I made a silly comment. Many years ago I played as a high elf paladin and my dm allowed me to have a pet Squirrel just for the fun of it. I named him Fabio. One session our party camped overnight before going to clear out a kobold cave and I said I’ll cook breakfast seeing as I’m a new member to the party. My Dm said “you don’t have any food” so I jokingly said “oh Fabio looks like you’ll be our breakfast” to which the DM responded by saying “roll to hit” I was very confused and said it was a joke but the DM ruled that if he asks you to roll you have to roll. I killed Fabio quickly but then I got a Natural one on cooking him so he was completely charred. I was pretty annoyed about the whole thing but the DM said I should think before I speak. Am I at fault for making a silly joke to my pert squirrel or is this DM just a dick?

Diego Jorquera

To average dude justice Murphy, to the benevolent duncle judge Tanner, and the sultry and voluptuous judge hurwitz (also the imposing but respectful bailiff axford) I present my case. I am part of a group that is supposed to play on a bi weekly basis. I wish we could play more but I understand life gets in the way of things. Anyway, when we do play it is a lot fun; however, there is one member of our party who always does their own thing. They argue and want to fight with every character we face, want to be the one to do all of the events or challenges, and also have a discussion with every somewhat interesting NPC. Our Dm seems to like the role play but for everyone else it grinds the story to a hault while we wait for them for 10-15 minutes while they discuss the intricacies of being a dog person (in character). We only have 3 hours of game play per 2 weeks so every second counts.How do you deal with excessive roleplay and is there a nice way of telling this person that the story should be told between all members of the party and not just them? I put my head on the guillotine and await your decision. Also please avoid using my name if you can I don't want anyone's feelings to be hurt in case they listen to this.

Salil

If it please the Honorable Justices Murphy and Tanner, the Wise Interim Bailiff Axford, and the interim justice Hurwitz who is I guess good at leatherwork (i.e. wallets), I bring the Hot-Off-The-Presses Case of the Hostile Work Environment. My PCs were in a port town trying to get passage to another city up the coast. They knew they were in a seedy part of town when someone came up to them and offered to introduce them to someone with a ship. While 2 of the PCs were suspicious, they ultimately went with this person, drank some beer which was drugged and found themselves being press-ganged into the ship which included a fight against some other pirates as part of an "audition" to join the crew, signed demonic contracts and got magical brands. The PCs learned that these brands were a way for the captain and officers to control them when one of the PCs failed a DC25 Charisma Save and was possessed to unwillingly execute a prisoner. However, I did let the PCs know as part of an Arcana check that there is a way for them to challenge the captain and her officers to get freedom for them and possibly the rest of the crew. This was a session I was unprepared for as DM (work got busy and I got really drunk with one of the PCs the night before our session). With a hangover and only 3 sentences of notes to work with, I did a lot of improvisation and the PCs knew it. They might have just gone along with some of the obvious things I did knowing I didn't really have any backup material planned. Did I go too far or was it an acceptable way to raise the stakes and give them motivation?

M. T. Kadisin

To the most Moonshiny Bailiff and our most esteemed judges, I present to you a murder case. Who killed the fun? My party arrived in Ravnica and wanted to do some shopping. Our gentle hearted barbarian purchased an axe! It turned out to be cursed! The curse would cause the barbarian to attack anything with 60 feet of her in combat. The barbarian was upset, fearing the effect of the curse would have on her character. Nothing the party did would get the shop keeper to give us a refund or point us to someone who could remove said curse. The DM plowed us forward in the plot until a fight broke out. The barbarian ended up sitting out of the rest of the game for fear she would do something horrible. So, mighty font of justice, who killed the fun? Our sensitive and kind barbarian who didn't want to go against her very self or the DM who refused to allow us to rectify the matter?

Alexis

To the honorable Crit Justices and the Righteous Baliff. May it please the court. A few years ago I was in a game where as part of character creation my DM asked that each of our characters have a deity they worship along side a few other questions to help flesh out our motivations and tie us into the world. I made a yuan-ti Barbarian/Paladin that was a follower of the divination god Savros. The half-damage of her rage was flavoured to be that she has visions of the immediate future to help her take the blows in more favorable ways. The tone of the campaign was very serious with elder gods corrupting people, body horror nightmares, and the end of all existence in the balance. Despite this my DM found it fit to make the first NPC that was a fellow follower of Savros comic relief. He made this follower who was meant to aid my paladin further in her fait... A disco beholder... To this day I still feel his choice of comic relief in nthis instance was both insensitive to my characters backstory and way too tone deaf for the campaign he created. Am I in the right for feeling this way or am I being too much of a fuddy duddy? I await your benevolent judgement.

Jack McAlevey

Bailiff Axford I beg, please hear my case of DM v. Horny Players I often let my players name things in my world. A player named a cafe "Le Petite Mort", which I agreed to before she told me that it meant "orgasm" in french. Foolishly I decided to lean into it and made a secret "adult" club above the cafe. They almost immediately got in, all wanted to have sex, and also wanted me to narrate it. I was horrified at what I had done but agreed to narrate some of it, with my embarrassment over the situation delighting my friends more than the situation itself. Following this, multiple players have tried to initiate sex scenes, with various arguments about them being "important to the plot of the story" - to which I responded by outlawing sex scenes, and using a "fade to black" from now on. My friends were largely upset by this decision, so I come to you for a ruling - is it my obligation to narrate sex scenes for my friends no matter how much I blush?? When is it right to fade to black?? Am I just being a prude??? (Note: we are all good friends and generally respect each others boundaries, and this is all really in good fun. I am actually quite embarrassed by it though so please don't say my last name lmao)

Ben Young

May it please the court. I'm part of a 2-year campaign with a few first-timers. Our DM is great but things have gotten out of hand with one first-time player. The player is a loot gremlin and has collected a small menagerie of animals that follow him around including: 4 wolf pups, a penguin, a cat, a hawk familiar, a sabretooth tiger steed, and a zombie velociraptor. The issue is that the animals inconsistently affect the game and our decisions when role playing. Half of the time, the animals don't matter and we don't acknowledge them. The other half of the time, they do matter and are a huge obstacle. For example, last session our cleric cast Word of Recall to teleport us and a friendly Kobold back to our airship. Since there is a limit to the number of creatures that can teleport, we asked the DM what should happen. This lead to a long and frustrating discussion in which the player tried to convince the DM to let him bring his animals. When that failed, he tried to convince the party that we should leave the Kobold behind, even though we had already told the Kobold he'd be coming with us. The DM ruled that animals with mechanical abilities or skills (the familiar, steed, and velociraptor) could not be allowed to travel via the spell. Should our DM allow some animal companions to follow the rules and not others based on their mechanics? What should be done about the many animal companions? I await your judgement. P.S. - The player in question is a teenager, the DM is their older cousin, and their Mom is playing with us.

Bryan Holt

To the honorable justices and the beefy bailiff. I a humble Warlock of Fey, created grenades of animate objects, borrowing some power from my patron the baba yaga (May she not take us this night). I discussed their creation with the dungeon master, who approved them over chat. I was told that if I wanted to create a potion that had a spell effect I would just spend the amount of gold that it would cost to build a scroll and that they would be used by other players. During a challangeing fight with a half dragon the grenades helped to tilt the action economy towards us players. I then was penalized by the DM because according to him it would have been impossible to calculate how much the jukebox machine in the corner could turn the tide of battle. My grenades were taken as were my XP for the fight. Justices, was it right for them to perloin my potions? Was I a Min Max Menace?

Barpo Goodbarrel Bard-Barian

May it please the court, Honourable Justices and Esteemed Balif. I present the case of Misty step vs step of the wind. In one of my campaigns, I am playing a 7ft trans masculine elven Monk named Aywin who took the Fey Touched (wisdom) feat I will provide a link and text of the feat in the post script as evidence if it pleases the court. Recently while in a series of ancient sewers, our party was faced with climbing up a 60ft tall tunnel to get to where we needed to go. I had already used half my Ki points in a fight and had misty step thanks to the feat so because Aywin has a movement of 40ft I chose not to use step of the wind. Instead I used 10 feet of movement to get a running start, used grabbed a brick 16.5 feet off the ground, then bonus action misty step(from the feat) and then used movement to travel the rest of the way. Because I rolled a nat 20 on my athletic check to climb the DM allowed me to ignore difficult terrain. But even though I had less than ft to finish climb he would not let me proceed the last 10 ft to tie a rope for our members that had low strength and would have struggled to climb up. Instead he said I pulled my self up and could not move any further but I could tie a rope to my waist. I argued that I had started my turn 10 from the tunnel, jumped 16 feet then misty stepped 30ft to then climb the remaining ~15 ft I would have had more than enough movement to make it 10 feet ahead. He said that if I had used step of the wind I would have been able to but that the vertical jump would not have allowed me that because I didn’t get a big enough start. I accepted the ruling so that the session could Progress but I’m still salty that I couldn’t help my party who are mostly tiny goblin rogues or clerics in heavy plate. So I pose the question: did I not do my math right or was my wonderful DM wrong and bad at math? I also feel his ruling did not reward the nat 20. Thank you for considering my humble problem, Lorne (they/them) and Aywin, Monk of Kelemvor. Your exposure to the Feywild’s magic has changed you, granting you the following benefits: * Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20. * You learn the misty step spell and one 1st-level spell of your choice. The 1st-level spell must be from the divination or enchantment school of magic. You can cast each of these spells without expending a spell slot. Once you cast either of these spells in this way, you can’t cast that spell in this way again until you finish a long rest. You can also cast these spells using spell slots you have of the appropriate level. The spells’ spellcasting ability is the ability increased by this feat.

Frankie J

To the honourable justices and the demure balif, I come to you with the case of the dismembered arm. I was running a mystery one-shot in a high school setting. The final combat was against an aboleth in the school’s seemingly bottomless swimming pool. During the fight, one of the party members was hit by its tentacle on their arm and became diseased. On an insight check, I told the player they could only be cured by a spell of a higher spell slot than any of the party had. After the combat, the players returned to the surface where teachers were waiting, and I began to hint that a teacher could cure the disease. However, this is not the option the players took. The diseased player asked if their arm could be cut off. I started trying to explain why that wouldn’t be necessary as it can only be healed with a spell when another player jumped in and offered to cut their arm off for them. The joke persisted and before I could react, the other play announced they were going to cut the arm off, rolled pre-emotively without my input and got a nat 20. I sat in stunned silence for a while but allowed it to happen. There’s no hard feelings here but occasional debates about whether I should have allowed it to happen, especially as I played into it afterwards by having an NPC that they had been flirting with take the dismembered arm as a keepsake. Am I in the wrong for suggesting I shouldn’t have rewarded that Nat 20, or should my players preemptively rolling have been enough for me to stop one of their arms being (needlessly) chopped off?

Star_Drek

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

Leith H.

Honorable judges, and most highly honored bailiff, I present the case of the broken fall I play a 11th level cleric, who doesn't care for material possessions, except for his staff, the final gift from his mentor. The staff turned out to be a magic item, the staff of flowers with a twist (the flowers could be eaten for 1d4 of healing) When he was pushed off a cliff he fell almost 200 feet, my dm told me to make a dex save to take half damage, -2 to dex, but I roll a nat 19 and pass. I do take half damage, but at a terrible price, the dm narrates that I land on my pack, and my staff attached to it breaks, and cannot be repaired, I ask if I could just take the full damage to save the staff, but he declined. I plead the court, was I in the wrong for being upset that my dm took such an important piece of my character away?

Oakworthy Vineyards

Even though you all are good friends, no one (including the DM) should ever feel uncomfortable at the table. It’s okay for characters in a game to be uncomfortable, but the actual players& DM shouldn’t be. Do you use any safety tools in your game? I’d recommend checking out the Digital RPG Consent form. There’s a Google doc version that you can modify & share with your players. It’s a great way for DMs and their players to determine what content will appear or not appear in your game. If you search “Digital RPG Consent” form, you can find it easily. I’d also recommend looking into the RPG safety toolkit. It offers some great techniques for navigating potentially awkward, uncomfortable, or trigging material in game play.

Adam Michael

Hello beautiful Judges. And Emily. And Murph who recently cut his hair, which sucks because I thought he was quite handsome. I am about to start a Strixhaven campaign this next week and told my players they could pick whatever race/lineage they wanted. One of my wonderful players took that and decided to get as silly as possible. They picked a tortle wizard. Like, who does that? I’m going to be playing a game where college students are getting into wacky hijinks and one of them is a tortle wizard. And this player, who is a darling friend of mine, will abuse the fact that they’re a tortle and will talk like a turtle. I’m talking Master of Disguise Dana Carvey. Can you please tell them that they need to change? Pleeeeeease? The rest of the party is human, tiefling, and Yuan-Ti. Perfectly respectable races.

JessMayWin

May it please the court and the feline queen Emily. I present the case of the failed toilet ambush. 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

Alex Messbarger

May it please the crit and it’s holy justices along with the oh so tiny bailiff , I present the case of the unholy spa day: in a one shot I and other pcs got to make new characters and run through a short campaign I was a Eldridge knight the other two both Dragonborn one bard other barbarian. We get to the spa and the dm tells us we have to hand over all our gear to enter all being reluctant but wanting to continue I asked to a-tune myself with the barbarians axe and the dm allowed it so we enter, once we place all of our stuff in chest and close them we realize we needed something so I opened the chest back up and everything had vanished so we are weaponless and naked in robes we attempt to charm the receptionist but fail and they transform into a demon that nearly wommped the floor with us.. we only survived due to both other players being Dragonborn and having breath weapons and me being able to summon bonded weapons for myself and the barbarian (the dm was very reluctant to let this happen) we ended up dying later on in the one shot die to lack of ac and potions. So I ask did we get cheated out of our stuff or was the dm right in taking everything to make it difficult?

Mackenzie Dobson

To the honorable judges Axford, Murphy and Tanner, along with the glorious bailiff Hurwitz, I hereby submit my case. Our party was in a dire situation, trying to not get murdered by an entire bar’s worth of mafia members. I cast invisibility on myself and my fellow party member, to allow us advantage on escaping the situation (the other two members were not with us). However, as the spells rules enemies can find us with perception checks. So I had taken some damage while invisible, but my invisibility remained. *Let me just interject to say that neither my DM nor I remembered that invisibility was concentration so I never had to roll for it after taking damage, that was just a party foul on both our parts - and also we forgot that when invisible, you can’t cast spells (we thought it was just that you couldn’t melee attack while invisible).* Regardless of the above, I was taking damage while remaining invisible. However, the next round my party member who was also invisible was perceived by the big baddie of the encounter. When he took damage from the big baddie, my dm ruled that his invisibility dropped due to the power of the attack - our DM said that the same way that invisibility drops when you attack, it means that when you take damage it also drops. But, he had allowed me to take damage because it was just minions hitting me, it wasn’t the big baddie. So, kind judges and thoughtful bailiff, am I right in saying that this is a double standard? Now, I know I am extremely lucky since we didn’t actually play the spell right, and we will do so in the future, but I thought it was a bit unfair to my party member that his invisibility was taken even though it was my spell and he didn’t have any concentration to worry about or anything, while I had been hit a bunch of times and the damage didn’t cause my DM to tell me the spell dropped. Was my DM right in saying that there’s a difference between getting hit by minions versus the big baddie of the encounter? I lay my judgement at your feet.

Rach

Honourable justices and Jake the Bailiff, I present to you a case curtesy of my 4 year old daughter: Miss 4 was playing “dandee” with her 7 year sister, 6 year old family friend and with her father as DM. Her fighter, Nature Roseabelle was riding a giant snail in a race, and winning due to an excellent animal handing role when a dex save was asked for, and tragedy struck. A natural 1 meant that Nature Roseabelle was unseated and fell off her snail. I ask you judges, should the player reaction of running and hiding under the bed in tears, be taken into consideration when the DM then ruled that Nature Roseabelle was at risk of being trampled by her fellow snail riders and that dex roles to avoid death by snail should be made with disadvantage? (You will be happy to know that the race was infact paused by big sister/the wizard Marigold who rescued Nature Roseabelle and that chocolate lured the player back to the table) I await your insight….

November Snow

Majestic baliff Axford, 2nd of her position, honorable justices Caldwell and Murph, and whoever else might be listening. I bring to you the case of a mishandled crit. I was a new DM for 3.5e and made it so crits dealt double damage instead of rolling twice as many dice. One of my players got upset at this when she crit and we got into an argument. I was too immature to let this go and just let her role twice as many dice, which eventually ended up with her leaving the table. Fortunately we were able to make amends and I admitted that I was wrong to raise my voice, and we were able to continue playing after that. But I wonder, was I within my right as a DM to decide how crits were handled, or should I have paused the game to look up what the RAW stated? Thank you for whatever judgement you offer.

Holly

May it please the crit and I guess also the Baliff: I’m running a Pokémon flavored game and it’s great aside from one thing: my players keep using cuss words! We are all adults but the player characters are thirteen and I don’t think you should be allowed to use the F word around a Clefairy. I tried limiting it to one f word per session as per PG13 movie rules but we a

Calvin Silver

To the honorable justices and epic bailiff: may it please the court. I come to you with a case from my first time dming a few years ago. As a first time dm, I tried to please my players as much as possible so when a player wanted their character to be a warlock of Cthulhu, I allowed it. However, this was a campaign set at a high school and neither the rest of the party nor the pc in question were evil-aligned characters. However, Cthulhu definitely is. A few sessions in, the character was given the opportunity to meet Cthulhu and took it wholeheartedly, saying they would do anything for the chance for him to be their patron. In response, I had Cthulhu offer them a deal: they would have to sacrifice someone they cared about (ie: a pc or significant npc) in exchange for powers. They were adamant that they wouldn’t do it so I told them that Cthulhu would not be their patron. The player was cold toward me and tried to argue that it was too extreme and I could have played along better to let them have Cthulhu as a patron. I think I did the right thing—especially since I had never dmed before—but I will humbly take whatever judgement you bestow upon me. (PS: the aforementioned player is now my ex so I have absolutely no allegiance to or sympathy for the way they played their character.)

Holly

- we all use this sort of language by default and it slips right out. Please send these sassy players to juvie so that my game can meet television broadcast standards

streetcat

May it please the virtious Supreme Crit Justices and the Glorious Baliff. This is a simple case, but one of great import. I play a very small game with only 2 players. Its a fun casual thing, but there is one problem. My DM has convinced himself that we all need to roll intitative a the begining of each round of combat. So each round of combat has a differnet turn order. We have been playing for months and neither me or the other player have brought it up. The main issue is that the DM is our dad. Are we in the wrong for not correcting this odd behavior? He plays D&D With other groups too, so is our negelgence causing pain beyond our own game? I await your judgement with baited breath. -JH

ethical non mahogany

May it please the honorable crit justices and the (held in slightly lesser esteem but still pretty tight) bailiff, I have a Dice God Or Whatever confession: Our group has been playing the Tales From The Yawning Portal adventures. It has been the first D&D experience for several of us. Towards the tail end of The Sunless Citadel, we were in a small library and our bard picked up a book entitled 'Treasures of the Firelords' and took it with him. At some point in downtime, he did an Arcana check and discovered that the book was protected with a Glyph of Warding. None of us, including the DM, realized that a Glyph of Warding couldn't be moved. In the next module, Forge of Fury, we invaded the dungeon and, just inside the gates, took down a group of orcs (including a shaman). Our druid wildshaped into a spider and went down the hall to investigate the noises we heard. The druid found a group of orcs and an ogre. We were fairly beat up at this time and our bard hit on idea: He put on the shaman's clothing, cast Disguise Self, went down the hall, impersonated the shaman and told the orc/ogre group that the book was very important and they should read it, but not until he left. He then rolled a nat 20 performance check. He barely made it down the hall before the Fireball Glyph of Warding triggered, killing several orcs outright and knocking the ogre down under 50% hp. We made fairly quick work of them all and continued on through the dungeon. Honorable court, I ask you this: must we do penance for our misuse of the Warded book? Or did the Dice Deities shield our DMs eyes so that it might rescue us in our hour of need? We prostrate ourselves and beg your mercy.

Taylor Vittitoe

Esteemed justices and dedicated bailiff! I am here to offer my first submission, however it is not a case but rather a confession. I started playing dnd years ago and still play with the same friends. They are wonderful and obviously very patient as they have watched me learn from ground zero when they have all been DMs before playing with me. The very first game we played was over facebook messenger. I was at an anime convention, so we were using roll20 and sharing our rolls. At the time I thought the point of dnd was to win the levels and get rich, so I re-rolled all my rolls until it was a decent number, screenshot them, cropped out the bad rolls, and sent it to the group. Everyone else knew what was going on and made jokes about it, but I powered through because I wanted to win and be awesome. It took until a second session to realize it was taboo. I lay my confession humbly at your feet and ask how I may make it up to my very patient friends!

Sparster

To the honorable justices Murph & Caldwell, the charming bailiff Axford, and the great ascended bailiff turned justice Hurwitz: may it please the crit. I present the case of Dominate Person. In the last campaign I DM'ed a fight occurred during which our ranger failed the save of the spell Dominate Person. On his turn, I informed him the telepathic command he heard was 'to attack'. He then described himself as firing an arrow straight up in the air claiming he was using the attack action and therefore complying with the command. I then specified that the command would have included that he needed to attack another creature. In response our ranger with the archery fighting style and sharpshooter, who up until this point had only ever used his bow, said he ran in to melee range of one of his comrades and did an unarmed strike. He argued for both of these saying that although he was charmed, he was still trying to resist the effects because his PC wouldn't want to hurt his allies. He also pointed out that he was technically following the commands, and said that per the spell, the bad guy would have to use his action to take "precise and total control" of his PC. Was I wrong to rule that he had to shoot his friends? Should I have allowed him resist the spell in his own way? I humbly await the decision of this court.

Gavin Pountney

May it please Bailiff Axford and justices Murphy, Tanner, and also that other guy, I guess. I present to you, the case of the unnerved Mage Hand Many moons ago, my Halfling Wizard named Dimple and the rest of our party were in a dungeon. We came across a large stone door accompanied by a hole in the wall next to it. I thought of an idea of summoning my mage hand to go down the hole to investigate. The DM told me that Mage Hand didn’t have a sense touch therefore couldn’t find anything in the dark, I protested this to no avail. Our party fighter decided that they would put their hand down the hole to try find something to help open the door. They found a lever, that not only opened the door but then proceeded to skewer our fighters forearm as it activated a trap at the same time. The fighter failed there dexterity saving throw to remove their hand in time and then proceeded to fail their strength saving throw to yank it free. The only thing we could do is sever our fighters arm because the dm exclaimed “the hole was a perfect fit and that we couldn’t get in there to dislodge the spikes stabbing into the arm” We then had to fight a boss at the end of the dungeon with a handicapped fighter. we all barely made it out alive This could have all been avoided if my mage hand had a sense of touch. I have a feeling it may have been the DMs way to try make the final encounter more difficult, and they did give the fighter the ability to save their arm twice. Even with all that, I still wonder what could have been if Dimples Mage Hand had some nerve P.S. the fighter did get a prosthetic arm a session later that was actually pretty sick

Taylor Vittitoe

Wait, since I screenshot and cropped the rolls out I think I knew it was taboo, but just wanted to be epic. I know now that the fun comes from having stakes, but wouldn’t have gotten there without my buds. How do I make up for this scourge on dice Christ?

Evolet Harris

To the beautiful bailiff Axford. Im a dm who runs a everyday campaign. It's very hard but super rewarding. Recently, I was playing with all new players and most of them were respectful and nice, except for my elf wizard. We all did the occasional razz about wizards tending to be weak, but this was fine because they would razz my goblin barbarian who would help them along the way. (They would call me a "green dwarf" because I super strong but really short.) But eventually the wizard hated being razzed and he told us to stop, which I was fine with and told the rest to stop as well. But then when I was describing scenes, he would interrupt me and and talk. It got to the point where he would interrupt me so much I couldn't finish a sentence. I told him to stop, but he didn't and when we all said we didn't like it, he got really mad. The next day I gave him my only players handbook because he needed new spells. When he came back the next day, he didn't bring the book back, so I asked why. He then admitted he purposely ripped up the pages. I said it was my last straw and kicked him out of the campaign. All of my friends agreed with me but I can't help thinking I was wrong. Was I wrong?

DM Dennis

Dear bailiff Axford, I come to you with a case of probable stupidity. In my best friends game I play a halfling paladin inspired by Beverly. We were exploring an old ruin riddled with traps. It was clear soon most were pressure plates which activated in front of the doors. Our party had found some straw practice dummy’s which we were throwing on to see what would happen. On one fire burned them to a crisp. I piped up that I was going to open the door without describing how. The DM (my best friend) then Blasted me with the fire and said I stepped on the plate. I disagreed and said that after throwing the dummy I as a seasoned adventurer would avoid it after seeing it. He blasted me anyway and nearly killed me. Should I have better described what I was doing? Was i stupid to walk into the trap? I await your prosecution. Kind regards Darvey MarbleBerry

Vic

To the esteemed high crits and the incredible bailiff, may it please the court: I play in a weekly game that I enjoy immensely. Being in a city with some of the strongest lockdown rules, we have been unable to play in person for months, but play online every week. I love online play, however there is one small issue. One of our players is dating the DM, and she constantly messages him with rules lawyering comments/corrections, most of them to the detriment of the party, calling out something the player shouldn't have been able to do etc. The DM will address this by saying "I've just been told", which alerts to us that it wasn't something he realised, but something she's sent him. Should I address this? I don't want to bring up any drama within the party, as it truly is the highlight of my week at the moment, but it's so frustrating! Am I being too sensitive here? Should I just ignore it?

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?

Shan Guleria

To the esteemed justices Murphy and Caldwell, the unfortunately demoted Axford, and to the pretender Hurwitz, I bring you my case: We're playing a high level homebrew campaign that is heavily Zelda themed. My character is a Battlemaster Fighter named Darmour. He's a Goron, where we basically reskinned a dwarf by replacing poison resistance with fire resistance. My DM gave the party a ring of spell storing and eventually also gave me a homebrew item that turns my resistance into full immunity to fire damage. Since then, our druid has been casting Wall of Fire into the ring, and having me use it to create what I have affectionately called Darmour's Playpen, where I trap a group of enemies with me inside of the wall of fire while Darmour remains unharmed by the flames. This started out working great. However, over the last couple of sessions it seems like a weird number of his enemies know Misty Step. I get it when a mage knows that spell, but even random dungeon monsters that don't seem to have any magic about them now all seem to be able to teleport out of the playpen. Is he a dirty metagamer? Or am I being greedy? Please settle this dispute.

Whitney Ahn

May it pleasure the Crit, their cats, and the entire birdlesque bar, and also hi to the Baliff, The big bad of my campaign’s name is Titania, modeled after the Shakespearean Queen. One of my players wanted to be her brother, and decided to make his last name Titan, which would’ve made my baddies’s name Titania Titan. I love shenanigans but I felt this would’ve changed the tone of the character in a way I didn’t like, so I vetoed it, but my player seems to ignore me and continue to tell people his name is Trenton Titania. Am I right to want to find some kind of name related monster to punish him with, or should I just let him change my big bads name to something silly?

Chris Calilung

May it please the court, How do you feel about reskinning in the game while maintaining all standard mechanics? I recently started playing as a PC in a game with a new DM. Prior to the game I let them know of several character ideas I had and they chose from those ideas a PC that would fit their campaign best. I wanted to play a Bladesinger Wizard who is a half dwarf half elf, or dwelf. Using a combination of each family lineage he is a gunslinger bladesinger, using a hand crossbow reskinned as a pistol. He “casts” spells through his pistol, each day as my wizard “prepares spells” he’s creating arcane bullet shells that he Has stored in a bandolier and then inserts those shells into his gun and fires away. The limited amount of daily ammunition is in line with daily spell slots. In addition, we use hand crossbow stats for my pistol. All stuff I discussed with my DM before he chose this character for me to use. But, after I created my character and after our first game my DM told me he’s uncomfortable with the idea of my character using pistols because he believes they are overpowered and that the technology can’t and doesn’t exist in that world yet. I think those issues are fair, but we discussed this stuff in advance. Mechanically my “pistol” can’t be overpowered since it uses hand crossbow stats and he loved the idea of a gunslinger wizard casting spells through his pistol. Then, after the first game he also mentioned that Dwelves don’t exist in his world so a half dwarf half elf won’t work character wise. Mechanically I just use half elf stats and me being half dwarven is all flavor. Taking each the elf and dwarf part of him is why he casts spells through the pistol. Something he approved in advance. Instead he’s changed me character to still be a blade singer but I have to call my weapon a hand crossbow. And I no longer have magical bullet shells as spells but just cast through weapon w no flavor at all. In addition I am just a half elf half human now because dwelves don’t exist. Essentially every part of my original character has been altered after the fact so I am considering leaving the game as it doesn’t feel like a good fit. How do you feel about reflavoring or reskinning parts of the game without altering mechanics? Am I in the wrong some how? I felt I cleared everything in advance but maybe I made a mistake somewhere along the way? Thanks!

Figgy the Cat

Good evening the magnificent judges and the Bowing low bailiff for this court. I come with the case of the unruly players vs the dm. The dm made a star wars game where the story was straight forward to capture jedi or die. But the players were not. I made a mercenary to gain money whatever the situation and my best friend made a jedi child that had a trauma of watching his chid friends die. My best friend and I had a conflict between our two characters with the ideals of capturing a party member or defying my parent's life work. Needless to say, after defeating the main boss of the 2 shot, the campaign did not seem over until we fought to see who would win. The child jedi won (after my fighter took only 1 attack and pulled a punch for a more narrative ending). The DM was not happy with our infighting and thought it took away from her campaign. Was she right? Did our in character fighting take away from her own campaign? If all players enjoyed the bantering and teasing, were we in the wrong?

Stuffandsuchrqg

Good Evening to the lovely baliff and the lovely judges except jake. I bring you the case of the smart himbo. I run a campaign with my two older brothers and a couple of our friends and my oldest brother really enjoys playing meatheads. He almost always plays a low intelligence or low wisdom (or both) fighter of some kind. This is great except for the fact that he is super fucking smart in real life. He will often roleplay his character in lighthearted moments, then when there are actual stakes, he will be smart and provide plans and mechanic based solutions to their problems. I have tried to convince him that stupidity can be fun sometimes, but he says that since D&D doesn't actually punish his behavior mechanically, it's fine. What is your sentence Judges? Am I being a hard ass or is my brother too smart?

Stuffandsuchrqg

ps. I can't just play with other people, if you were going to suggest that. He is my brother.

David Moelker

May the Justices Murphy and Tanner be pleased and the Bailiff be jolly. I present the case of cape vs ocean. I was running a game for a couple friends were they were playing pirates in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" setting, (still using magic items). We were having a fight on a ship while four characters were attempting to grab something at the bottom of the ocean, and one PC on the boat decided that they wanted to get down to the other PCs in the ocean to get help, to do this he simply used his cape of the mountebank to teleport down into the water. I said that it was a great move and explained how he got down there, but instantly got interrupted by squeals of protest. All the other PC's turned on the cape player saying you can't cast dimension door into water as that would be like teleporting into solid rock. I relented and didn't allow the teleport which resulted in him and the other PC on board the ship being killed. Was I right in listening to the PC's or should I have maintained the mountebank masterpiece?

Mac N Cheese

To the honorable and esteemed crit justices, and Jake, I guess, may I humbly bring forth the case of the indecisive revenant. I was the DM for my friends, they were 5th level, and we were running through a mega dungeon of one possibly copyrighted mentally unstable mage. This was meant to be a less DM-prep intensive adventure, but we all still wanted to integrate our characters into the plot as much as possible, which meant more player input. I am all for player agency and had learned the hard way a long time ago to always include your players in planning their stories. Things were going great, but before they cleared the first level, we had our first player death due to a room full of acid and a living, four-armed fish-monster statue. The player with the deceased and partially melted character had spent a lot of time on their backstory, specifically about them being the last member of their secret order, looking for sacred texts, and was very quiet. A little too quiet. I reached out multiple times before the next session to get their input on what they wanted to do. I was game for anything, a last minute resurrection or a newly-rolled character, as long as he was part of the planning process. He basically only gave me half answers and mumbled about how he had spent so much time on this character and was having fun. But with the next session happening in a matter of days, I needed an answer to keep the party moving. In a moment of frustration and fully seeing the next +20 levels of the dungeon, I decided that the BBEG of the dungeon was going to make them immortal: whenever his character died, they would come back  to life at the next dawn. The only caveat was they had to let the BBEG take a look at any sacred texts they found in the dungeon. Just look, not keep. Now, two levels later, the player always tells me they are happy they got to keep playing their character, but continuously brings up how they are upset that they are now beholden to the BBEG. Was I wrong to make a last minute decision without their input? Should I rescind or renegotiate the contract between the character and the BBEG? I leave my fate in your honorable hands, and Jake's, too, I guess.

Connor Raftery

Dear illustrious, resplendent, and luminous justices, and also the bailiff who Im sure is nice in his own unique way, I present the case of PC/NPC agency, I am the DM of my group, and recently we had one of the players guest DM and I got to be a player in my home brew world. I made a Barbarian with a heart condition, and made tons of references to how Raging was detrimental to my long term health. At the end of the guest DM arc, I picked up The reigns as DM once again, and the first thing I described was a dramatic death scene as my Barbarian’s heart couldn’t handle his rage. My players immediately started making plans to reincarnate him, and this is my dilemma: Do I not impede on my players agency and allow them to reincarnate my former PC, or do I keep control of my character and deny them the reincarnation? I would prefer to have my characters story end right there, but I don’t like telling my players “No” in situations where there is no logical reason. I leave this in your capable hands, and I hope the bailiff has a nice day

Nick Asmussen

Honorable Justices of the Supreme Crit and feisty bailiff, I present to you the case of the Cleric v. Magical Fire(?) In attempt to prevent a manor from burning down to the ground my Sea Dwarf Tempest Cleric cast Gust of Wind. Since the fire was contained to an area of 20x30 feet (4x6 squares) I assumed my spell would extinguish the flames in a few rounds. The DM disagreed with the wording of the spell and suggested that the flames may be magical. We compromised that I would roll a die determined by the max number of squares I could hit, which meant that I needed to roll the max number to extinguish all the flames I could hit. Since the fire spread exponentially and I never rolled the max, it resulted in the manor burning down. It was only her second time DMing and she did a great job, but there is still some debate whether the spell should have worked. She later admitted it was not magical fire. Should the spell have worked or am I wrong to question my DM? I humbly await your judgement.

TJ Miller

Honorable Justices and High Archbailiff, I Present the case of Vampire v Doorway My DnD group was nearing the end of our campaign and we were preparing for the last fight. The bad guy was in his castle, we were gathering our allies, all the good stuff. I had the idea to invite a vampire that we had tangled with earlier to fight the BBEG. The vampire didn't like the big bad and without us inviting him, his story would have just been a dropped plotline. We went to the vampire, pled our case, rolled some good persuasion checks and he agreed to help us out. Fast foreword a session to the day of the battle, our DM had us fight some guys in the courtyard to get into the castle and we were making our way in. The vampire stops and says that he cant make it past the entryway. We remember that vampires must be invited into somewhere to come in so we invited him. Our DM says it doesn't work and the session devolves to arguing about semantics of vampires. Our DM says you cant invite him in if you are breaking and entering but we had literally just walked in the unlocked front door. The BBEG himself stood on a balcony and taunted us and essentially invited us in before the fight. The DM then said that we aren't residents of the castle but our party happened to have the former PRINCE of said castle with us. We continued arguing until the DM shut it down by telling us we shouldn't try to bring high level NPC's into a big boss fight and we went to fight the BBEG without the vampire. To be honest I didn't expect him to do much, our DM had already essentially said as much but we expected him to do SOMETHING. The vampire was powerful (our DM gave him the ability to cast Power Word Kill for some reason) so it just left a bad taste in our mouths at the end of the campaign (Don't worry we got our DM back by shutting down the BBEG's Power Word Kill with a clever potion and use of False Life) Who was in the right here? Should we have left the Vampire out of it or should our DM have accommodated for the vampire? I await your righteous judgement and will accept any punishment humbly.

copperdragon

With the intent of pleasing the astounding bailiff Axford, as well as her companion justices, who adequately tend to the court, I present my case. The first ever campaign I played in, I played a devout cleric. I was kind of nervous about being new, so landed on pretty much only healing people. However, also at the table was a warlock essentially tried to oppose all my ideas/character decisions. I tried to get a wolf pet and they killed it’s mom. I prayed to my god and he deliberately interrupted by summoning his patron. He also was greedy and annoying to other players, shutting down their big moments and other stuff. The breaking point came when I tried to compromise with the dragon, giving it gold instead of a town, and he crept up behind it and stabbed it, initiating a battle between an adult dragon and around 5 second level characters. Luckily the dm wanted to avoid disaster, and said the dragon wanted to duel one on one with us for payment instead of just killing all of us with fire breath. My character still ended up going off, saying he was reckless and just wanted death, and that I would give it to him. I dueled the dragon, and after my inevitable death, afterlife happened, and turned out I was such a bringer of good my god resurrected me. Warlock guy dueled, and ended up meeting the devil who branded him as an evildoer and sent him back to earth but with none of his riches and completely under the devils control. He got really pissed off and started yelling at me, saying my character didn’t deserve what she got. He also tried to take over dming, saying he wouldn’t be as ‘soft’. I don’t remember that group ever meeting again. Should I have just let him meet his death at the dragons feet? Or was it right for my character to be pissed if to the point of recklessness? Should the dm have resurrected us? I await your judgement. P.S. I think I was around 13-15, and he was at least 3 yrs older than me

Jack Campau

To the worthy justices Murphy and Tanner, the glass ceiling shattering bailiff Axford, and “justice” Jake I suppose In a campaign I am currently a player in, our DM has seemed to take on the persona of “Ryan Urphy”. His campaign is based on the Wheel of Time and has a really fun premise, but he is horrible at balancing fights. Our characters are always incapable of defeating the enemies and we end up always being saved by a super high powered NPC played by him. We get introduced to these characters and they are all significantly more powerful than us with a bunch of sweet abilities and spells. Our DM will throw monsters with hundreds of points of HP that can knock us down in 2 hits while we can only do about 15 points of damage on our turns. In practically every encounter our DM’s NPCs come in to save the day with his overpowered character throwing spells that can do 5 times the amount of damage we can and ends up stealing the show. The worst part is that he claims we’re not playing our characters right, and that we have to use our resources better. Am I wrong in being annoyed with this behavior? How can I convince my DM to start balancing these attacks better?

SoupLightning

May it please the court, wow the beauteous baliff Emily, and thoroughly satisfy Justice 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.

Leonard Grasso

May it please the court, the entire court, and no one but the court: In my current campaign I am DMing, we began a fight with three sorceresses that have revealed themselves as the current villains. We were fighting with our druid's noble parents, all three of whom had Conjure Animals prepared. With a high persuasion, the Druid PC convinced both of her parents to conjure "as many wolves as possible", which led to 36 wolves being on the battlefield. For ease of game play, I let the druid do one attack roll for all the wolves, but she crit and ended the battle pretty much right there, completely annihilating all the villains. The party rejoiced, but I am bitter because I planned a lot of fun characterizing in-battle dialogue that went unused and I even wrote disco battle music for the session that felt wasted. Was I correct to let her do one attack roll for ease of gameplay, or should I have been a stickler for mechanics and made her do 36 attack rolls to prevent the GameShark cheat code way that they won? I await your judgment!

Alex Ferri

But also, was I robbed of this Nat 20 by Dice Christ?

Jack H

May my desperate cries for justice into the dark abyss be returned by a cruel punishment that matches the heinous crime I endured. Our party was at a magical tree that required us to solve a riddle to advance to the boss fight. The riddle went as follows: Take Note. I cast a spell that affects the masses. I am the whisper you hear among the branches. When with many, I face scrutiny. But when alone, I’ve been mastered. After much thinking, I realized that the perfect answer to the riddle was a fart. It satisfied every line of the riddle. A fart is, in fact, a whisper that affects the masses and is scrutinized among others. Everyone knows a fart is mastered when alone. However, our DM did not accept this answer and eventually gave us a hint which led to the real answer, A Song. This brought the party into a frenzy as we felt that fart was a more appropriate solution than a song. My question to you is, should a DM accept a creative answer to a riddle?

ChewChewChetney

May it please the lovely Bailiff and the wise Justices. I have the bane of having two bards in my party. I DM a party of six and two of the PCs are bards. Overall this is not an issue with their roleplaying. The issue that has arisen is the fact that they have both since very early on in the campaign been able to cast the Bane spell. When combat rolls around the two bards cast Bane the main threat and I then have to roll with a negative 2d4 to attack rolls and saving throws. To make matters worse, the party ranger has multiclassed in cleric giving them access to Bane as well. What should I do? I feel conflict with possibly setting a limit on how many times a creature can be Baned. On one hand I want combat encounter to still be challenging, but on the other the party revels in the having this combo. I hope to hear the advice of the Supreme Crit and hope that any punishment is just and swift.

Luke Miller

Sorry about the Bills, Jake.

Dax Motarex

Not a justice but simply an aspiring law student here to help! On page 205 of the players handbook under the section “Combining magical effects” it states “ The effects of the same spell cast multiple times don’t combine.” “Instead, The most potent effect, such as the highest bonus, from those castings applies while their durations overlap.” It goes on to say “for example, if two clerics cast bless at the same target, that character gains the spells benefit only once; he or she does not get to roll two bonus dice.” Therefor, given that bless is basically the inverse of bane I would say it works the same way Hope that’s been helpful!

Casey Alexander

May it please the our lovely court on this fine day I find myself in a weird position with in my party. I recently started playing with a new group. We’re all friends from university. My three friends are all first time players including our dm. I’ve been playing a lot longer and am always super happy for someone to want to dm. However, I keep running into the problem. I’m totally up for helping my friends at the table or answering questions but I’m starting to feel like I’m dming instead of my dm. I don’t seem to get to really play because I’m constantly helping to figure out what my dm should do. I’ve tried to explain that some of the fun is there being like some mystery between player and dm and it not as enjoyable if I know what gonna happen but it’s still not changing anything. I’ve even explain that I’m so up for literally anything they want to do even if it’s not exactly rules as written. I feel very stuck because I do love playing with my friends but I also want to be enjoying myself while playing. Any advice on the situation would be appreciated.

Yeeha532

To the judges above the bar and the bailiff, the true star. I throw myself at your mercy in the case of PvP. Long story short, we'd "saved" the first town of our first campaign and been given the choice by dm to continue or re roll and start something new. We chose to continue. But I requested that our party actually try to work together. During the campaign the rogue was the most rogue a rogue could be but the paladin was the goodiest paladin that could paladin, always at odds with each other which left my ranger always picking up the pieces and "hearding the cats" so to speak. Was I wrong to ask them to dial it back slightly and think about the team? Or is it a crime to interfere with players' styles? Ps we continued and things are better. The dm it turns out was going to intervene. Adam, Scotland.

Thomas Richardson

Dear crit Justices and of course the bailif who are all very special boys and girls, I bring to you a case of DM vs DM. Me and my friend both play in each others campaigns. We both have a great time despite our different GM styles but there's one thing we can't agree on and that is how we handle perception checks. He's very by the books in the the players have to describe exactly where they're looking to have a chance of finding something. And by the books I mean literally as this is how its described on page 178 of the PHB, (so it looks like my mate has, I dunno, the founding fathers on his side). I think this is dumb for a number of reasons, foremost being that our perceptive characters tend to miss obvious things because the players didn't realise that thing was there. Contrariwise he says my way (of letting you find the thing with a high enough roll) takes away from his engagement with the game, which is a fair enough. Which side does the fair and impartial supreme crit sit and if its mine can you please amend the phb (or the constitution, my American politics is not very good) to reflect this. Thank you

Jacob Alexi

If it pleases the court, I throw myself at your mercy. I am a forever DM finally getting to play a PC, yay! During character creation with the new DM I told him I was leaning toward being a chaotic good character even though I feel alignment is fluid and doesn’t really matter. On this comment he told me he would be deciding my alignment and that if I wanted to play in his world I would have to conform to his views on alignment. Thank you so much and sorry about the Bills.

Ricardo, devotee of dice christ

***UPDATE*** This is an update to the case of Ricardo vs the suspicious dice. To the wise judges Axford, Murphy, and tanner of the court as well as the esteemed bailiff Herwitz. I wish to provide a long overdue update as to the condition of the dice I mentioned in a previous case. After applying the advice of the judges I used salt water to float my dice that I was suspicious of possibly being unbalanced. After the float test it was conclusively determined that the dice was balanced after all! My praises rain forth to dice Christ for the blessing of my dice and good fortune. I have now dedicated myself to the dice Christ thatI may henceforth continue to sanctify his name as a Paladin Of Dice Christ (which I think could be abbreviated to P.O.D). Thank you for your wise council and making an amazing show, big love from England! P.s. Judge axford may be interested to know I play and dm SW5e and have a case to bring in future concerning this system.

Meghan Oliver

Honestly just popped in to say I love the camaraderie between the different posters helping eachother out.

masterofmerc .

Gracious and Beloved Bishops I come, on bended knee, not with a case but as a humble parishioner seeking the guidance of our Lord and Master Dice Christ. I have an overly blessed player, who plays a Rogue. Now when i say overly blessed, I truly mean it. To the point that my players take bets on how many nat 20's he will roll a session. Any group rolls are sent his way without delay. I have had him change dice several times, roll with an app, roll in a tower and on a tray. The 20's...my gods the nat 20's. I prostrate myself before the church. Did I wrong Dice Christ? Am i doomed to suffer so? How, beloved Bishops, do I create stakes when my sneek attacking rogue is so blessed?

Mackenzie Fresquez

O mighty Crit Justices and cute lil bailiff, I bring to you the case of the leveling up fiasco. May it please the court! We have been playing an XP-based campaign and typically our DM would give us the total XP we earned at the end of the session. The past couple sessions we have been getting the XP at the end of each encounter, before the end of the session. Which personally I think makes more sense, getting experience right after we do things! However, during our most recent session, we got enough XP to level up right before entering a dungeon. We had just taken a long rest, so I wanted to level up real quick to get my sweet sweet level 5 rogue features. But our DM wouldn’t let us level up! I argued that since we just took a long rest and had enough XP we should be able to, but he said since we had been leveling up at the end of the session previously, we had to wait. We compromised and he let us raise our max HP, but I still think we should have been able to level up before inevitably walking into more encounters in the dungeon. I humbly request your expert guidance.

Kendall 🎶

Greetings High Esteemed Judges and Baliff of the Crit and the very dry Justice Hurwitz. I bring forward the case of Druid v. Nightstalker. I’m playing a level 20 homebrew called Turrasic Park. We’re in a horde fight with a Nightstalker and my friend’s level 20 druid fish guy ER (real name is unpronounceable) is being affected by the Nightstalker’s Finger of Doom. The action states that if the target fails a wisdom save (ER failed) they take damage and are frightened. According to the rules “While frightened in this way, the creature is also paralyzed.” Before this happened, ER had transformed into a fire elemental which is immune to the paralyzed condition. When ER said he could not be paralyzed, my DM argued that the paralysis was mentally instigated by ER’s fear and the effect still stood. My friend gave in to our dm as the final ruling. But I told him he could appeal to a higher power. So I ask this, was my fishy friend wronged, or must we ask for Dice Christ’s juicy forgiveness? We’re still fighting the Nightstalker so I hope we live to read your verdict.

Jordan Jenkins

Lo for justice hear me glorious officials and their humble servant Jjkae. This happened some time ago on an island off a tropical coast. My party and I decided to participate in an underground pit fight in an effort to earn enough scratch to repair our ship. I loved every second of it, the elaborate monster skeleton decorated colleseum, the epic personal music that played before my party mates' 1v1 brawls with four armed gorillas and massive snakes! It was a chance to see what they could do on their own and really made them pop as the individuals that make our party uniquely great...then my fight happened. Before rolling initiative in the arena, indeed as the gate opened to show my combatant, a thick cloud of green mist rolls to my character. A Con save of 10 and my monk is asleep on the sand, being automatically crit by the monster multiple times. 1 turn later my companions are leaping in to pull this gaseous snake leopard (Kamadan) off of my near-dead monk and the fight is over. My character who had a harsh God and meritocracy mindset was devastated and left the group ashamed. I have now been dating the DM of that session for over 4 years and still haven't let it go. So my question for the court is this, has the statue of limitations expired on this obvious crime and what is his punishment? Thanks love you judges!

Ace

May it please the court, the most esteemed judges Tanner and Murphy and Axford and the imposter judge Hurwitz, I present the case of the teenager meta-gamer. I run an isekai-style home game with my older brother, two of my best friends and one of their younger brothers where they all play themselves in a fantasy setting. We all played for the first time in months recently since we are on break from college, and an NPC, previously a DMPC who adventured with the party was polymorphed into a young red shadow dragon and forced to fight the party. He was killed in the fight and when my brother, who was closest to the NPC requested that the younger brother who was lord of the castle they were in, and has cleric levels, help him he said he wouldn't because "it's just an NPC," and "he was on my kill list anyway." My brother attacked him and put him down making death saves. He was quickly healed by an attendant, and the guards arrested my brother, but there was much argument at the table afterwards. The meta-gamer has expressed this kind of sentiment before, and claims that since he knows so much about 5e lore and mechanics, and I had intended for them to be able to make strategic use of that knowledge in game, then his reaction would be to treat anyone from this setting as a random NPC, since he would genuinely believe he is in some kind of game. How should I deal with this borderline psychopath at my table? I am definitely changing his alignment from Neutral good, but is there more I should do to prevent future arguments, or is he right as he claims to live as though he and anyone else is just a board game character?

The Chili

May it please the highly coveted judges Caldwell and Murphy and the fallen Axeford. May it please the court. In our campaign, we were exploring and conquering a keep in a desolate land. In this keep, there were several different high level loot rooms. While waiting for everyone to show up so we could roll our finds in the treasure after killing a major boss last session, I jokingly said that I get I was going to pull a vorpal sword from the pile. Later rolling our d100s I rolled a 37. My dm after assumingly looking at what was on the table for that number, I was told to reroll mine since it was too strong. After finding out that it was the vorpal sword, I feel somewhat cheated but I understand it may be broken and that may not be the kind of game he may not want to run l. So i ask fair judges should he have honored the roll or should I accept this pettiness of mine and get over it.

Seth Davis

Happy Hoglidays and also may it please the court and the badass bailiff. I am stoked to have started the new campaign and am blessed with a great group of players and a wonderful DM. Starting as as a hobgoblin chronomancer I had a clear backstory in mind. At our first session, the DM narrated what I had included and added a bunch of other elements. I was excited but also a little intimidated to correct them because it seemed like they had done a lot of work. I’m not looking for punishment, but instead advice and a “gift” of a punishment. I want to be gracious to my new DM while also asserting myself about the correct backstory for my character.

Natural 20 Self-crit

I don't presume to be an honorable and fair justice of the court, but I'd still like to weigh in. Your way is good, his way sucks. It requires the DM to meticulously describe every inch of every room so you can point out specific things to search. And if they don't do that, then you always know exactly where to look for something; whatever the DM described. Unless you're playing with visual aids that are exact models of what the DM is presenting to you, the only sane way to do perception checks is in the general sense.

Caitlyn Mills

May it please the court and the extremely beautiful bailiff. We hear the case of PC vs. the rest of the party. In a lair of a Mindflayer, our party was clearly outmatched. As a group, we decided to flee with the last of our HP, as we were pretty low level. However, our fighter became stuck in the jaws of the Mindflayer AFTER the other two party members had already started to dash away (bad initiative). Instead of going back to help the poor fighter, our Druid decided to cast Spike Growth between the party and the Mindflayer, making it impossible for anyone to go back to help the fighter without going to 0 HP, but saying it would stop the Mindflayer from following the rest of the party. She did say “it might not be the right thing to do, but it’s what my character would do.” I just thought it was selfish. What say you? Was she playing her character and making a strategic move? Or was she being a selfish party member?

Samuel

May it please the esteemed court and the humble bailiff, I present the case of the back to back three-ways. I've been playing DnD for about 5 years. I've been a DM for about half that time. This case transpired a few years ago (pre-covid). I was DMing for a group of people from university. I was a new-ish DM running a game for mostly new players. We had a session 0 which was mostly character creation and introduction to the mechanical rules of 5e. We didn't really get into red lines and/or stricktly off topic areas of RP. The incident in question happened when more than half of the play group (3 out of 5) couldn't make the session. I was so excited to play that I did not care that the session was smaller than planned. I had the two players who could make it meet a super cool and hot sorcerer NPC. He gave them a mission and I expected the session to unfold with them following up on the mission he gave them. I made a mistake. My NPC was too hot. The newer player, a fiend patron warlock rolled super high on a seduction roll and the more experienced player went along with it. They all hooked up in a near-by alley. It was fun. After a fade to black, we got back to the game. No problem. Later that same session, the warlock wanted to seduce the tiny devil that was a messenger from his patron. He rolled high, the other PC didn't object and a second three-way happened at the table. I was uncomfortable because I described the devil as somewhat beastial and probably not compatable with the PC's biology (the devil had a scorpion tail and gross little wings) but the warlock didn't care. The session ended shortly after another fade to black. That play group crumbled soon after (probably for the best). To this day, I feel like I could have handled the situation better. Should I have set clearer boundaries in session 0 or should the player have read the subtext that I didn't want them the have sex with an actual devil? I prostrate myself before the court awaiting judgment.

Whitney Ahn

If it's just the biology that made you uncomfortable, I present the Tieflings Exist defense, which is that devils and humanoids have absolutely had sex before because that is how tieflings exist.

Cara McKinley

Exalted justices and lowly peasant bailiff ja- huh? It's Emily? Oh... Equally exalted bailiff Axford. may it please the court, I bring forth the case of old DM vs new DM. I was running a campaign for some friends when life got busy and my schedule stopped allowing for the hours of session making and world building I was doing. So rather than break up the party I reached out to a friend and fellow DM asking if she would be interested in taking over the campaign from me. She was and we agreed my character would be a collage or lore bard so that any extra in site I had into the world would be justified. She was excited by the setting and premise I had already set and said she couldn't wait to keep this story rolling. Cut to 2 weeks later where the party arrives, only to find out that our high fantasy setting has been changed to a Sci fi one, and "The One Tree", the source of all magic on the planet, has been chopped down. I ask, fair judges, am I being too precious over the campaign and should I just let it go, as I have passed over the story righting to her, or am I right to question why we didn't just start a whole new story, if it was going to be this drastically different? I await punishment, if not for the acts stated above, then for my terrible terrible spelling

Meghan

May it please the court, the honorable justices and the lowly bailiff Jake. Recently I had a player who used dimension door to go 300ft in the air above an enemy and then attempt to pile drive down on an enemy. Their goal was to land on top claiming that they wouldn’t take fall damage since the cushion of the mages curves would “cushion their tushion” and instead the mage would take the falling damage. I ruled they both would and allowed for this weird combat maneuver just because it sounded cool but the player insists they should’ve been at least able to try to save to avoid. How do you rule? Does landing on something softer than ground prevent fall damage? Would the person getting landed on also take the falling damage? I await your sentence.

Alex Gibson

May it please the court, and the esteemed justices Murphy, Axeford, and tanner, and to the ascended bailiff Jake. I present to you, the case of the DM versus the party of new players. Session 1, I started the party off by explaining that their characters had been on a wagon which fell into a cave, where they found an overturned cart and a door. After investigating the cart and finding rope, a living person entrapped in the cart, and some silver, the party decided to try and use the rope to climb back out of the hole they had fallen into. After several sleight of hand, strength checks from the party I had one of the players trip over a candle, lighting the cart on fire. With the man in the cart screaming, the party decided that it is now urgent they exit the cave, and ignore the door and cart. After additional attempts, the players tied a rock to the rope, and got it around a tree. I let them climb out. I made the players roll a pure luck check, to see if they would fall into any additional traps, to which they rolled a natural 1. As I did not really have anything else planned, the natural one made them fall into a trap, leading into the room that door opened too. Surrounding them by several goblins. The players still are mad at me for not allowing them to exit the cave, and have more of a free world adventure. Was I wrong to not let them roam free in the world I made? I await your decisions humbly.

ChefJustinLane

May it please the court--that being the honourable justices Murphy, Axeford, and Tanner along with slightly less honourable bailiff Jake--I present the case of Player vs. DM. We were in the midst of a deadly encounter with a group of pirates hell-bent on killing my character (for reasons). I was making death saves, and rolled a Nat20 on my wonderful BLM dice (thank you Heartbeat Dice and Headgum cohorts at 3BH) but to my dismay, the DM announced that I only had 2 successes instead of the Rules-As-Written 1HP regained. It would have meant the beginning of my turn and the ability to save my party member's brother, who died on the next turn (sparking another big event that is irrelevant to this case). While it's totally normal to have homebrew rules, we had a session zero when we talked about this stuff and that never came up. I pleaded my case, and the DM, in fairness, did apologize, but I still feel robbed especially since it was such a crucial moment. I survived, but I'm worried this might happen with something else important down the line as well. My party and I await your endless wisdom. Signed, Concerned Reborn Bard (AKA Adam Elias "Riverboat" Reid)

Ollie's Travels

Honorable judges and most honorable bailiff. I have recently learned how to DM. Is there any helpful advice that you would give a new DM on how to bring the pain to their PCs? I want to make my gameplay smooth and fun at the same time. Yours truly, New and confused DM

Pearl of a Girl Nursery

Honorable judges Murphy and Tanner, that other guy, and the beloved and respected headmistress in the school of multiclass and exceptional roleplay Emily Axford: I’m the newest player in a long-running group that I found online. I’m a 15-year-old Half-Elf Runechild Sorcerer named Villicent Beaudunor-Mar’kael. Villie for short. She was sheltered in a small elven village with her parents for most of her life, until the orcish deity Gruumsh possessed the druids of that village, including Villie’s mother, decimating it. Villie only survived through her father, who had anticipated the attack and orchestrated a spell that would trap his daughter in her own arcane focus, a ring. An awesome, emotionally wrenching backstory from my one-on-one session zero with the DM. 200 planar years later, Villie is released from the ring to join the existing party. Slowly but surely, I gained the trust of most of the party. But there’s one guy Karl who, weirdly, feels like he as a person (i.e. not his character) has decided to not like me as a person and has just gone out of his way to make Villie scared and uncomfortable. Sometimes, slipping in my own name (“I’m just pissed at what Tess is doing so I’m going to do this”) seemingly out of character and when I’m character, shaming Villie for not buffing him with her abilities and threatening to put her back into the ring. I’ve been in campaigns where my character didn’t get along with another, but it’s well understood after a session that as players we are cool. With this group, since it’s online and essentially with strangers, it feels so weirdly hostile. I was originally brought into this group because the DM wanted more role player types so I don’t know what to do. I have crafted a few ways for my character to reach out to his, but every session he ends up doing or saying something hostile and it just wouldn’t make sense for my character to, for example, show his Wizard character that she has a magical portal key to her Wizard father’s library around her neck, which the DM has even confirmed for me would allow Karl’s character to get a new spell or ability improvement. I am really perplexed by this because I love Villie and want to stay in this campaign, but I’m also the newest player in a group that’s not used to roleplay with a voice and motivations that might even deviate from the “smart” thing because she cares about what she cares about. I’m starting to feel like I’m pushing my roleplay on other people. I’ve opened up to my DM about this, and we both agree that players should play in the way that is fun for them, but both of us are perplexed on how to handle this situation when those things that are fun can be so different person-to-person. Can roleplayers and non roleplayers really coexist in a campaign without one of them having to “win” out over the other? Is this a conversation the DM, Karl, and I should all have together? How would you guys handle it?