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Calling for Court Cases! (Patreon)

Published:
2022-04-26 14:40:19
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Okay! Bailiff Jake here and crit is soon to be in session. Please submit your (BRIEF, I implored you!) cases on this thread and we will try your case.

May Justice Be Soon Served,

Jake

Comments

Jack Campau

To the honorable justices Axford, Tanner, Murphy. And that’s it. I bring to you the case of the Shapechange - Change Shape loop paradox. I play in a high level pirate-themed campaign where my character is a 17th level circle of stars Druid (navigator of the crew). My character has the spell Shapechange which I found has a quite possibly game-breaking ability if I’m using it properly. I warned the dm about the upcoming tomfoolery and stated “I know this move is bullshit and I don’t plan on ever using it again, I just wanna do it once” beforehand. I Shapechanged into a CR 17 adult gold dragon. Used the dragons ability to Change Shape into a Arch Mage with the Shapechange spell, and stated that I would do this back and forth, building a character that would theoretically have an unlimited amount of HP (every full death simply sending him back to the most recent adult adult gold dragon). My dm claimed this was bullshit and would not allow it. Was I wrong to use this trick just once to share my found loophole, was the loophole false and my use of the spells wrong, or was my dm in the wrong for not letting it play out? I eagerly await your judgement.

Axyl and Olympia

May it please the court, Oh great and powerful justices and that other guy, I present to you the case of the Organ with Organs My dnd party has occasionally done a less serious spin off from our usual campaign to just casually play shit heads and fuck around called the adventure squad. Well this time my lovely DM presented us with a spooky village that we were sent to, to figure out why people were going missing. Skipping past the middle what we find is that a very French woman and her husband are taking people from the village and using their body parts to create a living organ “that makes music feel more alive. There is more passion when the instrument itself is living” At the end of it all we catch her and were debating wether or not to kill her because she was very adamant that even tho we killed her organ here she can do it again somewhere else. The very loud but funny debate that ensued was wether or not by killing her were we any better than her. That would killing her be better and prevent any more living instrument related deaths or were we no better than her if we killed her. We killed her in the end. I await your glorious and truthful conclusion and or punishment.

David

First

Eva Dellow

May it please the court, the Honorable Crit Justices and the consistently inconsistent bailiff. I present the case of hiding from Shia LaBeouf. I was invited to play in a seemingly normal Curse of Strahd inspired one-shot. Our kenku monk had been captured by an unknown assailant and we were attempting to rescue them. We found a cottage in the forest where the monster was hiding and initiated combat. I, a halfling rouge, attempted to hide after my turn, but was told that there was nowhere to hide. I fought my case but the DM refused. After rescuing the monk we confronted the monster, who was revealed to be the 'actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf'. The pieces fell together, and the whole one shot was revealed to be an elaborate bit. However, being the killjoy I am, I felt cheated! While I understand why the DM didn't want me to use my character as I had designed her, was railroading our combat to fit the lyrics of the song justified? I humbly await your judgement. (Please feel free to paraphrase if my submission is too long!)

Jackson W.

May it please the court, the supreme judges and the naked bailiff. I bring you the case of forced hospitality. I DM a game of 6 lvl 7 PCs, one of people at the tables character is a tabaxi gloomstalker named Gallus who delights in creating minor chaos. The party had just entered into a new town, the national bread basket. The town’s population is made up of farmers and their only protection was a lvl 18 Druid who sat at the towns center helping anyone who needed it. I role played everyone being nice and very hospitable, the Druid was the same but was more of a no nonsense person. Enter Gallus, with his insane stealth checks would break into homes to rearrange furniture, move mugs to different cabinets, or swap farming tools from shed to shed. Mass confusion ensues. After a couple bad stealth checks the Druid finds Gallus and asks him to stop. Gallus agrees, waits 5 minutes and then starts again. After finding out that Gallus didn’t keep his word the Druid try’s to talk to Gallus again. After a failed deception check from Gallus the Druid cast Geas on him, Gallus failed and was given the directive to stop committing chaos in the town and to be as hospitable as possible to others. Leaning into it Gallus adopted a southern drawl like the farmers and went a little over the top with it. I still get called out for “rail roading his personal action” to this day. Should I have let him play his character as he wanted or was Geas to harsh of a consequence? I leave my case in your capable hands.

Dayton Miles

May it please the all-mighty Justices, and the baliff who might be immortally handsome. I was the DM of a campiagn a while back with a small party. The Deck of Many Things was used by one of the players and got the Wish card. He wished that his sister was never captured by a goblin clan, which was part of his origin story. He lost his sword that he crafted because he would've never forged it due to his sister being gone and also lost his blood red eyes since he was never traumatised. My player was upset at the changes but I argue those are the consequences of said action. Was I wrong in the changes or did I alter time correctly? I await your judgement.

Brooke Sanders

May it please the courts who sit on high and Jake wherever he may lie. I bring you a case of long ago. Back when i first started high school, I found out our school had an after-school D&D club. The first time I went, I was extremely shy and nervous as everyone else there were upper classmen and veteran players. They were kind enough to let me join their current campaign. I don't remember much about the character I made except that I started at level one and I had a tiny dragon familiar, which I was only allowed to have because the DM said it couldn't have any dragon abilities. Here's the action. Our party was in a room with an object that we needed to get but was clearly boobytrapped. The party came to a standstill in discussion, so I offered for my dragon to go and touch the object. The DM then described in great detail how my dragon knocked over the object and was consequently shot by a bunch of arrows and died. Looking back, the rest of the party must have been AT LEAST level 5 because I remember thinking that the damage would have killed me couple times over. I wanted to object and say that I had said the dragon would only touch the object, but frankly I was too nervous to say anything. The action caused the rest of the party to finally do something, but I don't really remember anything else from that session because I was bummed my only friend had died. My question to you is this: Was my dragon wrongfully murdered or did my not speaking up rightfully damn my little buddy? P.S. If you do sentence the DM, please don't punish him too harshly as I would have never played D&D without him.

Danny B.

Bless me Daddy, Duncle, Docent, and guy who hasn’t DM’d for I have sinned. In the campaign I DM random encounters are determined by having 1, 2, or 3 players roll a D12 (depending on the how dangerous the area is) and me rolling a D12. If my roll matches any of the players rolls a random encounter occurs. Out of ease I tend roll this behind the screen. However, a few times and growing more frequently I have fudged the roll to either avoid a random encounter that I felt didn’t fit the current story or to create a random encounter to push off the next scene until next session. My intentions are pure, but actions have defied Dice Christ’s true intentions. Please forgive me. As my Catholic school teaching has instructed me I have already begun saying my first (of probably multiple) dice roseries (instructions in the comments).

L_D

May it please the court and put a bee in the bonnet of the bailiff. When I was but a humble beginner DM, I once created an encounter for my players built around a magic ball that would suck anyone who touched it inside and could only be released by a magic pass-phrase. During the encounter, my party’s Mage decided to pick up the ball with mage hand and chuck it at the mini-boss I had painstakingly written for them, ending the fight before it even began as he got sucked up into the ball. I accepted my whomping and allowed it to happen. My question arises from the following; the party’s barbarian then suggested the mage use mage-hand again to put the ball in a satchel so they could release the mini-boss as a weapon of sorts in their next encounter. I allowed this, but when they released the mini-boss in the next encounter as they planned to I simply had him attack them almost immediately, absolutely clattering the healer in the process and nearly causing a TPK. My players argued that he would have been confused and attacked the new enemy that they were fighting, but I argued that trapping him in a ball would only have made him more mad at the party. Was I in the right? Or have I just condemned myself to being trapped in a ball? Many thanks.

Danny B.

I hope this doesn’t offend anyone. I am a practicing Catholic, but I think God has a sense of humor. If anyone has a made a dice rosary, please share it. I couldn’t find one with a quick Google search. Begin with the Sign of the Dice. Holding the d20, pray the Player’s Creed. On the d12, pray our DM On the d6, pray three Hail Dice Towers On the d10 pray a Glory be the DM Pray the first decade On the d12 announce the mystery then say our DM On the d6 say ten Hail Dice Towers while meditating on the mystery On the d10 say the Glory be the DM On the D8 say O my Dice Repeat the decade Sign of the Dice In the name of the DM, the Dice, and the Player’s Handbook The Player’s Creed I believe in the DM, the Parent Almighty, Creator of Planes Material and Not; and in Dice Christ, His only Tool, Our Lord, who was rolled by the Dice Tower, suffered under critical fails, was yelled at, tossed, and binned. He descended into the Nine Hells. The third session he arose again from the bin; He ascended into Elysium, sitteth at the right hand of the DM, the Parent Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the characters and the players. I believe in the Player’s Handbook, the holy Wizards of the Coast, the communion of heroes, the forgiveness of goofs, the resurrection of the die, and the characters everlasting. Amen. Our DM Our DM, who art at the head of the table, thy kingdom come; on paper as it is in your head. Give us this day our weekly session; and forgive us our goofs as we forgive those who goof against us; and lead us not into a TPK, but deliver us from this dungeon. Amen. Hail Dice Tower Hail Dice Tower, full of angles, the Dice is with you. Blessed are you among towers, and blessed is the number of your roll, Dice Christ. Holy Dice Tower, roller of Dice, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our character’s death. Amen. Glory be the DM Glory be the DM, and to the Dice, and to the Player’s Handbook, as the character was in the beginning, was then, and ever shall grow, campaign without end. Amen O my Dice O my Dice, forgive us our goofs, save us from the fires of the TPK; lead all PCs to glory, especially those who have most need of your 20s. Amen. Hall Holy Tower Hail, holy Tower, roller of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. To you we cry, poor banished players of DND; to you we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in the valley of ones. Turn, then most gracious advocate, your twenties of mercy toward us; and after this, our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of your rolls, Dice. O wild, O uncaring, O stoic Dice Tower. Pray for us O holy roller of Dice. That we my be made worthy of the criticals of Dice Christ. Concluding Prayer O DM, whose only begotten Die, by its rolls, ones and twenties, has purchased for us the rewards of healing potions, grant, we beseech thee, that while trancing (for 8 hours) on these mysteries of the most holy rosary of the blessed Dice Tower, we may imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise, through the same Dice Christ our lord. Amen.

Omar

To the honourable justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, and however we feel about the bailiff today. I come to you with advice on if I should become a table tattler - I play in a Pathfinder 2e campaign, where multiple attacks on your turn suffer penalties to hit. However, one of my fellow players has been ignoring this penalty and thus hitting more and doing way more damage than the rest of us. Normally I'd be fine with this, because if a member of the party does well we all do well. However, the dark stain here is that he has been boasting in and out of character that he's so much better at combat than the rest of us, and it kind of grinds my gears, so should I slip into my DMs DMs and tell him what's going on or would that make me a dick? I await your judgement

Sara

I would still love for the original case that inspired the idea of dungeon court (from the end of the Short Rest for episode 35 of campaign 1) to be tried.

Ophelia Black

Hello to the wonderful supreme crit justices and also Jake too! I have a medical marijuana card from my disabilities. This means that I sometimes show up to sessions high. I always give warning before the session, especially since I’m the dm. Recently, one of my players has started killing some of the morally grey important NPCs, claiming “that’s what his character would do”. I found out from one of our mutual friends that he’s doing it because he thinks I’m ruining the D&D experience by being high. Is he in the right to be mad at me? I humbly await your decision

Alex Cannata

May it please the court, Our druid keeps using mending to make a "butthole finger trap" out of our dead enemies' bodies. But the DM uses any unsuccessful roll (to have sex with it) as a chance to say that the butthole finger trap disintegrated. I'd argue that since it is being mended it should hold up even if we are unsuccessful of finishing in it. I hope this pleases the court the way I want our butthole finger trap to

Bryan Holt

May it please the court and Bolster the Balif. I present to you the case of the Retroactive Reagents. I am but a humble arch fey warlock of the Babba Yagga, mixing potions with the artificer levels I took. One of these potions is a potion, a grenade if you will of animate Object. I work out with the DM that I can spend the spell slots and hand them to players to use as they pelase in battle. Cut to, a harrowing fight with a half black Dragon Sheriff. Well the Rouge sees a fancy jutebox that he wants to join the battle and it's attacks prove clutch against the Draconic Danger. The DM is furious after the fight saying I tricked him into allowing an overpowered item. Claiming there is no way he could have accounted for an extra fighter in this battle. He not only took my potions but my XP for the fight as well. Justices I ask was I a Tricksy Tinkerer or was he being a gloomy game master? I await your most humble of judgements.

Kristen Coates

May it please the holy trinity of justices and the devout bailiff as they spread both spiritual and legislative justice on us mortals, the scenario I present is simple. My Druid Bex and her owlbear cub (Clementine) familiar were riding a horse (named Chester) and fighting Wintersplinter (Curse of Strahd). We rode up so Chester could take a hooves melee attack on his turn, and then Bex wanted to cast Thunderwave. My DM made the save for the tree, and then told me that Chester and Clem had to make the save as well. Since, in a previous incident other members of my party had had to roll the save, I specifically said that I only cast this spell since no one other than the tree was within the cube originating from my location, and he said that Chester and Clem counted since they weren’t me, and I argued that they shouldn’t count since I was astride Chester and Clem was on my back holding onto my shoulders. We didn’t agree, but he did let me change and cast a different spell, and we moved along. I ask: who was correct? Blessings to you in dice Christ, -Kristen

Lux Ultor

Hear ye, hear ye, virgin bailiff and chad justices: I write to you in a time of great need. I just turned 21 and I was struck by a horrible realization: I’m growing up. I don’t have any friends who are willing to play dnd with me anymore. Gone are the days of sleepless sleepovers fighting mind-flayers and after-school shenanigans rolling intimidation checks to force lovable kobolds to join us. This is a rather unorthodox question, as it doesn’t have much to do with the actual game of dnd, but how, short of breaking into your studio and forcing myself in as a guest character, do I find new party members?

Matt

May it please the court and Honorable and attractive Judges Tanner, Murphy and Axford; and Honest and Trying Bailiff Jake Last of his name. I need a post game ruling on if Something was meta-gaming. I had a player use their OOC knowledge of the dice roll to affect their Role-play and decisions. For example once he rolled a nat one on a Sense motive check and when told “you think he’s friendly” he attacked and told the party he crit failed so they must of been evil (he was, but still). The Player thinks his character knowing if they passed or failed a check isn’t Meta gaming and got furious when I said I would roll a perception check he asked for. Was I wrong? Can the characters know how well the players rolled?

Fish Harlan

High Honored Judges and Dearly Beloved Bailiff, I bring you the case of The Cleric With A Death Wish. In our home game, my players are in the capital city and have found the black market in a massive underwater complex covered in a glass dome. Our cleric, being very righteous and dedicated, thinks the black market should be gone. He has expressed on several occasions wanting to shatter the glass dome and flood the market. Each time, he has been talked down by me (the DM), and his fellow players because doing so will definitely get him killed from magical backlash and angry criminals. My question is this: should I let him do it anyway? Am I stopping him from a valuable learning experience? I await your judgment.

Talia Smock

May it please the court, I have brought to you the case of the Barbarian that won't Rage. I am a DM in a campaign through Avernus with an awesome, well rounded party, the only issue is that our Barbarian is a pacifist working on anger management. He has recently come to terms with fighting when needed but the player refuses to rage. I've tried explaining the mechanics to him, trying to force him to rage in game and even trying to create a subclass for him to fit his play style but he won't even use that. I'm just confused as a DM because I want him to have fun but should I be enforcing him to use the mechanics or just let him play as an overly buff fighter? This seems like a silly question but I am curious on the thoughts of the judges. Thank you for your time!

LovelyLorelei

Greetings to the Bailiff and Assorted Justices, I present to you the case of the Broken Tiara. In this Game I’m DMing I made an encounter against an Shadow Sorcerer Assassin that involved them using Darkness and Shadow Blade to sneak around the PC’s home and deal massive and untraceable damage. However less then an hour before the game was to start I realized that both the spells were concentration. So rather then rework the encounter I made up a home brew item called “The tiara of two minds” which allowed casters to concentrate on two spells at once with the caveat that the rolls for concentration on the additional spell can’t receive any bonuses and that the tiara has a 20 percent chance of breaking if the spell loses concentration. The encounter itself was very fun with a few near deaths in both the party and some beloved NPCs, but the primarily spell-caster party quickly deduced what was happening. The Assassin was hit by a huge blast by the party Warlock and with an unlucky roll the tiara broke. After the game one of the players asked about the double concentration and I told him about the tiara and he was pissed at me saying that quote “Giving NPCs breakable items is a bitch move. You just didn’t want us to get our hands on the tiara.” Are making items with a break percentage a good way to control OP artifacts or are they indeed a “Bitch Move”? I await judgement.

Sophie Buijsen

May it please the wise court and the oft unprofessional bailiff. I DM’ed a short campaign based on the movie mamma Mia (the fiancés curse could only be lifted by true love’s dad). 3 of my players were DMs themselves and don’t get to play often. This was my first time DMing. One of the players had such poor table etiquette, trying to derail the story, not being a team player and sometimes flat out refusing to move to the next part of the adventure. As a new DM I did not have the skills to handle this and felt I was constantly having to tell a PC no, when I had told myself I would make sure to let people do what they wanted in this clearly casual game. Was there a way I could have dealt with this player without ruining the game for them and the others? Or should I have called out their behaviour, therefore souring the mood during a game essentially about Meryl Streep as a Banshee? I await your ruling.

Gianni Pappas

If it may please the overall decent court (Judges and Bailiffs are equally cool). I present the case of the sleepy mad King. We were playing an altered version of the Dragon of Icespire Peak and we’re running through a gnome dungeon/kingdom. When we talked to the king he locked himself with his husband in a room and wouldn’t open the door. As I had the Sleep spell I decided to cast sleep on both of them. I placed a point on the other side of the door knowing the 20ft radius would get both of them in the range. My Dm said you cannot see past the door it is a solid steel door with a hinged opening. Here comes my argument. The sleep spell just says a point I choose. No part of the spell says it requires line of site or anything like that. While I accepted his ruling I still think I should have been able to put them to sleep. Am I wrong here or what’s wack yo? I wait for the courts decision. (Also thanks for tips on TGI Monday’a but love TGI Skydays better)

Dave 3D Art

May it please the court justices, and the beloved bailiff. Recently played in a campaign with more than a few houserules I had issues with, but the one I mention only came up during the first session. The DM* had a houserule that if anyone in the party multiclassed he would drastically increase the Challenge Rating of all encounters. Obviously to create a disincentive to multiclassing. When I commented that multiclassing was functionally self-balancing due to removing access to higher level class features I was asked to leave, and not come back because I implied he didn't know how to balance emcounters. Was I right to have questioned his houserule, and implicitly critique his knowledge of the game or was he right to kick me from the group? Thank you for your time. *He's been playing for about 20 years, the same as me so I can't write any of this off as him being inexperienced.

Chris Bean

Dice Christ confession: Dearest and honorable clergypeople. I humbly prostrate myself before you and offer this confession. I was moving to the couch during a long play session. The DM asked for a con save and I rolled the dice into my dice box. However, I couldn't see the exact number but I know it was only 1 digit. I sat up to get better lighting and it jostled my dice box. It bounced the d20 to a 16. Instead of rerolling I just went with the 16. The DC was 20 and with my +6 I beat it. Was I wrong? Was dice Christ giving me a win? I humbly await your judgment

CARROT SNATCH

one time my dm ate a beetle at the table and then wanted to continue the session

Austin Rousseau

Honorary crit justices and the wonderful baliff. I play a campaign with my brother, 2 cousins, and my uncle. I'm playing a time wizard. I'm a divination wizard with some homebrewed time spells we found online. We found a treasure map that I accidently burned half of. I asked, being a time wizard, if I could use the mending cantrip to repair it. I would expell a spell slot to boost it and turn time backwards for just the map. (Just like Dr. Strange and the apple.) He said yes, but the DC was high and I would need to roll an arcana check. I proudly used my portent roll to roll a 16, getting a 20. The DM said no, that I couldn't use my portent roll. We argued about it for a second before I just let it go. I rolled a 5..... I felt disappointed that I couldn't do what my charater was designed to do. Am I holding on too tight to expectations, or should I have been able to do this pretty neat thing? I will gladly accept whatever ruling is made! Thanks!

CARROT SNATCH

It might have been a box elder bug actually

Alex W

May it please the court and also bailiff jake I guess, I bring to you the case of Shrek the rogue. I’m starting a campaign with my friends, all of us new dnd players. My twin sister is playing in the campaign, and I was helping her design her rogue. We rolled the stats and she decided she playing a half orc. When I talked to her about her background, she decided on hermit. We continued to design the character, not thinking much of how the hermit background doesn’t quite fit the half orc raised by gnomes that she wants to play. Right before we finished, she said “you realize I’m playing Shrek right?” I asked her please not to, but she insisted the only way that she play would be as Shrek. Later, I said she could play Shrek but a barbarian might better fit the “Shrek” archetype, but she was insistent that she play a rogue. Was I wrong to insist that she shouldn’t play Shrek, or to ask her to change to barbarian to better fit the “Shrek” archetype? I leave Shrek the rogue’s fate in your hands.

Chase

May it please the ever richeous court and the ever competent bailiff, I present the case of the DM vs the Suicidal Wizard. So I play a halfing necromancy wizard who uses necromancy to learn to heal instead of raise dead. Therefore one of his big spells he picked up was Life transference, basically you take damage and heal for double. During a big fight, the party barbarian went down, and I really couldn't dish out as much damage as him, so I casted the spell, and rolled pretty well,so well that it brought my barely hit Wizard down to 0hp. The dm then narrated how it knocks me out, but since I was unconscious, I couldn't get the energy to my target. We ended up killing the bad guys, and I got razzed for my character seeming to giving up and knocking himself out. But I posit the question, If I cast the spell, can't I sacrifice myself AND get the healing out? I await your judgment and whatever cruel and unusual punishment you deal out.

DnDiplomacy

To the honourable justices and diligent bailiff, I present the case of the anti-gravity orb: When faced with a water obstacle my players chose to deploy an anti gravity orb which removed all gravity in a 100ft radius. Once airborne they stated they could now swim through the air over the water. Instead, I made them think of a way to propel themselves (rafting up and punting with a large stick), but often worry I did them a disservice. They still tease me about it sometimes. Please, put me out of my misery - can you swim through the sky, or do you need something more to move?

Ross Gilliland

May it please the court, I present the case of the defiant PC. Once when DMing for 6 of the goofiest guys I know, I had them stumble upon an eerie and strange town where everyone seemed a little off. The eventual plot twist was that every member of town had a vampire guardian that lived with them and protected them from various dangers in exchange for their naturally replenishing blood supply. My best friend Paul played our most problematic PC, a Tortle named Hektor the Shell-Endowed. Hektor went to one of the town’s vampires and asked for assistance in one of his personal quests, to which the vampire sternly turned him down because it had nothing to do with him. The line that Hektor uttered next has lived in infamy ever since: “I light his coffin on fire”. Not willing to outright kill a PC that I had grown to love, I allowed my bias to influence what happened next. The Vampire merely marked Hektor as his servant and informed him that at any point in the future Hektor would be required to return to him if his service was required. I should mention that before this session started I felt the need to remind my party that DnD is not a video game, actions have consequences, and I would no longer go out of my way to protect their characters if they blatantly put them in harm’s way. With this in mind, was I too lenient on my player’s shenanigans, or was this a fair response to an action that was obviously meant to challenge my authority? Thank you for your time and judgement.

Thomas Donovan

To the honourable Bailiff Hurwitz and the wannabe Bailifs Murphy, Axford and Tanner. I recently ran a heist one shot with my crew, at a ball where Xanathar the beholder was in attendance. When sneaking into the guest rooms upstairs the parties rogue decided to eat his pet fish. I'd already explained that the Xanathar was exceptionally paranoid and protective of their fish, so when they came back down to the main hall they found a rampaging beholder blocking their exit who they then had to fight, directly after an encounter with an adult black dragon in a vault demiplane. They had to abandon their riches as they fled the beholder, and were left with nothing but low HP. They argued that a goof shouldn't have tripped them up at the final hurdle and that the chaos should in fact have made it easier for them to escape. was I being unfair on them, or did they just face the consequences of their own actions?

WunDarWun

To the honorable court and badass beefy boy bailif. I'll keep it brief: Months ago I allowed my players to defeat a high CR opponent by casting Hold Person and using Mage Hand to gently hold his nose and mouth under water until he drowned. The logic was that the 10lbs weight limit on Mage Hand was plenty enough downward force. Your honors. I cannot overstate this. They will not. Stop. Drowning people now. They literally ask me where the nearest body of water is at every occasion, refuse to go on quests without ample fluid at hand, carry bucket fulls with them, and insist on shouting "WOMBO COMBO" each time. I humbly ask the court for sanction to drown each of my PCs over the course of the next adventure.

Gabriella

To the great justices of the Crit and Jesus Dice… and Jake. My case has to do with a dm, balancing, and an time bs. We were level 17 and I had my kenku moon druid. We fought a homebrewed and multiclassed abomination of a character the dm made based off a PC that left the game after they were toxic and they had a tantrum. We were excited to fight this entity and have a little catharsis. We fought them and they were a hexblade, whispers bard, battlemaster multiclass so their charisma stat was super important for their fighting and casting. Halfway through the fight I cast feeblemind on him and he failed twice because he was given indomitable. He was barely able to do anything as the barbarian closed in on him and I wildshaped to clobber him. We beat him after that but then for reasons too complicated to explain we leapt back in time a ways and people’s backstories were changed by the dm. We then fought this former PC again and he starts by casting feeblemind on my druid with a save only a nat 20 could succeed. I failed. So I humbly ask you. Was this metagaming on the dm’s part? Or was it fair game. The rest of that fight I, the only healer, could only hit things in wildshape and we ended mid combat, we have not met up again in over 8 months.

Andrew Criteser

To Jake and the justices: I present an odd case. Not because I was not allowed to do something or had a drama with another player in the typical sense. But rather my DM compared us to you. We have a party of 4, at the time it was 2 warlocks, a Druid, and a barbarian. We were fighting a beefed up version of our barbarian when my character, one of the warlocks decided to cast thunderstep on himself and the barbarian, 90 feet above the badbarian. The dm allowed this and the extra fall damage onto the badbarian. Our Druid decided that she wanted to help by casting thorn whip into a net to give us some kind of damage negation. The “problem” is this, the dm allowed it and thought that was also rad as hell. He then compared her to Emily and myself to Caldwell. Which isn’t really a problem, however, I feel like Caldwell would be the net maker in this situation. I should also say it is usually an honor to be compared to any of the justices and Jake, but I feel as if the comparisons should be swapped. I humbly await your verdict, Whatever that may be.

Jack Francis West

Your Yass Slay Excellences and Quirked Up Bailiff, if it may please the court; I present the case of Crimes Against Goofmanity. In my first ever campaign, my best friend Jordan was playing a paladin named Godfre the Perfect. We were all newbies so the vibe was silly and chill. Then the DM introduced a new player, a veteran, who was playing a min/maxed Half-Giant storm barbarian. The tone of the game began to be completely de-goofified. In protest, Godfre killed a random prisoner (in order to liven things up). Godfre was then sent to jail, forcing Jordan to roll an elaborate series of new characters like: - 3 sisters, appearing consecutively after the former would die in a random landslide. - Sharee the Body Percussionist (rhythmic slapping underscored serious scenes). Jordan was kicked from the group that had originally supported his comedic tone and I soon followed. It became a huge source of trauma around DND for him. What the duck went wrong??? We lay our goofs before the court. ❤️

John Hanrahan

May it please the supreme justices and the honorable bailiff I was running a campaign and when we were reaching close to the end, level 19, they were going to fight an eldritch horror. I decided to give them boons with drawbacks. The spell casters would receive a power that let them draw magic beyond their abilities at a cost. The spell level squared plus the spell level hit dice (9th level spell would be 81+9d6 damage) one of my players then used it to do two meteor swarms. This made him take 115 points of damage. The player ended up dying from this as it brought down his HP. I explained that the monster saw him cast two massive spells and would target him. It ended up killing him but his sacrifice saved the realm. Was it wrong to give such a boon to my spell caster? May you show harsh judgement to me and my players. I await the verdict.

Maddie Bruns

Oh wise judges and the bailiff, I come to you with a case that has sat with me since the event took place. The campaign I was playing in had been taking place for over a year. The story had evolved from a knock-off fantasy high to an alternate universe version of my character starting a war. Upon first meeting the "evil me" she cast hold person on the entire party. Everyone failed the wisdom check except for my character. Not trying to be captured I cast misty step and teleported into the shadows. I had the eldrich invocations mask of many faces, one with shadows, and aspect of the moon. With this combo and a lack of an initiative roll I acted fast. I cast mask of many faces and disguised myself as a standard goon of my evil self. I then cast invisibility and was prepared to wait for as long as it took for me to be able to leave. The actual goons began throwing my party into a cave that transported them to an alternate universe. While this was happening I succeeded on my checks and was able to sneak out of the hideout and to safety. I thought I was successful and was home-free. Boy was I wrong. Shortly after I asked if I could run back to our allies and find someone who would be willing to help me save my friends. My DM informed me that the plan I had in place was unrealistic and so he would not allow it. No one would be willing to leave the safety of the school to help me fight an evil me. My argument was that I just lost my party to an alternate universe cave so the logistics of the real world versus our campaign shouldn't be a valid argument for why or why not I can do something. I was fighting for an attempt to try. To be able to fuck around and find out. He then told me that my character felt as though I couldn't do this on my own and that I had a greater debt to my party than to maybe get someone else to help. He then narratively decided that one of the professors at the school spiritually placed me with my party so I wasn't there physically, but I was still there. It quickly became apparent that my success meant nothing and the campaign was going to continue as planned. So I ask the court, was I wrong for honoring my successful wisdom roll and escaping the hideout or should I have just gone along with the story my DM was trying to tell. I am looking forward to your ruling and accept whatever the verdict may be. Thank you kindly

Dylan Jacob

To the honorable justices Murphy, Axford and Tanner. And whatever Jake wants to call himself. I present thee with the case of the lackluster DM. I'm currently playing a grung arcane trickster rogue in a campaign that has been running for over a year now but as a group we are having a lackluster time. Our dm seems almost afraid to put difficult fights or challenges in front of us with most of our encounters lasting two rounds at most. The rest of the party is comprised of a bard and cleric and we are all missing the stakes. We have so many spells, weapons and ideas stocked that when it actually comes to the encounter we don't get to use anything as one player usually finishes the bad guys off rather quickly. In order to alleviate the lackluster feelings we have leaned heavily into the role play and usually will play out a scene for ten minutes or more with the dm sitting in silence not engaging us or trying to push the story on. We don't know what to do anymore to make the campaign more fun. When we roleplay we seem to annoy the dm by not pushing forward with their story and then we are presented with encounters there's no stakes it just lasts a round so we all feel a level of combat blue balls. How do we help this situation we have tried to suggest the dm plays a new world or encounter book if they're bored with their world but they vehemently refused and trudged forward. I really enjoy playing my character and as the dm of another campaign this is one of the few times I get to play DnD so I really want to have something to look forward to!

Evan Spears

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

Daniel L Hodson

May it please the court, Justices Murph, Axford, Tanner i present the case of the bullshit booby trap. My party had just entered a cave for some reason i don’t quite remember this was a long time ago. We had recruited 2 hunters that were guarding the cave with a high persuasion check and they were supposed to help us, they did nothing. literally the first encounter in the cave was against some buffed up hobgoblin that almost wiped our whole party except for my 4th level Genie pact Warlock. After the encounter I see a chest on the other end of the room and i wanted to open it. i also wanted to heal my party but i had no healing as a warlock and we had no potions so i was gonna have to take them back to town. i figured i would open the chest now with my mage hand so as not to get killed by any traps. as soon as i touch it the room fills with poison gas and kills everyone in the room. Was this bullshit or justified?

Hero TJ Quinn

really hope this gets used, if only for the chaos of them discussing the Actual Cannibal masterpiece haha

Luke Shealy

Honorable justices and bearded bailiff, I bring you the case of the party face that cannot speak. I have recently started a campaign where I play a Halfling wizard with a focus on both charisma and intelligence. I have built my character to be as good as possible in social encounters and at 2nd level I am currently useless in combat. I purposefully only took utility spells and cantrips. The problem begins when we were about to talk to a slave trader who basically controlled the entire area we were in. Our goal was to set up a base of operations here before we move into the nearby nation to stop a war. So making a good impression was important to avoid being arrested. Naturally I stepped forward to do my job. When I introduced myself I did not use my character name so I could hide my identity. And one of my party members immediately said "that isn't your name." After a moment of stunned silence the NPC we were talking to asked what my real name was and before I could think of a new one the same guy said my real name. Then the party proceeded to completely undercut whatever I said and talk for me. I was unable to do the thing I built my character to do and had made it clear that was my goal. Am I being too controlling wanting to be the party face? Or was I rightfully upset for my party to not cooperate with me?

James Brannan

May it please the court, and also that guy from Jake and Amir. I present to you the case of the Dirty, Greasy Defeat I was once playing in a campaign as a level 3 Dragonborn wizard named 'Rachni Joe, who was named so due to his fascination with spiders. I entered a local tournament to fund my scientific expedition into the Underdark. My party and DM both mocked me due to the fact that wizards are notoriously fragile, so I went in with a chip on my shoulder. I went against a fighter NPC, so I wanted to cast the Grease spell underneath him to try to slip him up. My DM, to my surprise, said that the spell had failed because we were fighting in an arena with a dirt floor, so the grease would just absorb into the dirt. I argued that since it was magic grease it would still be able to work on the ground, otherwise the spell would be useless anywhere but in cities or dungeons. He stuck to his decision, I was eliminated in the first round, and I was unable to fund my expedition. Was he wrong to make my spell useless, or am I just being a greasy, salty boy. I humbly await your ruling.

Horny advocate for Welly's carnal audiobook

Forgive me Dice Fathers and Emily Superior, for I have sinned. I recently started a D&D group to make friends in a new neighbourhood and to learn the game, but after a few sessions the GM power went to my head. I had hidden a Gelatinous Blob in a big pantry and when the party opened the door, I ruled an opposed strength check to slam the door closed as it tried to lurch out... My Blob rolled a Nat1, but in a fit of annoyance and eagerness to fight with jelly, I ruled that surprise gave it advantage and rolled again... I rolled a second Nat1... at that moment I saw Dice Christ's hand on my polyhedron and realised I had betrayed the big DC by re-rolling. How can I avoid lapses in faith like this, and remain true to the Dice Mother?

Maxwell Keiles

May it please the honorable balif and the bourgeois justices he severs. I bring to you the case of the soon to be willing creature. My party was in what was essentially a forced failure fight with the BBEG. While he himself was takable for our party, he had an ace up his sleeve. For plot reasons, he had set up a scenario where a building would blow up with all of us inside but would not hurt him. Our Dm told us this would be an insta kill but also provided us with a teleportation scroll. Channeling my inner Emily, I said we should force him to teleport with us and finish the fight. While the wording said it must be a willing creature, I wanted to cast suggestion and make him willing. Our dm rules that because he would be mind controlled, he would not be a willing creature. Justices, did my dm make the right call to preserve his campaign, or was I robbed of a clever way to nip this unknowable evil in the bud. I aware your humble ruling.

Tori

Hey there judges, Picture, if you will: It's the penultimate arc of a five-year campaign. It's my character's backstory arc - where we visit his home country and maybe resolve some of his plot threads. I had been dropping hints in character about an antagonistic character who was central to his backstory and motivation, AND discussed it with the DM privately to hash some things out. In my (and my character's) mind, this antagonist would be a formidable fight with a lot of emotional catharsis. HOWEVER, that's not what happened. Instead, another member of my party used a homebrew spell he'd workshopped with the DM to fire an enormous laser, the DM decided this antagonist was especially weak to that spell, and long story short the NPC was literally melted in under one round of combat. Melted into goo. The same player then instantly teleported us all back home to where the 'main' plot occurred. I tried to act normal about it because the player and the DM seemed really pleased by how things had gone, but at least two other players contacted me in private to ask if I was okay. I wound up rerolling a character for the last arc because I was now embarrassed to ever have been invested in my first one and couldn't play him anymore. My question is this: Was I overreacting? Is a win a win, regardless of who melts whose evil dad? And if I'm in the right, who's most in the wrong: the other player for inventing and using that spell, or the DM for allowing it?

Dave 3D Art

For the record we aren't friends or anything, so no real loss.

David V

Hello fair justices and vascular bailiff! I have an update for you, on the case of the power word kill happy DM. So first, to clear things up, I did not sleep with my DM, nor did we date, and in fact he and I are friends outside of the game. However, as a DM, he is ridiculously strategically minded, and all his characters and NPCs inherit this trait. His repeated murdering of my character genuinely was not borne of any ill-will (as far as I’m aware), it was truly just that I was the highest damage dealer, and since he COULD kill me right away by giving all his villains PWK, he did. Unfortunately, I did not get the chance to employ Emily’s greater invisibility strategy, but I can tell you how it would’ve gone down, knowing my DM. They would have 100% had either true sight, or some ring that allows them to see invisible things, or probably some other manner of bullshit like that, and I would have died just the same. I do appreciate the suggestion though. However, luckily the matter resolved itself in a different way. After the session in which the infamous double PWK occurred, my partner, who is also a PC in the same campaign, screamed at our DM in a rage for about 15 minutes about why what he did was total bullshit. Her argument seemed to resonate more than my previous attempts at dissuading him from murdering me every session, and so at the start of the next session he had a god appear to my character, and grant me a boon that made me immune to PWK. Felt like he could’ve just stopped using the spell as much instead, but I’m not complaining. So, all in all, everything ended up pretty good. Thanks for hearing my case, and it was in fact cathartic to hear that at least you guys got some amusement from my pain. Have a great day and may Dice Christ favor you, David

BenMightSmite

To the honorable justices axford Murphy and tanner as well as the lovely bailif. My party was dealing with a serial killer who was hunting arcane magic users, a very well timed detect object on the poison he left behind allowed them to see he was downstairs and even saw him out the window so some of them stayed behind to protect a victim while the druid ranger and pal-lock and there balnor like knight gave chase after cornering him he throws down a poisonus gas pellet to lend some aid as an assassin isn't gonna win a one on 4 fight but here's the issue its dc 17 or take 8d4 poison damage and have disadvantage on your next attack or check and if you fail by 5 or more you are stunned. With this gas and some bad roles he was barely able to escape they all failed there checks and got stunned and almost knocked them out. After the game they all insisted the gas was to much and broken even they it was a 4 on 1 fight against someone who has less than 100 health fight 4 level 8 pcs and imagine how easy it would have been if they didn't split up. I implore you justices was this gas broken or did they not prey to dice Christ enough.

Benwahah

May it please the great justices and the okay baliff. Court case: Who truly owns the house the vampires or the halfling bard We are stealthing inside a giant mansion. As we stumble upon the ownership of said mansion. We noticed the name of the original owner was removed and the vampire lord. Put their name on. To become the new owners. So i decided to erase their name and put my name. And as my character recently studied up on vampires for weaknesses. He knew they needed to be welcomed in or to stay inside. So as i became. The new owner i took away the permission to be inside. The dm allowed it. Tho. It ended the session early. As it screwed up the entire plan of the session. I respect that he stayed true to the mechanic he placed. But i still feel the guilt. Were my actions justified. Or is the guilt truly deserved.

Zitronay

May it appease the Court and a-please the bailiff: I joined my friends’ 3.5 campaign just after the rest of the group reached level 3, and I worked directly with my DM to create a traveling bard to help the party. To introduce my character in the next session, the DM asked where my PC was coming from. I said I had just come from a concert hall and they said there were no concert halls to come from. I asked if they meant not in this city and they said “there are no concert halls in this world - there wouldn’t be any in this time period.” Since we were playing a high fantasy campaign with full caster and half caster classes in the party, I ask the Court as I asked my DM: if people figure out how to conjure fire from their fingertips, why can they not figure out how to put 30 chairs in a room for performances? Was I wrong to want my bard to play at a designated music venue? I accept whatever judgement or punishment the Court sees fit. Thank you, Jeffery 🙏

Adam Baker

Dearest Supreme Crit and the one who serves below! I bring before you the case of the teleporting daggers. I am DMing my first full campaign and wanted to add some unique stuff to a module. In the first session our party met a group of travelers that ended up being their recurring rivals (Pokemon Team Rocket style). To make the rival encounters difficult and occur multiple times instead of the villains just being killed I wanted the party to experience the growth of some villains that they were once friends with I gave them magical daggers that as a reaction they could stab themselves and be teleported to a secret location that was nearby. Obviously, this ended in some frustration; as the first time one of the rivals was hit away from death they stabbed themselves and poof, they were gone. This started a 20 min argument in how this was possible in the DnD rules. The same argument happened the second time they were used and on the third encounter I just let the party kill the rivals to avoid the arguments. I had completely made up the dagger and it's abilities but had thought being a DM let me sorta make stuff up like this. I am at a loss as to what I should have done here. Do rivals just not work in DnD? Were the daggers too powerful? Or were my players justified in being mad when I stole a kill from them. I accept any punishment as long as it involves birds.

Kyle Chavanu

May it please the court, the illustrious justices and the stalwart bailiff. I bring before you the case of, "The Magic Missile and the Death Saves." Roughly two years ago I, the DM, was finishing up a two year long campaign with 5 of my friends. We were drawing close to the end of things and they were doing battle against a powerful mage who was the lieutenant of the big bad guy. One of the players went unconscious, and had been a big pain for this mage during the fight. They had failed one death save and I had the mage use his next turn to cast magic missile on the downed player, sending all three missles at the downed character. I ruled at the time that 3 missiles is in fact 3 seperate hits and thus they would fail all their  remaining death saves. However all the players tried to argue that one spell shouldn't have been able to make the player lose all their death saves. To this day my players still give me a hard time about this whenever magic missile is brought up. So, should I have ruled differently or are my players just mad that I killed one of them off? I await your benevolent judgement.

Ellie

To the Charming Justices and the Regular-Ass Baliff, I implore you to hear my case of the goat in the woods. In the campaign I'm in, we have been railroaded a lot recently to a town we don't want to be in but we are getting ready to leave. Before we go, myself and two of my other party members go to get supplies. We met a shopkeeper with a ridiculous voice and as a joke our wizard refused to do business with them. This clearly upset the DM who said that there were no other shops, so we decided to go hunting in the woods instead. While there our DM describes a rustle in the bushes and asks us to roll a perception check. Our wizard rolled a natural 20 and our DM said it was a strange goat. However, after the wizard threw a fire bolt at it, our DM reveals that is was actually a satyr. The wizard immediately was perplexed, our DM said he did the Nat 20 justice by saying it was "weird" and then guilt tripped us out of robbing him by having a family picture in his bag. Later the DM made a meme saying that he had been trying to introduce a fun NPC satyr but to me and my boyfriend it feels as though he was just upset we didn't do what he wanted. I await your ruling and will accept the punishment as necessary.

Thomas Donovan

To the Honourable Justice's Tanner, Murphy and Axford, and to the snivelling bailiff Jake, I present the case of the over enthousiastic crab. I've been running a heavily modified game of dragon of icespire peak, and while running it, I played an animated crab who was supposed to be a quest giver. When my party approached the crab, I was a little overzealous in my voice acting, and their immediate response was to kill, cook and eat my welcoming giant crab (who was described as wearing a vest and spectacles) Obviously I didn't give them the quest after that, and they missed out on obtaining a series of magic items that have left them in a sticky situation now, facing an adult white dragon with no magical weapons or cold resistances, they were pissed that I "deprived" them of their rewards, but I maintain that if they keep killing and eating friendly NPCs, they shouldn't get rewarded for it, was I right to punish my players cannibalistic urges, or should I have rewarded their murderhobo antics? I throw myself on the mercy of the court, and pray that dice christ may absolve me of my sins, if they do exist.

Matthew Tyler Helm

ESTEEMED BAILIFF AND NEGLECTFUL JUSTICES I BEG OF THEE HEAR MY PLEA I DECLARE A MISTRIAL Mine was the case in which I demanded my player sing Lick it Up and dance like a minstrel for the party--THIS IS A FARCE Due to my deepest respect for the lowly bailiff, I heeded his request for only the most succinct re-telling of my story. In doing so I left out some supportive details in the name of brevity. Twas my second session EVER as a DM. My party begged me to run a campaign for us. I have, at times, insurmountable social anxiety and relented on the condition that we use No Pain and Suffering Rules and The Rule of Cool. Fast forward to the bar scene--I told them they would almost SURELY die upon entering in an attempt to dissuade them from doing so because I am the greenest of DMs. I told him to roll with disadvantage, he asked me for ADVANTAGE, not a flat roll without disadvantage, but ADvantage. I allowed the team to give him the help action despite their being outside the building, but when he asked me for ADVANTAGE, I told him the only way I could let him roll with advantage is if he had a point of inspiration, which he could earn via exceptional roleplay, i.e. singing in this instance. He did NOT have to sing, he KNOWINGLY put his character in danger, and KNOWINGLY put his very very green DM in quite the pickle. I have not cleaned the foam pit, and would kindly request the player be made to do so BUT, if after hearing my re-trial you decide I am still in the wrong, I will do so and I will sing lick it up the whole time. I await your judgement.

Joseph Hewison

To cutie Jake and our buff chad justices, I present to you my case: In a campaign I used to DM for, one of my characters was a changeling. They were in an abandoned town discovering its mysteries when they discovered a crashed mind flayer ship deep in a crater centrally in the town. After discovering the head of a mindflayer in a nearby temple, the changeling decided they would shapeshift into what their character THOUGHT a mindflayer MIGHT look like. They then proceeded to enter the mindflayer ship and encounter several mindflayers in front of them. They then proceeded deeper into the ship, ignoring the mindflayers staring and visibly confused. The player was then consequently killed as they were surrounded by 6 mindflayers, and were far from the exit. I used a power word kill on them to show the players how dangerous and brutal they were, and thought this was okay because the changeling was going to be killed anyway. The person playing the changeling was pissed and confused as to why this happened and thinks I should have let them do what they wanted in the ship. I’ve always felt bad about killing them off like that, but should I? I await your judgement.

Clever Innuendo

If it pleases the majestic judges and the masochistic bailiff, I present the case of the Warlock Levels Gamble. My character had been captured by the bad guys, and the rest of the team were planning on how to get me out. For the past few months, our Rogue had been taking some Warlock levels, so he asked his Patron to help them out. She agreed, but at the cost that the whole group then does a specific errand for her. If he failed or refused to return the favor after saving my character, however, she would forever pull her support. Not as in "He's just a Rogue again", but that he'd become a level 9 character in our level 12 game. What complicates things is that the errand she asked us to do was an action two other party members, including my character, would be very upset about doing. We politely voiced our concerns that we felt obligated to take the mission, however, because we know the Meta-consequences for our other player. The DM insists 'we'd know he'd be losing powers, it's not Meta', but we feel there's a huge difference between losing your multiclass and simply being many stages of power behind now. Besides, we play Milestone, and I don't even know what characters being different levels even means in that situation. We ended up finding ways for our characters to justify the choices and did the mission, and the drama of the team possibly turning on each other so late in the game ended up being fun, but were we right to feel we were strong-armed into this situation? I await your decision.

ChefJustinLane

DM Court Cases May it please the court--I present the case of Stolen Salvation; Player v. 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. 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 the ruling stood. I still feel robbed especially since it was such a crucial moment. I survived, but there were severe consequences that still feel unjust. My party and I await your endless wisdom. Signed, Concerned Reborn Bard (AKA Adam Elias "Riverboat" Reid)

azelfy

To the honourable Justices Axford, Caldwell and Murphy, and the ever so dashing Bailiff Hurwitz, May it please the court: I was the DM for a game once, and in one of the sessions the players were escaping through secret tunnels to get away from royal guards. I had a map layout of the room they were all in, and was describing the layout. One of the players asked to inspect a hallway/room and I asked for an investigation check, to which she rolled a natural 20. The only issue was, this hallway was empty. I told the player that there was nothing in the hallway and she was left upset by this as she got a critical success. I told her that just because it was a crit success doesn’t mean that empty rooms/hallways suddenly have a purpose, but I don’t feel like I handled this well at all. I patiently and eagerly await judgement

Tyler L

Dear Honorable and beloved Crit Justices and the psychically vulnerable bailiff Jake, I come to you with a player on player crime. In my campaign we had a Javelin of Lightning that we had for most of our 2+ year campaign. Our rogue, who felt like they no longer needed a ranged attack after getting a wand that allowed her to use Eldritch Blast, decided to give the Javelin of Lightning to our Paladin. In the same session that the Item transfer happened, LESS THAN A HOUR LATER, we had a underwater fight with a morkoth. Our Paladin, unable to get close to the creature and against the party's advice, decided to throw the Javelin of Lightning at it. We argued that if he missed it would likely be lost forever in the ocean and if he hit the javelin would be stuck in the creature and it could swim away and we would lose the Javelin. He rolled a natural one on his attack and we lost our very first magic item to the void of the ocean below. After getting back to town he tried to find a replacement but was only able to find a Knock off, Imposter, magical spear. It cost him most of his gold to buy this weapon. This is where the crime comes in: He told the rogue to split the cost with him on the new weapon. His argument was that it would help out the two non-ranged players and the party in the long run and didn’t see an issue in splitting the costs. The rogue, feeling bad about the Javelin, agreed to split the cost. My question to the Justices, was it wrong for the paladin to split the cost after losing a beloved item that we had most of our campaign or should he have sucked it up and paid in full for his poor choices? PS: In remembrance of the hoglidays the Javelin was also used by the rogue in a one shot we played to kill Santa. THE DM OF THE ONE SHOT WAS THE PALADIN.

PineappleLiar

To the beloved despot justices and the lowly baliff they control, I present the case of the Maze Getaway. Our party was fighting a very high level encounter against a Great Wyrm; a dragon whose power was being greatly bolstered by it’s horde. The creature was basically untouchable to the rest of the party, so I knew on my turn I needed to do something about the gold powering it up. As such, on my round I decided to use my bonus action with a homebrew magic item to blow up a sizeable portion of the dragon’s gold, weakening it significantly. The important bit comes after, when I used my main action to cast Maze on myself to avoid the dragon’s obvious rage at me destroying it’s horde. It was the only thing I could think of that would 100% guarantee that this dragon would not find and kill me on my next turn, as overkill as it seems (I already wasn’t very stealthy, and the likelihood of some kind of Super-Truesight fuckery was high). The issue comes on my next round, when I decide to stop concentration on Maze to reenter the fight. The DM argued that my character would have no information on the current state of the fight, and therefore shouldn’t reasonably know that they should return this round. I argued that the last thing my character saw before the Maze was a gigantic dragon barreling angrily towards them and their friends, so that should be enough context to warrant returning as soon as possible. We eventually compromised by saying it would work during that particular combat, but any future attempts at Maze shenanigans would be off the table. So, who was in the right? I leave my fate to the whims of the judges.

Adam Golden

A confession to dice Christ. I was dm a session during lockdown where the party had gotten stuck on an archipelago that the monsters/bad guys based on the werewolves and vampires from the dressing files. The party was fighting a loup garu that could only be hurt by silver weapons. My brothers otter had a silver sword and his wife silver arrows. My wife was playing a monk and took the sword from my brothers druid. At which point the loup garuo let out a frightful roar which scared the monk. I couldn't rember the exact rules for being frightened and didn't want to pause to look them up. So I just had my wife roll a new save every turn and keep running if she failed. She ran for another 6 rounds at full monk speed. On the end no one died and my players were all laughing and joking but I still feel bad for having it be a mich harder fight then intended and messing up the rules. I lay myself in at the mercy of dice christ.

Rylei

Forgive me Dice Christ for I have sinned. I ran a high level one shot for my friends that ended with the party fighting a red dragon in a volcano. The dragon had 3 mages as his minions that the party quickly dispatched. My best friend who DMs our main campaign quickly trapped the dragon in a wall of force sphere within 5 minutes of the battle. I had already revealed that a corgi that had been following the party was actually a silver dragon that would help in the final battle. I immediately panicked as the battle with the big bad would end quickly in an anticlimax. During a break, to make the battle more difficult, I quickly inserted an archmage into the roll20 game who could specifically cast disintegrate on the wall of force that had trapped the dragon. The party still won in the end but I feel insanely guilty about it.

Vivi

To the beloved Crit Justices, Murph, Axford, and Tanner, and the tolerable Bailiff Jake So I am a first time DM. I'm running a Fallout 4 inspired fantasy campaign for my partner and a friend. Bother characters have some form of amnesia. The one character, a Human Synth(flavoured as a warforged) is a fighter and technomancey wizard. I've homebrewed a thing where every long rest they do an Intelligence Check with a DC of 11 + the spell level and they get a spell at said level. My player rolled a Nat20 so through a random generator they got the 9th level Gate spell.(I should also mention they are part of level 8 Fighter/Wizard and a level 7 rouge. Later during an encounter with a larger ghouls they had wanted to use it to get behind the ghoul. I had said the spell doesn't work like that but with a good enough Arcana check they could use it and something would happen. They rolled poorly and so the spell fizzled. They seemed a little disappointed so I had clarified they still have access to the spell and if a situation occurs where they want to use it they didn't expend that slot. The made it out of the encounter fairly easy as well. Did I do the right thing stopping the spell or did I ruin my players fun moment? I humbly await myself judgement.

Jack Francis West

PS. The veterans character also punched my character in the face… I was playing a 19 year old disgraced beauty pageant queen so uhhh that was weird! 😳 But I’ll never forget Jordan and I pissing ourselves laughing and rhythmically slapping our bodies while the other side of the table stared on in grim disapproval.

Sahara

Dice christ confession: I DM a game in my grandma's nursing home and they were fighting Auril the Frostmaiden in the climax of the Rime of the Frostmaiden module. 4 out of 5 of the party were down, with my grandma's warlock on 5 hp but Auril was in her final form and low on hp as well. My grandma missed her first attack so she needed to crit on her second and, in the excitement, she threw her d20 across the room by accident while rolling for her second attack, so I asked her if she'd like to reroll but she insisted on taking the floor roll. I went over to get it and, to my horror, she had rolled a 1. In that moment, I strayed from dice christ and lied. I sadly told her that it was a only a 19 and she shouted that that was a crit because of her hexblades curse and the table erupted as much as a group of very old ladies can. I don't actually feel bad but I have been rolling like shit in my other games ever since so... I'm, like, sorry or whatever. Please let me roll above a 10.

Walls

To the most honorable and wise supreme crit justices Axford, Tanner and Murphy, and also to whoever else might be in the room I present the case of Fighter V Wizard. In a campaign that ended shortly after these events, I was playing a Warforged Samurai Fighter who was the primary tank of the party of level threes. During a side quest to investigate who was eating the bodies of the condemned criminals in the town we were on, our trail led us to the mayor’s house. After the usual shenanigans that come with trying to get a meeting with someone of importance we made our way to his office. When confronted about this the Lizardfolk mayor, who was also a former barbarian, they acknowledged it as if nothing was wrong. After some moral accusations by our relatively immoral necromancer the Mayor gave us one last warning before a fight was going to break out. The DM had told us that the Mayor was higher level than us and after some quick mental math I realized he could almost certainly one shot at least one if not two of us every turn. Things took a turn for the worst and we all rolled initiative. On my turn I attempted to grapple the wizard to drag them out of the room in hopes of ending combat. They used their inspiration to avoid my grapple and the fight began. It would’ve been a TPK if our DM was not actively preventing that from happening, yet I still find myself awake at night questioning my actions. Was I wrong to force another player to use inspiration in hopes of avoiding what would surely be lethal combat?

Easton Moore

May it please the court, the Honorable Crit Justices and our lovable yet senseless bailiff. I would like to bring to the court the case of “Cure Wounds v The Dying NPC.” I am in a campaign with some work friends set in an Arcane style world but when technology is still very new. On this adventure we’ve come across many friend and foe who have augmented bodies. An informant of ours and friend of one of my companions had an augmentation and at one point during an altercation we just missed backfired and had to rip it out. He successfully does so and our DM said he was dying and we could ask a question or two before he died. I quickly told my DM I wanted to use Cure Wounds to heal his arm and save my companions friend (I had just meet him earlier that day). My DM stated that my cure wounds would keep him alive a little longer so we could ask whatever questions we wanted but was going to die shortly after. I protested and said since he wasn’t dead yet my cure wounds give him “HP” and he should survive. My DM told me cure wounds doesn’t just magically cure him of dying. He still has this huge open wound and blood loss. I protested one last time that im literally casting a spell so it is magic. He said since it was an NPC it doesn’t work like that and I rested my case because I’ve DM’d before and didn’t want to keep the fight up. We continued and had fun. Was I in the wrong to think my cure wounds should be able to save NPC’s from death, or did my DM steal my magical abilities to heal.

kieren casey

To the great and wise Murphy, Axeford and Tanner, and the deplorable bailiff Jake, This happened a few months ago and still haunts me to this day. I have been running a homebrew game for a while now and thought it would be time to add an interesting encounter. Instead of this encounter being about a battle I thought this encounter can be a sales pitch to be part of some sort of pyramid scheme. I had the party throw wisdom saving throws, role play some questions and even had the None-cromancer (basically a necromancer who uses essential oils) use legendary actions. However in this encounter instead of the party losing HP they would lose gold. 5 of my 6 players had a blast trying to navigate around while minimalising their losses. But one of my players would constantly say "this is not what my character would do" when it came to their turn and potentially handing over their gold. This player decided to roll the saving throws anyway and still failed. Draining their gold gradually away from them. This encounter lead to a fight and the aforementioned player left the group and took their partner with them. Losing 2 players over what I thought was a fun encounter. Was I wrong to introduce a dynamic where the players would hand over their gold for failing saving throws. I await your judgement.

Ben Wygant

Esteemed Judges of the Court and most Esteemed Baliff Jake, I present to you the case of The Bullied NPC I am running Curse of Strahd for my party and along they’re travels they added a group NPC who has become a punching bag for the group. Most of the razzing is done in jest and was mostly passive aggressive at best however in our most recent session the group turned simple razzing into downright cruelty. They were going through a dungeon and the NPC in question pointed out a door the group failed to see on their perception checks. One party member thought the NPC pointed out the door “in a smug tone” and preceded to slap him. The others joined in on the “fun”, which included a lewd minor illusion depicting the NPCs mother. I decided the NPC had enough and announced that he was leaving the group and they asked for a persuasion check to have him stay. I said no, as the NPC had had enough and was done with their bullying. So my question to the judges is this; was I wrong to not let them roll the persuasion check? In my opinion enough was done to this poor NPC that nothing would change his mind. I humbly await your judgement.

MacMillan Leslie

Honorable justices and also Jake, I come to you with the case of the very serious bad guy. I was playing in my friends campaign set in a dark fantasy world. It was pretty clear we were about to fight the big bad evil guy this session as we were in some sort of spooky temple thing. Finally they revealed themselves and...nobody in the party had no idea who they were. The DM reminded us we had seen a painting of them in a spooky manor about 6 months ago real time but none of us remembered. What proceeded were a lot of "I don't even know who you are" jokes and general mockery of the bad guy from our characters. At this my DM got flustered and combat began. At the end of the session he seemed really angry and said "That felt really awful. She was a really serious bad guy and it felt really bad that you guys made fun of her". I felt kinda bad that I had upset him and so I tried to apologize but he just said "Well you guys had fun at least" and logged off of the video call. So I ask. Was it wrong for us to make fun of the villain for being obscure? Can't our characters have fun ripping on an evil character? Or should have we taken the bad guy my DM had worked hard on more seriously? I humbly await your judgement.

SoupLightning

May it please the court and thoroughly satisfy Baliff Jake so much so that he doesn't think about his divorce with Jill, I am taking pebblepot DM Brian Murphy to court!  On episode 28 of Eldermourne. Jake rolled a nat 20 in order to find his old jean jacket and had in mind his own ideas of the jean jacket, but instead of honoring the nat 20 and giving the player his dream jacket he gave him a sad ill fitting jean jacket. I think Jake was slighted by Murph and should have recieved the jean jacket he desired and not a bizarre version of Murph's creation. Murph awaits your just and sensible sentencing judges.

Seth C

To the honorable justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy as well as the underrated bailiff. My friend decided to take up DMing and wanted to run Dragonheist. We just started and are in the tavern The Yawning Portal. We get into a bar fight trying to defend the honor of a half-orc we have never met. The DM told us if we pulled out our weapons the ruffians would pull out theirs. I play a level 1 roque with a -2 to strength so unarmed strikes weren’t an option. So I asked him if I could use DEX instead of strength since I only use finesse weapons. He told me no since I am not a monk. I didn’t want to argue with him. I normally DM so I thought it would cause him to feel discouraged or diminished by his decision. He ended up letting me use my sheathed rapier (Sirgio). I one shotted every enemy I attacked making it a seemingly uninteresting encounter. Should I have insisted he let me use DEX and risk him being embarrassed or should I continue to let him make his own choices? I await and embrace any punishment that comes my way.

Jake de Medeiros

May it please the court My DM is running our party through a volcanic high mountain plateau inhabited by dinosaurs. Our party is one human and two halflings. Our Ranger, not a beast master ranger mind you, made a deal with the DM a few sessions ago that with sufficient deer meat in her inventory she could make animal handling checks to tame a dinosaur as a temporary companion. We thought it would be fun to bend the rules a bit to enjoy the prehistoric setting. This deal quickly became a whomping of me, the human fighter, when she used her dear meat to befriend a pterodactyl, a creature large enough to carry the two halfling PC’s into the air during combat, leaving me alone on the ground. The other halfling is a paladin with higher AC than me. The halflings claim they’re giving me air support, but I’m still taking all the hits from the various Tyrannosaurs and Raptors we fight. My DM has been all too happy to say that enemies would target the only person on the ground, me, and combats have been absolutely brutal for my PC. Am I getting screwed over here? I’m worried my PC isn’t long for this world. Thanks.

Gigagodslap

Not quite there but I must submit a dice Christ confessional of sorts. May it please the honorable justices and beautiful and handsome bailiff I was at your show in Dallas, drove only 5 hours to get to it so not as far as some but definitely a good distance. Extremely excited for the show we got downtown early enough to go eat some Delicious food and have a few drinks before we actually got to the venue. Here's where I goofed. In line for the merch table I saw there was a bar conveniently located about 4 feet from the actual line. So in the spirit of having a good time I decided what's another drink before we start. Little did I know I accidentally ordered a double. Bringing my total margarita intake to a solid 5. Got the merch at the table and made our way to our seats. And then about halfway through I started tunnel visioning and realized I had drank TOO MUCH. And low and behold I do not remember the last 1/2 of the show. I ask you as a humble peon even more lowly than Baliff Jake for forgiveness for ruining the sanctity of live show mass.

Benjamin Goolsby

To the honorable justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner I humbly present the case of the equipped sword. Our party had to fight a gelatinous cube in a forest. At one point, a party member was absorbed into the cube and we were scrambling to free them. I was playing a bard and wanted to cast heat metal on the sword on the party member’s belt. The DM ruled that because the sword was equipped to the person, the player would also take damage from the heat metal spell. I argued that the sword was not physically touching the character, but the DM said that for the sake of mechanics, an ‘equipped’ weapon is in physical contact with a character. Do you agree or disagree with this ruling? I eagerly await the court’s opinion.

Kyle Mabee

May it please the honorable justices axford, tanner, and Murphy. I present to you the case of the insta kill. My friends and I were playing a campaign which we traveled through a magical door to a different dimension each session in search of treasure, kinda like roulette Narnia. I’m playing an artificer and another player is a paladin. We fight our way through this world and pick up some treasure along the way. We eventually get to a field with a large glowing green rock with a ton of large bee creatures around it. My character wants the rock and needs the rock, so he attempts to stealth to the rock. I pass a few stealth checks and am able to grab the rock but on my way back to the group I roll poorly and end up being seen. This encounter lasts about 2 minutes of these Bee creatures chasing us to the forest and surrounding as. As we’re surrounded a bolt of lightning comes from the sky and where it strikes stands the god which the paladin worships. The paladin pleads for his god to save us. The god then tells us he wants the rock. But the thing is I want the rock, so I tell this to the god. The DM then tells me the god stomps on me and I am dead. No roll to save or anything. Just insta death. The paladin thanks his god for ridding the world of a non believer and everyone goes on there merry way. This was my favorite character I’ve ever made and it was also the first session. Keep in mind this whole thing was in front of my girl friend. Was I wrong to refuse the god? Was I wrongly killed with no way of getting out. The Dm told me afterwards there was no way of us winning the bee encounter and Thai was the only way to let some characters live.

Eric Nesser

To the honorable justices and the true power behind the throne bailiff Jake. I play a redemption paladin in a party of murder hobos. I often try to spare enemies if I think they have a shot at redemption much to the party's chagrin but the DM loves it for storys sake. Fast forward to a fight vs one of the DMs BBEG and we had this drow priestess on the ropes. She throws down her weapons and offers to surrender but follows that up by saying she will only do so if we allow her to kill the NPC we have been protecting the whole campaign as he is the key to the realms salvation. I scoff and say no way and then she adds that if we don't let her live she will be unable to call off the hit squad she sent to kill my characters pregnant wife. I proceeded to smite her several times killing her. Afterwards my DM approached me a bit upset saying I didn't really play my character by not taking her surrender to which I pointed out that stipulating that she gets to kill someone as a freebie dooming our realm isn't an option even for a redemption paladin. Also threatening my wife and child wasn't the smartest way to get my compliance, only anger him. The DM then said he was considering changing my alignment from lawful good to neutral good since he thought my actions weren't necessarily in line with my paladins tenants. We discussed it for a VERY long time and he final dropped it but was I wrong? Should I have done something different to follow my redemption ideals better? Or was killing her out of anger for her threats a worthy offense to prompt an alignment change. I accept whatever fate Jake er.... I mean the justices hand down.

Nathan J. Marcisz

To the esteemed Crit Justices and also Jake, I present the case of the rat-juicing party. In a recent session, I, the DM, had set-up what I thought was a fitting conclusion for my party's dungeon delve. For eight sessions, they had been hunting in the Underdark for a shadow demon that they were sworn to slay. When the party reached the door to the shadow demon's lair, I described an ancient lock with runes on it stating that the door could only be unlocked by way of a blood sacrifice. My intention was for the party to shed their own blood, which would cut down on their HP and make the fight that much more dire. I made sure to put no enemies close to the lock, so the party wouldn't be tempted to use their blood instead. However, the party wizard produced his hat of vermin, a joke magic item I had given him 20 sessions prior, and proceeded to summon 3 rats which he promptly caught and juiced onto the lock. He then looked at me expectantly as the rest of the party cheered. I allowed this to open the lock, fearing my players' wrath, but I found that the party then whomped the final encounter in an easy and anticlimactic fight. Was I wrong to let the wizard circumvent the lock with his rat gushers? I humbly await your verdict.

Arnor

Greetings mighty justices of court and the dispassionate bailiff Jake I present the case of Villager's vs charmed Bandit. May it please the court! My players had just rescued all of the villagers from a goblin cave and went to return them to their homes. When attempting to have the drawbridge to the village lowered a group of bandits had taken over and refused to open saying they were not welcome to their new lands. The Druid of the party cast charm person on the leader of the bandits and got him to lower the bridge so that the villagers could enter their homes. However instead of dealing with the bandits my players decided they had finished the job and left as the villagers had returned. I told the players that charm person would eventually wear off and who knows what the bandit's would do at that point. They ignored it and went off their way to new lands. Was it wrong of my players to just leave the villagers to die while they jump in joy in search of new quests? I humbly await your judgement

Ciara Connor

To the Noble and Honourable justices and the ever loyal bailiff. May it please the court. I write to you of a profound betrayal. My partner has recently taken over my role as DM and is several sessions into her first long term campaign for our usual group of friends. I passed over the reins of this group with complete confidence in her abilities. When creating our characters I asked if I could have the variant noble feature of a retainer, this was granted and so Qiric was born. Qiric was my characters servant in name and only real friend in practice. Her backstory was that almost every member of her family had betrayed her at some point, and so Qiric became her only confidant and the only person she trusted. My character has a severe aversion to touch due to her family life, and Qiric is the only one she permits near her. At the start of the campaign all of our PCs were killed and transported to Hell, Qiric was “also killed.” Apparently my darling partner did not kill him, she replaced him with a god of trickery named Cyric. Her only real defence to her choice is “it was funny your honour”. The reveal of this cruel trick was last session, I grant her that it was indeed funny. I argue that this was a cruel thing to do to my character as she has let this strange god brush her hair etc while believing him to be her friend. My partner argues that the name rhymed and she simply had to. I leave the judgment in your capable hands. Look forward to seeing you all at the live show next month. Ciara

Anthony DiClementi

May it please the court, the honorable justices, and the passable bailiff, I come to you not with a case, but a call for aid. In one of our current campaigns, we live in a world that is struggling with a Groundhog Day problem. We keep repeating the same day and only our party retains our memories each time we loop back to the beginning of the day. This is great because we have all died numerous times and know that as long as the baby of prophecy we are trying to protect dies, we will all be revived and begin the day anew (with each repeat of the same day each of us becoming more and more mentally unstable). My problem lies in the fact that I am a low level necromancer elf. We head to the main city where we are supposed to be preparing for the demon raids that plague the land, where one of our antagonist waits in the shadows. A high level dark elf who hates all other elves. Due to his high level and me being a low level elf wizard, my clock ticks a bit faster than the rest of our parties. As soon as I enter the city where our quests await, my clock begins and I know I have less than half a day before the dark elf finds me and kills me in one hit. It has been fun to try and outsmart him, but in the end I typically die within 30-50 minutes of our 3 hour sessions. Each session typically only covers one day so it is almost a guarantee that I am out for the rest of the session and just scribing for the rest of the players so we don’t miss any important information. We do retain our experience and slowly level up, and I am now able to die after two hits instead of one, so eventually I will be able to take on the dark elf and survive, but I feel that day is quite a ways away. What can I do or try to help improve my odds of being able to survive a whole session? It is getting a little boring watching from the sidelines and even my DM is starting to feel bad that he designed this character who kills me every time. I humbly await your thoughts, and pray that Dice Christ grants me a good stealth check one of these days.

Theo Englund

May it please the court, the honorable justices, and the Cool Dad TM bailiff: A couple sessions in, my character, Vigil, met Lark, a mute Tiefling bard who played the violin instead of speaking. One of the players that I didn’t know so well decided during a flirty conversation between my character and Lark, that their Kenku was going to cast create water (I believe) on Lark so she couldn’t “talk” anymore, since she can’t play a wet violin. (This player had previously been audibly frustrated whenever I was roleplaying) They attacked Lark, and I attacked them back. Because they had just come out from a bar fight in the Tavern, they had low enough hit points that I ended up knocking them out, and they broke a precious item. They were furious and said that I should have known it was a joke, and that if they’d known i’d fight them they wouldn’t have done it, and wanted to retcon the whole thing. I said that’s not how retconning works, and they said it works however they want it to. The DM ended up siding with them and ended the session. After that session, almost every single player quit and one even said “My character no longer wants to save this world, and I felt awful that I had made a mistake. Was I wrong to fight back and does retconning have an actual rule set in DnD?

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.

Will of the hunt

To the honorable justices I present the case of iron flask vs iron flask. I come to you with a game mechanic that I’ve had issues with in dnd 5e. You see I captured one of my party in an iron flask. The party member named Syndra, was kept on the belt of this human. The party still fighting this human (fernand the cannibal) decides to polymorph him. In polymorph all the items on the creature in question transform with them. Once polymorphed my players needed to go ahead and capture him fully. So they pulled out their own iron flask and tried to capture him. If they do so their putting an iron flask in an iron flask. My question is, should that be allowed? Would it not create a huge portal to the ethereal realm like a bag of holding in a bag of holding? What are the implications?

Trash

May it please the All Mighty justice Axford and I guess the rest. I present the case, of the Choked Cleric. We are currently playing a "one shot" (that has been going on for many sessions) and we have a npc Cleric to help us along with our missions. At some point our party was setting up camp so we all split up to do our tasks. Our party's druid found the cleric getting impaled by a moose, so the druid passed a check to get the moose off and it ran away. The cleric was "dying" in the druids arms so our druid produced 10 good berries to heal him. Our DM continued to say, "Since the Cleric has a punctured lung, he chokes on the berries and dies". Granted this is our DM's first time dm'ing and we figured he may have done this on purpose, but the party still was dumbfounded by this situation. We kinda just went along with it but we are still a little bit bitter about it since our Druid should have healed him. Should the dm have let us healed our cleric or the dm have done something else?? I humbly await your decision

Taylor Post

Honorable Justices, and Abominable Bailiff Jake-- I ran a campaign with some friends while deployed this last year. One of my players realized that, as a Barbarian, he could feasibly survive maximum fall damage while in a Rage. This, of course, led to him jumping on enemies from a flying boat, inflicting the same number of d6's he received as damage on his hapless opponent. I had no idea how to run that mechanic, so I ruled that it would be a Dexterity check (lower DC for larger creatures) to see if he could feasibly land ON an enemy from above the clouds. This decision led to much good natured yelling and gnashing of teeth, the Barbarian arguing at great volume that he should use his normal To Hit numbers, myself retorting with vehemence that it's not a weapon attack. Did I make the right call, or should falling on top of someone use the Barbarian's Strength+Proficiency? I cast myself upon the judgement of your inestimable wisdom.

Alex

May it please the Crit and the Honorable Justices Tanner, Murphy, Axford, and sometimes Hurwitz presiding. I bring the case of the Chaotically Evil or Good PC. I started a campaign with some friends from Law School, and one of the PCs was CG (on paper) but “joked” about murdering almost every NPC they met, insulted and looked down on most of them, and proposed to the party either killing the King or making him a vassal. I told the player a Conquest Campaign sounds fun, but I didn’t want to run that campaign. The next session the player seemed dejected, and the bad guy offered the “join me” speech. Later, the PC untied the villains hands and later escaped with them. The player has said that the party didn’t give the PC a chance and that they were actually CG despite their rude and murder-hobo behavior. Was I wrong to discourage the player from conquest and nudge them towards making a new PC? I humbly await the courts judgment.

Mike Cathcart

May it please the illustrious Justice Axford, preeminent Justice Murphy, renowned Justice Tanner and jake. I currently play a Circle of the Moon druid and I'm running into issues with my accepted wildshape forms. My PC is a 100 year old wood elf druid named Aramil Liadon who grew up in the Neverwinter Forest. I understand that there aren't any dinosaurs around but my DM is not allowing me to wildshape into anything besides a brown bear basically. Dire wolf was denied. Giant Elk denied. Giant Constrictor denied. I like the brown bear form but it gets boring after a while and we just got to level 6 so I'm missing out on all the good CR2 forms. I tried to use conjure animals to get some CR2 animals I can observe and learn for my wildshape but I'm being forced to roll a D8 to determine what I get and I usually get some stupid deers which doesn't help me learn new wildshapes. Is my DM being a stinker or should I be allowed (within reason and based on the environment I grew up in) to use other wildshape forms, namely Dire wolf, giant elk and giant constrictor snake. I throw myself at the mercy of your wise and just judgments. Love, Michael Cathcart

Jack Francis West

DICE CHRIST! 🙏 I need to tell on someone 😭😭😭 I know you guys HATE table tattlers but this sin has simply gone too far. In our first session of a new module, we killed our landlord and his robot dog (an Iron Defender, Artificer vibes). Our rogue wanted to re-wire the dog and keep it for himself. He rolled, looked up in disbelief, exclaiming “Nat 20!” As he PICKED. UP. HIS DICE. Do you see what I see here???!!! In what WORLD do you roll a Nat 20 and not stand up from the table and point at it for all to see???! But alas, he was awarded with a free Iron Defender with reckless abandon. But I know what he did. And it makes me SICK. Dice Christ help us all.

Josh the Alchemist

To the honorable justices and milquetoast bailiff, I present the car of the forced multiclass. This happened nearly a year ago and it's still bothering me to the point that I actively avoid doing things too creative so it won't happen again. Let me explain. I was playing a hexblood circle of stars druid and our party found ourselves in a position of either leading a revolt against a corrupt governor or killing him. Not knowing what to do, my druid performed a ritual he remembered to talk to his mother, a being who turned out to be a hag. She gave him a new spell to fix the problem, but my druid quickly realized it was bad and didn't use it. My DM said that, because I'd made a deal with the hag, I had to multiclass into warlock at the next level up. Long story short, I multiclassed, didn't enjoy my player agency being taken away, and changed to a cleric. I still won't do anything too creative on that campaign for fear that there will be unintended consequences for myself or my party. Was I wrong to be upset at the multiclass being forced upon me?

Kaylie Elise

May it please the radicle court and crustaceous bailiff, I present the case of DM vs The Never-Ending Snow. This was my second time DMing, and I was running a game where my players were attempting to traverse a snowstorm to find a lost city. The storm was the city's barricade; it was neverending, and if someone was determined enough, they could make it through the storm to the front gate, but the players were unaware of this as it was a secret kept to protect the city. 30 feet before the exit point, one of my players decided to get the party to take cover in a ditch and wait out the storm. I had them all roll survival, intelligence, and arcana checks to try to get them to see the storm would never stop and that they were so close to the exit. They rolled well and I felt like I kept repeating some version of "You don't think the storm is going to stop but you get the feeling you are close to the solution." Our ranger even spoke with a mole who told them that the storm had always been like this. Still, the party wanted to wait it out. I was getting frustrated with myself because I felt like I couldn't get my party to understand that they were so close to the exit without literally telling them. Eventually, I just had the storm end because I could tell the players were getting impatient and did not want to leave their ditch, but to this day I felt like I could have done more to convey that the party was so close and just needed to walk 30 more feet. Was I wrong in giving up, should I have let my party start taking cold damage, or should I have somehow made it more obvious how close the exit was? I await your chilly judgment.

Summer Tribe

May it please the whole juicy court This wasn't an issue at my table but it does demand resolution. I was discussing with another player the possibility of riding the Artificer - Atillerist's Eldritch Cannon, NOT mounting it, as that comes with its own rules, merely standing on an object that is capable of moving, and this other player was disputing that it shouldn't be possible. Unless your weight overcomes its strength score (the rules say treat it as tho it has a 10 in each score for checks, provides no details about carrying capacity) surely it should still be capable of movement as you stand on it, which would be awesome and tantamount to riding your gun like it was a skateboard. The only benefit this would provide would be potentially increasing your movement speed by 15 on some rounds, which hardly seems gamebreaking. I eagerly await your wise and fair verdict, the skeleton is in the mail from your last one

Outpulse

May it please the court and the honorable bailiff Jake, I present the case of Medusa v Silent Image In a one-shot that a friend of mine was running, we ended up encountering a Medusa in a dungeon that we had been hired to clear out. Thats when i cast silent image to block the medusas eyes so we would be paralysed or have disadvantage on our attacks however our DM said that because we would know that it were an illusion that we would see through it and still be affect, i argued that in almost any other case one could always choose to fail a saving throw however they did not agree so we ended up fighting the medusa normally. Was i being a problem player or should i have been able to use silent image in this way?

Marcus Heer

May it please the court and clergy. I have been DMing for a group for about three years now. We are all very close and are good friends. We trust each other. Or so I thought. One player used to roll fairly average. He would hit his nat 20s occasionally and also a handful of nat 1s. However, when covid started and we were playing online a shadow loomed over this player and he started rolling good 90% of the time. When I didn’t tell him what the roll was for he would ask “am I trying to roll high or low.” Which is definitely sussy. When I subtly pressed him about it during a session he chalked it up to him getting metal dice so he had better luck. Every once and a while I would bring it up during a session to see if I could guilt him, but the rolls stayed high. Now that we are in person again his rolls have evened out and are regular again. I ask the court whether this man is guilty and should be tried as a heretic of Dice Christ, or should I just leave his punishment in the ever loving, dice rolling hands of her grace Dice Christ.

Drumlined00d

May it please the court, The chaotic justice Axford, the Iron fist justice Murphy, and the always smiling justice Caldwell. (I guess the animal "loving" bailiff Jake.) I have an assassinrogue In my game. One of his abilities let's him get a critical hit on any hit as long as certain conditions are met. He met those conditions and rolled a natural 20. In the heat of the moment. I decided that, if any hit is supposed to be a critical, then a natural 20 should do quadruple damage. I fear that since I ha e said that, I can not take it back. Have a made a mistake allowing the assassin ability to quadruple damage if a natural 20 is rolled? Keep in mind, this was at level 3, he wound up doing high 20's damage.

Lou

May it please the court! I bring to you the case of the Blazing Chariot VS the net. A while ago, my party was fighting a group of Ice Giants and it wasn't going well. My PC, an Eladrin of the hearth (homebrew), casted the glorious (homebrew, but DM was on board) spell BLAZING CHARIOT!!! It is as cool as it sounds. You basically summon a BLAZING CHARIOT with BLAZING STEEDS that is very fast and burns foes in it's wake. The DM then procedeed to throw a giant net above the chariot, saying that it couldn't move anymore because it was restrained. I replied that the chariot was BLAZING, and thus the net should burn. He said that it wasn't in the rules. I stopped arguing, but got womped. I ask you: should the blaze rule almighty, or is the net Superior? I await your Judgement.

Taylor Vittitoe

Forgive me judges for I have sinned!! I fudged almost all my roles in my first dnd campaign, because I thought the game would only be fun if I my team was winning. We were playing remotely, and I wanted to be a useful member of the crew. So I fully committed, rolled online, cropped the bad rolls out and sent the crop to my DM. Of course my friends noticed the fishy behavior and made “subtle” jokes about it. But nevertheless I doubled down. For the entire campaign I committed to being the “badass” hero I wanted to be and continued to crop the rolls. Since then I’ve come around to the wisdom of dice Christ, but my past still haunts me. Please help me figure out how to atone for my dice sins and make it up to my friends, whom I still play with! Amen 🙏

Jessika Faircloth

To the gracious and powerful justices and the lowly but loyal bailiff. I present to you the case of the very powerful rat-boy. We have been playing a Pathfinder game for several years and I am playing a Ratfolk Swashbuckler. Usually my characters are not very effective but apparently I built this one well and now I keep killing the DM's monsters in like 2 rounds of combat and due to my class abilities he can almost never hit me with melee attacks because I can parry them. Recently after the session where I once again whomped his monsters he approached me and said he was thinking about house ruling some stuff to nerf my character because he feels I am too OP. This really upset me because this is the first character I have ever had who was actually effective, I even bought an expensive mini of my character. I feel like it is his job as the DM to balance the encounters for the party. He knows my character slaughters most things in melee but that is still what he keeps throwing at us. Am I in the wrong? I eagerly await your just ruling.

Yashuntafun

Dear Most Honorable and Wise Justices and the Respectable, Workmanlike Bailiff: May it please the court, I submit to you the case of the Draconic Dragonborn Drag. In a campaign I have run for the past few years, I had one player who chose the Dragonborn species and the Draconic Bloodline Sorcerous Origin. One of the features of the Dragonborn species is resistance to damage of the type associated with your ancestry - in the players' case, he gained fire resistance for a red dragon ancestry. However, when we hit level 6, we discovered that the Sorcerer subclass of Draconic Bloodline gives you the ability to spend a sorcery point to gain resistance to the damage type associated with your dragon for an hour, but which the player already had permanently, due to his species feature. We agreed that this was an oversight of the books, but couldn't come to an agreement on how to resolve it. The player argued they should have the ability to gain *immunity* to fire damage for an hour with a sorcery point, but as a new DM, I was afraid that would be too strong. (The players didn't know, but a trip inside a volcano was on the horizon.) The player wasn't interested in resistance to another element, or any other metamagic features. We ended up buffing his pseudodragon familiar's abilities as a compromise, but the player wasn't happy and still sometimes brings up how he was short-changed for going all in on draconic features. So I ask the court - who is in the wrong here? Was the player asking for too much because RAW gave him a redundant ability? Was I too scared of total immunity to fire damage? I humbly await to see what the draconic scales of justice decide.

Rogue

My it please the court and lofty balif I need your help I spent like 2 months trying to create my DND world named Solis I made a detailed map town's city's back stories but I don't know how much stuff I need to start the campaign I would really appreciate it if u could help me I leave the judgement/wise words to the wise court thank you

Zack Auron

May it please the court, the esteemed supreme crit justices who judge from on high, and the bailiff who tops from the bottom. I bring you the case of gratuitous fall damage. I am a DM running Descent into Avernus, and my players are driving around hell in their war machines. They were trying to get to the top of a volcano, and I warned them explicitly that driving a car to the top would be risky. In response, the group sent their best driver on their auxiliary motorcycle to scout ahead. I had that player roll a Dex check to manage the terrain and they failed. I then gave the player the choice: try to save the bike with a strength save, or bail from the bike for an easier dex save. They chose the strength save and rolled just under the DC. Here is where I started scrambling. I wanted to figure out how many feet they fell so I grabbed a handful of D6, rolled a 25 and stated the player fell 250 ft. So then I rolled 25d6 and offered the player one more Dex save for half damage - which they also failed, taking 68 damage. They then asked to Misty Step to safety. I stated they had been falling and had inertia, so the misty step only granted them advantage on their dex save - which they also failed. The party wanted to run and revive the player, but I reminded them that they had sent the player off on their own a while ago, and that even after falling back down, the player was no closer than 1000ft away. In the end, the player rolled 5 death saves and stabilized before the party arrived to revive them. After hearing this tale, your honors, please judge if I was too eager to give out fall damage or too harsh in my ruling to place the player far from their friends. I await your fair judgment.

Muqtadaa Miandara

FOLLOW UP PUP: Honored Justices and Bailiff Jake Durr-witz, I return to the court with a new tale of Feywild-related shenanigans. You might remember my previous tale of the genie freed by an accidental moment of sincere role-play, my players have since used the genie’s favor to get out of more than a few sticky situations, and they’ve promised to help him find the remnants of his destroyed civilization in the Outer Planes. Today however, if you’ll hear another case from me, I present the case of the Very Good Boy and the Very Ruff Fight. A player we’ll call Ness (an 11th level soul-knife rogue 8/fighter 3) was exploring the Summer Queen Titania’s mausoleum and I had her roll one of the encounter checks on a table for Fey Encounters. The result was the following: “The shadow of a dog begins trailing you. No one else can see it. If you attempt to interact with the shadow, you hear the sound of rueful whining.” I didn’t plan to do much with it, the session finished with Ness being weirded out by having a shadow dog following her around, wagging its tail and whining when she couldn’t touch it. Then I asked some DMs online for ideas, and someone recommended that I tug at the obvious heartstrings available to me. In the following sessions I emphasized the presence of the shadow, allowing it to give Ness advantage on perception and insight checks based on the shadow’s reactions. The party left the Feywild, dealing with the usual time-related shenanigans of traveling between planes, and returned to the Material Plane, where the party began pursuing a series of small quests on behalf of the Ranger of the group in his service to Melorah. At a bandit camp that they raided, they found a large guard dog with a wounded leg. I narrated the shadow dog barking in confusion, sniffing the real dog, then leaping on Ness’s shadow and licking it furiously. When Ness turned with torch in hand, I described the shadow of the dog dispersing under the light, not to return. The wounded real dog began following Ness, and she ended up keeping him. The dog joined in on a few adventures, and then in one battle with high stakes Ness was truly destroying everyone. She was using her magic items and her psi-knife teleportation and hide checks and sneak attacks and it was just stacking up to so much damage so fast in just a few rounds. So, I played the enemy spell-casters as smart as I could. They were on the same initiative, so I had one cast disintegrate on her, and the other prepared to cast plane-shift on her if she survived. She should have died and been disintegrated, but it felt a little ignominious and I know she’s very attached to the character, so in a flash of inspiration I realized I knew how to close the story of the dog without killing her. I had the dog jump in the path of the disintegrate spell, and described that, strangely, a shadow had been left behind. The shadow dog barked, and then when the other caster went to cast plane-shift on Ness the shadow dog leapt up and took that spell as well, disappearing from the fight. I described for Ness that as the shadow vanished, she heard the familiar sound of the shadow dog whining and could smell the spicy-sweet scent of the gardenias growing wild in the buried Summer Keep. For my wizard with time magic (who rolled a very high arcana) I described that they felt a time loop close, like all the hands of a clock coming to rest at 12 and the gears of the clock settling in for just a second in their default configuration before the loop begins again. I was not prepared for how emotionally devastated my players became. When Ness realized that her dog had been waiting for her in the Feywild bc of time shenanigans and hand’t realized he was dead until he saw himself in the material she broke down. Tears everywhere, all my players were down and they ended up ending the remaining battle with extreme prejudice. No jokes, no goofs, they played smarter than ever and absolutely demolished the remaining phases of the encounter with brutal creativity, which I loved to see. After though, there was some backlash. I guess, since I’m not a dog person (always been a cat guy) I didn’t really get it, but one of my players later said I pulled a Futurama (I watched the clip in question, it is very sad). Ness liked the story even through the tears, but her gripe was that I took control of the dog from her and didn’t give her the choice to take the spell instead, when she’d been in control prior, essentially forcing the dog to die. Another player was upset that I jumped to killing an animal without warning, although it never came up as a trigger in session zero and I’ve threatened, attacked, and dealt damage to other familiars and animal companions who joined in battle in the past. Honored Justices, was I wrong to take control of the Very Good Boy and what more could I have done to prepare my players for what I planned? Should I have foreshadowed more? Is this what I get for improvising a deeper story out of an encounter roll? Will my players ever trust me with their animals again? Can I send you guys an idea I had for a seafaring campaign Jake should totally DM that’s ~6 sessions of content? All these questions linger, and so I look forward to an answer from you, the highest crit in the land. I humbly await your judgement.

Foster’s Bewildered Veterinarian

Salutations most fantastical justices and _____ (blank) Bailiff whose descriptor will be chosen by Murph right now. In a campaign I played in college we had an almost all orc party in the process of integrating into society. My character was essentially an Orc Jehovah’s Witness for Kord who loved handing out pamphlets which of course were written in orcish and unreadable to most. During a fight one of the party members was surrounded by several enemies and dropped to zero. On my turn I asked the DM if the party member would have fallen prone, and the DM said yes, so I asked if I could cast Shatter on a point above the group so the 10 foot radius would hit all the standing enemies but not my downed friend. After some lighthearted back and forth, the DM said she would allow it this time because it was a cool idea, but going forward the spell wouldn’t work with that kind of precision and would hit a downed character in a similar situation. I humbly ask the court, did I use the spell correctly, and should I have been allowed to keep creative freedom with my rad radiuses, or was my DM correct and I was indeed committing geometric grievances?

Nick Yorio

Honorable justices and perfectly adequate bailiff, I present the case of the Cleric’s Dilemma. Our party was assaulted by some savage poisonous frog creatures armed with a paralytic poison applied to their blow darts. Our monk was hit and failed their constitution save, forcing them to be paralyzed. My turn was next, and rather than cast lesser restoration on our monk I felt my war domain cleric/battle master orc shaman was better served to finish off the frogs and win the battle. After devastating them with spirit guardians and attacking three times I was able to finish them off, after which I restored our paralyzed friend. The PC was annoyed with me, accusing me of being a “glory hog” and refusing to do my role as a support caster. I felt my war obsessed worshipper of Gruumsh was perfectly in character to focus on killing rather than healing but am I wrong? What obligation does a cleric have to supporting his party? I humbly await your decision.

Josh Hoffman

I throw myself before the mercy of Dice Christ with a confession. Recently, my party faced off against a Void Dragon from Kobold Press Tomb of Beasts. Upon defeating it, two of my players were transported to a random plane of existence as per the dragon's Collapsing Star feature. I gave a 1% chance to be teleported to a distant futuristic and spacefaring plane outside of the traditional universe where the BBEG came from. Neither of the affected players hit that number so I fudged the chart and pretended one of them did and sent them there. I did this because their return trip through a wormhole would bring with them an NPC infested with a Starspawn, flavored for my campaign as a parasitic mind-controlling hive mind race, to set up a future campaign. I'll accept any judgement Dice Christ gives.

foster the boneless duck

may it please the most ineffable justices axford, murphy, tanner and i guess the effable bailiff whose name i forget, i present the case of the groundhog day of invasion. for context this is a 3yo frontier-style campaign that's run completely online. counterspell requires dex checks (to see if their quick enough), any spell is nitpicked to the letter, and everything magical is an insane amount of money. i've noticed a pattern in our dm's storyline and i'm not sure what to do and who's in the wrong. so our dm has a habit of invading almost every town we visit with some kind of army that's unrelated to our main quest. as we're heroes, we stay and defend these places, but it's taking so long that we've become completely flippant and reckless as a party just to bypass the 4 sessions of planning that inevitable feel like beating our heads against walls. essentially we stop in a town, we discover or hear of a threat of some kind of invading force (so far we've had werewolves, ogres, barbarians, sorcerers, phantoms, more barbarians, blood hunters, hags, and three different cults). we decide to stay and defend these usually helplessly outnumbered people by finding hiding places for those who can't fight, trying to learn about our enemies, strategise, and teach some hunters how to fight. every tidbit of the invading force is usually a complete mystery or (even on a nat 20) the barest morsel of a crumb that's usually a maybe. we then use what we can to alter the environment, redirect forces, and strategise only for our moves to be completely turned on us at every moment. we've always won so i guess we shouldn't complain but the last three times we've just said the bare minimum, rolled a few dice, and almost refused to engage in rp just to get to the actual fight because we know that even though our dm makes space for battle planning, it never helps us. last time, our dm clearly got a bit annoyed at this behaviour and essentially forced us all into more filler stuff by having people be talked to in our heads or such. we also got a bit annoyed when his own filler rp gave us the info that they're spellcasters who were weak and wouldn't have counterspell but then they were blood hunters (which are pretty sturdy) plus two wizards appeared from the bushes as soon as our wizard cast counterspell. all in all i don't think he knows he's doing this but i don't even know how to adress this with him or if we even should? the rest of my friends are of the opinion that we'll just keep handling it like we have been but i also feel bad for behaving like that towards our dm. i humbly await your judgement (and hope to enact your most venerated advice) ps the game is a lot of fun otherwise and we call ourselves the shenanigang. our group is comprised of a spring eladrin, wood elf, warforged, tabaxi, arakocra and our companions; a dire goat named geoff, a brown bear names bernard, an owl named owlington, a ghost called peter, and my character's new baby drake as a drakewarden ranger (please help me name the little guy!)

Contender in the making

Your honors and ladies and gentlemen of the jury and the bailiff who is definitely there. I implore you look at the case of the sliding scale I've recently been playing with some friends most of us have never played but a few of us listen to podcasts/ watch dnd shows. I've listened to all of naddpod and dimension 20 so I've got a decent handle on the game Our dm has never dm'd or played before so thing were a little rocky our first session. He does a sliding scale for checks depending on your character. For instance we were walking on a rickety bridge and trying to balance it was a dc dex 10 check for our elf but a DC 18 dex for me because I was a " heavy stumbling orc" I mentioned that the DC should just stay the same and the fact that I have worse dex is already factored into my stats so he doesn't need to double down and make it harder but he disagrees. He did this our entire session and it's just very frustrating feeling like I can't do anything. Am I wrong here ? Am I misunderstanding the game ? I await your decision.

Gabriel Glazer

To the honorable justices and beefy bailiff Jake One of my players came to me and said he wasn’t able to keep playing with the party and to kill off his character off screen. I was obviously disappointed but adjusted my plans. I chose not to kill off his character and instead make him leave his hot tiefling girlfriend and bar he owned in the night so it’d give him a way to rejoin with his character if he wanted to in the future. This also worked well because another of my players said she wanted to flirt and date his now ex girlfriend. Later when I told him what I did he got angry and tried to argue that he wanted an epic death scene and it was out of character to leave his girlfriend. I argued that the previous session he tried to seduce a bunch of people so his character had fuckboy tendencies. Was I wrong to have his character ghost his gf so an active player could console and eventually romance her? Should I have given him the epic death scene he wanted? I await the impartial judgement of the highest court in the land

Zack Collins

Honorable court, I beseech thee to hear my case if it so pleases you: One of my players lost a contest against man named Hurley Bingbottom. Said player coveted the magic medal Hurley won and concocted a plan to cast heat metal on the item in an attempt to steal it. He rolled damage and killed Hurley, but the player was upset because he didn't mean to kill him. He insisted that we should take back the cast spell since "it is not something his character would do". I acquiesced to his demands and let him go back to before the spell was cast, but I still don't feel good about it to this day. Therefore I ask the court, should a redo be allowed if a player feels they made a role playing mistake? What is the line between the player and their character? PS. They ended up framing Hurley for murder and mugged him in his hotel room

Matt M

May it please the court and unelected justice/bailiff. A party I was DMing were fleeing across a broken bridge from a horde of large bugs. The warlock used one of their 2 spell slots to create an illusion of a complete bridge to send the angry bugs to their doom below. However, after everyone else crossed and the illusion was cast, the paladin decided that they could take on the horde and decided to hold out and not cross the bridge. Cue the paladin (through a series of good rolls and bad rolls on my part) standing there killing bugs while the other party members seemed bored and skipped their turns waiting for the paladin to cross the bridge and enact the plan (he didn't, and he killed all of the bugs). Should I have somehow thrown more at the paladin to discourage this act (if not for good saves he could have been paralysed more than once), or was it on the other players to tell him to do what they had planned? I humbly await your judgement.

Tiffany Taylor

May it please the gorgeous justices and the handsome bailiff: I'm getting ready to start my first ever campaign, so far I'm writing the background and figuring out all the little details. I play with a group of my friends who all have campaigns as well. None of the campaigns that we have played have ever used spell components since every just uses an Arcane Focus, so we never have to worry about it. I thought it would be a cool idea to use spell components in my campaign to do something new and because magic is relatively new to the world. One of my players is super excited about it and can't wait to try it out since he's playing a Wizard. However, a different player said it wouldn't matter since they would have an arcane focus. I explained that since magic is so new, no one has an arcane focus, but that they could get one later in the campaign, they'd just have to find the right person and it would take awhile. The player then scoffed and told me that it was the dumbest thing they'd ever heard and that there was no point in using components because they are easy to get. My question is this, do I give in and make it to where we don't use components to make that one player happy, or do I say that they're the only ones with an Arcane Focus? Or is there another way to maybe compromise to where everyone is happy? I anxiously await your judgment. P.S...I want to make music for my campaign as well, mainly a theme song. What would Emily recommend me using since all her music is so beautiful. Thanks.

Remington Fenter

To the esteemed judges and the disparaged bailiff I present the case of consequences. I run a homebrew campaign for my wife and 3 of our friends set in a world where chromatic dragons rule like tyrants. At one point my wife's character, a Drow Swashbuckler Rogue, made a deal with Tiamat and gained Devil's Sight in exchange for protecting a mysterious egg. Since then her character has brought up this deal or the egg in RP with important NPCs that are know about Tiamat. The first was a group of Archdruids that then had to use force to take the egg and the second was a demon innkeeper that decided it was no longer worth being in this plane and planeshifted away. My wife thinks some of these responses were too harsh where I and some of the other players think these are appropriate responses to learning that someone is aligned with "the Dragon Devil" and mother to the tyrannical rulers of the realm. Was I right or should I let my wife use her sugar momma dragon devil to get more favorable outcomes in RP?

Tyler Jackson

May it please the esteemed traveling judges and the lowly chauffeuring bailiff, I present the case of the competing croaks. My party was following a cryptically written invitation to a reach a Witches Solstice party in an enchanted forest, having to complete a series of tasks in order to navigate the woods. When the party reached a pond full of giant croaking toads they had to join in song to earn passage, the party assumed the rogue with expertise in performance would handle the toad song. Before the ribbit could escape his lips however, the party’s resident rat man decided to give it a shot and rolled first, getting a shout out to the two crew. The toads were enraged by this performance and attacked, resulting in everyone attempting to the soothe the toads with their own individual croaks (except for the rat man, who stabbed his toad to death). The party was allowed to pass with only stern looks from the toads afterwards, but the rogue maintains that the he should have been the one to roll, while the toadstabber claims Toad Karaoke is any man’s game. Was I right to let the rat man’s roll count and have the toads attack, or should I have let the rogue’s crooning croak smooth things over?

Eden Hunter

Dear exalted Judges and all-round incredible fella Jake, If it may please the queen and court, I present the case of the player who wanted to fit a 4 day process into a 6 second turn. I was running a non-canon pvp game for my players main campaign characters and one of my players (Human Sorcerer) turned invisible after taking quite a bit of damage. He then messaged me privately asking if he could use the herbalism kit that his Character had to brew a healing potion so he could regain some HP. I was foggy on brewing rules and so looked it up to find that it takes 4 days to brew a health potion. Now, as you will know, a turn in D&D combat takes about 6 seconds, so it might be a bit of a squeeze. But as this was a non-canon session and rule of cool etc I said I would let him roll a medicine check for it, setting the DC so that he would be able to do it if he roled a 19/20 and that he would have to drop concentration on his Invisibility to focus on this endeavor. He then started to argue back that it wouldn't make him lose his concentration, at which point I reminded him that I shouldn't be letting him perform a 4 day process in 6 seconds in the first place. He then got grumpy and distant. Did I make the right call? Love, Eden x

Eli M

May it please the court, but not that bailiff you keep around for some reason: The group I DM has a beast barbarian that enjoys using her “Form of the Beast” to grow giant claws in battle. The party recently got access magic tattoos, including one that improves unarmed strikes (Eldritch Claw Tattoo). The barbarian was really excited about getting this new ink, but the barbarian class feature specifically calls the claws “simple melee weapons” even though she’s not actually wielding a weapon. I suck with the wording in the book, and told my player to save her gold because it wouldn’t work the way she wanted it to. She was a bit bummed, but we found a different (and in my opinion cooler) tattoo for her build. However, I am requesting an official ruling from the high crit: should her claw attacks count as unarmed strikes? (PS: Seriously what’s up with your bailiff? He seems feral and some of the other petitioners are scared to approach him.)

Nick B

May it please the honorable court and esteemed bailiff that metes out their wise judgement, in a recent game my players were ambushed by soldiers of the red hand horde while on the road. I described pairs of hobgoblins riding chimeras, one with two soldiers and the remaining two had a soldier and wizard on its back. As the chimeras began to dive for the party, I had everyone roll for initiative. Everyone had seen each other, so no surprise rounds, just a brawl. One of the players rolled highest, so I laid out the situation thusly: the chimeras began their dive. Everyone knows what’s coming, so as the top of initiative you can determine what height they are at when you open up. Could be when they are 100ft high or when they are just above you (the player was a caster). I also specified the players couldn’t tell if they were landing or not. I did this to give the party a moment to strategize, and after a bit the player chose to open up when the enemy was 30 ft overhead. Later, the cleric asked a bunch of leading questions “okay so these guys started 150 ft up? And they are diving?” I stated it was a “dive” at an angle, they are currently 30ft up. He tried to say he casts banishment on the chimera when it starts it’s dive, but I say no, combats started when they were at 30 ft. He relented and cast it anyway, causing the already injured soldier to die on impact and removing the chimera from the combat. He was upset, though, that the enemy wizard lived. I told him the wizard was fresh and the fall was only 30 ft so while he’s definitely bloodied, he’s still up. The player argued that because of the dive the wizard should take more damage being at “terminal velocity”. I replied with “this is the specific reason I wanted to be clear about heights and when combat started. If this was your plan, you had time to communicate that. Even the next day he admitted he was a bit salty on my ruling, but I don’t think I was overly harsh. I await your judgement on how I ran this combat. Should the hobogobo gone splat?

Matt Pearce

May it please the court and honourable bailiff Pinch: I present the case of the Idle Arm: my friend had his arm severed by an enemy wizard, which began attacking us. After defeating the wizard, we attempted to subdue the arm thinking we could reattach it. I, the barbarian, hit the arm with the side of my axe in order to do non lethal damage and knock it out. However, I ended up criting and obiliterated the arm. My friend, a rogue, argued that he should havr been able to use unncanny dodge, since the arm is still his, in order to halve the damage thus saving his arm. The DM ruled against this and the arm was forever destroyed. Was the DM too harsh or is my friend forever cursed to be a bad guy in a Harrison Ford movie?

Travis

To the honorable justices and the other guy. I bring to you the case of Strahd and the Noob. This is about me. Several years ago I was a newer player having never really stepped into the world and lore of Dnd. A friend wanted to run Curse of Strahd and I happily jumped at the opportunity. We set a date for the session and we’re told to make level 1 characters. I had no idea who or what Strahd was. Here’s where the issue starts. I created a death cleric warforged named PI (stood for private investigator) who’s backstory included that he was enforcer for a mob style family of vampires. He loved working for his “family” and modeled his actions around the great vampire hero ‘Batman’ and even mimicked the voice. Lo and behold we start the campaign, and introduce our characters. I get some strange looks from the dm but nothing more. We get to a point where we are waiting inside a tavern and lo and behold Strahd shows up. Of course my character immediately invites the nice vampire in at the grumbles of my peers. Eventually another player hurls an insult at Strahd and Strahd charms another PC to attack the insulter. I fail my check to notice and jump into the fray on Strahd’s side. We proceed to have an all out party brawl all while Strahd laughs. That was the last session we had for that game and I think about it often. Should I feel guilty that I created a vampire loving pc in a Strahd game or should I chalk it up to being a new player and move past my mistake? I await your wisdom and judgement.

Matt

Honorable and Fair Judges Tanner, Murphy and Axford; and Honest and (insert insult here) Bailiff Jake Last of his name. My case today blurs the line between court and church. During my last campaign I realized that during Session 18 our Path of the Berserker barbarian was doing too many attacks. I realized that I had incorrectly explained Frenzy during Session 2. I never told the player about my mistake because they were having so much fun Rolling the extra attacks. I made sure to balance the fights to encourage the other players but the Barbarian always had large damage totals. The Campaign is over and I never came clean. Can I hid my shame? The truth would of/will bum the player out. Was it okay to ignore some of their damage to make it fair behind them screen? To The Court and Church and Grog, I ask for mercy. Bonus Details: We did 30 sessions I explained (wrongly) Frenzy as giving them a Bonus attack and that they got to take an extra attack during rage. By the time I realized this it was so built it I couldn’t take it away. It was a casual friend game (non paid) dune online during COVID.

Tucker

Honorable Justices and lowly Bailiff Hurwitz. I present a case of mutiny and treasonous behavior. I am the DM for a campaign with a total of 7 PC's. We've been playing close to a year now and I have a player who plays a Ranger who after all this time does not understand the dynamic of the game and how actions/bonus actions and all of the elements of the game essentially work. Each session I re-explain what they can do with their turn, maybe which spell to use or which NPC to attack. To keep it brief, he also is obsessed with collecting goats in the campaign and wants to micromanage feeding and taking care of them. This annoys the other players greatly and it really slows down the flow. They have now come to me privately asking me to remove them from them campaign so they can have fun again. I am notoriously a craven man and have not been able to approach this player about leaving the campaign. The other players have now begun to threaten that they will leave the campaign and start anew with another DM if I cannot remove them soon. I'm too nice of a guy and am having trouble with confronting them. Do I remove the player to keep the majority happy? Or do I persevere and hope they can resolve their differences otherwise?

Macauly Leiher

If it pleases the Incorruptible, Right- Minded and Noble Justices Murphy, Axford and Tanner, I would like to submit the case of Blaise vs The DM. We play a weekly campaign and one week my shenanigans cost us a cool reward of a pet drake. So the next time we came across some I vowed to make one a pet, however these ones were possessed by some evil spirt so they were untamable. I accepted defeat, but then I saw some dragon eggs after about an hour of negotiations with a snake creature guarding them I managed to acquire 4 eggs and take them to town, the session ended and I felt victorious. Next session starts and 3 of my 4 eggs were smashed so that’s my first strike against my dm the next happens when I sold the final egg all I got was transport to the next area of the campaign, no extra gold or anything for the eggs that wasted so much time to get! Was I wronged or was it just?

Tammy Connors

Your Honors and most fabulous bailiff Hurwitz, In a recent game, our players happened upon a Deck of Many Things. A player chose to pull 6 cards; one of which was the Idiot. The Idiot card states, "Permanently reduce your Intelligence by 1d4 + 1 (to a minimum score of 1). You can draw one additional card beyond your declared draws." The player is arguing that the term "Permanent" means the reduction can't passively be removed via long rest, but CAN be actively removed via Greater Restoration, which states it can remove ANY reduction to a single stat, because there's no text preventing it. Another player is arguing since "the Deck" is a powerful magic item, it should not be subverted so easily and that the reduction should either stay on or require multiple uses of Greater Restoration. Who wins the argument? P.s. For those wondering the other 5 cards were the Star, Sun, Key,Throne, and Gem.

Jordan

Dear nude saints of dice Christ, I come asking for forgiveness, for I have sinned. I am running the Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign, set in Icewind Dale. For one session, my group was traversing a gem mine that had been taken over by kobolds. Little did they know, the kobolds were only a small part of their troubles: a grell (think a flying brain with a beak and tentacles) had wandered up from the underdark and had been hunting humanoids within the shaft. The book states that the grell would not attack, preferring to hide and hunt members of the party who wander alone. Here's where I intentionally sinned. According to the module, "A character who has a passive wisdom (perception) score of 16 or higher notices the grell." I knew that the druid of the party, Aurelia, had 16 in passive perception. However, when the party ventured into the grell's lair, I didn't tell the druid that she saw the grell, as I wanted to scare them. In a feat of poetic injustice, it just so happened the druid herself was the one to wander from the party. Since she didn't ask for a perception check, I had the grell descend on Aurelia, paralyzing her with a tentacle attack and scraping her head with its beak while trying to eat her brain. She ended up surviving with the help of her friends, but not without a scar on her head. My party said the session was really fun and the grell was super spooky, yet I know what I have done. Please my nudies, judge me accordingly, so I can lay my guilt to rest or atone for what I've done.

anniemurphs

To the exuberant, honorable, and fair Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner; and the even MORE so, Bailiff Jake: I used to play dnd with my friends, and was in the very unfortunate circumstance of one of them, the dm, having a crush on me. I was very obvious in that I didn't reciprocate his feelings, and did so without being cruel or rude. It felt like he couldn't seem to take a hint and would say weird shit both outside and inside of game play- so much so that my other friends noticed as well. During a session in our lvl 15 game, we had to avoid mimics while trying to find an artifact to help us escape a mansion in an alternate plane. My dm told me, who was playing a swashbuckler rogue, to roll a perception check. I rolled a nat 1. The problem is, that I had Reliable Talent and was proficient in perception checks, meaning I couldn't roll below a 10 as a base roll. When I pointed this out, the dm said "a nat 1 is a nat 1" and the mimic got a sneak attack on me. Honorable Crit, do you think it may have been a petty treatment because this dude was upset that I didn't have feelings for him? And am I just in still being mad about this unfair treatment of my cool rogue? I humbly await your judgement

Allie Rosner

Honourable and Exalted Crit Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and lil cutie Bailiff Jake, I present the case of Means vs. Ends. I represent my client, a gnomish bard named Musty Grumpkin. Musty and his party were confronted by guards and noblemen in a room and were about to be arrested, so my client cast Shatter on the locked door to give them an escape. Unfortunately, a noblewoman was caught in the blast and torn asunder. Everyone, Musty included, was horrified. At the end of the session, their DM insisted that the party change their alignment to Evil, so to reflect the shattering of the noble. My client fought back, saying that because they were horrified, they would become more Good than anything. What say you, gentle judges?

Neil henderson

Salutations justices Brian "you need better friends" Murphy, Caldwell "I'm going to try something" Tanner, Emily "fucking up Murph's plans" Axeford and bailiff Juke Hairwich. I'm a long time player but new DM who plays with a bunch of creative people. They keep trouncing all my plans even though I try and use challenge rating calculations. I don't want to TPK them but I do want it to be more challenging. Does the court have any tips/tricks for balancing combat? Is it ok to improvise and throw a couple more baddies at them that weren't planned?

Gregory Guidry

May it please the astute justices and the bailiff who is present, I guess. “To wing or not to wing, that is the question.” I was DMing my first party of 3 through my homebrew campaign and wanted to give them an extra treat when they leveled up to give them more customization and also better balance them since we’re all pretty inexperienced. When they leveled up to level 4 I let them take both their ASI as well as a feat for free, flavored as a “blessing from the Allmother Dryad” they had just finished helping. When I sent them a list of feats, I had sent one that included Unearthed Archana ones as well, thinking nothing of it. The Druid took Critter Friend to speak with animals for free, the Blood Hunter took Sharpshooter to help with her bow, and the Dragonborn Paladin went to the one feat I was scared of immediately, named Dragon Wings as the one she wanted for her character. I had a few reservations about this, including combat stuff, but largely that it didn’t seem reasonable to immediately sprout wings and be able to fly normally right off the bat. So I offered the player to be able to take another feat and we can try to work the wings in over time over the campaign so that they grow in, have to learn to use them etc. She seemed annoyed but went with it. I’ve been including a bit about the wings coming in more and more over the last few sessions but she will still sometimes try to lower my DCs on checks by reminding me “hey remember that time you wouldn’t let me have wings?” I ask, was my ruling on the wings too harsh, and how quickly do I need to give her wings to avoid the continued razzing? I humbly await your decision, Greg G

Austin Soren

May it please the esteemed court and you know... the bailiff I guess. I present to you the case of the Bar-bear-ian rage. I am playing a bear totem barbarian (3) moon druid (8) multiclass. This gives me essentially resistance to all damage when raging, and an extra 250 health points in the form of wildshape. The issue has arisen where I now have access to polymorph for another HUGE health pool by turning myself into a T-Rex. The issue I am having with my group is whether or not a barbarians rage continues in wildshape. You take the stat block of the polymorphed creature and it's actions... but I am already raging BEFORE transforming. Why would an effect on you end when you are polymorphed? Mike Mearls says rage continues into polymorph, whereas Jeremy Crawford says it does not. I await the court's judgement on this colossal issue. Should the T-Rex be hit with a meteor and removed from my spell list?

Figgy Blue

To the honorable and eroticly powerful justices, and the…okay… bailiff Jake. May I present the case of the sneezing dust betrayal. We are currently on a strange tropical island in the middle of the fridged north, where it is foretold that there are cannibal druids. We are there to get a gods eye, and our star druid was saying we should just merc them all and the raven queen warlock made a big case that we shouldn’t, i was a bit in between as this session I was in the middle of a strong edible. The next session we found the druid camp, then after some looking around, a tent were the druids came through, the warlock them became a raven and dropped an entire bag of sneezing dust inside of the tent. When the druids came out he became himself, in which when he was asked why he then banished a different druid, and we went immediately into combat, in which the other players brutally murder on of the druids, and the other was running away. i made a quick decision and helped the Druid leave without harm and made an escape. While doing so the warlock said “don’t run, I have circle of death.” After the fight the session was over, and the warlock play then walk alot about how his character hates me now. Dear judges did I make a uh oh?

Summer Tribe

tattle my guy, intraparty disparity is already feel bad and this wingus is rubbing his cheating in your face. on the other hand if it's not affecting the storyline or roleplay negatively then mayhaps it's fine, if I recall correctly characters in pathfinder who attack aren't even half as strong as casters so it might not matter if a martial is upping their damage some

R B

May it please the court - the case of the irrational rations request. I DM for some people I didnt know before playing with them, so I try to periodically send some questions to check if they're enjoying the campaign. One of my players has repeatedly suggested they would enjoy the game more if we really tracked our daily rations and resources like arrows etc. This isnt something I think is interesting, and I've gently explained to them that I've never known or heard of anyone else who thinks rations are interesting, but they insist they think it will raise the stakes of the campaign. Am I a bad DM for not working this in? Should I stop asking for input if I'm not prepared to take it on board? Is there something else I can add to make this player happy without slowing the game down for everyone else? Ps I've played with a couple of the other PCs where they have prepare food and water, so I'm pretty sure the moment I ask about rations they'll all just start eating bland but nourishing spell food

zac moehring

Not a court case, but a Dice Christ Confession. Back during Christmas I ran my first in person game for a group that usually plays online. (On Y2K aliens attacked and destroyed all humans and gave their sentience to the animals of the world). One of my players plays a descendent of Pizza Rat, is highly motivated by situations in which pizza is the outcome. Cut to: Pizza Rat was gambling against a little girl with a Create Food and Water wand and they were roll-offing d20s to see who gets the wand (pizza rat had put up some potions he found earlier as collateral). I roll, Nat 20. Pizza Rat rolls, NAT 20! We start jumping around ecstatic, screaming and the energy is electric. In the craze I yelled “That’s another roll off!” And roll again, ANOTHER NAT 20! I’m going crazy but my players energy had gone dire. Pizza Ray rolls like a 14 or something and loses, he’s now devastated at the fact that he loses his chance at the pizza wand and loses all his potions. I quickly realize that I just stepped on his Nat 20 roll by making him roll off again, I just got too excited. Should I have honored his incredible Nat 20 rebuttal by letting him win the first time or was I right for having a roll off on 2 Nat 20s? I feel I may have taken the magic out of his Nat 20 roll by treating it as a tie. Dice Christ, I prostrate myself before thee.

Emma Margaret

I definitely have a story, but gotta get with my table about writing a brief summary of the situation before I submit. Will be for future dungeon courts.

Slippery Pete

May it please the infallible court and the 'just shy of acceptable' bailiff, Hurwitz: The case of the Greedy Wish. Long story short: A monk PC in a game I run got a wish from the deck of many thing towards the end of a session and used it at the very start of the next one. his wish was: ‘Without prejudice, here and now, I want myself and my party members to have one ability score increased to 20, and for us to have advantage on saving throws and ability checks with that ability.’ Initiate DM sweat. Excluding the monk there was a total requested increase of 36 ability points between 4 party members. I granted the increases as per the wish but took away 36 ability points from the monk dropping his str, int, wis, and cha to 6,and con to 10 while preserving his dex score of 20. His AC went down by 5… Court, please judge me! Was this a cruel way to punish a greedy wish and is the party now imbalanced? How would you, in your benevolent wisdom, have ruled such a wish on the spot?

Two Deers Beep

To the justice who rule from Mount celestia and the lowly bailiff of the underdark. I present the case of the Dream Trap. For some background information I am the. DM for a campaign that has been going on for three years and the party is level 18. My players had just defeated a major enemy placed by the BBEG and were traveling to another fight. While they were resting I had the BBEG cast the dream spell on one of the players and impersonate a god who the players knew to be dead. The god told them about the location of a legendary sword they knew about that was Along the path they were traveling. A sword whose location they already knew and it was on another continent. I chose both of these things to be red flags so that the players would not trust the dream. However they did and traveled to the location and were ambushed by 4 lieutenant of the BBEG and the fight was extremely hard and they nearly died. While all the players had fun they still said that it was an unfair trap and they should’ve been able to roll checks to remember thing. I countered with 1. They never asked to roll any checks and basically just frolicked there and 2. They had enough information in their notes slash memories to know that a lot of false hoods were said by the dead god. Thinking back on it though I fee like I should’ve had them roll a history or insight check as our game is very casual and has been ongoing for a long time so expecting them to remember details might be unfair. However I didn’t want to spoil the trap and make them suspicious by asking for rolls either. I lay myself at the mercy of the court should I have had my players roll unprompted or should I have let them depend on their own notes and memories? Thanks y’all come back to the south east soon.

Colin Kilzer

May it please the crit, and jake. I just recently started a new curse of strahd campaign as a player and my sister is playing too and we used the starting gold mechanic to buy our items in game, during the process of buying our items many players expressed confusion and were accidentally buying the wrong things. My sister halfling/druid forgot to buy any kind of weapons and then the DM (her boyfriend) in our off week (knowing full well we would be in combat at the start of next session) asked her smugly what weapons she was planning on using in combat and when she told me I said well do you have enough gold for one? (She did) so I told her to just ask if we can say she bought a 2 silver quarter staff that way she has a weapon and when she asked at the start of the combat session the DM said no you should have asked when you were buying items, the combat went fine and I ended up being able to give her a wooden stake as a club but I still feel like he should have let her buy a 2 silver quarter staff. Was the DM right was this a lesson that needs to be taught or am I right and he should have just let her add a quarterstaff for 2 silver I throw myself at the mercy of the crit

Axle

May it please the Honorable Supreme Crit Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, as well as the lil buddy bailiff boy Jake: I am playing as a Circle of Stars Druid in a pirate themed campaign who serves primarily as the ship’s night time navigator, but who also uses wild shape to fill in smaller roles on the crew (like turning into a parrot to spy for land, turning into a monkey to climb the rigging, turning into an octopus to go underwater and repair hull damage). One day as we were sailing along, we were ambushed by Sahuagin (shark people). I was currently in parrot form assisting the guy in the crow’s nest at finding a desert island, and didn’t want to return to halfling form, fight the Sahuagin, and then use another wild shape to continue the hunt, because I was nervous about wasting resources before we knew what exactly the island held. BUT I still wanted to be useful to my compatriots, so I asked the DM if I could cast certain spells to aid in battle- Faerie Fire and Healing Word, both spells specifically chosen because they ONLY have verbal components, and as I was playing a parrot I could talk. Rules as Written states that Druids can’t cast spells while wild shaped, but I argued that the reason for this was because the Druid was limited by the animal body they took; since a parrot’s throat is capable of human speech, it should be able to form the words necessary for verbal components (it also came up that monkeys have the hand dexterity necessary for somatic components). I knew I was going against Rules as Written, so I didn’t mind when the DM told me I couldn’t do that, but I still feel that both parrots and monkeys should be able to cast spells with purely verbal or somatic components, respectively. I throw myself upon the mercy of the Supreme Crit, may your judgement be swift

Jeff Mcguire

Benevolent justices and arguably professional baliff. I ask for your ruling in a case of skydiving shenanigans and dm fuckery. We were in a temple in the sky floating on top of an eternal storm covering the entire planet. We came to a chamber containing the top of a tornado with an eye that went through the storm to the ground below. I play a monk and between Slow fall and a good amount of hp, i suggested jumping in. Our artificer had feather fall and after some debate and the dm uttering “Are you guys actually doing this, and let it be clear I’m not saying dont do this” We held hands and Thelma and Louise’d into the tornado. As we fell i took my sword of radiance lit it and threw it in front of us so we could see through the dark storm when it hit the ground and use a reaction to cast feather fall. As we were falling we were unsure when were gonna hit the ground and the DM said “I’m not going to fuck you, you’ll cast it in time” Because of this the player, playing artificer started talking about their back up plans for landing safely, out of character. While the artificer was saying this the DM said you see the ground approaching, then 5 seconds later, the ground is approaching. The DM then said you smack into the ground and you are all dead. The DM did not roll for Falling damage, saying we were skydiving without a parachute. I thought we should at least do that and eventually rolled in roll 20 just to demonstrate the mechanic and see what would happen (3 HP left monks are great). We snapped awake in the aether realm(where we start each session) to find out that we were revived by destroying a dragons tear that gave the population in the storm realm most of their water, dooming the population to thirst and starvation. The mood instantly got tense as we plead our case but I eased the tension by proposing we leave our case in the hands of the court and await your ruling.

Brittany Behr

Most benevolent judges and esteemed Bailiff, I present to you the case of the sharp psychic. My friend recruited me for a game of monster of the week that takes place in an alternate Buffy the vampire slayer universe. Because I'm obsessed with playing spellcasters I obviously ended up filling the Willow role in the party. As the nerdy spellcaster I ended up also being the main researcher who would solve mysteries. This resulted in something of a friendly rivalry as my GM and I tried to outsmart each other. This leads me to the events of the case. In one session, my character tried to use her psychic powers to contact someone over a longer distance, so she used a magic spell to amplify her powers. It didn't seem to work and I l,the player, made a point to say that I ended the spell. Later, the mystery that we ended up in was being trapped in our nightmares from my spell being left open. My GM revealed that she had planned the session around me making that mistake and I threw her for a loop, so she decided to retcon that I didn't close the spell and gave me an extra experience point as an apology. I definitely think my GM was put in a hard place, I had no idea that one decision on my party could completely unravel her plans and I was fine getting the experience point. But it was a bummer that the mystery was much harder to solve since I wouldn't guess the spell I said was closed was secretly still active, and I've always wondered if the session would have been better if she had rolled with the punches and changed her plan. What do you think? I eagerly and humbly wait on your verdict Bunny from the Bay Area

Tobias Oliver

To the Highest, most Exalted Priests Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, as well as the wretched church mouse pitied only by Our Lord. I prostrate myself before you and Dice Christ, for I have sinned. I am a DM, and my crime is unfaithfully tracking hit points. At first, it was truly accidental- I would forget to subtract hp off after an attack, or I would accidentally take away too much or too little; later in the fight, if things got tight, I would just fake it, and decide when the party had had enough. But that innocent seed has grown into a twisted, thorny vine. I’ve become addicted to ignoring hit points. Sometimes the combat will be too easy, and I’ll just toss on an extra 50. Sometimes I won’t even mark hp until two rounds have passed and then I’ll say, “they’re close, a little more should do it,” as if there is some reason to my madness. As of yet, no permanent harm has befell my party, nor do they know that i routinely sin in front of them and Our Lord; but I fear that my hp habit is, at the very least, removing cool, exciting moments from the game. I stand before you nude and ashamed, awaiting the cleansing judgment of Our Savior.

Anthony DiClementi

May it please the court, the honorable justices, and the passable bailiff, I come to you not with a case, but a call for aid. In one of our current campaigns, we live in a world that is struggling with a Groundhog Day problem. We keep repeating the same day and only our party retains our memories each time we loop back to the beginning of the day. This is great because we have all died numerous times and know that as long as the baby of prophecy we are trying to protect dies, we will all be revived and begin the day anew (with each repeat of the same day each of us becoming more and more mentally unstable). My problem lies in the fact that I am a low level necromancer elf. We head to the main city where we are supposed to be preparing for the demon raids that plague the land, where one of our antagonist waits in the shadows. A high level dark elf who hates all other elves. Due to his high level and me being a low level elf wizard, my clock ticks a bit faster than the rest of our parties. As soon as I enter the city where our quests await, my clock begins and I know I have less than half a day before the dark elf finds me and kills me in one hit. It has been fun to try and outsmart him, but in the end I typically die within 30-50 minutes of our 3 hour sessions. Each session typically only covers one day so it is almost a guarantee that I am out for the rest of the session and just scribing for the rest of the players so we don’t miss any important information. We do retain our experience and are slowly leveling up, so now I die after two hits instead of one. So I know eventually I will be able to beat him but I fear that day is far in the future. What can I do or try to help improve my odds of being able to survive a whole session? It is getting a little boring watching from the sidelines and even my DM is starting to feel bad that he designed this character who kills me every time.

NuclearArachnid

To the honorable Crit Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and the revered baliff Hurwitz, I present the case of the White Knight/Wolf in Sheep's Clothing. Here some quick background about where my party was facing at the time of the case and the roller coaster that was our campaign. 1) A romantic plot between our Cleric and Fighter was just beginning (no real world romance was occurring, they just wanted the acting challenge) 2) Our warlock was just revealed as the alternate reality son of the cleric and fighter so the romance was canon to his story. 3) Our party's Wizard was killed in our first encounter with the BBEG and the player was to introduce his new character Now on to the issue at hand, the new character, a Paladin, immediately shoehorned his character into the fighter's background as being from another noble house. Also for some reason he was a werewolf? Also the Paladin's abilities (we were level 7 at this point) were meant to directly replace those of the cleric and my character (the resident Bard) and make us obsolete (so said the player in question) Almost immediately the Paladin began interfering with the romantic subplot and would insert himself into any conversation/decision points for the fighter which, to me and others, was extremely cringe and took away a lot of the player agency from the fighter. After a number of weeks of sessions being upended by the paladins actions. The fighter expressed her discomfort with the situation privately to myself and the cleric and how she was thinking of leaving the group. We encouraged her to speak with the DM, which she did. The DM was slow to react however so the issues continued. Also when discussing the Paladins actions with my brother (who was roommates with the Paladin) I discovered that the Paladin player had quite a crush on the Fighter player. Knowing of the Fighter's discomfort with the situation I rightly came to the conclusion that the crush was NOT mutual. The fighter was not wanting to confront the Paladin IRL so with her permission the Cleric and I formulated a plan of action to counter the Paladin's action to try and deter his behavior. The DM approved of our plan. This culminated after 10-12 sessions of trying to deter the behavior with no change, things came to a head. We were being chased through a narrow canyon from a horde of undead and needed to climb up and out to escape. I saw an opportunity to "break bad" which led to my character dropping the paladin Scar/Mufasa style into the horde (told you this was a roller coaster). A Nat 1 and a series of poor strength rolls led to the character's death. The DM offered to save the Paladin via divine intervention but the player refused the offer leaving the table in a huff. He never returned. After 2 more sessions the DM deemed that due the Paladin player not wanting to return that the campaign was over. I ask of the court, was I wrong in choosing the nuclear option and effectively killing the paladin and as a result the campaign? I submit myself to the judgement of the Crit and may Justice be served.

Austin Gill

May it please the benevolent yet cruel Justices Axeford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the lowley yet humble baliff Jake. I bring thee a case full of spicy dnd drama that you so crave. About a year ago one of my long time freinds asked the group if his girlfreind could join the game. We of course didnt mind and were very receptive of her joining. Over the length of playing for about six months though we realized that she wouldnt be able to remember much about the game at all and would spend entire sessions on her phone scrolling Facebook. She also couldn't do basic math during combat and would take a full couple minutes trying to figure out four plus three for damage. We tried to help her out but evrey time we tried her boyfreind would shush us and tell us that shes only going to learn if she can figure it out hence would lead to us awkwardly sitting for five minutes struggling to take a turn in combat. We raised these issues to them and they called us toxic and havent talked to us since. Tis was a long court case but I megerley await the sentecing to my freinds and I to see if we were toxic in how we dealt with it.

Niko R.

If it pleases the honorable justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, as well as their trusty bailiff [insert own name here], I bring to you the case of Dumpy the Thumb Wrestling Paladin. Full stop. I started DMing a campaign for a group of friends where the initial pitch was a monthly, more episodic campaign where misadventures were centered around a tavern and its patrons. Think Cheers, but if the DM has never seen Cheers. Anyway, one of the friends is new to DnD and has created the character named Dumpy whose entire thing is thumb wrestling. Which given the premise isn’t a bad starting point, but after almost a year, he has done almost nothing. The most interesting thing he’s done was thumb wrestled a myconid’s thumb off and planted it until it became Baby Shroot, but he didn’t really keep up with his child. Most sessions I kind of forget he’s there because he won’t say/do anything unless I call on him, plus I’m the only one that turns my webcam on, so I honestly would not know if he just walked off. I ask the court, am I not doing enough to engage my player? I have asked some of the others in the group since they are closer to Dumpy. He says he’s having a good time, but at this point it feels hard and sometimes like a waste to do things to engage his character since he gives little to nothing in return.

Ilana Galpert

I have a fun story for the church of dice christ. I just finished running a call of cthulhu campaign. You roll percentage dice instead of d20s and the goal is to roll low. At a pivotal moment, one of my players asked if he could do an "Ally Beardsley" and I told him sure, roll under a 5% and you can make it happen. He rolled a 1% on the dice. A dice christ intervention if I've ever heard one.

Patrick Harry

May it please the court, Honorable Justice Axford, Murphy and Tanner as well as the every diligent and oft abused Bailiff Jake (the bailiff is an underpaid position, and deserves respect!) I have sacrificed many children to Dice Christ trying to receive guidance, so now I turn to the court as I sit in uncertainty. I was playing a lovely weekend of D&D with my group. They got to attend a festival, play games, go to a lovely bluegrass bonfire dance party after.. that was unfortunately interrupted by sniper fire. Long story sort the group pursued and found themselves in an ambush for the past sins of kidnapping a gnoll child as leverage. This battle was set up to be challenging, and it was more so than any my group had faced before. I could see a little bit of their morale dropping as the battle went on, their usual feeling of invlunerablity going out the window. So as the battle is getting closer to the end, of of the healers (druid) goes down and is brought up by another. One player with potions though is ignoring the others going down and doing their own thing, looking at my tactics I knew one of my gnolls would be filling its belly with the flesh of our druid bringing them back down and our celestial warlock was surrounded. As the two gnolls attack the warlock I notice that the attack rolls all hit (including a crit)and the damage that will be done will easily bring them down, so I fudged... I made sure the Warlock stayed up to be able to continue to heal the other party members (as they had gone down already twice and were using their familiar to feed them goodberries). They pulled through, but could tell they were a bit shook. They still had plenty of potions left though, a few goodberries, and some still had spell slots. I think its the first battle that had pushed them though and their frustration of anxiety came through. Was I wrong to fudge the attack rolls to prevent a player from going down to potentially prevent either a TPK or at least multiple players from potentially dying? This is everyone in the groups first foray into DnD (although other systems have been played previously), I put my judgment in the hands of hte court as well as Dice Christ who watches from above

Adam Leeuwenhart

Dear honourable and talented Justices, and 300+ golden mic winner, the gentle, kind bailiff Jake Hurtwiz. I come to you from Australia - not with something that has happened, but something that shall transpire soon, with months of planning. This is a three shot campaign. The important characters are Me, Big Bomb, and Leviticus, (who is desperate for a father figure.) The setting is a giant demon trying to take over the world. In chapter 2 we found the philosophers stone - which I pocketed - this stone means no matter what you can never go below 1 hit point and “The Deck of Many Things.” From which Big Bomb drew two wishes. I made a deal with him that he can have the stone if I could have one of his wishes. I gave him the stone first, which he immediately swallowed. He used his first wish to give us all a 3rd level boon. Then- in the face of a world ending cataclysm with the power to wish for ANYTHING - used his second wish to wish he was the biological father of Leviticus. This is singlehandedly the funniest, and most devastating moment I think we’ve ever had as DnD players. Out of character we laughed for about 20 minutes. In character I and the other party members were furious at him wasting a wish on the magic of fatherhood during an apocalypse. We also came across the Eye and The Hand of Vecna - not realising what it was I took the eye and Big Bomb took the hand. We were bestowed with incredible magical fuckery and turned to neutral evil. Here is where it gets interesting… if a person has BOTH the hand and the eye they gain the ability to use the wish spell every 30 days. As I am owed a wish for the philosophers stone - my plan is to at the start of the 3rd and final session cut off Big Bombs hand while we all long rest and fuse it to me. Then I will wish for the Philosophers Stone to be in my possession again. This will make me immortal and the debt will be paid. I will lie to the group saying the eye was trying to over power me and wanted me to kill them all and I did this to get the wish spell and use it to control the eye. This is all in the name of good fun, and hopefully a big fun twist as Big Bomb thinks he’s still invincible but realises the trick when it is too late. The DM knows about my plan, the players do not. Honourable Justices, I come before you for judgement- What do you think of my plan? Is this fun for the finale of a short campaign? - I leave the judgement in your capable critty hands.

Samuel

I have a Dice Christ Confession. I seek forgiveness in the eyes of the church. My friends and I just wrapped up our episodic style campaign where we played to level 20 and defeated an evil Goddess. I played a druid/monk multiclass it was great. However after our final battle, I realized that I had been using one of my staple spells wrong. I thought the duration of Guardian of Nature, a 4th level druid spell, was 1 hour when it was really 1 minute. Countless punches were made with advantage and extra damage. The DM never double checked and we are already rolling characters for campaign two. Despite this the guilt persists.

Darth Kuruptios

To the Honorable and Righteous Crit Justices. As well as the lowly and slimy Bailiff, I bring before you a case of a session one TPK. I was DM’ing for a group of three people and one of them had played 3.5, the other two were new to the game. And as such I had helped them all with their character creation. Once they had everything ready to go I told them to stock their spells and get ready for the first session. Once the first session began it went well, everyone was going through the encounters just fine, but no one cast a single spell. By the time we got to the main encounter of the session the entire party got wiped in the first five rounds. One permanently dead, one kidnapped, and one that ran away due to me lying about a roll. After the session was over I was told that none of them had stocked any spells or reached out to me to learn how to do so. Should I have checked on them more since they were first time players, or should I have just TPK’ed them? I ask the Crit system to be fair and impartial, and the Bailiff’s slime to be cleaned swiftly.

Sander Goldman

May it please the court, illustrious judges, and underling Jake, i present the case of Hideous Laughter v. Animated Armor. I was playing an Adventurers League game at a local game store when the party ran into an Animated Armor in a dungeon. My illusion wizard Quaytheleine (pronounced Caitlin) cast Tasha’s Hideous Laughter at the armor but the DM said that it had no effect because the armor was immune to charm effects. I argued that the spell was not a charm and the word charm doesnt appear in the spell, that instead the only conditions it imposes are prone and incapacitated, but he maintained that it wouldnt work so i let it go and the spell was wasted. But i put it to the court: Can armor be made to ROFL?

John Solorzano

To the virtuous priests Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the divine high cardinal Hurwitz himself, I seek through you the wisdom of Dice Christ. My party is playing Curse of Strahd and after a TPK fake out we had the opportunity to change characters or receive a dark gift. I, having a love of creating new characters, made an awesome dhampir paladin. My DM told me that my old character would still be alive out in the mists so we could write him back into the story at some point if I wanted to play him again. Knowing that I decided to step way out of my comfort zone and make my paladin female. A hot badass vampire paladin fallen from grace looked so much cooler as a woman in my minds eye. As nervous as I was the DM and other players didn't bat an eye when I introduced Marceline Dimitrescu and I partially forgot my discomfort and just played the game with my friends. In the next session however I made a dirty joke to an npc (something about having sex as a vampire) which seemed to make the other players uncomfortable. It's hard to tell since we're online, but it felt like they didn't want to joke like that with a girl or maybe that I didn't have a right to speak like that as a man dictating what this woman is saying? I'm not sure but I know it made me super self-conscious and even now many sessions later I still feel like I can't talk the way we usually do when I'm in this specific character. I really like this paladin, she's an absolute badass and the character has really bonded with the other PCs, but it's been really hard to shake this feeling that I might say something that is uncomfortable. I'm thinking a lot about that promise my DM made that my old character could come back. How in your combined infinite wisdom would you handle this holy Speakers for the Dice? What would Dice Christ do?

yorky borg

May it please the court and the right honourable justices Axford, Murphy and Tanner and bailiff Jake, please help me commit PC murder, I am a DM for a group of 5 friends, we've been playing a campaign for a year, we have a really good time and mostly everyone is able to attend a session every month or two (we all live far apart), apart from one player, they have only attended the very first session, however constantly insist we don't play until they are available, which is never, they are always on holiday or ''moving house''. When we inevitably decide to play without them, they force me to tell an elaborate in-game excuse for why their character still hasn't made it back to the rest of the party. Their PC is the classic mean edgy douchebag, who actively resisted any whiff of a quest i put forward to them in the first session and was asked by the other players to participate more. The PCs don't want to permanently remove their friend from the game but... i do. is it wrong for me to have this PC go under a carriage off-screen? I await your judgement.

Rachael Lovely

To the Honorable Justices Murphy, Tanner, Axford, and the ever Humble Bailiff Hurwitz, The other day I was playing in a one-shot in a modern day superhero setting as a Monk half-elf, flavored as a speedster, who came from a family of superheroes based on the Roman Pantheon. As part of my character’s backstory I told my DM that my PC, Cassandra, had a three-year old daughter who causes tension in the family because my character got pregnant when she was 16 (this is very much a teenage superhero party.) During my character introduction she asked if I was with my daughter and I, foolishly, said yes. So when a supervillain attacked I had to roll a check to see if my mom could watch my daughter, and I rolled a natural 1. So she wasn’t available. So, I had to call a different family member and I failed the roll again with a 2. For the next 30 minutes of this one-shot trying to find someone to watch my daughter. Eventually I dropped my daughter off with my half-sister who was at her apartment with her boyfriend, who my PC had never met before. I felt like the worst parent in the world leaving my daughter with a stranger but I felt like I was taking up too much time for this one-shot with my backstory that I had to have for my one-shot character. I felt like I really betrayed what my character would do. Afterwards everyone told me they loved playing with Cassandra but I can’t help feeling like they were just being nice because I don’t get to play often with my school schedule and being in a different timezone than everyone else I play with. Should I have not given my one-shot character such a complicated backstory for a one-shot or should my DM shouldn’t have had me roll on something she didn’t want me to fail. ~James-Anne (they/them)

Taylor Anderson

May it please the Righteous Justices and the plebeian bailiff, I bring to you the case of the Confidential Check. My DM insists on rolling all stealth, persuasion, and perception checks for players behind the screen. He claims that this is so the players don't know if they rolled well. It can lead to some funny situations where the DM says "you are sure that you saw something" or "you are sure that you hid your lie" when really they rolled terribly and they aren't hidden at all, clearly lying, etc. For the most part these moments are few and far between though, and it just means there is a lot less rolling for players which is a fun part of the game. Have you ever played a campaign where the DM does these rolls? Should my DM be tried for these crimes against rolling or did I fail my persuasion check?

Shy-senpai

Forgive me Fathers and Mommy for I have sinned. I have slighted the 2 Crew and seek forgiveness or punishment. I have been a fan of NADDPOD for a long time. I started listening when you were a few episodes into campaign 1. It took my interest in d&d and turned it into a love for the game. The short rests and mixed bags have given me the insight and confidence to find a group to play with. I even ran a small one shot for the first time recently. Here's the thing. I've been listening to the short rest and bonus content for years but I've only recently become a patron. That's right. I have illegally listened to much of the bonus content without paying tithes. I leave myself at the mercy of the Dice Christ and his devout followers.

Ben Rohr

Dear honorable justices and esteemed and semi-honorable bailiff: About a year ago I jumped into an campaign with a few friends I knew from the internet. Before my first session, the DM and I had a video chat to roll my character and I told him I wanted to play a peace domain cleric/ wild magic sorcerer multi class. We talked through my backstory and it seemed to be going really so we finished rolling my character and I prepped for our first session. During my first session I tried to cast emboldening bond and when I did, my DM stopped the session and told me it was unfair that I was playing a newer subclass because unbeknownst to me, everyone else in the campaign was playing their classes default subclass. I asked the rest of the party if it was alright and everyone said it was fine since I was the group healer, but the DM seemed annoyed and Interactions with him were pretty tense for the rest of the campaigns lifespan. I ask you: should I have relented and remade my character to match the rest of the party or was I justified in keeping my peace domain cleric the way he was? I humbly await your judgement

Jeremy Umpleby

To the Greatly Exalted Justices and Moderately Respected Bailiff: I was the DM for a Lost Mine of Phandelver module with some work friends a year or so ago. I was a new DM and wanted to learn 5E better before writing a campaign. (We were using roll20. None of us were in the same room.) At the beginning of the campaign, one of my players, a Halfling Rogue asked if he could buy some dynamite for "mining purposes," and thinking after seeing one of the monks perma-die after using the fireball spell in a small room. I let him buy it with the condition that he roll a luck check to see how old the dynamite was. He passed the luck check, so there was nothing I could do. He ended up using it responsibly, assuaging my worries, but here's the issue. Towards the end of the module my players encountered a magical flame that gave their weapons and armor +1 bonuses for a short period of time. He asked me if he could put anything in there, and I told him that as long as it was a weapon or armor it could. Later in the final fight with the BBEG he pulled out a bundle of dynamite and used it. The bad guy failed his dex throw, and my player said because of the magic flame the bundle of dynamite does 20d6 of damage and gets ready to roll. I told him that the flame doesn't work of dynamite and that if he said that he dipped his dynamite into fire, even magical fire, that it would have exploded killing everyone in the room. He argued that dynamite can be used as a weapon, and that he had been using it as a weapon since he bought it. I counter argued that a pencil could also be used as a weapon, and the flame doesn't add to the weapons damage just its likelihood of hitting its target. He begrudgingly understood and just rolled 10d6. Was I wrong, or was he? I await your merciful judgement. Here's how the module describes the Flame: Brazier of Green Flame: A successful DC 15 Intelligence (Arcana) check identifies the brazier as the source of the magic that suffuses the surrounding caverns. This magic has waned over the years, to the extent that it can no longer be harnessed to permanently enchant magic items. However, any nonmagical weapon or armor bathed in the green flame for at least 1 minute becomes a +1 weapon or +1 armor, respectively, for 1d12 hours (see Magic Items). The brazier cannot be removed from the Forge of Spells.

Josh

Dear the revered or feared Supreme Crit justices and of course the sunshiny bailiff Jake. In a fairly late game campaign our party was faced with a wizard and her slimes The wizard casts Tensers Transformation on one of the slimes which buffs it up. The fighter in the party wields a sword and swings at the slime- which is when our Dm revealed this was an Ochre Jelly which splits in 2 when hit with slashing damage. Our Dm then narrates how the two new baby slimes both absorb the magic of the Tensers transformation and so we have to fight 2 slimes with the buff I ask the Supreme Court if this seems like a fair reading of the rules of the ochre jelly, or was our fighter wrongly punked on by two buff slimes?

Brian

May it please the Justices, but not the cowardly bailiff who runs from birds... In a recent session, the finale of my first campaign as a DM, one of my players, a gunslinging Kensei monk, was involved in a 1v1 against his clone, a wizard, away from the party. This player is fairly experienced, a couple years of play, has had chronic attendance problems, is frequently late, and has a hard time getting engaged in the game. During the fight, one of my players, a rules lawyer, kept offering advice and critique to the player, and was causing this combat to creep by. The rest of the players looked visibly bored, and I interrupted the rules lawyer, saying we needed to get moving, and his interrupting was making this drag, and was killing the vibe. I also said we needed to let the Monk make his own choices, "take the training wheels off". The rules lawyer acquiesced, and the fight continued, with the player eventually triumphant. Unfortunately, I felt like the argument the rules lawyer and I had resulted in a nasty awkward silence several times during the game. I may have been a bit harsh. Justices, should I have let the rules lawyer continue to help the Monk, or was I right to try and force him to play his character his way? I await your judgment.

Magestain

Forgive me Dice Christ for I have sinned. I, the dungeon master, lied about my own natural 20. It was the first session of the campaign and our party was travelling across a rocky path on horseback. I rolled on the random encounter table and landed on a Giant Constrictor Snake (Challenge rating 2). I rolled a surprise attack and got a natural 20. I rolled max damage on the constrict attack for a total of 20 damage. Which would have killed the wizard outright. There was a very long pregnant pause as I considered what to do. "You take 4 points of bludgeoning damage." I lied. And we continued on with our campaign. I have hardly been able to roll above a 12 behind the DM screen since then, almost three years later. The entirety of my DM career has had awful rolls. I get my shit rocked every session because of my "behind the screen" curse. I beg for dice Christ's forgiveness. I'll never lie on a dice roll again, even if it's the first session and I end up TPKing a bunch of level 1 characters 30 minutes into the game we've been planning for months. Sincerely, Izu, Liar of Crits

Ben D

Dice Christ Confession: Forgive me for I have sinned, and continue to sin. In a very well designed boss fight against a warlock, my character was rolling insanely well, passing all saves and always hitting. In an effort to make the encounter more exciting, and because the DM was starting not to believe my rolls, I fudged a 17 and 18 to be 12's. After that I rolled 2 nat 20s with disadvantage. Flash forward, for weeks now I've been fudging successes to be failures and my rolling has never been higher. Am I cursed? Blessed? I feel as though I can't go back, please cleanse my soul in the light of Mother Axford, for the sake of my party and their story.

Kenna L

**resubmission, edited for brevity May it appease the empyrean judges and tickle the plebeian bailiff. I present the case of the total party kill from Grecian hell. Long story short, I played in a campaign set in Ancient Greece where our 3rd level party was TPK’ed by the god of wine. At the start of the battle we were actually winning. My DM became visibly frustrated and I (as a fellow DM) could feel the battle mechanics change. After a long drawn out slaughter, I was the last PC standing. Everyone just kinda sat quietly at the table, a bit upset or confused. I tried to stay in character and play through the awkwardness. I had my ranger surrender, beg the God for forgiveness, and I was immediately punished for worshiping a different God and lost some of my homebrew abilities (that had been given to everyone by the DM). I was then promptly beheaded. Only THEN was it revealed that we were all actually in the underworld, not permanently dead. At this point some of the PCs had been dead for over an hour irl. The mood at the table was relief and awkward laughter, but still pretty tense. My question is: was my DM wrong to fudge his stats mid battle in order to kill us all unceremoniously for plot? Or is it unfair of me to be frustrated when there was clearly good intentions behind the TPK. I await your judgment.

Wren Turner

May it please the compassionate Judge Emily, the wise Judge Murph, the insightful Judge Caldwell, and also Bailiff Jake, I present the case of the child serial killer. I was first-time DMing for my sister’s friends, all aged 16. When the party reached the first village, I mentioned that there’s some children playing in a field nearby. One of the players, a rogue, fixated on this, and, interrupting me, explained how she snuck up on a child, stuffed them in her bag of holding to die, and, unprompted, rolled a nat 20 stealth to hide what she did. I was horrified and asked “what the hell??” to which she responded that killing kids was in the backstory she refused to tell me about. Being very new to DMing and wanting to yes-and, I try to roll with it, and just keep the party away from child npcs as much as possible. For example, they find a village where, because of a Pied Piper-like incident, all the local children had disappeared, which the rogue grumbled about. However, when the party later entered a nearby large city, I had them find a wanted poster of the rogue for her apparent child murdering backstory (which she still refused to elaborate on). She flipped out and accused me of lashing out at her character choices by “retaliating” like this, and a few other players agreed with her. So I ask you, have I done wrong by my child-killing rogue for giving child murder consequences? My table is beginning to convince me so, and I humbly await your verdict.

Scott

I would like to confess a sin to the one true dice christ as witnessed by the infallible supreme crit bishops and the hunky alter boy Jake. As a new-ish dm I run a game for my wife and 2 brothers and we all agreed not to be too serious with things and just to have fun. I gave them a dmpc healbot in a dwarven cleric named Stumbles since there were no healers in the party. During a climactic boss battle a crazed sorcerer caused a cave to collapse making the party flee down a long tunnel. The party was separated with Stumbles and a fighter far behind when my brothers necromancy wizard was hit by falling rocks and knocked down followed by him crit failing a death save. My wife's rogue tried to stabilize him with a medicine check but failed. Stumbles and the fighter weren't going to make it to the wizard in time and Stumbles was out of spell slots. The wizard failed their last death save. Everyone was quiet and my brother seemed upset by this. He had put a lot of himself in his character. To make him feel special I had planned the next arc of our journey around his wizard. So here is my sin. I announced that Stumbles had one more first level spell slot that I had missed and should have used his last turn. Healing word would reach the downed wizard and bring him back. Nobody protested. They were just happy to keep playing. As penance I feel I need to sacrifice my cleric. My players need to learn to walk on their own without my help. It's the hardest lesson a parent has to learn. I prostrate myself before your holy judgement. I pray it is swift.. Love/from Scott.

David Heintz

May it please the Court, Two years ago, our party of four (level 3s) encountered a philosophers-stone style potion puzzle with 5 different-coloured potions, one of which opened the doorway we needed to continue. A confusing poem handed to us was the key to which potion but we were stumped! After 20 mins irl, we just start drinking potions. The Fighter drinks one randomly, he gets a stat bonus. My Goliath named Gurth drank one at the end. A black one. Without asking "Are you sure you want to do this?", my DM looks at me chuckling and goes "You're dead." Offered no saving throws. Nothing. He points to the poem and it reads "At the edge lies death", "Therefore, Gurth just dies". Apparently the two black potions at each end were insta-death potions which he had planned. DnD Court, is this fair of the DM to do? Instant death at level 2 on our 5th session?? At our time of need and confusion, our DM just left us out to dry? Then brutally poisoned me? Credit to Michael M.

VMEArcana (Very Much Earthed Arcana)

May it please the court and the likable bailiff that I can’t find in my heart to rag on. This is the case of the incorrect cantrip. I was playing my first modern one-shot for my D&D podcast (which makes my mistake even more embarrassing). My player, a coffee fueled high school Warlock of the undying patron (re-flavored as the Unresting patron), was in the middle of the final encounter for the one-shot. Following clues I was making up on the spot, the teen sleuths ended up in the basement of the Pride Pines cleaner factory. Where a Fey-wild Demon killed the owner of the factory that infected them with toxic waste. After a few rounds of an spooky encounter with a Feywild Demon covered in toxic waste and tendrils from its back with human skulls (centaur and a few imps mechanically) the player Duncan Saxby had an audacious move to run to the center of the fight, between the demon and our Warfordged Paladin, and casts thunderstep! Bringing down half of the bosses hp. And counting on our Paladin to make the constitution saving throw (which he did). But the problem was from character creation. Duncan was a level 4 Warlock with Thunderstep as a cantrip. There was miscommunication with a) the website we use where I put things in manually, I goofed up and put Thunderstep in as a cantrip instead of a spell. And b) I though Warlock’s Pact of the Tome was choosing spells to become cantrip, like some Eldritch Invocations, instead of just choosing cantrip from other classes. The real problem is that now that I know what the mistake was… I don’t really want to fix it. I can’t have Thunderstep be a cantrip of course, but having a big spell once a fight really helps the pacing and is always really fun to see your players to a cool move. We’re already homebrewing a warlock patron, so I’ll explain as that. But this is where I need guidance from all of those from the honorable court. The best I have is a level of exhaustion after calling upon the powers of a caffeine fiend of a patron. But I would love to hear a less harsh alternative for a strong move that my players enjoy. Or would love to hear if I just need to walk back the move for now and get him Thunderstep the right way after a few levels. I await the order of the court.

Steve Daw

May it please the court of esteemed justices, and the Baliff who is also there: I present The Case of the Early Bird Brigade. My party and I are currently in a maze on the Feywilds, and got split up searching for an enchanted mask. Long story short, I ended up finding the mask by myself, where it was being worn by a catatonic child who was guarded by a witch. I decided to try and take it, and my DM asked me to roll initiative. I got a 20, the witch got a 16. In my first move, I grabbed the child using Bigby’s Hand, and then used my full movement to run the opposite direction with the hand just behind me. On the witch’s turn, she upcast Conjure Animals to summon 16 giant owls to attack me. The DM rolled initiative for the owls and they got an 18 as a group, meaning I was next in the order. However, the DM said that he had a home brew rule that allowed summoned creatures to immediately take a turn after being summoned — I protested, saying that my character had used summon and conjure spells multiple times before and this rule was never brought up. He said it was his mistake for not mentioning this rule before and that I would get to benefit from it in the future, but insisted that the owls would get to go next. I was annoyed, but I begrudgingly agreed. On their turn, all 16 owls attacked me twice, lowering me to 3 hp and forcing me to give up the fight or be potentially instakilled if I moved on my turn. I gave in and went to go reunite with my party, but I’m still kinda pressed about this ruling since I could’ve used other magic to get away had I been given my turn. Was the DM wrong for suddenly instituting this rule, or am i just being bitter? I await your judgement with the utmost humility.

Casey Fenton

If it may please the court and pleasure the bailiff, I present the case of the Character Stealing DM. We’ve been running a campaign of three of us plus the DM for about six months. The DM was new but it was a supportive group and we were making it work. Unfortunately, one of the players had to drop out for unrelated reasons. We all agreed to give this character a farewell session and continue the campaign without them. The departing player ended up sacrificing themselves in a great dramatic moment for us to defeat a long standing big bad necromancer. It was sad but a satisfying end to their story. A week later, however, in our next session, the DM’s first action was for the enemy Necromancer to resurrect the departed players character. It was declared this character was now an undead zombie. We were confused as players but proceeded on in the session thinking it was just a one-off story. It escalated quickly and by the end of the three hours the zombie had developed the ability to speak and was basically the same former character but now with undead special abilities (such as eating corpses) and being played as an NPC by the DM. We told the departed player about this and they were furious. They felt their character was hijacked and it was destroying their already resolved story. They told the DM they disapproved and the response was “You aren’t in the game anymore so it isn’t your character anymore.” Where does the court stand on DMs taking control of player characters in this way? I humbly wait your ruling and always justified punishment.

Draxen01

May it please the court and the illustrious bailiff, I present the case of the Lost Roc Run. I run a Greek inspired minor homebrew campaign. My players recently arrived back to a burning town they had grown attached to, trying to save it and in the background I was rolling for a Roc to approach the the town and scoop an important enemy NPC away that they were currently fighting. Upon arriving, one player used charmed monster being from the Cult of Dionysus, to make the Roc fight for them. I explained after an arcana check that this Roc was already under a 7th level deepend Mind Control spell and it would be nearly impossible to take away the control of a powerful creature under a higher level spell. I compromised to let the Roc roll at advantage and a higher DC and rolled two 1's. The party was happy but my NPC was now trapped and would later take away from a good player moment. I think I did the right thing giving them a chance but should I have put my foot down and said that the Roc would not have been able to be charmed under mind control? I await your thoughts and punishment wherever it may take you.

Kevin Wixom

To the Honorable Justices and Bailiff Jake, this is more a question than a case, but I'd love your advice. Is it OK to kill a PC during a session zero? To clarify, it was my PC that was killed. We are playing a very dark, violent story similar to the Metro video games in theme, and for session zero, we did a "simulation" skirmish against zombies in an enclosed arena as a training exercise. Long story short, my fighter with a flamethrower got in 1 round of attacks before being completely swarmed and killed. The other players and I ended up laughing so hard they almost died just trying to get away. Now, this DM is usually a player (I tend to DM), and he's known for crazy builds and dark backgrounds so it's not surprising the difficulty level of this campaign. I'm just curious how you all would handle that as a DM? Clearly the PC I made didn't cut the mustard and our solution was a "Universal Soldier" plan where my PC came back as a cyborg construct with some upgrades, but I can imagine another player being very hurt at something like that happening. Our group shook it off as a fun experience, but a lot of that is knowing the DM as well as we do. I could imagine it feeling personal to target a player like that, especially so early on.

David N

May it please the court and the beautiful bailiff Jake, I'm in a relatively new campaign (about 5 sessions maybe) and the DM did some exposition, told us about these powerful, magical items to save the world, blah blah blah, and we ended up with one right there. A few of us tried to use it, but it would only work for the fairy in the group. We accepted it as some weird attunement problem and let it be. But as we learned more it seems like ALL of the items will only be usable by fairies, so only the one PC will be able to use any of the powerful items we're traveling the world for which 1 is kinda a buzzkill, and 2 makes the one player feel more like the main character which isn't very fun either. Do i tough it out for a while, and trust that my DM is smarter than we are? Do i roll a new character and try to become a fairy just so i can use the cool items we keep hearing about? Or do we as a party let the fairy PC die just to make the DM flounder a bit in trying to find a way to make us able to use them? I patiently await your judgments

Hunter Ives

We need official “Keep it brief, i implore you” merch on the naddpod store lmao

Kenna L

A Dice Christ Confessional I prostrate myself before the esteemed judges, bailiff Josh, and the Christ of Dice himself to beg forgiveness. I tried to murder one of my PCs that I absolutely hated, and in turn accidentally killed an innocent one… Long story short I ran a campaign that was essentially a holy war and with the intention of plot development, my party saw an infamous high level enemy at a distance. I think that they will probably run, and they do. Except for my abhorrent pacifist PC who decides to engage. He tries to reason with the enemy to stop the war by insulting the competency of her father (the BBEG) and I see a rare blessed opportunity to insta kill this mofo…. In an attempt at fairness, I role to see how badly the baddie reacts to the insult, and I roll a nat 1. With unabashed glee, I unleash a cone of cold at my highest level spell slot… and in my hubris I forget that there is one other PC in range. An innocent caught in the crossfire of my apoplexy. The pacifist makes his saving throw, goes down but survives…. and my other PC fails and is insta killed. I am guilt ridden to this day. Dice Christ forgive me, I took an innocent life.

Stephanie Karisny

May it please the Court and the most excellent Bailiff, Jake - A few sessions ago we planted a magic bean that grew into a nest of 7 magic eggs. Basically, someone who eats an egg has to make a DC 20 CON save. If they make it they get a bump to their lowest stat, if they don't, they take 10d6 force damage from "an internal magical explosion." With some mayonnaise from the alchemy jug and some spices from Heward's handy spice pouch my PC naturally turned these magic eggs into magic deviled eggs. The problem is our DM has so far not allowed me to try and force an enemy to eat an egg in combat saying basically that I couldn't force someone to swallow an egg in a single round. Honorable Justices, do the 5e combat mechanics permit my PC to force feed magical deviled eggs to my enemies on my turn? I await your ruling.

Matty N.

May it please the court and the highly respected baliff. I'm usually relagated to the DM position, so I was elated when I was offered a chance to be a player in a different group. I have a habit of playing characters who try to keep the party on the straight and narrow, so this time I figured I'd have some fun and play something more akin to a heel wrestler. Not outright evil, but will go along with shenanigans the party may get into. Fastforward to the party having to break the leader of a thieves guild out of prison before they would be publically executed, and our party's Monk decides the plan would be to steal a bunch of bombs from the armory and set them off around town as a diversion, clarifying that they would try to purposefully kill civilians. I seemed to be the only person in the party strongly against this plan, and we ended up going with a good old fashioned jail break. Was I right to object to this plan, or should I have just been silent as we blew up the town?

Peter Mundell

If it may please the court (I assume it won’t and may likely anger the court), Years ago, I was in a campaign where our party was often allowed to do whatever we wanted, regardless of the rules. When our party of four was only level 6, our DM, tired of “getting whomped”, brought out a Kraken for us to fight. After a full session of this fight, our DM told us the Kraken still had over 700 hp. I started complaining this was absolutely insane, and unwinnable, but the DM and even my fellow players said it would be fine. At the start of the next session, I continued mentioning my discomfort and belief that this was too much, and our DM finally cut the Kraken’s HP in half. After another full session, and many rules broken, we won, and not long after, the campaign fell apart and I found new friends to play with. But judges, I implore you: was I really THAT out of line believing that four level 6’s couldn’t beat a Kraken? Or does the fact that we won anyways prove that we would have been fine?

Peter Mundell

For context if wanted: some of the combat rules that were broken included: 1. All cantrips were bonus actions 2. Multi-attack meant multi-action, meaning my paladin could take two attacks or he could take a dash action and one attack 3. Your reaction was not limited to “reactions”, it was essentially a second, shorter turn It should also be brought up that our DM had never once used legendary actions, lair actions, legendary resistances, or even multi-attack.

Arthur

To the heavenly Justices and the bailiff from jake & Amir, I present the case of the gun slingers crit & crit failure In our campaign I play as a Kenku gun slinger called Vanta Spectralon. At the start of our session we levelled up to level 5 so I could now as a fighter have two attacks per action. During our combat encounter in this session I decided to just roll both attacks at once. Dice Christ & The Dice Devil both did their work. One dice rolled a nat 20 but the other a nat 1. For the dramatics of it I read out “Nat 1 AND a Nat 20” but then my DM ruled that because I said Nat 1 first my gun would misfire and I wouldn’t get my Nat 20 attack. I didn’t argue to much but was bummed out. My question to the court is was my DMs ruling fair? Should I have lost my Nat 20? Or should it have been played some way that I got the Nat 20 and a misfire in one?

Nathaniel Boyett

May it please the court and yeah I guess the Bailiff too, I present to you the case of "the Crit that bit back". I play a rogue in a high level campaign that my friends and I started a couple months back. A few weeks ago, after being confronted by a harbor master about the docking fee for our ship, I rolled a sleight of hand check to steal from him and then pay the fee with his own money. I crit, which, with modifiers and the gloves of thievery, became a 40. The DM interrupted me and then described how I not only stole the money, but completely undressed him without him noticing. Last session, when we went back to our ship, we were confronted by a new harbor master with an armed guard who explained that we needed to still pay the docking fee because they knew that I had stolen the money from the last harbor master because I had undressed him in front of everyone. I ask, should I have been punished for a 40 on a sleight of hand roll because of how the DM described me doing it or was he just trying to find a way for us to not avoid paying again.

Harecule Poirot, the Rabbitfolk Detective

May it please the Court, and Amir's friend. I present to you the case of the “campaign that went down the pipes”. I play a monthly game through my local game store, and the most recent campaign had us stopping the resurrection of an avatar of death. I, taking some light inspiration from Moonshine, created a Tortle Circle of Spores Druid who was big and beefy enough to serve as a large tank, while also being able dole out healing in the form of magic mushrooms. Completely independent of me, another player created a bard plumber named Mario, got a familiar named Yoshi, and RPed in the Mario voice. I made an off-hand joke about Mario teaming up with pseudo-Bowser and taking mushrooms to save the kingdom. This led to the campaign quickly devolving into us fighting koopas, gumbas, and a variety of other classic Mario foes across a series of castles, ending in a lava dungeon fighting a giant Bowser. While the DM is making it work and has built a lot of fun sprites, the series of campaigns in this setting that he was running is ending, and I can’t help but feel we are at fault for our shennanigans. I await your mercy.

Ihatecrabz

To the completely unbiased and unpurchasable Supreme Crit, this is the case of the Deadliest Character Introduction This was my first time properly joining any tabletop rpg and had already fallen in love with the idea from amazing dnd podcasts out there (Ahem, Naddpod, Dimension 20). This wasn't using Dnd but instead a popular Pokémon system and was set in a dark souls esque fantasy world. One of my favorite hobbies is Character design so I was already having fun coming up with ideas from the prompt, and came up with something I was really proud of. I had to wait a few sessions after getting in to be introduced into the party but after a long wait I got my time to join. Once I saw the party I had thought a way to get in was to offer to be their guide in this locale I'm very used too, however I was immediately threatened by the resident DM PC who saw me without even making a check against my Stealth roll. Immediately the DM PC states to give a reason why they shouldn't kill me on sight, which threw me back a bit. This was my first time playing and was told that there wouldn't even be combat, the DM PC could kill me in an instant. I did my best to keep my head and tried using my good Deception to offer a card game for my life where I would cheat. The Dm accepted, but made it clear I wouldn't be able to cheat very well because this guy was too good. I had to really plead my case and got a small bonus, which just barely let me win in the contested roll and live. I later learned that the DM had a very specific plan for how that would go down, and apparently the only reason I almost died was because I didn't play my character like he thought I would, and that the npc's whole thing is killing people of my characters faction on sight Am I wrong to be peeved by this character introduction and that I now feel I was punished for playing a character I was excited for, or should I have accepted my characters fate whatever it may have been. If my case is deemed worthy I humbly await judgement

Tori

As a bonus point, the final boss fight lasted two rounds and my new character neither dealt nor received a single point of damage.

Alec Posta

May it please the court, and their consistently solid baliff. I was recently running a 1-shot for a group and during a tense final battle the big bad was down to 2 health but took down the final player. This was ok, because I like to make fights intentionally harder with a "plan B" in mind for if they TPK (in this case, the enemy revived the players, but put them under it's powerful charm, setting the stage for a second 1-shot down the road.) The problem is that in my excitement to reveal the surprise twist, I forgot about the player's beast companion, who easily could have downed the boss with one final attack. Someone did bring it up later, and no one seemed particularly peeved about the situation but I didn't want to backtrack and potentially have a circumstance where all the players AND the boss were dead, thus robbing them of a chance at later redemption. Was I justified in twisting fate for the long-term satisfaction of the party, or should I have delivered a bittersweet, critter-based victory. I eagerly await your judgement.

Adrian Garcia

May it please the court, the supreme crit justices and bailiff Jake! I am a PC in my friend's homebrew world! Full of political intrigue, great narrative, and 5 other PC's - so we are a slightly bigger group. I come to you for some social advice and hopefully some creative tips to help navigate MAIN CHARACTER ENERGY. One of our PC's suffers from acute MC energy!! They continually monologue, tells the worst jokes on repeat until we (in character) respond, failed to heal a downed party member to do a guiding bolt instead - essentially having a part in that PC's death, actually attacked my character for some damage, on their phone, and on top of it all - the complete inability to "yes and..." so RP isn's really happening unless they initiate it. We have tried outside of the game to give them tips, advice on how to RP, how to use action economy, and has gotten to the point where we have to use RP to interrupt his monologues and his main character energy. Truly makes playing not as fun or not fun at all. Everyone is on the same page and I wish it could be as simple as giving him the boot, but he is a long time friend, and lives with the DM and I :,) Please help!! xoxo, Adrian PS - keep an eye out for some dice christ holy symbols i've been working on ;)

Stems137

May it please the court, and the lowly bailiff Jake. I was playing in a new campaign with some mutual friends. On a routine sweep of a dungeon my character, a half elf rogue opened a door, and the dm described the room as being mostly bare, except for a chest across the room. My curiosity was piqued, so I entered the room cautiously to open the chest, and made my intentions known to the table. Upon reaching the "chest" I was made to roll a dexterity save for a saw blade trap springing from the wall. Turns out the "chest" I was going to open was a dismembered human torso. The trap took away a large portion of my low level characters health. I argued that if I had known that it was a torso I wouldn't have been so keen on opening it, but the dm maintained that he gave a fair description. I'm still bitter about this and it's been a handful of years since it happened. I look forward to receiving justice for this most heinous act.

Michael Dawson

May it please the inexorable court and the humble yet crafty Bailiff Jake, I bring to you the case of the Drowned Fairy. My players had launched a mostly successful assault on a keep that was controlled by pirate cultists. One of the pirates managed to slip out from the battle and, in true pirate fashion, attempted to flee by commandeering the players' ship. The players gave chase, but due to poor swimming speeds, were having trouble catching the ship. The Fairy Rogue, who could fly, decided to confront the pirate by herself and try to stop the ship so the others could catch up. The Fairy attacked the pirate with a crossbow while in the air. I had him respond by casting Sleep on her. He outrolled her HP, and I said that as she couldn't maintain flight while asleep, she would plummet down into the water and take 50 feet of falling damage. The Fairy was immediately KO'd and began drowning. The other players weren't able to reach her before she failed her Death Saves and died. The pirate also escaped with their ship. My players all felt this was incredibly unfair, as I had killed a PC with, in their opinion, no opportunity for counterplay. I argued that it wasn't a guarantee the pirate would outroll her HP with sleep or that the fall damage would be enough to KO her, and that since the Rogue had chosen to confront the pirate alone and chosen to position herself high in the air over the water in a failed attempt to outrange potential counterattacks, the death was, while harsh, the result of bad luck and poor decision making. Was it wrong of me to do this? I await your judgement and whatever hilarious, slightly macabre punishment you deem appropriate.

Zachary Hill

May it please the court, the church, the cave, and every other institution you all represent where Jake still somehow ranked lower than you, I present a genuine query: when does D&D become copyright infringement? I’m learning how to be a DM, and my ideal first campaign is a breath of the wild inspired world. In my head it’s perfect for fleshing out the world slowly if players have amnesia and perfect for building fun random encounters with monsters. But is it wrong to more or less copy and paste names, character descriptions, topography? You all have discussed your influences before: final fantasy, the Witcher, even reading Dante’s Inferno. Is there a line you feel gets crossed between taking inspiration and just taking? What if someone said “I love NADDPod so much, I want to run a Buhumia campaign featuring everything from the frigid north and moonstone to green teens and Pendergreens?” What are your thoughts? I avail myself to punishment should this escalate, and I’ve listened to this podcast for years, so it probably will.

Jo Skårderud

To the elevated Justices and the downtrodden Bailiff Jake. After listening to Naddpod I recently started playing D&D again after 20 years. I'm DMing for my wife and two daughters, six and nine years old. We are having great fun as a familiy , but a complication has arisen. My six-year old, playing a halfling arcane trickster rouge, keep adopting my monsters. Instead of killing them, she beats them within an inch of their life, and force them on threat of death to become part of their merry band. They now have two goblins , "Scab" and "Eczema," and a bandit, "Bob-Morton" as, basically, slaves. They also have four wolves as pets. She's named them Snarlkitty, Little Pillow, Papa-Bear and Furball. Mechanically I've fixed it so that the slaves and pets don't participate in combat, except in special circumstances. The problem is that I can never get rid of any of these hangers on, as my youngest daughter, and increasingly my wife and older child, is forming meaningful and close relationships with their adopted friends. I'm afraid she'll keep adopting more and more colorful companions, eventually turning the band into a horde. Have I done wrong? Should I have put my fot down on the first sign of her adopting a goblin? Should I, from now on, confront her with the dog eat dog-reality of Faerun? Or, should I let her keep thinking that a monster is just a friend you haven't beaten to a pulp and forced to hang out with you - and see where this goes? I leave myself at the your mercy.

Jackie

Does Dice Christ demand a sacrifice for my sins? My brothers and sisters in Dice Christ, I beseech you to consider and cast judgment upon the case of the “Damnations Dice”. For context, I am a DM in one game (known as the adventure gang) and also a player in another game (known as the adventure mafia) Early in the campaign I was running, my party had an encounter with a young green dragon (hereafter called YGD) which tried to fly away as it began to lose the fight. My party chased after it and due to some unlucky rolls, the entire party besides one character went down. The YGD was about to finish off the last character with a claw attack and rolled an 18 on its attack. The character’s AC was 18 and the YGD would have done enough damage to kill the character. However, due to fear of a TPK early on I fudged the roll, telling the party that the YGD rolled a 17. The party cheered, the character was able to administer health potions, and the YGD was quickly defeated. Six months later and I have noticed that my rolls have been chaotic. My party faced off against the BBEG of the campaign arc and once again, everyone except for one player was down. The player was able to defeat the BBEG in the nick of time and the party survived but I did roll four nat 20’s in a row against my party. This is just one instance of me rolling exceptionally well against a party that, for all intents and purposes, technically shouldn’t be alive. In the other game in which I am a player, I rolled 3 nat 1’s in a row while in combat and given that we use fumble charts for critical failures and successes, Thomas was close to death. I have been unlucky since the beginning of the campaign (Thomas having gone down in combat four or five times at only level 3) and it only seems to get worse, so I ask, is Dice Christ asking for a sacrifice? Must I destroy my precious character to save my party?

CommodoreGalaxy

Hello, I seek the wisdom of the Dice Christ clergy in interpretation of a wild dice event. My partner runs a game for several of her friends and I. Right before our last session she told us to bare with them because they had done very little prep and were trying to "shoot from the hip" for the first time. We were fine with it and started session. The party preceded to, within 15 minutes, roll upwards of 6 natural 20s back to back. By the end of the 1-2 hour session we had rolled more than ten 20s. What could this mean? Is it an omen? How should we interpret it? Thank you for your time.

RickDaddy

May it please the court, the venerable Bailiff, and hopefully entertain everyone’s favorite table top tyrant, Justice Murphy. I recently ran a high-magic, high-powered, level 20 one shot for one of my Player’s birthdays. I had them fighting a “family” of blue dragons, split into 2 encounters. In the first one, the bard, whose birthday it was, casts polymorph on one of the young dragons attacking their airship. The dragon failed the save and he says “cool, he’s a chicken now.” I said okay, but since chickens can fly, he won’t outright die, but he definitely can’t keep up with the ship, so as long as you maintain concentration for long enough for him to hit the ground(I ruled 5 rounds), he’ll still be out of initiative.” This caused an argument about the flight capabilities of chickens, and ended with him saying “well fuck it, then I’ll just rip off Emily entirely, he’s a dolphin instead.” Then later when fighting the Blue Greatwyrm, the party had burned all its legendary resistances, he casts polymorph on it again, turns it into *another* chicken. Then tells the party’s archer to take it out. The archer does so and hits and deals 11 damage on the first attack. This drops the chicken(2hp) to 0, but since it was polymorphed, I ruled that it reverted back to a dragon. He argued that since the attack dealt more than twice the creatures HP, that it was just insta-dead, similar to power word kill on a polymorphed creature. In the moment I changed my ruling because it was his birthday, and he had expressed that he wasn’t really enjoying the character he built for the one-shot. So, honorable Justice’s and most esteemed bailiff, was I wrong in either of my rulings? And should I rule differently in the future should this come up in a full on campaign? ****extra info if needed**** In the first encounter there were 2 young blue dragons and 1 adult, most players were focusing on the adult and ignoring the young-ins. In the second fight there was a blue Greatwyrm and an Ancient Blue Dragon, by the time the bard polymorphed the Greatwyrm, they had dealt over 1300 total damage to the two dragons, and the ancient dragon had fled, causing the sandstone cave they were in to begin to fill with sand. The Greatwyrm still had around ~150 HP before it hit 0, at which point it would have entered a second phase and regained 2/3 of its health. This is why I ruled that it died from the archer attack, as the player whose birthday it was, was no longer having fun, and didn’t want to have 2-3 more hours of playing his character.

SwagDog85

To the animal loving justices and “complicated” relationship status of the bailiff, I would like to present the case of “My familiar is a… Demilich!” I’ve been playing for 3 years in a local Dungeons and Dragons group at a comic book shop. One day our DM couldn’t be there and I was given a chance to run a oneshot that later became a campaign after the current DM had to step down. I noticed that when given the new charters who would be switched out during the transition a player would be changing to a Warlock with Pact of the Chain. This player wanted a familiar that was much more flexible than written in the Player’s Handbook. I’m a rules lawyer and to make it fair I wrote up a magic item that would transform this player’s familiar into any tiny creature they wanted. As such the familiar had many odd forms, with the player favoring a parasite to nauseate guards. I was okay with these unusual forms the familiar had until three sessions ago. During the preamble of the boss fight, the Warlock looked to their familiar and transformed him to a demilich. The fight was over before it even started. To avoid this happening again, I tried to say that the familiar was given so much power and broke free from the magic that binds fey to their mages. This familiar was free in the world and soon to be their new BBEG. Most of the party looked excited about this change in baddies except the Warlock who was distraught. I told them as we wrapped for the session that they could get a new familiar before the next session but I cannot allow a group of level 5 PCs to have a demilich in their pocket. They told me, “Why did I give them this ability to turn their familiar into any tiny creature, if they were going to take it away from them.” So my question to the court is do I deserve punishment for taking abilities away from my players or did I handle the situation appropriately? Thank you for your time and I shall follow any punishment deemed upon me.

Karina Mena

Y'all we are in a supremely difficult situation involving good friends and opposite playstyles!! We are in a story of 4 people (3 players, 1DM) and 3 of us seem to be on the same page. We value party play, group decision making, and acting with a bit of humor. Our esteemed 4th person has decided, post pre-game conversations, that he is taking his roleplaying to an un-fun, un-collaborative extreme. Every situation that we encounter in game leads to them stunting any progress and they are being unyieldingly rude to NPCs and PCs, while using the guise: "That's how my character would react." We have tried to address the issue in character - with no result. One player spoke to them in person - with no result. And the players have addressed it to the DM who did nothing and said we should resolve any personal issues (to which there aren't any outside of the game). Your Legal advice is humbly requested in this matter. P.S. Help, please!

Jon Gravina

May it please the court (and Jake) - In last week's session of "Curse of Strahd," we were exploring a winery. My character is Diesel, the Warforged "Path of the Ancestral Guardians" Barbarian, who summons the spirits of his fallen allies, Jesse, Vince, and Leon to aid him in battle. He also may or may not have a boombox that appears out of his body to blast "See You Again" when he enters his rage. But I digress - I have missed a few sessions over the past few months due to the birth of my second child, so when I am there, I try to make up for lost time by doing some outlandish shit, such as collecting haunted teeth, chugging demon ichor, and in this particular case, licking the brown mold. I did not want to metagame and look up the effects of agitated brown mold, so suffice it to say we were surprised when it exploded for 8d8 damage to anyone caught in the radius (we are currently Level 4). The only person unlucky enough to be caught in the explosion was Dilly, our gnome Wizard, played by one of my best friends for the last twenty years. Dilly was hit for 44 damage, but had a max HP of 22. You can see where this is going. Luckily, he was saved from permadeath by two remaining temp HP. Theoretically, the secondary effect of the brown mold, losing max HP equal to the damage dealt until your next long rest, should have killed him on the spot, but our DM is a benevolent deity and let him out with 1 HP and a max of 1 HP until our next rest. We are currently working on his backup character just in case. I know the excuse of "well, that's what my character would do," is kind of bullshit, but I really had no nefarious intentions and felt horribly afterwards. He has put a lot of time and effort into roleplaying this character, including perfecting an accent and the self-proclaimed title of "America's Favorite Wizard." Was I wrong to lick the mold without knowing it would have killed my friend? Should I stop going around licking random shit? I await your judgement and am prepared to send Diesel to space with Ludacris and Tyrese as atonement.

Stephen Power

May it please the venerable court and the veiny bailiff, I present the case of the flavorful feather token: I DM a game for my wife and 2 others, and the campaign is about 70% roleplay, 30% combat as we like to play rule-of-cool for the most part. My wife's firbolg druid found the "bird" version of a Quaal's Feather Token, which allowed her to summon a bird "with the statistics of a Roc" for essentially a free high speed taxi ride around the world. However, despite there being plenty of traveling in the campaign, she never used the token. We discovered later that she had thought that the bird would have the statistics of a "ROCK", and therefore would be too heavy to fly and basically useless. While I told her she could have a giant bird friend, she now insists that she wants a useless stone chickadee to drag itself around after the party. I love the idea and the absurdity, but hesitate to bring such a cursed creature into the world. Justices, I submit myself before your judgment.

Zach Brown

May it please the glorious judges Axeford, Murphy, Tanner as well as Jake. I present you case of the Overpowered monk. After listening to a crown of candy on D20 I was intrigued by Zach’s character and made my own monk with the path of the long death. One of the abilities Touch of Death allows me to add 5hp plus my lvl (lvl8) every time I kill something. Needless to say my DM put a bunch of weenie ememies in front of me and I occurred enough health to put me over 240hp (starting is 131 with some werewolf abilities mixed in). I was then able to 1v1 a swamp hydra and it seemed to annoy my other players at the table cause I wouldn’t go down? Am I using this ability wrong or am I just using this ability to it’s full potential? I await your dreadful punishment.

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.

Dangerously Dave

To the Judges... and Jake I guess, I present the case of the Avernus Aversion. I am a new DM and have been running Wild Beyond the Witchlight on my lunch break once a week for most of this year. One of my players approached me with the monster manual, and asked if I could run a second campaign with Demons and Devils with some other new players. I didn't know much about it, but I loved the enthusiasm so obliged. Unfortunately I've been finding my Fey stuff slowly leaking in. I had a rough outline of how we end up in Avernus, and we started in a swamp fighting skeletons and zombies. However my players are very goofy/creative so I keep accidentally adding in weird and silly NPCs and Monsters (like a Dog wearing a cowboy hat with a sword in his mouth, or a grumpy cyclops with talking goat sidekick). My players absolutely love this stuff, so I've been encouraged to keep doing it. Its ending up pretty much in tone like the original campaign. Everyone seems to be having fun, but I feel like the player who asked is essentially in two fey wild type campaigns now. Am I at fault for accidentally turning my gritty devils campaign into a campaign that is secretly the plot of Shrek? I humbly submit to judgment. PS! I am a middle school teacher and my players are students, so they probably are too young to have seen Shrek. Not sure if it's relevant.

Tom

Forgive me dice Christ for I have sinned! May the the quire boys sing and allow the heavens to hear my regret and be forgiven by dice Christ and once again be one with the men and women of the church. About a month ago I played my last dnd session for a while. I’ve been in a campaign with a group of friends for about 6 months but just recently I’ve got a job opportunity where I am away from home for about 4 months and my last session was quite an emotional one, leaving the party and all. There were lots of fun moments in the session that gave my character a fun and emotional send off, but during the combat of the session, after describing an epic backflip where I pulled an arrow from my quiver mid-flip and stared down the final enemy standing, likely to be my last chance to attack and hit for about 4 months, I rolled a 6. However, when the dice landed it had stopped within a crowd of other dice sitting inside my dice tray and without hesitation I grabbed the dice and said it was cocked, quickly rolling again and hitting a natural 20! Since it was my last session I wasn’t being conservative with my equipment and after unloading everything I had at level 4 and hitting a crit I not only did the most damage my party had seen in the whole campaign so far, but I did 69 total damage! One of the players next to me had seen the original roll and we were both aware of it, however we stayed quiet about it. And now months later I wonder if I will be punished upon returning to the table, will I be cursed by the dice devil? So please, as I come to the high priests and priestess of the church I ask that they please scrub the blood from my hands and guide me to the path of Christ’s light, Thank you.

dh

Honorable Justices and esteemed bailiff. My client, a halfling circle of wildfire druid, was traveling up a mountain in Icewind Dale when the party spotted an avalanche. Unable to determine how long they had before impact and knowing that he and two gnomes in the party were unlikely to dash the width of the hurdling snow in time he decided to cast flaming sphere and hunker behind it. On their turns both gnomes chose to depend on the sphere for protection as well. However, as the snow reached the party the defendant, an otherwise fantastic DM, informed the party that the sphere would have no affect at all on the avalanche, dex saves would be rolled flat and damage would be taken in full. And so I ask, is it fair to decide that 65 cubic feet of magical fire would be completely ignored by an avalanche? Or should the snow have been bisected by the spell as my client had imagined it?

Ammon the Average

Honorable Justices and the damn fine bailiff, may it please the court: I have been running a grimdark no revivify campaign for about a year now, my players have gone from level 3 to 10 over the course of this time and only 2 PCs have died, Until last Friday. A cavalcade of errors led to a PC making death saves and eventually failing them. I shouldnt have felt bad, our gloomstalker assassin fighter decided to romance and then betray some sky pirates and attacked them from only a few feet away with a crossbow. But it was his first session back after a long hiatus and while despondently parsing out items to the party members who got their moments too late he remembered he had a luck coin and asked if he could retroactively use it for his last death save, i said yes and he passed and his character didnt die and my somber dm eulogy was for naught, but now I think I was too merciful, did I betray the stakes of my own campaign by allowing him to re roll that save? I leave myself to the mercy of the birds.

BassToad

Hello judges! and Bailiff... Our DM forced us to do a combat that should have just been a cutscene. We entered a cave that was way too big because our DM has a huge battle map and he likes to use the entire thing. So this 200 foot long cave has a staircase of difficult terrain that is about half the length of the cave. After spending an entire combat fighting two Harpies and using dash actions to get 100 feet up the stairs, we encounter our foe, inside a wall of force casting a spell. We're only level 4! We can't get through the wall. We can't stop him from casting this spell to transform kids into more harpies. So we just sit there and let him cast the spell. As our party slowly realized that we couldn't do anything except yell at the wizard inside the dome of force, I just had this feeling of just "whelp I can't do shit here. This isn't fun" And then at the end he just leaves. Our DM thinks this is ok. I felt extremely discouraged. Judges, should our DM just made this a Cutscene? Or was it ok that it was an encounter that took a good chunk of time to drag our way through?

Victoria Page

To the most lofty of judges and also to Jake, may it please the court, I bring the case of a player/DM alliance. I was a player in a game of 5e where the accused player used his sway with the DM, who was his sister, to create a character none of the other players were allowed to know anything about. This character was chaotic evil and regularly ruined our fights by trying to kill us when we "hurt" the people who were attacking us. We were not allowed to know this players race, class, skills or even their name. Once I deduced that the character was a halfling as they rerolled their 1, and I was told I was "not allowed" to know this or act on this information. The DM banned us rolling perception or insight checks on this character and would regularly make us leave sessions so that she could role-play "secret" storylines with him. I ask you, how much is it fair to hide from your PCs - especially when it comes to other PCs? Can you ban perception checks if they will ruin the story? Justice, I implore you!!

Chris E.

May it please the gorgeous court and the average bailiff. I bring to you the case of the Players Handbook rule vs the DM house rules. After, playing my Paladin for 3 months I finally crit in battle! I told the DM I was going to use a Divine Smite, thinking that damage would double as well, but the DM said that I could only double my melee weapon’s damage and not my smite’s. He ruled that any damage done that consumes a spell slot does not get to double because of a crit. I didn’t want to slow down combat, so I just agreed so we could move on but I ask you is it ok for a DM’s house rule to override what is in the player’s handbook?? I await your judgement

DOOFINIUS

If it would please the esteemed and wise court, and i suppose bailiff jake i present a case of potential party vs dm, our friend dming dnd for the first time has a 10 or shorter campaign seisson going it is us vs elder gods and designed to go level 15-20, our first combat was brutal still ongoing righting something with lair and legendary actions as well as resistances to everything like even magic like a tarasque, it would seem these damages have a threshold but all of this seems crazy for us at level 15 even with a party of 5, weve done hundreds of damage and are only maybe halfway, we were able to acquire very rare and rare magical items in character creation but even that seems to be only holding off the inevitable, other players seem confused and semi ready to agree that our friend got too cute and intelligent in monster building and the cr seems way off especially since this encounter is supposed to be the easiest so my question is does this all seem unfair even though we agreed to something a little more challenging or has our dm taken it to far in monster creation i await your decision esteemed council

DOOFINIUS

Sidenote the creature is colossal in size 100 feet wide 70 ft tall and i know personally ive done by rolls at least 120 damage and others have done double that

Samson

May it please the Court, and the magnanimous Bailiff Jake. I present to you the case of the Law Students and the Piss Bucket. In our first year of law school, one of the members of our five-person study group introduced us to D&D and we decided to use that as our weekly stress reliever. On our very first session, my sorcerer dwarf character, Magni made a sarcastic insult (in-character mind you) toward one of the players at the table and from that point on that player was determined to cover Magni with piss (I don't know why it was that specific punishment). Throughout the entire session, his character tried time and time again to catch my dwarf unawares and cover him in urine, be it his urine, horse urine, pig urine, etc. I was extremely bothered and managed to successfully evade each attempt to douse Magni. I noticed that everyone else at the table was equally annoyed by the other player's shenanigans, but nobody said anything. Eventually one of the other players asked me if I would just let him douse me in piss and get it over with so that we could move on, but I flat-out refused. Near the end of the session, the player finally succeeded in dumping a bucket of horse piss on Magni and I finally had enough and cast shocking grasp on him. Alas, Magni failed to fatally injure the piss-flinger and was restrained by the rest of the group. I ask you honorable justices to answer me this question: Was I the asshole in the situation for refusing to allow the player to dump piss on my dwarf and causing this annoying bit to aggravate the rest of the table throughout the session? Or am I vindicated from being a sore sport? I humbly await your verdict,

JSwanson

To the bailiff, who is low in status but high in moral fiber, the easy on the eyes justices, and Brian, may it please the court: For my first home game, the party entered a dungeon that had Orcish all over the walls, written in some other language like graffiti. I, a character with the Noble background, asked if I could read the Orcish script because I knew Dwarvish (the PHb states "[Orc] has no script of its own, but is written in the Dwarvish script."). The DM said I would only be able to distinguish individual letters as Orcish, but not their meaning. I protested because I thought surely I could read words written in a language I know how to read, even if the spoken language is different. It ended up not being terribly important and was bypassed through some ghost shenanigans later, but I'm still a little miffed. So I ask, delightful justices (including the doubly delightful Justice Tanner), should I have been able to read those words, or should I just let it be? I throw my slender yet muscular frame at the mercy of the court and those grand 6-foot high benches and cushion on the floor for the bailiff's use.

tarvis frogfriend

May it please the court, the honorable justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner, and the tireless, thankless Bailiff Jake: I present to you the Zone of Truth and the Frustrated Goth. In my homegame, I went on a sidetrip concocted by my players, who in our Fantasy High-inspired game decided to go after some bullies from the football team that were harassing one of their favorite NPCs. Their plan was to honeypot them into doing something embarrassing while under a Zone of Truth spell enchanted into some liquor so they could blackmail them later. Things took a dark turn when they managed to isolate it down to the leader and decided to take him into the woods by himself with two players and an NPC. Our resident Goth cleric who is antisocial (but who is also the reluctant champion of the goddess of love Aphrodite and for story reasons has a very one-on-one relationship with her) during a failed persuasion check to get him to follow, demanded a boon of her goddess to convince him to go. Since they were short just 1 point, I ruled that Aphrodite would do so, but would call in a marker at a future date. In the woods, I did what I thought was a fair (if not liberal) interpretation of things to come. Under the affects of Zone of Truth, I ruled that he couldn't even lie to himself, and began to admit that he was under a lot of familial pressure, high expectations, and how when he felt inadequate, he would let off steam by making those who seemed to do better than him feel lesser by verbally ridiculing them. They did such a good job with the interrogation, I let them do a group persuasion check to permanently change his ways and be less toxic. They succeeded! Sounds good so far, right? Well apparently I hadn't taken into account how much this weighed into the cleric's backstory, where she was bullied. She had taken this bully as sort of a figurehead for all her past bullies and had genuinely wanted revenge (she had hinted she was okay with murdering the bully). She'd pinned so much on pulling off this caper that when they ended up redeeming him, she spun out because she now owed her goddess a big favor because she put herself out there to help out a friend. Despite what I describe she had made huge leaps and bounds in becoming a more outgoing person, but decided due to this failed revenge plot, that she'd wind her character back to square one, which is problematic because she doesn't know that one of her classmates who was helping her on this plot has a crush on her and has been trying to actively be her friend. She was really mean to her that night afterwards too. All things being said, everyone seemed really excited for this turn of events because they love RP and having the cleric become a tough nut to crack again is going to be fun for them. But they did tell me that they had fully expected a fight and maybe needed to make the bad guys less sympathetic. I feel like my problem was being caught off guard since this was fully improvised. Meanwhile I'm worried because Aphrodite is about to make her challenge known (this was a plot point that I'd written a while ago)--she is going to make the cleric run for homecoming queen but I'm afraid in her downward spiral she may not have the hustle to take on this task ahead. Did I do wrong with my interpretation of Zone of Truth? Should I have just made this guy a one-off jerk that they could've gotten a kick out of beating up and embarassing? Is rebooting one of my players back into black-pit-of-self-loathing-antisocialness my fault because I hadn't realized how big this would've figured into her back story? I humbly await your judgement. Yours Truly, Loose Duke is Always Nearby

Jay V

Honourable justices of the court, and the bailiff, who is also there. I present to you the question about the forgotten silence spell. So, in a campaign I'm in, I play a wizard/druid multiclass, and therefore am very much a rules frog. My DM set up an encounter in which all of us were under the effect of the Silence spell. I took a great deal of time to prepare, as someone who knew that I would be limited in my abilities while under the Silence effect. I developed my own strategies, and we went into combat. While in combat, the Warlock in the party, began by casting a spell, which I knew required verbal components. I mentioned to the group generally that we were all under the silence spell, since the DM hadn't said anything, and they did another cool move instead, and combat moved on. Later, however, the same warlock proceeded to cast another spell that also required verbal components. Now, I don't want to be the nerd, but nor do I like ignoring my own recollection of the rules, especially when it gives the party an edge over the DM. That said, I didn't want to cause a fuss again, so I didn't say anything. On one hand, I want everyone to have fun and play in the way that they want. On the other hand, I prepared a great deal for the effects of the silence spell, only for them to be ignored. Am I being a little piss baby, or should the Silence spell be respected, even if the DM has forgotten the specifics of it?

Zac

Honorable Justices and the Bailiff who is killing it I need guidance. I started playing with a new group of people who I meet online. Things were going well enough until my masking behaviors slipped 6 sessions in and they realized I’m autistic. (I started stimming) Now people are upset that I didn’t disclose. Are they right to be mad or should I find a new group and just disclose during session zero? I await your judgment.

Adam Wurstmann

Honorable Baliff and his crony Justices, I think my new DM has made a grave error in adjudicating our game. In a recent encounter, an entire damn down was on fire, including the fountain in the center of the square. One of my fellow players attempted to climb atop a high wall that surrounds the town and toss a water barrel onto the fire, in an attempt to stymie said flames. The DM decided that this would be a Strength Saving Throw, which I (fairly in my opinion) disagreed with, and attempted to argue should have been an Athletics check. My DM responded to my argument by saying something along the lines of, "in the heat of combat, you don't have time to work at it, hence why it's a saving throw instead", followed by "you don't have to think so hard, I know you're a DM but try to be less of a rules lawyer." I want you to know that I love my DM like a brother (he is my brother in law, in fact), but this rubbed me the wrong way. Was there a better way I could have approached a challenge to his authority? I let my players call me out when I'm wrong at the table, but I mostly run Pathfinder. Am I just not up on my DnD 5e etiquette? Guidance would be greatly appreciated. -Adam

Addie K

Honoured judges (and the bailiff too, I guess), I bring forth the case of advantage on a corpse. In a recent session, while fighting a ghost in a dungeon, my paladin found the corpse of said ghost laying on a raised platform in the centre of the room. In an attempt to see if they were linked, I wanted to attack the corpse with advantage as it was prone. My DM ruled that it was not in fact prone due to it being on a platform. I argued that it doesn’t get much more prone that being dead but was quickly told I could take the hit straight or he would add partial cover to the corpse as well. Was I wrong to think a corpse would be be considered prone or was my DM right that a waist high platform would circumvent the prone condition. I await your judgement.

ThatOneMotherFucker

Honorable Justices and my favorite Baliff Jake I come to you with the case of DM vs Line of Sight technicalities. I was DMing a game Tomb of Annihilation when my players came across one of the shrines required to progress the module. This particular one had a large pond full of algae filled water in front containing a froghemoth and a few grung as backup. I had the froghemoth attack the bard and dragged them into the water. On the wizards turn they tried to cast levitate on the froghemoth to get it out of the water bringing the bard with them but I ruled that the spell needed to see the creature and all the could see was a dark vague shape underneath the water. My players argued that they knew where the creature was by the large shape and that it should fulfill the requirements of the spell. We went back and forth for awhile and I eventually conceded because I wanted to move on. My question is this: does seeing a creature obscured by dirty water, shadows, or etc count as being able to see the creature (if not in much detail) or do you have to clearly see the creature for a spell to take effect? I humbly await your verdict and punishment.

Matthew Holland

To the amazing justices and that other guy. I’m running a campaign for my wife her two sisters and there husbands is a per generated world. The issue I’m bring to the court is with one of the husbands who is the only other person who has played dnd. I’m starting them in a small village where the characters are part of the council and he has built a background that would make it impossible for his character to be in the village. I have tried to work with him and adjust the background story to where he could be in the town but he refused. So I asked him to give me a good reason why soldier from the rival country (while they are at war) would be there and he refused. Saying that if I want him to play I have to figure it out. Am I being to difficult in wanting to twick his background to the country they are in? I look forward to your judgment.

Those who love and give where they can

Honorable Justices, and Jake! There is a battle brewing amongst the Elders! A wonderful counicl member has, since the beginning of C3 and the new COE shoutouts, changed their name to "Calder's Cold Cum" After hearing the shock and horror of the wonderful people reading the shoutouts, as is their duty and our honor, I changed my name to "Hashtag End Calder's Cold Cum" and in response, The aforementioned esteemed Council Member changed their name to "Calder's Cold Cum, Hashtag CantStopMe" Justices, I ask you what is the Court's opinion on this beef of the week?

Dylan C

To the gorgeous judges and the handsome bailiff. I started my first game as a dm with my friends about a year ago. It's sea themed and I even had little meetings with each player after a few sessions so we can make a personalized adventure for their characters to have. This way they can each have a turn to shine and feel like the main character. They even got to help make lore/mechanics for their adventure like the pirates promise which is a ritual that 2 pirate groups can perform so they can temporarily join forces without the fear of betryal. This is to help the player feel important and also the player gets to explain it instead of me always doing it. But the problem is that most of them are chronically late. Like 30mins late sometimes more. It got to a point where we set a time and I plan for most to be late. We've been online until recently and it was a hot day for our return to I'm person games so we decided to do a beach game. I even remade mechanics so we could be active on the beach instead of on a battle map. I got there at 6 to set up and hold a spot and I fully expected them to roll in by 7. All but one person was late by 2 hours. We just ended up hanging out because I didn't really feel like running a game. How can I get my players to show up on time? Also shout out to the monk/wizard player for carpooling with me so I wouldn't be alone and she's a listener of the pod. I wait for your judgment, it will show up before my players do

Patrick Murphy

To the incredible, immaculate, infallible supreme crit justices. Oh and Jake. I submit to you the case of the bard and the tree ent. My level 5 bard was sitting just outside the established camp (having struck out horribly with an NPC) and was keeping watch when a horde of zombies appeared in camp. A Nat 20 perception check revealed not only the zombies, but the fact that the tree my bard was leaned against was, in fact, a tree ent. After a successful persuasion check (of a modified 22) convinced the tree ent to give my boy a “hand”, my DM had me roll an attack for the tree ent to throw a massive stone into the group of zombies. The roll resulted in a natural 2. My DM then described in detail how my bard was crushed into the ground and restrained by the stone, unable to reenter the fight until a successful strength check was performed effectively removing my bard from the fight. I submit that had the ent rolled a nat 1, all would be understood, but a 2 should result in merely a comically failed attack with the chance of redemption of bard and ent. I throw myself upon the mercy of the court and accept its judgment as law. P. Murphy

Bob Rover

To the beyond benevolent judges and the bullied baliff I present the case of the realm collapsing paladin About half a year ago me and a couple of good friends started a campaign with a strong focus on inter dimensional war after getting through the first leg of the campaign my paladin decided the realm they had just gone through was "unjust" and used the divine power of his adoptive father and god of the astral plane to seal the realm and later found a way to use the power of the sealed realm (with a nat 20 persuasion check) and so he then proceeded to completely shatter another dimension and therefore an entire leg of the campaign therefore completely derailing the campaign and preventing any future uses of inter dimensional travel or enemies andjust overall removing a lot of the fun twists I could've put within the story So I ask you should I have let them taste the power of God or should I have told them to fuck off and play the campaign normally I await your earnest judgement

Cody Simon

Honorable supreme crit justices and not so honorable bailiff Jake, I bring forth the case of the missing druid and the not so missing player. I am playing a campaign with my aunt, uncle, and cousins with my cousins fiancé being the DM. I joined pretty recently and some time after the campaign initially began knowing that the DM loved D&D and I could always find something to talk to him about it. In the last session the party was accused of assassinating an NPC that was with them for a mercenary job that they were hired for. That NPC was actually killed by a dragon, who I assume is the BBEG of the campaign. The party explained that the NPC was killed by the dragon so the cities government told us that we need proof and that they are going to send a group of guards to go investigate this claim and insisted that the druid, played by my aunt who is new to D&D, needs to go with and forced her to go no matter what the rest of the party said. This led to the druid leaving for the rest of the session as well as the next session after it and my aunt just sitting there watching as everyone else played. I tried to make a comment that we should wait until the druid gets back to continue on with another job we were hired to do, but that was quickly shut down by the DM saying that it would be another 3 days until she is back. I bring forth this case in search of if I was in the wrong for wanting to include my aunt in the game or if I am ruining the Dm's plans.

Jordan

Dear Tyrannical Supreme Court Justices Axeford, Murphy, Tanner and Martyr Bailiff Jake. I present the case of the "just a rat" argument. For context: I was DM'ing for a small group of friends, who were travelling through a forest and just arrived at the entrance of a cave that was being guarded by two cultists. It was a beautiful sunny day, and I described to the players that there was a clearing around the entrance of the cave, so it would be tricky to simply sneak up to the guards. While strategizing, one of my players (a druid) said that they would just wild shape into a rat and walk past the guards. I reiterated to the player that seeing as there was a clearing, they would probably be spotted. The player was not worried, saying that since they were just a rat, the guards would not be alarmed if they just casually scurried into the cave. The other players weren't convinced, but our druid was confident and went ahead with their plan. They were quite frustrated when I described that the cultists attacked the rat as it got closer, saying that they were just a rat and should be no cause for alarm. I explained to the druid that it was reasonable for the cultists to be suspicious in a world with shapeshifters and magical familiars. The players ended up besting the cultists in battle, but the druid felt I was being unfair towards their plan. I beseech you, members of the SUPREME Crit, to weigh in with your infallible wisdom. Thanks in advance <3

Andy C

To the honourable justices and the sub par bailiff I present to you the case of the Charging Monk. I have been running a pirate campaign for two years now, the PCs were just meeting a pirate lord in their secret underground cove, I should preface this first with they were seeking help from the pirate lord. Long story short they had dinner, a player got Yu-Gi-Oh shadow realmed and incapacitated, they fought and killed the lord. I didn't expect this and told them that the place is on high alert and that they need to escape. I gave them multiple secret passages that were not there beforehand to escape however the monk player decided I can just sprint back to the boat making the guards and the complex fully aware of the rest of the party. Eventually they did escape but a near TPK where the player whose story this tied into, the one who got incapacitated, died along with most of the party. Including the monk. The monk and I still bicker between ourselves about how that should have went down. Should I have allowed the players to escape since I hadn't fully planned that altercation? I humbly wait for your verdict.

CactusJuice

To the high-chaired justices Axford, Murphy and Tanner, as well as the babysitting bailif Jake, I humbly put forward the case of the Constrictor Snake Execution. One session me and my party members found ourselves in a dungeon saving an npc from another character's backstory from being magically brainwashed. We managed to free her after a long and hard battle, but the wounded mage doing the brainwashing cast Invisibilty on herself and tried to escape. I (a druid) decided to block the entrance and try to capture her by wild shaping into a constrictor snake. I managed to restrain her on my turn, but on the party cleric's next turn he used his attack action on her, saying that he was continuing trying to kill her. My druid tried to protest, but as she was currently a snake she lacked the vocabulary to make a solid argument. The DM let the cleric attack with advantage, while ignoring my hisses of protest, and he hit the mage and killed her. I was, both in and out of character, a little salty over the execution, seeing as the mage could've been a very good source of information. Now, my dear Justices (and Jake), this is where I might've overstepped a line. After this session my druid has actively cockblocked the cleric at every turn. I must stress how he is a fuckboy through and through, but let's say his glory days are far behind him. Am I right to ruin this middle aged half-orc's sex life because he executed a valuable (albeit evil) mage in my scaly snake arms? I can also note that there is no bad blood between me and the player, but that this incident won't leave my mind and I need to know if my petty actions are justified. I humbly lay myself in your own Scaly Snake Embrace and await the judgement of the court.

Alexis

To the honorable Crit Justices and the Righteous Baliff. May it please the court. I present the case of the Tone Deaf Disco Beholder. 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. As the campaign went she grew more serious about her worship. The tone of the campaign was very heavy. Elder gods corrupting people, body horror nightmares and the end of all existence in the balance. But despite 8 levels of the horrific tone of the campaign my DM found it fit to make the first NPC tied to my characters religion that was meant to help her a comedic disco beholder. To this day I still feel his use of comic relief in this 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 robbed of what could have been a big step in my characters growth or am I being too much of a fuddy duddy? I await your benevolent judgement.

Joshua Golias

To the honourable crit justices and our favourite bailiff to hate, I provide the case of the blind gas I DM a homebrew campaign and my druid pc was blinded on a narrow bridge (nothing stopping them from falling over) by a Gibbering Mouther, they wanted to cast gaseous form on themselves thinking that as a gas with no eyes they would no longer be blind. I ruled that them as a creature is blind so even in different forms they would still technically be blind. Was I harsh for not letting this cool idea happen?? I await your judgement!!

Izzy R

Forgive me dice Christ for I have sinned, I made a character who is just so annoying and now she exclusively rolls below a five My character is a mousefolk with a human body who loves to bake and has a temper. Her impulsivity makes her a terrible party member though and after she attempted to assassinate someone the others wanted to interrogate she started rolling extremely poorly to the point where my dm is calling my character cursed. May I be absolved of my transgressions (having an annoying character) amen

Ben Kloosterhouse

To our favorite Judges and the Baliff, I present to you the case of the overly priced armor. My friends and I are currently playing through Storm King’s Thunder. Since the beginning of the game I have been saving my gold in order to buy custom made +2 plate armor. I finally found someone who was able to make it and was told it would cost me 5,500 gold pieces. After many sessions I finally saved enough gold and went to the blacksmith. I described how I wanted the armor to look and all was going well but when I started describing the helm I was told that the helm would be an additional 500 gold pieces. I told the blacksmith that is ridiculous because I am already over paying for this armor and that I was under the impression that the helm was included but after some shitty rolls he wouldn’t budge. I spoke to my DM afterwords and expressed how disappointed I am that I don’t have the helm and asked if he could let me have it because it’s literally just flavor and doesn’t add any gameplay value but he wouldn’t let me have it. I am very salty about this and just want my helm. Who is in the wrong here? Should I suck it up, save 500 gold pieces, and go buy my helm. Or should my DM just let me have the helm? P.S. When are you guys coming to Grand Rapids, MI? It’s literally Beer City USA.

Zoe the Smallest

I seek the wisdom of the dice Christ order to judge me, as I have sinned. I am a player in a 3.5e campaign, and we met another party member's character who was acting shady but we did not know why. We unfortunately all rolled poorly on sense motive checks. I play a wizard, and one of my fellow players mentioned Detect Thoughts. So, I casted Detect Thoughts and managed to figure out what the player was up to. Everyone got super excited that we'd outsmarted the DM, who is known to go out of their way to make us feel like we can't make smart moves. The only problem is while everyone was getting excited and chanting "NAT 1, NAT 1" for the shady player's save roll, I realised I did not actually have detect thoughts stocked, I just thought I did. It ended up being a really fun and hilarious situation, but I can't help but feel guilty since the DM seemed genuinely upset that we'd figured out what the player was up to. I humbly await your judgement

JakeF

May it please the venerable bayliff, I've been playing Alex, my Satyr bard/paladin for about 2 months now. He often tells grand tales about himself or his comrades, and equally often fails to be so invincible. We are only level 4. Our conflict occured at Alex's most recent performance at a rural inn with drunks, farmers, and free running kids. After the performance he left the inn to take off his armor, hand out merch, and speak with NPCS. He gave out stones to the roudy kids with his brand logo Prestidigitated onto them. And while Alex spoke to an NPC, these kids starting throwing rocks at Alex. At first he was moved to have inspired these young kids. And with his stats, I thought surely he could look like an invinsible hero to them. I was wrong. 6 damage, 4 damage, 8 damage, it kept coming and without armor my AC was 8. I was quickly bloodied by these kids. The leader child declared his name Macho, and he was between 7 and 13 years old. Alex turned to the kids. As a gladiator and as an honorable warrior he accepted Macho's challenge. Alex dashed to the child, and grabbed his throwing arm and removed the rock. DM says the kids were intimidated. Alex asked what Macho wanted, if he wanted this to continue, (since he was quickly disarmed without any harm). Alex was hit by a divine smite by the child's guardian and told to leave. Alex, as a warrior, checked in with his opponent Macho again and the DM said the kid was crying. The scene ended and ever since both in and out of character the party acts like i've commited manslaughter. Its kind of killed the vibe of Alex at the table and im thinking of asking the DM for a do-over. Was I in the wrong?

Jackson W.

May it please the court, the supreme judges and the naked bailiff. I bring you the case of forced hospitality. I DM a game of 6 lvl 7 PCs, one of people at the tables character is a tabaxi gloomstalker named Gallus who delights in creating minor chaos. The party had just entered into a new town, the national bread basket. The town’s population is made up of farmers and their only protection was a lvl 18 Druid who sat at the towns center helping anyone who needed it. I role played everyone being nice and very hospitable, the Druid was the same but was more of a no nonsense person. Enter Gallus, with his insane stealth checks would break into homes to rearrange furniture, move mugs to different cabinets, or swap farming tools from shed to shed. Mass confusion ensues. After a couple bad stealth checks the Druid finds Gallus and asks him to stop. Gallus agrees, waits 5 minutes and then starts again. After finding out that Gallus didn’t keep his word the Druid try’s to talk to Gallus again. After a failed deception check from Gallus the Druid cast Geas on him, Gallus failed and was given the directive to stop committing chaos in the town and to be as hospitable as possible to others. Leaning into it Gallus adopted a southern drawl like the farmers and went a little over the top with it. I still get called out for “rail roading his personal action” to this day. Should I have let him play his character as he wanted or was Geas to harsh of a consequence? I leave my case in your capable hands.

Phillip Englehart

Honourable justices and noble bailiff, may it please the court, I present the case of the ray of sickness. I have a sorcerer that's been casting ray of sickness left and right, and for flavour, I've been saying that people are "getting sick and throwing up, projectile vomiting everywhere" when casted. She's mostly been using it to mess with people and cause distractions, however, when my party went up against a flesh golem that proceeded to eat the monk she cast ray of sickness on it saying it should throw up the monk. I had no problem and thought it was a creative solution, however, another player who DMs frequently says they spell doesn't technically cause vomiting, just poisoning and was being quite adamant about it. I decided to let the monk roll with advantage to get out, but I humbly ask you justices, if the precedent had been set that the flavour of ray of sickness causes vomiting, should the flesh golem thrown up the monk?

Joe

I just got my tickets for the Edinburgh show and I'm so excited!! I was just wondering will the Manchester show be different?

Markie Chapman

To the Baddass Bailiff and Juicy Judges I am a DM for a homebrew campaign with a nice mix of classes of new players. However I feel that one of my players isn't using their class to the full and this could be holding them back. They currently play a ranger and wanted their own companion. The reason ebhind this is when we first met online it was as hunters in world of warcraft vanilla were we were both Night elf hunters who had moon panthers as pets. During our wow days she was very attached to her panther Moon. So when the chance to get an animal companion came up i obviosuly mlet her get the chance to tame a panther, which she called moon. However even though she is a beast master ranger she refuses to put the panther in any fights. As a Dm i try to be fair so if the panther was ever there I would have some of the monster try to hit it. So she didnt get ti inviolved in any battles because of this leaving in the stables when out. Once i realised she wasnt going to pay the panther i even added a special homebrew buff to the panther to entice her to use it more in combat. I gace it this abaility to add an extra poison damage attack to its claws. Still no luck and wont use it in battle. After this failed I tried to say why dont you change your ranger type, say the panther was just a mount. but she refused to make any changes. She then got angry said she knew when someone was being controlling told me to f off, said I quit and left the discord. Next session she was back but didnt talk at all just rolled using discord and had the other players talk for her. Was I out of line or is there anythign else I can do or the player should do?

Stations & Starships

Oh holy Pope Murphy, Cardinals Axford and Tanner, and The Deacon Jake, please channel the judgement of Dice Christ and ask her to forgive me for my sins. In my very first campaign, I was a steward to a flock of 5 players They were at Level 2 when I set up an encounter at a riverside dockyard, a false flag attack attempting to burn it to the ground. I had a duergar and two gnolls appear as part 1 of the encounter, once the duergar was off'd I had ready a weretiger as the final boss. This is of course where I erred... They had no silver or magic weapons. It was mid encounter when I realized they needed them. They had one spellcaster, and one NPC who by chance was wielding a +1 club. I was panicking. After several more rounds of combat, with the dockyard engulfed in a blazing inferno and the entire party at death's door, I chose to fudge the hit role of the NPC in a flailing attempt try salvage the session. To my surprise, I was called out on my lie, for I had rolled publicly in our virtual tabletop... of course. So, the weretiger jumped into the river and swam away. I have never fudged a roll since, but I have never forgiven myself for trying. I pray to you now to please cleanse me of my guilt and forgive me.

The one they call Barlo

To the Stoic Bailiff and the Surly Sweeties. I bring the case of the DM vs. the magic paints. I was DMing a session from Rime of the Frostmaiden and my plucky heroes were infiltrating a Duergar fortress, needless to say the had a hot entrance (due to some poor stealth and other choices) and found themselves fighting in a hallway as duergar were pouring out their barrack room. My Paladin had recently picked up 3 pots of Marvelous Pigments which lets someone paint something and make it real, he was trying to expand his character in downtime and I thought he'd have fun with this. During the fight, mentioned above, he asked if he could throw a pot of his pigments on the floor amid the duergar in the barracks they were trying to get of to make a pit beneath them to fall into. Here's where we come to the issue. I reasoned a pot can cover 1,000 square feet with deliberate application so to cover the 900ft area of floor was a bit of a stretch; I also stated that the paint would not represent an accurate pit as simply lobbing a paint pot on a floor among bodies, chairs and tables is super unlikely to look anything like a pit. Not wanting to poo-poo a creative idea I did try remember the ''no, but'' rule I picked up from other D&D court episodes you guys discuss things. I offered with either a Deception check or Arcana check, he could either convince the blood-thirsty bearded chaps that it was something like acid he had thrown into the doorway (deception) , or he could see if he could make it actually become oil/acid in a 5x5ft area with a good enough Arcana check (DC14) as he was effectively throwing away a cool magic item for a one off use. The former leading to them trying to avoid it and the latter check leading to them taking acid damage of it acting like a Grease spell in a small area. I thought this was a fair compromise, considering the magic item is supposed to be painted with a brush. The Paladin did not agree. The player accused me of being a rules lawyer and uptight and should let him do it how he wanted. He did not take me up on either of my ''no, but'' offers. He (the tank) decided to sit around the corner, away from the fight and chug a health potion. He did not do anything else for the rest of the fight, that ended 2 rounds later, in the parties favour. He sat on mute for the rest of the session (1 hour) and logged off after. He told me after the game he thinks I'm being super unreasonable and need to to relax. So please, I have to ask, did I go a bit too overboard here and maybe need to chill a bit more? I'm a new DM so I'm really not sure what's best. Thanks, love the show x

Stephanie Janssen

To the Honourable Judges Axford, Tanner and Murphy and the Bailiff who's marital status I googled and was disappointed with the results....may it please the court!!!! I was playing through a Curse of Straud campaign with my group of new friends (3 PCs and our DM) when I started to notice our DM changing details mid gameplay to suite the outcome she wanted. The first instance of this came to light during a raid on a house where one of our favourite NPCs was being held captive. While setting up the battle map, our DM began placing trees around the house and I commented, "Yay! I can use those to hide behind!" (I am a rogue gnome named Otter) To which they said, "Oh in that case, there aren't any..." and began putting them back in the box. When I protested, they begrudgingly put a few back out. The next instance of this was during a fight against two Flaming Skulls when our only healer went down. We have a small group of only 3 PCs and with both of us other players not being able to heal, it was time to act. While I was too far away from our healer, I explained that I wanted to use my full movement and action to use the spell scroll "animate dead" on a near by corpse that had be described as having "flesh burned to a crisp" who would then move to our healer and drag him out of harms way. My DM confirmed this was fine but when it came to the actual dragging, she stated that the corpse is actually a skeleton and therefore has no flesh or muscle with which to pull and can't do it. The table backed me up by saying that is a magical world and if a skeleton can come to life again and walk around, then it shouldn't matter if it has muscles or not. It eventually went to a strength roll and I was able to save my friend but was my DM wrong for changing the information that was given? Or am I just a big winey baby? I leave it in your capable hands...

Ryan

To the Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the Reverend Doctor Bailiff. May it please the court, I bring to your attention The Case of the Unceremonious Crit. I have been playing in a new game that is made up of this DM's 'favorites' for his first true homebrew campaign. He assured me that this game was going to be very fun because all the individuals would work well together and have a great time creating a story together. He' made the campaign very gritty and very crunchy and as such combat is HARD. I'm the party cleric and responsible for much of the party's healing, though not all of it. I play a fairly unassuming firbolg (even though he's 8 feet tall), and generally try to provide the straight man in the hijinx put on by our goblin warlock with a death wish. Anywho, the party had just finished a rather grueling fight and were making our way back to town, pushing into the night in order to complete the journey. The DM had been fairly vocal in his descriptions of my compatriots actions in battle, narrating and expanding on the player's actions. So perhaps that made my expectations a bit too high when it came to the next bit. As we are pushing on we get stopped by three bandits. Everyone wounded and exhausted, I decide that my cleric has really just about had it. So when the human bandit leader declared that there was a 'tax' for using the roads my 8 foot tall cleric stomps up to him, says "Here's your tax," grips his entire face and casts Inflict Wounds and CRITS dealing 38 points of necrotic damage. We are level 2 at this point. After hitting the crit my DM says "OK, anything else?" I respond "No, that's my turn." He moves on to the next in initiative. I would later find out that even though this is level 2 this bandit leader had 70 HP, and the DM admitted to being a bit surprised at my action but not much else. The question I present to the court is this: Should I expect that my DM made a bigger deal out of this particularly cool crit? If he vividly describes another player's combat actions, am I wrong to expect at least SOME exposition on my action? I still feel cheated and though I still play in this campaign a whole lot of the wind has been taken out of my sails because I see that the DM just doesn't describe the actions of my character much. Or should I grow up and be glad that I have a pretty fun crunchy group to play with? I await your decision.

frogman smooch

esteemed judges axford , tanner, and murphy, and EQUALLY ESTEEMED BALIFF hurwitz, if it may please the court. i’m dming curse of strahd for some friends and they keep calling him Todd. nothing is wrong with this but it makes him so much less intimidating and i am powerless to stop it. (this is mostly a joke but seriously, how do i know when to stop “yes and” ing and start laying down real rules as a dm?) i await your gracious and final judgment

Dylan S.

Hehehe. I'd work in a descriptive statement suggesting the characters are compensating for their overwhelming fear of Strand by giving him a friendly alias.

Terry Ankerfelt

Hello esteemed judges Axford, Murphy and Caldwell. As well as Jake, please pass judgment, my friends and I all play in a campaign together, my brothers character, a human variant who took the sharpshooter feat, was killed in a fight with a Copper dragon. The rest of the party used quite a bit of gold (20,000+) for an NPC to cast reincarnate on him, he came back as a Copper dragon, when this happened the DM told my brother that he could no longer have the sharpshooter feat and that it was replaced by the breath weapon, meaning my brother would have to spend a precious ASI to take the feat he already had. I could tell my brother was a little upset by this but didn’t make too much of a fuss. After the session he told me he was very annoyed but didn’t want to cause issues at the table during the game. Was our DM correct in taking away his feat? I humbly await your ruling and sentencing

RedPaladin44

Greetings to Judges Critter Corraler Axford, Cunning Cartoonist Caldwell, Campaign Creating Murphy and Bailiff Jake. May it please the court, some of my PC's swear/complain that I make up rules or add things on the fly during encounters. I will admit that I have done and still do that. My issue is, should I not, as DM, attempt to make encounters interesting and have stakes that feel like they matter when my PC's have it too easy? Or should I leave the encounter as is and allow them to walk into the next Big Bad encounter with nary a spell or HP missing? One such example is introducing another Shadow Drake into the initiative... I humbly await your decision at the chopping block. Your loyal servant, RedPaladin44

Hollie Tawhiao

Re listening to C1 and Murph, we're you OK during the Hellfire Chronicles? Because DANG the episodes around the fight with Akarot were just big thing after big thing and I didn't notice the first listen through 😵 Please do a full campaign recap so you can say the insane thing after insane thing and really tip how epic it was *pls n thnx*

ronald.

Dear Judge Murphy, Judge Axford and Judge Tanner. and jake. I present to you the case of Wrestling VS Rolling. I am currently DMing a game in which one of my players is playing a goliath ex-pirate who wrestles everything and anything he can. Upon describing a wrestling move, I was confused and the player offered to show it to me. In my hubris I said that if he could pin me with it for 6 seconds I would let him auto succeed his roll. Needless to say, I got pinned, my head locked in his legs like a vice for 6 seconds Now the players insist I allow him to do this with every roll? So judges, I ask you, should I learn to wrestle and defend my pride? Or accept the fault of my hubris. I humbly await your sentence.

Phil E

May it please the esteemed court and the solid bailiff, I present the case of the nat 20 fiancé fiasco. I am playing a terminally ill peace domain cleric tortle named Raphael who is struggling to come to grips with his mortality, has a severe penalty homebrew mechanic that I designed, and whose journey involves acceptance of his fate with the occasional bad day. Our party was at a carnival where we saw a male halfling propose to his girlfriend, a female halfling. At the same time a machine cast Tasha’s Hideous laughter on the female halfling and the male halfling ran off in tears. Our party followed him and found him alone. Initially, the party tried to explain what happened but raphael, bitter that the couple would have a future of bliss and companionship that is out of his reach due to his illness, rolled a persuasion check to get the male halfling to leave his girlfriend and realize he is better off without her. I rolled a nat 20. The male halfling seemed to respond but as soon as he saw his girlfriend they immediately reconciled. I think a nat 20 should mean something and is capable of destroying an engagement or at least having one of them blurt out something that would forever tarnish the relationship (eg if murph told Emily he didn’t like cats or hardwon told tris he enjoyed reading). After months of complaining, the dm said that it is possibly my roll had some long term implications and doomed them without me getting to see; I think he is backtracking. I ask the court, can a relationship survive a nat 20? And I ask the bailiff, did tucker roll a nat 20 to steal Jill away?

Armadon the only

Distinguished representatives If it may please the court, i bring up the munchkin condition. Two of my friends have played RPG for years, they work the system in their favor, not to be power gamers (they say) for they only focus on one aspect and maximize its potential. For 3rd edition d&d one friend made up a wizard that was able to twin spell magic missile all the time, while the other made a fighter who was names Jack and specialized in tripping his foes. These two players find fun in playing the systems to make these Ridiculously strong characters but complain if i throw stronger foes at them just to match their might. Should i cow down to their abilities or can i just through the sink at them?

SolemnSeagull

Confession: I lay myself down in front of the Gods and confess that I, as a DM, fudged a roll. A level one wizard in the party failed a dex save and fell 20 feet. I rolled max damage, and since they were teetering on one hit point, it would have killed their character permanently. It was this 12yo's first time playing DND, and I didn't feel as though it was right. So I docked 1 from damage, knocking them out, but not killing them. They got a Nat 20 on the first Death Save and were immediately filled with joy. I accept whatever penance I must endure.

Catherine Meushaw

To the Honorable Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner and the esteemed Baliff Hurwitz, May it please the court.. I'm in a homebrew campaign with a group of friends and the DM recently made a decision that still has me struggling. Our chaotic party was exploring and explicitly ignored the DM's instructions not to use magic (forgive us Dice Christ for we have sinned). We managed to save ourselves, but the DM introduced a time loop, sending us back to the beginning (with most of the knowledge, levels, and items we had before). On our second reset, the DM had us make wisdom saving throws and three of us failed. Those of us who failed got a message from the DM asking/telling us to change something about our character (Subclass, class, race, backstory). While I think it is a stellar twist, I do object to being forced to change something about a character that I developed a backstory and plan for after 20 sessions. I await your judgement