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Cases Please! (Patreon)

Published:
2022-05-24 15:01:56
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Hullo! Bailiff Jake here. The Supreme Crit is convening this very eve, so please submit your (BRIEF, I beg!) cases on this thread and we will bring you swift justice.

Your humble bailiff,

Jake

Comments

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?

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 full of 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.

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.

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?

Amber Schneider

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

Fizzy Elderflower

I love dnd court, it's what pushed me to join the patreon. Long live the justices! Long live the bailiff!

Nick

Does anyone know why we're are getting so few canon episodes lately. I like the diversity of content. But I dont like it this much

ThatManGareth

May it please the figure-painting bailiff Jake, and the judges who also happen to be on this show. Now presenting the case of Sorcerer v. DM We have our first encounter with the main villain of our campaign, former DM party member, a fighter turned Warlock. The party noticed the villain first, so my sorcerer used zone of silence. The DM claims the villain noticed the lack of background noise (Torches crackling, water dripping, ect.) and knew something was up immediately so we didn't get a surprise round. My sorcerer later casts phantasmal killer spell (3.5e version) Villain crit fails the first save and fails the second save by 1, so is instantly killed. Our DM claims villain had a nearly endless supply of clones using the Clone spell. We neither get experience nor loot because we didn't destroy the soul and the body disintegrated when we tried to inspect it. Were we ruining the story by usurping what was supposed to be a BBEG or was our DM to harsh on our derailing. Please help settle something we still razz him for to this day. I eagerly await the Justice of the Crit, The Plaintiff Sorcerer.

thomas musgrave

Me and a group a friends started our first dnd campaign, most of us never played before and our DM was also new. Me and our dm got into a pretty big fight after the second session because he killed my character in one hit and teleported the rest of the party away from my corpse. In our first session there was a zombified hand that showed the ability to raise zombies, in the second session we were in a room of corpses and when we brought the hand into the room all of the corpses combined into a flesh ogre that proceeded to slam my body into the floor for 40 damage (i had 17 hp). The necromancer npc then proceeded to tp the rest of the party out despite me arguing that one of the members could carry my corpse. In the end my character was permanently dead and we all stopped playing dnd.

Stations & Starships

O 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 magical or silver 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.

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?

Ellie Smith

I'm not certain, but it might be because of the tour and liveshows?

Tristan Belzer

May it please the Judicious Judges and the Belligerent Bailiff. I present the case of the DM vs the Tardy Tarzan. Recently I was starting an online D&D campaign with a group of longtime friends. We had played D&D together before, but this was my first time DMing a full campaign, and I was equal parts nervous and excited. I pitched the game two weeks before the first session, and in that time worked closely with my players to fleshed out characters that fit what they wanted and the world. In the meantime, I wrote each character a little intro scene to set up each characters motivation, and why each character would eventually end up in the same place for the story to start. This entire time, one of the people I invited repeatedly (let’s call him Greg) made it clear that he did not want to participate in the campaign, despite me asking if he wanted to be included periodically for two weeks, as I didn’t want him to be left out. Then, about 30 minutes before the first session, I got a text from a different friend that Greg wanted to be part of the campaign. I was a little annoyed, but prepared, and I sent over some pregen character sheets he could use. About five minutes before the session, I hopped into a video call to hear about his character. Greg wanted to be a Bearfolk Druid called Tarzan. He was a human child raised by bears. When I asked if he was raised by bearfolk, he said no, actual bears. When I asked why his character was a bearfolk then, he said it was because he was raised by bears Tarzan style. He then went on to describe what he deemed the most important character trait of Tarzan, his southern accent. Greg made it very clear that it was weird he had a southern accent, and nobody else in the world had a southern accent. This is when my brain short circuited as it desperately tried to think about how to introduce Tarzan, especially since the session was just about to start and everyone was waiting, so I said “we’ll talk about this next week” and went on to start the session. I ended up giving everyone their individual scenes, and when everyone was together I said “oh and also there’s a bear there” in an admittedly kind of salty way. Am I right to be salty at this ridiculous late inclusion to my carefully crafted home brew world? Or should I just embrace the Tarzan style with good humor? I lay myself humbly before the judgement of the court.

Nathaniel Rice

May it please the illustrious Justices, and the bailiff who hangs around. I had a player fall asleep mid session. We are running a Tomb of Annihilation game online and we use discord for A/V. It was in the middle of a combat. I had notice the player closing their eyes occasionally, but just figured they were tired. Then it came to their turn in a combat situation that saw one of our other PCs get knocked out. We gave them a few shouts and nothing. We all eventually signed off, and then rejoined a chat to agree they had to go. Since then we have continued ToA without them, which was a group decision. But we also agreed not to tell that person we continued without them. My question is, is this the right thing to do? Should we tell the person they were excluded instead of having them assume the killed the game. We are going to be playing a one-shot with this player in the next few weeks, and I’m concerned they may find out at this game about the game she is excluded from. I await your judgement.

Tyler Jackson

Dear honorable justices and Bailiff who really doesn’t get enough credit, I request your ruling on a matter that has not come in game yet but I would like your interpretation on the subject for future reference/conflicts. Someone online recently brought up a point about Rogues and Sneak Attack Per the language of the ability it can be used “once per turn”. It does not specify it has to be your turn, and it does not say it can only happen once per round of combat. Meaning if a rogue were able to use its reaction to make an attack on someone else’s turn and the other conditions for sneak attack were met, they could (per this persons interpretation) get multiple sneak attacks in one round of combat. I might just be late to the party but I always thought it was once per round. What is the honorable justices’ and equally honorable bailiff’s take on this matter?

chronicsunshine

May it please the court, the illustrious & venerable judges, & the beautiful baby Bailiff Jake. I present to you the case of the “Shut the fuck up” stick. I’m currently a PC in an intimate home game with some friends. Our DM introduced a new mechanic, called the “shut the fuck up” stick which is essentially a wooden stick that we can beat our Goblin Bard, Bimbo, over the head with (causing him to have to roll a DC15 CON saving throw to not be concussed and be able to speak for the duration of the convo.) so he stops talking and disrupting important dialogue / progression with his tomfoolery, which consistently impedes our campaign. Of course this irks Bimbo, who argues that our DM isn’t allowing him to have fun, but the rest of the players and the DM agree this stick is our saving grace. So, who’s to be punished here? Should we stop beating our friend over the head with a wooden stick? I humbly await your judgement.

Cameron

Benevolent, wise, and powerful judges and also bailiff Hurwitz, I bring you the case of the never ending D&D game. I started a game with some friends in college and we have managed to continue playing through a pandemic, our graduation, weddings, cross country moves, and much more. Our lives are changing as we enter our adult lives, and yet every Tuesday night for four years we manage to sit down at a virtual table and play the characters we love so much. But justices, hear my plea! Despite weekly games for four years, we are only level 8! A combination of an epic sprawling world and experience points leveling has left me thinking we will never see high level play. Plus even though I love my character, in four years of D&D, I’ve thought of some other characters I would love to play! Is my DM leveling our party up too slowly? Or should I be grateful that we have this amazing game that’s lasted this long and looks like will continue to last for years longer. I await your ruling.

Matt

Honorable and attractive Judges Tanner, Murphy and Axford; and Honest and Okay Bailiff Jake Last of his name. I pissed off a friend by building an Aarakocran Warlock that was afraid of heights and thus would not fly, ruining his OP plan for a all flying party (low level). Was I in the wrong for making than an RP choice and helping the DM out?

Andrew Bonkginya

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and True Neutral Bailiff. I am here to present the case of tiny hut vs the nightwalker. Our party was in the shadowfell, resting in a Leomunds tiny hut spell when, in the night, a nightwalker attacked us. I said it shouldn't be able to hurt us through the tiny hut so we didn't need to worry. But then the dm started describing the nightwalker digging under our hut. I argued that the Nightwalker who doesn't have a Burrow speed should not have been able to dig under our hut. But the dm insisted it could because of how strong it was. I ask was our tiny hut done wrong in this situation? (P.S. the floor was stone)

Dave Large

May it please the most honorable court and also the Jake guy who reads for them, I submit the case of the Lazy Loxodon. In a cave combat involving a gnoll pack lord and demon-summoning portals to the abyss, the Loxodon barbarian opted to “guard the exit” and do nothing but take pot shots with her Longbow. Not a single use of rage was expended! I tried to use scene narration to remind her of her abilities, but to no avail. I noticed the other party members getting frustrated, and communicated to her separately a reminder so as to not call her out in front of the table. Still, no rage as one of the party members fell. I ask, should I have meta gamed and sent the monsters past the other party members to attack her, or was I simply meant to sit and watch? I patiently await your judgement.

alex rodgers

May it please the court, the high justices and my favorite bailiff Jake. my friends and I are a new group of players. We recently started a campaign. We have a druid (me) a fighter, a rogue, and a warlock. We recently fought a dragon and from the dragon a frost brand long sword was found. I thought that because I gave the killing blow to the dragon, I deserved the sword. However our warlock disagreed with me and said that the sword would fit better for our fighter or himself. I said while that might be true, I found the sword and I gave the killing blow. He got frustrated and we ended up ending the session (partially because a few of them had to go to bed as they still have school) Was I in the wrong for taking the sword? Should I have given it to him? Please give me your amazing guidance.

MJMM

May it please the Court: I DM a game where my players are unknowingly working for the Big Bad. During a heated confrontation one of my players asked to do an insight check on my secret BBG, and rolled a nat 20. While my friends celebrated I rolled a deception check to see how much I actually had to give away, when I also rolled a nat 20. With modifiers my nat 20 scored higher so I gave my player a vague answer that something might be going on, but nothing too malicious. Now when other players bring up doubts about who they work for this player defends them often bringing up how they rolled this 20 and didn't get anything significant. Have I misled this player, and should I accept the inevitable argument after the big reveal?

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?

vrtx

I can't remember, but i'm pretty sure they addressed this. It takes Murph a lot of time to write the story as well as edit the episodes, and I think they're padding it out more now to give him a bit more reasonable deadlines. (work life balance ya know?)

Andrew Dillon

Glorious Supreme Crit Justices and their faithful Bailiff Jake, a case for your review: In my group's last campaign, our rogue managed to land a critical on a sneak attack that totaled up to 90 damage. The problem: the creature it attacked was declared to be immune to damage from non-magical attacks. Rules as Written, this is fair, but for the sake of player engagement, was the DM wrong? After the damage didn't stick, the player tuned out for the rest of the session, if not campaign. PS: this occured in Descent into Avernus with a first time DM who can be very adversarial, and made it hard to get any sort of loot, especially magical weapons.

Squiffy13

May it please the court and bailiff that ask for brief cases but then proceed to ask for more information. Using the cantrip shape water could I either freeze holy water or animate it to lay across a short sword and sneak attack with it. My DM says that it’s unfair for a level 3 rogue to do 5d6 dmg per sneak attack with a short sword on undead. I tell him he should be glad it’s not 4d6 and 1d8 from a rapier and that he should consider upping the difficulty of encounters. I know I’m being a knob here but am I right? I await the judgement of the high chairs and the wretched fool bound to clean them.

Phil Willmarth

To the honorable justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner… and Jake. I have a dice Christ confessional. Inspired by campaign one, my friends and I started a campaign together where I am the DM. It is hard to get us together, we’ve been playing for a year and maybe only have had five sessions. Because of this reason I am trying to make very this campaign very story driven but have combat each session to keep things fun. One particular session, the adventures found themselves in a Colosseum facing off against a king of orcs and his gladiators. In hindsight, the pacing must have been slow because at one point my cleric in the middle of a wave of sentinels attacks the king. I had him set up to be the only creature at that point of the encounter… But lunging him in to this wave Meant sure death for my friends. I did something I’m not entirely proud of. I changed the lair action damage output and subtracted five from each roll in order to save my party. While I am glad my friend survived and defeated the encounter, should I have let the dice told her own story and come up with a different solution? I await your judgement

R. Tadd Pinkston

May it please this Honorable Court and bemuse the okay bailiff Jake - I wish simply to die. My group is playing Curse of Strahd. I play a variant human swamp druid named Si Fungalot - a problematic fey supremist. We were fighting Strahd himself and he bit me dropping me to 0 HP. Strahd's bite reads: The target dies if its hit point maximum is reduced to 0. A humanoid slain in this way and then buried in the ground rises the following night as a vampire spawn under Strahd's control. We completely missed that I was supposed to die and I helped out in the rest of the fight. I think becoming a vampire could be a cool turn for my character but my DM seems resistant. The other players seem okay with burying me at the start of the next session. How do I convince my DM to let me be a problematic vampire?

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.

Dan Callery

Greetings high crit justices and hello to the dark yet mysterious bailiff jake. I'm a dm and in my last session I had my party face a succubus, intending to make a tricky encounter where players would be charmed and fight each other. At the beginning of the encounter the party caught on quick that a charm could potentially be broken by inflicting damage on the affected creature. They did this at first by simple unarmed strikes to minimize damage, but at one point the bard in my party took it to a dangerous level after the rogue was charmed. Instead of small damage, she decided to use a rapier of wounding, a magic weapon I had given to her months ago and never used until now. She inflicted an insane amount of damage on her fellow party member, breaking his charm but causing reoccurring necrotic damage afterwards. As the DM was I in the wrong for allowing this severe attack to happen? Should I have tried to stop her and make her rethink her actions. Or is the Bards fault, and does this fall under the "get new friends to play with" precedent. Thank you and I flash the jury

Samuel Dodd

May it please the court. Esteemed justices and humble (very humble) bailiff Jake, I present the course of the broken action economy: A few years ago, I was in a campaign with my high school friends as a player. Our party had a political tyrant to take out, so I had the idea to hire a team of assassins. It was a ton of fun until the end. It led to an all rogue one-shot where we snuck into his fortress and attacked him in his sleep. Our first round of attacks didn't kill him, so he opened up a portal to the realm of his dark god. The god then proceeded to power word kill all of us, even using it on my character mid-action as I tried to use the weapon to make a return portal. The DM tried to justify this by saying it was a one shot so it didn't matter. But the party and I felt cheated since we didn't even have a chance to escape.

Rebecca Wilson

May it please the court, the always-just Justices, and the always-bailing bailiff: I present the case of the confusing convocation. My d&d group is big - 10 people plus our DM, who is my brother. We usually schedule games with a small group of whoever is available each week. My lvl 14 druid just finished an arduous quest (with the help of her friends) to finish her PhD thesis and guess what - she passed! But now it's time for her convocation, and the problem is that everyone wants to attend. This is either going to lead to many important characters missing out on this celebration, OR the most chaotic session ever, which might distract from my druid's big moment. Should she only invite some of her friends? Bring everyone? Overthrow the ceremony and take over the school? I patiently await your sage wisdom and judgement. Thank you!

Nero

BobbyG

In the name of the twenty, the one, and the Holy Rolls. Forgive me Dice Christ, for I have sinned. I have recently started a 1-20 campaign with me as the DM. I got my players to write backstories for their characters, with the promise that we'd delve into them as part of this homebrew campaign. At the end of the first session, the party was being teleported off a monastic island by a Flumph in a pope hat. The teleportation goes awry, and I rolled a d6 to see which backstory we'd be delving into first, and the result was one of the PC's whose backstory I found boring, so I rerolled and landed on a more interesting PC. Have I sinned before Dice Christ? Should I have gone with the first roll? I'm planning on visiting that player's story later on but I haven't thought of a good setup for their boring backstory. Amen.

Carter Carscadden

Dear highest of justices and holiest of the church of crit, I do not know if I have a crit confession or a case for you to decide. I play in a sci-fi space campaign online with my bf and our friends. Me and my partner are both players and are very attached to our characters. Him playing a palabard and I a circle of stars Druid. Problems occurred one night of mismanaged combat facing a beholder. In the combat an npc who was like a pseudo son to his character was disintegrated. Now this could have been some what okay, if it wasn’t within the same weekend that he had put his childhood cat down (which the dm knew had happened). This dm hates the 5e revivify rules which even more so can’t apply without a corpse. As my boyfriend is having a panic attack about death I pull and stack everything possible Druid spell I have to bring this npc back to life. When asked for a wisdom roll I believe , I rolled a four but out loud I said “nat 20”. So I come to you wondering, should I be punished by dice Christ for my hubris or was I intervening in a tragedy that should have never occurred?

Johnathon colin Rodaway

To the divine crit justices (and anyone else present) i present the case of the drowned tortle. A year or so ago my party consisted of Uguey a tortle paladin who was our tank, myself a monk and several squishy casters who are not important to the court. The tortle paladin had a homebrew magic armour that allowed him to add his charisma to his AC. On any character thats amazing but a tortle with already high AC it was absolutely broken. With him weilding a tower shield his AC would sit comfortably around 26 and if he went into his shell as a bonus action and cast shield it would hit 35. Broken but thats all he was good at was taking hits. Our DM clearly regretted this choice as monster would often go around the paladin to hit everyone else with no logical reasoning other than "well they can't hit him unless they crit". Clearly one day he had enough of Uguey and had 2 fighters grapple him and hold his head under water to drown him and insisted that he began to drown instantly despite the rulings of how holding breath works. He said that because he was grappled and had his head pushed under he "didn't have enough time to take a breath before his head was in the water". Ultimately we managed the encounter and Uguey lived to retire but it still feels wrong as i was sat there watching it all unfold. Was our DM right to say you can't take a breath if you're forced under wter or was he just clearly being a bit of a baby? I humbly await your verdict

Joshua

May it please the beloved High Crit and the (even more) beloved Bailiff; don’t let them get you down, hero. I bring forth the case of the Fire Mephit’s Heat Metal. I was a few sessions into my first time DM’ing for some friends and my players were going through a dungeon that had a room of lava and rock bridges where Fire Mephits would pop out at certain points. I had a Fire Mephit cast Heat Metal on the Fighter’s Axe only for him to say the handle is wooden. I said “ok he casts it on your armor instead.” He got annoyed at the immediate retcon, but I figured the Mephit, who could see the warrior, would know what metal to heat. Because he was annoyed, I didn’t make him take off his armor to stop the damage and the Mephit died quickly. Was he right to be annoyed that I fixed my own mistake in the moment or should I have had the spell fail because I didn’t know what his characters axe looked like? A minor case, but one that has haunted me since 2019. Pls save me.

The Broox

I humble myself before the omnipotent supreme Crit justices and to bailiff Jake (chooser of cases, reader of stickers). Last year I joined a D&D group. (I found them through reddit). Things were going well until the fourth session. One player (gnome artificer) couldn’t make attend; so the DM told the party that one of us would have to play their character AND the artificer’s character for that session. No one volunteered and I (an eternal people pleaser) said I would do it since my character (gnome cleric) was the artificer’s grandmother. Things went well enough until combat. We were ambushed by crag cats, and my cleric and the artificer were koed. I failed my first death saves and then proceeded to roll a nat 1 for the artificer. My Dm said, “Well. He’s dead now.” I asked if my cleric could do a religion or an arcana check to see if my patron god would intervene and save the artificer. My DM said “No, he’s dead.” Off mic I asked the Dm if we could not kill the artificer because I felt uncomfortable with the decision and felt terrible that I was in possession of the character when he died. The Dm said “Artificer knew this might happen if he didn’t attend the session and this was the consequence.” I felt awful for the rest of the night and the group disbanded shortly afterward. Was I wrong for asking the DM to resurrect the artificer? Or was the Dm wrong for creating a situation where a character could die if a player wasn’t at the table?

Tom Sutton

Most honourable justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner. And also that bailiff guy. I present to you a simple question: how much head is too much? I'm running a long term campaign in which rhe characters have just reached level 17, giving the characters access to level 9 spells. Our druid has opted for shapechange. An excellent choice! However, this combined with a fun boss they encountered over 2 years ago has left me with a potentially game breaking issue. They have fought a hydra. Which means she can turn INTO a hydra. This in itself is not a huge deal. But if you cut a hydra's head off by doing 25 damage, two grow back and the hydra is healed for 20. There is NO LIMIT on how many heads a hydra can have, and they get an extra attack PER HEAD. This means for a measly 5 healing a turn (which is pretty trivial for a party of 5 level 17 characters to achieve) they get an extra attack. How do i handle the 1000 headed spaghetti monster that awaits me? I throw myself before your feet, and humbly request your help.

Ayn Like Ryan

No case, just dropping in to say Bailiff Jake is kind, smart, generous, and overall a cool guy 👍🏼

Adam Leeuwenhart

PS. 2020 and 2021 was a rough year for me and this podcast was a great beacon of consistent fun and levity each week. Thanks for the laughs and the comfort.

Ihatecrabz

Greetings Supreme Crit! Today I offer the case of the Deadliest Character Introduction. It was my first time playing a proper game of a ttrpg and I was very excited to make a character, so I kinda went all out with the guy and his artwork that I did myself. The party was in a dark swamp forest and wasn't in anyway native so as a native myself I thought I could be a guide for them. However to my surprise the resident overpowered DM PC had a specific hatred for my guys faction that He himself pitched to me. The character was huge, had super strength, and immediately threatened my life, and it was made clear that I had no possibility of winning any kind of combat when the guy CUT DOWN A TREE AND SHEARED IT INTO PLANKS as a show of strength. It came down to doing the only thing I could think of which was betting for my life in gambling, and if I hadn't gotten 1 number higher than I did, I would have just died, no combat. I don't think I'm in the wrong here by thinking this was a little unfair as an introduction to the game, but I leave judgment in your hands

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.

Djentleman XIII

May it CHEESE the court and the absolutely tarnished Bailiff Jake. I present you the case of the Couch-Grouch. I was DM'ing for the first time a few years ago where I was running a campaign for my level 3 characters. One of them got a potion that temporarily boosted a random stat of theirs to 20. He landed on Strength, so now he was a VERY muscular Fighter. He took this potion during an encounter where they fought a few bandits and the, now frankly hulking character, asks to throw an entire couch at the bandits. I tell him that he's only going to be able to lift the couch, but not throw it with enough force to phase them. He lightly protested but in the end I just gave him automatic Crit-damage with his Unarmed Strikes. The reasoning in my head was that they were only level-3, so I didn't feel like throwing a large furniture was adequate to their skills as-of-yet. Was I wrong? I kinda feel like I was wrong, as I've had 3 years to look back at this blunder. Also, after this session the player declared he no longer had time to play. I await your judgement.

Wolfgang

May it please the Court, Honerable Justices and Grand Baliff Jake. My case today is actually one against myself. I have experience as a DM but never started at level 1. We are doing a campaign based in Strixhaven. My players are now level 2 and are currently exploring a Warlock's tower. On the first floor I had a sitting room full of Chairs of Madness. Keeping in mind that they were only 2nd level I made sure make the DC to resist getting pulled into the chairs and resist the madness, a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw in a party with the lowest wisdom Stat being the Barbarian at a 10. Some of the party members fell to the madness and started acting against the party. I had already planned to give someone the ability to be able to use a Scroll of greater restoration to cure the madness. But after the session wrapped I felt like some of the players were upset that they fell to madness and attacked other party members. It's been a few weeks but I still feel bad that some of my players may not have had fun. Should I have lowered the DC or am I just suffering from DM's guilt? I thank you all for you civic service and await to hear the outcome.

T.J Robertson

May it please the justices that dare not to do drugs (stay in school kidz) and the bailiff that dares to do drugs (not cool). I bow before you to confess my sins and be reborn in Dice Christ. May my sins not be too large a burden for Dice Christ's chiseled shoulders to bare. A few years ago I was running a one shot for some friends. One of my players wanted to play Matt Mercer's Order of the Lycan Bloodhunter. Me, being wet for critical role, said yes. However, instead of being a werewolf or a werebear, he asked if he could be a wereturtle. I said no, stating that the order of the lycan has a claw attack and I said turtles don't have claws. He then proceeded to Google turtles with claws, but they were tortoises I argued. He then asked to be a weretortiose, but I was worried I wasn't being taken seriously and still said no. To this day I bare this scarlet letter on my chest and I offer my soul up to Dice Christ to set me free. Amen

Brave the Badger

May it please the court and the lovely, invaluable judges and the beautiful bailiff Jake. I present the "Just let me do cool shit" case. The DM for the current campaign I play in is wanting to create a low magic homebrew world. I am super excited for him, as it's going to be his first ever homebrew. We are extremely limited in regard to character creation (players handbook only) and every idea I have is being shot down. I love playing the craziest races and classes I can. Since non-humans in his world are looked down upon and enslaved, my first idea was that I am a fairy who cut off their own wings to fit in. I said I'd be okay with using normal elf stats, but the backstory implications are limitless. He immediately shot it down, as well as my idea to be just a normal elf warlock with the archfey patron. I feel blocked creatively and I'm already not having a great time with this game and it hasn't even started. Please tell me if I'm asking too much of my DM. I will accept whatever the courts decide!

Vivi

To the benevolent Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, as well as the Wonderous Bailiff Jake I'm running a small introduction campaign for my first time as a DM. My partner and a mutual friend are the players. Both PCs have a form of amnesia we just had a huge backstory reveal for the Fighter/Technomancey Wizard and after that session the player came to me to do a solo session for more specific lore roleplay. Personally feels wrong to do solo sessions mid campaign when we only have 2 players so I have denied the request. They don't seem to upset by the decision but I worry I have upset them. Did I do the wrong thing by not wanting to do solo sessions? Or should I have given in? I humbly await your ruling.

Robert McDaniel

May it please the court, the all omniscient justices, and that fourth guy uuh Jack? I present the case of the Brainless Brazen Dragonborn. During my latest session as DM, running Dungeon of the Mad Mage, combat took an unceremoniously harsh turn when an Intellect Devourer used it's Devour Intellect ability and reduced my girlfriend's Amethyst Dragonborn Paladin (party is level 5) to zero intelligence. The party was unable to kill it before its next turn and it proceeded to use Body Thief on the now Stunned and Incapacitated Dragonborn. My girlfriend immediately DC'd from the group discord call and did not rejoin us as the party finished combat. I quickly adjusted a hidden magic item into a Ring of Three Wishes so that saving the Paladin was an option. I beseech you all to know, what would you have done and have I done wrong in the eyes of the court?

Joe Curran

Maybe it please the court, the inimitable justices Axford, Murphy & Tanner and, ya know, the other guy. I was DMing a party that reached the BBEG, a spellcaster. One of my players rushed him and began a grapple check to clamp their hand over his mouth to prevent any spell casting. The PC had advantage on all strength checks due to some totally legal Rune Knight bullshit. My caster failed and was grappled. My PC proceeded to drag the caster out of the room, covering his mouth the whole way out. I imposed a penalty of only being able to move half speed. I cannot believe that a caster can be nerfed so easily. In the moment, I couldn’t find anything to back my grievance so we moved forward. Am i guilty of bad research? Being too generous to a player? Heinous misunderstanding of the grapple condition? I await whatever flogging I’m sure to be given. Humbly, a new-ish DM.

Jacob Corona

May it please the court and the weak-armed bailiff, I have a mildly crunchy case for y'all. This weekend, there was an orc enemy lightly obscured by rain and fog but lit up by Faerie Fire. I tried to throw a javelin at it at max range. The DM ruled that the obscuration plus the long range of the weapon meant that I would have to roll at disadvantage. I argued that according to the rules, even a dozen instances of disadvantage plus one instance of advantage, like from Faerie Fire, still cancels out to be a flat roll. But he was insistent. I ended up missing the orc. Is my DM a virgin for this?

whosthekoon

To the supreme crit justices and the honorable bailiff Hurwitz, I was playing a campaign with friends and I was a half-orc named stinkjaw, when character was created the dm did not specify that all orcs in his world were "Warhammer style" orcs, as in having the powers of telekinetic belief and being grown from spores in a cave. My PC visited a brothel and had a very saucy encounter with a ahem.....worker there by the name of sticky grandma. Here lies the issue,when my party encountered an orc camp,my PC ended up fighting for the right of the KNOB or leader if you will. My PC won and I became the knob,I mentioned the wonderful exploits and soft touch of sticky grandma to the camp of orcs and the dm ruled that they wouldn't know what a human was because they had just recently grown inside a cave and had the entire camp turn against me and kill my character, was he right to not set up the boundaries before playing? Or should I have just kept quiet about sticky grandma

Tim C

Blessed bailiff and honored judges. A giant worm had swallowed my group's ranger putting everyone on edge. To save the ranger, our wizard cast banishment on the worm. The wizard argued that since the spell's target is one creature, the worm would be banished and not the ranger in its stomach. I pointed out that any food in the worm's stomach would be banished with it, and the ranger was it's lunch at this point. I left it up to Dice Christ, and the wizard rolled a Nat 20 arcana, making the decision easy for me. We banished the worm and saved the ranger. While all were thrilled with this resolution, for future precedent, I'm curious if the court would allow this, and if so, should it be possible without a Nat 20?

Jason Dedrick

May it please the inestimable and magnanimous Supreme Crit, and also Jill’s friend, I guess? A few years ago I was running a campaign which included my little brother (an orc Paladin) and my partner at the time (an elvish Moon Druid), and despite in-character conflicts from the occasionally antagonistic Paladin, the campaign was going well. However, my partner came home from work prior to session after having a particularly rough day; we postponed session for an hour and I heard them out, but we still started session while they were upset. During session, some teenage hooligans began harassing the party, so the Paladin moved to violently reprimand them. This upset the Druid, who launched into PvP by casting Lightning Bolt (a spell we later realized Moon Druids do not have) at the Paladin. PvP was not a part of the campaign at any point, and both players were visibly upset, but I was so stunned that I just sat there quietly while the Paladin shrugged off not one but two Lightning Bolts and beat the Druid unconscious. This effectively ended the campaign, and the three of us (my brother, my ex – now my best friend – and myself) have often discussed sending the case in to D&D Court for a fair and judicious ruling. I believe I was in the wrong for not intervening, the Paladin believes he was in the wrong for not attempting to deescalate, and the Druid believes they were in the wrong for initiating PvP, but we humbly submit to the will of the Supreme Crit.

christien

Honourable judges and bailiff with the questionable home life. I present a case very near to my heart. I'd like to play this character again but this event left a bad taste in my mouth. I played a corgi riding halfling paladin. The party was in an intense battle and I was the last left up. The party wanted me to use my healing but i felt like the dm was hinting the last enemy was low. I quicken spelled darkness on my corgi and sent him to cover the party while I tried to smite him down. I missed with advantage he fireballed my team in the darkness they failed their last death save and I got booted from the campaign. Was I wronged? I felt very bad they died but I thought I made the right decision.

Courtney F.

May it please the court: Our party got lost in a forest of illusions and in order to get out we unfortunately had to make a deal with the 3 Night Hags tormenting us. The deal we made for our freedom was that we would kill a black dragon and recover his eye and tongue for the hags. Once finished, we would call upon the Hags to “meet in person, in a place of our choosing” to give them the items. We knew they’d be tricky about this deal so we made sure to specify these terms. We intended to get them out of their territory and kill them when we met. Well…when we summoned the Night Hags, they sent simulacrums. Half of the party argued that simulacrums don’t count as meeting “in person” but the DM said that these simulacrums are real creatures and therefore, fulfill their end of the deal. We accepted our DM's ruling but the half that protested are still a tiny bit salty about it. Benevolent Judges and also Jake, were we swindled by simulacrums or are we simply salty Sallys? I humbly await your judgment.

Kyle Corbett

Greetings to the most honorable high justices of the court and a glancing scowl for the mewling bailiff. May I present the case of the slighted sentinel shield. I’m currently playing as Gallia, a satyr Knowledge Cleric/Druid Circle of Stars with the supernatural gift of The Oracle. At the start of the campaign we were each allowed to pick to uncommon magical items as it was understood our players have been adventuring for sometime. I chose the Sentinel shield, an uncommon magic item. As a wisdom base character my perception is already quite good but with the bonus of the shield, which grants advantage on initiative roles and perception checks, not much can get past me. My dungeon master has recently started to say I shouldn’t get advantage on perception checks outside of combat because they believe I need to actively be using the shield in order to benefit from the magic effect. This has caused some discord at the table to the point where now I feel the dungeon master is punishing the table by giving us disadvantage on perception checks just to cancel out the advantage I have from this item. My question is this, Looking at the wording on the item how does the court rule? Do I need to be lovingly caressing my shield in order to benefit from its innate magical properties? Since I cannot be there in person to throw myself on the mercy of the court, I ask that the Bailiff grovel, beg, and weep on my behalf. Thanks Sweeties! Kyle

Your Good Buddy Brandon

To the right honorable Justices and their pet the bailiff, I present a case of redo's, resentment, and zombie healthcare. My first time DMing I asked my players to be sure of their choices when leveling up as one of my players (we'll call him Beau) had a habit of changing his mind and several times asked our previous DM to "re-spec" his character. Go figure, a few weeks in Beau asks me to allow some edits to take a level of rogue. I acquiesced but informed him that in story he would die and be resurected with his new skills. He agreed, and was struck down the following session by and honest-to-Dice Christ nat 20. Here's the issue, the party's trigger happy Necromancer zombified Beau's corpse before the NPC Cleric I sent along could Gentle Repose him to prevent this, so now the healing guild's 1,000gp Ressurection spell won't work as it can't bring back undead. The only options are Reincarnate for 1,000gp (which Beau is against as it would almost certainly change his race) or True Ressurection for 25,000gp. Upon hearing this Beau became upset, stomped outside to hit his vape a few times and fumed silently for the remainder of the session while the rest of the party ended up giving basically all the money they had to cover the spell -- but he DID resurrect with his remade character. I fear I was too harsh, should I have just ignored that some spells don't work on undead, was I wrong to try and punish this behavior I knew was coming? I throw myself upon the mercy of the court.

Phil E

May it please the court, the resplendent justices, and the solid bailiff, I present the case of the nat 20 fiancé fiasco. I am playing a terminally ill tortle peace cleric named Raphael in a friend’s campaign and as a result, my character vacillates between acceptance and bitterness at his inevitable untimely death. The party witnessed a male halfling propose to a female halfling, only to have the proposal interrupted by a machine casting Tasha’s hideous laughter on the female halfling. The male halfling ran off distraught and the party chased after him. While the other members attempted to console him (and rolled poorly), I rolled a persuasion check to see if I could convince him that he was better off without her and to move on. I was fully aware this was a misunderstanding but was bitter at their happy ending. I rolled a nat 20. The DM said that the halfling was receptive and seemed convinced but as soon as the halfling saw his “fiancé” they immediately reconciled. I called BS and said they should have at least had s fight where one of them said something truly horrific and irrevocable (think Hardwon telling Tris he likes to read or Murph telling Emily he hates cats). Months later the DM said there may have been long term ramifications I didn’t get to see but again, I call BS. I ask the court, can a nat 20 destroy a relationship? Is that how Tucker ended up with Jill?

BuzzingAround

May it please the most honorable supreme crit justices, least honorable bailiff, and welcome guests, whoever they might be. I bring to you the case of Hearing vs Healing. A local temple asked my party's help clearing out an unknown wailing creature in their catacombs. We could hear screaming described as so powerful it might do permanent damage if we went inside, even through wax earplugs. One of our party, a war hardened navy Triton, immediately tried to pierce his eardrums to deafen himself ("sacrifices must be made in war!"). The rest of us stopped him, then realized it might be a good plan since we knew the temple had healers and healing potions to restore our hearing afterwards. Our DM said this plan wouldn't work because healing would restore hp but not our hearing since our eardrums would still be ruptured. I said that healing our eardrums should also heal our hearing since HP is just a mechanical representation of health. He ended up letting us layer the candle wax to completely deafen ourselves temporarily, however, the question still intrigues me. Would healing potions and/or healers be able to restore hearing after a character punctures their eardrums?

Jevin Kames

Honorable justices and...Jake,

BuzzingAround

PS, we ended up killing the creature (a banshee) before it's first turn because we got a surprise round and it rolled really low on its initiative.

Gage Stoneman

May it please the court, the honorable justices, and the craven, yet hunky balif. My problem is one of privilege and excess, I play too much DnD. I am in four campaigns as a player and I DM a fifth which is currently on hiatus. I need to relinquish one of these games so that I can have more free time for real life and not fantasy. The only trouble is the one I'm most likely thinking of abandoning is the group with which I started playing. It meets every other Sunday at the DMs house and while I have enjoyed playing with these folks for several years the other campaigns are with friends I am much closer with and take place at my house or over discord so are more convenient to work my life around. So my question for the court, is it wrong of me to abandon my very first party in favor of these latest ones? I humbly await your decision and since someone must always be comically punished I request that whatever you decide, it should be me.

Gooserocket

To the venerable crit justices and the supple bailiff Jake (the true puppet master of the court), I DM for my wife and friends in a casual game that only meets once a month. One of my players is a dwarven bard named Mendick Strongwood of clan Oakenshaft. His roleplay is decent, but the only problem is he is absolutely terrible in combat. He insists on using a blunderbuss to fight, and after multiple sessions of him not hitting a single thing, I gave him proficiency with the weapon to help. This only helped slightly, so I asked if he would be interested in reclassing Mendick as a gunslinger so he could be more effective in combat. That's when he told me that he actually *likes* that Mendick is a terrible fighter, because the character's personality is that he is craven and driven only by wanting easy treasure by riding on other's coattails. So far he has survived by the skin of his teeth on several occasions, and the other players are getting a little tired of having to bail him out despite being amused by his antics off the battlefield. In one fight, he went invisible immediately, showed himself to try to shoot a giant spider, missed, and then went into hiding again. He didn't reappear until the fight was over and everyone else was beat up pretty bad. I've had talks with everyone that their adventurers need to have a reason to adventure before my scenarios, plot, and world even happen to them, but this player is perfectly content to play a cowardly fool with a big gun. Should I double down on my attempts to show him that dumb actions have consequences, or is Mendick alright to keep living his insane life and getting away with it? I humbly await your verdict.

Matt Hudson

May it please the honourable judges and the here by the sweat of his brow bailiff. I present the case of the murdered bachelor. For my bachelor/stag party we played D&D as a group of mercenaries and I played an order domain cleric. As the majority of the players had never played before and In order to encourage a bit of role-play I attempted to file a HR report to the captain of the ship due to a hostile work environment and lack of safety procedures. This was taken in good fun until one of the party fired into my combat with a harpy, rolled a Nat 1 and hit me. In a frenzy the rest of the group turned on me, declaring me a narc, and stamped on my body until I was dead. It was a fun night but the tone shifted quite a bit when I had to then watch them play for the rest of the night chanting “kill the stag”. My question is this, was I right to try and encourage some role-play and what is the victim of abuse or murdering at my own party or we’re the group justified in killing me due to the HR report? I await your divine justice.

NotAFrog

If it may please the court, I bring before the honorable judges and the lowly lowly bailiff the case of Ü Korbel VS The DM. This campaign was one where the world was a toxic wasteland. The DM would alter our character in extreme ways saying it was the poison. It was cool at first, but by the last session our PCs were shells of the characters we created. My most relevant alteration was getting a jaw that unhinged and shark teeth. My PC was named Ü Korbel and he was a chaotic neutral fighter that loved being the strongest. The DM set up a fighting arena, and he obviously entered the competition. During one of the fights Ü tried to bite his opponent’s neck and I rolled a nat 20! I went to tell the DM what Ü was doing but he cut me off and said that Ü’s bite was too strong since a rolled a 20 and it killed his opponent. I argued that a nat 20 would mean that he does what he intends in the most successful way, and he would not bite to kill in an arena setting while the DM said that a 20 means it’s the most powerful version despite it not being what I wanted. Most honorable Judge, Jury, please tell me how a Nat 20 works. Best intention scenario or most extreme case scenario?

Gayandorky

May it please the crit but especially the beautiful radiant Judge Axford. I have a bone to pick with my DM. For reference there has been a recurring npc called Barthog Redcap, a red-capped goblin who stumbled upon a wand of fireball and a headband of intellect, and has declared himself king. He escaped in our first encounter, however supposedly he had some of his henchmen follow us for days. The party had just come from the eastern part of the continent and was now heading east. We were almost to our destination when Barthog’s henchmen showed up out of nowhere. This is the first time we had found out we were being followed. The henchmen mentioned that Barthog was gathering other goblin leaders in an attempt to join forces and kill an entire town- spreading the reign of Barthog. The meeting of the goblin council was in the east of the continent. Where we had just come from- this was after days of traveling. We ultimately decided to stop Barthog (and to get the two magical items he possessed), and travel the long distance to the meeting area. This turned out to be a small colosseum where around 35 goblins were gathered. We of course got into a fight- which started out by our ranger doing an amazing critical hit on Barthog, immediately killing him. Despite being level 4, and being up against 30+ goblins (who seemed to have higher HP than a goblin should) we won the battle! When we went to loot Barthog’s body, it was discovered that some of the goblins took his body away, along with the magical items. All of this seemed ridiculous to me. Was our DM trying to kill us by making us go to fight the goblins? Why did we have to continue this thread and follow the goblins more instead of continuing the main story like we were trying to do? Please help me solve this riddle oh great justices and also that one guy that’s there I think.

Mads

Dear honorable justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, any guest justices, and of course, the charming bailiff. A member of my party has a horse name Forrest who has been given a boon from a primordial deity and a) constantly glows and b) can jump 30ft in the air. So we thought, how could this horse be any better? Simple. If he could tap dance. Our DM was immediately against this idea. One of our party members was proficient in Cobbler’s tools for some reason, and we thought that since there would probably never be another reason to use Cobblers tools in the game, the DM would surely let him try to make horse tap shoes. But no. She continued to reject it. She said that none of us would know what tap dancing was, so my character rolled a history check to see if she knew what tap was, which I rolled very well on. Despite all of this, the DM stood her ground. So I ask you, most prestigious judges, is my DM in the wrong for not allowing us the simple pleasure of having a glowing, ethereal horse who can also tap dance?

Sean

May it please the court and Tucker’s new apprentice. This happened years ago and I still wonder if I was in the wrong. We were playing L5R and I was playing a clan that in the sourcebook itself said handled being lied to by close friends poorly. Another party member decided (with good reason) to be deceitful to my character. Out of character I said something along the lines “if you do that please either be extra sure my character doesn’t find out or figure out a good way to break it to me because if he figures it out on his own it’ll be bad for everyone. My party told me I was bullying and meta gaming I thought it as trying to avoid a PVP incident. Thoughts?

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

Jor Elare

A warm greeting to the justices and an appropriately terse nod to the bailiff. I DM a party who just hit level 6 and recently added the boyfriend of one of my players to the group. To get his PC hooked into the party, I had his Warlock's Patron tell him in a dream to meet up with them and join their quest. The problem? My players have all kept notes and have shared a ton of info out of character with this guy and he is unintentionally metagaming pretty severely. He has accidentally spoiled a pair of significant reveals to his character by recognizing someone he hasn't met in game and speaking to them. I'm still having a bunch of fun, as are the players, but I ask the court how to gently steer my players into keeping their PCs secrets/insights in game.

Stephen Burns

Benevolent Judges and lowly bailiff, I present the case of Mighty Morphin tree death. I was playing in a campaign where our druid died after picking up a cursed item. The other players noticed the item turning her skin to bark which buffed her AC. It would also possess her and cause her to eat dead bodies. We couldn't convince her to drop the item as it was buffing her AC. We didn't know it was speaking to her in her head. Over the course of 48 hours in game she turned into a homebrew Corpse Flower Tree. This is how the session ended. It was not clear that her character had died. The DM described us still seeing her face in the tree's trunk. However, the next session he explained she was indeed dead, but did not offer her to create a new character. Half way through the session, I had to ask him if she could run the DMPC. She was silent for much of the session. We did kill her/the tree, but never played together again. Was our DM too harsh with his cursed item or was our player in the wrong for keeping it?

Luke S

May it please the infinitely righteous Dungeon Crit and anyone else that might be in earshot. I present to you the case of the Discouraging Dragon Distribution. Years ago I was playing in one my first campaigns with a group of experienced friends. The campaign was Dragon focused, and after a few months of playing our characters were given a Dragon egg reflecting our characters. Our paladin was given a Gold Dragon egg. The Wizard a Silver Dragon, and so on. Until me… Giddy with excitement imagining the dragon riding fantasy my friends and I would share, I was awarded an egg for a “Dragonnel”. A 5” tall scaled horse with wings. I tried to be appreciative but couldn’t help but feel disheartened after seeing all other players at the table receive some sort of full-blooded dragon. I inquired why I received the horse-dragon and was told it was because I was playing a human. Humans have a (relatively) short life span compared to my elf and dwarf counterparts, meaning I wouldn’t be able to grow and mature with my dragon. While I somewhat understood the logic I still felt like I was dealt a salad at an ice cream social. I protested and played along but remained pretty disheartened. So I ask… was the DMs logic just? Did my character deserve to ride aloft a weird horse while my friends rode LITERAL dragons, or should I have respected the DMs gift and stopped being jealous Judas? I humbly await your ruling.

Brandon R

To the honourable Supreme Crit Justices and the lowly but under appreciated Bailiff. May it please the court, I bring to your attention the case of the conscripted commoners. I DM a weekly 5e campaign with my mother and two family friends/neighbours. Throughout the many campaigns we have played I’ve noticed certain pattern of behaviour from the party but especially my mother’s characters, they are constantly trying to recruit every NPC they meet to help the party with missions, even when I have made it clear they have commoner stats and have only 4 hit points. It’s gotten to the point where part of my process for creating npcs and quest givers is thinking of a reasons ahead of time for them to decline joining the party because I do not want to have to deal with them in combat. Even when a quest giver (like the deputy who protects a small frontier village) declines they will ask “what about the rest of the town? Is there anyone you can send with us?” They usually end up rolling their eyes and calling the quest givers and towns people lazy. We even had a campaign where I gave them a Tabaxi drunken master as a DMNPC and they still went in on the wizard who was giving them quests because he wanted to stay behind and watch over the town they were in rather than help them. So I ask you Justices, should I continue to try to convince my mother and her friends that the NPCs in these campaigns are more than just meat shields? Or should I simply cave and make every npc recruitable and just deal with the fact that I will have to run them in combat?

ChappyThoughts

I appeal to the justices of the supreme crit and the bailiff Jake who is neither more nor less incredible than those venerable persons: I was DMing a viking themed game in Faerun. The party was facing a dragon turtle and after doing very well I had the beast retreat. There was no way that they could win in a death match against it but I threw it at them knowing they could drive it off. One of my players wanted to chase follow it but I ruled that they couldn't track a dragon turtle through the ocean from the surface. The thing is, he is a real-life outdoors survival teacher while I am a former Navy submariner. Neither of us are experts on sea turtles but I know that loggerhead turtles can stay under for hours. Was I wrong to introduce the threat to begin with or let it escape?

Jordan Clement

To the most highly esteemed Justices Murphy, Axford and Tanner. And I'm sure Jake's there somewhere. 🙄 I bring the case of the Stormy Fireball. This case is brought up because it led to me accidentally killing 2 of my party members. Our party was seeking a Demonic Hobgoblin assassin ship. It was a night time expedition, but we were seeking a sleek black vessel. We arrived to the ship, and we were accosted immediately. On the top deck of the ship, our wizard shoots a high level fireball at 8 of the enemies, but the DM says that because it's stormy outside, that the fireball was whisked away in the wind. Our wizard get reasonably upset and pulls back on playing. I wanted to help my ranger and wizard, who ran into the captains quarters and got choked out by Bugbears. When I tried to save them, the bugbears moved my party members body into my attacks. I had a powerful but extremely low intelligence two handed fighter. I ended up killing 2 members and then fleeing. But we argued with the DM about the mechanics of the fireball spell but we were shut down. Do yall think that this is true and fair? Or did the DM burn the whole party? Thank you for your time.

Noel H

hi guys i don't have a case but just wanted to say hi

Easton Moore

May it please the court, the high justices and the lovable but foolish bailiff Jake. I’m in a arcane style campaign with some work friends and our party consists of a Tiefling Rogue, a huge homebrewed race Barbarian, Goliath Fighter and then me a halfling Bard and recently in a session our Goliath was getting a little restless with some NPC’s. At one point he went in to punch someone and I tried to stop him by convincing my companion to not fight. I asked my DM to roll a persuasion check against my companion and he said you can’t roll against PC’s and I would have to roll play and actually convince the person to not fight. I couldn’t do so and he punched them and we got into a fight (in game fight, not me and my friend). I purposely made my character to be slick with words even though I’m not particularly sly myself and to fight with his words more than his weapons so I think I should be able to roll to see if I can convince him just like he could roll to see if he hits me with an attack. Am I in the wrong for thinking I should be able to roll to persuade PC’s or should the DM have had it be a roll off? I humbly await your verdict

vincent

Good day malevolent supreme crit and honorable bailiff. In my last session my Dm had set up what was supposed to be a rather hard encounter with 3 big bads. I was first to go and I have made improvised bombs made of alchemist flame, acid, and 1000 ball bearings. While the big bads were together I threw it at the big bad in the middle causing it to explode and dealt well over 500 damage to each. My dm though it was cool and really enjoyed that I came up with a cool thing but I feel bad for completely destroying what was supposed to be a hard encounter. Should I red con the bombs for myself or should I accept the DM's judgement and just use them.

Gabriel Wykle

May it please the court and pleasure Jake. In a previous campaign, my players ran into a deformed airboat rental owner named Ep, and his assistant, Max. He begged for my players to help restore him to his formal self. My players, being the very nice people that they are, obliged. After they helped however, Ep and Max revealed themselves to be Jeffery Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, and now that they were restored, they would be able to continue on with their nefarious plans. Hijinks ensued. While writing that section my wife told me that I, quote, "Really shouldn't do that Gabriel." But as you now know, I did not heed her sage advice. Did I go too far by tricking my players into unknowingly releasing Jeffrey Epstein into the world? I humbly await your ruling.

Fiona Dowell

May it please the court, the beloved and powerful Justice Axford and the other guys, I present the case of the gaslit rabbit. I play in a rather large dnd group at my college, around 8 people, that a close friend of mine dms for. We met up for our last session of the school year and everyone was pretty excited because an npc people wanted to meet was going to engage in combat with them. Note that in this world all the characters are already dead so when you “die” in combat you basically just respawn in a peanut gallery, and my character as well as 2 others were not present which we were fine with. The combat ended in a tpk, again no pcs actually died, but a member of our party switched sides and fought alongside the npc and actively “killed” other party members. everyone at the table was fine with this and said so repeatedly, however as the characters they were understandably upset. One of them, a rabbitfolk, had been betrayed in his life which was what resulted in his initial death, so he felt particularly hurt. Later, most of that crew ended up going to a gay bar and the rabbitfolk started venting about the situation to an npc. this is where i started having an issue, because the rabbitfolk was completely justified in feeling hurt and betrayed by our party member, however the dm as the npc started suggesting that maybe it was his fault for assuming that the party member would remain on our team in the first place. the player that plays the character that betrayed them is also the dms partner, so it really seemed like he was using this npc to defend their actions as the character, when in reality no one had issues with it and the npc and that pc were strangers. when walking back to our dorms at the end of the session, i talked with the player with the rabbitfolk pc and they said that that interaction left them questioning how they interpreted the initial betrayal and i had to reassure them that they weren’t in the wrong for how their character would feel in that situation. so i humbly ask, did my dm disrespect our friend’s character decision to be upset, or was he in the right to play that npc how he saw fit? on an unrelated note, we played for about 5hrs that night in the middle of finals season and i did not get to play, like the dm fully forgot about me and i just sat there watching my friends play, instead of doing work.

Tucker

Honorable Justices and the other guy. I'm in a campaign at sea where we were fighting a Kraken. We had cannons on our ship which the DM was almost baiting us to use. They only have a +5 to hit so naturally we missed a lot. Finally, I broke through with a crit! But as I was rolling my damage my DM intervened and said sorry, you do no damage because the Kraken is immune to non-magical weapons. We were irate knowing the whole fight he was setting up scenarios to use the cannons only to dash our dreams instantly. We asked him for any solution to use them so we didn't feel like we wasted the whole encounter for an attack that would never do damage. But the DM didn't budge! Ultimately we won the fight but one of our party members died in the fight. We haven't set up another session in weeks and the DM has gone ghost on us since then. Are we in the wrong for not knowing about the Kraken's non-magical immunity? Or was my DM being a little too harsh? I await your fair judgement.

Benwahah

Dear fathers and alter boy jake. Forgive me, as i may have sinned. I believe dice christ has put me through the test to see if i was worthy to be a dm. This was my very first session dming for a friends. One of them never played before. I. The very first fight. I crit on 8 attacks against them. So i lied and turned them into. Either a miss or a normal hit. Depending on what i felt the situation needed. The rest of the session went well. But at the end. They were to have a one on one duel vs a fighter who challenged their strongest fighter. The new player volonteered. And. Lost. Was put to one failed attempt. The battle ended. And i decided to use this as an opportunity to teach em about death saving throws. So i allowed them to roll before anyone could heal her. Thinking whats the worst that could happen. Well she rolled a nat 1. Feeling as dice christ was challenging me to whatni would do in this situation. Do i tell the new player that shes completely dead. And needs to do a new character. Or lie and say thats just one fail and pretend i didnt see the 1. I cowared my way through and allowed her to be saved. And now i feel like ive failed in the eyes of dice christ

Faisa Awow

I bow before the benevolent judge axford, wise judge Murphy and the little stinker judge caldwell aswell as the radical bailiff jake (ur doing great bud). I’m here to present a case on my friends behalf. Basically my friend is a dm and was asked to host a stream by one of their mutuals. They agreed to dm for a party of 14 players each representing one of the classes. Initially they were told that their mutual would handle marketing and scheduling however most of the brunt has fallen on to the dm aswell as having to work with players to homebrew 7 worlds. I play the barbarian and feel bad watching my friend deal with so much pressure and responsibility as I watch the resentment grow against the person that asked for the stream yet refuses to do any work surrounding it. Please punish this mutual for breaking their promise and stressing my poor dm out, we await ur fair and impartial judgement. (Btw said mutual is playing the fighter of the party if that adds anything) xx

Yakov Medyanikov

Dear esteemed justices and beautiful bailiff, who my wife called "the handsome one" at the Seattle live show, I come to you with the case of the murdered bard. I, of course did the murdering. But on accident. My character, The Pebble, was a halfling barbarian and the bard was artichokelis m. Father. We were fighting some mimics, one of which was impersonating a rug. Well the rug bastard wrapped himself around artichoke, and me, being stupid, attacked with full rage and strength. I guess a rug doesn't make a great shield because I ended up cutting through the mimic and killing the bard as well. I was devastated and pleaded with the DM to reverse this decision, stating that we weren't doing cleave rules and I should have only killed the rug. Please help me find peace for my murder and absolve me of my crime. Thank you.

Eric Wills

May it please the court and bailiff. I bring the case of science vs magic. I run a campaign of extremely well educated friends and family, including a doctor and a nurse. After some Con fails, their characters became diseased by an exploding fungus and had 8 hours to find a cure or they would die. They tried to convince me that the spell “purify food and drink” should cure them of all disease. I said no. They continued to argue with me about the blood brain barrier… blah blah blah science stuff. I continued to resist but I allowed an arcana/medicine check to try and cast the spell in a way that was not intended. They failed miserably but continued to argue with me and the results of the dice. Nobody ended up dying from this encounter but the trend of real life science trumps magic logic continues in the campaign. Should I go back to school in order to better implement science in the fantasy rpg? I humbly await your verdict…

imortan Joe

To the establishment of the grand and repellent supreme crit justices, and jake too I guess. I bring forth my plea of a theft of a cool pc moment. I was playing a level 16 barbarian in a campaign run at my university. Me and my party we up against the BBEG of the champain a litch that was gathering a army of warlocks as the litch was their patron. During the final battle with the litch our dm was asking what our exact hp was which was odd since they only have asked our approximate hp. I assumed that the dm was planning on using power word kill but I didn't want to call it out in fear of meta gaming. So I hatched a cunning ruse. When my hp dropped below 100 and it came to my initiative I held my action stating I wanted to prep a help action in case some dropped. The litch the began to pass power word kill on me but then I sprung into action and used my second wind to bring my hp ubove 100 hp nullifying the spell. However, my dm said otherwise and said that I could not intrupt a 9th level spell with a bones actions. I protest but in the end we settled on allowing me to second wind but still letting the lich attack me with a necrotic touch. We still beated the litch (our paladin came in clutch with a 5th level crit smite). But I still feel like I have a shot at outsmarting the BBEG and doing something cool or was I a naughty little meta gaming player that needs to be punished

Martin

May it please the court and it’s jester: About a year ago I was playing a fighter, Steve Stevenson, in a campaign with some of my friends and we had been playing for months already. The DM had at this point already killed two characters and established that this world was deadly with her tough encounters, but two players in my party had discovered a cheesy darkness + catapult ten acids of vial combo to give us the edge on fights. On this occasion, we were deep in a subterranean dungeon fighting a massive lava elemental when my fellow party members cast darkness on it to try to the combo. My fighter, Steve, had spent the last two turns dashing to the elemental (we started the fight 200~ feet away from it) and, not wanting to waste my third turn, ran into the darkness to duel the elemental. Well, I quickly got my ass kicked and knocked unconscious, and because I was in the darkness spell couldn’t be healed. My party eventually defeated the lava elemental, but not before Steve perished. They tried to come revivify me, but the DM said that after I died the lava from the elemental disintegrated my body. Am I wrong for still thinking that was unfair and that I should have been able to be revived? Or was the DM right to annihilate me for walking into a cloud of cheesy darkness and punish the group for trying to get the upper hand? I await your ever-fair decision.

Jewel

May it please the court, the honorable and indomitable judges, and the lowly but invaluable baliff: I'm DMing a campaign and one of my PCs no-called/no-showed for the penultimate boss fight (a demilich locked up in their tower in a fallen ancient city). Not sure how I should handle their character's absence, as the party basically teleported to the boss and began the fight immediately. It feels weird to say that they were there when they weren't. But it's also kind of awkward to point out the absence. This player has missed several sessions before but usually with some advanced warning.

Heidi Artigue

May it please the leaders of the Holy Stochastic Empire, and their little usher Jake: I present an update on Ack Ack the Aarakocra bard AND a confession. As the campaign with Ack Ack and his friends progressed, he adamantly maintained that he wanted to play a bard who got up in the mix and fought with swords. I suggested he reclass as College of Swords, but instead he did a single Attack with a regular dagger throughout the campaign, for a max hit of 2d4 in a round if he used his bonus action as well. This clearly brought him joy, but was extremely ineffective at higher levels. So I started to fudge his damage rolls behind the screen. Every time Ack Ack hit, I knocked an extra few hit points off the enemies, and I would knock down the damage done to him so he could be the Bard Tank of his dreams. I also started planting health potions around the world after he healed HIMSELF when the wizard went down. I bring forth this confession because everyone else in the campaign was actually playing to their class, and by bringing Ack Ack up to their level I fear I tainted the game. Was I wrong to sneakily help the worst player when he was willfully ignoring my advice? Please be merciful in your judgement.

Caroline

To the wondrous and humble priests of Dice Christ, please hear my confession: I permanently killed a level one player in my first session as a DM, but I didn’t know it, and my novice player did not know that reaching your negative hit point total was an automatic kill. He was revived within 2 rounds, and continued forth on his adventure. I am DM’ing this short campaign to give our regular DM a break. After that first session, away from other players, my regular DM confessed to me that he noticed that the player should have been instantly killed, but he didn’t say anything at the time because he didn’t want to be a huge bummer and possibly ruin my first session. Please forgive me and my novice player for our transgression, and please sing the praises of supportive DMs everywhere - especially my DM, who has opened my eyes to the wonderful world of D&D and has quietly supported my efforts to become the best Direct Messenger I can be. He is also my boyfriend, and I love him very much.

Zoe Jones

The esteemed judges and (slightly) respected bailiff: was my husband a nightmare PC or do the other players just suck? His bard, who was the face of the party (chaotic good) was confronted by the kidnapper and "lustfull villain." The party found out that the villain intended to ... assault someone ... and my husband's bard cut the guys head off with one Nat20 blow in the town square. The DM stopped and made my husband's character shift to chaotic evil and everyone was rolling initiative against him. His character was forced to flee with a key item for the campaign. He then had to play out the campaign with a new character and the key item was gone forever. If it's any consolation, His new character became a lich and became the BBEG after sneaking off in the night and defeating Strahd alone. I humbly await your opinions, Zoe

Nathaniel Walston

I beg the wisdom of the High Crit, oh honorable justices and Jake. I have a civil case, and only seek to know my debt to another party member I inadvertently took advantage of. My party stumbled into combat in the town square of Vallaki. The mayor, his wife and son, and tyrannical town guard hosted a "celebration" and the towns people attended out of obligation. Combat erupted when the mayor sentenced a guard to death for a chuckle at the mayors expense and one of our members intervened. I, an assassin rogue, the melee that ensued resulted in the death of the mayor which triggered the teenage son to release a fireball engulfing everyone (friend and foe). Our party cleric said over the table she didn't know what to do here, so I looked at her spell list on D&D beyond for something to save us from battling a powerful wizard, finding she had the Sleep spell I suggested that, and the DM called an end to initiative order and combat. This is when I realized my opportunity—as an assassin rogue a sleeping target is undoubtedly an easy one, and I would automatically crit—so, when the DM asked "okay, so what's the plan" I took no hesitation in saying "I walk up to the sleeping mage and I drive my rapier through his head" (I rolled a critical on top of the already auto crit, dealing something like 50+ points at level 6). At the time this seemed like the perfect solution, but as the game has played out we deposed a tyrant who's worst trait was a bad sense of humor only to hand over the city to a vampire who reports directly to the devil himself. My question is, how do I make amends for this grievous transgression? I throw my fate to the wisdom of the benevolent Crit Justices, the Bailiff Jake, and Dice Christ themselves.

Joe Michienzi

Honorable judges and insignificant bailiff, I present my case of Silence or Silencer. My players were at the end of the fight with a bunch of giants and the fighter got the finishing blow on the final giant. I gave the natural “how do you wanna do this?” And he responded with giving the giant the silencer. (In which an arrow goes in the mouth and outside the back of the neck and is sticking out of both at the same time.). I said the arrow is too small to pull that off on a giant. Then we proceeded to debate on this for about 45 minutes. (We all drink during our games so some fun debate happens often). We inevitably came to the agreement he just shot a spear at the giant and all was well and he could purchase giant slayer arrows from the shop in the future for this. Now should I have let this go (which I don’t know why this trivial detail bothered me) or was I I fine in doing this? Ps: The player is on the council of elders and has been for well over a year. I don’t know if this is relevant but, I thought you should know.

BenMightSmite

May it please the court,the honorable crit justices and the big strong bailiff. I present the case of the moral bound cleric. So in my game one of the player had his village wiped out by a group of orcs marked with spider tattoos. And when someone who they were stuck doing favors for turned out to be one of them (named z) they tied her up and questioning her and she revealed her group purposely had his family killed to make sure he took up his call to adventuring and she wasn't directly responsible for his family's death. When they planned to kill her the cleric wanted to save her so I had them roll the ranger rolled last cleric first and z mid. The cleric healed z and untied her allowing her to escape. The ranger pissed off saying he basically let his family's murderer get the cleric disagrees saying she herself did nothing wrong and didn't deserve to die even attacking him the party broke them up but the cleric saying that if you without think z deserved death kill him instead and winded up decapitaing the cleric loosing the partys best healer as a graveyard cleric. Should I have allowed this as most of the players are peeved at the ranger who even says he's usually makes fun of pkers. It was also later revealed he had saved another bad guy who was just trying to seek revenge on a wizard who turned him into a sentient horde of spiders. The cleric was able to intro a new character who was also sentient horde of insects the cleric took care of but I still feel bad costing the party bot only there healer but now everyone is on edge around the ranger.

PineappleLiar

Honorable judges and also that guy who happens to linger within their shadow, I present to you the case of the Bird that got Away (and other misunderstandings). I’ve been playing a game with some friends for almost 3 years now, and we’ve just started a new campaign. The party Artificer, through a surprise crit, was able to ‘adopt’ a crow by grabbing it out of the air. This character has some clear attachment issues and immediately bonded with the bird. My character, a warforged cleric, was tasked with performing Animal Handling checks to keep the bird from flying off. The problem arose when, after a high Insight check on my part, the DM told me that this player had some major red flags when it came to the bird (along with some ominous, but ultimately not explicitly malevolent statements from the Artificer, mind you). So, when the Artificer was not looking, I had my cleric release the bird, causing a big rift to occur between the characters. My concern is that, after the game, it became clear that the Artificer really did just want to have a pet bird, and that the DM somewhat misled me down a path that led to more drama. While the tension is fun, I can’t help but wonder if my DM was in the right for giving me wrong or at least inconclusive information after a high Insight check. I await the court’s judgement on this case.

Steven Hamonic

May it Please the Court and titillate the bailiff. I started recently making Pinterest boards for my long running D&D game, it's been really helpful to be able to grab from a bin of art if say I need "half elf femme NPC" or "Tabaxi noble" at a moment's notice. One of my players has complained to me: "Hey, your NPCs are all too hot. I have a hard time talking to them when I have a mental image of the art you picked out, I get flustered." (they were referring to : https://64.media.tumblr.com/3e21ebe938f3686a103d66e0d65057d6/tumblr_p56c8kNUHV1va87k2o2_500.jpg this villainous fortuneteller they met at the time but apparently it's a lot of my NPC art.) Supreme Crit: I need your help. Do I need to stop providing hot art for my NPCs? I yield the remainder of my time.

joe farulla

If it pleases the court, justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and bailiff Trevor... I mean Jake. In one of my first campaigns we were the proprietors of a research vessel that traveled from island to island discovering new things and selling our findings to higher orgs. One night our paladin brings back a new love interest to his cabin, which frustrated the wizard and I as the party had agreed not to do this because of the valuable information we held. With a good persuasion roll and some money, the wizard convinced the lover to leave and never come back while I secretly cast a Modify Memory spell on the paladin so that he wouldn't remember the woman existing. The paladin player flipped his lid at me and ONLY me (the wizard is his irl older brother) and to this day holds it against me for ruining his player autonomy when we all saw it as a fun goof. Was I in the wrong to cast this spell, or does the paladin need to chill and get over it?

Evelyn Carsten

I seek the forgiveness known only through the holy presence of Dice Christ, may it please the congregation. When I was running a 5e game, the bard accidentally challenged a weakened fire giant to a 1v1 duel. Somehow, despite all odds, and rolling to attack in front of the table, the bard survived long enough til they were both only a single blow from death. The giant hit on its next attack, and I rolled damage in front of the table. The dice added up to one less HP than the bard had, and the table went crazy. Swept up in the excitement and not wanting to kill the vibe, I purposefully avoided mentioning the +7 to damage that should've been added, which would have knocked the hard down. Please, oh prophets of Dice Christ, help His spirit flow through me once more.

theodor c

May it displease the court and especially the bailiff, I bring a case against one of one of my friends. Please punish them harshly. Me and my friends were playing a one shot, DMed by one of my closest friends, and it was their first time DMing. We all had characters made, except for Frelrickson Von Terarovitch (which was a name he came up with minutes before started playing). Before we started, I asked him to not play a really weird character because it was out dm’s first time. He said ok, and we began. His character, Frelrickson, was a Goliath Paladin, described as 8 ft tall and 200 pounds. Throughout the one shot, he turned his eyelids inside out repeatedly, slithered across the floor instead of walking, described his flesh as “having gills” from how often his bones protruded from his skin, and got us kicked out of a bar for his behavior. My character, a kenku barbarian, had to carry him (against his will) so he came with us on our journey. He also described his casting focus as “the shriveled head of a dead god” thats jaw would unhinge to cast spells. On top of this, his character had taken a vow of silence, so he did not speak once. The story of Frelrickson ended as he pretended to stay behind as the rest of us finished the quest, but secretly followed behind. He tickled the leg of one of the other characters, and promptly got stomped on and bitten by the characters dog, killing him. Please punish him in a vile and upsetting way. I leave him to your mercy.

Hellarex

I humbly prostrate myself before the wise Supreme Crit Justices and send my regards to the decent Bailiff This is not a case as much as it is a question from a new DM. Justice Murphy, how do you best recommend dealing with railroading and unruly players? Any advice you can give to make an engaging world and story?

David Donnel

COMES NOW Plaintiff Player David and hereby moves this court for an entry of an Order of Sanctions against Defendant DM Mitch. I play Damian Nox, a Way of the Shadow Monk with the Devil’s Sight Eldritch Invocation that allows me to see in “magical and non-magical darkness”. During a recent session, my turtle friend was buying smoke bombs and I asked the DM if that counted as non-magical darkness, and thus something I would be able to see in. The DM ruled that non-magical darkness is the absence of light, and not anything blocking vision like a smoke bomb. This reasoning is flawed. Devil’s sight allows me to see in magical darkness, which also “obscures” vision via magical “smoke”. Allowing the non-magical version of this darkness would be on the path of justice. I ask that Mitch be blindfolded and pushed onto the freeway.

Ayden_Walkway

May it please the court, especially the renowned justice Murphy. So there was a time in my first campaign where my players had a base in a tavern run by the trickster deity in my world and while we were playing some of them wanted to go into his wild magic room. So as I let them do it and as they went in they rolled a con save and when my Elf Monk player rolled he had gotten a nat 1 and that was where I got to pick. With some quick background, this player had a home brew subclass that was op. I didn’t understand that it was but after a combat that session where he has scored most of the kills and rubbed it in the faces of the other players, so when he rolled the one on the wild magic table I made him a centaur. It didn’t change him to much other then the wings he had wouldn’t work till he was transformed back and ladders were a no go. Around 3 sessions later he asked me if he could switch his character after nonstop complaining during combat and I said yes but only in book content. Was I too harsh here by completely messing with his character or was I valid in my horseification of him?

Fia (but not Boginya)

I pray Dice Christ is merciful to me for I have sinned. I have stolen a soul from his immortal embrace. The other day I was DMing a session for a small 2 person party I run. They were on a mission on a mission to assassinate a city guard with the help of an NPC artificer, when they encountered a Wood Woad. This combat when very poorly for them, I was rolling very well and they were rolling very poorly, as was the will of Dice Christ. By the end of the combat the Warforged Gunslinger went down and rolled two Nat Ones on his death saves. The players were devestated, half the party just died. Not wanting them to be upset, I gave the Artificer NPC access to the spell Revivify, even though they hadn't had it before and didn't even have a 3rd Level Spell Slot. The party was over joyed, but I feel I have committed a mortal sin against Dice Christ. I beg for his forgiveness and offer my own soul in servitude as repayment for the one he was denied that day.

Neil Carpenter

May it please the court, the just Justices, and the baleful Bailiff. I humbly offer you a case study on D&D meme-ology that desperately needs a judgement. For session zero of my first ever 5e campaign, I DM’d a practice combat for two of my players who are also new to the system. Two level 3 characters (tiefling monk and triton swashbuckler) faced off against three giant goats. For his first turn ever in 5e the triton swashbuckler, who is also my brother, decided to full-dash away from the goats, leaving his team member alone. When two of the goats caught up to him, he jumped on a goats back and repeatedly tried to tame it as a steed. He spent the rest of the combat doing so, only swinging his rapier once and ending up dead along with his teammate. While I don’t view this as a heinous offense, as it was a practice combat that was “non-canon,” I seek judgement on the greater question at hand. Should he be punished for his actions, or do the ends justify the memes? I patiently await your response.

The Game Itself back from nowhere

My exuberant judges and honored bailiff, I come to you with a crit-fession. First I must say normally I praise RNGesus however there are none of his pastors in my area, so I come to you. My group is rather large, 12 people if absolutely everyone shows up, and with around 4-5 of them being DMs there are many opportunities to make characters for new campaigns. With this being said my crit-fession is this, whenever I roll stats for my characters, if I do not like the rolls for my stats, sometimes I may fudge the numbers a little by moving 1 or 2 stat points around or sometimes rerolling all together if they are truly abysmal. Please don't misunderstand me, I know it's wrong and is a betrayal to not only my DM but my fellow party members, but I do not use this to give myself amazing stats, I only do this so that my character isn't completely unplayable or I so I can get at least 1 stat over 14, on several occasions I have taken characters with 1 or 2 stats being below 10. I thank you for your time and await any judgment seen fit to be bestowed upon me.

Patrick Harry

May it please the court. My exalted judges Axford, Murphy and Tanner and the holiest of Bailiffs, Sire Jake (whose rock climbing skills may one day surpass my own). I am a DM in a conundrum, and want to do right by my players. I may have messed up, and am trying to find an appropriate way to fix it. At the start of our campaingn our players all received 1 free feat from a curated list, I should have spent time understanding the ones that I chose as one of the options is bountiful luck (a halfling character can choose to use their reaction to share luck and prevent a teammates natural one within 30 ft, forfeits their own lucky ability for the round). Our hafling player named Button aka my wife chose this and now whenever a character is within 30 feet, they pretty much cant get a natural 1 (which is great for their successes but man it means we miss out on juicy nat 1's). Some of the players started calling it out for themselves when they rolled a nat 1, "Bountiful luck" they would say and point to Button. I did shut this down, as its a reaction meaning that Button needs to choose to share this luck or not as it does impact her own lucky ability. Overall it is easy to navigate in combat when rounds are set, but where I am feeling like I may be a jerk DM is if I limit this in social or exploratory encounter where there is no set rounds. I dont think Button was necessarily abusing this, but i did bring it up to her about nerfing it and she was a bit upset (once again this is my wife so while I am a fair an equal DM I do want to make her happy and continue enjoying playing games with me). She feels I am punishing her if I do this for the actions of others, which I dont disagree with, but the overpowered aspect of Bountiful Luck needs to be stopped or at least slowed down. If I were to limit its applications to a certain number of times such as the lucky feat in non combat scenarios, would I be the Asshole DM? Am I punishing my wife for the sins of other players or my own lax judgment at session zero? I desperately seek the guidance of the court. I know this is more a "what if" ruling, but yalls wisdom is infinite and judgment are pure of heart, and thus I know not where else to turn with love and respect, Mr. Satan

Alex Jones

May it please the most honorable and just justices axford and tanner. The handsome and wholesome bailiff hurwitz. And the sniveling craven pebble pot justice murphy. I humbly present while covered in scorpion stings One more from the blast'em grandma. She has done it again, at 93 she is the destroyer of worlds. We have been running an HP lovecraft inspired campaign in the under dark. I had the party make it to a keep after fighting through some troglodytes and a roper. As they were in the keep I had a murder of dire corby come through the area and wash over the walls of the keep And continue on their migration. This was supposed to be a way for the party to make it to the next city over while having advantage and on encounter checks. Instead it turned into her bard hitting a nat 20 on the wisdom saving throw agAisnt the Dire cacophony and then another nat 20 to jump off the wall and join the murder. I played it as she was able to blend into murder and not be attacked but she argued because she rolled a nat 20 she should be able to control the murder with her glamour weave cloak and performances as a story telling bard. Justices(used loosest sense for pebblepot murphy) am I wrong in only ruling this ent riding, magic shooting, nat 20 rolling son of gun can't control an entire murder of monsters with just a performance? I await your ruling.

Westin Lanser

HONORED JUSTICES AND ALSO OTHERS! I’m running a game where my players are trying to escape a dungeon that resets every 24 hours. The players came across the exit way earlier than expected and before they had any idea how to actually use it. See, it’s a tunnel full of magical darkness that is infinitely long until the darkness is dispelled. After a while of messing with it and some not-so-subtle hints that they didn’t have the tools required to solve this puzzle yet, everyone got the message and went elsewhere. Everyone but the monk… he decides that he’s going to sprint down the corridor for “as long as it takes for something to happen.” He insists on taking off and spends the rest of the session sprinting down a hall while the rest of the players and I have a normal session essentially without him. He sat in the Discord call for 3 hours until we ended for the day. Should I have allowed my player to make decisions that would exclude him from the rest of the session (and maybe more if he keeps sprinting)? Should I have told him he could leave the call? I throw myself on the mercy of your judgement.

Owen Rath

May it please the ever-expanding court, I recently wrapped up a 8 month campaign with what I thought would be a pretty satisfying ending. I planned out an encounter for the party of 4 that was winnable but would require a lot of teamwork (something the party had struggled to do). In the end, however, two of the party members joined with the BBEG and actively worked against the rest of the party. It ended with one character stuck in Hold Person for the whole fight and the other one dead All in all it wasn’t a huge deal and save for a few verbal barbs it went over fine. Afterwards though, I got a text from the players who was stuck the whole fight saying how upset he was at the other two party members for “ruining his last fight with us” (We’ve been playing on and off for a few years and are all moving to different parts of the state). So the question I ask is who is to blame here? I feel bad for the one player, but everyone else seemed to have fun. Should I have done something to help the player out? I humbly await and accept your verdict.

Scott Archer

Dearest justices, noble and fair, and Jake who is also there. I present the case of the headless Demogorgon. It was the final fight of the module "Out of The Abyss". Over the course of the campaign, we acquired two bags of holding, and later found out that piercing it would send the contents as well as anything nearby into the Astral Plain. This gave our storm barbarian the idea to use it against our two headed foe in our last stand. Through shinanigans, we managed to pull off his plan of blowing up both bags by its heads in hope of causing damage. The DM ruled that the Demogorgon lost its heads to the Astral Plain, suffered around 70 damage, and swung with disadvantage now that it couldn't see. The rest of the fight was close to a TPK as the headless Demogorgon still handily screwed us up, much to our barbarians dismay. Hence the case at hand. The barbarian argues that the move should have had more impact, maybe even a heavier nerf to the prince of demons than just disadvantage. However, the DM argues that it would have taken the gravitas away from the final fight and break the game. I, the fighter (on behalf of my bummed barbarian), await your verdict.

Adam Leeuwenhart

Hey Jake, I posted this before but I can’t see it so I’m reposting. Sorry if it is, just skip it of course :)

Michael B

To the amazing, sexy Justices and merely hot bailiff I bring forth the case of the Thrice crit new character. I ran a game of Storm Kings Thunder a heavy giant campaign and a new player joined my table and in her very first combat as a Druid she conjured a hoard of badgers to EASILY fell some frost giants. Now here is the problem. I rolled some attacks from the giant leader on the player and both attacks critically hit. I rolled the second attack with disadvantage because I didn’t want it to be, but the dice devil had other plans. The massive damage from two Crits nearly had the Druid dead. The player was quite distraught and afterwards did not return to my table for some time. Later she had told me it almost turned her off of the game! So I share my case should I have fudged the die rolls for a new dnd player to make sure they had fun and felt safe or let the cruel reality of Giantkind be shown in their first session?

Adam Leeuwenhart

Dear honourable and talented Justices, and 300+ golden mic winner, the gentle, kind, thick calved bailiff Hurwitz. I come to you from Australia - not with something that has happened, but something that shall transpire soon, with months of planning. The important characters are Me, Big Bomb, and Leviticus, (who is desperate for a father figure.) The setting is a demon apocalypse. I recently found a magic ring which means I can never go below 1 hit point and “The Deck of Many Things” from which Big Bomb drew two wishes. We made a deal - he can have the ring if I could have one of his wishes. I gave him the ring which he immediately swallowed. He used his first wish to give us all a 3rd level boon, which was admittedly nice. Then- in the face of a world ending cataclysm with the power to wish for ANYTHING - used my wish to become the biological father of Leviticus. This is singlehandedly the funniest, and most devastating moment we’ve ever had as DnD players. We also found “The Eye and The Hand of Vecna” - We didn’t know what it was so I took the eye and Big Bomb took the hand. We were bestowed with incredible magical fuckery and turned to neutral evil. Now… if a person has BOTH the hand and the eye they can use the wish spell every 30 days. As I am owed a wish for the ring, in the next and final session my plan is to cut off Big Bombs hand while we long rest and fuse it to me. Then to wish for the ring to be in my possession again. This will make me immortal and the debt will be paid. I will lie to the group saying that the eye wanted me to kill them all and I did this to wish that the eye has no power over me. 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 three shot campaign? - I leave the judgement in your capable critty hands.

Alex Roddy

May it please the Honorable Justices Axford, Murphy, and Caldwell- as well as the Permanent Guest on 8-Bit Book Club Jake- I present the case of The Deck of Too Many Things. I was running my first campaign when I decided that one of the rooms in a tower (similar to Watchman’s Tower in Campaign 1) should contain a modified Deck of Many Things- which would be represented with an actual deck of cards (including Jokers). I used an existing online spreadsheet as a template- while changing some of the consequences to better fit the world. Once the PCs were in the room- I stated one of the general rules of the Deck of Many Things- that you declared how many cards you intended to draw beforehand and then drew. Three of the party members declared one draw each. The first two party members drew great cards- one which gave the player a fair amount of gold- and another which in effect is a Wish spell- but can’t be used until much later. Then the last player drew. Their card aged them 5 years. This made the player slightly annoyed. They then asked me if they could draw two more cards. I said I would allow it- only if he agreed to live with the consequences of that decision. He did- and then proceeded to draw two of the worst cards in the deck- one that put him down an entire level, and another that reincarnated him from a hill dwarf to a human- which he was not happy about. The other party members and myself found it funny initially, but it has become increasingly clear that this legitimately upset the player. Was I wrong to make this impromptu agreement- or should the player live with the consequences? Either way- I would love to hear any suggestions you may have to maybe at least bring them back to the same level as everyone else. I humbly await your decision.

Aaron Thomas

May it please the court, the honorable justices and the other guy from If I Were You. My grievance is with my current DM. The issue, he constantly says no to everything the party tries to do that goes against his plan, even in combat! I've tried taking cover and he says I can't because they cab still see me. Try disengaging and running around the enemies to draw fire, nope we are suddenly in a tight walled area or on the edge of a cliff. Am I expecting to much from him or is he doing us wrong by not letting us be creative? I've tried talking to him on multiple occasions and he just says that in his head we can't do the things we asked because they don't make sense. I humbly await your judgment and rulings.

Eli M

May it please the court, but not that feral bailiff you keep around for some reason: I recently killed a player character with a forced Nat 1. He has a cursed magic item which allows him to get an automatic crit once per session, but I also can force an automatic Nat 1 after he uses it. Once he found out it was cursed, I warned him that I was going to use it in the most cruel and vindictive ways possible. I get the impression now that he thought I was joking. The party got into a tough, but not particularly deadly, fight. The player in question had some bad luck and was downed by a thunderwave that made him fall 10ft and fail his first death save. As he was getting ready to roll a death save on his turn, I told him not to bother because he rolled a nat 1 and died. The player got very upset and told me that I wasn’t allowed to do that to his character. My only response was “yes I can”. He wanted to leave early, but one of the other players was his ride, so he just sulked in another room while we finished the battle. Was I out of line? Or did this player overreact? I humbly await your judgement.

Bryan Holt

The great and mighty Judginos and the small but boisterous Baleet I come to you with the Case of the Pilfered Points I am a humble Warlock of the Baba-yaga, named Werst-Son. A fine spell slinger as well as a master potion crafter useing my tome, Yaga's own cook book. My DM allows me to make potion grenades with spells in them I can hand to other players. One recent make was the Grenade of Animate Object. The DM alwayse reviews what spells I lock in the potion as he has barred some of the more potent powers. Cut to a fight we had takeing down a rather rough Half Black Dragon Sheriff. What proves clutch was the Rouge hucking a bottle at the bars Jute-Box. After this fight the DM says I decieved them as they could not have known how much the action economy would have tilted by the addition of an extra NPC and has taken my potions and my XP for the fight. Judges I ask was I being a Tricksy Fey or did my DM drop the hammer too harshly.

Jack Burns

Greetings to the Glorious Bailie and the sovereign judges. I am a novice DM, who is in a new campaign with his friends. During our last session I felt like I was either rushing the PCs and have a feeling like my storyline is off the rails. How can I fix this in future sessions with my players? My little brother who is playing in the campaign says I’m doing a good job but idk if he’s just being nice or actually saying that. Thank you for your Time, Jack.

Krispy Buns

May it please the honorable justices on their highest of high chairs, as well as the crispy and frisky baliff, I present the case of the wild magic cleric. I DM for a group of four first time players in a world that I have created from scratch. Three players in the group have really gotten into their backstories which has helped me build out the universe. However, one player ( dragonborn cleric), named his character Hodd Toward, and hasn't done very much backstory up to this point. The only thing he has stated that he is not a cleric that worships a particular god but instead carries many holy symbols and picks and chooses as he sees fit. Seeing as this didn't really fit the vibe of a cleric, I have adjusted to have him worship the god of trickery and luck and have incorperated a wild magic surge for his spellcasting as part of it. That being said, the player plays Hood very chaotically, which has led to numerous conflicts within the party, which up to this point I have been able to mitigate and contain. Most recently, however, Hodd ended up unknowingly making a deal with a devil (my attempt to make him see that actions have consequences). It worked for a bit but in the most recent session the player "joked" that Hodd might turn bad and try to kill the rest of the party. He did this completely out of the blue (no coordination with me beforehand) and I am worried that I might have a PvP situation on my hands soon. My question for the court is: Should I kill Hodd to quell the conflict within the party before I risk potentially having the other players die, or do I embrace the chaos that I have allowed up to this point and see what happens? I kindly await your judgement.

Marion

In the Jurisdiction of the Supreme Crit of Justice, presided over by Mr. Justices Murphy and Tanner, and Madame Justice Axford, as well as Bailiff Mr. Hurwitz, The PLAYER (“The Plaintiff”) CLAIMS against the DUNGEON MASTER (“The Defendant”) the following: The Plaintiff (me) often has dreams about the Defendant (our DM). On one occasion, I dreamt an elaborate scenario where our party was fighting a group of Deep Gnomes. For reference, my own character was also a gnome. My DM and I then got into an argument about whether or not I could use the spell “Replace Gnomes” since it would effectively end the fight. I clearly remember making a passionate argument that the language of the spell should have allowed me to replace all of the gnomes, and that it was fair to do so, because my character would have also been replaced. My Dream DM disagreed. Once I told my party about this dream, we became obsessed with crafting Replace Gnomes into a real spell for use in our campaign. Our DM refuses to consider it, despite the clear signals that such a spell is destined to be used in our game. What, if anything, would be a fair effect for “Replace Gnomes” to have in-game? Our current build involves rolling on a d100 table to replace every gnome within the area of effect with a random creature, with around a 50/50 chance that that creature would be friendly. I seek a reference decision on the contents of said spell, specific performance of the dream contract outlined above, costs of this action on a substantial indemnity basis, and such further relief as this Honourable Court may deem just. (PS, in case you couldn’t tell, our entire party are lawyers. We would therefore like to remind the largely self-represented parties to actions in this court that they have a right to an attorney.)

Tali

O pure and virginal justices as well as the lecherous bailiff Jake, I put forward to you the case of the rejected adoption. I had been playing in a relatively new campaign with some friends over zoom, and during one session we were set upon by bandits. The dm narrated that there was a kid with the bandits, and after killing everyone but the kid I decided I wanted to liberate them from bandit life and tried to take them with us. I failed my persuasion check, and the bandit kid ran off. I’ve always really wanted kids so after that, i decided to adopt a child. However, the dm was pretty resistant to the idea. I tried going to an orphanage during downtime, and even though it was rundown and seemed like the perfect place to adopt, I was rejected. This was one of a few attempts, all of which were totally unsuccessful. I ask you, was I wrong for wanting to bring a kid along with the party and maybe doing something the dm really wasn’t prepared for or should I have been allowed my sweet baby boy. I anxiously await judgement.

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?

Jack McAlevey

May it please the court: I have a confession to make. Many sessions ago, I pitted my party against a bone swarm - a CR 12 creature - as the final encounter of an arc. They were level 8. They punch well above their weight, but I neglected to realize that the several preceding encounters (something we don't often have) and a confined space (which helped the bone swarm) would turn the encounter deadly. In the heat of battle when our artificer was grappled by the swarm, I secretly changed a crit by the bone swarm into a miss, assuredly saving his life and avoiding a tpk. Was this right to do? Should I have let the dice fall where they may? What, if anything, should I do in penance?

Hop The Dancing Rabbit

May it please the almighty, effervescent, and lovely bailiff, and maybe those justices as well. Im running a campaign with my mother who had never played d&d and my 16 year old brother, and as an introduction to what it’s like to have a fight you can’t win I had a kraken destroy a ship within view of my players and see the kraken attacking the 2 people that were on the ship. They were level 1 but I had set the encounter specifically for if they worked together the kraken wouldn’t really be able to do anything too bad. My mother flew out there to help (she is a fairy Druid named Petunia Chitterlinks) and my younger brother decided to completely not participate even after I had given them opportunities to get out into the open water in a convenient way. My mother ended up completely doing everything and almost dying, but then my brother decided to take credit for the win because he had thrown a hand axe attached to a rope out after she was already safe with the crash victims. Should I punish him for not participating, or was he in the right for not doing anything? I await your judgements. P.S. he is a halfling fighter who is supposed to be a war veteran captain so I thought he would be a little more brave

Ashley Henley

To the honorable judges and the best bailiff Jake, I give you the case of My Party vs My Relationship. Right before the pandemic, my friend had an idea so we could play D&D and still be flexible with everyone’s schedules. We would all take turns being DMs and run one shots. Everyone agreed and it was a great idea at the time, but no one followed the rules of just making their legs of the campaigns one shots. Many of them lasted multiple sessions. This went fine at first because I was laid off, I had no trouble scheduling my time with my SO and my players. But once I went back to work suddenly no one wanted to work with my schedule. I could only see my boyfriend one day on the weekends, and that day would change with his schedule. I was always met with attitudes whenever I said I was busy some weekend. Every time I was contacted to schedule some time to play, it was one or two days before and I would already be busy or be working. If there was a scheduling conflict with anyone else, it was always accepted. This went on for some time, until one day we were finally able to play in person. I was so excited, I hadn’t been out of the house in months because I was taking care of my grandmother after her major surgery. Once I arrived at my friends house, there were no dice or maps, no one was talking and everyone was staring at me. They sat me down and had an intervention-style talk with me about my “behavior and dedication” to the party. They demanded answers on why I was being so difficult. They blamed my boyfriend, saying he took up too much of my time (one day a week). I was humiliated, some of these people I barely knew outside of the game and I had to sit there and defend myself to them. They treated me like I was a child, telling me I can continue to play but we will , and I quote “revisit this if my behavior improves”. I went home, cried, and promptly left the game. Tell me, was I wrong in choosing to see my boyfriend and life over playing a game?

Mr. Dude Sky

May it please the graceful court and the tenacious bailiff. I’m a DM for 3 players currently in the Feywild. My players have gotten into a fight with a gluttonous pig-like fey lord who proceeded to swallow the party warlock like a banderhobb. He had his familiar on the outside to use it’s senses and decided to thunder step. I thought this was a fantastic move, but he wanted to take the fey lord with him! Normally I wouldn’t allow such a move but with these circumstances I relented if he failed the constitution save from the spell. He failed and the warlock teleported both of them to the party who then proceeded to gang up on the fey lord. I worry that this sets a dangerous precedent, should I have just let the warlock teleport himself or should I have counted them as the same creature while he was swallowed.

Jevin Kames

May it please the honorable justices and...Jake, I've been running the Strixhaven module for my father, my sister, and my ten-year-old son. My son plays a level 3 Arcane Trickster rogue, and is the only member of the party that can do more than a few d4s of damage each turn. However, my sweet sweet boy almost exclusively uses thaumaturgy during combat, even after he's used his bonus action to hide. I can only think of so many ways that slamming a door, yelling loudly, and making fireplaces flare up can help during a fight, so I decided to give him a wake-up call. During a sneak mission in a semi-haunted mansion, my son decided to open all the doors in a hallway. After failing a DC 20 stealth check, the party was attacked by every enemy on the first floor, resulting in a near-TPK. Fortunately, everyone still had a fun session and it made for an interesting narrative beat, but my son *still* wants to use that dang cantrip whenever he can. Did I accidentally reward his behavior by almost killing his character (and everyone else's)? Was I too harsh? Should I be punished, or can you help me find a more effective way to punish my sweet, loud son? I prostrate myself before you, and I thank you for your time.

Reinier Z

May it please the most honorable court and the slightly less honorable bailiff Jake, I present the case of the vacationing dwarf. Since 2017, I have been playing a on and off campaign with some friends. It ended in 2020 while we moved onto a different campaign, but we still return to our original setting for fun one-shot sessions on occasion. In this campaign, I play a half-elf warlock who I am very fond of because he was my first character. Last month, we played one such one-shot session with the party on vacation going to a museum of magical artifacts that was under attack by a cult. We eventually encountered the cult in a cave, where the DM rolled to see what kind of monster they summoned. The dice decided on an Oytugh, which the DM described as being primarily guided by hunger, so it attacked one of the cultists that summoned it. One of our players, a dwarven fighter, then remarked that if the monster just ate all the cultists there wouldn’t be a problem and that since our characters were supposed to be on vacation she didn’t really want to fight, so she exited the caves. The three remaining players almost killed the monster, but all ended up getting KO’d in two turns after some unfortunately high damage rolls. With our dwarven friend nowhere to be seen, the DM described the monster eating us and declared that this would now be the canonical end of the campaign. I felt very deflated at losing a character I had played with for five years in such an off-hand manner. The player who left initiative then got very defensive and said that we should’ve just left the fight too, since we were also on vacation. I argued that D&D was not a game where you roleplay not fighting a monster, but this fell on deaf ears and things quickly escalated into a bit of a shouting match that ended with me exiting the discord chat in a absolutely foul mood and our DM spending about an hour afterwards trying to mediate things. Was I right to bemoan the loss of my favorite PC and the end of a long-running campaign in such an anticlimactic way or was my dwarven companion right to exercise her right to a vacation? I humbly await your judgment.

Ilana Galpert

Hmm well there are misfire rules. "Whenever you make an attack roll with a firearm, and the dice roll is equal to or lower than the weapon’s Misfire score, the weapon misfires." Depends on if your weapon has a misfire score though, because some of them don't. It would have been cool if they let you use the 20 on the tinkers check to repair the gun though

Pamphleteer

To the honored crit justice and baliff. I never have any cases because my table is pretty chill, but we did have an argument come up last week. The soul blade rogue used invisible mage hand to yoink a magic dagger from my bad guy. He was hidden in a field of weeds and immediately after the theft, the bad guy and his flunkies went scouring the field to find the rogue. I was trying to explain that the rogue had to use his action to move the mage hand each round and that he only had one object interaction (as in, the mage hand doesn't get a separate object interaction of its own) so if he moved the dagger straight up 30 feet and dropped it to himself, it would require him moving closer to the group, triggering another stealth check, and then one object interaction to drop the blade, and a second one next turn for him to pick it up. Anyway, the end result was massive confusion and rereading the mage hand spell a few times to explain to me that he can just grab the dagger from his mage hand. I was just trying to give my dude another opportunity to recover the dagger but I felt like the mood went sour immediately when I was trying to parse out the actions it would take to accomplish it. Was I wrong to get nitpicky with what was admittedly, a cool move by my player?

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.

Jack

May it please the court, bring honor to the highest minded crit justices, and bless the heart of the supine baliff. In the name of the d20, and the d10, and all the other blessed math rocks, I must confess. This week I played a solo session 1 over discord with my DM to kick off the campaign, as did all the other players. We are playing a more roleplay heavy campaign with fewer dice rolls. Normally in virtual sessions I use the online dice roller on whichever platform we're using. But, I can never remember the commands in discord, so I opted for physical dice. My desk is a mess with no room to properly roll a dice or host a dice tray, so I held the dice tray by hand and rolled into it on the few occasions a dice roll was necessary. On one occasion, I rolled a d20 for a skill check for my little parakeet character to try to cross a long ravine without falling, but as I could not keep the dice tray level the die skipped out onto the floor (I pulled a real Ally). The die landed on a book on the floor next to me. I reached down to pick it up by reflex, and only after it was in my hand my brain caught up and realized it was a 2! Only now I was already holding the dice and halfway through re-rolling. I re-rolled the die, at the time justifying that it hasn't landed in the tray. But in hindsight, I just wanted a better chance for my precious little birb character to not fall into this ravine, potentially to his death. Dice Christ and Crit Justices, please forgive me for I fear I have sinned and been tempted by this selfish reroll.

Dan Murphy

May it please the court, the high justices and medium of quad bailiff. I present to you the case of The Toasty Bones. I play a College of Eloquence Bard at my game store's weekly D&D night. My party is currently level 4 in a certain gothic themed campaign and had just traced some stolen hallowed bones back to a shop. We broke in and caught the shopkeeper sleeping so we bound and tickled him until he told us where the bones could be found. He tricked us into an ambush of 6 vampire spawn which almost TPKd us and killed our warlock. My angry bard rushed to the mayor and convinced him to send his guards to burn the infested house down. Unfortunately the bones were fully destroyed in the fire making the death of our warlock for nothing. My main issue with this: bones don't "burn" until almost double the temperature of an average house fire. I knew this before the guards burned the house down but it was explained as "magic fire". I've taken the decision but submit now to the judgement of the court.

Nick Molina

May it please the Crit and the esteemed Bailiff, who should be praised for the work he does. Due to scheduling constraints, our party recently agreed on having a “railroad” session, where we kind of agree on where our story lands before a month-long hiatus before an in-game year of planning for a big epic battle to come. We’ve been playing together for over two years now, and this campaign can only be described as sandbox af. But even though this was something we all wanted to do, are we guilty of forsaking the sanctity of PC agency and the will of the dice? I humbly ask for your ruling, and accept any punishments that may come.

Matthew moyles

Greetings justices of the crit and small sniveling reading dog-bailiff. I was playing a battle master fighter named balaldoth and we were fighting a young green dragon. The dm told me the dragon was about to try and flee so I did what I thought was necessary and jumped on its back. When It took flight with me on its back about 80 feet into the air, I proudly said wanted to use one of my maneuvers, trip attack. My plan was to knock the dragon prone sending it to the ground while I rode atop it, hopefully only taking half fall damage. My dm argued that since the dragon was flying I could not trip it, I argued that the description doesn’t say anything about the creature having to be on the ground only that it gets knocked prone. I feel I should have been able to trip up its wings. We argued a bit, but I managed it kill it anyway and jump off its back to a nearby tower, taking the name dragon tripper as a title from that day forth. Was I robbed of a cool application of one of my abilities or should I have shut up? I await your judgement.

Prof Bubbles

May it please the court and new justice. Also Jake I guess. I bring you the case of the Gnome-ball special. The question I ask is how many turns should it take to throw a gnome at an enemy. During combat we were fighting a group of flying enemies. My character, a 6'7" 19 strength warforged wanted to pick up our gnome barbarian and toss him towards the enemy. The DM ruled that it would take an action to pick up the gnome and in the following round another action to throw him. This was an incredible amount of resources and I decided against it. However, the enemies never came close to the ground and our barbarian had to essentially sit out the combat having no way to deal ranged damage. I ask the court, were we too greedy and too cartoony for wanting to toss our gnome skyward? Or did the DM begin to sweat at the thought of a soaring barbarian, I supplicate myself to the ruling of the Crit

June Lekstutis

May it please the court, the judges presiding, and the one the only the lonely little bailiff: My friend ran his first big campaign, a supernatural western with a party of a ranger very obviously a werewolf, a firbolg cleric wearing a cage as armor, an edgy priest coffee sorlock fighter, and myself the lucky man alive. We were in the first ten minutes of what was clearly the finale session. The blood moon rose high in the sky and the girl we had to save was to be sacrificed in the town we began. As we started to travel, our firbolg stated that his people have their own blood moon tradition and left to join them. Our werewolf realizing that the blood moon was coming stated during the middle of travel that he would have left the night prior, insisting this repeatedly that he was gone, despite participating in skill checks that day. The DM begrudgingly allowed him to retcon and vanish. What proceed was a bbeg fight with only 3 of 5 PCs. We did okay I assume because the DM adjusted things well, but the other two players just sat there angrily not playing. Our epilogues were cut short because of the uncomfortable atmosphere. Apparently the two players had spoken to the DM about their aversion to the blood moon prior, but was their exclusion not their own fault for making a PC who wouldn't be involved in the conflict? Our fledgling DM hasn't said as much but I assume they've been nervous about DMing ever since, despite an otherwise great campaign.

Waddle Bawddle

I prostrate myself to Dice Christ and pray for forgiveness. I am DMing an old west Witcher style homebrew and the group were hunting a monster much like an ekimmara from Witcher 3. I thought they’d track it back to its lair, but no they attacked it in town and killed it in like 3 turns. They still had to find the people it had taken so they had to go to it’s lair anyway. I decided on the spot there were actually 2 of these things. And in the end after a good fight, one of my players was killed and turned into a vampire as the monster’s last act of revenge. I humbly pray for forgiveness and always try to remember, WWDCD. What would Dice Christ do. (Side note, a player decided his priest character was not ok with a vampire party and is having him leave and making a new one. But all the players, including him, are excited to have a vampire. It still weighs heavy on me though)

Bailey Hull

May it please the esteemed justices, as well as the meek, ignoble bailiff. I present to you the case of Kenku v Comprehend Languages. In our Storm King’s Thunder campaign, our party was trying to overhear a conversations spoken in Yakfolk. I, a beer cleric, cast Comprehend Languages on the party. The spell reads: “For the duration, you understand the literal meaning of any spoken language that you hear.” However, our Kenku argued that, because Kenku speak by mimicking others, he could mimic the language he understood via the spell to attempt to speak Yakfolk language (Sort of like how a person can learn a song phonetically in another language) After much deliberation, our DM ruled in favor of the Kenku. However, our party was stumped as to whether this was the correct ruling. We prostrate ourselves and this brain teaser before the court.

Tim The Enchanter

May it please the court, the honorable justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, and the ever-mediocre bailiff Jake. I present the case of Vader Melee = Forced TPK This is a long one, but I hope you find it worth the length. About 3-4 years ago, my D&D group was playing a Star Wars campaign using the SW5E system. I was a player along with 3 others, making a party of 4. We were playing in the time period shortly before A New Hope. For a majority of the campaign, we had been doing miscellaneous jobs and avoiding interaction with the Empire whenever possible. About a year into the campaign, our DM got engaged and said he was going to be moving out of state as soon as they were married. Therefore, we all knew that our campaign would be coming to an end due to that. Here’s where the problems really start. After clearing monsters out of an abandoned building (which we were contracted to do by Jabba the Hutt), our DM decided to ambush us on the ground with an Empire fleet. There was no real story reason this was happening, it just happened. Fighting and escaping were actually impossible (we tried both and he told us we couldn’t). We were all taken as prisoners to a massive battle station. Shortly after being brought on board, we learn that the Rebellion is attacking it. Yes, our DM just railroaded us onto the Death Star shortly before it is supposed to explode (spoilers for A New Hope). It gets worse. We manage to escape our prison and make it to a ship hangar. One of our party has connections to the rebellion (and comms with them), and is tasked with destroying as many enemy ships as possible before they can join the dogfight. We do this, destroying all but one ship that we can escape on. But surprise, Darth Vader himself is here, and apparently one of the ships we blew up was his. He’s mad and fights us. Now, this is epic and exciting to face Vader. We’re all level 20 at this point, and we think it’ll be fun (despite our dislike of being railroaded here in the first place). Except Vader’s statblock is bonkers (our DM shared it with us after, and I would happily send it to you guys if you want). As a group of four, we stood literally no chance of beating him. It makes sense in the lore of the world, but it’s no fun for us to have to die. In fact, we knew we wouldn’t win, and we tried to just escape on the one ship left. But our DM wouldn’t allow it, making us fight Vader. We were forced to fight him and die. The only consolation we got is that WE blew up the escape ship, stranding Vader in the Death Star to also die. Judges, are we wrong to feel upset by our campaign ending, since we were forced onto the Death Star and forced to fight an unwinnable battle? The ghosts of our party await your ruling, so that they may finally move on.

Evan Spears

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and handsome Bailiff, may it please the court to hear my one and only D&D story. I'll keep submitting it until I have my day in court. I've only played D&D once, for one session, nearly 15 years ago. I rolled 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. 

Aaron Burnell

I bring to the most honorable Supreme Crits and the handsome balliff a case of "Am I the Asshole? My partner and I were playing a light campaign with two of our nephews (brothers ages 21 and 18). We were all about level 7 or so, and we were traveling to our next location. We needed to make a brief stop at a human military camp. We were all playing non-human races in a primarily human world. The push back and discrimination our party faced was part of the game. When we arrive, we are, as expected, treated like shit and not given passage. As we began to leave the camp (notably with the information we needed on how we could sneak into/past the camp), the soldier we had been speaking to said some rude and derogatory things. Our warrior (18 year old nephew) took great offense and began popping off and promising he would take this soldier and everyone else in the camp while more and more soldiers begin appearing from barracks and the camp in general. My partner and I (warlock and rogue) physically cart the warrior out of the camp and tell him to cool his jets -- we had gotten the information we needed and we could push on. Well, he wasn't having any of that. He threw a massive fit and said he was going to go back in there and kick their asses. Both IC and OOC. my partner and I said that was a terrible idea and he would get killed. The DM (who, as you might have put together, is the warrior's older brother) echoed that he would, in fact, get killed, because there was no way he was going to solo 10-12 soldiers. So the warrior storms in, the soldier we spoke to previously gave him the warning to GTFO. The DM said, OOC, that this would only end up with him dead if he kept pushing to fight them, but the warrior persisted. The warrior rolled in the middle of the initiative, and so when his turn came up, he was already pretty bloodied. The DM gave him the option of turning tail or laying down his weapons to be taken into custody. Of course, he refused and took his two or three swings while yelling and shouting about how this was bullshit and he was going to kick ass. Before the round was over, the warrior was dead. His corpse was thrown outside the camp, and, as a warlock and a rogue, there was nothing we could do to revivify him. The player had to start rolling a new character, but he was livid about it. He said the DM cheated and added mobs or bufffed their stat blocks (the DM even shared the soldier stat blocks), He accused my partner and I of being "in on it" for not helping him despite the fact that we told him it was a terrible idea, and we weren't interested in being lit up by a camp of professional killers. The warrior's player killed the mood and ended the session earlier. When driving him home, he was very upset and secretly cried in my car in frustration and embarrassment. My question, honorable crits and jake, are we the assholes for letting him do what he insisted? and/ or for not following him to the suicide mission originally or letting him get his ass kicked? The table awaits your wise and practiced ruling.

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 lower the DC and rolled two 1's. The party was happy but my NPC was then 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.

Michael Allison

To the holy tribunal of Dice Christ, I come with repentance, remorse and regret for what could have been in my homebrew campaign. On the high seas crossing from their homeland to the source of a mind-controlling plague, the party for which I DM encountered some gym bro Koa-toa's who sought to sink their pirate ship. During the battle, the Wildfire Druid tried to fire teleport to the other ship to weak some havok. I raised my eyebrows and cocked my head, leading him and the whole party to realize he was about to set his own ship ablaze. He then said, "I jump off the ship and teleport in midair." I thought for a second, and allowed this revision. The other players muttered mild disapproval at this benevolence. They won the battle easily and continued on their journey. However, I still think back to that moment - had I been less forgiving, they might have sunk in the sea, where I had a whole world of watery civilization already dreamed up. They would have met the dragon turtle disguised as an island and perhaps continued their journey on his back. I still feel a wistful envy for the timeline that got away. Clerics of the Icosahedronal Truth, how can I move on from this moment of weakness?

Dario Lia

May it please the court, oh humble and might I say glowing Crit Justices Murphy, Tanner, and Axford and that little cutie-patootie in the greasy stained uniform jake. I present to you the case of "The Hex Hunters versus the Quickdraw Charm Spell". My party (a group of 5 Level 5 characters) had just finished their quest to save a kidnapped boy from a cave of Hobbes that were being controlled by a Nymph. Not only did we save the boy, but we saved a merchant and a bard that had been trapped in the cave for a while. Quest complete, we make our way back to the Capital city and the bard tags along since they were originally heading back that way. Once in town we start examining our loot and we had a magic mirror that you could use to see a past version of yourself. Our mute Aarakocra Ranger used the mirror and saw a halfling woman instead. The group is confused, and we find out the Ranger is cursed and had their OG body stolen. Unbeknownst to us the bard had been watching us play with the mirror the whole time. After we resupply we hit the road again and part ways with the bard. He asks us where we were going after this and like a dummy my Divination Wizard tells them. On the road my DM has me roll an encounter check d10. I roll a 10 (this is a story linked event, this is the second time I've caused story events on the road with a roll), we are riding our horses down a mountain path and some fog rolls in . We stop our horses and hear a fast approaching rider, they ride past and hit the Ranger. Their stuff falls to the ground and on quick inspection the mirror is gone. Our Artificer tries to stop the rider with Web, and they break through. Then I cast Hold Person, they try to counter spell but I counter the countespell. This spell locks the rider up for a good 3-4 rounds before they make the DC 15 Wis save to break free. We remove the magic cloak and mask that are concealing the rider's identity and it is the same Bard we saved from earlier. They were linked to the people who stole the Ranger's body and wanted the mirror back. We tied their hands to stop them from casting spells, but they had a magic item that allowed them to cast spells without the Somatic component (hand motions). The entire fight me and the DM were having a battle of minds I was spittin' hard on behalf of my party making sure they remembered their Hexblade Curse damage, arguing that the DM couldn't use Geass because the casting time is 1 minute. I was a Rules Lawyer Champion of the people, and making sure not to overstep the boundary of being obnoxious and metagaming. After a 6th level Fireball centered on themselves; only me (Wizard), my wife (Ranger), and friend (Warlock) are still standing. This is where the issue comes in: I had readied the action to cast Hold Person again specifically saying if they tried to cast a spell or make an attack it would trigger. My turn was right before the Bard's turn. Immediately the bard starts to try to cast a 3rd Level Charm Person, this triggers my spell to go off. The DM describes how my spell goes off but somehow the Bard gets their spell off before mine. The Ranger and I failed a DC 21 Charisma check and are now charmed. I try to argue that the bard couldn't cast that since the Hold Person would have activated first with my ready action. The DM doesn't give a straight reason why the Charm went first. I didn't want to cause too much strife so I accepted the DM's rule and we continued the fight. The Bard got away but we still recovered the mirror with a clutch Nat 20 sleight of hand to steal it back. Was I wrong for arguing with the DM that a ready Action would activate before a Charm spell? Or does a Spell that only needed the Verbal component activate quicker than normal? I humbly await your judgement.

Jurti

May it pleasure the court and tickle the squirming bailiff Jake. I request from you a ruling on what my group has come to know as Glitter Gate. My group was having our first in person session.This was a big deal, we rarly see eachother in real life, and we getting ready for a big fight in game. My DM invited two of their friends to play with us who played in a different game that he ran. While we in a town getting geared up for the fight, one of the guests just says "I would like to buy glitter" They then proceeded to spend over an hour and a half making rolls and bartering with random NPCs to find as much glitter as possible. The rest of the group didn't know this person, and didn't want to be rude, but at the same time we felt a chunk of our precious in person session was wasted on glitter that I don't think ever got used. So I ask you, was my group justified in our frustration? Or were we overreacting about our glittery guest. P.S. This person has since become a regular member of the out group and we are all great friends, but the topic of Glitter Gate still leads debate.

John Richards

To the Supremist of all Supreme Crit Justices, and the People’s Bailiff, Jake. If it pleases the court, I bring you (a mercifully abbreviated) rendition of the Case of the Hypnotized Halfling. To set the scene: 18 months of campaigning and build up. BBEG Fight. Tons of banter and trash talk. The drama was palpable. Battle starts. Immediately, in the first round of combat, My dummy DPS rogue fails a wisdom save on a Hypnotic Pattern. Because of the layout of our battle map and my -2 to Wisdom, I, John, spent over 90 minutes of IRL time, listening to my friends play DND over discord while I scrolled instagram and Tik Tok. Justices, I understand that I was a victim of my build, and the rules of the encounter… but DND is supposed to be fun! Shouldn’t my party or my DM have found a way to retcon some rule or something to get my lil guy back in the fight?! (As an added note of flavor, and to potentially and shamelessly curry favor with the court: my character was a Skateboarding Grandpa Halfling-Rogue named El Chivito: the Goat Face Killer. He wore a little goat mask and liked to stab people while doing sick kick flips and 50/50 grinds.)

Emma Margaret

I wanted to introduce my girlfriend to DND because I thought she would like it because she's LARPed before. She wanted to be a bunny folk with a battle-axe, which sounded dope. We do a session zero where she fleshed out her character traits and stats but she refused to use a character sheet and only looked at her notes she took about her traits and weapon. One of her character traits was that she likes shiny things and she's a kleptomaniac. One of the other players was playing a southern Belle artificer ranger with a metal prosthetic leg she made herself. My girlfriend's character, named Poufacus, wanted to steal the leg because it was shiny. The artificer convinced her not to do that, and then the DM put us in a fighting pit to fight these spider monsters to test how our characters would do in combat. We won the fight and Poufacus RAN to the prize box to try to take all the gold for herself. It was at this point I told her this character won't be fun to play with long term because of how selfish she is. And because she talked about murdering party members to steal from them. She then explained to the group that her intention if she stole the artificer's leg was to replace it with a big dildo to walk on, (she wanted to be a rabbit with a Rabbit) and that she would have just been the one to hold onto the gold for the party. She had not communicated that to us at all during the encounter though and she told me on the car ride home she wouldn't play DND anymore because she felt like we were all attacking her for following her characters traits. Maybe I am too used to performative DND where none of you guys are murder hobos but I don't think that is normal behavior even in home games.

JessMayWin

May it please the court and the criminally underrated bailiff - i bring to you the case of the failed toilet ambush and the impossible target. In a game a few years ago we were tasked with kidnapping the daughter of a wealthy merchant to get information about the location of a valuable artifact - the only problem was, according to the DM, 'she never leaves her mansion and has at least 2 guards with her at all times and if they are alerted or attacked her father and his entire guard force will be mobilised immediately and you will all be imprisoned and later killed'. We spent over 3 sessions trying to solve this issue in a variety of ways, which the DM continued to shoot down (ok can we infiltrate the merchant's militia and try and get on her guard shift? No. Can we pose as merchants and try to get an audience with her? No. Start a fire at her estate to smoke her out? You get the idea). In desperation I suggested that our bard polymorph into a fly and try to sneak through a crack in the window while she was on the loo and then dimension door out of the manion, as I reasoned that surely she would have to be alone while doing her business. The DM flat out refused, saying the guards would also accompany her to the toilet. The whole thing left us feeling pretty.... crap.... to be honest. I humbly ask the court - would someone being guarded at all times expect their guards to be with them when they are on the can, or was my idea, as gross as it was, a viable one? How can you get around a DM who doesn't allow creative solutions to problems they set, and still make sure everyone has a fun time? p.s. after this same in game day continued with no further success for another 2 SESSIONS i dumped that group and have found new people to play with - they really are the shit!

Brandon Boling

If it may please the court, along with that tall and handsome Bailiff guy from something Amir. I come to you as a DM with uncertainty as to whether or not I have been unfair to a player. For context, I run multiple Homebrew campaigns for my fiancée and our best friend we met about a year back. My players are just about to unravel the great mystery of faewilds winter court, when they discover the King's Secret Vault, left for them to prep against the massive battle ahead. The players go down the secret passageway, into the study, somehow got access to 6 magic items. I was so proud of my players creativity of how they got all items out of the vault, that I spent minutes reading out what each one did. Last was a homebrew item I made known as the Bottle of the Gods. Due to time constraints, we decided to skip one of the courts, so I put this item here to help level up the party (3 swigs, enough for the players and DMPC to level up once). Our friend, a cleric named Colt, decided they should drink more then 1 swig, allowing them to level up twice. I as a DM panicked and gave a gentle warning that taking more than one, may have dire consequences. They even got a Nat 20 Arcana check so I explained exactly how if someone drinks more then one swig, the character would need to make a high CON SAVE (DC 20) or begin magically seizing with grave consequences. Our cleric then summoned a Spirit Guardian to protect her and quickly taught it to protect her head. When she rolled for the save, she failed by 1, and unfortunately began seizing. Because of how she told the guardian to protect her, it would attack the PCs trying to help her, which inevitably killed Colt the Cleric. I ask, should I have given another punishment that would've opened up more chances for the party to save them, or did the cleric reach to far for godhood just to be properly smited? I await your wise and benevolent judgement.

Gurt

I fling myself before ye, O anointed of the Dice Christ, for I must confess an ancient but harrowing sin that I committed. Twas the year of our dice 2016 and I was playing in my second 5e campaign. I was a still a relatively new player and this was my first session with this new group at my university. I was playing a halfling bard and we were exploring a crypt filled with statues described as “eerily lifelike” with eyes “that were filled with palpable fear.” And I, having been an avid reader of mythology in my youth, quickly came to the conclusion that we were about to face a Medusa. This should be where the story ends. But alas. I spoke out to my party, not as my character, but as myself, a mortal man and told them of my suspicions and convinced the party of what lay in wait. We began to play in a manner that could only be described as Meta-game madness. The dungeon master was a good sport and we finished the session successfully. He never said a word to me about the incident, however, looking back I remember a look on his face that I recognize now as disappointment and frustration with the party and with me. I ask that Dice Christ my show me mercy for the grievous sin of wanton Meta gaming and may crit have mercy on my soul.

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 wrestling roll? So judges, I ask you, should I learn to wrestle and defend my pride? Or accept the fault of my hubris. I await your sentence but am fully ready to turn heel.

Kris Warrington

To the honorable who evers and what evers.... presenting the case of the Anti-Dragon DM! My DM won't let me play a Dragonborn because he doesn't want to include Dragons in his games because they're "too complicated" and "over-rated". I don't mind NOT playing a Dragonborn,but they are my favorite race... what the heck do I do?

The Wizard Syndicate

To the beloved Crit Justices and the Beleaguered Bailiff I bring the case of “What does reasonable mean?” I DM for a small group of friends and at this point we’d been playing for about a year. My players needed to steal holy weapons from an evil church to kill an even more evil demon, and the bard and wizard decided to case the place. I had prepared a sneaking mission for them if they decided to come back at night at some point, but what they did instead surprised me. The wizard cast Mass Suggestion on the priest who ran the church, and told her to give them the weapons. I, as DM, asked “what specifically did you say” and the wizard replied “I say ‘give me those’ and I point at the weapons”. I say “ok these are extremely powerful weapons that are kept under lock and key she’s not going to just hand them to you, the spell says you have to make a reasonable request and that’s not reasonable.” His argument was since it was Mass Suggestion it should be 16x more powerful since it can effect 16 people. I disagreed and said that if they wanted to use the spell she would at best think they were inspectors from the king who’s castle was nearby, offering up a secondary way to maybe get the weapons without sneaking in if they wanted to try that. The wizard said “never mind this is what you want I guess” and cast cone of cold on her and killed her. Which of course was never “what I wanted”? This disagreement is the only time I’ve ever truly argued with my friends on D&D and has since been handled internally, but I bring it before the justices at it still bothers me even a few years later. What was more unreasonable? The Wizards spell? Or my DMing? I await your justice.

Star_Drek

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

Elise Lehotsky

To the honorable justices and the perfectly suitable bailiff:I run a game where each of my friends PCs are themselves. One of my friends, true to character, tries to mess with everyone and everything, and often accidentally kills friendly NPCs (rolled a nat 20 on a vicious mockery). He can also be helpful - he somehow lured a dragon to befriend the party (dice christ smiles upon him). I'm considering designing the game to throw harder trials and tribulations at him. Should I skew the game to make it spicier for him, or is that unfair to the other players?

Justin Dorland

May it edge the court to hear my confession, Actually nothing is really wrong and both d&d groups I DM for are fucking rad and there's very few, if any problems. I just came here to confess that your D&D court cases have helped immensely with conflict resolution and thinking on my feet. If you'd like to know more - one is called the Midnight Carnival and the players are a band of freaks and weirdos in a magic-unfriendly land, becoming a found family through their adventures and the vibes are immaculate. The other is a post-fantasy-apocalyptic setting, similar to a Dredd or Attack on Titan where most intelligent races are holed up in megacities and the wastelands in between are full of undead and other monsters (as well as the mysterious Obelisks that enable adventurers to level up!) Love you all my sweeties, please come to Toronto eh?

Muqtadaa Miandara

By the honored justices and their unsworn oath to uphold the law, and the bailiff who is also the court narrator I suppose? May it please the court, I give you the case of the time-looping dog. I shared a more detailed version on a previous post, but basically my player was in the Feywild and ended up being "cursed" to have the shadow of a dog follow them around and being cute and kinda sad that it couldn't interact with her. The shadow follows them around for a while, helps them out with perception here and there, and then one day back in the material they come across some dogs being raised in a fighting pit and rescue them, and the shadow approaches this one young dog, sniffs it, barks, and then becomes the shadow of that specific dog, who then sticks to my player like glue. My player loves it, loves that the dog is hers and she's reunited it with it's shadow, but see I knew that this dog was part of a stable time loop, something they obviously didn't. With hindsight, I guess I could have let this story go, but I just liked it too much. There came a point where some spellcasters they were fighting were very tired of this teleporting rogue with a dog causing them so much trouble in a fight, tearing up their minions so casually. With the two casters on the same initiative I had them cast disintegrate then plane shift on the rogue, who would have for sure died or been lost. She asked me straight up, is there anything I can do? I said "You might not like it", and she said do it without asking further. I narrated the dog jumping in front of the spells for her, first disintegrating into nothing but shadow, and then being shifted across time and space. The wizard of the party did an arcana check and I told them they felt like the arms of a clock had just struck 12, like time had closed a loop of some sort, and my rogue did a perception check to realize that she smelled the fey flowers she smelled when she first met the shadow of the dog. Basically the shadow was back in the Feywild waiting to meet the rogue once more. The party then destroyed everything bc they got really serious and were kind of upset with me. I've never seen them play better. After, my player just kept sniffling and crying a little bit. Some of the other players thought it was a really cool story, but it didn't feel worth it, since my player was really sad about the fact that I killed the dog and in their minds, always planned to. I argued that the menagerie of other animals in the party (including a winged tiger, a drake, an owl, and a gold dragon wyrmling [yes balancing encounters for my party is truly the most interesting hell]) are always at risk of death as well. Also, A again, in my head, the dog was always dead, stuck in a time loop. But you tell me, am I cruel enough to animals to join Hardwon's radio advertising agency? I await your judgement

Artemae

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

Ilana Galpert

I've only read the first 137 posts and damn Jake I don't envy you choosing. My favorites so far are: Brandon R (really hoping you choose this one it's so good) Matt's Aarakocra (or Nicki DeGuzman since their cases are similar) Steven H Matt Pearce Tom Sutton Your Good Buddy Brandon

Josh

Dear the tantalising court and in case you have a secret guest hi to them too. Anyway we are in the endgame of a campaign and as the dm I’m planning some more spicy battles. This next one has a slime and wizard. I’m planning on the wizard casting tensers transformation on the slime- when hit the Yellow Ochre (slime) stats say it splits into two smaller slimes. Is it fair that I rule this will mean both new slimes have tensers transformation cast on them or will the spell essentially dispel? I throw my lanky body at the foot of the courts high chairs in reverence for the decision. x

okiedokeTM

May it please the court (and I guess Baliff Jake if you still keep him around) I bring you the Case of the Third Session Disintegrate. I run a campaign that’s been ongoing for 2 years. Recently, a player’s long-time character left the party for morality differences (no problems with that - everyone loved the drama and she’ll come back later). In the meantime, the player made a new character. During her third session, the party got stranded in a cultish commune whose mayor is secretly a legendary necromancer feeding on the villagers. They cornered him alone, so he kicked their asses and then leveled with them, saying he could easily kill them unless they agreed to join his commune and not interfere with his leadership (I wanted them to explore and get some victimized villagers on their side to help with his boss fight). This new PC was easily offended, and in a very in-character move, took a pot shot at him. He retaliated with a Disintegrate that the party tried and failed to Counterspell… and it killed her. I felt awful. I spoke with the player alone after and she seemed a bit sad but said it was ok. We made a new character together that she now loves, and there’s no hard feelings. I still feel HORRIBLY guilty, though. I didn’t want them to keep fighting him, but was killing her new temp character too far? I humbly await your judgement.

LovelyLorelei

To the Tough but Fair Justices and the Squishy Yet Duplicitous Bailiff I submit before you the Case of The Amnesiac Rule. I came up with what I thought was a fun idea for a character, a warlock to the fea Queen of Spring who took a pact with her to work off a debt from a blessing/curse. The terms are that “All tears that stain your cheeks and the source will be forgotten”. Practically, this means that whenever something or someone makes her cry she almost instantly forgets anything and every thing about the situation or the person. As such my character remembers little to nothing of her life before she met her patron. The trouble started when I told my DM about the character and he brought up a rule he has for the table “No Amnesiac PCs” he says they kneecap role playing and put the onus on him to make backstories for the PCs. I told him that I had an outline of my character’s life and a reason they made the deal (grief over the death of their twin) they just didn’t remember it. The DM said the he won’t be making an exception, claiming that having memory loss as a key part of my backstory still makes me an Amnesiac PC. I’ve tried to make my case several times but made no headway. We are both listeners of the podcast so with your ruling I hope we can put this whole thing to bed: is a character with a written backstory they can’t remember truly an amnesiac pc? My Fate is in your hands.

Jillian M

Dearest Justices, and slightly dearer bailiff: may I present a case, or perhaps a confession? I did an intro quest/session zero one shot with a small group: 2 of the 3 players were playing for the first time. I allowed them to roll their stats, because I prefer to, but they rolled really well, so my encounters were a little under levelled and they finished all my encounters in a round or two. The final encounter of the one-shot featured an adult bronze dragon. Originally I had planned for a monologue, and then the dragon was going to run away (90’s cartoon style), but it seemed a little anticlimactic. Moreover, the players had just blasted through my final fight in under three rounds, and barely took any damage. It seemed like the new players didn’t really pick up on the danger that they were in. Soooooo, I had the dragon do a lightning breath weapon attack on 3 level five characters. I capped the damage at 50, and all but my DMPC passed their dex checks. So now I turn to the Supreme Crits: was I too harsh on these new players, or was I showing them the true dangers of dnd? I humbly await your judgment.

Alex Weatherhead

I bring forth the case of the Daring In-Ring Ribald Fling. May it please the incomparable and irreplicable Supreme Crit Justices as well as Bailiff Jack. I'm currently playing a cowboy character who is secretly a warlock with a genie patron. When I discussed the character with my DM before the campaign he asked what kind of relationship I would like with my patron. I explained that I wanted the relationship to be friendly as long as I kept up my end of the bargain to give her 10% of all my money at the end of each day. At the end of the first session, my character opted to spend his long rest within the confines of his bottled respite, a brass ring on his finger which he can enter once a day. The DM narrated that my patron was waiting for my character within the ring then RPed her grabbing my warlock and beginning to slow dance while he told her about his day. The scene had sexual tension so thick you could spread it on a bagel. It was funny to say the least but not the relationship I was expecting. Did my DM perhaps misinterpret the term "friendly"? Should he be sent to horny jail or do I have to keep pretending to date my friend the DM? I await your tough but fair judgment.

Camden Griffith

Oh blessed justices and the most divine of baliffs. I kneel before you, and our lord Dice Christ, with a confession. Almost half a year ago, One of the parties and also one of my favorite npc's, was wrongfully drowned in front of the party when he mechanically should have lived. (Read your spellcards closely my friends) Group of 4 friends agree to have a tough but fun game of d&d. Fast forward a through 2 years of play. Party of 3 gains a 4th in the form of a half orc shadow monk npc named mohg. Prophecy says "3 heroes may stop the evil" and bbeg is a rules lawyer. He and another mage cast force cage and create/destroy water in combination to remove our sweet boy mohg from the scenario and demoralize the heroes. Here's where things get crunchy and sad. Shadow monks can teleport from one area of darkness to another, which mohg was in darkness but force cage requires a charisma save to tele out. Mohg fails every save. Our druid (who I know always stocks dispel magic) begins making rolls to beat force cage at it's dc of 17. With all of his available spell slots, he was 1 point short 4 times. After several failed rolls and some really intense roleplay, mohg drowns as his friends watch unable to help. It... Was... Brutal. After a real life moment of silence, the game continues, we talk about how cool the character was and how intense that scene was for months. All in all it ended up being a good yet sad plot point. Until this week. When everyone present at the table realized we had been misusing dispel magic. Somewhere along the line, we all came to think that when rolling to beat a higher level spell, you used arcana. Not your spellcasting mod. My mind immediately jumped to the scene with mohg. Now realizing that he should have successfully dispelled the force cage on each one of the rolls that had fallen a single point short of the dc. Our wisecracking, halflings leaf smokin, sweet baby boy should have lived and I don't know how to tell my table. I humbly await judgement #justiceformohg

Spencer Clark

Holy Disciples of Dice Christ, I come seeking your wisdom. I have been unnaturally blessed with extremely high stats whenever I roll a character for a one-shot, (e.g. only 15s, 16s, 17s, & 18s before adding class or race bonuses). All of my characters for normal campaigns have average stats. My group has always rolled for our stats during our session zero and has been witnessed by our DM. He has always allowed me to use these rolls, but I yearn for guidance on how to proceed with this gift. I humbly await your divine words, Spencer P.s. Come to savannah.

Guildedfangs

To the Fair and Just justices of the court and the ever handsome Bailiff Jake, I present the case of rewritten history. I once played in a game where the DM sat each player down to have them help build their home regions and how they worked. My region was a fridgid land to the north ruled by nomadic clans of barbarian, druids and rangers that vied for power and hunting grounds often with the exception of my clan who lived at the base of the tallest mountain. On this mountain an ancient white dragon ruled and my clan appeased it with a yearly sacrifice keeping the north relatively safe. This dragon became my characters goal to slay it and free the Northland. When we finally aroved in the campaign to my home I find the land settled and two more silver dragons ruling over the people and all the work id helped with gone. This caused a deep anger in me in which I recruited my best friend also in the game to help me derail a single session which ultimately led to the DM being so bitter he ended the campaign with us fighting a god after working through the god's saints. Was I right to be angry that everyone elses regions where how they had helped build them but not mine or should I have rolled with it and took the disregard of my help?

Francisco Hernandez

Most esteemed Judges and steamed bailiff Hurwitz, I bring forth the case of the Chef’s Conundrum. I was dm’ing a western/cosmic horror themed game recently and my players came upon the carcasses of some plague-ridden horses. I told them that coming in contact with the bodies would spread this extraplanar plague to them, and one of my players - a pala-lock, asked if he could use purify food and drink on the horses since horses were technically food. While i agreed that horses could be eaten as food, I argued that in the current state- an unprocessed, diseased horse carcass- it was not technically food, in the same way a dead cow is not the same as beef. After about 10 minutes of back and forth, we cane to a compromise that if he (the pc) took a bite out of the horse carcass AS IS and succeeded on a DC 20 constitution check (they were level 4) then that would be proof that it was food and he could purify it. He got a nat 1. It was funny enough though that he asked if we could keep the rule going forward. Judges, should I allow my players to potentially descend into cannabalism as a goof or should this concession be a one time thing? Thanks

Sven

To the Supreme Justices of the Court and the Humble Dude they allow to be present at preceedings. I played a 8th level sun-soul monk in my friends campaign, and my friends and I were in a battle against a fearsome werebear. My DM became frustrated when I used my sentinel feat to cause our foe to get stuck in the cloud of daggers spell cast by our wizard. Frustrated, our DM, at the top of the round activated the wild magic lair action. He asked for dex saves and he argued that I automatically failed mine because I used my reaction for my attack of opportunity. The failure caused my character to be cast into another dimension. Should I have argued more to be able to resist that lair action? I miss playing my young anime boy. I humbly thank you for your judgement.

Justin Dorland

Duration: Concentration, Up to 1 minute [...}The spell ends for an affected creature if it takes any damage or if someone else uses an action to shake the creature out of its stupor. Yikes, your DM either forgot Concentration checks or your party actively avoided helping you get back into combat

Marcus Heer

May it please, tickle, and/or lightly massage the temples of the court. After suffering as a forever DM for a couple years a friend of a friend invited me to play in a new campaign he was starting. I passionately agreed. The world he created was a steampunk world with a faction war of vampires vs werewolves. Our party aligned ourselves with the werewolves and hid in their secret underground society. We had a very wholesome roleplay heavy session where we had a camp out under the stars and all bathed together. Upon returning to the underground society we had found that it had been ambushed by the vampires. The DM’s reasoning for this ambush was that we never explicitly said we closed the entrance behind us when we left. The DM then proceeded to commit mass genocide on these werewolves with only a single wolf surviving. The party then pointed fingers at my character as I was the last one through the entrance so I should have closed it. I, already a little frustrated, rebutted by reminding the party that my character was only 15 years old and they left a 15 year old in charge of protecting the secrecy of an entire civilization. The party continued to blame me in further sessions and eventually the campaign fell apart, never to be finished. To be frank I’m quite glad it fell apart. Was I wrongfully razzed? Was it just to kill off an entire civilization because the players didn’t explicitly say they were closing a door? Or am I just a bitch who should have closed a damn door? I await your judgement

Tammy Connors

Most Esteemed Justices of the Crit and Best Baliff Hurwitz, we beseech you, 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.

AntiApe

To the esteemed Supreme Justices of The Crit and the ever-present bailiff, I bring to you: "The forgotten BBEG". October 2021 I invited my regular dnd group over to play a Halloween one-shot. I told them to make 10th level characters that had some tie to the undead. The party was a Human Paladin, a Changeling Cleric and a Kalashtar Wizard and I had prepared a 4 level dungeon with a bunch of undead. Once they got into the dungeon they defeated a few waves of skeletons handily, and I thought they might blast through it all, but the second fight ended up taking way longer than I expected. We only had about 90 minutes left, so I scrapped the fight with a Death claw and an illusionist it's bonded to (as that would have been a bunch of taking damage while looking for the caster while not being able to kill the undead) and instead made the Death Tyrant (which I had modified to not have lair actions and some of the beams) into the final fight. Of course they crushed it in 3 turns. I tried my best to make it epic, but I can't help but feel like it might have been anticlimactic. Did I make the right decision or do I owe them a sequel next October? I humbly await your judgement. -Spooky DM

Taylor B (The vengeful, one-winged angel)

May it please the court and arouse the Bailiff. I present to you the case of the Elemental Dismissal. I was playing a Samurai Fighter with a group of friends in a home brew version of Wildemount, where our party was tasked to save a group of children from a religious, ritualistic sacrifice deep within a cave. We were outnumbered and surrounded, when I suddenly remembered that I had an Elemental Gem. Instead of using my 3 attacks, I used my action to break the gem and essentially cast Conjure Elemental (a 5th level spell) to summon a Water Elemental and turn the tide of battle. My DM gave me a worried look, paused as she clicked around on D&D Beyond, and then asked me what level of spell Conjure Elemental was. I said it’s a 5th level spell. She then said “Okay, he casts Dispel Magic at a 5th level and your elemental disappears.” And had the evil priest send my precious ally away, essentially wasting my turn. As a Samurai Fighter I have no access to magic, and to have my one magic option dispelled in a meta-gaming fashion and having my turn wasted was such a letdown for an item I had held onto for months. Was my DM wrong to meta game by asking the spells level before deciding to dispel a cool ally and waste my turn, or am I being a sad and whiney little baby? I humbly away your decision

Jack M

To the esteemed Justices and the Forever chained Bailiff Hurwitz, when does a Nat 1 demand punishment, playing Strixhaven we had to do some talent show Stuff(spoilers not sorry) my Giff Paladin threw our Kenku Bard for their performance, but our Gnome Ranger wanted to shoot an apple somehow, I of course offered my head to lay the apple upon and Held my shield over my face. Boom Nat 1, I take some damage? Should the arrow have struck me cause I trusted our ranger or should it hit the Gnome in the foot? Or just miss entirely? I eagerly await your punishment?

Josh Meier

DICE CHRIST CONFENSSIONAL: To the Supreme Crit Justices and Jack. I prostrate myself before the court with a grave sin. In my first year of DMing I had a battle between my 4 players vs a shambling mound. 2 of my players used their turns to set up a sick combo. The Aasimir eldritch knight flew high above the creature and used their action to dive and pierce the mound through its skull rolling a nat 20. Our Tabaxi Bard held their action to cast the heat metal spell at 3rd level to engulf the blade in flames mid dive. This is where I transgress: Me wanting to play "by the book" looked up shambling mound stats. It said they are resistant to fire. I then described how the creature was unaffected by the flames and no fire damage or effect occurred, only piercing damage. They were dissapointed but moved on. Later that night as I lay smuggly and proud in my bed it donned on me... Resistance does not mean immunity! The Shambling mound should have taken damage! Instead of playing the rule of cool. I played the foolish tool.   I also never told my players of this and I hid my mistake from them. I beg thee oh court, give me a swift but fair punishment. I await your judgment...

Rob T

Dear Supreme Crit Justices and the Hunky Bailiff Was up? How was the tour? I haven’t been in a dnd group for a bit so i can’t remember any stories or problems. I just wanna say y’all are great!

Ian Dack

Forgive me dice christ for I have sinned. I was dm'ing a session for my kids and niece first game (12,11 and 10) and I had to fudge almost all of my rolls to make them worse as I was rolling almost consistently over a 15 and would have tpk'd them in their first combat as they were all rolling very badly. It took them about half an hour to kill 2 goblins. However, they had an absolute blast and were getting very descriptive by the end!

Tim S.

May it please the infallible Crit Justices and the averagely-fallible Bailiff, I must know if my party and DM should face justice for unknowingly feeding our rogue to a gelatinous cube. Our party was pretending to bring our rogue to an evil warlord and had him in chains he could easily break out of. Our barbarian was allowed to take the rogue to the dungeon while the rest of us talked with the warlord, and each prison cell was a shallow pit. Both barbarian and rogue failed their Perception checks at this point, and the barbarian unknowingly threw the rogue into the cell with a hidden Gelatinous Ooze before returning to the audience chamber with us. Our rogue was quickly engulfed by the ooze and could not call for help. Since our plan was to wait for a signal from the rogue, all we as players could do was helplessly make small talk with the warlord while the rogue slowly died from acid damage. The rogue died unceremoniously, alone over multiple rounds. Is there anything we could have done differently? This was years ago and we are all more experienced now, but the player is still rightfully salty about it to this day. Adding insult to injury for the rogue, the warlord was actually making some really good points, and we eventually were convinced to join him. Were we right to leave him to his death? Or was there anything we could have done? I humbly await your judgement. Supplementary info: The DM tried to give the rogue outs but the dice were not in his favor at all. I as a Cleric even asked if I could receive some divine inspiration to check on the rogue, but I failed my religion check.

Pearl of a Girl Nursery

Tess Tucker from Virginia Beach (shoutout to belly chains) Honorable Crit Justices Murphy, Tanner, and especially the queen of multiclass Justice Axford whose build & backstory for a certain Sundae Sorceress actually inspired the PC I play here: I bring you the case of the Grappling Coin. Last session, my 5th level party and I followed a mysterious path to a tavern for free drinks, only to discover that the whole tavern was a giant mimic. Inside the tavern mimic, we were at one point shrunken to a couple inches tall and forced to fight tankard and coin mimics on a table. My Shadow Sorcerer/Undying Patron Warlock, Maren Ashmourne, targeted a coin mimic who was on the edge of the table and I took the shove action. I failed the contested check by one. On the coin’s turn, it attacked me, and I reacted with a Hellish Rebuke. The DM narrated that as the coin falls back from the attack, it tries to grapple me and pull me off the edge with it. I failed the check, but knew I could Misty Step on my next turn. That is, until DM began rolling fall damage. After some confusion and googling since I’d always known falls to be something that begins on the start of the next turn (a common house rule but nothing official) and DM admitted he wasn’t super sure of how the grappling would interact with the falling rules, another party member suggested I be allowed to burn my last 2 sorcery points for Quicken Spell, and just this once be able to use it for a reaction Misty Step. The DM and I agreed to this and we moved on. After the session, I felt a little disappointed that I didn’t just fall off the table. It was a cool moment and it was only the scaled equivalent of a 70-foot drop for my shrunken character. I even have a feat from my Shadow Sorcery that could have allowed me to pop back up at 1 if the damage exceeded my current HP. It would have been fun to say I played Be Our Guest with a bunch of nightmare mimics and get grappled off a table, but I do think with everything the coin did in its turn, it just doesn’t make sense that the coin’s attack, my Hellish Rebuke, the coin’s grappling of me, the fall, and hitting the ground could all happen in the span of a 6-second round. Should I have fallen, or should the coin not have gotten the chance to pull me off in the first place? I think it could have been an awesome moment if it was split between two turns in a way that made more sense. I stand on a table’s edge at the mercy of the court.

ChromaticMars

✨Hello Benevolent Judges, Axford, Murphy and Tanner, and the teenie tiny little pocket sized bailiff✨❤️. I present to you the case of the FORCED aging. When I first started playing Dnd I only had NADPODD as an example so naturally I made a character based off of the Green Teens. He was a 14 year old ball of sunshine. He liked to give out information packets about the Green Teens, as well as did other charity works, but I made it a well known fact that he is a CHILD and role played accordingly (ie not drinking at taverns, talking to all adults as if they’re authority, etc) Well I guess my DM felt differently about him, because after killing all of the Green Teens leaving my character to be the last one, they also gave my character a magic ring that was “left for him by his parents” after they died that when he put on and attuned to, magically aged him to be 19 years old. I was pretty upset about this and asked if I unattuned to it would I turn back into my normal age? The DM said no you’re stuck like this forever. I tried seeing the brighter side because I was a halfing and could still be the sweet boy I originally made, but am I justified to be upset that I missed out on such an important pivotal story arc of my character growing up on his own? I await your all knowing judgement (Side note: I’ve also had issues with this group because the DMs husbands character tricked my character into drinking alcohol when My character and Myself said it’s something we didn’t not want to do so obviously they have issues with boundaries from the start)

Leah S.

Honorable Justices and Steadfast Bailiff, I present the case of chaotic rules. I've been in a regular game with some friends for almost three years now. We have a culture of bringing up rules, making rulings, and using them going forward so we are all on the same page. That game is wonderful and they are my forever group. My case is about joining one of my partners' games. The game is amazing, the player characters and story are deep, but the rules are all over the place. Short backstory is that the DM came over from Pathfinder and is running a 5e game for my partner's friend group. However, he has a loose idea on the rules of 5e and I joined the game about ten+ sessions in. The first example was I gave the rogue advantage so they would get sneak attack, he tried to explain that was not how it works, I showed the class feature. Typically this is how misunderstandings are resolved in my other game, but I was called a rules lawyer (in a joking way?). The rogue was new to 5e and I wanted her to be able to use her class features. Other issues were that I hit an enemy with 18 ac right at 18, I was about to roll damage but was told I missed. He requested performance checks for tools, since there were no tools under skills, I tried to explain how they worked. We were asked to make survival checks to see if we don't get seasick, so I requested to use a con save. A big one for me was we had clues from a book and were all trying to put the clues together. He had everyone roll straight Wis checks to make sense of clues. I asked if I could use investigation, my character is an artificer rogue and built for these situations. But I was told that since we were making sense of clues we already had, it had to be a straight wisdom. Reading the investigation skill, it should have worked, I posted the skill in chat but didn't request a reroll. I talked with the DM after, he did say it was fine I bring these rules up. Still, I worry I'm taking away from the game every time I bring these things up. I suppose I am struggling with knowing the rules, while also trying to respect the house rules of the game we play in. I am asking for advice from the Court on how to best approach these rules that come up, on one hand I want to respect it's his game and the DM should have the final say. But on the other hand, I build my characters with skills and class features in mind, not working the way they are written or having to bring them up everytime I worry makes me come off as a backseat DM. Please advise me, Justices. If by chance you find neither of us at fault, I will take whatever punishment you deem worthy.

ChrisTheWiz

To the Greater Justices and the lesser bailiff, I submit my plea for justice! My first ever game of D&D, I made a gnome divination wizard as my go-to RPG class and inspired by Fantasy High. My DM was very excited, saying he loves Wizards because they are so OP - he hinted very strongly that I should take the Identify spell to start with. Knowing the Identify spell required 100gp of materials (we were told components with GP were required) and we were level 1, I picked other spells I thought would be good for combat and planned to pick up Identify at 2nd or 3rd level when we had money to spend. When we reached level 2 after two sessions my DM asked if everyone knew how to level up? I proudly said I had already picked out my spells - but then my DM dropped the bombshell: in his world Wizards didn't learn spells by levelling up, they could ONLY learn them by finidng and copying them. This was not told to me before we started and I struggled for another two levels, wanting to abandon my wizard. My DM did take pity and gave me two spells at Level 4 and Level 5, and he also gave me a spellbook - although it only contained 1 new spell and 4 I already knew. I love this DM and we have started our third campaign, but I will never play a wizard with him again and now badger him constantly asking about houserules relating to all my feats. Was I justified in being annoyed? Should I have asked more or just changed class? Oh Justices (and bailiff), judge us kindly.

Elliott Solomon

If it pleases the court, the Bailiff Jake, and any secret guest judges hiding beneath the Judges' box: I present the case of the Lawyer DM! My very good friend/DM is an IRL lawyer and, as you can imagine, incredibly book smart. I, a notorious melee fighter and owner of a theatrical design degree, am not very book smart. In this session, my Gunslinger Fighter was being put on trial for treason against her kingdom for conspiracy (for which I was guilty but that's unimportant). I was a little intimidated, being in my DM's favored terrain, and I had to argue my own case. My dear DM cross-examined me into oblivion for nearly three hours real time, no recess, with my group having to watch without participating or being able to help me, as they didn't pass stealth checks to get into the courtroom. I rolled hot, nothing sub 17 with bonuses, and I got a guilty verdict. She was stripped of rank, and the whole table was disappointed, but my DM said we should be happy because my character wasn't sentenced to death or killed in the court room. Am I being a baby about this, or is my DM in need of punishment?

Leah S.

Also, other NADDPoles. If you got some advice, please let me know!

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

SirensSingSongs

Honorable judges and honor less bailiff , may I present the case of the zombie trees and necromancy. I’ve been DMing a home brew campaign for my roommates that’s set in Ancient Greece, using the Greek pantheon. Naturally, all the PC’s are Demi Gods and have a godly parent. As such I’ve allowed a lot of shenanigans and bending of the rules (extra feats, double subclasses, etc) and felt that it was time for some shenanigans of my own when they decided to go to LITERAL HELL to interrogate demons. Using the format of the 6 layered Carceri (loosely) they crossed one layer that was full of poisonous and undead plant life. Mostly consisting of some home brewed undead treants that I had to poison damage with the rock attack, making it instead pustules of poison damage. I made these with the sorcerer of the party in mind as she loves to cast blight on plant creatures to do the maximum damage. When I explained these were undead treants in hell and thus wouldn’t be taking maximum damage and would roll their saves regularly, everyone accused me of cheating! I explained that technically they were undead and shouldn’t be affected at all by necrotic damage and that allowing them to roll a save and take damage at all was already catering towards the party. But no one would hear me out and said I just made it up, which is literally all I’ve done the whole campaign as DM! I wound up caving and letting the sorcerer absolutely demolish my home brew babies, but it’s still bothering me weeks later. Should I have stuck to my guns and let them roll their saves even? Or was I right to cater to the parties wishes to keep the fun going? I humbly await your wise judgment…as well as jakes judgement.

Penny Leatherleaf, the half-elf cleric

HELLOOO! May it please thee three righteous judges, and thy deplorable bailiff who I think has a name that starts with J...not totally sure The half-orc in our campaign believes that orcs rely on taste and smell more than other races, sort of like dogs, so it makes sense for his character to lick and/or consume objects when investigating. This has resulted in a many-a-near-death poisoning, in which I, the cleric of the group, use my precious spells to save his half-orc haunches. Now our DM is placing more and more toxic objects in our path, resulting in more poisonings, and more of myyy lost spell slots. This situation is further complicated by the fact that this half-orc player is also my spouse IRL, so I don't want to sound like a scolding spouse meta-nagging my him into not playing his character in the way that feels truest to him! (bad vibes for the table!) As a party with a married couple in it, how do you navigate this sort of thing?? Also do orcs really rely more on taste and smell like dogs?! Should I just stop healing my spouse and let him die of poisoning damage? Sounds a liiiittle intense, but I'm open to it. Thank you for all that you do! (p.s. my real name is the same as caldwell's baby, which makes me feel truly blessed :))

Shacked Aharon Rosenthal

Honorable Justices Murphy, Axford and Tanner, and the lovely and gracious bailif Hurwitz. I bring before you the case of the drugged druid. I was playing a level 1 druid named Tenlen in a new game with a new group, I was playing him all naive and freshfaced, just a nice gentle guy. Being level 1 he still couldnt wild shape and I was roleplaying the heck out of strange things ALMOST happening during combat and when he finally managed to wild shape after we had leveld up he was horrified of what he had done as an animal. All this to make clear that he was a young somewhat clueless guy. In preperation for the campaing we had decided that when a player had to miss a session then the group would just ignore the character and that they would rejoin as if they were there the whole time at the next session. When this eventually happened to me, the DM decided for some reason that my charcter was out of it because and I quote "he had been high the whole time". I was displeased with this decision as it was very out of character for my pc and it went against what we had decided in advance. I asked the dm politely to change what he had said during and after the session, but the rest of the group just picked it up and it became a running joke for the next couple of sessions. I ended up leaving the group because I just stopped having fun becuase of the silly drug jokes. I ask thee honorable judges, should I have just let it go? Or should the Dm have not messed with my charcater? I humbly wait your jugdment. P.S The london show was really fun!

Gill

May it please the court and the very hard working and amazing bailiff who is very good I played in a short campaign recently as a 11th level druid goliath, loving druids but never having gotten to play one past level 5. Our party was on a mission to kill Semiramis and our infiltration gave us very few opportunities for rests, short or long. We entered into a battle where I rolled a nat 20 initiative but hadn't been able to look through my spells enough. The DM started counting down from five, I think for stakes and pacing--that it was supposed to be surprising and I wouldn't have much time to react--but I couldn't think and eventually cast a summon fey spell that did absolutely nothing in an encounter that lasted only two rounds. We didnt have a long rest for the rest of the campaign, including two final boss battles. I lay my fate at your feet and ask, should I have been given more time to decide on what to do and not waste a precious high level spell slot, or should I have reviewed my options more in advance to be fully prepared?

Bright Morning

Sup honorable judges and also Jake who is just trying their best! I present the case of the 3 immovable rods. I was DMing for a group of mostly new players (including my two roommates) during the pandemic, we were running the Curse of Strahd. During character setup i had them all role on an uncommon magic item table to help get them excited about their new characters and give them ways to solve problems without using combat. Smash cut to 3 of the 4 PC’s rolling the same item: an immovable rod. At first i offered to have them reroll, so as to not have duplicates. They declined, and after some suspicious silence and texting back and forth i decided to leave it to fate. 4 sessions later? They had determined the best and only way to play would be to have stay suspended 60 feet in the air, on a makeshift raft laid across the 3 rods, slinging spells from a safe distance and only coming down for supplies and loot. They had daisy chained themselves up to a height where almost nothing could get hurt them! They even sleep up there! What’s worse is that they complained any time i even *hinted* that they should try going in buildings, talking with residents, and explore the old fashioned way. I love the creative solutions they’ve come up with but it’s not exactly the experience i had in mind when i agreed to DM for them. Did i goof up? Or are my players a bunch of dinks who need their toys taken away?

Max Piper

To the super duper crit justices, and the super duper dapper bailiff. I present the case of persuasion v. intimidation. I was DM’ing a scene with one of the party’s favorite NPC’s. Their goal was to tease information out of him that he was reluctant to give over. Everyone was having a good time finding tactics and making different checks to win the NPC over. Things shifted when one of the players made a direct threat at the NPC, and asked to roll intimidation, because they had a really high bonus to it. I told them they could and it’d work if they passed, but it would have a really bad impact on the party’s friendship with this NPC. They countered, saying that their close bond should be able to sustain one intimidation roll. I ask the court: should making a direct threat at an NPC ruin their relationship with them, or is my player right in saying their friendship could last.

A Monk named Dil-go (yes the whole thing, yes everytime)

To great just people in tall chairs, and skinny man in small chair Me name flint, sometimes flint get mad. New thing happen when get mad. One time was mad at 2 guys in hallway. This time small boom friend appear to help, tell boom friend to go between guys and go boom. Before friend could big voice said boom friend could only go in front or behind 2 guys no between. Flint feel boom friend was small enough to fit between is flint right or big voice right? Ie. Wild surge barb, explosive pixie on the surge table

Zak

Most radical judges and most special boy Jake, I come before you pleading for you to hear out my case brought to you on this 24th day of May and I await your ruling and guidance. I recently started DMing for a group of friends in a Ravenloft campaign. I introduce them to a custom domain I created called Harkonia which the residents were stuck in a time loop of being attacked and killed by werewolves at nightfall. The issue? My players quickly realized that based on a mistake I made saying that everything resets in the morning, that meant all their gold and valuables did too. Now my players have decided that instead of progressing the story, they’re going to spawn camp my town and continually butcher and rob them of everything they own. How can I remedy this situation before I sadly have to give up on an otherwise most bodacious storyline?

Proto_link

To the honorable justices and the slightly less honorable balif. I present the case of no stealth on a rouge. In a game I play in I have made a rouge that has a homebrew subclass approved by the DM and during a big talk about what the group wanted out of the game and how the other people liked the characters others are playing. During this talk I was asked to have my character act more like a rouge and then I revealed I had not taken stealth as a proficiency . I saw no issue with this as the subclass approved by the dm was a stage magician and I intended to be more of a distraction than someone who would sneak around. There is no actual argument I just want to know was I wrong to not take stealth as a rouge. I humbly await your judgement

Haz Pants

May it please the court, satiate the Crit Justices and quench the most hench of Bailiffs.
 I'm the DM for a campaign with four PCs (barbarian/cleric/warlock/paladin) A majority of players and I are very story-focused, some even taking less efficient builds for story/character reasons. Our Paladin is very much a mechanically focused player. He already has a tendency to dodge plot hooks, meaning I have to go far out of my way to magic up a reason why he’s working with the other characters. In the past, he’s looked up multi-class builds for his character that he plans on taking explicitly for the mechanical benefits and doesn't take into account how they tie in narratively. I spent some time trying to work in a plot hook for his backstory for why he would eventually become a Sorcerer/Paladin I’m actually really excited to see it play out in-game since I thought I’d come up with a fun story that both I and the Paladin would be interested in. The other day he found a build online called a ‘coffee-lock’ which utilizes synergies between a warlock and sorcerer to generate large amounts of spell slots. He said that it would be really good for his build and he’s potentially thinking about going Sorcerer/Warlock/Paladin. The problem is I don’t think he’s really thought about the narrative rationale, since his character is very much not the kind of person a patron would consider reliable. I’d want it to make sense for the character and world, but I’m worried that if I make multi-classing into warlock harder because of narrative reasons it might seem spiteful, which I want to avoid. I’m also worried about encounter balance, if one person in the party is mechanically more powerful than others since I want them all to be challenged equally. Knowing encounter building is my weak point, I feel this would be something that would really be hard for me to navigate. I submit this now to the court. Am I in the wrong if I tell him he shouldn’t multi-class into Warlock because it would be hard to fit into the story and I can tell he’s only doing it for the mechanical benefits it would afford him? Or should I let him live his best life, and just roll with the punches even if it makes the game harder for me to design?

Mark Baker

To the esteemed Baliff Jake and the lowly crit justices, I bring you the case of the Pillaged PC Corpses. A year ago my group that I DM'd for at the time suffered a total party wipe. I could tell my PC's were bumbed about dying and making new characters, so instead I ran a few sessions of them in the after life where they became champions of long forgotten God who would return them to their bodies in exchange for implementing his will on earth. But when they came back I said that the outlaws that had killed them had robbed their bodies of anything obviously valuable. My players were pretty upset by this, saying its bullshit that they lost their gear and potions. I compromised and said that they could roll for each item to see if the bandits found it or not, but after some poor rolls on their part most of the items were lost anyway. I ask you, was I in the wrong? I didn't want there to be no penalty for dying in the campaign and they were low leveled, so it's not like anything they lost was exceedingly difficult to replace, AND they gained some new powers from aligning themselves with this new god, so it's not even like they were just nerfed. But on the other hand I try and make D&D a fun time for my players and this decision clearly wasn't making them enjoy or want to engage with the game more, so maybe it was a mistake. I humbly accept whatever decision your eminences decree.

Brooke

May it please the court and the humblest of bailiffs (a dormouse of a man): I come to you with a case somewhere in between the laws of man and god. You may don the robes you see fit. Be this a courthouse or a church I lay myself at your feet. I DM for a group of players in a modern, cabin-in-the-woods-type murder mystery story. I am a relatively new DM and one of my party members consistently wants to split the group up to cover more ground or do two things at once. I don't want to be super controlling and say no, so I let him go off on his own or hang behind at the house when he wants to. Even if sometimes all he does at the house is eat a hearty breakfast of eggs. Truly so many eggs. The problem really developed when he started trying to leave the cabin. Most recently, upon realizing the phone lines were dead and the police had never come, he gathered up some NPCs and drove out to find a working phone. I want the whole party to play the way they want to play and am trying to let the dice tell their story but all of my shit is planned at the cabin! The whole idea of a cabin in the woods campaign was to have an insular and isolated experience with a controllable amount of NPCs. I have no logical reason to stop him from going out (there is a car on the premises) and I do like how he’s committing to his character and honestly thinking about what he would do. I also wish I could hit him over the head and tell him that there is so much more to explore where they already are. I ask you, honorable justices, is one of us in the wrong? Should I relinquish my control on the narrative and go more with the flow? Or is it an unspoken rule that you should keep the party together? I count on your mercy, compassion, and swift justice.

AmberDextrous!

I don't have anything to submit or confess, just wanna offer up a prayer to dice christ that I can find another group to DM because all my friends are too busy to play 😭

Jack H

May my case please the illustrious court and may the bailiff have a pretty cool sticker to keep his attention. I bring the case of the creative riddle solution. Our party was at a magical tree that required us to solve a riddle to advance to the boss fight. The riddle went as follows: Take Note. I cast a spell that affects the masses. I am the whisper you hear among the branches. When with many, I face scrutiny. But when alone, I’ve been mastered. I realized that the perfect answer to the riddle was a fart. It satisfied every line of the riddle. A fart is, in fact, a whisper that affects the masses and is scrutinized among others. Everyone knows a fart is mastered when alone. However, our DM did not accept this answer and eventually gave us a hint which led to the real answer, A Song. This brought the party into a frenzy as we felt that fart was a more appropriate solution than a song. I eagerly await your ruling on if a DM should accept a creative answer to a riddle.

Tess Nicola

To the brilliant and bewitching Justice Axford and everybody else... I have a simple question: Can you cast Flesh to Stone on a slime monster? Does a Slime Monster have flesh? Does his mucus count as flesh? "You attempt to turn one creature that you can see within range into stone. If the target's body is made of flesh, the creature must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, it is restrained as its flesh begins to harden. On a successful save, the creature isn't affected." This question has haunted me for years after hearing a DM not allow a wizard to cast Flesh to Stone on a regenerating poisonous slime monster. The DM teased the wizard stating that it was the most absurd request as it was obvious that a slime monster doesn't have flesh. This did not seem obvious to me and has haunted me for many years. I can only trust the justice and judgment of the Supreme Crit Justices.

Rachel Simurda

May it please the court and also Baliff Jake, who I honestly think is just trying his best, I bring to you the great Pickpocketing a God Debate. I play with my best friends in a super fun homebrew campaign. Our DM has created her own pantheon that includes beings called “divines” that are children of the gods and deities in their own right. I play a wild magic sorcerer pirate who caries around a sentimental compass. My friend plays a rogue who is an incredibly prolific pickpocket. Early in the campaign he claimed that he could pickpocket anyone, even a god. I called bullshit, and we made a friendly bet of 10 gold. Later, we came across a divine and during combat with it, it possessed my body and spoke through my mouth. My friend took this opportunity to pickpocket my compass while I was out and then claimed to have pickpocketed a god. The table lost it as laughter rained down from the heavens. My DM let it happen and we moved on. It created a wonderful narrative moment between my character and the rouge, so I’m not too upset, but to this day we have friendly debates about wether or not I truly lost the bet. I maintain that because it was still my body, he did not pickpocket a god. When ghosts possess you in-game you do not yourself become a ghost so how could I have become a god in that moment of possession? Please, great and powerful justices, lend us your wisdom and insights and bring an end to this uncertainty.

The Cooliest Fooly

Honorable justices and stunning bailiff, I present to you my case of the podcast copycat. It was my first D&D game, introduced by a coworker and her boyfriend who DM'd. My wife and I joined, making characters and backstories before session 1. After arriving, the DM had entirely new backstories for us. Okay, so they wanted an adventure of their own world, we rolled with it. Before long, the DM started recommending an actual play podcast fervently, every session. I gave it a try, and before long I had binged 60+ episodes. That's when I started to notice the same villains, settings, and scenarios happening to our party, to a T. I pointed to is out to my wife, and we decided to write a private letter to the DM, stating we knew what was happening, and opted out of the game in private. The DM then messaged the group, telling them we had insulted him, called him a bad DM. Was I in the wrong for wanting to live my NADDPOD experience through the podcast, and not my DM second hand? I await your judgement.

Bleepers

May it please the ever balanced and glamouress court and also that mongrel of a bailiff. I bring you the Monks Magic Duel In my campgain my echo knight werewolf fighter ( kinda like jekyl and Hyde) was having a duel with a tabaxi. The tabaxi was being controlled by the DM. At the top of the fight my character declared that this is a no magic and no funny business kinda fight just hand to hand. Halfway thru me and my DM had a thought if monks power are magic or just really skilled hand to hand combat techniques. We came to the conclusion that they aren’t. This resulted in my character getting womped by a flurry of blows but not getting down and hanging by a thread. I seconded wind and kept the fight going. I ended up losing but was an awesome duel. However we where left curious if the marrial class ablities like furry of blows and second wind, action surge etc are magic and fair in this type of duel

Joey G

I have two here, feel free to use one, or neither, your choice. Dear our great and always-right-never-overzealous Justices and the much hated on but still honored Bailiff, I present the case of the master attacking animal companion. This was back probably a decade or more ago now and sometimes I still think about it. I was a fairly new player, and a very new DM at the time, and playing with some experienced players. At the time we played readied actions a little differently (and honestly a lot of things differently to make combat more “realistic” which translated to “difficult” which was fun for us) where you needed to state exactly what you were holding your action for, and it wouldn’t happen unless that circumstance happened. I had a player playing a druid with your standard wolf companion (this was in 3.5) fighting guards on a tower. He planted his wolf at the top of the stairs, ordered it to bite the first thing that stepped in front of it, then walked in front of it. I asked him if he was sure that was what he wanted to do, he stated yes. So, I had him have his familiar take the action against him. He began to argue, then decided it was funnier this way and actually took the attack. No one was upset, made a funny story, and after several years I have lighted up on a lot of that stuff. But I wonder back sometimes, was I in the wrong making him do so, or was I technically right, the best can of right? I humbly await your verdict. To the benevolent an oft right Justices Tanner, Murphy, and Axford, and the Bailiff Hurwitz who is alright I guess, I present the case I like to call: Daddy issues. This took place about 3/4ths way through a 2 to 3 yearlong campaign, around level 18-19, with a group who had been playing together with these characters for a while now (though one of them was newer to the campaign). For plot reasons I won’t get into the players were fighting the father of the Half-Dragon in the party, an Ancient Red Dragon, to get a deity killing sword to kill a god who was stealing the power of the other gods and was inadvertently destroying the universe. You know, normal D&d stuff. They had made a plan, promptly ignored it and teleported in, with full intent on killing the players father, with the players blessing. It was a very difficult and close fight, ending with two players down but alive, the half-dragon barely alive having dealt the final blow, and two overs standing but not happy. The warlock (my girlfriend at the time, now wife), used Eldrich blast on the corpse to make sure it was still dead (them having dealt with regeneration and contingent healing in the past) and the Half-dragon got angry and attacked her. With a 9th level spell. She survived due to passing the save but was obviously upset. The conversation of if this was rational reaction or not began to get a little heated, but luckily it was at the planned end of the session, and I cut it off there and left it at that. They both used the situation for character growth and things got resolved when the Half-dragon player had to leave the game for unrelated reasons. Everyone agreed that his emotional outburst makes sense, as it was an emotional scene for him, but to go straight for a 9th level spell seemed extreme. Though I agreed that it was extreme, I am very for my players agency to do what they feel their character would do and help guide this to a growth experience that actually helped the campaign. I wonder though, should I have stepped in on the spellcasting and stopped it or did I do the right thing letting it happen and fixing it after? I await your sentencing.

Erin Choi!

Greeting groovy movey crit justices! Who's that in the corner? His name is Jake? Oh okay cool. Nice to meet you. I present the case of the unlucky gunslinger! I recently finished a 2 year long 5e campaign with a group of people from my school. Within this campaign I played a college of lore bard named Paloma. When we first started playing I found it pretty difficult to adapt, given that I was the only player that preferred the role-play aspect to the combat and dungeon aspects of dungeons and dragons. Everyone had made perfectly minmaxed characters with builds effective for damage, not interactions with npcs. Our DM also would consistently create combat situations that were near impossible to survive in. Because I was the only arcane caster with healing spells, almost every turn of mine was spent keeping the party up, and I never really got to damage any of the enemies we fought against. I would be told what to do with my turn, what feats I needed to take to help everyone do damage; just general yucky and near meta-gamey behavior. It’s also worth mentioning that as the only girl in the group, there were times where characters would treat only my character (and by default me) disrespectfully I.e. trying to physically restrict my character’s ability to speak, never considering her opinion during discussions, and hitting or hurting her without asking me how I felt about pvp We had a big talk about how uncomfortable I felt towards the end of the campaign, and although I still feel a little upset about the situation, it was a constructive conversation where we also collectively agreed that the stakes of combat set the group up to read each other poorly. Now we’re starting a new campaign, and taking inspiration from Brennan’s C1 character Deadeye, I really wanted to build a gunslinger. Given that I wasn’t given the chance to be an effective combatant in the previous campaign I wanted to take the lucky feat to avoid misfiring. The DM said I was not allowed to take this feat citing the fact that the lucky feat would technically allow any disadvantage to become a triple advantage due to the language of the feat (although I said I would not exploit this). Our DM famously sets AC incredibly high, so it’s likely that I have an incredibly high probability of missing, and I really want to avoid the general feeling of uselessness I felt in the prior campaign. I can see the situation where I misfire, fail my tinker’s tool check, and end of with a broken gun and once again, an inability to interact with combat. So generally I have a question. How does the court feel about banning the lucky feat in games? I know it’s a pretty common thing to do, but is this an issue that I should bring up in the group? I don’t want to be unnecessarily confrontational or rude to the DMs hard-work. Thank you for your consideration and judgement! I will happily and humbly receive any sentence if seen fit. Can’t wait for your LA show!!!

Aaaaaarushi An Anachronistic Enigma

May it please the honourable justices and disgrace the deplorable bailiff, I bring to you the case of the questionable dragon anatomy. I dmed a oneshot a while back that culminated in the party fighting a dragon made of pure fire. The famous thing about fire, is that it burns. However, my one of my beloved players was a very melee-heavy character and decided that the best way to mitigate this, was to attempt to jump into the dragon’s mouth. When I reminded him that fire burns people, he said he was going to jump in the mouth and out of the ear, and since rounds are only 6 seconds and he wouldn’t actually touch the fire, it isn’t enough to kill him. I countered that he can’t jump in the mouth and out the ear all in one jump, the canal is curved, and he would have to land on the tongue, at which point he would be instantly burned up. This started an hour-long debate on reptile and then human anatomy – may be worth noting that most of the party, but not me, are medical students – but I stood my ground. We eventually came to a compromise of the dragon just throwing him out of the mouth so that we could continue the game and not instakill his character, but we are HAUNTED by this debate. It comes up at least once a month, and one of the other players made a (very funny) full powerpoint presentation, complete with MLA references to her medical textbooks, on why I am wrong. Did I ruin a fun heroic PC moment with, especially given that he couldn’t really fight ranged, or was his request a little too ridiculous?

Chris Coppel

To the wise and benevolent Supreme Crit Justices and the steadfast bailiff, I bring to you the case of the Paladin who sought forbidden knowledge Recently in a campaign I DM, my players ended up saving a small fishing village from a cult of Deep Ones who had been kidnapping and sacrificing villagers to their eldritch god Shar-Ngolyeth. Typical adventurer stuff. One fight saw them defeat the God’s herald, a slightly buffed Deep One Archimandrite from Tome of Beasts. On a whim, I had described him as wielding a menacing trident writhed in necrotic energy. After he was dead the Paladin of the group, a follower of Tyr, asked if he could take it. I saw a fun opportunity, said sure, and in-between sessions created a pretty powerful (but cursed) homebrew trident to give to them (Trident of the Herald) along with some plans for what I thought could be a fun curse-breaking arc that would test their faith to Tyr. I told them the name of it and said it’d be ready for them next session. The next session however, they suddenly didn’t want it anymore. I was a little bummed over my wasted effort, but such is life as a DM, and the session continued with the cursed trident unexamined. At the end of the session, the Paladin sheepishly admitted that after I told them the name, they went looking for it on dndbeyond, found it, and read the curse text. On one hand, I blame myself for making it public… on the other hand, this is the second time this player has gone digging for information they shouldn’t have. We started this campaign running Lost Mines of Phandelver and it eventually came out they read through the adventure after I explicitly asked the party to not go seeking out info they shouldn't have on dndbeyond. I ask the court, does the blame fall to me for making the item public… or should the player be punished for their crimes of seeking out forbidden knowledge Here is the Trident for reference: https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/4805878-trident-of-the-herald

Canadian Schubert the Mushroom 🍄

Honorable Justices or Holy Clergy, I come seeking guidance: I am going to kill a fellow PC, something I never thought I'd do. In session one, I attempted to bring the party together by telling everyone my address so once the battle was over, we could scatter then meet up and chat. This edgelord then broke into my house, stole my spell book, some gold, and an artefact that connects me to my warlock patron and ran off. I tracked him down in a righteous fury and tried to knock him out as payback, but he spent the whole fight dodging and telling me to "calm down so we can talk this through like adults." Then he broke into my house again. My character's a hex witch who curses rich people (mostly men). Being wronged, then told to "calm down" made me realize he's exactly what I'm against. PVP was decreed AOK in Session 0, and I'm talking towards the end of the campaign where I wreak my revenge so that he can still have a good game. But is this the right thing to do? I'm usually Emily-level of party focus and cohesion, but he's pushed me too far.

David Schappler

Honorable justices and most enviable bailiff, I present to you the party-destroying case of the evil captive. In a 3.5 game long ago, we had a group of 7 adventurers plus our lovely DM. We were attacked on the road by an ambitious group of cultists. We killed all of them but one, who we knocked out and took captive. The captive was tied to a chair and questioned thoroughly when he woke up. After questioning finished, the inevitable question arose: do we set him free? Kill him? Knock him out? It turns out that this would be the great moral question of our time, with half the party wanting to kill him and the other half wanting to set him free. At some point during the 3 hours of intense arguing, a player asked the DM / captive "If we were in your shoes, would you kill us?" to which he responded "definitely." However, some members of the group did not hear this exchange, and thus kept arguing that it is always evil to kill a defenseless person. Ultimately, the party decided to set the captive free. Crisis resolved, right? Wrong. One player (the wizard) decided to fly away from the party and finish off the captive by himself. This instigated another hour-long uproar that resolved in 3 characters leaving the party, walking off into the desert (though staying in the game). I ask the court - what could have saved us multiple hours of arguing? Should the DM have stated outright that this captive was evil? Is it an evil act to slay a defenseless person? I accept whatever punishment awaits for this 15 year old crisis.

Stephen Corston

May it please the court & the baliff can come too, I present the case of the bad economy. I am running a post-soft apocolypse campaign set in a modern world where the party a part of an Adventuring Union. We're fairly early in the campaign so when the party when to a convience store to buy supplies I lowered the price of Healing Potions so they could afford them with only their starting gold. As they levelled up and got paid from quests, I raised the prices a bit but they just recived a huge windfall and I forgot to update my price guide, now among the seven-member party there are nearly 50 individual potions of healing. I did convince them to leave some of their supply at their homes but there's still an issue of an absurd amount of healing potions in what I intended to be a bit of a tougher campaign. I accept that I messed up in lowering a crucial item but would it be unsporting of me to find a way of some demon or something to steal their potions or a burglar break into their homes and stel the bottles they left behind? I await your judgement with my head in the guillotine.

Molly

Honorable judges and I guess the bailiff too, I present the case of the decapitated npc. I DM a game for some friends who get very, very attached to NPCs. One in particular was a Tiefling childhood friend of the paladin. In a big boss battle, this NPC got her head chopped off and I ruled revivify would not work because it specifically states it does not grow back body parts. My players were in absolute rebellion and tried a myriad of ways to bring her back. Was I wrong to rule against revivify in this case? Should I have let them bring their beloved Tiefling back to life? I await your judgement!

hereisfroggy

Hi sweeties and the sour bailiff, I have a Dice Christ blessing! We used the 4d6 method of rolling stats and I rolled insanely well and ended up with an 18, 16, 13, 2 12s, and an 8. I sent my DM screenshots of the online dice I’d rolled as proof and I asked if she wanted to nerf me because I didn’t want to be overpowered. She said no, the dice had chosen my fate. I realized she was right and accepted the gracious blessing of Dice Christ.

SemiHuman99

Honorable justices and lowly bailiff, I present the case of "Can't find a book, kill a bitch." I was DMing a homebrew game where one player wanted to be a half orc from the forgotten realms world and got transported to mine, which I accepted as long as he understood his character understands that. The party had gone to an elven treecity in a forest of gigantic trees and the half orc wanted to go to a library to learn more about the world he is in. After failing a check on finding a book, he promptly went to the librarian and killed her due to apparently hating elves cause he's from the forgotten realms though never having a problem with the elf in the party. That elf wizard PC, who had decided to watch over the half orc, was not a fan of this and caught him before he could escape authorities. The rest of the party heard the commotion and headed there as the half orc PC then used a spell scroll to revivify the librarian and immediately proposed to her, which she profusely declined. The rest of the party was done with this PC after multiple instances similar to this and were threatened with being exiled from the city (which was the elf's homeland). They told authorities they would deal with him and eggsecuted him via a heated frying pan with cooked eggs. The player told me he was upset because the elf he killed and revived should've said yes to his proposal because he saved her life and I shouldn't have let the party execute him. Was I in the wrong to let the players take control of the situation and deny him his victim fiance?

Tristan Belzer

Similar thing happened to us where we killed the bbeg way too early, but instead of having a reason, our dm just begged us ooc not to kill him lol Ps. S/o my fellow Tristan B

Kurisil

May it please the honourable justices and the stinky gym rat man bailiff, I bring you the case of the sinking Instant Fortress. In my Saturday night game my party was facing off against a Gargantuan sized snake/hydra hybrid in a very open desert area. Before the session kicked off I had asked my DM if I could utilize my instant fortress as cover for our squishy casters, I asked before hand due to our DM not really liking the instant fortress being used in combat, he told me he didn't see why not and so I ran with it. One or two rounds into combat he narrated that the instant fortress started to sink into the sand and of course panicking due to the fact that we have a very important story related thing in said fortress I immediately said the command word to shrink it down when it was on my turn. But that wasn't enough, I had to make investigation checks to dig through the sand to be able to find the item. To make a long story short I spent the entire combat looking for the cube while the hydra popped in and out of the sand next to me. Eventually when combat was over the DM said the item was lost even though it was argued that we could split up and shout the command word for it to spring back up and also its a magic item why did it even have to sink to begin with? I felt spurned for my creativity and it set a tense tone for the rest of the night. Was my DM in the right and I'm just being a bit of a sore loser or am I justified in feeling that I was being punished for being creative and trying to help defend my party? I eagerly await your judgement.

AriBeam

Hello, esteemed members of The Supreme Crit, I present the case of "PVP Friendship." I recently played a short campaign with a group of friends, one of whom makes a lot of impulsive character moves. Our two characters had met once before through a secret magic society (in a contemporary, low-magic setting). My character remembered her character, but not vice versa. First session, her character panicked and cast Friends on my character with no other provocation than my character saying hi as if they knew each other. I decided not to have my character become hostile after a minute because they didn't otherwise have negative feelings towards her character. Was my friend in the wrong for using Friends on my PC? Or was I in the wrong and should have leaned into roleplaying a newfound enmity in the party? Did my desire for true party friendship lead me astray in the eyes of the Crit?

Brady Moore

To the great and honourable justices and to the great but certainly not honourable bailiff, I bring to you the case of the infinite quiver As the DM, I’m running and apocalyptic campaign focused on survival and when we had a session zero I was very upfront about this. My players keep track of rations, water, and even materials to make healing potions. Our Elven Fighter uses a bow and every time I ask them about the amount of ammunition they have, they would always respond with “I should be good” So I started writing down how many arrows they’d released, and not collected, I even warned them their quiver was feeling lighter. When they finally took their 20th shot after I started keeping track, I narrated how as they went to pull an arrow out the reached back and found none left in their quiver My player was furious, claiming that their character sheet is their responsibility and I had violated their privacy, and that if my world was my world then their character should be their character. Justices I beseech thee, did I breach a boundary I was unaware of? And was I too harsh in my punishment, if so I’ll humbly accept what ever punishment you deem necessary

Brennan Comishin

May it please the holy and righteous court and also... I think it was bailiff John. I present the case of the obliterated backstory. I created a character that was a medieval microbiologist druid who was trying to prove that bacteria existed. When I first introduced the character and brought up the fact that I was trying to prove to the world that microorganisms exist my party members loudly proclaimed their knowledge about bacteria and that pretty much everyone living in the fantasy world also knew about it. My DM had already told them my backstory before we played so they knew that I was on the hunt for shit-particle related science. I ask you, oh merciful counsel, was I robbed of my backstory or should I stop presuming the level of scientific knowledge possessed by my party.

Jane Lee

To the almighty, all just, and all powerful Justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner… and that other guy… I present to you the case of the spell that worked too well. I’m playing my first dnd campaign and during our most recent session our human Fighter had the confusion spell cast on him and was ordered by the dm to attack one of his fellow party members. Instead of arguing, trying to get out of it, or showing any signs of remorse like you might expect, the Fighter immediately came at me, a half-elf bard, really hard. They spent their whole turn trying to do as much damage to me as possible, and even ended up using the bardic inspiration I granted them earlier that day on their attack. I was already down before they even touched me. My character died. Confused, I later confronted the other player to see if there was tension between us, in which they responded that they were simply doing what their character would do in that situation. And that the confusion spell would erase any hesitations their character might have. I ask the judges, was our fighter right in taking the immersion to the next level by killing my character? Or have I been wronged? I lay my case humbly at your feet.

Armadon the only

To the honorable members of the Crit Judicial System. My group had decided to run in 3.5 d&d, a good friend decided to play a Druid and mentioned during character creation he wanted to change into a dinosaur. I took that too heart and set up a game where the group discovered dinosaurs. But in the first few games he wanted to become a raptor. Not wanting to show my hand I just told him he wouldn’t have ever heard of one and to wait and see. Since then he has been snarky and I won’t fold for him. So am I in contempt for not sharing information?

Jackie

To my dear, lovely Supreme Court Justices and the radical, tubular, and all around solid bailiff Jake, I have a confession for dice Christ. I am a DM and while running my game early on, my players fought (and almost lost to) a young green dragon. However, in a rejection of Dice Christ’s will, I fudged a roll that would have resulted in a TPK. Now, I believe I am paying for that sin because I have recently rolled 4 consecutive nat 20’s against the same party while they were battling an avatar of Tiamat, once again nearly resulting in a TPK. Thus, I ask, what should I do? I await your benign and righteous judgement.

Evan Cordero

No case to be brought before the courts just saying hi to the lowly bailiff who has to read all of the submissions

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.

Summer Tribe

booting you from the campaign is messed up wtf is going on? especially given that you were still conscious and the DM chose to kill the other players anyway instead of targeting you

Summer Tribe

why did you even give them a wish? how did you not foresee this outcome? this is on you man, the effect he asked for isn't even covered by the wish spell. On top of that the monk was doing something for the whole team and you punished the monk alone. what were you thinking? you made every wrong decision

christien

It did seem mean! I felt quite bad afterwards. It was my favorite character. Just a little edgelord conquest paladin on his ridiculous corgi mount. (Mastiff stats). I remade him for a new campaign because I've become a forever DM and haven't gotten to play since haha.

tony boccia

My Honorable and Holy Supreme Crit Justices/Pastors and that one guy that met Finn Wolfhard once, I have a confession that I must bring to the Chourt(Church/Court) I was running Hoard of the Dragon Queen for some friends of mine. For this session they were in the middle of a burning city trying to reach the keep in the center of town. During this encounter an NPC in the party was supposed to be kidnapped by the cult attacking the town. However, what I didn’t expect was for the party to turn around to try and rescue said NPC. When the tides started to turn in the party’s favor, I panicked and sent more enemies their way. No one died, and the NPC was kidnapped, but I ask this. Was I in the right to send more enemies to stop the party, or was it wrong to stop the party from having this win and saving their friend. My fate is in your hands

Kellin Cremeens

To the honorable justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, as well as the guy that it’s in Amir’s videos: I have a very crunchy case about the wording of a spell for you from a campaign I played in about a year ago. I played with some longtime friends from high school, and my character was a human life cleric, acting as the group’s healer. The DM, who is a very close friend of mine, seemed to have a thing against clerics from the get-go, claiming they were OP or “broken” at higher levels. To combat this, he added a bunch of little mechanics and rules to balance the power of a cleric, such as negative HP and having the enemies primarily target me, claiming that they were smart enough to know that I was a high value target (the barbarian player also got targeted, so I know I didn’t get completely bullied). My quarrel, however, comes in the penultimate session of our campaign. Knowing that we were heading into a tough final fight, and having some gold burning a hole in my pocket from a dragon’s hoard, I decided to stack up on Revivify diamonds. The only shopkeep selling diamonds was selling them for 3000 gold each. I argued that since the wording of Revivify says that it requires “diamonds worth 300 gold,” that a diamond I paid 3000 gold for should, theoretically, give 10 uses of the Revivify spell. We went back and forth for a bit before I relented, spending almost all of my gold on two diamonds. I am willing to admit that I am the Saul Goodman of Rules Lawyers, but I still lose sleep over his ruling. Justices, was my interpretation of the Revivify diamond value correct, or should I have accepted his ruling like a good cleric of Chauntea? I humbly await your ruling.

Zachary Wade Sherwood

May it so please the magnanimous Crit justices Axeford, Murphy, and Tanner (and that guy Jake I guess). I bring you the case of the invisible boss that killed an entire campaign. A little background, I was the DM to a party that absolutely MASHED every encounter I threw at them. These dudes were unstoppable and would breeze through any encounters with the greatest of ease. They were 13th level at the time of the event in question. Two of the four players were playing very tanky paladin multiclasses while the other two were a sorcerer and a witch. Almost all straight up fights were pretty much trivialized because between the four of them because they could do hundreds of points of damage in a single round if they wanted to. Here’s where the rub starts to come in. They enjoyed being absolute chad mash lords, but I didn’t. It sucks to put in a bunch of work for a boss fight for it to ultimately come to mean next to nothing. Also, I’m a firm believer that a story needs stakes in order to be compelling and those just weren’t there anymore. I had expressed my concerns to my players and they recommended things I’ve already tried like wearing them down with weenies and traps before hand. Up until now that hadn’t made much if any of a difference. With this in mind I started to think a little differently about my boss encounters. They would win any straight forward fight so I made the fight not straight forward. I covered the battlefield in a powerful, get solid illusion (mirage arcane, cool spell look it up) and then one of the lackeys cast greater invisibility on the boss with rogue levels. My strategy was the do invisible hit and run tactics while retreating to bait the party through the lackeys to wear them down. This worked very well, unfortunately. Immediately, two of the four players started complaining how this was impossible and there was nothing they could do. They had a sour mood and it brought everything down. However, this wasn’t the case. The sorcerer had see invisibility and could point out invisible enemies and the boss only had 100hp to offset the difficulty of hitting them. I even allowed one player to cast create water to make it rain in an area to cover invisible enemies. One of the invisible lackeys failed a DEX save against this and they lost the disadvantage to hit them for a round which promptly saw them destroyed. Those were only a few of the things I did to mitigate the invisibility problem for them once it became clear that they were not having fun. We got about halfway through the fight before we had to call it for the night with the original two complainers still in a bad mood. Afterwards, one of them called me and told me he wanted to leave the campaign. He said that he had been losing interest in DND and didn’t want to play anymore. This caused the group of 13th level characters, in a campaign we’d been playing for two and a half years since level 1 to break up because we didn’t have enough players anymore. To this day I still can’t help but feel that it was that boss fight that really broke up this group. My question is this. Was I wrong to not let my players be the Mary Kate and Mashley Olsens they loved being simply because I didn’t enjoy it, or was I justified in trying to add some stakes and enjoyment for myself? I await your judgement oh fair and noble justices.

Dakota

Greetings, powerful judges and impotent bailiff. I bring to you the case of the Ring of the Grammarian and the most powerful spell in dnd: Fish. The Ring is a powerful magical item that allows a caster to change one letter in a spell as it is cast, but scales (pun intended) the power of the spell cast to the level of spell slot used. Now we were two years into a campaign, and all of us players (and characters) were (and are) good friends. We were about to have a fight with a demon towards the end of my character’s backstory arc and since my character is a little sorcerer with a sense of humor and a lot of baggage, we all had a feeling the fight was going to be difficult, but magic based and a little irreverent. We all had our funniest strategies planned, and felt ready for the fight. My character had one secret weapon- a scroll of Wish that he’d never told the party about. The bad guy was a giant water elemental made of booze and mud, since the area was an alcoholic swamp (like the crick!) This guy had a temper and called us all little fuckers a few times before we got into the fight. However, he was WAY tougher than we expected. Almost everybody went down, leaving me (with Wish still on the back burner) and the Paladin (strapped with the Ring of the Grammarian). My character stepped forward on his turn, top of initiative on the fifth death save roll for two party members. He raised his hand with the scroll in it, and the paladin used the ring in an unspoken agreement to act like this was the plan the whole time. I used the scroll, casting a 9th lvl Fish spell on the creature. The DM was stunned, which is always awesome. He said he needed to take five, and when we all came back he gave us his ruling. We turned the booze/mud elemental into a “school of sardines with the mind and power of the creature.” Awesome, but this brought an entirely new monster onto the battlefield, which then almost swept and killed our whole party. Everyone went down except me, and thank goodness I took Polymorph. We all got out okay, but it didn’t feel like a success after burning a ninth level spell scroll and a very funny use of the most powerful item we’ve ever gotten. My question stands: should we have benefited from the use of this scroll, especially since my character took all of the negative effects of using the Wish spell? Or did we do some dumbassery that deserved a little push back? I humbly await your ruling, dulcet-toned judges. Jake, hey mf wassup.

Caitlin Sievert

To the most honorable Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, I have a crunchy appetizer of a case. My party and I are relatively new players, having played one campaign and several one shots DMed by my sister. We're getting ready to start our new campaign in a few weeks and I'm going to DM (for the first time!). To learn how to manage combat I ran a one shot recently. The players came across a secluded city where an evil church has a monopoly on healing magic, and irritated by the ridiculously high cost to get their wounds treated, they tried to kill the leader of the church, a level 15 warlock. During this battle my sister's level 10 wizard used a 5th level counterspell to try and counterspell an 8th level feeblemind. This is where the question comes in. The language of counterspell says when used against a spell of higher level "make an ability check using your spellcasting ability. The DC equals 10 + the spell's level." In this case my sister was rolling against a DC 18. We debated if the wizard would add their intelligence bonus or their intelligence bonus plus proficiency since it was an ability check not a saving throw. We decided to include proficiency as house rules, but we both listen to the show and were wondering how long time DM Murph, Duncle Caldwell, and long time spellcaster Axford (and I guess Baliff Jake too) handle this? (P.S. thank you Jake for gathering cases!)

Mitchell Robinson

May it please the court and Mitchell remember to put something about Jake here: Recently I was in a party that was exploring a dungeon. We had encountered a garrison with eight heavily armored guards at the entrance, who were actively looking for intruders. One of the new party members had an ability where they could find out damage resistances and weaknesses in combat, and above-game told us he wanted to shoot one of the guards to find out that information. In-game, all he said was "you guys should run" and casted suggestion on my character. In my character's backstory, he hates controlling people via magic, because it takes away freedom of choice. I passed the wisdom save (cleric for the win) and the DM told me that I was aware they tried to be influenced. So in my mind, his response would be to treat that as a hostile action and shut it down. In response, my character cast blindness/deafness on the antagonizing character, who failed the save. He grabbed their arm and ran with them as a chase sequence started, dispelling the magic after about 60 feet. My question for you is this. The party agreed that casting spells on another player without asking permission should not have happened. Was there a difference course of action I could have taken that would have made it better? Or am I at fault for escalating it with my response?

SwagDog85

A plea to the highest court in the Gygaxian land populated by some of the most insightful DM’s and players, but one… Justice Caldwell for leading this DM astray. During the boss fight that our party left off during the previous session I wanted to make the upcoming fight a little more challenging. Following the advice of Justice Caldwell saying, “to throw in events that you cannot control to have fun.” Thus I added in layer actions with a majority (85%) being DEX, CON, or WIS based as the party is mainly spell casters. At the start of the initiative the barbarian ran into the grove to engage with the minions. During the fight the player of the barbarian rolled the layer action getting the 5% chance of a STR based environmental effect. I said “in the barbarian blood rage in slaying the last minion and looking for your next, a burning tree crashes into your back.” The barbarian failed the STR saving throw and pinned for two rounds of combat making checks at the start of their turn. Finally pushing off the tree, they claimed that I had robbed them of their ability Danger Sense as wouldn’t a falling tree be a DEX saving throw. I argued to make the layer actions more balanced; I chose this specific ability score to not overwhelm the party with skills they would pass easily. The fight ended with the players winning, but now whenever there is any check the Barbarian player will ask if it is a STR check as all checks are related back to STR. I ask, was I justified by not rewinding combat 2 rounds, or am I being too much of a mule. I humbly await your ruling and sentencing.

Raltz Klamar

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the occasionally useful Bailiff, I bring to you today the case of the magical poison. The players in my group, one of whom plays a 5th College of Conjuration Bard, concocted a plan to knock out the captain of the guard of a castle they needed to sneak in to by slipping sleeping poison into his food that would render him unconscious for 6 hours. The Bard used their Performance of Creation feature to make the ingredients of the poison, and then successfully made the checks to the poison itself. They then slipped the poison into the guard's meal an hour later, and saw that he had been knocked unconscious. They made quite a bit of headway into the castle to get the information and equipment they needed, but were very surprised two hours later to find that he was awake, and looking for them. The players argued that since the captain was poisoned, he should still be unconscious for another 3 hours. I pointed out the fact they'd been getting, in their words, "NO-HANGOVER DUMMY-TRASHED" almost every night by using the same feature with a cask of ale, since the magic would remove the effects after a few hours, and that alcohol is, essentially, a poison. We ended up compromising by retconning the events so the captain wasn't awake, but the (less-organized) guards had realized by now that something was up, but also making getting "dummy-trashed" have consequences. Was I right in saying that the poison should end early but keep party time alive, or was changing to keeping the poison active the correct switch, even if it meant an end to NHDT? PS: Performance of Creation relevant text: As an action, you can channel the magic of the Song of Creation to create one nonmagical item of your choice in an unoccupied space within 10 feet of you. [...] The created item disappears after a number of hours equal to your proficiency bonus.

James Jones

May it please the Court and the wonderful bailiff Jake: I fear i already know the outcome but i ask for judgement regardless. I was DMing my first campaign and our group likes to play with lots of homebrew items and I made a terrible mistake. I gave the party a Portal Sword, a longsword that is capable to open a portal to anywhere the wielder wants. The party was in a city that is held on the backs of two giant tortoises. While in the city they attended a party where half of the party was drugged and blacked out (the other half went on a scouting mission). When the knocked out half came to the Elder of the city had been murdered and the finger was pointed at them as outsiders. At that moment the gunslinger pulled out his Portal Sword and the escaped the encounter I had been most excited about. They were to face judgement by the two tortoises that city was built on. Was I wrong in bringing OP items into my campaign? Should I have done something besides let them escape? I await your judgement.

Amos Mayhugh

May it please the Court and the handsomely awesome bailiff Jake: For my current campaign I am preparing to run I want the players to come up with lore on their home lands. And I had one player who wanted to play as a slime, and his whole country to be inhabited by slimes. I must mention that I specifically told them to stick to races in the book, although I have ran campaigns for them in the past with a different rule set (savage worlds) that makes it so they can create their own custom races. When I told him that he could play as a smile he proceeded to call me a fuck was and then stormed off. I tried to talk to him later on to see if we could find a character that he would actually like to play so he did a human druid. A few seasons down the road he stocks poly morph and then start to transform into a slime ever time he had the spell slot to do so. I've tried to talk to him about stopping multiple times and he always brushes me off. I'm at an utter lose and don't know how to end this madness

Theo Englund

May it please the court, and satisfy the bailiff: I bring to you the case of the Frozen Tiefling Girlfriend. A while back I was playing a 5e campaign with my friends. I played a Revenant Cleric named Vigil, and I met a tiefling named Lark while in a town. We had a bit of romance and ended up kissing in front of a fountain, and fell in, just cute, sappy stuff then fade to black. However, one of my friends wanted to freeze the water while we were under it as a “prank.” I didn’t want my character to get too stuck, so I asked our DM if we could do a check to stand up beforehand so at least it would just be our legs stuck. My friend accused me of metagaming and the DM ended up agreeing, and my character almost died. It ended up fine, but after that session three people quit and the DM ended up ending the campaign. My question is was it really metagaming and should I have not spoken up? I humbly await your decision.

Izzy R

May it please the court and that other guy I dm a game for a seven and a ten year old. When they asked me what they could be in dnd I said “anything you want” so they’re playing a phoenix person and a medusa gorgon. The first session we played I didn’t have character sheets for them (I am busy with school) and just looked up the monster stats as reference. The second session I had actually made character sheets for them, however the one playing a medusa gorgon was upset I wasn’t letting her petrify people willy nilly anymore. I stuck to my decision but I feel bad since she rarely uses her power anymore and when she does the npc she’s trying to petrify usually breaks out of it pretty quickly. Should I have changed the rules a bit to let her have more fun? I await your verdict

James Hanna

To the Honorable Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, [don’t forget to insert something nice about] Bailiff Hurwitz In a long-running campaign with some of my oldest friends, we recently had a dispute about Mordekainen’s Magnificent Mansion and whether our huge raven (named Bindy) could enter through the entrance that is “5 feet wide and 10 feet tall”. Obviously, it is a magical door, and the spell text states, “You and any creature you designate when you cast the spell can enter the extradimensional dwelling as long as the portal remains open;” therefore, I argued, the entrance should magically adjust to allow our huge raven inside. The DM disagreed, noting the specified entrance size wouldn’t be large enough for a huge creature. His decision was final, and poor Bindy remained stuck outside while we enjoyed the lavish finery of the mansion. Justices, I ask you: should Bindy have been allowed into the mansion? Or should magical doors have physical limitations (which is stupid)? I rest my case humbly at your feet.

Motoneuron

May it please the tall, muscular and handsome bailiff and possibly some other people. I throw myself before the mercy of the court due to guilt for killing a PC. My players were attempting to rob the lair of an ancient dragon that they had killed and knew specialized in magic items. They had been going through increasingly deadly magical traps until they got to a disintegration spell guarding his inner sanctum. I thought they would understand the severity of the situation and utilize the party rogue who would be incredibly unlikely to be harmed by this trap but instead they joked around and decided to give a lesson on picking locks to the party fighter, note that this was after they had already detected the trap with detect magic. So I read of maybe a mild injury a player was disintegrated instantly and I can’t help but feel I did not properly convey the seriousness of the situation and perhaps should had put some fine grey dust around the trap or some other clear warning sign for such a deadly trap. The player took it like a champ and wrote up touching farewell letters to the whole party during the session which we read aloud but I can’t help but feel I did my players dirty with such an instantly deadly trap without sufficient warning. If you could give me a proper penance I would be grateful to the court.

The CheeseMonger

May it please the three most illustrious justices and the effervescent bailiff, i present the case of leomund's loophole. In a pvp battle (which turned out cool dont worry about that part) our bard cast leomund's tiny hut around himself and his gnoll bodyguard for the night, but our warlock asked the dm if he could dimension door into it (to steal his blood) and the dm allowed it. After he cast dimension door and appeared in the hut, however, our dm said that since he wasn't inside WHEN it was cast the bard could decide if he was allowed through the dome or not, and the bard did not. The bard allowed the bodyguard to exit but trapped the warlock inside the dome. My question is thus; Can one dimension door into a tiny hut? and if so, would the tiny hut caster be able to trap them inside? I humbly await your judgement.

Craig

Forgive me benevolent Judge/ Apostles of Dice Christ for I am involved in something I believe to be nothing less than heresy I am playing a homebrew class my DM made and, shamefully, I have been trying to kill my character. The class is simply not very fun and has, at best, a few hyper specific situations where it can even be useful. I have tried bringing up my issues with it but he is resistant to change. I now constantly pull reckless and dangerous moves in an attempt to get my PC killed and have even resorted to the most heinous sin of fudging rolls to get a bad result. However, my PC yet lives, and I fear additional sin on behalf of my DM is to blame. As confessed I have fudged rolls in very dangerous moments and still come out clean, I believe my DM may be fudging the DC of checks to keep my PC from getting killed. There have been a few instances where I am certain I rolled lower than another PC but they failed where I did not, though the discrepancy has never been brought up by anyone else. I have begun to suspect that he doesn't want to kill his homebrew class and has thus trapped me in it. The sin of my table lies at your feet and I seek your guidance

Lucas Bryant

May it please the Crit and sensual bailiff, I am playing an Eladrin Hexblade/College of Swords bard who has left his tribe to explore the world and collect stories of glory and valor. He is an impressionable and quixotic young man. On our travels, the party entered a forest and discovered that it was inhabited by a tribe of Tabaxi who have cared for it since its first sapling. They told us that they were having issues with loggers nearby cutting down their trees. The party agreed to help and i felt that my character would have a kinship with them and their plight, given that he is also a part of a tribe and they even worship the same goddess. The loggers claimed they needed the wood to fortify the city as war with a nearby nation was looming and seemed to not even understand the problem with taking trees. Out of character these negotiations were an echo chamber nightmare. Frustrations were growing both in and out of character for me; after the rest of the party circled around to "both sides have a point" for the fifth time or so and the foreman dismissed the tribe as "just some mangy cats in trees," I attacked him, and killed him so dead so quickly that no one had any time to intervene. In and out of character I was lambasted for my hastiness, as now the party will have to deal with the fallout. I maintain that my in character motivations were sound and that my player motivations to keep the story moving weren't ignoble. Am I to value the party's interests over a very clear cut character motivation and personality flaw? I prostrate myself before the Crit and it's wisdom.

Nathanael Scott

May it please the court, I bring you the case of the Buzzkill Basilisk. In the middle of a lengthy dungeon crawl, our party encountered a basilisk who my character looked at, failed the constitution check, and turned to stone. Pretty standard stuff. We were a party with no healers, so I thought maybe I was done for, but the DM assured me "you'll be able to find someone to heal you when you're done with the dungeon". The problem was, my party didn't finish dungeon crawling that session and only finished at THE END of the next THREE HOUR session, meaning I had turned up to a game and sat there unable to play for the entire time. I was trying not be cranky and bring the mood down, but while obviously bored and checking my phone, my DM told me 'I shouldn't have looked at the Basilisk'. Was missing out on two sessions just punishment for this blunder? Or should the DM be tried for cruel and unusual punishments and therefore be tried cruelly and unusually? I await your decision.

David V

Hey justices and stinky bailiff, I bring you an update to the case of the unhinged power word killing DM. First, I want to thank Emily for her advice, it was certainly a fun idea, but I knew right away that it’d never work. Many times in the past, our party has attempted to use invisibility to bypass challenges, and every time we were thwarted by various instances of true seeing enemies, anti-magic fields, and other bullshit. One time, even my friends use of an 7th-level etherealness was not enough to bypass his NPCs omnipotent vision. So, needless to say the greater invisibility plan wouldn’t have been effective. It’s okay though, because the matter resolved itself on its own. Following the infamous double PWK session, my partner, who is also a PC in the campaign, yelled at our DM for about 15 minutes straight. Apparently their words held more weight than mine, and at the start of the next session, a god visited my character and bestowed upon her a boon that made her immune to power word kill. Which, I guess I was happy with. I still feel like he could’ve just eased off the usage of the spell, but hey whatever works. Anyways, that’s all. Thanks for seeing my case, it was very cathartic to hear you laugh at my pain and suffering. Have a great day!

Rach

Kia Ora - I need your justices wisdom as to whether I was in the right… my husband DMs a game for me and some friends, last week we came up against a pretty intense monster and during the fight everyone was getting into the horror of the scene, my character was eaten and it wasn’t looking good. But, I kept getting distracted because when describing what was happening my husband kept using my name and not my characters, I called him on it, he apologized and went right back to narrating but then did it again - every time he did I reminded him of my characters name and eventually the bard even joined in, but it got to a point where I felt like I was being awkward and probably ruining the experience for my fellow players. Was I right to remind him? Or should I have left him be?

Colton Rader

To the Honorable Justices and I guess the baliff I started a waterdeep campaign with my coworkers. Sometime in the campaign they wanted to know where a brothel was so me not wanting to disappoint but move on told them where they could find one, and gave a grotesque description of the ladies obviously implying I wanted to move on from this. They however decided to lean into this so as penalty they stole their gold as the snuck out of their rooms after their services in hopes they would stop. They did not. So next time I took it to the next level and voice role-played and had them describe what they would do and I would describe what the npc would do in hope this would stop them for sure. THEY LOVED IT! I ask was I wrong to add this into our campaign and if so how do I rectify this abomination that I've created. I await your punishment or enlightenment.

Nicolas R

This was nearly a decade ago in my first ever dnd group in high school but I am still deeply hung up on it. I was playing a gruff deep gnome urban ranger styled as a noir detective who grew up with humans and didn't have any friends. A few sessions in, the party was underground and the dm decided to give my gnome an animal companion in the form of a young myconid (a little mushroom man) that we freed from an abandoned cage. I decided to take the little guy on as I thought it would be a really fun character dynamic, but the moment I did, one of the other players pointed out that I was basically taking him as a slave. My character asked the myconid if he wanted to come with us and the dm said "yes he does", but this did not convince my teenage friends otherwise. So for the rest of the campaign, whenever I tried to have my mushroom buddy do *anything*, my group of white friends would start making fun of me, calling me a slave-owner. This went on for several weeks until the dm decided to put an end to it... by murdering the myconid and leaving it in a hole for my character to find in the morning. Next week my gnome got a new companion, but I'll never forget my little mushroom buddy.

David Silva

May it please the esteemed court and the honorable bailiff, I was playing in a campaign with some friends online and I was playing a firbolg druid named Till. For the sake of brevity, I will not give too much context: we had planned to wipe out a village at the behest of a large sentient rabbit. As we were planning, we were attacked by an adult silver dragon. As a party of 4 9th level characters, we were a little concerned. It offered no parley and we fought back. My big move was to use my one of my 4th level spell slot to cast Conjure Woodland Beings to summon pixies and try to polymorph some of us into stuff that could take some hits. Dinosaurs were out, but I'd asked the DM about the Oliphant, from Kobold Press and he cleared it. I cast the spell and burned a legendary resistance with 6 of them. The other two I tried to buff myself and one pixie. Then...the DM said the pixies have never seen an oliphant...or a mammoth...or an elephant...or a giant croc. That left me with Giant Scorpion at a whopping CR 3. I did it, got hit once and lost the polymorph and all my pixies. It felt like a wasted spell. We ended up winning the fight, but at the cost of a pc's life (the battle went on beyond revivify's limits) and it happened to be Till's best friend. I'm retiring Till next session being that his friend is gone and he wants to return home. Was my DM too strict with his limitations or was I being too brazen with my plan without being sure it would work? I prostrate myself before you and accept your judgement.

Megan Adams

May it please the court, Had to kick a player out of the group for being a creep and asshole outside of the game - we were all teachers in the same building, and he would discuss details of our personal lives + make sexual comments about some of the women in the group in front of students. As the DM, I gave him a warning and then a kick when it didn't improve. His character was arrested in-game around that time anyways for letting his murderhobo tendencies slip, so... no worries on that front. (And all of the teachers quit working at that school except him, so no worries there either.) However... he was undoubtedly the best roleplayer in the group, with a flair for bringing other people into conversations and interactions, and the rest of the group is s t r u g g l i n g to fill the gap. Any suggestions to get my players over this hump?

Where Bear

This isn’t really a case so much as me rambling to the stenographer during court recess that the honorable justices or bailiff might happen to overhear while waiting for their coffee; but I think it’s a crime that twice in a row my DnD game has been canceled with only a few hours notice, when I’ve been dying to inflict a dumb little goof on my party. My fey eladrin ranger, Ranger Ranger D. Ranger, just leveled up and got the spell Summon Fey, and since she’s an eladrin I thought it’d be funny to summon a halfling-sized version of herself (3/5 of the party are halflings or gnomes), and the day before the first canceled session I finally came up with the name….Junior Ranger Ranger Junior. As thanks for reading this far and because I don’t know how to end this non-story, please accept this haiku our halfling wizard wrote: Ranger D. Ranger The interplanar ranger D. stands for Danger

Sonja Maitland

I humbly approach the bench and bow to honorable Balif and wise Judges. I bring you the case of the too kind DM. Recently I DMd for experienced players for the first time (usually I DM for newbies). During the session they team defeated an evil wizard; then the cave collapsed and they had to Indiana Jones style, get out as fast as they could while dodging obsticles, falling rock etc. We did this in ininitiative. I had an NPC running at the back of the crew providing help action on their turn. Afterwards one of the players said they had fun BUT... 1) complained I took away the stakes by offering advantage too often. I did it once per round, to one person who the NPC could reach. 2) I treated Nat 20 too generously. (N20 investigation check on wizard body = found wand of greater invisibility. Then N20 arcana check to identify wand = wand had 6 charges, but I let them snap it in half perfectly so they now have 2 wands with 3 charges (same thing I guess, but they seemed happy). I told him thanks for the advise.. But I wouldn't have changed anything. Am I guilty of being too kind to my players? Or is one of my players a sucker for punishment?

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 did make a change but I'm still feeling weird about it. Did the DM take it too far? I await your judgement

Macauly Leiher

Not a court case sorry, but y’all should definitely watch the new chip and dale: Rescue Rangers movie for a mixed bag. Maybe even bring Lou Wilson back because of the amazing Chip and dale intros back In the first hexbuds arc and he also got to meet the titular Chip and Dale so that would be some fun insight

Sciz

If it may please the court, of the most honorable crit justices and the most handsomest bailiff, i present to you the case of the Detectable stealth magic. Me and my party were trying to hunt down a runaway noble who in turn had hired another adventuring party to hunt down us however we did not know that yet. During a raid of one of this nobles safe cabins, my as my sorcerer had cast Detect Magic to search around and still had it up as we were leaving to find the next clue. as we leave hiding behind the bushes we are ambushed by the other party, and our party is surprised. The enemies then brags during their turn that how easy it was that just casting Pass without Trace was all that was needed to get the jump on us. Here is where the problem lies, i then ask the DM, noticing the enemy that was hiding was within range of my detect magic, was I able to see the aura of the spell due to it being a 20ft sphere around the caster and they were only crouching behind bushes. We go back and forth for a bit, amicably, and the DM ends in the ruling that the person who had cast the spell was surprised as well seeing that i knew they were there, which made no sense to me, but we spent around 5 minutes arguing at this point and its only a surprise round which we end up winning, although barely. Was I in my right to defend that we should of known they're ambushing us? Does the detect magic see the whole aura of the spell or just who's casting it? I require your infinite wisdom to calm this conflict within myself.

Mike Cosgrave

May it please the Crit, honourable justices, and lowly-though-occasionally-elevated bailiff, I present the minor case of the three dumdums and the Djinnis, and also a huge shout-out for a DM going above and beyond. I've been playing with a group of my best friends for a couple of years (started just before quarantine, took a break during, restarted this past summer) and we've really gotten into it. We've been taking turns DMing (I was the inaugural), and another of us, J, came up with a solution for weeks when we’re not all available: he DMs whoever can play through a big fighting pit with 10 rounds of combat, dynamic arenas, loan sharks, gambling, a minotaur king in an illusory labyrinth – the works. Sounds dope, right? It is! But one of the levels led to a bit of… let's call it animated discussion. On our first run our party made it to one of the later stages, which featured a fight against 3 Djinnis. The Djinnis’ arena had a magical mist that charmed the PCs on a failed charisma save, and the Djinnis themselves have a whirlwind attack that flings the target into the air and restrains them on a failed strength save. Thanks to some truly Murph-worthy saving throw rolls (and in my case just being a wizard, and thus neither charismatic nor strong), we were getting tossed around like beach balls at spring break, dropped from 20 ft up, and charmed by multiple Djinnis at a time. In desperation, I realized that I should be able to Misty Step out of the whirlwind, since the restrained condition only affects movement. The DM argued that based on the wording of the Djinni’s ability, a player could only use their action to attempt a new save. I responded that Misty Step is a bonus action, and only requires verbal components to cast. His response was that the entire action economy is being taken up making the save. I relented, got dropped on my head again, and eventually we got enough rounds of one of us uncharmed and unbeachballed to kill the Djinnis and win some awesome rewards. No shouting, no drama, but I still feel like the Misty Step should’ve worked and it’s been brought up since. So J and I ask: should I have been able to Misty Step out of the whirlwind to lay waste to these stupid djinnis? I lay the weight of my purely moral victory upon your wisdom.

Kahlan

May it please the Crit Court, My first campaign was a homebrew campaign based on Percy Jackson and run by my brother. Being a new player, I didn't really understand long-term consequences and asked to be a daughter of Poseidon half-blood who would start specializing in blood-bending (from Avatar the last airbender). He started to have me roll charisma saves to see if I would attack my teammates and keep in mind my charisma was a -3 because of my terrible stat rolls at the start. Eventually my character went through a "metaphorical death" where her stats, abilities and everything changed and I started a new version who was significantly less powerful. I log into a session, my brother announces it's the last session of the three year campaign with no warning, and he had it so Hermes forced the evil back into my character where she proceeded to kill a majority of the party and the entire camp. This was done without a saving throw. To this day, I am a little sad about my character's ending after I tried to hard to get her back to being a good aligned character. Should I have been given a saving throw chance or was the DM okay in his ruling as it was because it was the last session and my character had done some questionable things in this long campaign. I humbly await any verdict, Kahlan Tries

Jason Rodriguez

May it please the Court and the trees and the critters and the dweebs. I've been DMing a homebrew campain thats been slowly progressing for 4 months now. I started the group with players I met in a Facebook group. The problem I face is that whenever the party come upon a new problem, their solution is to report it to the authorities. Whether its a dragon brooding over a players myconid hometown, or stumbling across a drug cartel kingpin. The rogue of the party appears to take charge and lead the rest of the table to this agenda. Is it appropriate for me to let them push pass all these possible encounters, or find a way for them to not rely on law enforcement.

Horny advocate for Welly's carnal audiobook

Surely corrupt law-enforcement is the answer... in fact law enforcement directly IN the pocket of the big bad they're reporting. Now when they face the problem, they have to take it on ALONG-side their bribed muscle... it might prompt them to think twice about doing it again... or they might really enjoy flushing out crooked coppers and cleaning up a town despite the extra hardship. Either way you still get to make them face the bad guy in the story, and they enjoy themselves. Just what I would do... sorry I have no authority here. Not even an intern.

Alyssa S

To the honorable crit justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and also to that baliff dude, I present the case of the Merciful Fireballs. My cousins and I have been playing a campaign for a little over two years now and current are trying to figure out who/what is turning healthy humanoids into zombies. We went to a town to investigate and were surprised by two dozen zombies hiding in a church. After we killed all the zombies we realized that the zombies lost their undead features upon their death and looked like their regular humanoid selves, only brutally murdered. When we left I threw two fireballs at the church to burn it down so that the local towns people wouldn't have to see their families and friends brutally killed bodies and to hopefully stop some spread of the infection. While my party understood why I did so (it was not discussed I just did it) the DM was not happy and stuck the local authorities on us. So instead of trying to figure out who was turning people into zombies we had to flee from the authorities and spend two sessions getting them off of our trail, and when we spoke to them about burning it down to stop the zombifying infection (common world info) we rolled semi-bad charisma, and they said they didn't believe us and now the whole has to be cautious wherever we go in case we are recognized. I ask of the court, was it so crazy to burn the church down or are the DM and their crusade of the local authorities (who have done shit for the past two years) justified?

Long Otter

Agree with the other commenter. Or even just have them be crap, if you want an easier out! That's what I'd do - "Oh yeah, we are aware of the murder spree, we will get to it. We're just dealing with the mouse infestation first. And the guard rota is a bit tricky atm, there's a lot of annual leave booked..."

Summer Tribe

roll them dice baby <3 it'll happen at most once a combat anyway and it's the only useful feature assassins get for 14 levels

Anna McCune

May it please Justice Axford and no one else, Many years ago my older brother dm-ed my first game. He very kindly taught me and some friends to play and it was slow at first but overall very fun. After a few sessions the players really started to figure out we could do and say whatever we want, so things got chaotic. We ruined one of his encounters with our shenanigans and he wasn't mad. But since the battle that supposed to last a whole session took 10 minutes he decided to go off the rails and be as chaotic as we were. He made it rain ducks and we robbed Dwayne Johnson. It was fun but completely ruined the campaign and we stopped playing after that. So was it our fault for causing chaos or his fault for getting sucked into the insanity? I humbly wait your verdict.

Summer Tribe

sounds like this issue goes deeper than this

Summer Tribe

you didn't put any effort into sorting out why they were asleep or how to work around that? are you just not her friend?

Summer Tribe

it literally says "once per turn", you have your answer. Everybody who reads the rules knows you can sneak attack on your turn and as an opportunity attack on someone else's turn. You only get 1 reaction per round anyway and it requires the rogue to be in melee which isn't ideal, so it probably won't be happening often. https://www.sageadvice.eu/sneak-once-per-turn/ not that I love JC's rulings but come on everybody already knows the answer to this one

Summer Tribe

please gods let this be answered on the show

Summer Tribe

you aint being a team player

Summer Tribe

end the player insurgency, ignore their petty complaints, you are designing a game for them. a deception check is MEANT to mislead players so yeah you rightfully did mislead them, so what?

Summer Tribe

The DM's problem isn't in not allowing the damage, the player can suck it up there it's only one attack roll who cares, but if you're fighting things immune to non-magical attacks why hasn't the DM provided you with magical weapons? Do they just hate martials?

Summer Tribe

Your DM allowed holy water then got mad when you used it? It's only good against one enemy type and it's only good really early in the game, your DM is being a knob and what you're describing is not insane at all. 4d6 damage + your dex mod is an average of I'm guessing 17 damage at level 3? Is your DM familiar with DPR calculations and what the averages are by level? You're already putting yourself in melee range against undead, it's not the most optimal thing imaginable

Summer Tribe

it might behoove you to clarify if you're talking about a real convocation or an in game one given that you keep referring to your coplayer by their class

Summer Tribe

Your ranger is trying to break the game with a lvl 1 spell. DM was fully in the right, the ranger is the one putting the creature in harm's way in the first place

Summer Tribe

Why would the mephit cast the spell on an invalid target? your fighter is mad that they didn't get one over on you, tell them to suck it up, even if it has been 3 years

Summer Tribe

this abuse case has been present for a lot of things. The "bag of rats" exploit is actually a common one for several reasons, wherein any vague on kill mechanic can be met simply by having a bag of untamed rats nearby since they pose no challenge whatsoever, and the way around it is to just be more specific. In the same way that the devs frequently restrict players to doing things with small or medium creatures perhaps the blood required should also have come from a small or medium creature, or from a creature with more than .5 CR you may notice that Matt Mercer's HB classes Bloodhunter and Gunslinger both have clauses on abilities like this (BLM had to ask Murph about this during their stint in Shadowfell) wherein it's DM discretion what constitutes a significant threat (or even a mild threat)

Summer Tribe

I'm losing my mind seeing all these people complaining about having their characters die. WTF do they think hit points and death saves are for?

Summer Tribe

You are in fact guilty of bad research. BBEG's shouldn't have player stats, if they're spellcasters they shouldn't even be within range of a regular grapple, and presumably they should have a mook or two handy. It happens, lesson learned

Summer Tribe

Weighted advantage is an optional rule that a lot of tables use. Not stacked advantage just allowing regular adv/disadv if you have more sources of one than the other. That said it's not a variant rule that's suggested in the books, it's sorta just a thing that "feels sensible"

Summer Tribe

HP is not a mechanical representation of health and true bodily harm is supposed to be fixed with spells like regeneration, that's why they're there. 5e doesn't have a well thought out injury system but the intent for HP has been stated again and again since the initial release of the game that it doesn't represent the actual damages and wounds done to your body/mind so much as it's an abstraction of how much punishment you can take before you conk out. I don't know what spells the temple cast on you but Cure Light Wounds (lvl 1 spell) isn't supposed to also stand in for Regeneration (lvl 7 spell) from the man Gygax himself "It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being slain! Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses- and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" whith warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection. Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique) and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness)."

Adam Wurstmann

Dear honorable justices and doubly honorable baliff, my DM gave our whole gaming table Covid. Can I beat his ass in real life, or is there some in game way for me to beat his ass?

Summer Tribe

You could scale combat encounters back a little to accommodate for the fact that your party has sort of half a character but it is a curious situation. Trying to balance different player needs and desires is difficult, especially because people largely don't know what they need but think they do

Summer Tribe

this case has been encountered before and you're both wrong/right depending on the situation but you gotta clear this shit at session 0. RAW nat 20's only apply to attack rolls for the sake of critting

Summer Tribe

You were willing to bend the rules and the guy still complained? end his life

Summer Tribe

RAW strong wind only imposes disadvantage on ranged attacks, which fireball isn't. DM should've covered this rules change in sesh 0. DMs breaking the rules is fine, breaking the rules on the fly and still taking the spell slot from the player is not. Even just saying "it'll be whisked away by the wind don't do it" would be okay but just docking the player their turn while imposing a completely new undiscussed rule is just fucking rude

Summer Tribe

This is funny but I must ask why

Caolin Ua Tuiscint

Dear Merciful and humble justices of the Supreme Crit and Most honourable Bailiff Jake. I am a 24M from Dublin and just so you all live. I have started DMing on roll20 and discord after advertising my game on r/LFG_Europe (a subreddit for finding people to play RPGs with). I met some really cool people, a lot couldn't end up playing but the people I have now are great. The problem seems to be that when I DM the party don't try to talk that much and its really difficult to play sometimes. Sometimes they are great and really talkative and others they're just dead silent after I introduce a character or scene. I have described how they should participate coming up with backstory and little details, but sometimes they just say nothing. I am going to try a few things myself that I might have missed and try and get them to be more comfortable improvising and talking but how do you all think I should try mitigate or help in this situation or am I doing something wrong?

Summer Tribe

your players have to prove that they are "food and drink" by eating each other

Tanner Stevens

To The Honorable justices and the ever so comedic bailiff Jake. I was in my first DND campaign and was playing a bugbear Rogue. I was definitely a first to attack ask questions later type of character oh, but the one instance that I feel that what I did was 100% correct is when we were stopped by a checkpoint in a stolen wagon and after failing forging checks I impaled both of my short swords into the clerk. The ranger of our group got up and left the table never to return. Was I too much of a murder hobo, or was I Justified?

Tanner Stevens

No, but you guys should run into a bunch of healing potions

Barbara Williams

Honorable justices and bailiff of the court, I present to you the tale of the Wild Magic Mushrooms. My players attended “halfling music festival” where there were various games, art, (and drugs) available or a course of a week in game. One of my players was curious about some “magic mushrooms” and bought some from a shady halfling. He did an arcana check (he does not have the spell identify) and rolled pretty high. This was enough for me to tell him they were magical but not the effects. He did not ask the bard for help with the specifics and hid them from the other players. Later after the music festival he gave them a try, and discovered that they have a “wild magic” effect when consumed. Now here was my catch: like other drugs, they could be more potent or weak, so I as the DM roll to see if the wild magic effect was instantaneous or 30 mins delayed. I happened to roll the delayed choice, so he thought this was always the case. Many sessions later, the party was racing through a dungeon to collect a magic item before an enemy could. After defeating the main boss for the dungeon, the player with the wild magic mushrooms wanted to “celebrate” and also prepare if the rival group caught up, by consuming the wild magic mushroom. I rolled the instantaneous effect of the mushroom, and then I had him roll on the wild magic table. He ended up rolling a 1 on a d100, which means for one minute he would have to roll again and again on the wild magic table. He ended up turning into a potted plant, started floating, and blinded half the party as the rival group caught up. This was a big problem for everyone as he was their only means of escape (teleport). After the session, he argued that he rolled high enough on a arcana check to know the effects. I argued that specifics like that can only be discovered through identify. So should I have given him all the info after a high arcana check (it was not a natural 20), or was correct with the identify spell? I await your verdict and accept the outcome what it may be.

Summer Tribe

players need a reminder that not everything they want goes. the artificer can buy a pet bird and leave it at home while they go to work just like every other person in the universe does. Grabbing a crow out of the air and expecting the DM to let it sit around like it's your friend is cute and all but I don't know why it's everybody's expectation that this is a) how one acquires a pet b) how one makes friends c) going to work at all or d) a reasonable goal The artificer has at least 5 in class means of acquiring a loyal pet at level 2 (find familiar tattoo, awakened shrub from infusion, homonculus infusion, steel defender, buying a mule or a dog or whatever), why did this maniac just kidnap a poor crow?

Summer Tribe

Why you turn to Murphy for this kind of question? His players seem largely quite civil and he's happy to go along with them showing their assholes to their dads or whatever. You gotta ask people who play with a lot of strangers constantly to get an idea of how to work with bad players/bad DMs

Summer Tribe

Mitch is fully in the right, sorry my guy. RAW smoke bombs don't produce darkness. Smoke is just a thing that's in your way. A tree also obscures your vision but you're not going to get away with trying to pretend that because you can't see the other side of it it counts as darkness

Summer Tribe

for real why are people so sad about death in a game where you roll with equal chance on a 1 in 20 die? DnD lends itself to "unexpected" outcomes but you should probably expect death as an outcome in a game with death saves and an HP counter. Let them die, let them say goodbye and learn to move on, they can roll another character

Jordan Clement

You don't have to comment on other people stuff for these cases. We want the Justices opinions. Thanks.

BuzzingAround

@Summer Tribe I had to remove a lot of details to make the post shorter, but that was basically what our debate was revolving around. The main argument point was that we would be harming our eardrums, which while a delicate injury, does repair itself quite easily with hearing restored to some degree afterwards. Chopping off an arm or something of course couldn't be healed by a healing potion, but we thought an eardrum should be doable We also were at a temple of Sehanine, and so even though we didn't end up needing it, the assumption was that the temple would have something like Restoration etc to use on us

Summer Tribe

Ask yourself again if this is even "overpowered". It's just halfling luck for the whole team, big deal. Why does it even need a fix? it doesn't prevent them from dying, doesn't give them a significant bonus to hit, or to save, doesn't add any numbers to their die rolls, only marginally increases their DPR if they're making attacks. Sit down and do the math, you'll find it's probably not that impactful. Or just look it up, plenty of people have done it before

Summer Tribe

Deck of many things is a gamble and your player took it, not once but three times

Summer Tribe

at least you're honest about being unnecessarily adversarial. curses are fun but telling your players that they have a good thing and then using that to kill them is another

Alexander Robinson-Gabel

I have a GM I love playing with. But everytime we die or a new player starts. He has them all start at a lower level than everyone else. Then he stops everyone else from leveling up until the party levels are equal. Am I in the wrong to think this is INSANE. Why not just have new players/characters start at the same level as the party???

Rob The Hegemon

Most Righteous Justices of the Supreme Crit and Holy Co-Popes of the Church; and very important Bailiff. I present the case of the absolutely hammered wife. I am very fortunate to have convinced my wife and my closest friends to play Dungeons and Dragons for the first time. This was also my first ever real DND experience and I was DMing (yikes). I was very nervous wanting it to go well as to not squander this opportunity. I spent hundreds of dollars on minis, paint, brushes, music, terrain pieces, and books. I also spent weeks preparing for a single session with what I felt was just the right balance for a table of newbies. My wife asked me to make her character for her, even though she pretty much knows how to play from watching D20 and Naddpod with me. Since I will be dead in the grave before I deny my wife a single thing she ever asks or set a single boundary, I obliged despite my misgivings. After building my world, NPCs, tactical terrain, and rehearsing my voices, the day had finally come to play. After hanging out for a while we all had some drinks, and I noticed that my wife was at the bottom of her second bottle of wine and was a bit worried that she might not have her faculties about her to help the other players. My fears were realized once she started sexting me during our friend's character introduction. I thought it prudent not to get horny while DMing since I stand most of the time, so I started ignoring the texts. Throughout the 3 hour session, she went in and out of consciousness twice, forgot her character's name and backstory, asked me to take her character's turns in combat, demanding changes in background music, and overall not paying any attention to what was going on. Although I was frustrated, everyone thankfully still had fun and planned to play again at the end of the night. During pillow talk, I sternly told her how much I loved her and that it would be ideal if she was a little more present during the game. Justices, am I right for being so hard on my spouse, or should I just be happy that I have a DND campaign with all of my favorite people? I await your most harsh punishment for me or your most firm warning for my wife.

Summer Tribe

this is the most important proposal for a case I've ever seen

Summer Tribe

sounds like your DM isn't familiar with late level DnD frankly

Summer Tribe

you were robbed. yeah prone is a bad name for the condition but RAW and as far as I'm aware RAI you ought to be capable of "tripping" a flying target that is large or smaller. Aboleth's can knock you prone under water, and reducing a flying combatant's speed to 0 is a classic move, you've got precedent and rules on your side, your DM has a nitpick with the admittedly poor wording but it's no reason to take your combat feature away, fighters are already so limited, not allowing them to use what little they have is just boring, your DM is going to accidentally teach your team to play casters only in the future if they disallow your maneuvers

Summer Tribe

a horse can still take an action and move in the same round that your character takes an action to get on the horse, similarly your friend should be able to use their move to get into your hand, ready an attack action, and wait for your turn for you to throw them. You're still using two actions to use a single attack action, not a big deal alternatively the grappling rules suggest that you would actually have to use your action just to pick your ally up, even if you can pick up a similarly sized and shaped object without using your action

Summer Tribe

DM could've handled it better given that you apparently came to the table with different expectations for sure but it sounds like you didn't really pick up on what was going on with the rest of the party. it sorta sounds like a session a bunch of high schoolers would run

Summer Tribe

the kid has to wise up, he tried to make the game about himself, ignored the warnings, and then got pissy. sucks but he's gotta learn to play along. It's real tough trying to play with a teenager, they got some pretty shit emotional maturity but they wanna be treated like the adults and then they don't act like an adult

Summer Tribe

justin dorland is correct but you gotta accept that any player in a big fight can just get knocked out of it, it's how the game is built. What do you expect the DM to do? Let you autosucceed on DCs? insisting that "DnD is supposed to be fun" doesn't provide a better understanding of the problem or what you think would be a fix and just saying "the DM should've retconned it" also displays a lack of desire to actually play along with the game

Summer Tribe

not play them? learn to appreciate any other facet of the game?

Summer Tribe

You're in the right. You even posed a means by which Mass Suggestion could still be helpful, your wizard having a snit and choosing to kill a guy just needs a time out

Summer Tribe

sounds like you handled the aftermath admirably. I'll never understand why people enter combat with a creature they want to not die

Summer Tribe

yeah I've also read a lot of them and I certainly don't envy the bailiff either. A lot of people are asking questions that aren't very interesting (such as having an incredibly easy answer), or might just require some good ol therapy, or have already been answered. I'm grateful to them for sticking thru it tho

Summer Tribe

DM is making up rules just to fuck you. Ask them why they're being openly adversarial

Summer Tribe

Didn't the priest also use their turn casting dispel? That's not a waste of your turn, you prevented the priest from using their action for something deadly right? Might not be the outcome you were looking for but it's still decent

Summer Tribe

the plus side about them having boundary issues in DnD is that DnD isn't real. They seem like a crew you shouldn't play with, I hope they're not too close to you

Summer Tribe

" But on the other hand, I build my characters with skills and class features in mind, not working the way they are written or having to bring them up everytime I worry makes me come off as a backseat DM." yeah this is a big problem. it's understandable if the DM is new and of course it's not fun constantly correcting them but if your character's abilities are constantly being undermined by your DM's lack of familiarity that isn't fun either, and maybe you should keep making your cases during a session and offer to help them get familiar out of session

Summer Tribe

this is what a session 0 is for. also if wizards can ONLY learn spells by copying them then how were any wizard spells ever developed in the first place? this sounds frustrating mechanically but also like something of a flavour fail.

Summer Tribe

You absolutely should've stuck to your guns. WTF is wrong with your players?

Summer Tribe

it's not very nice of your DM to rush you but if you planned to play a high level caster you ought to have prepared more, it's kind of rude to hold a full table up because you willfully played a complicated character without putting in your part to do so. You've even played a druid before, why would you not have looked ahead at the spell list at some point?

Summer Tribe

but how does being 60 feet up help against the witch or against strahd's castle or against the temple or against the wolves den or against the death house? you can't be 60 feet up and be in any of those scenarios (except baba yaga who I'm pretty sure can just fly anyway)

Summer Tribe

why are players constantly so whiny? they died and they want to have no consequence whatsoever?

Pagos, Self-Proclaimed Fae King, Now with Real Musical Improv Action

I am once again asking for the supreme crit and bailiff for preemptive judgement. I want to run a one shot with a particular gimmick. Create your characters but then, last minute or just as the game starts, i have the players swap their lowest and highest stat. The issue is every time I mention this idea to someone, I get told about how bad of an idea it is and it’ll ruin the fun of the game for everyone involved. Am I in the wrong here for my desire to see low str/ high int barbarians, or smart and wise bards with 0 charisma? Am I the villain of the table. Or am i just trying to feel good. Keep in mind, there is only me to punish or not punish.

Summer Tribe

that's not even a good riddle for A Song. Let the Fart reign supreme

Jules

Honorable Justices and lowly Bailiff, I bring before you the case of the spiteful DM. I play a Goliath Barbarian in the ghosts of Saltmarsh. We had gotten to 7th level gaining money and magic items when I decided to purchase a cloak of displacement in order to reduce the number of hits on myself and allow reckless attack to be more useful. I am typically the main front line which has put me unconscious plenty of times. Ever since this purchase my DM has been having a tough time hitting my character. This has made him begin targeting my character even more and turn to making attempts to kill my character, steal the cloak, or destroy said cloak which I had spent all my saved up gold in order to get this. The most recent encounter was my 10th lvl barbarian fighting a 17th level Wizard and winning due to resistances and the cloak causing multiple misses. Is my DM justified for trying to take away such a powerful magic item or is there another way he could counter it?

Summer Tribe

oh shut up you baby, people are posting in a social media thread. skip my posts if you don't want to read them, I'm not asking for your approval. The justices aren't going to read all these cases so hey isn't it better if someone comments on them? you don't have to engage in a conversation you don't want to be a part of but don't tell me not to start them. Furthermore, when the justices do read these cases, they release an episode, which also will have other people commenting on them. I dunno how that could pass you by but I suggest you give it a think. I notice you also posted in this thread with a case so you think your thought is important enough that the justices should read it out loud for thousands of subscribers but my thoughts aren't even worth you reading? psht, I was even on your side for your case. I hope you're at least capable of appreciating the irony of you commenting on my post and not even on a post that I had commented on elsewhere (such as I dunno, your own). Also cool of you to speak for literally everyone else here, I was unaware you were the voice of all NADDPOLES

Annam Gunney

Venerated Justices and Special-In-His-Own-Way Bailiff Jake, I present to you: The Case of the Invisible Spider and the Very Lucky Shark Man. My party was infiltrating an underground lizardfolk city that had been taken over by sahuagin, henceforth referred to as "shark people" because the name is a bitch to pronounce. My warlock sent his imp familiar, Noodle, ahead to scout, as he could turn into a spider, turn invisible, and then crawl along the 10-foot high tunnel ceiling. My DM asked me to roll a stealth check with advantage because Noodle was invisible. I expected a very low DC, so I was only lightly concerned when I only got a 10. I was still surprised, however, when the DM informed me that a shark-man guard patrolling beneath Noodle decided to reach up with his spear and randomly attack the exact spot on the ceiling where the invisible Noodle was hiding. I protested that it would be nearly impossible to see OR hear a regular spider 10 feet above you in a dimly lit cave, and even then, there was no reason to try to STAB a random spider in a cave. The DM, however, overruled my protest and proceeded with the attack. The attack missed, I used my action to banish Noodle safely to his pocket dimension, and we ended up brute-forcing our way in with a 3-session combat slog, but I still wonder: was Noodle wrongly denied his epic scouting mission, or am I just sore because Noodle's Cool Stealth Combo didn't work? I humbly await your judgement.

Summer Tribe

why would he not be able to fight ranged? he can get thru med school but not remember to pack a bow? Also please dear god share the presentation you were given

Summer Tribe

Just put the curse you had planned for that on all the weapons those cheaters already have lol

Summer Tribe

regardless of if you get an answer here, drop a follow up to this down the line

Aaaaaarushi An Anachronistic Enigma

monks are just Like That, aren't they? I'll ask her for the powerpoint, it was genuinely amazing. Whoever invented powerpoint nights was a genius, i strongly recommend all long running campaigns to do one in character. my players are insane but they are so so funny

Summer Tribe

Xanathar's Guide to Everything gives new (or at least more explicit) uses for the crafting tools that were listed in the Player's Handbook. For crafting arrows, you need Woodcarver's Tools: Craft Arrows. As part of a short rest, you can craft up to five arrows. As part of a long rest, you can craft up to twenty. You must have enough wood on hand to produce them. you're running a survival campaign and you have the rules to support what tracking arrows should look like. players don't have privacy, that's nuts

Summer Tribe

that's a rad backstory, would it have been in the fashion of the Harikikigaki or did you intend for your character to be scientifically correct? I suppose if you talked to your DM it could've been one and the same

Summer Tribe

Get a friend with jeweler's tools proficiency to cut the diamonds down to 300 gp size boom, why does everyone always forget tools proficiencies exist. Better yet have that friend break that diamond down into many tiny diamond sizes and then have that same friend appraise the tiny diamonds as being worth 300 gp and just swap those tiny diamonds for your friend's 300 gp, then gift that gp back. It's "worth" what they'll pay for it -> near enough to infinite 300 gp diamond hack ;)

Summer Tribe

Maybe it's the way you're describing it but this battle doesn't sound like it should've been that hard. Were your players unfamiliar with readying an action? Even with disadvantage I can't imagine how two 13 lvl paladins with fire support from a sorcerer readying actions would need more than 3 rounds to take down an enemy with 100 HP. This sounds like a fun encounter and you let them player creatively with the create water-> rain thing, it seems really odd for your players to get this far into this game just to quit

Summer Tribe

What debate is there to have? The spell says "using your spellcasting ability" that's all you add

Summer Tribe

If the poison disappears after 3 hours as per the text of the relevant feature, shouldn't that mean it's purged from the captain's system 3 hours after ingesting anyway?

Summer Tribe

oh dice christ I hope if you don't get this answered this time round you do the next

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.

Summer Tribe

conjuration spells are messy and require a pre game chat if you intend to use them, lesson learned I suppose. Flooding the board with tokens, adding however many extra things to keep track of in a combat, gaining potentially OP allies, or having your DM give you shit ones, too much can be frustrating if you don't agree on things beforehand

Summer Tribe

This doesn't track at all, cloak of displacement is a fine item but it is not that busted. A level 17 wizard couldn't overcome it? This is mystifying to me, your DM either didn't read the item description or doesn't know what they're doing tactically. Almost any damaging AoE spell can turn off your cloak until your next turn regardless of if you make your save or not (I'm guessing you don't have a source of evasion). Alternatively a level 17 wizard could just cast a debuff or a control spell. I don't know what enemies Ghosts of Saltmarsh normally has but I'm sure they don't all only have single target attacks without any sources of advantage ever, official module designers aren't THAT unaware of what players can do. It really sounds like it's just your DM who is unaware of what his own creatures are capable of. If you're constantly passing checks because of resistances or something then the source of those resistances might be an issue, but based on the "difficulties" you're describing I think it's more likely your DM is inexperienced. Even if he really really really believes it's broken why wouldn't he just refund you a portion of the gold and give it a minute/long rest use or something? There are so many ways around this that don't involve going out of his way to destroy or steal the cloak.

Summer Tribe

Your DM is whack and your reasoning is utterly correct. Back in 3.5 being as small as a spider would give you wildly high advantage on stealth checks (+16 or something, it wasn't a great system) but frankly the more salient point that you bring up is that there's no reason for anyone to be on alert for a spider in the first place. Knowing when to use the dice to determine things is an important skill it sounds like your DM doesn't have. That or they just really really really didn't want you to succeed for some reason and weren't creative enough to come up with a decent response

Tristan Belzer

Almost had a Pokémon campaign there!

Maya B

Omg I think they already recorded but PLEASE save this and resubmit next time it's a great one

Raltz Klamar

That's what I was saying, but someone brought up that if you made a healing potion and drank it, it wouldn't feel right to "unheal" 3 hours later

Taylor B (The vengeful, one-winged angel)

You may be missing my point. The fact that the DM obviously used out of game knowledge and had me tell them what level spell Conjure Elemental was and then used the appropriate level Dispel Magic to not even have to roll. If they had guessed what level it was, or cast it at a 3rd level and rolled for it I would be okay with it. But they metagammed to make sure they didn’t waste their spell slot and my Elemental didn’t have a chance to stick around. It’s also a one-shot item that was wasted because of this metagamming. There were more enemies than our party, many of them stronger, so my elemental would have balanced the encounter and my DM panicked.

The'Rose

Honorable Crit Justices (and Jake), I previously have dm'd one-shots, but nothing too long and only a handful of times. I wanted to do a mini-campaign with my group to give my Dm a chance to play a bit more and to get more experience.  what was supposed to be a session a week for ~5-7 weeks turned into months and months (partially because of scheduling issues with work (mostly mine - i work ~70+ hours a week as an attorney)), we finally get to the last session. One of my players on a d100 random generator a few sessions back got a dire wolf friend. It was initially supposed to only stick around for 1d but became a campaign member so I let him keep it. End of the campaign the PC's had to essentially teleport back in time to finish their quest (go to the future to save the past). There were only 5 spots in the transporter to get back and I essentially narrated them getting into the spots and going back in time, partially to just finish this campaign as fast as possible. Not giving my player a chance to try and find a way to bring the wolf back too (unless a PC gave up their spot, there was no possibility to bring back more without ruining the ritual). We finished the campaign and sometimes he still brings up his wolf. I'm asking if in my attempt to streamline and finish I railroaded him into leaving his wolf.  I await your judgment  ps. This was reviewed by the group including the PC who lost his wolf. 

Stephanie F

Am I the only one who is having trouble with their posts? I have tried to share my case three times and it always disappears.

Canas_Colours

To the honorable Crit Justices and the bailiff who deserves the world, I present to you the Case of the Impossible Pirate Railroad. Our session started right after stopping yuan-ti cultists, whose boss nearly wiped the party (All survived, but pretty much all resources were gone.). After escaping the collapsing dungeon with some (ominous) loot& a chest full of money we made our way back to the mainland. After 4h we spotted prirates ships with aroun 70 pirates, who demanded our surrender. Besides our elf druid no one had gotten a long rest. Despite multiple high persuasion rolls we were given nothing beyond "be robbed blind or die". Combat did eventually start due to a rash decision of a newer player, which left most of the party frustrated with the encounter because it felt like there was nothing we could do (not even flee bc no dingys on the boat). During the very frustrated combat the DM said that this was supposed to be a GAMBLING (?) encounter and that we "didn't let the captain speak" which our fighter pointed out was BS. We had talked with the pirates for IRL 10 minutes back and forth, long enough for our paladin to offer his sexual services to the captain. During the fight itself there was 4 separate persuasion attempts to let us leave if we spared the captains life to which the DM said that there were 4 captains so his life didn't matter. After the captain died we were told that they'd try to sink out ship because the Captain is dead. Only after threatening the 1st mates life for the 3rd time we finally were offered parley. the session emded with everyone mad or frustrated The DM had prefaced this session with "remember not every encounter is winnable" which I get, but I can't help but be frustrated with a railroaded event, during which we were told we had choice but also blamed for taking the "wrong" course of action by not wanting to be robbed and left on our boat (which was implied) I surrender myself for judgment

Marina S

Honourable Justices and the welcome-to-keep-order-in-any-Canadian-Court Bailiff Jake, I present to you the case of the neglected cleric. I was playing in my first real campaign with a large party of 6 in a homebrewed city focused campaign. It was requested by my DM and the other Party members that I play a cleric to be the defensive buffer / healer of the party. I took on the persona of a halfling who was a bookish textbook carrying knowledge cleric who works at the local museum. I took on the responsibility of being the defensive player / healer with enthusiasm, however every time we would get into a fight and by the time it came around to me either 1) no one wanted or needed a buff 2) the Paladin or Bard already healed people, 3) the sorcerer already buffed people, 4) someone took a potion out of the party bag that i was literally left holding. Because of the spells i stocked and having built my character to be a heavy support i wasn't very strong and often didn't have a lot of offensive positions i could take. I also tried to be more "caldwell" in my thinking and try and add some shenanigans or different ways of fighting, and would be told "no that's not how that works". In addition to this, after a particular battle I would always be the one that would remember to investigate and i would be the one, more often than not, to find the special "magic item", when i asked if i could keep it to help with battle and because i found it, the DM would say "no i made that for x player"...... Eventually i asked my DM if there was a way for me to find a cool item specifically for me to use, his response was "maybe eventually". After some time that campaign just ended because of scheduling issues than the pandemic, for which i am kind of grateful. But it still bugs me that i wasn't able to use my character to it's fullest. Am i wrong in thinking i was being neglected? or should my party have recognized my potential and given me a shot? humbly wait your honourable judgements

PrettyBigGuy

No really, you don't need to comment on other people's posts. This is a forum for the patrons to ask for feedback from the Justices. Something like the DMAcademy subreddit would be a better forum for you to give feedback. Patreon's comment threads are terribly structured, and all of the extra comments on people's cases make it even more difficult to read through the thread.

Summer Tribe

don't monks have plenty of ranged options tho? if nothing else there's a sling. I need more details, I still can't fathom how hopping thru the dragon's face was supposed to accomplish anything unless they were like dropping bombs in, I'm so curious about this situation, it sounds rad. What is a powerpoint night? when I searched it up I didn't get a good idea

Summer Tribe

what "feels right" isn't really up to the players, seems odd that they wouldn't just roll with the punches. I get that you might want to reward them for trying to be creative with class features but being punished for a mishandled application is still a good story too

Summer Tribe

yeah I agree it seems like the DM mishandled the situation, why even give you the item if they're not going to be comfortable with you using it, I was just trying to look on the bright side, it did sooooomething, but yeah probably not what should've happened

Summer Tribe

I don't need to but I did because people here are asking questions. I don't understand what is passing you by about this but if you want a little silence club keep it to yourself. I've had multiple positive and interested responses, just because you think you're the center of your universe doesn't mean everyone else does. You can pretend all you like that your position is universal but you've managed to fail to address any of my points about how it's totally reasonable for me to converse with people in this place where they're clearly looking to spark conversation. Yes patreon is horribly structured and yet we're all here, reddit also isn't well structured, especially once you have all the nested responses. I don't care about going to DMAcademy cause guess what? I didn't pay to be a patron there. If the feedback is unwelcome to you then how come you can't understand how your feedback is unwelcome to me? If you want people to not engage with you why would you ever engage with them? Baffling behaviour

Summer Tribe

patreon is pretty messy, it's needlessly difficult to actually navigate the comments section and I too have had posts disappear in the past

Summer Tribe

Yeah I've had to reuse characters for other campaigns before, it's sort of a bittersweet feeling at first trying to revisit what you wanted them to be, good on you for being able to tho

L_D

Thank you! I submit it every time but there's a lot of us here and I guess I just haven't got lucky yet!

Zach Collier

To Jakes judges and the Bodacious Balif. I have a case involving the decision of gamplay vs role-play. I've played in a campaign with my friends from high-school. Currently I had to leave this campaign due to personal emotions getting in hand both in and out of the campaign. Though personal intrigue isn't what I present to you all today ( I can understand if that portions a weird discussion for a podcast with your friends and partnership in mix) Our dm has told me that this world was role-playing heavy and said some fights could occur. With our setup we had our cleric, warlock and I wanted to build a family tree using bloodhunters. I was considering an adams family/wifcher heritage of weird with a hidden truth of magic society tries to hide. We eventually see our bbeg in a ballroom bash. He summons my old lycan pc turned lichdog and 3-6 more lycans turning citizens into more monsters. As the monsterhunter comprising the scene i went and got my sword. Didier swing to aim for our bbeg but rather slice the chair and tried to tell the maker of the beasts to make them scurry. And full on denied any idea of us succeeding.( I understand a we can't win fight though he hasn't given us an actual win from playing years prior) Without going murder hobo and just executing him. I casted zone of truth And for 20 actual minutes straight he 2speakd against every accusation i threw while even pointing to the monsters he made, asking if they are his creations of his making. Denying every attempt for me to talk or fight me way out. For my dm to save his villan. (Of which he deserves recompense for destroying a city,turning them into lycans) not the bbeg but 3-4 nobles of the table casted feeble mind on me. I kept passing until the last one of which if you don't know the spell makes the player lobotomised from their character. Judges I ask you: was I wrong to leave because my decision were never given merit or was I to extreme trying to involve my choice? I await your punishment. Postnote; I've also at this time found a new dnd group and we have a complete blast. Putting gameplay before story and having our parts of our character have usage and meaning helps me get involved into the story.

The'Rose

Honorable Crit Justices (and Jake), I previously have dm'd one-shots, but nothing too long and only a handful of times. I wanted to do a mini-campaign with my group to give my Dm a chance to play a bit more and to get more experience.  what was supposed to be a session a week for ~5-7 weeks turned into months and months (partially because of scheduling issues with work (mostly mine - i work ~70+ hours a week as an attorney)), we finally get to the last session. previously, one of my players on a d100 random generator a few sessions back got a dire wolf friend. It was initially supposed to only stick around for 1d but became a campaign member so I let him keep it. End of the campaign the PC's had to essentially teleport back in time to finish their quest (go to the future to save the past). There were only 5 spots in the transporter to get back and I essentially narrated them getting into the spots and going back in time, partially to just finish this campaign as fast as possible. Not giving my player a chance to try and find a way to bring the wolf back too (unless a PC gave up their spot, there was no possibility to bring back more without ruining the ritual). We finished the campaign and sometimes he still brings up his wolf. I'm asking if in my attempt to streamline and finish I railroaded him into leaving his wolf.  I await your judgment  ps. This was reviewed by the group including the PC who lost his wolf.