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Calling all Court Cases! (Patreon)

Published:
2022-06-08 16:05:16
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Hey folks. Honorable Bailiff Jake here. The Supreme Crit is convening tonight! Please submit your (BRIEF please!) cases on this thread and we will bring you your sought after justice.

Love,

Jake

Comments

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 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. 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 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.

Skyler Morford

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

MJMM

May it please the Court, although this could be a confession also: 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?

DXGypsy

To the Most Exalted High Crit Justices, and that third rate, low grade, poor man's Ryan Reynolds of a bailiff: I submit a case of sour grapes that may technically fall outside of the High Crit's official d&d jurisdiction but given the near omnipotent deity status you hold, I figure you can claim jurisdiction on any goddamn gaming related issue you want to, so here goes: My usual d&d group (that I DM) took a week off from our campaign but decided to use our game night to play Texas Hold Em with a few extra friends. I ended up wiping the floor with all of them to the tune of $200. Afterwards, one of my player's friends began laying on a sob story about how he kinda needed that money and he was out of work and that was his gas money, etc. I nodded sympathetically as I pocketed my winnings and bid everyone goodnight. He made several passive aggressive comments about the fun I was going to have with "his" money while he ate ramen noodles all week. Since I'm absolutely certain I'll be hearing about this the next time I talk to my player I'm asking the Court for a preliminary injunction on all guilt trips and weenie whining. Am I in the wrong for keeping my honest winnings from a gambling session that everybody knew the rules and etiquette of prior to playing? Or am I even lower on the evolutionary ladder than a bailiff for not giving in? I await your judgment. P.S. if it sways the court in any way, the money will be used as a deposit to buy an Abyssinian cat that my wife and I have always wanted.

Samson

May it please the fair and secular Court, the honorable Justices Axford and Tanner, the multi-talented bailiff Hurwitz, and Animorph Murphy. I must make a confession before Dice Christ that I have held in for too long. About two years ago, one of the players in my old group volunteered to DM a campaign. He showed us some of his notes and the map he made, each country having a rich history and culture. We, being the sinful, out-of-control players we were, decided that our entire party would be composed of former WWE-style wrestlers who lost their wrestling gigs and decided to take on odd jobs as adventurers. Soon after, the serious campaign that our DM crafted, descended into absurdist, slapstick humor in which we wiped out some kobold raiders and proceeded to grift from a poor farming village with staged wrestling matches and tomfoolery. Our DM never complained about our appropriation of his world, but I had the feeling that he was disappointed that he wasn't able to tell his story. As fun as that campaign was, I still feel bad a year later that we took our friend's dream and stuffed it with tights and luchador masks, and I wish to repent. I ask the court, in all it's divine wisdom, to enlighten us about what punishment we deserve for trampling on our friend's vision. I humbly await your divine decree.

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 that has actual 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.

Keanu DRAMAFACE

Dear the incorporated court justices and the absolute SURFER BOY Bailiff Jake Hurwitz, a quick and dirty case for you. I have a friend who is trying to port D&D over into a complete modern campaign. Now, I have sent him examples of other TTRPGs that fit way better with the world he is imagining, but he refuses to do anything but reflavor EVERYTHING by himself. Should I just let him do it? What say you?

Judson Whitfield

To all honored members of the court: I come not with a case to be judged, but a plea for aid. An ancient silver dragon was recently enslaved by a mind flayer lich and taken to the elder brain that runs the colony. The elder brain is planning on using the dragon to bring about the apocalypse. We have a scroll of wish but, being only 10th level, are very unsure about exactly what to wish for. I humbly seek your counsel.

Bryan Holt

Hello justices and the Itty Bitty Balif. I present to you the case of the purloined potions. I am but a simple Feylock of the baba yaga a potion maker by trade. I worked it out with the DM that I could make spell scrolls but rather than being spell scrolls they're essentially potion grenades. One of the favorite ones of the group is the grenade of animate object, I cleared the item with the dungeon master several weeks before using them and demonstrating the spell myself. The party was quite excited, and during a fight with a particularly rough black dragon sheriff the jukebox machine in the corner proved clutch to our victory. However I was betrayed, the dungeon master not only took my potions but also took my experience to the fight saying that I had fooled them and that there's no way they could have accounted for the extra actions of the machine. Was I being a Wicked Warlock or was he being a Dirty Doggy? Please Judges hear my call.

Jack Campau

To the honorable justices Axford, Tanner, Murphy. No one else. I bring to you the case of the ENDLESS Shapechange - Change Shape 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.

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.

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. 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. 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.

Alex W

Shrek the rogue update! Honorable crit justices, and also baliff Jake if he wants, I bring to you an update on Shrek the rogue. It turns out my entire party is just insane. My sister is playing Shrek as a 45 year old divorced dad Shrek who Fiona left in the middle of the night. The other two members are a self described “fucking nerd” pink tiefling artificer named Kirby, and a grad student dwarven cleric just looking for a PhD advisor. On our first session, Shrek the rogue threatened the bartender of the tavern they all met in with a lawsuit twice, before starting a bar fight. So it turns out I’m simply stuck with some maniac PCs. I will say that Shrek the rogue started with the accent, but immediately gave up. So there’s a small win there!

frogman smooch

my honorable justices murph, axford, and tanner and the MOST FAVORED BALIFF , i am running curse of strahd and my players won’t stop calling him Todd. it’s not hurting the gameplay but there’s nothing i can do to stop it and now they don’t find him scary. please help -a timid, yet trying, dm

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.

Eddy Welsh

Eddy from Raleigh May it please the court and the Jake as well. I was part of a party playing the Witch Beyond the Wildlight campaign. During the carnival our Harefolk Barbarian got upset with an NPC which resulted in her showing her butt hole to said NPC. The DM was shook, to say the least. Later in the campaign we enter the Fey Wild and upon entering the new realm the DM says we all feel this tighte ing in our butt holes as they dissappear and we no longer have butt holes. We the party protest resulting in our full genitalia being blipped from existence while in the Fey Wild. I ask the court, was this a just reaction from the DM or does our party deserve our butt holes back?

Jack Campau

May it please the court, I present to you the case of advantageous head trauma. I am the DM in a campaign where the players are trying to take down a tyrannical queen in a Feywild setting. There is a nearby town just outside of the queen's fortress and they created a plan to kidnap and replace the town mayor with the party's changeling sorcerer named Ja Rule. From within they planned to start a revolution. They managed to kidnap the mayor and make the switch without getting caught, but I informed Ja Rule that he would be rolling his deception with disadvantage when speaking to the mayor's close friends and family. This of course cancels out the changeling ability to always have advantage when trying to impersonate someone. After some close calls, Ja Rule proceeded to go to a public area while in disguise as the mayor and have a horrible "accident" where he smashed his head into a wall running full speed and then convinced the town doctor and the mayor's wife that he had amnesia. After the incident, I let him return to rolling deception with advantage. Was I too lenient, or was this the right thing to do?

Aaron Caldwell

To the buff daddy Balif, and I guess thoughs honorable justices. I come to you with the case of the allergies, I am Pearsall allergic to both Tea ( yes the plant that you drink ) and coconut. As a joke I always make my characters also allergic, because it funny. Well my DM found out about my character allergies, and the next session killed my wizard character by lacing the dinner where we being served by the king we where visiting. I protested that the Kings Court would not know of my allergies. Was I wrongfully killed? I await ypu judgement

DoddyUndying

Yes. (Inserted great and entertaining story here) kachow.

Talia

To the honorable justices and my favorite little man balif, I ask your opinion. During the last session, our group was fighting a bunch of cultists who were trying to kill us. We left one alive to question, and he kept trying to cast command on us whenever we talked to him. Eventually we got him to talk and decided to kill him. One of our party members is a sharpshooter and promptly shot him in the head. What happened next completely silenced the table, one of the players was very angry with us killing him and proceeded to close her book and say she wasn't playing anymore. We tried to explain to her that this is just a game, but I think maybe the way that we killed him upset her. It was very awkward and we promptly ended the session there. Do you think that we should apologize or perhaps talk to the DM about retconning what happened? I await your approval. Thanks.

Eugene

Dear honorable and beautiful justices and the other guy. I bring to you the case of the “meta” counter spell. This has been a while ago but sometimes it still keeps me up at night. My party and I were facing a boss and they were about to cast a high level spell at us. I wanted to counter spell it but the DM wouldn’t let me roll an arcana check to see the level or let me roll on general because it was over 3rd level. He also told me to stop trying to meta game the session. I was a little shook cause isn’t the point of counter spell to idk counter a spell?!

Dan Callery

To the honorable justices of the Supreme crit/ high Clerics of the Church of Latterjake saints. I have a not a confession but my Dungeon Master's soul is feeling sinful temptation to murder one of my PCs. I have a player who's personality is based on being a pathological liar. They Will lie constantly to NPCs, fellow party members even themselves. At first it was funny but now it is unbearably obnoxious. Their charisma is also so high that most of the garbage they spew works on unsuspecting npcs. After two years of this I've given my player ample opportunities and lessons to grow as a character but nothing has worked. I've even talked to the player and said the other PCs and I are getting tired of this, but the player is adamant its core to the PCs charatcer. My only option seems to be killing them and I've come up with a plan or two on how to do it and fit with the story but it feels like a premeditated homicide and feels wrong. Oh great moral authority of dice christ what should I do?

Dave 3D Art

May it please the courts, and the honourable Hurwitz. I've recently started a Star Trek tabletop campaign for a few acquaintances. They are all experienced with Star Trek, but have only ever played Dungeons and Dragons 5e. My intention was to run a game of the Star Trek Adventures RPG from Modiphus games. I thought I had made that clear, and that they were going to play a new game but when we started session zero they thoroughly rejected playing anything that wasn't 5e. Long story short, by digging through the internet we found some passable 5e homebrew for Trek, and voted to use it for the actual campaign. I'm a little annoyed at having to run 5e again when I get much more satisfaction from running new systems, and no one else was willing to run it. So for the time being for the sake of playing at all I'm taking the hit. So I guess my question is ultimately, am I justified in my annoyance and should my players be more willing to branch out of DnD for a specifically designed experience or am I just a whiner who should be happy that I have a group to play with at all?

Alexander Hammond

To the Lords of the Church of Dice Christ, High Justices of the Realm, and their big-booty Bailiff/Altar Boy. I have a confession to make. I play AD&D (first edition) with a group and have been for over 7 years. Our DM is a friend’s uncle and he’s great, but first edition is so hard. We have as a group fudged rolls to move the story on and despite this have still lost so many characters to instant death traps and bullshit monsters we can barely hurt (we play the official story modules.) We play it rules as written so it can take years to get to level 5. Are we sinners? Or are we doing Dice Christ’s work in secret? I kneel and await your absolution. Alex

Evan Spears

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

riley chalk

If it may please the juicy justice's, and the asteemed bearded bailiff, I present the case of the child stabbing pirate. I was dm'ing for my long running campaign a few sessions back, and had designed encounters that would be tribute to things the players liked in real life. One pc, mo, a homebrew swashbuckler class, had his encounter come up, and I had a young boy named tien (from the way of kings) who was searching for his lost dog, where it ended up in an illegal fighting ring. Mo, feeling like I was setting him up, decided to stab the boy, right in the middle of the street, where I then had to bend over backwards to figure out a way for this child to be immortal and not bleed out in the street. Here is where my question lays, should I have punished him for believing me to be out to get him, or was his sudden child stabbing justified? Ps, he is also my best friend, and he is also the first to suggest burning any corpses they find for fear of resurrection.

Krispy Buns

May it please the court, honorable Supreme Crit Justices, and the crispy and frisky Bailiff. I present the case of Hodd Toward (tao-ard). I DM a campaign for four first time players in a universe that I created from scratch and continue to add to as we go through the campaign. Each of the players has contributed various amounts of backstory and helped build out the universe as we've played. Except for one. This is his first time playing DnD and he created a very chaotic character, a dragonborn cleric, who accroding to him, adapts the faith of whatever church he is currently trying to infiltrate. I've adapted this to have him worship the god of trickery and luck, and introduced a wild magic element to his spellcasting. He has failed to give me a backstory leading me to improvising things which have had mixed results. That being said, Hodd has become increasingly difficult to incorperate into the campaign, and recently he has even considered betraying the party (without any coordination with me). I can tell the other players are getting a bit annoyed so I humbly ask the court, should I figure out a way for Hodd to leave the party (kill him?) and have this player remake a character with a backstory better suited to the campaign, or do i let chaos unfold and risk a PVP encounter/total party kill?

The Game Itself back from nowhere

To the exuberant priests and priestess of the high court, I come to you with a Dice Christ confession. I run with a rather large group, around 9 people on full days, meaning we also have a handful of DMs who have campaigns to run that we do on a rotation schedule. Well this leaves a lot of opportunities to make characters and when I do I'll follow the rules the DM has laid out for how they want us to generate our stats, HOWEVER there are some times that I'll fudge the numbers a little by moving a stat point or two around, or fully rerolling if the stats are truly abysmal. I would like to say that I do not abuse this by rerolling until I get a godlike stat block, I don't make specific character builds that are meant to be broken, and I like to play and build my character to my character. Now I leave my fate in your hands, and fully accept any punishment set by the High Order.

Frederick Schemel

Honorable Justices and the other guy, I bring you a case of major disappointment. Last week my group concluded a two and a half year long campaign culminating in a heartfelt fight in which we lost many characters and NPCs. During this fight our DM was trying to input many bad jokes, which was kinda weird given from the outset it was pitched as a serious game and up until that point there hadn’t been that many joking/quippy moments in any other session of the game. This only got worse at the end of the session when we found out that the wholes story had just been an elaborate dream and a set up to a really shitty pun. Justifiably many left the call being quite miffed that our whole narrative had been trivialized like that and some of us have been steaming ever since that dropped ball. So justices I ask you is it right for me to Coup my DM and replace him after letting down many of our players like that?

Rowdy Mouse

Hello honourable judges and the delightfully Balif Jake. I have a confession to make before the bench to see how my mortal soul will fair the afterlife. I rolled my hp for my character and got 58. It seemed way too high and maybe I made a mistake so I rerolled and got 51 hp instead and thought that was acceptable. Using an online program I saw my DM however gave me 52. I accepted the 52 and moved on. The game started with a pvp match and me being a Paladin was able to heal myself back to full before fighting the last opponent who is another player. The other player landed a critical hit for 51 of my 52 hp. It had been hours since rolling hp and I forgot. But now since i have been referred to as the hero who won the tournament. Given lots of gold and have status in game. The guilt weighs in my mind heavily. With love from Brax The Hammer Level 6 paladin of vengence. (For context I have since confessed to the table and everything is good there.)

Canadian Schubert the Mushroom 🍄

Prestigious Court and Clergy in one problematic mix. I come to you seeking guidance. For the first time in my D&D life, I am deeply considering killing a fellow PC. We are only four or five sessions in, but this first time player Vivik has already broken down my usual Emily-level party-focused playstyle. During session 1, I told everyone my address to bring the party together. Instead, Vivik broke into my house, stole gold, my spellbook, and a feywild artifact that connects me to my patron, then ran off. In a righteous fury, I tracked down my lost items, and faced down Vivik. Originally, I wanted to knock him unconscious to show him the game had consequences, but he just took the dodge action while telling me to "calm down so we can talk this through like adults." To be a female character, so wronged and intruded upon, then told I'm being overly emotional has broken me. PvP was decreed acceptable, and I intend to take his last death save away way down the line so that he still has an enjoyable campaign. But I'm still conflicted. Should Vivik pay with his life? Or is his edgelord a natural first step in learning the game? I await your radiant judgement.

Draxen01

Honorable judges, bodacious bailiff, and Dice Krist I have a confession. I ask for forgiveness specifically from judge Emily! I run a campaign and made a fairgrounds/casino in the Fey Wilds complete with a rainbow dragon, mario kart double dash rules I made with minecarts and crates, even orphan fights! However I put off making a name for it so when my players asked for the name of the establishment I drew a blank, panicked, and said "Fey-gas". I remembered later on a short rest yall talking about location names and I feel terrible! Please forgive me in the eyes of Dice Kris and yourselves!

dakkadakka

Dear incomparable justices and the very comparable baliff, I present to you the case of the Lonely player. My friends and I had a campaign on discord that fizzled out as the pandemic wore on. I was sad because I really love dnd and that was my only chance to play it. Fast forward a few months and I learned that four of them had started their own weekly campaign that had been going on for months. Then they started another campaign with another DM where I was the only regular player from our old one not invited. Now they will be hanging out with me only to say they have to go play dnd and leave me all alone with nobody to talk to every Tuesday night. They keep on mentioning adding me to the campaign as a guest npc or something but they always push it off or forget. I feel like I keep on getting led along while everyone else has fun without me. I even tried dm’ing but everyone was too busy with the other campaigns to make time for mine. Am I just being salty that I organically got left out or is it alright to be a little mad about this? I await your judgement.

Bimkerly

May it please the Crit, and art professional Jake; please hear my case of the Orb of Wieners. I play in a campaign with my husband, parents, and my parents friends. It was a lot of our first times and the DM would try as he might to get us all to roll play. He would hand out hand made "inspiration tokens" to anyone that tried to play as intended (using voices/thinking as your character would) I don't embarrass easy so I would collect tokens here and there. BUT I would roll SO badly (Murph rolls as we say) that my DM gave me an Orb of "I'm A Wiener" to which I could use once per short rest to give myself advantage on any d20 roll. And I must Loudly exclain. I AM A WIENER. It didn't help much until the big boss battle where I used it and got a nat 20. I would also use my inspiration tokens as I was the cleric to keep my friends up. The DM was less than delighted that he was womped with his own Wiener Orb. Should I be punished for using too many advantage aides? Or should he accept that he gave it to me and take the womping? I accept the ruling if the court either way.

Nathan Mills

Forgive me Dice Deacons for I have sinned, willingly and knowingly. My wife is a brand new player and agreed to let me DM a short 1-on-1 premade Christmas adventure for her because it is her favorite holiday. About halfway through the story, while guiding a small village of gnomes through a wintry forest, she randomly encountered 4 Will O Wisps, which are a CR 2 Undead and have 19 AC and resistance to most damage types. As a more experienced player, I should have immediately adjusted this encounter, a mistake that haunts my waking hours, but I could never imagine the carnage that followed. She made me proud by opening the encounter with Detect Evil and Good to see through their invisibility and then used her War Cleric’s Turn Undead to force them to flee, but alas all 4 succeeded on their saving throws. She was quickly reduced to 7 hit points and her sidekick character, a magical talking snowman, was beaten unconscious. Then, 2 of the Wisps rolled nat20s against her. In an effort to foster a love for the game and make her feel like the epic hero that she is in my eyes, I denied the Crits and told her that they rolled nat 1s and missed their attacks. I narrated that with her back against the wall and with the lives of her snowy sidekick and those she swore to protect in her hands, she dug deep and found it within herself to use Turn Undead one more time. I rolled the Wisdom saves in front of her. They all failed and Clary Sage (her character) won the day. While I do not regret my choice of giving a new player, and the love of my life, an opportunity to overcome the odds and be a hero, my denial of Dice Christ’s will plagues me with guilt. I prostrate myself before you and humbly accept whatever punishment you deem appropriate.

Andy Kaplan

May it please the court, the honorable Judges Axford, Tanner, and Murphy and handsome and fan of the best damn football team in England, Tottenham Hotspurs (COYS), Bailiff Jake, I present you the case of the the wrong DM for the player. A few months ago I was asked to join a campaign playing a circle of spores water genasi druid named River Damphair who ended up being a seaweed delaer and essentially a stoner burnout with my best friend from when I was a kid and I haven't seen since our HS graduation over 20 years ago. It was over discord and it was also with some of his friends from where he lives now. My old friend was the only person I knew and everyone else knew each other so I already felt a little out of place. The campaign was centered around us being Harper's Cell agents and the adventures were from older one shots from the 70s and 80s. The leveling up was also done via XP and not milestone. The first session was fine, but then I started to realize it wasn't my style of game. There was very little RP, the players weren't rewarded for doing creative problem solving (for example we came up with a brilliant way to get a signature from a magic pen in a bank that we needed to withdraw something from a safety depoist box in the bank of a vault using a combination of fog cloud, disguise self, paying off a bank employee so they could go on vacation with their family, and making sure the people watching the bank didn't see us go into the bank, only for the DM to have the people watching the bank still attack us), the DM never went off the script of the pre-written story, and getting little to no rewards for complete missions. After a few months of playing, I decided I didn't want to continue and I told the group I had joined a rec basketball league on Monday nights so I couldn't make the games anymore. Am I the asshole for quitting and lying about it or should I have just told them I don't want to play anymore because I wasn't having fun?

LovelyLorelei

Hello bailiff and anyone else who happens to be there I guess, I present to you the case of the RetConed Cleric In this campaign I was playing a Grave cleric with a strict adherence to the rules of life and death, namely she would under no circumstances raise the dead. This didn’t cause issues until my character found a scroll of resurrection and my partner’s ranger character wanted to use it on their murdered father. Even with the rest of the party bearing down on me in character and my DM out of character my cleric refused, staying true to her code. While that caused friction, The real trouble came when I had to leave the game a few weeks later because of a new job. My partner remained in the game and told me my cleric had a vision that she was the reincarnation of a long dead queen, decided her views on death were wrong, used the scroll to raise the ranger’s father and switched domains to life cleric. When we both confronted the DM they said that when I left the game I gave up control of my character and these changes would be best to move the story forward and be easier for him to manage as he didn’t want to leave the party without a healer. Was my DM wrong to drastically change my character in such a way after I left, or since I can’t play in the group anymore should I just let it go? I humbly await judgement

Diarmuid Burke

Blessed be Dice Christ, I seek thine wisdom and guidence. It has been many moons since my last confession, but I fear my D20 is unbalanced but cannot prove it. Recently I invited some friends who'd never played to do an in-person one shot. As they were newbies, I handed sets of dice out to each player, including a new set of cheap but cool looking frosty dice I bought at the weekend. The first three rolls that dice's player made were Natural 20s! (as well as another 20 later that session). Blessed crits, or so I believed. But the following weekend, I used the dice in a friend's game and rolled several crits. At least 3. I now fear that the dice is weighted towards the 20. I've conducted several inconclusive water based tests to check this out, and have also found that it never rolls twenties outside of games. In fact it much prefers numbers on the opposite end of the die. Do I throw out a potentially weighted dice, or embrace that those rolls were simply blessed by Dice Christ? And if I do throw it out, do I tell the player their unforgettable first game was but a forgery? I humbly await your judgement - Diarmuid (Deer-Mid) Ps. Loved your Dublin and London shows, even got my hands on Emily's D100 after the latter.

jazzellini tortellini

to the honorable justices and they’re little buddy bailiff, i present you the the case of stealing my players ideas. i have just started running my first campaign, where my players have to solve the mystery of the feywild leaking into the material plane. however my players have been coming up with solutions that are far more interesting than what i had planned… so i have been stealing their ideas and putting them in my campaign. is this wrong to do? does it make me a i creative dm? should i stick to what i originally planned even though their ideas seem much more fun? pls send help.

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!

Fuzzboxx

Hello Honorable Justices and other. I bring you the case of the deadbeat dad. I run a campaign for a few friends and family. My cousin joined the campaign a while back and essentially his backstory was "my 6 year old son was kidnapped, I wish to save him". I thought this was great as it was really easy to blend into my world, and as he is a dad in real life I thought it would push him into action. 6 months into joining the campaign my cousin finally told the group that he was looking to save his son. The group was baffled that this was not mentioned previously or why it wasn't a high priority. I was the only person beside my cousin who knew his backstory up until this point. My cousin's response was "we will get to it when we get to it" There was not more pressing matters. After a year and a half of adventuring they finally found where his son was captured and saved him. He showed no happiness or excitement once the boy was free. Immediately my cousin's character showed disinterest for the small child and wished to pawn him off at an orphanage, a random person in any town, or a even a wizard school, literally anything so he didn't have to take care of him. The group was baffled by his reaction, so I have forced the small boy to travel with them and made him an integral part to the campaign, I have made it so that many answers to great mysteries in the campaign can be resolved if my cousin's character will just show the small boy a modicum of affection. This has yet to occur in 6 months. I need advice on how to get my cousin's character (who he chose to make a dad) actually be a dad in game, am I burdening the entire group because of my cousin's deadbeat dad character? Should I let the boy be put in an orphanage? How would you handle this situation?

Brayden Rittner

May it please the court, the bailiff may be pleased at his own discretion: My party was hired by a shady organization to steal a chest from an orcish boat. Our specific instructions were to ‘make it look sloppy’ to take suspicion away from the organization, as they were known for being thorough and discreet. The mission was going very well until a small battle erupted on the top deck. I had summoned my octopus familiar as a parrot for recon, and during the fight i sent him off to find a real dirtbag to be the fall guy during the battle. I ended up rolling low on a perception check and finding an upstanding citizen giving money to a homeless person, but I still went through with my plan to lure him down the harbor. I successfully got him onto the boat through some very difficult persuasion checks and before my party could protest, I killed him in one round. My idea was to leave behind a body, because our benefactors wanted the mission done sloppily, i thought if we had no casualties on our side it would look too clean. Eventually a stray fireball lit the boat ablaze anyway, and our dm never mentioned whether or not my assassination impacted the final result. Was I being strategic or was my party right in being appalled at my actions, I humbly await your judgement. PS: My octopus familiar’s name is Patton, since he loves a good pat-on the head, and he lives in an extra-planar coral reef I commissioned from a wizard that I keep in a bucket.

Ben D

May it please the court, I present the case of the mind-controlled monk. My 14th level sea elf monk was part of a fight against a powerful vampire. With a charisma of 8 I was literally unable to pass the DC 21 saving throws against the vampire's dominate person ability. However, as a monk, I have the "stillness of mind" ability which allows me to use my action to end a charming effect. It was peacefully ruled that since the dominate person ability dictates specifically that the vampire decides how I use my action I could not use stillness of mind. I believe that that goes against the intention of the ability and I should have been able to choose to end the dominate person. I leave it in the court's noble hands. Also, don't listen to the haters jake, you're not worth insulting.

Andrew Bruggeman-Green

Honorable justices and the ever so imprudent bailif I present the case of the dm who packed up mid session. In our 5e campaign I was playing a level 12 assimar oath of devotion paladin named Tyreal and another member of the party was playing a feral tiefling blood hunter named Roth. Throughout the campaign our pc's had been working together because of our objective but disliked each other. Mind you this was only in game, in real life both myself and the other player loved the animosity between us in game. One session our dm gave us objectives from our gods and one of Roth's objectives was to kill someone by throwing them off a ledge, so creatively he took a random prisoner from the dungeon was going to climb the mountain nearby to throw him off. I meta gamed to be far away while he did this, but the dm forced us to run into each other and my paladin wouldn't let this prisoner die without trial, as a result Tyreal and Roth got into a fight, where Tyreal ended up dying. While this was happening the dm packed up about 30 minutes into the session and left saying we ruined his campaign. I ask you was it okay for us to get into a fight which we enjoyed or was our dm wrong for throwing a temper tantrum and leaving when we got into a fight he forced.

Chloe A. Schafer

The Case with the Wall of Wavering Height To the honorable Crit Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and to the less honorable but necessary bailiff Hurwitz, thank you for hearing our case! While a little long, this case presents the unique opportunity to hear both the player and DMs perspectives of our tale. We patiently await your ruling. Player perspective: While in a Secret Garden pocket plane, my companions and I split up in order to investigate three different areas outlined in a clue. Consequently, our DM mysteriously rolled an unknown die and made a note. My fellow companions completed their investigations successfully, but I had more trouble. I climbed a large wall at the edge of the garden. I rolled a Nat-1 on my first climb check and took a d6 of damage. I then successfully climbed the wall, but the height of this wall and how far I climbed was unclear… I believe it was around 60ft, but heights ranging from 40 to 100ft were used by my height-wavering DM. Unfortunately, the mysterious roll earlier determined who would be possessed by an angry ghost that wanted to kill one of us to help tend her garden forever... Dice-Christ chose me. The ghost possessed me and then flung me from the wall. I rolled the falling damage, which was debated because the wall’s height was unclear. The damage took me to -2 HP. Please note, I would not have gone down if not for the d6 of damage from my initial failed climb attempt. My compatriots were not in range to heal me, I rolled my death saves. I failed. My character officially died. I ask you, omniscient justices, is this combination of wavering wall heights, secret ghostly possession, and additional damage for my first failed climb check more than a string of unfortunate events? Should my DM have intervened in some other way? Should my character have paid the ultimate price because of my DM’s inconsistent story? I humbly await your ruling. – Chloe aka Rutabaga Smut DM Perspective: I am lucky to have a group of boundary pushing, expectation defying, (too often) clever players. To challenge them, the day’s session was set in a trap-riddled and haunted garden, where survival would be contingent on collaborative and innovative play. Naturally, they decided to split up for the first time ever. I was concerned for a TPK, but through an inventive use of a bead of force on a submerged water wyrm, and the questionable structural integrity of graveyard tunnels, two out of three players bested encounters planned for the whole group. By the time we arrived at Rooti and the wall that would ultimately be her demise, I was happily exhausted in a way that only running a session that has gone completely awry can make you. The infamous wall of wavering height was in the neighborhood of 60 ft tall. The clarity of the final height is hotly contested, but it was TALL. There was a failed perception check and a failed wisdom saving throw. Rooti’s possessed body was flung and fell to the ground. She failed her death saves and then proceeded to die alone and broken at the base of a VERY tall wall. The 60 foot fall was by no means a sure death, but should I have picked a shorter falling distance because of the ambiguity in communication? How much shorter do I make the wall? Would any height that resulted in death feel unfair?! I await your judgment. If I too must be flung from a wall of wavering height, so be it. - Distant Mother, Chris Health, Joy, & Dragons, Chloe & Chris

K.C. Thompson

Not a court case, but I bring praises of Dice Christ to the Honorable Cardinals Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, as well as the decent Deacon Hurwitz. My group postponed a session so the my fiancee and I could witness the Seattle live show (yes the alleged hotdog chugging one). The next session I was rolling very hot and was blessed with 5 Nat 20s. I kept forgetting to write in but hope you enjoy word of His power. Praise be to Dice Christ and his emissaries on this plane!

snakes !

Greetings to the High Crit Justices and to the mostly mediocre bailiff, I am DMing a campaign where a paladin player wanted to multiclass into hexblade, when I asked them if they had any ideas as to what kind of patron they wanted they said I could do anything. Seeing this as a storytelling boon, I had a lot of fun coming up with a patron and creating a possessed sword for the paladin to find. I was very excited for the paladin to find the sword and meet their patron but when I ran the first RP the paladin seemed kind of disappointed. Now they keep asking if their possessed sword can give them the help action and while I've been saying no because I don't think an object can take any action, they still keep asking. Should I let them use the help action from the sword to make up for their dislike of their patron? Or should I stick to my gut about objects? Thank you, I await your fair and clear justice.

Lou

May it pleases the fair justices and that god-awful shell of a man. I present to you the case of the stolen perception check. Context: Zoom game, Height of the pandemic, Tomb of horror. The dm made us do perception checks every 5 feet (for realz) to not fall into traps in an hallway. After more than an hour (no jokez), I Crit. Yeah! He described the wallpaper in details. After another while, we reach the end of the hallway. We are lost, scared and angry and he eventually tells us that there is a secret passage behind the GODDAMN WALLPAPER I CRIT ON. He says we should have guessed based on what was on the wallpaper (an epic battle scene). I ask you: Is this fun? Should this be how we live and play? I await your fair Judgement,

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?

Johnathon colin Rodaway

May it please the most honored crit justices, and the dude from Nice Brothers... I come not with a specific case but a quick summary of a few of the new rules our long time GM has pulled out of his arse last minute when he felt like it. A lich was flying over head and after dealing a lot of damage i asksd why he didnt make a concentration check, he said "because he's using a magic ring" cut to 4 rounds of me trying to pull this ring of his finger and throwing off a tower only to be told "the lich is still attuned to the ring even though it was removed so he can still fly" He tried drowning a tortle paladin because he couldn't hit his AC and when the paladin said "i can hold my breath for x amount of minutes" he was told "no you didnt have chance to take a breath in so you start drowning instantly" And a fun one, my bard was face to face with a spider queen. I told her she had nice eyes and rolled a nat 20 which ended up being a 34 on deception. He told me that it fails because shes an avatar of a god and automatically rolls nat 20s on any check. In summary, how do i handle this going forward as any time i want to do something creative he can just pull out a rule that means I lose regardless? Or am I being too mean to our long time GM? I humbly prostrate myself before the court and await judgment

John

To the awesome Crit Justices, and the pretty okay bailiff. May it please the court, I present the case of the ballista vs the stairs. A few years back the fighter dwarf in our party thought it was a good idea to try and carry a heavy ballista throughout the dungeon the mad mage note we were only around 2 levels into this long dungeon, so myself and the rest of the party refused to help cause, it would be a burden and most of us didnt have the strength to. Also we had no ammunition for it and no way of getting some. so he sought help from an npc then once we hit the first set of stairs our fighter look at us to help him and the npc carry this down. We said no, he decided to try to bring it down anyway and it resulted in the npc getting crushed and runover by the ballista since that day the fighter has blamed me and the rest of the party for the mans death when we say we had no need for the ballista in the first place. So we place the judgment in your hands oh great justices. Side note the DM was on our side in this situation.

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?

Mattie Honda

Esteemed Supreme Crit Justices and also Bailiff Jack, may it please the court. I present to you the case of T. K. Tango V. DM. A friend of mine was running Storm King's Thunder, and I decided to play a Kenku Bard by the name of T. K. Tango. Because Kenku can mimic sounds and voices perfectly, he was used as an understudy at a theater whenever the performers had a sore throat (this is also the way Tango could speak normally, as he listened to monologue after monologue). According to lore, Kenkus are always looking for a way to fly. I stuck to this fun character trait, and had Tango be enamored with flying swords, flying carpets, and flying fortresses. Our party had just gotten to a griffin conservatory, where my PC declared they would befriend a griffin or die trying. Unfortunately, I was absent the next session, and the party ended up leaving the conservatory, robbing me of the chance to make a flying friend. I'm not really that angry either way, but I wanted to ask your opinions on how to handle character growth and motivations when the player is absent from the session. I eagerly await your punishment, cruel and unusual, like the masochist I am.

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 had a player who wanted to "re-spec" his character to multiclass after a few months of playing. I'm annoyed as he had done this many times in previous campaigns, but told him he could with the caveat that in story he would die and be resurected with his new abilities. 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 his 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 he is against as it would almost certainly change his race) or True Ressurection for 25,000gp. Upon hearing this he 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.

Tess

Dear beloved bailiff and honorable judges, I present to you the case of the “similar” player characters: I recently was invited to play in a campaign that takes place 10 years after a previous game I played in. The DM of the previous game will be a player with me, and another person will be DM-ing who I’ve never played with before. The first thing they messaged me was that I couldn’t play as my character from the previous campaign, because someone else they invited had already chosen their character to be a cleric of the same god that mine had been. This made me a little hesitant but I said, okay, I guess I was the last person to be added to the game so I should compromise and make something else. They gave me a few ideas that fit in with the hook of their campaign to work with if I needed inspiration, and I created a character based off of that. I talked to the DM of the previous game, and she loved my new character idea! So I sent it to this new DM, and they told me that…. It worried them that this character was going to be too similar to ANOTHER player’s PC that they had already chosen (a character that I didn’t know anything about). My proposed character was an elven artillerist artificer/divination wizard and theirs is a drow necromancy wizard. Am I being too impatient for being frustrated by this??? In my other campaigns, all the players have discussed their character ideas together to form a balanced party, and if our characters have things in common, it’s a fun thing to affect the roleplay and dynamics between characters. At first I thought I was being too sensitive about this, but I brought it up to the DM of the previous campaign and she said that this new DM always gets really into having a part in the creation of the PCs. So my question to you is, how involved should a DM be in their player’s character creation? Is my future DM being overzealous, or am I being too defensive of my character ideas? I humbly await your judgement, and ask for forgiveness from Dice Christ in advance if I am deemed guilty 🙏

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

To the [properly themed adjective] supreme crit justices, and the especially [opposing themed adjective] bailiff, I present the case of cantrip capping DM. In my first campaign, in the first session mind you, we were doing a typical job for low leveled adventurers. There were two spell casters. Me, a lowly divination wizard with armor class of warm butter being sliced through with a flaming sword, was surviving on well placed cantrips a one clutch portent roll. At some point though we ran into an encounter where the enemy forced retreated and barricaded themselves behind two doors. While one party member and my self went to one door and attempted to mage hand our way in, the warlock and the members that followed him started eldritch blasting the door to break it down. After the session, the dm took issue with that and stated that he thought being able to cast eldritch blast non stop at a door was to powerful and wanted to limit our cantrips. As the wizard, and as a dude with a philosophy degree who has argued very moot points just for funsies, I immediately took issue with that issue. My main point being that the fighter can, and I butcher my quote, “cast F*** you door, with their big f*** off sword” Even recently, after viewing a superhero movie involving multiple universes, queer latin rep, a red Queen, and a very attractive man named Benedict (both of them), the issue was brought up again and he still thinks cantrips should be limited. I still oppose this view Am I wrong to defend my fellow spell casters with an ac of the squat? Or is the DM in the right with these cockamamie shenaniganaries?

odin2878

Dearest judges and also that guy Jake, this will be my 6th? time submitting my tale. This was my first campaign DMing with players I did not know through my local game store. While traveling to an island to search for clues on the disappearance of a young gold dragon, the players had run into a pirate ship, and when they thought they had cleared the boat, they claimed it as their own and continued. Soon after, they found a stowaway in the form of an 18-20y/o man hiding in the mid-deck, where most of the supplies were stored, most notably, a few kegs of gunpowder. The Draconic sorcerer with a pension for fire wanted to interrogate this young pirate for any information while they had tied him to the main mast on the mid-deck. When she decided to use a flame cantrip and wave it around and then attempt to castrate him with said cantrip, I asked the fated DM question: "Are you sure?" The player seeing no issue with the action said yes and held a flame to the wooden floor with traces of gunpowder coating it. The ship promptly caught fire and exploded a few turns later, killing two PCs and stranding the other three on an island. The players say I was too harsh with my decisions, and I argued that they chose to play with fire, and now they got burned. I seek the wisdom of the mighty court and humbly accept any satisfaction or punishment handed down to me.

DowdMusic

To the honorable high Crit, and that scruffy little naked guy down there. I write to you today about a one-off downtime session that I ran with my 3.5 group inspired by the 8 Bit Book Club MONSTER MADNESS and the NADDPOD ROMP IN THE SWAMP scrub matches. I let each of my PCs choose 2 creatures level 2 or lower. One of my PCs choose a bird that had a charm ability that simply couldnt be beaten. This charisma laden bird was invulnerable as it charmed everyone away from attacking it. As time went on I could tell there was an imbalance and my other players also noted as such. Eventually we pulled out the books and found out that the bird was a challenge rating of 3 not 2. While this isn't much of a difference overall, it seemed to make the difference in the scrub match. However, at this point the scrub melee was more than half over. Other scrubs were also doing cool and hilarious moves, and players were having fun, but this impervious magic god bird was never going to die. This bird would be the scrub champion, it got past the regulations and now it was unstoppable. Not knowing what to do - I just kept playing on. One player was visibly and vocally upset about the overpowered bird, but I just brought up that these scrubs arent the players actual PCs or related in anyway. Regardless, the last 3 rounds of the scrub fight when the bird killed the last combatants 1 by 1 was not the best time. I ask you should I have halted the fight hours in and made the player with the OP bird find a new combatant? Should I have just retroactively nerfed the bird? Or is this all the PCs fault?

Gilgamesh

To the honorable crit justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner as well as the underrated bailiff I submit a case of a Nat 1 ruling that went too far from my early days of playing D&D: A friend of mine at the time invited me to his game but didn’t really help me make my character. Having basically been thrown the PHB and told “make a character” I made a Dwarf Barbarian. Though past that he only taught me the basics of combat. We were not even told to make character sheets and only used an app that tracked HP and AC. This lack of understanding would come up as my character was in search of a great axe. Even though Barbarians have the option to start out with one. My DM eventually gave me one from a halfing merchant and I was excited though that excitement would not last long. On session 3 of this campaign we encountered a sea monster on the beach and I attempted to throw my great axe at it. (Having no knowledge that great axes are not throwing weapons) I was asked to roll, got a Nat 1, and my beautiful great axe was lost to the ocean. I feel that was a reasonable response…if it had ended there. My DM retroactively stated that the great axe was cursed by the person who sold it to me and that if it was lost it would take away one of my arms. And it did just that. Mind you I was not given an ability check when purchasing nor was I aware I could request checks myself as I was a new player. This would basically make my Barbarian useless as the only thing he could wield that he had now was a dagger. I eventually left the game and the DM basically make no effort to try to keep me in or offer any solution or work around. Wanting to respect the game I asked that my character be killed off and I would come in with a new character when it made sense in the campaign. I was never invited back again. So tell me. Was that Nat 1 justifiable? Or was I at fault for not combing through the PHB despite being a new player? This case has haunted me for years as I almost never played again and I submit to the honorable courts ruling whatever it may be.

Bex W

May it please the omniscient court, and the blinded and deafened Balif. This was the first session of a new campaign. It started out in a combat without any character introductions. That would have been fine and fun, if the DM hadn't said that it would take me 3 rounds of combat for me to arrive at the fight as I was placed on an airship above and away from the battle based on the DM saying that's where I would start. Not wanting to spend my first 3 round of combat in a new campaign doing nothing, and seeing this as a challenge to make a fun entrance onto the battle field, my character jumped off the ship toward the fight, ready to cast feather fall once I was close enough to the ground to negate any damage this crazy move could have caused. The DM ruled that I wouldn't be close enough to get to the scene of the fight, and in the end it still took me 3 rounds to enter the fight, doing nothing except making my sorcerer lose one of their valuable spell slots. Should I have been able to reach the battle faster, or should I have been a good little player and just stayed on the ship? I humbly await your judgement.

Brendan Hooker

Amazing Justice Axford, Magnificent Justice Murphy, Cool Justice Caldwell and Just A Guy Jake, I bring to you the case of "The Path to Hell is paved with Good Intentions". For the last three years I have been DMing a heavily modified Descebt into Avernus game for my lifelong friends. It's been an absolute blast and has blessed us with hilarious inside jokes and cherished memories. My players often joke that they won't allow the game to ever end. The best session of this game was the penultimate one. There was captivating combat, a near TPK, tears, and cheers as the Rogue brought the Demon Lord down and saved the day. It even showed irl as it did in-game. Revelations were made and I began working on the satisfying final session.  This was a seven months ago. We have not had a session since. I learned about 6 months ago that my players wanted to give me a surprise before the final session. I tried to be understanding, but it's been a long time and I've heard nothing of this surprise and no one has even mentioned finishing the campaign. I worry there is no surprise and this is instead a scheme to keep the campaign in permanent stasis. Justices, am I being ungrateful and impatient, or am I right to think my players have duped me into truly never finishing the game? I anxiously await your judgment, even if it doesn't validate my frustrations.

CarpeLiam

May it please the court and provide a Shure sticker for the bailiff to fiddle around with, I present the case of the Neutral Paladin V the Comedy Steed. I play a no-nonsense Paladin of Neutral alignment. My problem is that whenever I cast the signature Paladin spell “find steed”, my DM always gives me a goofy giant animal instead of a more traditional, thematic companion. Thus far, the steeds that I have summoned have arrived as a giant snail, a Saint Bernard with a New York accent, a Moose with a pun name, and most recently, a Dwarf driving a pedal car similar to Fred Flintstone. Despite only wanting a horse, I always played into it for the sake of the game. I’ve asked my DM out of character why my steeds are always so silly, and if I could ever get a more traditional one. He responded that since my character was aligned to a deity that is neither good nor evil, the steed that showed up would be of neutral alignment. Since the options for steeds in the spell are either celestials, fiends, or fey, I was stuck with the whimsical beasts of the feywild. I ask the court: should I have pressed harder for a regular horse, or am I resigned to a campaign where my signature spell is a punchline?

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

Aaron McC.

Dear honorable justices and lowly yet handsome baliff, May it please the court, I present the case of the sideways moonbeam. I am DMing a campaign with some friends and while we have had peaks and valleys at the table we've worked through all issues fairly harmlessly (save for losing one player due to mental health concerns from "playing too much D&D"). One of my players a dragonborn paladin Torinn has tried and failed at every attempt to find a way to cast the spell Moonbeam sideways (Kamehameha Wave) style. Now while this sounds cool I'm concerned with it breaking combat and becoming his go to move. While I find the novelty of it fun I know my players and if something works once they'd for sure try it again. I have toyed with the idea of making the BBEG use a sideways moonbeam attack as a playful rib but don't know if opening that can of worms is worth it cause my players would spend literally sessions trying to make this work. Honorable judges I implore your wisdom. Should I squash all dreams of a sideways moonbeam and definitively tell Torinn it's a no go or should I keep the dream alive. None of my players truly deserve punishment so any punishment aimed at them I will gladly serve

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)

Dylan C

Hello and thank you for hearing me Honorable Justices and cool guy bailiff. I bring the case of forced gender swapping. I'm in a really relaxed "just for fun" game where with no main storyline. While in a wizards office my genie warlock air genasi touched a random object it, in the words of my dm, "transed his gender". I didn't really say anything about because dm is non binary and they were very excited by this and also because the game isn't serious but it feels like it took away a my own agency. It even seems permanent because the wizard told me good luck with my new life. Mechanically I would have been content with a charisma save like with polymorph. So I ask, am I being a stick in the mug or should my dm let me make a save. A await your swift justice

Robbie Allan

To the honorable Crit Justices and the ever average bailiff, I come to you with a case that had me labeled "a psychopath" by one of the other players at the table. For context we were playing a homebrew campaign where the party was tasked with hiding a young boy who was the true heir to the throne of the kingdom we were living in. My character was an Oathbreaker Paladin who had felt betrayed by the hierarchy of his temple and thus broke his oaths, but to keep up appearances, didn't make it obvious. The other player was a monk. Despite not having any knowledge in game of my paladin being an oathbreaker he would constantly do insight checks on me, not let me take payment for our jobs, divide up the loot to the party etc. I wanted to play so I kind of just let this guy do whatever since I had fun Roleplaying with the other players but everything came to a head when he went down and almost died. I used all my lay on hands to help him up and told him to run. He did and I stayed back to fight a deathknight. With some good rolls and fat smites I actually killed the death knight on my own while the other members retreated. I collected the loot and found that it had a ring of protection in it. Keeping it for myself I then in character handed over all the goodies, this is when the player announced that I was stealing from them. Everyone else wasn't bothered but out of character this player went on a tirade that my character is evil and that stealing in game isn't right and that roleplaying a character that behaves like makes me a psychopath. The game promptly ended as the DM didn't want to deal with him anymore. Should I have just not kept the ring? Should I have embraced the stereotype and cast inflict wounds instead of lay on hands on the monk? I await my judgment.

David N

May it please the honorable justices and the also honorable Jake. I have been playing an alchemist with a homebrew mechanic where i am allowed to pick up random things and turn them into potions that will do whatever my DM decides. A few sessions in at discovered that rabbit feet made haste potions, and as a level 3 alchemist that can't do much else in combat this seemed like a good thing to stock up on, so i made it a habit to ask if i found any rabbits while traveling. This was fine until the most recent session. My DM had me roll to see how many rabbits i found and i got a natural 20. Problem is, we shortly found out that i found so many rabbits that i pissed off the guardian of the forest, basically punishing me for my 20. It all turned out OK in the long run, but i have to ask, were they wrong for using my existing behavior of hunting rabbits and my natural 20 against the party? For those concerned, because of this my character has given up on hunting rabbits, and we all love animals now in our party.

Easton Moore

May it Please the Court. To the ALMIGHTY Crit Justices Axford, Tanner, Murphy and the lovable but dimwitted Bailiff Jake. I bring to you the case of Valfire v Brick. During our adventure we were talking to some NPC’s and I a halfling bard wanted to talk to them and get information but my companion, a Goliath Fighter, wanted to fight. I asked the DM if I could persuade him to wait on fighting for the moment. He said go ahead but when I asked what I needed to roll on my persuasion he said I the player had to convince the other player to stop. That he isn’t going to let me persuade a player with a check, but would personally have to convince him. I tried and failed and left it at that. I protest if he as a Goliath fighter wanted me not to fight he would pick his characters strength and choose to restrain me we would do opposed grapple checks (we’ve had PvP grappling and we did roll for it) but since I tried to use my advantage in persuasion I couldn’t roll for it. Was I wronged for not being able to use the strengths of my character against him as he would be able to use his against mine? Or should I not be able to convince a PC with a roll and high stats. Both me and the DM listen to the pod so we leave it to you justices and humbly await your decision.

hereisfroggy

To whom it may concern, I derobe and immerse myself in the dice bath for 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 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, despite being Jewish, I have since accepted the gracious blessing of Dice Christ.

NoLifeKitty

To the honorable bailiff Jake T Hurwitz (I assume T idk) and the honorable Justices. The case of the sad lich is presented a third time for your consideration. During a curse of Strahd campaign my (Dragonborn paladin) and my wife and sister in law (eladrin rouge, half elf warlock) had breached a castle looking for clues on defeating Strahd. As we broke into the lichs quarters we came up a sad old lich who’s memories were mostly gone and he was depressed. My wife being the good hearted person she is doesn’t realize this is a lich and just assumes he’s a nice old skeleton who forgot who he was. Cut to my wife convincing my SIL to burn both spell slots restoring the lichs mind to help him be less sad, my brother (frustrated DM) allowed her shenanigans and the lich helped us through the castle without fighting anything else, but here’s where the issue arises honorable crits. Upon leaving my wife asked the lich for a means of communicating (purely so he isn’t depressed again) and my brother the DM decides she can have 3 single use scrolls to communicate with the lich, she began arguing she didn’t want it to be single use as she will never write the lich for on game information, she merely wants him to know he’s not alone. She eventually agreed to three single use scrolls (she later was forced to use, by the DM, to contact all members of our party to reconvene in Strahd). Was my brother the DM right in his single use scrolls or was he merely bullying my Wife out of a cute lich pen pal who wouldn’t even feed us info. I await your timely and impartial response and hope you have a fantastic afternoon.

Dan Killilea

My players lit my house on fire. Jake, I’ve been running a twice monthly Campaign for the last two years now and we had finally reached the end. One of our friends Chris is moving across the country next week so everyone brought their partners and we decided to make a combined DnD/Going Away Party/Potluck dinner. Everything started out great and my players were absolutely destroying the bbeg and having a blast doing it when we hear a scream from the kitchen. We all run in to see the top of my stove was on fire. Not like a pan, not like something else small, my whole god damned stove. I race and grab the extinguisher from under the sink but now a portion of my wall is on fire and smoke is legit choking everyone. The extinguisher worked but it took a minute and now my stove top is ruined and I have a decent size hole in my wall. We called the fire department they came and checked everything out and told me the house is safe and to be extra careful cooking with grease. I’m in shock just looking around at the damage. When Chris comes up to me, hands me a beer and asks me if I want to get back to the game? At first I thought he was being nice and trying to take my mind off the thousands of dollars of damage to my house. But when I told him I don’t think I’m going to be able to play anymore tonight he started getting mad. I was fucking stunned but worse yet the rest of my friends started backing him up saying it was the finale and Chris is leaving us so this is the last chance to play in person for who knows how long. Are you fucking kidding me! My house literally on fire! I said no two or three more times but when everyone stated really insisting I absolutely lost it. I told everyone to get back to the table and when we got back I had them all roll con checks. I didn’t even look at the dice. I narrated that they all had massive aneurysms and died. Before they could roll death saves the bbeg and his minions went around and killed them off permanently. I told them it was time to leave and to get out of (what was left) of my house. I love all these people but I was shocked. Since then things have pretty much gone back to normal but Chris apparently is pissed at me and a few of my friends have reached out saying he lost his chance for a real finale now and I owe him an apology. So I ask the court (but mostly Jake). Was I wrong to not want to play a game after my friends accidentally burned down part of my house?

Brendan Hooker

P.S. Only one of the players told me they were preparing a surprise, and only after I vented to him about not finishing the campaign. The others do not know I know and simply say "no" with no further explanation when I bring up having the final session.

Declane Gilhooley

Hey Sweeties and honorable Bailiff Jake I have a question about a fellow PC that keeps sleeping at the table. To give some context, he's a co worker of mine that I brought into my main campaign with my 2 other friends. We are a mix of in-person and zoom players. Myself, the DM and Sleepy (is what we will call him) play in-person. We also started a mini campaign because we wanted to play in person more. Started all this last year. Since then we have had to put both campaigns on hold due to DM burning out, pcs looking up monster stats as we are fighting, and pcs falling a sleep. 4 months later we where given a chance too play the mini campaign, also brought in an other co worker to help. We where setting up to fight an Adult White Dragon, everyone was excited. Come the the fight and Sleepy is passing put mid fight. Myself, the other pc and DM all woke him up on 3 different occasions. At least once he had no clue what was happening in the fight. We finally killed it with him down but not out, npc was killed, myself and the other pc are lower then 10 health. He was packed up and out the door as he had a date an hour later. He was more awake then when he showed up. I ask what should we do?

Abigail Hood

May it please the Magestic Justices, and the slightly above average Baliff. I present to you the case of the cleric complaint. I am the dm of a campaign we've been playing for a year and a half now. The party is at level 5 so they all recently had a large jump in the amount of damage they do. Except our monk. We have a DMPC with the party for the first major story arc. She is 90% on the background and mostly there because she's a cleric/ to answer questions the party has pertaining to things they already knew (she's basically their notes). She's the partys healer so that our two new players (a bard and a rouge) could play without worrying too much about if the party had a healer. Our monk is a veteran player and it's been discussed at length that once the dmpc leaves someone will get something similar to bev's amulet due to having no real healers in the party. They said they understood this. Cut to 3/4th of the way through the first story arc they chose for their 5th level to multiclass into cleric. Its been three sessions and they are very upset with the low amount of damage and spell slots they have compared to the other players. I've offered to let them take the 5th level in monk and switch it out but they have declined. They now insist that I make sure they have something that can help them cause as much damage as our level 5 bard and rouge. Do I cave and let them have something overpowered, being unfair to our bard and rouge in the process? Or do I let them be unhappy and let them deal less damage at the cost of having the perks of being a cleric?

Trevor Wurtsmith

May it please the honorable justices and potentially offend the baliff Our DM runs 2 different campaigns with 2 different groups, eventually we all thought it would be fun to have a group vs group PVP one shot with 4 people on each side. I was hyped and spent hours with my group trying to plan the ultimate team. A couple days before the session, the DM lays down the rules: everyone's lvl 10, he banned a few multiclass combos, and finally said we were allowed magic items. I asked if we were banning putting 1 bag of holding inside another one, because it would essentially end the battle. The DM rules it fair game, which I was willing to accept, but my group was very upset because they had put so much time into planning and this gimmick makes the win up to initiative order. This problem eventually became so contentious, we cancelled the session and the group broke up. But I'm curious, is the DM in the right to allow the trick, or are we right to ask for it to be banned for balance?

Hyacinth

May it please the beneficent Judges and may jake feel just alright, I bring you the case of the Acid Lock Dilemma. In a recent session my players snuck into the jail of a large city and attempted to free someone from their cell in exchange for information to aid their current quest. The players have an Alchemy Jug, which can summon acid (among other things) once per day. They summoned acid and poured it on the lock to dissolve it. In a moment of weakness I allowed this to happen, despite my real-world knowledge that acid can't melt locks (at least not quickly). Was I too soft on my players, and should I put a more difficult lock in their path in the future to atone for my crimes? I put myself at the mercy of the court.

Jack O'Keefe

Hell Supreme Crit Justices and supremer bailiff Jake. I present you the case of the new DM and whether i was right to walk away from two campaigns. A friend of mine had got into playing DnD during the pandemic and expressed an interest in DMing a campaign, so me and two friends signed up. It was the Dragon Heist module, and in it, the party inherits a pub/tavern to run. During the second session the new DM makes us interview a bunch of NPCs he created for staff members, and asks us questions about wages and roles. Now, i run a brewery and taproom in real life, and so i roleplayed interviewing fake staff and talking about drink mark ups all might, though admittedly, i came across as disinterested. After the session i messaged him privately and said i don't want to do that, as i roleplayed being at work for an evening after being at work, and thats not fun for me. He seemed to take it well, but then a session or two later he had us roleplaying staff issues and i left. The campaign fizzled out after and we still play dnd together both as characters. Recently he has started a Curse of Strahd campaign as a DM and i said im not interested. He called me unsupportive, and said im sure i made mistakes when first DMing. So i asked about the party, and i found out one PC is a Luxodon (elephantperson) Rogue. "because no one wants to talk about the elephant in the room.". Curse of Strahd is a horror campaign and i didn't think the character fit so i said no, and now his PCs are passive agressive to me in our other campaigns. Im right to think when DnD won't be fun? Or do i ride through just because he was a new DM.

Sutton Strother

Dearest most honorable justices and the bailiff whom I honor and respect, My party ran Tomb of Horrors as a B-game for about a year on days when one or more party members couldn't make it to the session. With the exception of one PC, we all managed to survive to the end and defeat Acererack! However, as we turned to go, it was revealed that one PC had stolen a Gem of Wish in an earlier chamber. He used it to murder the rest of us and take all the loot in the dungeon for himself and the secret society he belonged to. At the outset, our DM told us we didn't need to get overly invested in creating fleshed-out characters due to the deadly nature of the campaign, but most of us did anyway because that's how we like to play D&D. Toward the end, the DM even asked us if we liked these characters enough to play them in another campaign, and we all agreed we did. However, this traitorous player had not only invented detailed secret backstory but had plotted his betrayal with the DM behind our backs. When he struck and it was clear the rest of us were going to die without opportunity for self-defense or escape, the mood on the Zoom call immediately soured. Everyone was pissed at this conclusion to a story we'd invested so much time in, and I nearly quit the party altogether because outright character murder felt like crossing a boundary. I ask, who is at fault here? The murderous player, for insta-killing his fellow adventurers? The DM for not just allowing this to happen but acting as a co-conspirator behind our backs? Or are the rest of us just being babies?

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.

Sean

To the high justices and tucker’s future apprentice (hopefully) I have a case of me “doing what my character would do” That i need to know if i really was the bad guy. I was playing legend of the 5 rings and I was playing a lion clan samurai who took literal truthfulness very seriously (it’s from the way the clan is described in the book) One of the other players in the party a while into the game another player did something that would be considered dishonest by my character’s standards. I told the player out of character, that it would be best if he either made extra sure my character never found out or if he could find a way to come clean because I didn’t want the conflict that would happen. Was i a bully ? It’s been years and i still feel a bit bad about it. P.S. the end of that game was awesome withinin the first few minutes due to great and bad luck My character had an awesome death,

Andrew

May it please the venerable Supreme Crit Justices and the sometimes cool but mostly meh lowly bailiff Jake, I present to you the case of the stolen experience. We recently wrapped a 3 year long brutal Descent Into Avernus campaign and were really excited when the DM pitched that for the next campaign we start an all evil campaign at starting at level 16 having completed our goals from a previous campaign, a campaign after the campaign if you will. We had a great session zero building and fleshing out our characters, 3 of us are playing Harengon trust fund triplets who murdered our father for the inheritance. The turn comes in session 1, the DM sets out a fun and difficult but winnable first combat against a small army invading the island we control, but halfway through has a massive golem burst out from the sea with a giant gold disk in its chest. As it hit each of us our names were inscribed on the disk and as soon as it had us all it bamfed out. Pretty awesome plot hook, we're invested. At the end of the session however the other shoe dropped, for successfully defeating this small invading army and surviving this golem attack we received negative experience points and confirmed this will continue for every action we do including down-leveling until this golem is found and dealt with. Now I trust this DM, he's very good at what he does, but this is a fundamentally big element to leave out of a campaign pitch. Multiple characters were built with fun but wonky multi-classes that work because we were able to start at 16, that will be massively hamstrung losing levels. Nearing a month later we're quickly approaching our first down-level and while we're having fun our grumbling is intensifying. Was my DM wrong to spring a fundamental shift in the rules on us or are we being unappreciative of a subversion of the format? I humbly await your supreme wisdom and verdict. PS saw the show in Seattle and can't wait to miss my game next week as the DM and I will both be at the Portland show!

Zach Collier

To the honorable judges of the Supreme crit and even the even the goddess of magic herself, (Jake too) i have come with a petition to move a spell from the spellcasting list to the 10th lvl denying all from using it. Feeble mind-8th lvl This spell in latent terms lobotomizes the player from interacting with their character. Let alone role-playing with other contenders of the group(can't take actions. Don't know language, ect. For 30 canonical days) I was a ranger/bloodhunter in a ballroom blitz against werewolves. I knew who the creator of these lycan and he was sitting across the table as everyone is in panic. In a heroic attempt I got my sword and ran to him. Clipped the chair and gave him warning to stop these beasts. Judges why I ask when the dm had 3 different nobles have 3 different 8th level spellslots just to cast feeble mind? And keep in mind that I was the only one it was casted on in our party that whole fight and the others were freely able to do what they wanted. Was I wrong in making a heroic player decision? And what shall the deities say about the strength on this spell? I leave this in the hands of Supreme Crit and I hope to hear resolve. Thanks for reading and to lyk i left that party and found a group that loves the combative challenge, where then we add on story.

gordon read

Lyphyllendaraenoasoathoa (Leaf) in Portland, OR My dear, dear, dear, best friend Crit Justices. You guys are so cool and pretty and I’m so happy to be here in the court. Thank you for your time! Oh! Look, Jake is here too. Hey, man! This case spans two weeks. Week One: My party set up a meeting with a mid level crime boss to discuss prisoner exchanges, and the DM surprised us with the leader of the whole organization. That leader invited us to join a war effort (very much not the reason we had originally set up the meeting). We tried to lie and weasel our way out, but after our deception check the DM laughed and said “haha, it’s unlikely you’d be able to lie to this guy, he sees right through it. Roll initiative.” The leader was an assassin (CR 8) and there was some sort of artificer on top of that! For reference we are a level 6, caster-only party (one each: wizard, warlock, and druid). The leader nearly took me (the warlock) down in one hit, and the artificer set up a lightning storm that was hitting us every round. Then, we had to stop session half-way through the fight. Week 2: I realized it was an assassin in the intervening week. (I looked it up bc it was pretty clear we were fucked if we didn’t fight perfectly). Seeing the assassin’s low wisdom, I developed a plan. It was my turn once we started again. I disabled the assassin with “Hypnotic Pattern” and threatened the artificer to drop his weapon. I got a 19 on my intimidation check. He ignored me. We spent 4 rounds trying to hit the artificer, but couldn’t bc his AC was so high. Then, he was surrounded (all of us and the druid’s summoned crocodiles). Instead of dealing with that, he shot the assassin across the room! The DM set up a house rule that we can cast spells with provoking AoO at the start of the campaign (5 months), but we haven’t used it since. So the artificer got to wake up the assassin scot free (neutralizing one of my TWO Spell Slots) even while surrounded. From there, the druid fully died and I went down before the wizard finally stopped them. It feels like the DM is playing us-versus-him, and was upset the last few fights had gone so well for us. It also feels like our only choice was: fight this super hard enemy who we weren’t even expecting, or join his war effort as his lackeys. The question: Is the player of the druid justified in not wanting to come back to the table?

Final Girl

Esteemed justices of the high crit, and the bailiff of indeterminate quality, May it please the court, I bring you the case of the unheroic PCs. In a long running game with my friends, we played a group of selfish dumbasses who loved each other very much in a semi-dark world. The tone of the campaign had always been grey-moral and not outright heroes v villains and that was the tone the DM had set as well, as when we'd played straight up good guys in the past they'd often been sort of punished by the narrative for being overly naive so we'd all decided to switch to more grey moral types who had morals but weren't classic heroes. During an adventure one of the PCs ended up cursed and was going to die soon if it wasn't removed, so we went on a quest to get it cured, found somewhere it could be done, but also found a young girl who had a different curse and was trying to get help (hers was not fatal, just hard) We helped the girl as much as we could, but the person we found could only save one person, and though it was a tough choice, we ended up saving our PC, because it was a very beloved character to the player and even in story our characters wouldn't have saved a stranger over their friend, though tried to find another way to help her. Our DM was a bit miffed with us about this and the session wrapped quickly with other NPCs shaming us for not picking the girl to help, and with just an uneasy feeling amongst all of us. When we pressed the DM about this later he asked if we had considered if this was a test and that of we'd chosen to save the girl our friend might have been saved too. We all got a bit mad at that considering those types of self sacrificing heroics had been punished in the past and we weren't playing those kinds of characters. For the next while in game there was tension between the party and the DM as we felt we were being punished for following the tone of the campaign and he thought we had been silly to disregard the 'clear plothook' of a heroes test. I leave it to the court to decide if we were just assholes or if the DM was overly punishing. PS. Lots of love from Ireland,the Dublin show was amazing x

Just adopted a male bearded dragon and had to name it. So welcome to the family CHASE LIZ-ARD-SON.

May it please the cloister of monks of Dice Christ, I have a confession. Last year I started to DM for the first time for a group of friends. It was a party of six, so making my first encounter was tricky. I settled on two giant snakes and a giant spider in the catacombs of a nearby town. Though it was not difficult, I rolled a crit on a snake to constrict the Aarakocra monk. He had only taken one turn at that point, where he rolled a Nat 1. When I rolled damage, it was enough that he would have been instantly downed, and had he not been at full health, instantly killed. In my newbie DM panic, I fudged (lied) and instead did enough damage to leave him at 2HP (since 1 seemed suspicious). The adventure continued as normal. As the monk grew, he began to obliterate creatures later on. If that was the vengeance of an Old Testament Dice Yahweh, then so be it. I simply ask for the church's forgiveness.

Ryan Bourne

Dear our most esteemed Justices and our Sultry Bailiff Jake. I bring to you the case that split opinions of our party. We refer to this incident as 'a nat 20 dosent always mean success'. My partner and I were playing in a campaign during lockdown. We were playing a spooky magic couple of a necromancer (me) and a death domain cleric (partner). Our party were delving into a dungeon which we had successfully navigated encounters, traps, the usual dungeon fare. We entered into the final room wjere there was a figure clad in 'death' energy pouring over a book. My partner seeing this opportunity while he was not engaging with us fired off a guiding bolt whuch the dm agreed she could. She rolled a nat 20, against seemingly an undead creature. We all cheered seeing her triumph what would be a devastating blow. However in the moment the dm told us there was no damage to the figure and the 'death energy' deflected the bolt because it's not Necrotic and therefore didn't count against hitting him. Needless to say we were dumbfounded that this crit was taken away from her. We didn't argue for too long so as not to derail the session as the dms word is final, however even almost 2 years later we talk about this moment saltily. Was the dm right to take this away? Or are we justified in our grumbling. We humbly await your verdict.

Grace

May it please the court: To the most excellent and honorable justices of the Supreme Crit and also the bailiff who is fine I guess, can you help solve an argument my sister and DM and I have been having for several months? We were fighting a frost giant who had been using legendary actions throughout the fight; my sister dealt the killing blow because she got a nat 20 and used her last divine smite. As the DM was narrating how the giant was dying, he had the giant take out a hunting horn and blow into it, calling in the bigger daddy frost giant. We then had to run away because we were pretty low on health and spells as a group, and it kind of changed the trajectory of the story. My sister and I argued that giant was already dead and couldn't use his legendary action to do that, so the bigger giant should never have come. Were we wrong to argue so heatedly with the DM about it, or was he wrong to have his (very dead) giant pull out a horn to call his dad to the fight?

Thomas Gunn

Bless me, Dice Christ, for I have sinned. Or judge me justly honorable judges and the keeper of the blessed quads, bailiff Jake. I was DMing for my party. I am not typically the DM, but wanted to try my hand at it. I had setup an encounter and modelled my BBEG after Lord Frieza from Dragon Ball. To give my players a reason to dislike the BBEG I had planned to kill beloved NPC - pirate captain Dunbar Jackson using a magic spell that blasted him with a thousand tiny blasts( OPA Frieza Style). What I didn't expect was for one of the players ( The one who is normally our DM) to jump in front of the captian and save him. I had planned for this to be an insta-kill. So I applied the same logic to my player. I gave them a roll to get in-front of the captian, but not one for the spell save or the actual damage. It was a great moment, and my player did a really cool thing, but I always felt bad for not giving them a save. I await your Edict/Judgement/Verdict/Birdleusqe ticket,

Mad Dungeon Mama

I come to bear testimony of Dice Christ and his omnipotent omniscience! I have a kobold wizard, "Bwizzard da wizard wizard" (inspired very much by Calder). While running through a series of obstacles and skill checks on a floating island quest to find a secret air goddess temple, the party had to do an acrobatics check to hop across floating pillars, dozens of feet in the air above the ocean. Despite having a 17 Dex, my little kobold rolled not one, not two, but THREE natural one's in a row! Thankfully friends were nearby and saved my adorable little girl. But I do not complain! Dice Christ knew my smol character would not be able to jump these poles with her widdle legs. It made for beautiful roleplay and I praise Him and all His story telling glory!

Jack Campau

I write not to the justices but rather to the holy church of dice christ with a confession. I play in a campaign where I am a chronomancy wizard named Eon Yesteryear. I have the fortune's favor spell as well as the lucky feat. This combined with the chronomancer’s chronal shift makes it very easy to get many attempts on a role. I try not to abuse this power and only use it on superficial rolls, but at times I cannot help but give into the temptation of the time devil and dip into my pool of extra rolls. I figure that it makes sense that a wizard that is able to manipulate time should be able to make things go their way more often than other PC options, but I ask the church whether or not all these attempts are above board or if I am abusing my power by taking the decision out of dice christ’s hands and giving it to the time devil to play with? I will accept any punishment the church deems fair so that I may repent.

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?

Ryan Lonnergan

I beseech the glorious and wonderous Supreme Crit Justices and bottom feeding Bailiff (or vice versa depending on the week): I raise the case of the Nat 20 instant kill. While I don't play with this group anymore, the way that I left has me feeling like I overreacted. Here's what happened: Our DM had a rule that was quite simple. A Nat 20 was an instant kill/skill check success on enemies and players. Players could be revived 3 times before their soul was lost. We were quite high level so we already had access to revivify and my character had already been revived three times after getting killed through this rule. We were trying to evacuate the town that we were building because of a dragon threat, and I pushed on a villager to get them to move along. The DM ruled it as an attack roll, so I rolled and successfully pushed him. He decided to push me back, and the DM rolled and that 20 resulting in the death of my character. I was frustrated, but we took a break and I decided to just continue on and build a Moonshine inspired Circle of Spores Druid. In order to get me back into the story quick, we decided that I was a plant shop owner within the town. Another player I didn't really know well decided that it would be funny to get me to be their slave and rolled a persuasion check. Another Nat 20. A little more forcefully than I meant to, I slammed my character sheet and folder down on the table causing my dice and dice box to fly all over the floor. The table then sat in silence for 10 minutes while I picked up all of my dice. The DM decided to rescind the roll and all was fine for the rest of the session. Obviously, I didn't play with them after this incident but was I wrong to act out like that and is this rule even a good one?? P.S. The day this happened, I called out of work to play.

Sander Goldman

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

Tammy Connors

Most esteemed, highest of the Crits, Murph, Axford, and Tanner, as well that the best most worthy of bailiffs Jake. 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.

Jarod W

May it please the ever Supreme Justices and Jake is there too. A while back I was playing a homebrew alchemist Aarakocra that loved to throw bombs named Byrd. Byrd was great, I got to throw bombs and be a nuisance. However no one else liked Byrd and eventually we were in a city that was being besieged. I had taken the opportunity to fly around and be a nuisance when the DM said I flew too close to the castle and was shot by a ballista. I was crit, knocked unconscious and died from fall damage. To this day, Years after the event, I am still being razzed for this. Are my friends correct to razz me for this years later or do I need new friends?

1Lonelybaguette

Dear lovely, incredible, honorable judges, and Jack, I think. If it pleases the court, I come to you with the case of the Magic Window. In one of my first online games with strangers, I played a tiefling ranger knife thrower whose village had been ravaged by a dragon when she was a young girl. She spent her life studying the beasts, but had severe trauma around them. The DM had actually helped me come up with some of the details, and I was super excited, though these were all people I'd never met before. On our first session, though, I noticed that our supposedly "super experienced" DM (his words, not mine) was playing oddly. Throughout the game, he would tell me what my character would do, without giving me a choice or rolling for it. They were usually inconsequential actions, but the big one was when an entire, giant red dragon landed on the street right outside our second story window. Panicked, my character foolishly tried to jump out the window, but was told "oh, actually the windows are magically sealed, and you can't go anywhere," followed by the BBEG giving a massive monolog to the town. We were level 1, BTW. I was frustrated by the DM taking away my choices, and worried that anytime I wanted to do anything the DM didn't want me to, he would use similar "magic window" excuses to prevent me from doing it, so I informed him the next day that I'd be leaving the campaign. When I posted this same story online, a lot of the internet blamed me, not the DM. Was I too hasty in my retreat, or was I right that the DM should not have control over my character's actions? I humbly await and accept any punishment the court deems appropriate.

Classic Vlasic

Honorable Justices Axford, Tanner, Murphy, and any potential new additions to the bench. And Josh or whatever, the bailiff guy. May it please the court. I bring a case that has been building in my group's main campaign for a number of years. We had our first session in January of 2018. When we started, we were all in our mid-20s with day jobs, and we've added two new players to the table over time (5 PCs now). For the first couple of years, we played at least every other week with some stretches where we played weekly. Each session lasts anywhere from 2-4 hours. When quarantine started, we started pretty consistently playing every week because we didn't have anything else going on at night. Now we are back to consistently playing every other week. I say all that to say, accounting for the occasional cancelled sessions, we've easily played around 175 sessions and over 500 hours of this campaign. Our DM does an incredible job, has fantastic encounters, balances combat and RP, and manages the table perfectly. Now my complaint. We just leveled up to 14. The players are starting to feel like our DM is a little stingy with the level ups. We don't use experience, so it's difficult to know how/if we're progressing to a new level. The DM says they expect us to reach 20 before the end of the campaign, but at the rate we're going, that might be 2025. So I ask the court, are we right in thinking our leveling pace is skewed on the slow side? Or are we just being ungrateful? Is there an appropriate pace of leveling for home games that you each prefer?

Michelle Phelps

Dear honorable and extremely ripped Crit Justices/priests and also the soggy Wheaties boy that is the bailiff, I'm here to plead my case and confess not my own dice sins, but the sins of another. I have met some absolutely amazing friends who I play an online campaign with. The campaign is a super fun and unique home brew world and everyone usually has a really great time. There's just one issue: the DM constantly fakes their roles. This was something the DM actually mentioned when we started playing, saying they would occasionally fudge rolls if the outcome would completely derail the story or ruin an important world aspect. I ideologically disagreed with this mentality, but did respect the DMs right to do this. The issue is that almost every roll the DM makes feels fake. Every time a player casts a spell, we are asked our save DC before they will reveal the roll and its always beaten by just one or two. Every time there's an important contested check, we have to roll first and the DMs outcome is always just slightly higher or lower than ours. A lot of high risk decisions are left to coin flip. Our group is a "tails never fails" kind of group, and of the approximately 30 coin flip checks we have made this far, only 2 have been tails (yeah I've been keeping track). We have tried to subtlety mention this to the DM, asking if they would be willing to roll on Dnd beyond like the rest of us do so we could see the rolls and feel better but they say they want to always keep us in suspense. Again, most parts of this campaign are super cool and fun, it's just frustrating when it feels like a cool move fails not because of the dice but because the DM decided it should fail. I implore you justices, are we the players being wronged or should we be willing to trust the DM's judgement calls to keep their story and world on track? Thank you for your wisdom and mercy.

Kyle Corbett

To the lofty, towering, precariously high up there, justices/archbishops in the church of dice Christ and the sweet wittle altar bailiff who just can’t seem to get it together. Someday champ I am sure! May I present to you the worst case of Deja Vu. I have an Amazing group, DM, Bard, Barbarian, Ranger, and yours truly the Druid/Cleric. The dungeon master, bard, and ranger host our weekly session in the charming farmhouse they all rent together. We always aim to get together somewhere between 3 PM and 4 PM for our sessions which means we play into what most spoke would consider dinner time. Because we are frugal people, and they have a very wonderful kitchen, the three people who live at the house normally insist on making dinner for the rest of the party. Herein lies the problem, as it gets to be about “that time” the Ranger will start to drift away from the table and begin meal preparation. The bard, one of her partners, will often call out instructions to her, and eventually begin to drift into the kitchen as well leaving myself, the barbarian and the Dungeon master at the table. The DM trying to be respectful of everyone’s time (barbarian and ranger get sleepy around 9) insist we keep playing. If we initiate combat or an RP encounter the Bard or Ranger will often call out to the Barbarian or myself to pilot their character. On several occasions the Bard and Ranger has returned to the table and effectively vetoed what occurred in their absence stating, “That’s not really what I would have done.” The DM, the third person in this throuple will then Retcon, or rewind large swathes or combat or story so that their partners can interact in scenes, redo attack roles etc. This was funny at first and we considered it mild déjà vu our characters would experience but the Bard and Ranger and pushing for more déjà vu scenes after they complete dinner effectively undoing some fun gameplay and hijinks that the barbarian buddy and I get up to. I ask the court should I be grateful for my tasty dinner and comradery or should I advocate for the past being the past and say something regarding the constant reset in gameplay? PS: My druid cleric has the oracle feet from Theros and prior to all of this the Dm would use Déjà vu as a cue I may be getting a premonition. Now I just think it means dinner is almost ready. I await your judgment, Kyle C.

Mark Jones

Dear courageous Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and Baliff Jack. I was part of a pirate themed campaign playing a celestial warlock who wished to travel the seas looking for his father and uncover the prophecies etched into his quarter staff by his patron. My DM was very upfront about being a railroad heavy DM and didn't want us to veer from the path he laid out and everyone in the group was ok with this. So we come to the first game and everyone is having a good time, all of us playing together for the first time, and we get to our first combat. We run into a bounty hunter who was sent after us for an unknown reason and he tells us he has already captured our crew. He wants us to go with him quietly or he will kill our crew as we are the only ones he needs. As DnD goes, we fight and kill this bounty hunter and the men he brought with him. We are level 3 to start and have used most of our resources to finish this fight. All of us are low and I am out of spells and all healing. We decide that we have to get our crew back and with their leader not returning anytime soon, they will assume he is dead and execute our crew. As a warlock, I took Mask of Many Faces and proposed that I act as the captain and bring my two party members with me as prisoners back to the bounty hunter ship. So we do just that and it works flawlessly. I pass all my checks and end up face to face with the first mate, a strong as shit hobgoblin, and we only need to get past him to get our crew. Thinking on the fly, I convince the Hobgoblin to give me the cell keys and I unlock an empty door to put the "prisoners" in but ask him to take out any potential weapons first. I pass my check and the Hobgoblin goes into the cell and I slam it behind him. At this point, the DM hasn't really given any hints on what he wants us to do, and hasn't seemed annoyed. He very casually just says, "the Hobgoblin rips the jail door off the frame and attacks." No warning, check, or anything we just go into a combat we have been trying to avoid. So combat starts and the Hobgoblin goes first. He swings...but with only his fist. Every turn he only attacks with his fist and deals very low damage when he hits. Losing this fight would be almost impossible even for how low on resources we are, but the Hobgoblin also has a massive HP pool. After about 1.5 hours, we killed him. To this day, that was the most boring combat I have ever been part of and I felt robbed of a great plan to rescue our people with minimum fighting. Was the DM to blood thirsty or am I being a salty sailor? I await your judgment.

Kenna L

**resubmission, edited for brevity May it appease the empyrean judges and tickle the plebeian bailiff. I present to you the case of the total party kill from Grecian hell. I played in a campaign set in Ancient Greece where our party was TPK’ed by the god of wine. At the start of the battle we were actually winning. The DM became visibly frustrated and I (as a fellow DM) could see that he was changing the encounter mechanics mid battle. After a long drawn out slaughter, I was the last PC standing. Everyone just sat there confused and a bit upset, but I tried to roleplay through the bad vibes. My ranger surrendered, begged for mercy, and was promptly beheaded. Only THEN did the DM reveal that we were now in the underworld, and not actually perma dead. At this point some of the party had been dead and sitting silently at the table for over an hour. The mood turned to relief and awkward laughter, but was still pretty tense. So was it unfair of me to be salty when there were clearly good intentions behind his TPK? Or are mid battle mechanic buffs an affront to dice christ herself. I await your judgment…

Ross Gilliland

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

Nick T

May it please the court, the unimpeachable Supreme Crit Justices, and the dubious-at-best bailiff...I present to you the case of Flaming Hot Cheetos. I've been running a 5e campaign with a group of new players, all of whom are close friends of 15 years. It is my first time DMing, and I've put in a lot of effort to create a new world and populate it with fun quests and interesting NPCs in hopes of being less focused on the mechanical nature of the game and more on the fun, role-play aspects. The players have been on board and dialed in, but our Rogue, aptly named Flaming Hot Cheeto, has been taking it too far. He has decided that his character's alignment is chaotic evil, and as a result has been actively working against the party's best interest, including killing several key NPCs and stealing from other party members. Several members of the party approached me outside the game to talk about how they wanted to kill his character, and I decided to confront Flaming Hot Cheeto in an upcoming battle with a bone devil. Flaming Hot Cheeto fell in battle, the party made no effort to revive him, and ultimately his character died. The player was furious and claimed meta-gaming and collusion had been put in place against him. Was I wrong to give in to the desires of the party, or did Flaming Hot Cheeto bite off more than he could chew? I leave my fate, and the fate of all spicy snacks, in your hands.

NormalRealHuman

To the effulgent judges, who guard the people, and if it must touch the hands of the overzealous bailiff who thinks above his station I pray he does not soil it with sticky fingers. I present the case of the executed aarakocra. I was invited to join a one shot and made an aarakocra cleric of order with the prompt we would be working for an authoritative mindflayer state. When I introduced my character, I soon found all the other players either were indifferent or outright hated the government. After making clear I love the government (even with some iffy political decisions) I died in every encounter because no one would defend or help me. After a few revivifies from government agents, the rogue sneak attacked me during the boss battle second round and I stayed down for the next hour and a half of playing. I ask the court, who was wrong in this? Was I gaslit into being the only pro-state player? Or did my friends take their anarchic ways too far? I await judgment but gather in the shadows for vengeance.

Westin Lanser

Honored Bailiff and nasty, sneaky judges. I come before you with a case of Backstory Buyer’s Remorse. A key part of my character is a deep, unrequited love for a certain NPC. Last week, my DM introduced them into the story for the first time and it turns out that I just can’t fucking stand them. I’ve decided to follow your example and take the law into my own hands on this one but I still need expert advice. What sort of punishment does my DM deserve for his behavior?

whosthekoon

To the most honorable crit justices and that guy joke, allow me to present the case of sticky grandma and the orc tribe. I was playing in a campaign where I was a half orc and we had encountered an orc camp shortly after we had visited a town, during our visit to the town my character spent a large amount of time at the brothel with a woman known only as "the sticky grandma" when we made it to the orc camp through shenanigans I became the leader of the orc tribe,that is until I mentioned my experience with sticky grandma to my orc brethren,upon which the dm revealed these were "Warhammer orcs" who would never sleep with a human and had the whole camo turn on me and kill my character. Was the dm wrong for not revealing this information up top in the campaign,or should I have not visited and caught orclamydia from sticky GMA in the first place. I humbly await your ruling. Ps: jk Jake I love all you guys

Ricardo, devotee of dice christ

DND court submission The Case of The Bane of Dice Christ: May it please the court, the honourable judges, and the writhing bailiff! I would like to combine church and state for a matter of great importance I am concerned that a player of mine is fudging rolls in my campaign and another I play with them in. I’ve very rarely ever seen them fail a check or roll and other players notice it too. We’ve spoken to them previous but they deny the accusation stating that their character stats are just very good. Am I in the wrong to not trust my friend when they say they play fair or should I be wary? If you have advice on how to remedy the situation I would like to hear or if I must I will accept punishment. (Ps: I previously submitted my case about a dice that rolled high and discovered it was in fact a balanced die, thank you for your wisdom!)

C. Connor Hatcher

My humble opulent justices, and also Tucker's Girlfriend's Roommate, I come forth with a confession for Dice Christ, and seek his forgiveness. I am DMing my friends in a sci-fi/fantasy campaign, and they have recently befriended a bartender NPC. What they don't know is that this bartender, Trin, is actually part of a shadowy organization of cyborgs that have been searching for them. Recently the party was discussing a previous cyborg they dealt with in earshot of Trin. They asked if he reacted to the mention of the cyborg. I asked for a perception check, and one of the players got a dirty 20. I said he didn't. In my mind, he wouldn't react because their involvement with these cyborgs is exactly why he's following them, and he wouldn't blow his cover. Still I feel I cheapened the roll and a possible interesting development, despite it throwing my planned reveal off the rails. So please, Dice Christ, forgive me for hiding the true intentions of my cyborg npc. I feel like I have walked the path of the railroad and need straightening. D.C. be with you. (For clarity, I have the npc using true polymorph scrolls (warforged to human) to hide his true form from the party. I've hinted that he's remarkably dexterous, good with computers, and cold to the touch)

Max Piper

To the justices of the crit, and the bad widdle bailiff. I present the case of the failed color spray. I was in a fight where my party interrupted a gaggle of bugbears torturing a small goblin. Upon intervening, the bugbears noticed me, a gnome wizard, and decided to gang up on me. I was thrown against a wall, and pummeled while my other party members tried to attack and distract them. In a rare turn where I was conscious, I decided to cast color spray in hopes it would aid my allies in saving me. I showed my DM in Roll20 where I was casting it, and rolled the HP. The DM narrated how the goblin, who they’d earlier described as hanging on to life by a thread and hiding under a bed with his hands over his head, was able to absorb more than enough of the HP pool that none of the bugbears were affected. In a fight that saw me almost one-shotted two times, and rolled a nat 1 on a death save, it was disheartening that my one turn utterly failed. I ask the court, was my DM fair in their ruling, or would my character be competent enough to avoid characters they don’t want to hit?

Matt M

May it please the court, honorable justices and the one who does the hard work. I am playing in a game where another party member is a kenku who talks exclusively in mimicry, and takes this to the extreme of refusing to impart information to the rest of the PCs because his character "wouldn't have heard enough of the words before". For example, there was an important encounter he had on his own with a necromancer who had skeletal cats, which I know my pc wants to investigate but every time I ask questions in game, the only response is that his kenku "makes a cat noise". Is this deep role-playing fair or has it gone too far. My character has a prophesy that I think might relate to the necromancer, but I can't come up with an in game reason to extrapolate "a cat noise" to the actual facts needed. I humbly await your justice.

Swamplake Soundscapes

To the honorable Jake and several people who seem like they may be slightly less honorable, other than Emily who seems very honorable. I play in a campaign with two newer players, a ranger and bard respectively. During a recent raid on a cloud giant fortress, I killed the sitting ruler and declared myself sovereign of the tower. My ranger and bard companions, rather than realize their luck at getting to live in without managing the castle, feel the need to rip every valuable item off of thrones, walls etc. My question is, at what point do I attack them for stealing from my treasury? Caldwell is also pretty honorable I guess.

Jordan Johnson

Honorable Crit Justices Murphy, Axford, and Caldwell – as well as the lowly, rail-thin bailiff Jake. I present to you my dilemma of the aimlessly-wandering wife. You see, I am married to a woman who’s generally disinterested by D&D and RPG’s of any sort. Though one night while I was playing Breath of the Wild, she walked over and demanded “Hey, let me run around.” She then took my switch (with force) and started running around in the game. She has no call to adventure or desire to progress the story. She just likes walking around. Cut to last week, when after years of requesting she give D&D a chance, she finally gave in when I asked her to join a one-shot I would DM for some friends. She rolled a Leonin paladin named Fern. When asked about their personality, ideals, and bonds, she simply said “Fern just wants to walk around.” We ran ‘The Wild Sheep Chase’ where the party met a sheep who was actually a polymorphed wizard. The other party members were super interested and engaged, fighting off bad guys and eventually freeing the wizard of his wooly shackles. Fern did not aid in combat or help free the wizard. The only times she was interested were during the walks in-between encounters, where she demanded I let her roll nature checks to investigate the local plant life and fauna. So Justices and Jake, it seems that D&D is not suited for this belligerent and violently nonchalant wife of mine. Are there any other sorts of RPG’s, board games, or video games you can think of that we could enjoy together? Thank you and I humbly await your opinions, Jordan

David prendergast

Honorable Justices and honorable Just Is A Cool Baliff, I present to you the case of the tragic(ally bad) backstory. Just got done with a campaign for a bunch of newbies and wanted to start the next one with a bit more substance. I sent a one paragraph writing prompt for players to tune their backstories to. Everyone was very excited and responded quickly except for one. They sent me their backstory six hours before the first session. It hurt to read. I confronted them about this but they refused to change and when game time came around they played for only one session before complaining that the RP felt bad. This player left this campaign after being embarrassed about it and I frankly did little to help them. Should I have done more, or was I right to allow the car crash? I know brevity is important but this case comes with a request; below I have included the backstory they sent me. If I could request that Emily reads it as a pitch to Murph for a new character. It should be noted that the prompt was for a very serious horror campaign, and the players were level one. “my backstory is that I am the son of the God Odin and I wield this light hammer. I love doing drag but my dad hates it and banished me away from home. So I traveled to fight monsters with the guardians of the multi verse. We ran into a Goliath named Thanos, who I failed to kill. He then killed the love of my life Star lord, the rogue leader of the group. So after that fail and embarrassment and loss, I decided to travel by myself And go on a journey of self discovery. That’s how I’ve come to our location and campaign now”

Dominic Stacey

To the Crit Justice's and that sexy bailiff Tucker, may it please the court. This is more of a goof on me as the DM. My players were exploring a vampire's castle dungeon with jail cells on either side like in a modern prison. In the last prison cell I put the big bad vampire's coffin, guarded by a stone golem. As the players approach the call I had the golem on the inside gloating how they'd need the key from a different golem somewhere else in the castle but my gunslinger PC took advantage of a house rule I declared session 1. In that any basic ammo is infinite for the players so they could always shoot from a distance if they wanted to. With this in mind the gunslinger declares, "I shoot the golem and then the coffin until it's dead and the coffin destroyed." And with there being gaps between the bars of the jail cell he could shoot at the golem but the golem couldn't punch back. We all had a blast from this expwrience and as the golem said with his dyibg words, "I don't think this was thought all the way through "

DJY333

Dear beloved bailiff and co. I write to you on this dreary evening to pose a question: Can a rogue/monk multi class deal sneak attack with unarmed strikes? I was building a character that’s primarily an inquisitive rogue. I envisioned him as a washed up, alcoholic ex cop. While deciding how he would fight, I decided that he gets into a lot of bar fights, so unarmed fighting seemed the most appealing. For this, I took a level of monk (so my punches would scale with dex), as well at the fighting initiate feat to get the fighting style. However, I was heartbroken to realize that sneak attack specifically only applies to a weapon with the finesse property. Rules as written, my fisticuffs technically meet neither of these qualifications. However, is it really all that much of a stretch to say my fists have finesse? Especially since I took a whole level of monk and a feat to achieve this? I eagerly await your response.

Joshawa

Honorable crit justices. I bring you a case of a tpk and whether it was justified or not. My party wanted me to write and eldritch horror arc pitting the dm against the players ( one of the party members wrote a lich into his backstory and this takes place in his pocket demension). They were in a Maze and were being stalked by 2 wardens of the Maze. They ran into the weaker one and the weaker one warned them of how powerful the other one was. I put it there for them to run from. After winning the fight with the weaker one, they drew from the deck, got the wish card and wished for the bbeg to teleport to them and help them fight the stronger warden. ( this was before my bbeg got his power) this caused a tpk and my bbeg to die. I'm a new dm and my first campaign. Was in I the right or should I have trying to pull something out of thin air to same them. The warden in question was a nightwalker.Thank you in advance for viewing my case

Jardin Nome

I come before you today to prostrate myself before dice christ and seek the guidance of his most wise and uncomfortably sexy clergy. I've been playing once a week in an online campaign since near the start of the COVID lockdowns. Although everyone in the group were strangers when we began playing, over the last two years we've become good friends and are seriously discussing all flying into one city to play the campaign's final few sessions in together in person. This is where the group's sins before dice christ may be laid bare for all to see. Since we were strangers when we began playing all of the PCs used our discord tags as our names, but we slowly transitioned to using our real names instead. All except our DM. His tag started out as a very medieval sounding name, that we all assumed was a gamer tag, but he's never transitioned to anything else. Of the six PC players in the game, none of us is sure what his real name is. When a new player joined the group last year I thought we'd finally crack the mystery during introductions, but when the players finished introducing ourselves he transitioned to talking about the game without introducing himself. To make things more confusing, the only time he referred to himself in the 3rd person, he used his very medieval sounding gamer tag. It's not impossible that, as the DM who set the whole game up, he's been using his real name all along. But if that's the case he has what would be a very unusual name for 21st century america, imagine if your new coworker introduced themselves as Athelstan or Ecgberht. So, your holinesses, I ask. Is there a tactful way to find out my DMs preferred name after not knowing it for two years? And will dice christ forgive me for my sin of being a bad friend?

ZZYZZXX

To the illustrious and benevolent supreme crit justices who are wise and kind beyond their years (and Jake I guess). I come with either a case or needing penance under dice Christ My very first game ever playing dnd but having listened to naddpod for dozens of episodes I thought that the dm was improperly using the prone mechanic for her ogre having him use his full turn to stand up from repeatedly going prone instead of half movement I wanted to bring this up as I thought it was wrong but being my first game playing ever and the joy at repeatedly seeing an ogre slip on a floor of flaming ball bearings I said nothing and we absolutely dunked on her monster. Should I have spoken up even being uncertain on the rules due to my inexperience playing? I humbly prostrate myself before dice Christ or the judges as seen accordingly

PG Lusk

To the honorable justices and bailiff (I can't tell you guys apart you all kind of sound the same), I have an EXTREMELY quick case. I'm a player in a Curse of Strahd campaign. We're all very RP and shenanigan heavy. But recently I realized it's been a minute since we did any combat, and upon checking the logs, I discovered that the last time we rolled for initiative was September 2021. I half-jokingly brought this up to the DM and he said more or less, "there have been fights, you guys have just avoided them", but I can't for the life of me discern where these fights were supposed to be. Am I being too bloodthirsty? Or are we being starved for combat?

Mama Hot Tomato

Hearken to me, O Justices! Thy bailiff bears my plea, worm though he may be. Gather as he regales you with my tale of woe: The Song of Monsters and Miners. In the first session of a campaign with a new group, the party was tasked with vanquishing monsters in nearby mines. The monster infestation supposedly kept the miners from continuing their work. My character, a hot-headed and foolhardy noble, antagonized the miners with her haughty demeanor. As retaliation for one verbal barb too many, the miners attacked the noble. As a hired monster hunter, I was certain I could make short work of the miners. Turns out, these miners were majors. In one round, they had not only knocked my level 1 fighter unconscious but done enough damage to kill me outright (negative max HP). And LO! The DM sweat did burst forth. They claimed I did not pass beyond Dice Christ's DM Screen, but was simply unconscious. I replied that I was fine with death, as I wanted the game to have stakes, but the DM insisted I lived. After waking up, my character gathered the party and insisted we were being set up. The lowly miners were more powerful than us, the team hired to slay the monsters in their shafts. We set about hatching a plan to fight the miners instead. I saw the DM wish that they had killed me, and I left the game after that session. O Justices, I beseech thee - should my soul have been allowed to wander the Yonder, or was the DM right to spare my sinful flesh?

Cardine Sardine (your favorite bean)

To the blessed bailiff Jake and those other guys. I am new to DnD and started out DMing games for my friends. They don't seem as into it as I am, so I decided to reach out and find a local group. A DM invited me to join her session, and I was excited to be on the other side of the DM screen. I was given very little information about the campaign beforehand, except that it takes place in ravnica. I did a bunch of research to get a good character that could fit into this world. When the day came to start the campaign, the DM still didn't give me any information and just kinda jumped into where the other party members left off. With no explanation offered I just happened to be in this tavern where the parties fire just started asking what I know about what they've found. I didn't know what they were even talking about. Moving through the session, we were lead by the DM to a dragon that we had no chance of beating. I attempted to offer a trade for the dragon's hoard, but the DM didn't even let me roll for it before pushing us away from this encounter they set up. (I had really good persuasion). Next thing you know we were pulled into a completely different direction. I ended up not going back to this group because it just seemed too unorganized and I was completely lost trying to figure out what the story is. The DM mentioned before playing that she was having trouble getting and keeping party members, so it felt kinda bad. Justices, am I wrong for abandoning this campaign? Or does keeping me in the dark about what's been going on warrant my disinterest? I humbly await your verdict. -Cadren A. (Patreon won't let me change my name 😂)

Nick Lindstrom

Honorable crit justices and the ever socially-mobile bailiff, I DM a campaign in which one of the three player characters is a Paladin with the shield master feat, and he frickin loves it. He's so into his shield that he asks at just for just about every saving throw if his shield can give him advantage, regardless of its relevance in the situation. I've punished him once when he crit failed using it to try to open a trapped door, but he threw a half-joking mini fit because the shield is also his holy symbol (even though the punishment only reduced the AC bonus by 1 until he got it repaired). Nevertheless, he persists relentlessly in his attempts to shield himself from consequences. I ask the esteemed court, do I ignore his antics with a curt 'no' and simply move on, or is he deserving of some more severe consequences?

Stations & Starships

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, in my embarassment, I had the weretiger jump into the river and swim away to avoid a TPK. The true casualtiy was my own conscience. 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 my sins.

Andy McCabe

To the mighty and incomparable justices whose kindness and mercy are beyond compare, and also Jake, I am a first time DM requesting advice. As a DM I am often outvoted by my players, but none more egregiously than this. I had designed an encounter where the players had to fight on a speeding carriage while being chased by bandit barbarians on horseback. My Druid cast Pass Without trace and argued that the wording of the spell (an unnatural fog obscures your location) granted them basically permanent hiding within the range of the spell. When the bandits boarded the carriage they were then met with a seemingly empty carriage and were rolling perception v stealth every turn and losing thanks to pass without trace. My table declared victory over the barbarians easily but the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. So I ask you judges, do I have an incorrect idea about the DM’s role at the table or are my players being unreasonably by outvoting me when I make rulings. I humbly await your verdict

Jesse Young

To the honourable Supreme Crit Justices and Critical Failiff (sorry Jake), I bring to you the case of the unwilling enemy boat. In the middle of some intense sea-based combat with a small armada that was attempting to sink our ship, one member of the group – a fairy rogue – flew over to one of enemy boats and cast Reduce, much to the hype of the group. Confusingly, the DM then stated that the ship was going to take a constitution saving throw. We protested, pointing out the spell’s language specifies “if the target is unwilling” as a condition for the saving throw, and that a boat has no willpower with which to resist. The DM continued to insist that the boat could resist on the basis that it had a stat block. We had to concede, and then the boat made its save and resisted the spell. Here’s the thing – he could have asked for an ability check or even ruled that a boat is a vehicle and not an object and thus didn’t qualify to shrink, and that would have been fine. But now I’m thinking about this series of planks that not only knows a spell is being cast, but thinks “Hmm, I don’t like this". The DM still maintains that the boat, and I quote, “didn’t want to shrink”. There has been no indication that it was a magical living boat or a mimic. Are we right in thinking the concept of an unwilling boat is totally wack?

Gooserocket

To the venerable crit justices and the supple bailiff Jake (the true puppet master of the court), I bring you the case of the dwarven bard Mendick Strongwood of clan Oakenshaft. I DM for Mendick; 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 -in one fight, he went invisible immediately, showed himself to try to shoot a giant spider, missed, and then went into hiding again. 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.

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 the end of the world. 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. 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.

Jacob Bradley

May the highest Cardinals of the Church of Dice Christ and Jake Hurwitz bless me for I have sinned. My party was fighting an archdevil who also happened to be their adopted npcs mom in her castle in hell. I used an adjusted Zaire’s statblock for the fight, with a gimmick based around setting the party on fire. Her legendary resistances, a dispel magic action, a higher crit range, and a mid fight reaction were all only triggered on flaming party members. Midway through, our fighter and paladin had dropped after I rolled 2 crits on the devils multi attack. After this was our warlocks turn who attacked with his tentacle and cast cone of cold. This damage was enough to bring the devil into range of its reaction that triggered fireballs on flaming PCs and then put out the fires. The warlock wanted to use Cone of Cold to put out all the fires, but I didn’t because it didn’t explicitly say the spell does so, the fires were made by an archdevil in her lair, and I wanted the reaction to go off. The fighter and paladin would die due to the reaction, but on the paladins next turn, I allowed him to talk to his god and roll for Divine intervention like clerics do and he made it, then managed to chain smites on the devil before the NPC gave him an attack reaction where he crit smited and killed the devil. Then the fighter got revivified. The resurrections of the paladin and fighter made no long term damage, but I realized after I could have given the fires some sort of saving throw to not get put out by the cone of cold. Can dice Christ forgive me for being a sweaty DM and ruining my warlocks cool moment? I await your judgement with baited breath.

Ya Boi Troy

The the lovely judges and the humble bailiff I bring to you the case of the shaking staircase. I play a dragon born, oath of ancients paladin. The party and I where ascending a large spiraling staircase, when the we got to about 100ft. up the tower began to shake and we hade to make a Dex save. I was the only one to fail and my DM said that I fell off and will have to take damage. I asked if I could misty step back to the stair case and he said I couldn’t because it was not a reaction. I argued that is that I was falling 100ft. and in that time should be able to misty step back on to the stair case. He told me that I couldn’t because it would have happened to fast. So I took the damage and had to crawled back up the stairs because it was still shaking. So I ask the court for should I have been able to misty step during my 100ft. fall or was my DM right to be a stickler? Thank you for your time, and I anxiously await you verdict.

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.

Taylor Vittitoe

Honorable Priest Justices! I am writing in with an update on the confession of the cropped campaign rolls a few weeks ago. After reciting many Hail Dice Christs, I returned to our next session and confessed my sins to the group and apologized. My friends were extremely forgiving, saying they didn’t notice any suspicious behavior. I can only assume they are protecting my pride like Moonshine and Bev did for Hardwon in campaign 1. My repentance continues as I play a healer in our latest campaign. Thanks to the wise ruling of the judges, I may be able to crit for my friends instead of myself. I just wanted to thank you all and my adventuring party for teaching me that dnd is not about wining, but about having fun with friends. And gambling, a lot of gambling.

Tim The Enchanter

May it please the court, the [positive adjective] justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the [somewhat negative adjective] bailiff Hurwitz. May I present the case of the Butt-Stealing Bird. About seven years ago, I was playing in my first real D&D campaign. We had a party of six, and almost all of us were new to the game…all but one. And let me tell you, he was a rules lawyer. He would argue with almost every ruling the DM made, even when all the rest of us just said to go with the DM and move on. Now we jump into the scenario at hand. Our DM arguer is playing an Aarakocra Monk. We had just found a small relic that we were tasked with finding, and one of my party members, a Half-Orc Rogue, wanted to be funny. With the DM’s allowance and a high roll, the rogue hid the relic up his butt. Now, the rest of the party didn’t object to this (it wasn’t the first time this character hid valuables in his butt), so we moved on. Except, once the next combat broke out against some lizard-folk, the DM arguer revealed that he in-fact did object, and HE wanted to have the relic. During the fight, on his first turn, he proceeded to try and roll Sleight of Hand to remove the relic from the butt of the unwilling rogue. This of course angers the rogue, and they proceed to 1v1 while the rest of us fight a brutal battle against lizard-folk. At the conclusion of the battle, the monk manages to knock out the rogue, which definitely spurs the party to question what happened. The monk (and more importantly, the player) refused to yield that what he was doing was absurd and causing strife. After I (a Paladin) had healed the rogue, he immediately turned to the monk and knocked him unconscious. The talk continued out of character to get the DM Arguer to see that no one liked what he was doing. He still didn’t yield. At this point, one of the other party members, a Bear Sorcerer, looked at the DM, mimed placing his bear paw on the monk’s head and then pushing down. With that, the monk died. The DM arguer stood up, ripped his character sheet and threw it down, and walked out the door. Justices, was our party in the wrong for what happened? Should we have not let the character be fully killed? Was there any saving grace for this character/player? I await your decision, and should our party be found guilty of any crimes, I alone offer myself as tribute to bear the full weight of the Court’s punishment. Thank you.

A Spicy Lad of the Shadowkeep

To the infallible Crits and the infamous Bailiff. You have previously condemned the phrase "it's what my character would do", but I ask that you consider that sometimes it can be used for good. While our party was sailing at sea, some rowdy sailors attacked our boat and we handily fought them off. While they were waving the white flag and fleeing, one of the players, supposedly a neutral-ish wizard, fireballed the boat. In character, I stepped up and asked him what the hell he was doing; as he was essentially killing dozens of people who were just trying to run away. He shrugged and said the wizard walked off without a word. Since my character was new to the campaign and figured this act of unjustified murder was f**ked up, I asked the DM if I could sock the wizard in the jaw and tell him I wouldn't sit idly by if he went psychotic like that again. The DM said yes, I rolled above his AC, and did a few points of damage. Point made, beef done. However, the beef apparently stewed, as this altercation had pissed off the player and he took the DM aside later on, asking him to punish me for swinging at him. Everything worked out fine, no actual drama, and we're all still playing to this day, but I genuinely thought that if I'd seen someone do something so horrifying, my character wouldn't have let it stand. It still bugs me to this day that they went to the DM and tried to get me 'punished' just for roleplaying as a decent human(/Aasimar) being! What say you, judges? Should I have been a blank slate and said nothing? Or was this flavour a good amount of spice? I humbly await your legally binding decision.

Stephano

I submit, for your consideration, the tried & true wise words of the Honorable Justice Murphy: “get new friends”

Champagne Enema

Most honorable Crit Justices and baliff J***, I seek your council. I'm a player in a Waterdeep dragon heist campaign. Our party of level 4 characters were faced with a mini beholder (there's a specific name but it escapes me) and the battle was a rough one. Our half-orc cleric, Father Urk, took a disintegration ray to the face and took enough damage to drop him below zero, turning him to dust. I spoke up, remembering the half orc racial trait they get once per day that let's them survive a blow that will reduce them below zero, leaving them at 1 hp instead. The DM agreed with me and we finished the fight with our party still intact. The session ended right there and I thought all was well, but when we next met up to play again we were met with a surprise. The DM described our cleric slowly turning to dust before our eyes! The party just stood there confused until the DM explained that he had "looked up the ruling" and decided that the disintegration ray interaction would occur before the racial trait would kick in. So my question is this: was the DM right to reverse his ruling between sessions at the players detriment? PS: Father Urk's remains are kept with us in a jar (dubbed Father Urn) until we can find some means of high level revival.

Flando Maltrizian

May it please the honorable justices of the court, and the glorified text-to-speech program they charitably call a bailiff. While exploring a tomb, my party came across a magical trap. I, a bard, cast dispel magic at 3rd level, and the DM had me roll to beat a DC. I failed, so I cast dispel magic again, at the same level. The DM said that because I failed the roll, it seemed to my bard that I must just not be able to dispel it. I argued that, because it is in the spell description that the spell requires you to make rolls to dispel higher powered magic, that my bard would know that there was a chance of success on repeated casting. The DM argued that my character does not know that D20's get rolled every time spells get cast. Let the record show that things were getting heated at this point, but luckily our cleric offered to cast a dispel, and we all agreed that divine magic might work where arcane magic failed, and the trap was dispelled. That said, I'm petty, so I lay this before the court to decide who was in the right.

Bryan Holt

He has a bugbear up his but about MinMaxers. It's like one attacked him in the woods as a child. This is not the only instance that cleaver pre-approval has garnered reactions like this but this is the first time my XP was taken. I sold my left eye for the power to go beauty and the beast on these Jabronies that XP is hard earned.

Ali

May it Please the Honorable Justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy and Baliff Jake who I admire and fear. Early in the campaign, I gave my PCs a magical decanter of rum. The rum gave advantage on any charisma check against someone who drank it. I told them that the decanter containing the rum magically refilled itself and that the container and alcohol were separate magic items. Much later, they received a magical sangria that healed you the more you chugged all the way up to a Supreme Healing Potion. However, the more you drank, the harder the Con Save was to avoid getting drunk (gaining a level of exhaustion). The Bard replaced the rum with the sangria in the refilling decanter. I told him this was okay because I thought the Con Save would balance the item and disincentivize its constant use. I was wrong. They are drunk, all the time. Whenever they have a moment, they pass around the sangria and chug so much that their Con Saves rarely ever succeed. It's like watching frat bros play slap the bag the way they cheer each other on to "chug!." They've had many fights where everyone is absolutely sloshed narrowly avoiding death and never landing hits. One PC nearly failed his Con Save for his 6th level of exhaustion - literally almost drinking himself to death. So my question to the court is: Was I wrong to turn my party into alcoholics with an unlimited supply of refreshing summertime sangria? I throw myself at the feet of the court, groveling for justice as I am small compared to you mighty arbiters of truth.

Aaron Thomas

Most honorable crit justices and the other guy I think his name was Jack? I bring to you the case of the nerfed character design. I play a hexblade warlock and was waiting until level 5 to play the character as I imagined. Basically I talked with my dm and told him I will be casting darkness on myself and using the devils sight invocation to see through my own darkness and he was fine with that. When the time came to start using it he was very upset that I constantly had advantage on my enemies and they had disadvantage, also I was using a pole arm as a weapon so had reach whovh required them to also roll perception checks at disadvantage to find me. After 2 battles like this where I would solo the strongest enemy while my party whipped the little baddies my dm decided he wasn't going to allow the devils sight invocation which completely nerfs my character build. Was I in the wrong to make such a strong character or should my dm have figured out ways around how i wanted to play. At lvl 5 I only had 2 spell slots anyway so darkness and 1 smite was all I'm able to pull off per short rest. I humbly await your judgment, unless the decision falls to Jim was it? Then I mildly await your decision.

B

Magnanimous Justices and also that Baliff guy Jeff or whatever. I was playing with a local adventurer's league group (highly recommend for fellow listeners btw) and we were fighting a giant worm monster of some kind, probably like 50ft long. Monster had our cleric in its mouth and our fighter was making death saves on the ground underneath his mouth. I (ranger) wanted to cast hail of thorns which has an area of effect of 5 ft. My plan was to aim it at a back part of the monster, 20+ feet from my compatriots but the DM said that the area was calculated on all the squares the monster takes up, not the one square I hit, meaning my hail of thorns would've hit my friends. It was just 1d10 so I let it go but it still taunts me so I'm just curious how yall would've ruled this. My DM is very chill and tolerates me messing up regularly so I beseech thee: should you find him guilty please refrain from sentence him to any bird theater related punishments for he deserve no such fate. Cheers!

Rachel H

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and Jake Hurwitz, I bring to you the case of the Unrewarded Nat 20. I joined a campaign midway through at the behest of a friend because they were low on players. A couple sessions in, we came upon a hideout of the bandits we were tracking down and were surprised to see it abandoned. I asked if I could roll to investigate to see if I could find anything valuable or see if anything was amiss. I rolled a nat 20 and got really excited, but the DM responded with "You find nothing". I asked him to clarify since it was a critical success, and he said I was critically successful at finding out he hadn't put anything there. Later, we were ambushed by the bandits and it was revealed the whole thing was a setup. Court, am I wrong to feel as if I was slighted by this and my nat 20 at least warranted a clue that something was awry? I held my tongue at the table, but was a salty lil anchovy later and did not make the effort to play with them again. If it helps my case, I described my bard as "essentially Dolly Parton" and couldn't help but feel the real Dolly was disrespected. I eagerly await your just verdict.

Stephano

“get new friends” - The Honorable Justice Murphy

BassToad

Supreme Justices of Great Honor and Bailiff Jake, who holds them up like Atlas. I'm playing a Mean Girl Bard in a Strixhaven campaign, but I am extremely bad at being mean in a subtle way. I feel like my attempts to give back handed compliments and subtly insult people aren't as effective. I go from pretending to being nice to actually trying to be nice too easily. How do I act meaner?

DOOFINIUS

If it would please the esteemed crit justices and displease the baliff if jake isnt fired yet, i present the case of the tardy party. I initially started a campaign with six players three years ago. 2 dropped of scheduling issues one left because of new job another because gta 5 was more fun. We quickly found other friends to join and that has been the base party up until now. We added one that again conflict of schedule but we were iffy on them anyway its been a year or more since we added a new player, in that time weve had 2 mini campaigns and started a third. We recently added someone 3-4 months ago and they have now missed more than they showed up. They have canceled last minute twice, one of those was for something they knew was coming up but didnt inform the entire group only one of us. And now through secondhand again i find out they wont be available for potentially 4 weeks. For a wedding im 90% sure they knew was happening. It is mildly frustrating because im the dm at the moment and was excited for this mini campaign while one of our other part members is on vacation we knew ahead of time. My question is should we drop this party member, have an intervention, or let it go entirely but next time definitely have some sort of words exchanged. For context we are all in our 20s and 30s and i feel it would only have been right and correct to inform the entire group, rather than just tell one of us as we are all friends and adults who openly communicate. I await your judgment and wonderous insight and i suppose whatever jake has to say is good to.

Hobbes

To the almighty Justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, and the unscrupulous bailiff Jake. I present the case of the perilous postage paradox. Being only level seven, my party had no traditional means of teleportation, and was faced with a long and dangerous journey home. Getting to our current location had nearly killed us. My genie warlock declared they had just learned a new spell that might help. Casting the spell ‘Galders Speedy Courier’ twice, I planned to mail the first 2 party members to a trusted NPC, and then an hour later I could cast it again to send one more package to one of the first party members. The final package would contain the last party member and myself shrunken inside my genie vessel. The DM reviewed the spell and decided that this could work, but some of the party expressed doubt at being shoved into a box and mailed to their destination. My character airily assured them that it was perfectly safe, and that although the box couldn’t be opened from the inside, there was very little risk of suffocation as long as the target of the spell opened the box quickly. The first two packages were sent and received by the NPC without a hitch, and those party members began walking while I took a short rest to recover my spell slots. The problem occurred on the last journey. When I cast the spell, my DM asked innocently to which party member I was sending the package. After I declared the rangers name, I noticed a slight smirk on the DMs face, but thought nothing of it. I went inside my genies lamp, which the fighter picked up before climbing into the box and closing the lid. At this point, the DM turned to the Ranger, and asked if the character name I had known them as this whole time was, in fact, their real name. Blood drained from everyone’s faces as he answered, “No.” The spell description states that if the spell fails, objects inside the box reappear at the caster’s feet. My warlock was very surprised when the fighter and their lamp reappeared at their feet, INSIDE the lamp. Although we eventually managed to escape the infinite lamp loop, the fighter developed claustrophobia and the player was a little upset that I had endangered her character ‘recklessly’. I’ve endured merciless razzing about this incident ever since. Was she wrong to criticize me, was the Ranger wrong to lie to all of us about their real identity, or was I wrong to assure everyone my janky early teleportation scheme was safe? I humbly await your judgement.

Wolfgang

May it please the Court and its unseperated high priestess Axford, pastors Murph and Tanner, and of course the benevolent helper Jake. Today I do not bring a court case but rather must confess my sins. I, a forever DM, have recently gotten a chance to be a player. I made a wood Elf, flavored to be a Kitsune, Drakewarden Ranger. When we started playing I anticipated my rolls would be similar to when I DM. I was sorely mistaken, as my first 5 rolls all came up nat 20's. I took the result the first 2 times it rolled. But when it came up the next 3 times I lied about the results. In my heart I know that what I did was wrong in the eyes of Dice Christ. But, I wanted to give my fellow players their chance in the spotlight by saying worst results. I must say, while I'll carry these sins to my grave I know I allowed my fellow players to shine. Thank you kindly and praise be to Dice Christ.

Cameron S

To the sonorous Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner and discordant bailiff Jake. May I present the case of the falling bugbear and the flailing giant. I am a player in a campaign in which we recently fought a stone giant and only narrowly were victorious. During the or rogue was restrained and on deaths door with the giant about to take the finishing blow still on considerable hp. So our wizard and I had the idea to use me, a barbarian/fighter Bugbear, as a projectile in a last ditch effort to try and stop the murderous giant. They teleported themselves and me 400ft above the giant using dimension door and cast featherfall only on themselves. Since my turn was next I fell the full 400ft on my turn and collided with the giant expecting to deal and take full falling damage. Here's where the beef occurs. The giant had 80ish hp remaining and was about to go next, with the falling damage not even likely to bring him to 0. However the DM argued that me and the giant would each take 10d6 bludgeoning damage since the force of the fall was split evenly between us. My position was that hitting a body would be like hitting the ground at full terminal velocity due to the speed of the impact and that i would take full damage and that the force required to stop me (ie the force the giant would take) would be equal as per physics. I even offered to give the giant a dexterity save to halve the damage or make me hit them an improvised attack roll but the DM wouldn't budge. This lasted a few minutes before I just decided to roll the 10d6 and get on with the fight since it was pretty late that night. As expected the giant remained conscious after the 10d6 of damage but miraculously missed his two swings on our downed rogue even with advantage. Thankfully we were able to bring the giant down on our next turn and no one perished but I ask this of you justices. Should I have pushed for dealing the full 20d6 since hitting a person at terminal velocity doesn't seem that different to hitting the ground, or was my dm correct in halving the damage to both of us? I await your high diving/ sky diving punishment to the guilty party

Marcus Heer

May it please the three of you. I present the case of the open door vs genocide. 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. Oh and also Jake.

Matthew Stuckwisch

To the Esteemed and Lofty Supreme Crit Justices and there Rad Bailiff Jake. I present to you a question... Not a case. I recently relistened to the campaign 1 finale short rest. While Listening to Murph explain Balnor's time traveling backstory again, I thought of a question that I just had to ask him (and Caldwell also). So my question: what would happen to the Feywild and Shadowfell if the Material Plane ceased to exist (ie. a planar explosion destroyed it)? Of course this is all dependent on the individual DM. (For me personally I believe that the Feywild and Shadowfell would become absurdist depictions of each other because they lost their reflection of the Material Plane). Nonetheless, I await your ruling with baited breath. Matt S.

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.

Wyatt S

(Sorry for not keeping it short short) To the honorable supreme crit justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, as well as the all-natural, one of a kind crit failiff Hurwitz, I bring to you the case of my potential metagaming. Long story short, my party's wizard pretended to "betray" the party ,to everyone's surprise, because "this guy has a point" regarding the arc's zone boss, if you will. He claimed to be casting haste on the boss, and so I had her do an insight check (and rolled really well). Truthfully spoken, he did cast haste on her. Then immediately after his turn ends he breaks concentration to give her the negative effects of haste. Cheeky, but apparently "You can end concentration at any given time (no action required)." Rolling with it, I told him I would allow it once but it would be hard to pull off again. Later on, he tries to do this trick again, but I told him the boss would be having none of that, and he would be wasting a spell slot due to the willing part fizzling. I said that tales of the foolish underling had made its round as a legend, saying my previous boss had fallen for the sully words and gotten absolutely rolled (not true, but the legend/rumours claim). He said that this is metagaming. My question lies to you all, is this a reasonable claim and decision or did I just bully my player? Should I perhaps allow his deception vs my insight? Does my player not know what metagaming is or do I not understand? I accept judgment and bow my head in respect for the decision of the highly justices and the admirable bailiff. May dice Christ bless us all.

David Hughes

To the Beautiful and Benevolent Supreme Crits Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the other Attendee. I recently got to join my first campaign as a forever DM playing a Wild Magic Sorcerer Kobold Named Gak. Me and the DM agreed to use the d10,000 wild magic table. In one such wild magic surge we rolled that "The caster is enslaved to another party member". This was fine by me, however, we were in the process of hunting down this member's (Oscar) sister, who was a gunslinger like him, following her using a "Gatlas" we had that pointed towards her gun, we found her in her chambers. Before opening the door, he asked if I had a grenade handy, using my robe of useful items i pulled out a fireball scroll, to which he pointed into the room, and said, "Fireball". I knew that the sisters room was filled with 2 kegs of gunpowder and that fireball would ignite them and likely kill our level 3 characters. So upon trying to use a metamagic to change the fireball to poison damage so as to not trigger a fatal fireworks show. But the DM stopped me and said "Technically he did say fireball, so you can't change it", thus, gak perished in the ensuing explosion and flames. I Implore you, would being "Enslaved" to a character overwrite their survival instinct? Or should gak have unleashed a mighty toot upon the sharpshooter siblings and lived to tell the tale.

Wyatt S

As a side note, after some googling, I see that my player is NOT unique and there are discrepancies on whether this should be allowed or not in the first place, hence my submission :) Let alone what happens after

Megan Adams

To the Honorable Justices and John: I bring to you a question of difficult RP. A few months ago, I kicked a player from my table because of general shittiness outside of the game (at the time, we were all teachers in the same building; this player took things we discussed re: personal lives and told those private concerns to students). I don’t regret this decision in the slightest, except for one thing: he was by *far* the best RP’er in the group, and had a way of getting his fellow players engaged in a way they were sometimes hesitant to do with me. Now, RP at the table is stilted, and while some players are doing their best, others are hesitant to join in. I’ve tried to fix this by including a Balnor-style DMPC who talks to PCs in order to draw them out, but there’s been… mixed success with this tactic. Do I accept that RP in this group is just going to be stilted and focus on more of a bash-kill-loot kind of game (which isn’t necessarily something I’m against), or do I keep trying to draw players out of their shells? All of them have written interesting, deep characters, but I’m worried that this changed group dynamic has put that on thin ice. Alternatively, do I scrap the campaign and start off with a blank slate? Anxiously awaiting judgement, Megan A.

Aaron Burnell

I come before the High Altar of Dice Christ with a serious confession. It may even require punishment from the courts (luckily they are both in the same place). I have been playing DnD since I was in 7th or 8th grade (circa 1999/2000). I have always told my players and my fellow players that I cut my teeth on 3.5, the older nerd boys taught me from their 3.5 knowledge, my books are all 3.5, and it's the only system I have played to level 20. But I have also been known, as a DM and a player, to be a bit ... how do you say, chaotic. This was seen as out of character since I am normally a big fan of rules and following them. I would laugh it off and say that perhaps I had some cobwebs in the old brain. Fast forward to the present. my partner and I were discussing 2nd edition with their nephew, and I was bullying nephew (21) over THAC0. We began looking at dates, because Nephew asked about 3.0 being compatible with 3.5 I laughed as my partner looked up the dates and I reapted the known maxim that 3.0 was flavor and 3.5 was the mechanics so yes, they were meant to be used in tandem. Without .5, third edition is like ...unplayable Then my partner starts to cackle. 3.5 came out in 2003. Well past my middle school days. Most holy of dice stewards, I ran to my bookshelf and sure enough. Everything was 3.0. Suddenly my chaotic impulses made sense. No wonder my instinct was to go off the rails but cite precedent -- a precedent from a truly lawless bacchanalian Age of Aquarius. I couldn't believe it, but in my most trusted of tomes ... it was there. Now, I will leave you to contemplate perhaps my greatest sin. The Third Edition Harm Spell. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/958199937479356496/979903436923478036/Screenshot33.png I've heard of third-act reveals, but this is ridiculous (this is ridiculous).

Skillful Ferret

If it would please the honorable judges, bailiff please recount the tale of the Torn Tabaxi, While playing my last session (though only the 3rd session) due to deploying. The other characters in the party decided to plan to betray our mission and become an evil party so they role-played a distraction for my character who was a lawful good Paladin. I had offered to play a Lawful Evil Cleric as well, but the other players told me to play the Paladin. Thus, I had to spend the entire session pretending to be alone in another room. Then at the very end, to roleplay my character out of the session I took the artifact from our NPC priest to complete the mission without putting the others in danger. Which I thought would let the party have an excuse to quit the mission since they wanted to switch to being an evil party. I found out that during the next session they caught up to my character who had sacrificed himself using the artifact to revive a village that was destroyed (dm choice) which I thought was cool, but the remaining players decided to mutilate my character’s corpse to remove the artifact that I had apparently swallowed, in order to sell it. Am I right to be bothered by that despite being out of the game? Note the DM quit the campaign ~10 sessions later due to losing interest in the character’s antics.

copperdragon

To the most likely honorable justices and merely existent bailiff, I present the case of the harvest razz. I was 12 or 13 and out camping with my family when my dad suggested we play dnd (this was my second time playing). In the middle of a session, after our characters had started moving towards a town being raided, I asked if there were any crops like wheat or apples I could harvest and bring in the cart we had. It had been established that we were in a farm area, and I wanted to provide food for the villagers, but I can see how it was weird and out of the blue. All the adults immediately shot it down and I wasn’t allowed to roll perception. They spent the remainder of the week long trip teasing me about it, asking if I wanted to go into the woods to look for dinner and other stuff like that. I didn’t want to play again for a while, but kept building characters and designing encounters by myself. I ask, was this a rightful razzing or was I wronged? Thank you for your consideration and eventual judgement.

Matt

To the Supreme Crit Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and Bailiff Tucker... I mean Sir Jake Last of his Name; I have am Am I the Ahole question. My Wife and I just adopted and during the process I stopped playing D&D so I would have more time. Our friend has offered to run a game for us and his wife. I would be the most experienced player by far, my wife and kids have never played D&D before. I was going to make a Lore Bard/Celestial Warlock mix and play him like Gandalf (using a Muppet race); this way I can support, buff and guide the party without stealing the spot light. When I told another friend they got upset and said that with my experience I should make a maximized character and 'show them kids how its done'. Should I play a fun Support character or should I run circles around them? More Info: The other players will be a Cleric, Barbarian (gift to the youngest), Druid (shape shifting for the animal lover), and Ranger. Also LOTR Gandalf is NOT a wizard by D&D standards

Michael Singer

May it please the baddies PLZ PLAY THE JAN AND TROY ONE SHOT

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)

Tom

Dice Christ confession 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.

Rob The Hegemon

Greetings Flawless Supreme Crit Justices, and “Doing His Best” Jake. May it please the Court, I present the case of the overbearing DND Mom. I DM for my friends (a family of three) and my wife in a year-long Skyrim Campaign. Our friends are a Mom (henceforth referred to as “Murph Mom”), a Dad, and a 14-year-old young lady. Murph Mom will comment on every decision that her family makes and leverages her real-life motherly authority over Dad and Daughter when playing. Murph Mom will scold Daughter for “wasting time” with NPCs or admonish Dad for not staying on the objective. Sometimes they do get silly and sidetracked, and the Murph Mom does keep the game on the rails a lot. I’ve found this limits the potential fun at the table and disallows players to be their characters since their characters wouldn’t necessarily bow so easily to Murph Mom’s goal-oriented whims. To encourage more true-to-character role play, I have been awarding loot and plot clues to Dad and Daughter when they defy Murph Mom in hopes that she will chill out and everyone will be more free to role-play their characters. Instead, her wrath has turned towards me. Am I wrong to have meddled in such a delicate family balance, or am I in the right as the DM?

Bukvar's Assistant Isy F

Honourable justices 3 and the lonesome bailiff may it please the court. I was playing recently in a 5e campaign where we were battling against a flay wind. Being a Level 5 bard I had only taken spells that required a target of a creature or object. I tried to cast thunderwave to stop the wind advancing on us and was told by the DM that the wind is neither an object or creature but a weather event. I accepted this ruling and moved into supporting my fellow party. BUT a few rounds later our wizard wanted to cast identify on the wind which our DM allowed. I argued that according to the wording of identify, the wind would need to be an object or creature to work. Let alone the fact the wizard would need to touch it. We did end up agreeing that the flay wind was a creature and spells could be cast on it, and the wizard could cast it from a distance, But I never got my turn again as we outran it before I could cast. So I put it to the court, am I an unprepared bard only having spells that target creatures or items, or have I been wronged. I humbly await your judgement and if found guilty will take 1 spell of your choice for the rest of this campaign.

wicked.witchy

May it please the illustrious justices and the sweet but simple bailiff Jake. I recently joined a 5E home brew game that was only 3 sessions in at the time. We are fully online with voice chat only and use Roll20. My issue is this: My DM (we’ll call him Kyle) allowed me to join this game when my schedule opened up. One of our players (we’ll call him Cody) chooses to occasionally roll physical dice despite the rest of us all exclusively rolling online for everyone to see. It is my understanding that Cody did not ask if he could do this—he simply chooses when he wants to roll public and when he chooses to roll real dice. I have never been able to play D&D in person before, and I asked my DM Kyle if I might also be allowed to roll real dice just for fun, and not for any important rolls. Not because I want secrecy, but because I desperately crave the feel and sound of those clicky clacky babies rolling around in my never before used dice box. For context, Kyle and I have been online friends for years now, and he knows I would never fudge a dice roll for any reason. We have talked about it many times. But Kyle still vehemently forbade it, saying he does not like that Cody does this, and it’s only because of their long term friendship he allows it for now. Kyle says he intends to speak with Cody about it, but it has now been multiple sessions since I last asked and I am feeling strong dice envy. However, I am new to the table and hesitant to speak up again. Should I insist that Kyle speak with Cody, and/or allow me the same opportunities to roll my dice? Or should I let this be? I await your judgement 🙏

moondanse

to the honorable judges axford, murphy, and tanner, and the slightly-less-honorable bailiff hurwitz— may it please the court, i come to you with a case from several years ago that i have been unable to move past. please, help me to let go of my grudge or validate this pettiness i am feeling! the setting: an underwater casino. the scene: my character, my then-girlfriend’s character, and another are caught up in a gambling game with an npc. we needed to win in order to move forward with our quest. the three of us players each bet something important to us, mine being my characters earrings (a gift from her estranged parents). long story short, myself and another player ended up losing/going “out,” but my ex managed to win and secure our items and the info we needed. however, upon winning, she refused to return my earrings. when i asked why, she said “i never said i was working with you guys.” i was shocked and upset, since i thought it was implied that we were working together as a party. i voiced my concerns and she still would not give the earrings back, stating it wasn’t something her character would do. eventually she had her character give them to another party member to give back to me, but this was several sessions later and i’m pretty sure she only did it because i was visibly upset and it was affecting our relationship irl. tell me, oh fair judges, was i justified in being upset about this, or was i being a baby? it still leaves a sour taste in my throat to this day. thank you, and i await your judgment.

Some Guy Named Mason

Greetings, Honorable Judges Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the hard-working, respect deserving Bailiff Jack I submit to you the Case of Table Transience. My group has been playing for a few years together and I’ve just recently started playing DM for them. We went virtual for the Bad Times and have since stayed as such what with cross-country moves, etc. and this has caused an irritating issue to come up - a few players in the group are constantly doing other things while we’re trying to play, including hosting parties, grilling outside (once even when it was storming), and other activities that make it clear that our game is not the focus of what’s going on. While they’ve gotten good at having it not disrupt the overall game flow of other people who are fully present, I still find it irritating to have to regularly repeat what was said to them in sessions and feel disrespected that the time we have all committed to playing together (not to mention the prep work I do between sessions to try to make sure everyone has a fun time) is definitely not a priority. Justices, am I in the right for asking that everyone prioritizes our game time when we’ve all committed to it? Or do I need to chill unless it becomes a bigger problem? I throw myself before the mercy of the court, and accept whatever judgements you decide on. Thank you, Kind of annoyed in Illinois

Sam Taz

To the honorable Judges Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and to (insert appropriate adjective here) Bailiff Jake, may it please the court, my fiancé, cousin and I would like to submit to you the case of the 4,000 gold bag of holding. My party had been playing our very first campaign of DND for a little over a year. In that time our DM used standard DMG pricing for everything we purchased. If it was an uncommon item it was 500 gold, a rare item (like my Barrier Tattoo) was 5,000 gold. But as we began to prepare for our final boss battle the rules finally changed. Earlier in the campaign we had made friends with a wizard who had a a vault full of magical items and potions and we had made friends with a pirate fence that could get us magical goods. Our DM told us to just to tell him what items we wanted for our BBEG battle and he would tell us how much it would cost. He said since we had two weeks in game time before or battle all items would be subject to a "rush" charge. Suddenly a bag of holding, which is an uncommon item, was going to cost 4,000 gold. I ask you, is this sudden rule change and inflation of cost reasonable or was my party being taken advantage of by captialism?

Cody Doiron

Dear honorable Disciples of Dice Christ and Jake, I come to you with a group confessional about a dice roll and a dog. Our party got ourselves in a bad situation surrounded by Yuan Ti Demi-Gods where were surely going to be TPK'ed or at least captured. One player had an important dice roll that would likely determine the outcome of the situation for better or worse, so we decided to use the big 3" solid plastic dice and roll it on the floor for dramatic effect. The dice was rolled and immediately as it landed on what was clearly a bad roll, my dog quickly snatched it off the ground (with most hilarious teeth on plastic *clonk* sound), threw it up the air, and this time it landed on a NAT 20! We decided to take the Nat 20 and went on to survive and succeed in escaping. I ask you, did we commit sin in the eyes of Dice Christ for not taking the original roll, or did we witness a miracle of Dice Christ performed through my dog?

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

Bliss

Hello honorable crit justices Murphy the wise, Axford the clever and Tanner the inventive and the humble bailiff Jake. If it pleases the court I’d like you each to look under your highest of chairs for your shark onesies. If it pleases the tank I’d like to a chance to hawk my wares - the Ring of Great Success. Have you ever fought an epic boss battle and rolled a nat 20 on a saving throw? Were you disappointed that you simply saved? Then you need the ring of great success! When worn by the DM the Ring gives players that roll a nat 20 on saving throws get an extra bonus action. I humbly ask for one train car in thornkirk, one moon ranch in Trinyvale and one ocean front cottage in salty peaks; for 100% product rights and a virtual high five - redeemable at any time.

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.

Nicholas Rand

To the most honorable justices, and the pinchable bailiff. May all your attack rolls be 20s. I bring to you the case of the all too real dm and their campaign.

Nicholas Rand

This online campaign started with a dm and a party of 6 players. In one mission we had to go underneath the ground through a narrow descending staircase. One of the players, a warforged pally, was said by the dm to be too big to fit down the hole. So my druid turned into a badger to dig and widen the whole to the staircase. The dm said that the form would take far too long to dig the hole, and the rest of the party shrugged and left him outside of the dungeon.

Nicholas Rand

We finished the session, Including several trips and encounters, with the pally just stuck outside and the player surfing the web. Needless to say he quit the campaigns shortly thereafter. Was the dm wrong to leave him out there? Was the rest of the party culpable in this wrong doing? What restitution and penance shall be demanded? I await your judgment. Ps....there are so many more stories of real life physics interfering with this campaign. I'm too deep to quit.

Kahlan

May it please the honorable court and the lowley bailff Jake, My first campaign was an amazing homebrew campaign that took place in the Percy Jackson Universe run by my brother. But I cannot get over because it ended with me murdering half the player characters and an entire camp of half-bloods without my consent. My character, daughter of Posidon, was a homebrew version of a sorcerer who had slowly gone mad with darker powers controlling a persons blood. I wasn't a fan of her going evil, so we stripped her of her powers after a big fight and I rebuilt her without the darkness. I tried for around 8 months to get her redemption. One session, I am abruptly told this will be the last session. In the last 10 minutes, the DM had a God force the darkness back into her, WITHOUT a saving throw or any resistence. Then he rollplayed for me as he used my character to kill half the party and an entire camp of enemies. Then the campaign immediately ended. To this day, I maintain I should've had a chance to resist and it ruined my character's ending after years. My brother claims that this was an appropriate ending and my character never would've been freed from her darkness. Should I have been given more warning/saving throw before this tragic event or is the DM in the right to determine a character's abilitiy to be redeemed? I humbly wait for your response and a new persons perspective,

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.

Desk Plant

May it please the court and also that one guy, My players were on a hunt to find a small goblin named jingle jangle in hopes to find a key to free someone from a magical locked cage. When they got their jingle jangle had mounds of keys piled up on the ground and hanging from the wall. I told my players it would be a high investigation check to try and find they key, but one of my players spoke up. They said that they had taken the observant feat and shouldn’t have to roll since their passive investigation is 18 and their passive perception is even higher and should just find it. I ruled against this saying they were actively looking for the key in huge mounds of keys. Was I wrong for making my players roll even with such high passive investigation and perception. I humbly wait your harsh and fierce verdict.

joe ventre

Supreme crit justices and the brolif Jake I bring to you the case of "calm emotions on the cool headed gunslinger" my friend is dming her first campaign, during an encounter there was a gunslinger holding an Npc hostage and had a held reaction to shoot them if the party acted against them, on my turn I (a redemption paladin) used calm emotions hoping that the gunslinger would drop their weapon, the dm said that they continue to hold their weapon calmly-explaining that there was no animosity towards the npc but they had an order from their boss and were trying to just get the job done-not emotional, after explaining her reasoning she asked the other players/me if we thought it was fair and she offered me back the spell slot saying I could use my turn differently, I agreed but it is something we still don’t agree on. we have both come to you with this and humbly take the courts judgment and who will get Razzed

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

Salil

Honorable Justices and ok bailiff/amazing walletsmith, I have the case of the disappointed potionmaster. I DM a homebrew campaign with 3 level 5s, an Alchemist Artificer, Hexblade/Paladin, and a Rogue/Bard. The Artificer is often less helpful in fights because he doesn't do as much damage and frequently gets knocked out since he has low HP. He asked me about using his alchemist abilities to make potions and I gave him 2 options. 1) When the group is taking a long rest, he may expend as many spell slots as he wants to create "spell potions" (like a spell scroll, but without the class limit) that he or others can use, but he doesn't get the benefits of the long rest. 2) a similar situation with a short rest, but he can only create one spell potion. My alchemist seemed disappointed with this since I think he was hoping to use his alchemy abilities to create healing potions to keep either himself or other up longer in a fight. There are rules for healing potions in Xanathar, but they recommend a day of crafting for a potion of healing. Was I wrong to enforce this rule or was I reasonable enough in giving an option to do something. I await your judgement. Additional exhibits entered into evidence: 1) I've offered him the option to modify his subclass in Artificer or even switch classes to something else (like Wizard) several times if he wanted to be more of a blaster or even something tankier like an Armorer. 2) I generally am pretty liberal with giving out loot, especially since the party has run into multiple dragon hoards (this player has a Tan Bag of Tricks, a Periapt of Would Closure, and 2 Alchemy Jugs).

Preston

To the Honorable Supreme Crit Bailiff Jake and the Okay Justices Axford, Murphy and Tanner; may it please the court. Was I wrong for not kicking my Father out of our DnD session? I was DMing a game for my 11 year old little sister. It was her first time playing so I put a lot of effort into creating a Mario themed one-shot where she was the only player. After casting fireball on a group of Koopa, she managed to make it outside of Bowsers castle just as our Father entered the room. He immediately sat down at the table, but never once mentioned the actual DnD game. Instead, he played loud, immersion breaking videos from his phone and even started showing us a movie trailer he had seen earlier that day. He then engaged in a phone conversation with someone who must have been at a party (it was on speaker phone). I was irritated, and I could tell my little sister was too. Was I wrong for not telling him to leave? I’m afraid I messed up my little sister’s first playing experience. I await your judgement.

Chloe L

To the honorable, talented and all around amazing Supreme Crit Justices (and also Jake I guess), may it please the court: I was playing a half-orc barbarian mostly driven by the loss of her wife in a raid by the BBEG. In this campaign setting certain magics were lost to time and as we uncovered them we were given the option to take levels in them. After discovering necromancy there was a long pause before I decided my character would take it. I decided my character, in her continued grief, would try to resurrect her wife but would fail and instead would have this shameful zombie creature stored away in a wizards tower the party didn’t know about. All of this was agreed upon with the DM in advance, including the wizards tower given to my character by a lich we had allied ourselves with in exchange for our cooperation. When asked about what exactly she would be he nonchalantly listed a few creatures as if to say we’ll figure it out later. Fast forward a bit down the campaign, and we had started forging what we called god weapons which were magic weapons forged from various magical components and materials from powerful creatures we had slayed. We needed a spot in the area where we would be safe and I hesitantly offered my wizards tower. During the ritual we began to hear banging from where I knew my zombie wife was. Not wanting the party to know what I had done and knowing a certain type of paladin player in our party would kill her if he found her I told them to wait there while i checked on her. As I opened the door, my DM described, for the first time, my banshee wife and told me to roll a saving throw for her scream. I failed the save and got popped Rorschach style and I was told my soul was trapped in the newly forged god weapon that was being made for my character and that it would take a powerful mage to not only dismantle the weapon and separate me my soul from it but likely a powerful resurrection spell to bring me back afterwards. So I ask you, was I unfairly punished for a decision I couldn’t have seen coming or did I just get whomped? I await your honest judgement.

Jack M

Hey y’all, When my character wants to drink water should I have disadvantage on all checks for an hour? I just saw a river running from a cave we were entering and I drank it cause my barbarian was thirsty, I failed a constitution check, took 1d6 damage and was given disadvantage on everything for an hour. It’s just water. For clarification yes I do ask to drink/taste/lick nearly every liquid that my DM describes.

Alexandra Ferguson

Praise be to Dice Christ; I come with glad tidings in His name! I was recently playing a healer in a player’s last ever fight before moving away and leaving the group. At the midpoint, our session ended, and I was tested by our Dice Lord! Rather than interrupting the flow of battle, I’d been monitoring damage taken, and knew our about to be leaving player should be down. Wracked with guilt, I pondered it - did my faith in Dice Christ require me to send him a text and ask if he had some additional HP from something I didn’t know about? Or did my love of the game and the awesome final battle designed for his character mean I should keep schtum? In the end, judges, I chose my table’s story over the Dice Lord and swore to stay quiet forever… And then, in the final session, Dice Christ smiled upon me! By not reaching out, I preserved a twist (that the player had actually had a few additional levels in assassin and originally been infiltrating our party for sinister reasons) and the table and Our Faith converged into one again. Let this be a valuable lesson to all you dice devils - meditate on the lessons of Dice Christ and have faith in your party above all else, and you shall be rewarded!

BeuligXander

May it please the Terryifying justices and the "just-kinda-meh" bailiff; my party fought an odopi in an airship filled with one of the character's family, and it teleported into a room with his estranged brother, killing the commoner almost instantly. I was sure our cleric had a rivivify left, and so wasn't too worried, but she used her last 3rd level spell to inflict wounds because she hadn't seen the body. They are now holding it against me that the brother is dead. I'm a dm, i can take it, but should i have given her a heads up, or is the death on me?

Schoobs

Praise be to Dice Christ and ever reverence to our esteemed clergy I have a confession. In our last session me and my party were battling through Avernus and came across a fight where there were literally upwards of 7 Raksasha. Knowing them in meta my butthole puckered right up. There resistance to spells of 6th level and lower being no joke, although we do lean martial heavy. Imagine my surprise when our wizard pulls off a beautiful Steel Wind Strike, knocking most of them down at that point. We are not high enough level for anything above 6th, so I knew it should not work, but the DM let it go through. This occurred for a few other instances, with even cantrips being a hearty help. Here is where I fall on my knees in genuflection to Dice Christ. No time in this did I ever mention it to the DM, with the reasoning of I cast no spells as a barbarian, not wanting to be a yellow-bellied table tattler, and it would be meta for me to know anyways. That said, in my heart I know the real reason is I didn't wanna be a drag, and wanted our wizard to have his dope anime magic samurai slice. So I ask upon Dice Christ to forgive my wicked soul and I am willing to take as many natural 1 death saves in my atonement. May nat20's be with you

Connor Malott

To the Honerable Supreme Crit Justices and the beloved Bailiff Jake; may it please the court. Am I being unjustly targeted? I am playing a gunfighter in a campaign with my cousins. Previous, at level 7 I was the only member to survive a TPK and chased my party members into the underworld through a portal the DM made. Our DM used this opertunity to rebalance our characters as our druid was OP and breaking the game. I was able to keep all of my stats because I didn't die. But ever since I have been heavily targeted by all enemies, during a surprise round I killed a knight using my 2 attacks and my off hand. The other 4 knights proceeded to shoot me twice each with there short crossbows almost killing me. I argued the knights can't fire twice in 1 round because they require a loading action. The DM said it's fair because I get to fire my gun multiple times in 1 round. Our session ended in the middle of combat because we hit our time limit. I still might die when we resume our session next week. Is this fair or am I being unjustly punished for surviving the TPK? I awake your judgement.

Ace

Hear me my dear, valiant Bailiff and a quiet howdy to the others, may I present to you: The Case of the Wizard Wanker. My childhood friends and I run a campaign in which we roleplay as ourselves, mysteriously transported into a 5e setting similar to Faerun. We fought together, blood, sweat, and tears to be able to feed ourselves and clawed our way to gain status and save multiple realms in this world. However, time and time again, our wizard has gone off on his own to get up to his nefarious crafts. He’s lost an arm, needing to be saved from a necromancer, makes dealings with his former mentor who has known ties to the bbeg, and continues to jeopardize the party’s wellbeing. There have been times where my character may have laid hands on his character over things he has said and done, i.e. treating the people in this world, our party included, as NPCs. This all came to a boiling point when my adult red dragon companion was dragged into hell and turned against us. We slew him in a huge battle outside our wizard’s keep and after combat, I begged for him to be revived. Our wizard(with some cleric levels) retorted, “He was on my kill list anyway.” Enraged, I downed him, erupting into huge conflict in game and at the table, nobody, party or DM, took sides at the table, but all agreed that his alignment should have shifted long ago and that his repeated actions are a direct conflict for the party. I have since apologized both in and out of character for every instance i’ve struck him. But he has yet to show any remorse for his actions. So I humbly ask you oh mighty, massive bailiff—and company—have I repented for my sin of striking a minor(in-game mind you), did he deserve it? how should you punish us? I graciously await your ever-noble response.

Tito

The the virile and powerful Supreme Crit Justices and the super jacked Bailiff Jake, I come bearing what is arguably a champagne problem. After many years of work, I have built a steady stable of players out of my rugby team, and after a long two and a half years we moved on from an epic 1-20 Ravnica/planescape adventure to a brand new eberron joint. One of my players even decided he wanted to try his hand at DMing! However, with 14 bodies wanting to play, we decided we could split the load and run two games in the same universe. This went well for two sessions, before my co-dm decided he wanted to run one big session, and I acquiesced. It was kind of a shit show. Turns took forever, and he didn’t prep as much as he thought he did, so by the second round of combat he’d lost the plot entirely. After 5 hours of this, we finally finished the singular combat we had planned, and everyone was done for the night. The problem is, he wants to keep it one big 10/12 player session, and take the reins entirely. However, he’s openly admitted that he doesn’t really plan, and he just tries to go with the flow. I’ve tried to nudge him in the right direction and even offered to split the load again to help right the ship, but he’s adamant about wanting to have the one big sesh. The group is hemorrhaging players and I selfishly feel like the push for one huge party like session with drinking and coke is splintering the group we worked hard to build. Am I in justified in attempting to push back against the One Big Sesh or should I sit back and let the current sitting DM run the game he wants, to the detriment of a almost half the group?

Stephanie F

To the Highest, Most Esteemed Judges and the Noble Bailiff, I am seeking your powerful council in the case of the Nerfed Hydra. I play a 12th level volcano druid in our pathfinder campaign. I confirmed with my DM that instead of a standard animal companion, I could have a magical beast cohort. I chose a 5 headed Pyro Hydra named Steeeeevs (one E for each head). My DM approved this, on the stipulation that we nerf his ability to regrow heads. He is still a full grown Hydra and is a Big target. In the encounters that Steeeeevs is involved in (which isn't every encounter due to some interdimensional travel), my DM attacks him first. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that since he cant grow more heads, Steeeeevs has a super low HP of only 70. This includes a belt to buff his Con and very expensive mythril armor, plus he can only regain 5 HP a round. I don't mind that we nerfed some of his abilities because I don't want encounters to not be fun, I'd just like Steeeeevs to be tougher. When I brought this to my DM, he said he didn't realize I'd be using my Hydra in combat so much because that isn't how my DM plays animal companions. While he likes Steeeeevs as comedic relief, he takes umbridge with having him involved in combat. I'm not asking for better attacks, just for us to give him some feats to make him tougher but my DM won't let me. Am I being too greedy in wanting Steeeeevs to have a fair shake in combat, or is my DM right to refuse my request because it's his world and he gets to decide how animal companions are played? I do have a plan if he refuses, because he said at the table that technically Steeeeevs has 5 neck slots. I humbly await your judgement.

Martian Maneater

To the Critically Acclaimed Judges and the honourably mentioned Bailiff, may it please the court; Years ago, I had a DM who tpk'd us (minus one absent player) because we kept walking down a dark hallway. We were in a seven deadly sins themed 3.5e campaign, and we were approaching the Sloth Temple. The groundskeeper pointed out the super obvious entrance to us, then bc of our continued conversation with him, mentioned that there was a back service entrance that went more directly to the Target Location, but there was no possibility of lighting our way. We asked multiple times if there was anything else we needed to know about this entrance, but we all failed our insight checks. We did not want to metagame knowing that we had all failed our insight checks. The stairs led down into pitch blackness. As we descended, our dm narrated the different ways in which we were all struck with dread. Each of us roleplayed in-character reasons and ways to dig deep, face our fears, and keep going. For example, my pc was terrified of being alone, the darkness made her feel terribly isolated and alone, so she clung to her wolf familiar to remind herself she wasn't alone. The dm asked us if we kept going. We felt it was existentially urgent we get to the Target Location, so we chose to be brave and keep going. It was, after all, a straight hallway and the only indications that we should turn around was the oppressive darkness and how scared we felt. We were then informed we had died and needed to roll new characters. There was no in-game mechanic to explain how we died. We were told that we had selected the "easier path" and that meant we had been lazy, thus falling into the sloth trap. Our party argued that descending into darkness was harder psychologically for our pcs than the obvious front door was. We had already done several other temple puzzles of that ilk with little difficulty, and therefore thought the obviousness of the front door was suspicious compared to the terrifying descent with no visible monsters for our scrappy party to fight. The DM is always right, however, so we all rolled new pcs, who joined the sole remaining original party member (who had been absent) for the rest of the campaign. Tldr, we literally continued walking into scary darkness until we were informed we had died. This cause of death has always sat crooked in my mind-hole. Was this a case of a DM not being descriptive enough or not bothering to find mechanics (like exhaustion) to explain how we died? Or were we wrong to think that roleplay challenges can make things harder than puzzles/combat? We were a very RP embracing group, and this felt like not noticing we were walking into oblivion is a crappy way to go. P.s. the last original PC ended up ascending into godhood by walking up stairs that literally encased the bodies of his fallen comrades, which included our second set of PCs who had been slain during the course of the final confrontation. This was inspired by Berserk, the god-PC was literally named Griffith. Should we have seen this coming? Was our DM killing us just to torture Griffith? Were we lambs to the slaughter all along?

Abraham

In our last session our DM had us fighting a rakshasa at the end of an arc, but he had ruled that all spell effects didn’t work on him, even those of summoned creatures or buffs that enhanced weapons. I’ve never seen it ruled this way before, with the ones I’ve fought in other games usually just being immune to direct effects (fireball, banish, etc) and with 3/5 of our party being pure spellcasters it felt unfairly tilted towards the boss even if there was a narrative reason. Am I justified in feeling a little bitter?

Summer Tribe

insight checks don't tell you everything about a person and nat 20s aren't supposed to apply to skill checks anyway

Summer Tribe

it's a fools errand, let him learn from his mistake

Summer Tribe

This is just weird adversarial behaviour from your DM

Summer Tribe

your players are being dumb AF, DnD barely supports this kind of stuff and there are many perfectly serviceable TTRPGs out there

Summer Tribe

you were both in the wrong. you could've at the very least read the basic rules (also how do you think something called a GREAT AXE would be easily throwable?) but your DM certainly didn't help matters

Summer Tribe

the other player is a fucking lunatic what the hell

Summer Tribe

this is a difficult case, normally people hate it when persuasion checks and the like work on other PCs cause you're kind of stealing their agency but you're right about how the inverse is often seen as okay, I hope someone gives you some good advice on this

Gilgamesh

In my own defense I was literally just told to “pick a race and class” and that was all. And even at that as a now DM I would never expect someone new to ttrpg’s to not be intimidated by being handed the textbook that is the PHB. Even with the whole book, and me helping them, I have new players who still forget to use vital class abilities.

Summer Tribe

I love how you don't start with "may it please the court" you just say your house was set on fire then immediately appeal to Jake alone

Summer Tribe

players making bad decisions and then insisting you fix it for them is some real silliness

Summer Tribe

this takes 5 seconds of looking up the rules. No you can't, because you can't target the interior of the hut. Why did you post this as court case more than once? Do you really believe it'll be THAT interesting? God willing the court might make it funny but have you seen the other cases? You're just asking for basic rules adjudication

The CheeseMonger

Well funnily enough, if you look near the top of my question, I didn’t fucking ask you. This isn’t a subreddit you weirdo we’re just trying to be funny

Summer Tribe

you gave a fair warning to a friend that if you were serious about roleplay you'd have in game problems and you didn't want to have them. that sounds like the trusting friendly thing to do while staying serious to the game you're playing

Summer Tribe

I really wanna hear how this pans out

Summer Tribe

You're using your class abilities and you're worried this somehow constitutes cheating? what?

Summer Tribe

DM is blatantly in the wrong and you know it babe. Nice character name lol

Summer Tribe

"the internet blamed me" I can't believe this to be true if you told the story the same way. When I've been to reddit or DnD discord groups they're usually pretty level headed. Your DM sounded like not a very good DM but I suspect we're missing some details

Summer Tribe

Chaotic evil doesn't even have to mean being a rampant unthinking asshole, your player just wanted in a problematic fashion regardless

Summer Tribe

why did you ask perception check and not an insight?

Summer Tribe

sounds like your DM is a bully

Summer Tribe

The other player is playing it correctly and this is exactly why kenku should be banned at every table. That says RPGBOT makes a decent case for why kenku should be capable of mimicking language less terribly so maybe you could point that out to your fellow player

Summer Tribe

please stop putting an apostrophe in RPGs

C. Connor Hatcher

Summer Tribe: Because I often forget Insight includes body language, and I also despite playing DND for 7 years, I still make mistakes.

Summer Tribe

this is a frustrating oversight with the design of the game and your DM will likely let you circumvent the ruling

Summer Tribe

this is simultaneously really cute and really funny. How did the ball bearings come to be flaming ball bearings?

Summer Tribe

What edition are you playing cause that is nothing like the descriptor of PWT in 5e

Summer Tribe

how far apart are your sessions? I could swear you posted this exact thing like a month ago

Summer Tribe

there's already a spell for this, your DM was right, sorry dude. if you ready an action then sure but misty step also doesn't prevent fall damage if you're mid fall so you'd still have to figure out how far you'd fallen if you did step mid fall

Summer Tribe

This is awesome if a tad long

Summer Tribe

you're fine, your DM has to learn to cope. I'll never understand this thing where their first inclination is to nerf a player instead of just making better encounters. if you're fighting in a small room against an enemy with blind fighting then your allies potentially can't help as well if they can't see, you still get your build to work and the downside is present. Did your DM even run ONE fight like that before deciding to nerf you? It's not like you're using a lvl 2 artificer to summon a familiar and two bags of holding every day just to constantly bomb every enemy, you're using a melee weapon (usually suboptimal) and the darkness thing negatively impacts your party potentially. You only had 2 battles using this build? Your DM didn't even try to work with you man, shame on him

Summer Tribe

this sounds like far more than a razz

Summer Tribe

get someone with jeweler's tools proficiency to cut the diamonds down duh

Adam Leeuwenhart

This session I have described was in... may 2021 I think? Haven't played since, probably wont for a few months.

Lorelei G.

To the glorious High Priests and Priestess of Dice Christ, Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, as well as adjectiveless altar boy Jake, I beg you to hear my confession and absolve me of my wrongdoings, for I have committed the most grievous of sins: metagaming. I recently applied to several online D&D groups and, much to my surprise, was accepted into not one, but two. I soon discovered that both campaigns were going to be using the Lost Mines of Phandelver module: one strictly by the book, the other with added homebrew. The first campaign began, and all was well—our party, including my freshly graduated paladin intern, snuck into a cave full of goblins to rescue an NPC. We found the NPC in a chamber full of goblins, but before we could react, one goblin dangled the NPC over the edge of a cliff and threatened to drop him unless we overthrew the bugbear who ruled the cave. We obliged, and then, after a brief standoff due to our kleptomaniac cleric trying to steal a statue of a jade frog, we left in peace. As I said, all was well. Then, the next day, the second campaign began, and I found myself back in that same cave, albeit as an eladrin druid this time. Wanting to try something different and not repeat the exact same encounters, I spearheaded a more aggressive plan. I fey stepped up to the top of the cliff and held my scimitar across the head goblin’s throat, to hold him hostage. The goblin pulled away somehow, which led me to push him off the cliff, beginning a very close battle. A hasty exit and a few death saving throws later, we managed to escape with the unconscious but still alive NPC. Dice Christ may have already taken His toll, as during that session I wasted one of my two spell slots on a carriage driver who had been shot by the goblins and turned out to be fully dead, not healable dead, as well as having to endure listening to one player seriously and noncomedically consider eating a captured goblin whole. Additionally, the first campaign has fallen apart due to scheduling issues, so I will no longer have the temptation of knowing what is to come. However, I lay myself down at your feet and willingly submit to any and all penances asked of me if it means that I may one day I rest in the Dice Bag of Dice Christ. In the name of the Twenty, and of the One, and of the Rolling Spirit, amen.

Summer Tribe

why did you split this into 3 posts? do you not know to use shift+enter for spacing?

Summer Tribe

Does your home rule even matter? anyone with a damaging cantrip could've done the same

Summer Tribe

that's not how passive investigation works

Summer Tribe

your DM was nicer than they needed to be. Casting calm emotions would've been an action against the gun slinger anyway, they should've shot the NPC in response to you casting the spell

Summer Tribe

you were blatantly afflicted with the poisoned condition after going out of your way to lick everything, how do you see a problem with that

Noah Steele

To the justices who are okay I guess and the bailiff who I am obligated to be nice to because he chooses the cases I bring to you the case of my shit brother and my unhinged paladin I was playing in a session 1 of a new campaign my friend was running with my brother and a few friends, I played a paladin whose name is Gabriel who has a god complex and made an oath to himself. My brother plays a rogue kenku named krash. The dm started explaining the characters and the setting we were in and all was going smoothly until he said the plot hook. My brother decided krash wouldn’t be interested in the campaign and instead tried to rob me. I caught him due to a nat 20 perception check and he tried to run away from the party and leave the campaign entirely. I saw that the dm started to panic a little so I decided to grapple krash and essentially kidnap him in order to keep the party together. My reasoning in character was to force krash to atone for his sins against me which my brother thought was a fun dynamic and was on board with. after the session however one of the other players in the campaign approached me and accused me of hogging the spotlight. I fear I may have overstepped my boundary as a player by trying to bring the campaign back on track. Should I have left that to the dm to figure out? I leave myself in the hands of the court

Summer Tribe

if you'll notice, you posted in a comment section that people are paying to be a part of. furthermore if it is picked up as a case yet more people will comment on it. furthermore you're not funny