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D&D Court Submissions! (Patreon)

Published:
2022-09-25 18:33:44
Edited:
2022-09-25 18:42:37
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

HELLO SWEETIES. Bailiff Emily here. Bailiff Jake can't make it to this month's video recording so we're going to be blessed by THE RETURN OF JUSTICE AABRIA IYENGAR!!! 

Please submit your (BRIEF, I beg!) cases on this thread and the Supreme Crit will bring you the juiciest of justice.

Love,

Backup Bailiff Axford

Comments

Milk Teeth

Hello illustrious judges and Jake if you let him in the room, I present to you a robbery and an injustice. My party and I were walking through a series of rooms in hopes of tracking down a magical ring. In one of these rooms the DM said that there were piles upon piles of bones, with this I grabbed an arm and hand of a skeleton and affixed a skull to the top of it and then casted animate dead on my little bone amalgamation. The problem arises later in the session when I tried to use my newly acquired compatriot in combat and my DM said that he would have worse stats than a normal skeleton because he is not a complete body. I argued that it was only flavour and I still used a third level spell on him and he should still be as useful as a normal skeleton but my DM refused. The session went on but I am still miffed about this, was I robbed or was this justified on the DMs part.

Luke Johnson

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

Fuzzboxx

Hello Beautiful Judges and equally if not more beautiful Bailiff Emily. I present the case of the deadbeat dad. My cousin joined my campaign, he is a dad of a wonderful daughter. He made his character a dad trying to get his kidnapped 6 year old son back. I thought this was a great story and easy to incorporate. I made his son a major part of the campaign (he's tied to the major god in the universe). After over 6 months he casually mentioned his son was kidnapped. The group was shocked he never mentioned it, they considered it a high priority naturally. He said there was more pressing matters. There wasn't. After 6 more months they finally rescued the boy. My cousin immediately tried to pass the kid off to an orphanage, a local magic school, or anywhere (including a the town brothel?), much to the shock of the group. I made the kid a major part of the campaign story so he has to travel with the group. My question is was I wrong to assume my cousin would want to be a dad in game since he was in person? Or am I justified to be shocked by my cousins deadbeat dad nature?

Carson Lee

May it please the all knowing Justices and the omnipotent bailiff Emily I present the case of cage match courtesy and disputed sneak attacks. In the campaign I DM, the party is questing to gain entrance to the esteemed tournament of champions, SUMMERSLAM. To get there, they need championship belts to be allowed in. In a fight to acquire the belts that Stone Cold, John Cena and a stone golem replica of The Rock wear, the barbarian requested a cage match vs Stone Cold. Noticing the barbarian was losing the 1v1, the artificer directed his attacks at Stone Cold through the cage. This caused all 3 wrestlers to turn their attacks towards the artificer, which downed his character and is where the cause for the case comes from. John Cena, being a stealth assassin, appareted behind the artificer and made dagger attacks from stealth. The artificer used his steel defender to impose disadvantage on the first attack but I attacked with advantage on second as the defender only affects the first attack. The artificer argued that since the first attack was foiled by the defender, the second wouldn't get advantage. I ruled that since he was busy interrupting the cage match he didn't see the attacks coming, his defender used its whole reaction to block one and couldn't notify him. The resulting sneak attack dropped the artificer and he was upset and felt he was getting singled out. The barbarian was mildly upset that the cage match was not respected but didn't complain after beating Stone Cold and taking his belt. Were my attack rulings correct? And was I right to punish the artificer for not respecting the cage match?

Justin Loveless

Hello judgemental judges and bougie bailiff axford. I bring to you the case of Vrool's bruised ego. My party was granted a team of horses to ride to a nearby town. My half orc barbarian Vrool refused his own mount and insisted he could keep up with the horses as we weren't in a galloping hurry. Instead of giving me a chance to roll an athletics check my DM narrated that our party made it to the town while I lagged behind, panting, and tired, because there is no way I could keep up with a horse. The scene moved on quickly, but the damage to Vrool's ego has been done. Has Vrool been slighted, and should he have been given the opportunity to show what a life of running the plains can do for your athletic ability? I await your judgement. -JLove

Fabrizio Moreno

Dear priests and bible camp counselor, I've come today to ask for forgiveness and redemption. A few years ago, right before the pandemic, we were playing a Homebrew version of the Star wars ttrpg with some friends. Because I was the one with more knowledge about Star wars and ttrpg I was the GM, it was my first time ever GMing a campaign and also my first time ever playing, so as you can guess the stakes were high and so were my stress levels. In our first session our wookie Ranger found a couple of jawas trying to steal from her store, she tried to scare them but even with a +9 intimidation and a DC 12 she failed, after that they roll initiative and things went South. Out of the two 10hp jawas, one of them died instantly because our wookie got a Nat 20 and dealt 22 points of damage (1d12 times two) and the other failed his "death saves" after being throw out of the store and getting 15 points of damage. At this point I have two things I want to clarify, the first one is that I tried tod/ deescalate the situation in the middle of the battle (giving her another chance of intimidation, strength checks with disadvantage for being a target too small for a wookie, etc) but nothing work out, and second, and most important, is that THIS TWO JAWAS WERE VERY IMPORTANT TO STORY! They were fugitives from a illegal slave trader ring and supposed to give the party their first mission to rescue their children who were still captives in the slave ring, plus I had a whole backstory for them, their kids and even that she was pregnant, so when other party member got a Nat 20 in the investigation check of the corpses I had to tell them everything, about them, the children, the pregnancy, the slave ring, EVERYTHING. Needless to say, chaos ensued. Some were in shock, some were angry (understandable) and my friend the wookie went through the five step of mourning in 2 minutes. After that they ended up destroying the illegal slave trader ring anyway and the campaign went on, but 'till this day everytime someone mentions the "jaws incident" we all go silent and say "we don't talk about that". Now, here I am wondering: could I have done something different? Or was it all part of the game in the hands of the dice Christ?

Waddle Bawddle

May it please the wise justices, the gracious bailiff, and the ever present aura of that guy, John. I bring you the case of Stolen Character Moment. I was DMing for a couple of my friends and just had them storm one of my player’s (I’ll call him T) family castle after it was stolen by his step bro. Eventually, they captured the step bro and the exiled prince the party was working for gave T the final call on what to do with him. But before T could make any decisions, another player stepped up to kill the step bro. Our third player attempted to stop him, I also tried to use some NPCs to try and stop him. But his rolls were high and he got to step bro who was already low on health. One successful attack and he was dead. Luckily, that was the end of the session anyway but the table was pretty salty. So I ask, were we right to be irritated with player 2 for ruining T’s character moment? It still irks me a bit to this day. It’s been 2 years.

Parker

I posted this on the Pooping Cleric episode on Patreon but here it is again. Here's a new submission for dungeon court: It's me vs you guys. May it please the court. I got really high and watched this video with my roommate. I almost died bc I laughed so hard at Murph's "Stranger Kids" bit that I choked on goldfish. I await your judgement. Edit: I also tried to make brownies and burnt them bc I baked them at 425 and not 325. I know Murph will say that it's not his fault and to stop smoking weed but I got distracted thinking about "Where the fuck is Billy he's fucking gone." Genuinely spent more time standing in the kitchen laughing than actually mixing the brownies.

Dylan C

To the mighty and esteemed judges and the bailiff who is the true hero of the court. I bring you all a case of character gender identity and player agency. I am in a game where I play as an air genasi worlock warrior in a game that the dm describes as "a fuck around game." One day we were talking to a university professor and I touch an incomplete item in the room that changed my gender with no save whatsoever. On top of that the dm told me to just "interpret that how you will" which is a loaded statement because there are so many ways to decide what happened. I was extremely miffed because I made my character the way that made me comfortable and exited to play and I try to stay away from playing as some other groups of people because I don't want to accidentally fall into stereotypes. I eventually decided on saying that my character Zahid is a warrior first and wouldn't care about what their gender is so I could avoid any arguments that I didn't want to have. I ask, was player agency take from me or am I taking this too seriously in a silly game. To be fair I would have been less miffed with more defined rules and a charisma save. I pray for your swift judgment.

Andrew Schiessl

May it please the rad as hell justices and the musical genius bailiff. I bring you the case of the anxious paladin. I was playing my first ever session of dnd, and I was playing a halfling paladin who wielded a trident. About 1 hour through the game I had an anxiety attack and had to go lie down and miss most of the session. The dm and other players said it was fine and just played without me. The next day, I saw a message in the group text about our game making plans on a day I was busy, I’d asked if we could reschedule, but another player said since I had missed most of the first session that I probably wasn’t a part of the campaign anymore. Obviously i was upset, cause I would normally dm for this group and wanted to actually play as a pc for once, but had my opportunity stripped away. I humbly implore you, was I wronged?

Tavitafish

I have very recently been called a mean dm because I told my mom she could not be a minion. Yes, the things from despicable me. Finally I was able to work out with her that there are other fun small races (she seemed excited by kobolds). Then, as we're making characters, everyone kept ragging me for not letting her play a minion. I stood firm. So she makes her character. But I was still called mean. Should I have let my dear mother, lover of minion memes, be a minion? Ps: her character ended up with bright yellow skin anyways, so she kinda got what she wanted. And she hasn't done any annoying minion stuff

The Game Itself back from nowhere

May it please the High Crit, Jubilant Justices Eyinger, Tenner, Mop and the Bashful Bailiff Axefard, I present the case of DM vs Self. Making a very long story short, I had a Bear Totem Barbarian/Ascendant Dragon monk who wanted to solo a purple worm and with all the toys that I've given them very much could at level 10, however he misused an ability I gave him that let him shift 5 ft without taking opportunity attacks while also getting a last round round of attacks in before running but with a purple worms 10 feet of range, this caused him to get hit with one more attack. The purple worm had not hit with the mouth attack once so it opted to use the tail attack which it ended up critting for a third time on him. He ended up going down alone but I silently said earlier to myself that they was an enemy scout watching this fight, after he went down I basically made death saving throws to see who would win in a fight, the scout dragging the player's body away or the purple worm and in the end the scout won causing a spiral of events that led to a the paladin staking his paladin oath on a fight, losing, and joined the enemy side causing essentially character death. I ask you did I go wrong in my judgement to spare this player by having the enemy save him I feel like it was partially my fault for the death and to the monk/barbarians credit, if he didn't get crit on even once and gotten one more round in he would have won as he single handedly got the worm to about 50hp in 3ish rounds. I accept any punishment the High Crits deem worthy.

Parker

(yes I was still high at the time of writing)

Dayton Miles

Hello justices that are too sweet to handle and Aabria who just rules. I bring a confession to the table, and one I still think about. I have been both a DM and a player over the years, but I found myself at times fudging some dice rolls. Specifically moments that honestly made it better with the fake roll but it weighs on my consciousness as I did it for the betterment of the table. I await your judgement

Dan Callery

Oh wise priests of the dice christ church which including but not limited to Head Altar Boy Murph, Crud Day Coordinators caldwellans iyengar, Guitar playing pharmacist emily, and tucker's brother husband Jake. I come to you with a confession. In my last session, I DM'd an encounter based off campaign one's frostwind tunnel fight against the purple worm and the gnolls. Unlike the band of boobs, my party decided to just make a run for it, skipping fighting the gnolls entirely and dashing for the exit. Not wanting to waste a cool encounter, I decided to fudge a roll and have the purple worm attack the party's monk. I was later punished for this fudging, for in the space of a round the monk was swallowed, the paladin fell to zero hp from gnoll arrows, all while the bard had teleported out of the tunnel with no clue what was happening. Now facing a TPK of my own making, I quickly doubled down and fudged more dice rolls, making things up on the fly and giving them chances to escape and heal up. In the end they survived by the skin of their teeth and afterwards my players said they had a blast and that it was one of the most engaging and dramatic encounters yet. I can't shake the feeling though that I had interfered too much into dice Christ's plans. Have I blasphemed against dice christ, oh holy ones? Ps. All credit to Murph for the great encounter and being such an influence for this humble DM 👏

ananarama

Love Bailiff Axford! I bet she likes school lunches for kids unlike Bailiff John

Felix Principe-gillespie

To the honourable justices and the brilliant bailiff (so much better than the old one, bailiff Jack was it?) I ask you, is PvP ever justified? Our party had fought our way to the top of a snowy mountain only to find a chained white dragon. The dragon demanded we freed him and claimed to be a totally chill and friendly dude. My character, Maden, a druid water genasi, argued we 100% should not free this dragon, the DM confirmed my character, as an old magical conspiracy nut, would know not to trust white dragons. The rest of the party decided however to help the dragon. Maden could not stand by and let this happen, and so, a spell was cast, and PVP erupted. Maden was eventually bludgeoned to death, the dragon was freed, upon which point it quickly killed the party. This was our last session as a group. To this day I ask myself, was the PvP justified, should I have stood back and let them act, or was Maden justified in trying to save the party from themselves? (While it was indeed our last session as a group, the group separated because I moved back to the UK from Australia, but regardless I can't help but feel like the vibes were tainted by the brutal bludgeoning of my PC)

Daniel Barnes

Dice Christ confession: I live in Australia where we use the metric system: metres, kilograms etc. Fifth edition uses the imperial system: feet, pounds etc. My beast master ranger got access to a broom of flying which has a carrying capacity of 400 pounds. I read that at as 400kg which is roughly 880 pounds, more than doubling its carrying capacity. With this miscalculation I got my party out of many sticky situations by carrying them all on my broom at once. It has been 3 years and I still think about this. Will dice Christ forgive me for accidentally doubling the power of my flying broom due to a downunder blunder. May the lord have mercy on my soul.

Alejandro

Greetings you cool Justices, I have a confession for the one, the true, the only, Dice Christ. In a recent 5e campaign I play with a few of my friends, my character “Musadin” is a wild magic Sorcerer that, due to rolling some pretty bad stats upon character creation, has very low hp. I bring up the wild magic due to one of our battles, my character’s wild magic surge occurred, and upon rolling the d100, I got the effect that would have casted a 3rd level fireball centered on myself. I was already low hp, so being flustered and not wanting my character to instantly die (which was something that could have happened if I rolled high on damage) I lied about the roll and said that it was one number lower, which summoned a bunch of harmless animals around me. The play continued on with my character surviving the encounter and finishing the mission with the rest of the party I present myself before dice Christ asking for forgiveness for lying on my d100 roll, and thank you for hearing me out

technomancer42

Honorable Judges and he who presents the cases, I bring to you the case of the missed save. I was recently playing my first full game of D&D on the player side(I ran a few games as DM that did not go too far), we got into combat with some kobolds, the majority coming from in front of us. While pieces were being used, it had been mostly theater of the mind and as the DM was the one bringing out the pieces, I wasn't sure if my character was far enough in to do anything or even be on the board. That said, one player later did an AOE attack which hit several kobolds and possibly would have hit my character as well. However since I didn't have a piece down, and no one said anything to me, I said nothing as well to avoid taking damage. I made sure going forward I had a piece, but I still feel guilty and will take any punishment fitting. Also: just to note, I was playing a level 2 wizard with 10 hp, who managed to get through without taking damage otherwise.

jared laban

Greetings unwavering judges and back up bailiff Axford. I present to you the case of the uncooperative rouge. I recently ran a one shot for a new player and she chose to play a rouge assassin. For the majority of the one shot it was clear that she wasn't very interested in the story or helping the party in their crusade to find treasure. Instead she, worked against them! keeping information to herself, trying to steal magic items that were clearly meant for other players and GOOGLED the answer to my riddles. She did however end up getting on the wrong side of our Minotaur Barbarian who swiftly took her to 0 in a few swings. He then offered to pick her back up with a good-berry and when he did... she stabbed him in the ribs! Needless to say she died that session. But I ask of you, am I right to be annoyed? Should I have stopped the behaviour sooner? Or am I being too harsh on a new player. I patiently await your verdict.

Colin

Dear bishop elder priest and deacon of dice Christ I haven’t rolled a proper dice while DMing for the last 3 sessions, when my players come up with a cool plan out side of combat I just roll a backgammon die for the sound and say if it failed or passed depending on how I need to set the mood and energy for the next part of the game so far my players have been loving the campaign and haven’t noticed but I feel like I’m spitting in the polyhedral face of god and needed to confess

ThatManGareth

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

emilythecoffeewench

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices, Early on in our game, we established that William Shakespeare existed this world as a famous bard. My character discovered eventually that my grandparents are Queen Titania and Consort Oberon of the Summer Court. We transport to the Fey Realm, walk into the Court, very nervous to meet my noble grandparents. And there, sitting on Oberon's lap, is William Shakespeare, my actual grandfather. The rulers and the bard are in a throuple. This is obviously very funny but also kinda takes me out of it? My character is otherwise a very serious cleric/paladin. Did my DM go too far by making my character Shakespeare's grandchild?

Crow

Hello Divine Oracles of Dice Christ who bestow upon us your illustrious wisdom I present to you a case of consternation, I’ve been running a virtual game for about a year now first started with Strahds Murder House, before switching to Beyond the Witchlight. My party was given a plethora of magical items once out of the house to try and cover some issues they had with party build (it’s a party of 1 bard, 1 rogue, and 2 rangers) they are all playing as front line tank esque players except for the bard who’s mostly playing a healer. The rogue though has been consistently talking over people and consistently arguing any call I make he doesn’t agree with every session, and in the last session where I had them fighting a flabby giant to clean up a local lake the rogue got into death saving throws again before I called the session for next time to leave some anticipation. Previously I had asked the player if he had any ideas on backup characters if something happened to his rogue to which he said “I’d want to play my rogues brother (where he had claimed his rogue ran away from home and was an only child before) who is very religious and a cleric of Jesus” I was uncomfortable with this and said as much even tried to say what about Pelor but they wouldn’t budge. When I said I wouldn’t want any modern religions in the game he went off in the group chat claiming how I don’t care about them as players and care more about the NPCs then I do on them having fun. The bard who’s been a closer friend claims I’m over reacting to this even though I’ve worked hard on the world and NPC and has claimed I need to relax and let it go and the two rangers are defending me lightly but don’t want to cause any issues. Dear Justices I ask you am I wrong to want to cancel this game or am I over reacting to things that aren’t that big a deal? I await your judgement and decisions with abated breath.

Tim C

TLDR: if the DM gets whomped and the party doesn’t know, is it still a whomping? To the esteemed Justices of the Crit, the Particularly Honorable Justice Iyengar, and the one doing the job of that guy who makes the good callbacks, I present to you the Case of the Unintentional Whomping. My first time DMing, I made a Call of Cthulhu murder mystery campaign set in a small mining village in the Adirondacks outside of Lake Placid. Eight sessions in, things were starting to build towards the final confrontation. However, through two back to back critical successes (1 in 100 chances each) the party opened a portal and flooded the quarry where unbeknownst to them, the BBEG had been summoned. The party then, in a moment of classic shenanigans, accidentally discharged a lightning gun (an alien weapon they had acquired along the way but didn’t know how to use) into the water. This gun was the only way to kill the BBEG, and the party didn’t even realize what happened. I had to pause, but then sheepishly explained how they had successfully killed the BBEG, and that the campaign was effectively over. Five years and many campaigns later, we all still laugh about the absolute ass kicking I received, but I ask you, should I have changed my plans or fudged the plot for a more typical story climax? I await your judgement.

Clint Considine

The Case of the Trip Attack vs the Dragon Dearest Justices, One of my maniac players hit a flying dragon (it was 80ft in the air) with a ranged attack and then executed the Trip Attack maneuver to knock it prone. I am a student of the book and I think you can do it RAW, but come on!! Tripping a flying dragon? Who does that. What's next? I humbly await your ruling and judgement.

Skillful Ferret

If it would please the judges on high, will the esteemed guest bailiff, please recount the tale of the Torn Tabaxi, While playing my last session (though only the 3rd session) due to leaving for a deployment 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 losing interest in the character’s antics.

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 in 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 to a torturous a necromancer he attempted to recruit, makes dealings with his former mentor who has known ties to the bbeg, and continues to jeopardize the party’s wellbeing. This all came to a boiling point when our red dragon companion—my in-game bestie—was turned on us and slain. When I begged our Wizard to revivify, he said no, he had prepared defenses in his keep against the dragon in this case, and the dragon was on his “kill-list”. I attacked our wizard companion in a fit of rage, downing him. The table roared and I was captured by the guards he had accrued in his fiefdom. So I humbly ask you oh mighty, magnificent bailiff—and present company—was I in the wrong to attack his character when he is so willing to sacrifice the party, treating us and other characters as NPCs?

Tim The Enchanter

May it please the court, the equitable justices Murphy and Tanner, the captivating justice Iyengar, and the much preferred bailiff Axford. 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 obtained 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, apparently the DM Arguer DID object, but he didn’t let anyone know until the next combat. 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 acknowledge that what he was doing was 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 offer myself as tribute to bare alone the full weight of the Court’s punishment. Thank you.

Will Pena

To the Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the Ultra Honorable Bailiff Axford. I present the case of the pregnant ghost possession. I play in a Western-themed campaign, and one night while staying in an abandoned house we met a ghost. She was attempting to play the piano and out of an abundance of kindness, our bard let the ghost possess her. The ghost immediately ran outside, hopped on our horse, and rode away! The bard tried to convince the ghost not to run into the desert alone because she was pregnant! This was a lie. After a long discussion and careful consideration, the DM ruled the ghost would be able to tell that the body she was possessing was not pregnant and our bard could not attempt a deception check. All turned out for the best, but we still bring up the question to this day: Could a ghost detect if the body they’re possessing is pregnant, and should our bard have been able to roll for deception? We humbly await your judgement.

jenavieve

May it please the court, the honorable Justices Murphy and Tanner, The supreme guest Iyengar, and benevolent Baliff Axford. I present a case not regarding the rules of the game, but the rules of the gathering itself. We have a player who is IMPOSSIBLE to get in contact with. They were consistent in the group chat and we had over a dozen weekly sessions. However recently they have gone MIA. We have tried contacting them and they receive and respond to messages occasionally, however they don’t respond to ANYTHING in the DND group chat. I have even spoken to them at unrelated parties, where they will say things like “Let’s do DND soon!” and “I’m excited for next session” however when we try to plan there is NO input. Everyone else is ready to go and very active in the chat with scheduling. We are thinking of playing without them, but we don’t want to hurt their feelings.

Guildedfangs

To the Supreme Crit and the critically crucial Baliff Emily, I bring you a case of player vs dm. At the start of the campaign each player was allowed to help shape the world and where their character came from. I played a druid of a nomadic clan from a frozen waste ruled by an Ancient White Dragon who left to gain power to free the land from the Wyrm. My location was the last place we went too and after seeing all the others players locations treated well I find my land no longer a frozen land with nomadic clans but now a bustling city exists in it and is ruled by Silver Dragons. In anger and frustration after asking the DM what had happened and being hold he made it better then what we had discussed, i enlisted my best friend and we derailed the campaign causing him to make it end much sooner then expected. Was I wrong in going this far after seeing everyone else's location being treated as if it was gold or am I bitter about something that should have been a shoulder shrug?

That's not how misty step works

Greetings merciful judges and special honored guest Abria! I was playing a lvl 10 bard in a sidequest to our main campaign. There was a student in a library being taken over by some naughty books. We entered the library and on my first turn I walked up to the student and casted dimension door on myself and her to get her out of range of the books power. My dm said that the girl/book demon had to pass a check against my spell save which was 17 (pretty good) to be teleported. However the girl had to get higher than 17 to be saved which to me doesn't make sense. I built a strong character with a high spell save but in order to save the girl she had to BEAT it. So judges I ask you this: If I raised my spell save to be powerful shouldn't the check have been that if she fails the check (which she did) then I can save her. I felt as if I was being punished for a high spell save. This has been bothering me for about two years and I only now have the courage to post. Thanks and I fucking love you guys!

David Heintz

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

Michael R

May it please the court, Honorable Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Tanner, the honored guest Justice Iyengar, and also the once honorable bailiff Axford, I present to you a case of patricide: Last session, my party and I were fleeing a horde of invading Shadowfell monsters by jumping through a portal, which we knew was very unstable and could close at any moment. Despite this, another PC (my actual, real-life little brother) was attempting to haul the unconscious body of his character’s father (a very naughty father who, may I add, was unconscious after we beat him in an encounter where he used a modified “gift of gab” spell to gaslight us). While dragging this dastardly dad, the BBEG appeared, healing the problematic progenitor, who then promptly KO’d another party member along with my brother’s character, and resumed gaslighting us. My turn came, where I was able to heal one player, and then turn to attack the pugnacious poppa with my bow. After rolling a Nat 1, which I re-rolled as a halfling, I rolled a Nat 20. This wasn’t quite enough damage to do it so I rolled my second attack, rolling a second Nat 20. Our DM allows us to deal non-lethal damage, but I felt I couldn’t justify letting my brother’s offensive old man walk away, so I said that I shot an arrow through his forehead, leaving him dead. After our escape, my brother seemed disappointed that he wouldn’t have the chance to reconcile with his deceased daddy, who he had believed (after an Insight check), may have been magically compelled to fight us. Did I do the right thing in putting down this persecuting padre? Or did I rob my actual, real-life brother of an opportunity to role-play an important moment for his character? I surrender myself to the wisdom and mercy of the Justices.

Andrew Corliss

Hello Esteemed Justices Iyengar, Tanner, and Murphy, as well as the Respectful and Chaotic Bailiff Axford, I am playing a 5e curse of Strand campaign as a Wild Magic Sorcerer. After many magic misfires my once male Hill Dwarf was brought to a height of 2' as well as hairless and blue. During a difficult battle the wild magic surge triggered a Reincarnation spell on my Dwarf changing them into what my DM described as a preteen female wood elf. My question is if it is ok for me to play as a preteen character? My DM has even tried to weigh his own daughter in order to calculate the proper weight for my new character. Which I though was going a tad too far. Should I ask my DM if I can age my character some years so that it may not be as strange playing an older mind in a younger character? I think this may also be a little payback from my DM as before the spell I was just calling my character a Smurf and using their charisma to maybe get into one to many difficult positions. Thank you for your thoughts and feedback

H2

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the bailiff Jerk Hatewitz. If it pleases the court, I bring you the case of the Honeymoon Hijinx. My party, which includes a Rogue player and Paladin player, recently had a session in which the Rogue was marrying her Cleric NPC gf. After saving the Cleric from some giant spiders, the DM was describing the Rogue and her new wife going into their marital home with a tasteful fade-to-black when the Paladin PC interrupted. He said that, over the course of the session, he had become enthralled with the Cleric's strength of character, and wanted to dedicate his Paladin oath to her, in a ceremony that would take all night. The Rogue argued that they could do this later, since it was her wedding night, but the Paladin insisted it had to be done immediately, leading to a fight and the Paladin ultimately leaving the group. Justices, I trust that you can determine who was in the right in this case.

Gabriel Miller

Hello Honorable Justices and The Great Bailiff Of The Deep. My DM likes to design challenging combat encounters and at times potentially deadly ones. I enjoy this as it creates tension and stakes, except for one factor. My DM often includes allied NPCs that surpass the PCs power level. In one case in particular, we were a level 6 party fighting a Death Knight that we could barely hit and had a staggering amount of hit points. We only won the fight once an NPC Wizard had cast Banishment for the 4th time on the Death Knight. Our DM said afterward that the goal of the fight should have been to try and protect the Wizard/distract the Death Knight until he could land the spell. Honorable Judges, is it fair to us players for the DM to be able to use high level NPCs alongside us in combat or is the DM on a weird power trip. I humbly await your judgement.

Elana

Dearest judges in all their glory and professional cuckold Jake, I present to you the case of the unknown BBEG. I'm usually the DM in my group but eventually someone else decided to try it out. She seemed strangely into the idea of me making a power build but I didn't think much of it, I was too excited to finally play. Cut to my character I made was a Yuan-ti paladin inspired by Beverly, after a while of playing it came out that the DM had planned from before I even made my character that I would be the BBEG fight. I was never approached with the idea of betrayal and played my character as a supportive, loving, team player. But the DM was dead set on having a demon blackmail me into betrayal and railroaded us into that twist. I don't play with her anymore and my question is, is it OK for me to have banned playing with her or is it overreacting to a plot twist of a story she wanted to tell

Some guy who likes chicken

To the angelic Justices and the impish bailiff, I present a case of romance and treachery (may it please the court). Me and my long term GF are currently playing in a campaign with an old friend of mine as the DM. My GF's character is involved in a passionate relationship with an NPC, played by the DM, and I'm starting to feel uncomfortable during their roleplay scenes. I wouldn't mind except for two things: Firstly, I've played dnd with my friend for about 5 years and he's never expressed interest in roleplaying romance before, as a player or as a DM, and he hasn't pursued it with any other characters in this campaign. Secondly, a few months ago my friend told me while drunk that he has feelings for my GF, that he would never try anything but he thought I should know. At the time I told him it was ok, he can't control his feelings after all, but now it kind of seems like he IS trying something. I haven't spoken to my GF about it for fear I'm overreacting, but justices I have to know: am I just being a Jealous Jake or am I about to get Tuckered?

Randy

May it please the honorable court justices and the guy who got head from Ben Schwartz pre Sonic. I present the case of Buried Weretiger. I’m our campaign we had our tabaxi character become cursed with Lycanthrope. We had 4 days before the full moon and were coming up with ideas. I suggested the night of we put her in a box and bury her alive, with a pipe running to the box to provide air. If it didn’t stop her completely it would give us at least some time before she dug herself out. Our wizard completely shot down this idea and said he had one of his own and not to worry. A few sessions later the night came, but the wizard was not able to be at the session. The dm said he knew the wizards plan and would RP it for him. He cast tiny hut and tied her up inside of it. She proceeded to transform, break free, fight us, almost kill one of us, and ultimately run. I ask you was I wrong to suggest burying her alive, and was the dm wrong for running the session without the wizard, or was the wizard wrong for kinda being a nob? I humbly await your ruling

Hari Williams

I present to the Supreme Justices and Court Executioner Axford, the case of the Rejected Revivify. In one campaign, my Phantom Rogue failed a Wisdom save and was possessed by the spirit of a recently defeated enemy; this wasn't a huge surprise, as ghosts were a recurring theme in the campaign. Unfortunately, however, my Rogue was holding a cooperative prisoner at gunpoint when the possession happened, holding the thug hostage until we could figure out a way to spare his life without him potentially ratting on the party to the local theocracy. The ghost forced my Rogue to pull the trigger, shooting the prisoner directly in the head with a handcannon. The prisoner was killed instantly. The Cleric immediately jumped in and offered to revive the prisoner, but the DM said no; the headshot had destroyed too much of the prisoner's brain, he said, and since Revivify does not restore body parts, it could not revive him. I accepted this at the time and went along with the session, but months later, I'm now realising that this ruling would imply revivify is incapable of reviving anyone who suffered an especially violent death. Was my DM right to stick to his guns, or should he have allowed us to revive our prisoner? I humbly await your judgement. P.S. For additional context on the consequences of this ruling, my party decided to lock me in a cellar for a session and strip me of my magic items, including my gun, because I "couldn't be trusted not to shoot prisoners"; it was several levels before I was given my items back. Had the prisoner been revived, I probably wouldn't have had my items confiscated.

BonesBoy

To the wise clerics of The Church of Dice Christ, and the Humble monk (and mumbling hunk) Jake. I have been drafted to run D&D for some work friends, but this group seems impossible to wrangle, one will not respond to any messages or phone calls, another will not give me any contact information, the third insists they just want to watch, and our possible 4th is married to the first one. They keep insisting that this game will happen and every passing week I am disappointed. Is Dice Christ testing me or am I being gaslit? Your sad little Bones Boy P.S. Skeleton's don't need milk, but they enjoy a gentle brushing and sunflowers.

Michaela Z

Good evening to the celestial judges and the ethereal Bailiff Axford. This is the case of the Gun D.O.G. I was the DM in an Ebberon game, and my players found a robot puppy as a group familiar. It could help get advantage on attacks & checks, but wasn’t built for combat. The artificer of the party asked to put his Eldritch Cannon on the D.O.G. , I said “only if you hit a nat 20”. They got it, but I still refused, as I thought it would be too OP, and make the dog more for the artificer than everyone else. To try and make up for it I gave the D.O.G. a small 1d6 ray gun next session, but I still went back on my word and dishonered a nat 20. Was I justified? If I am in the wrong than punish me to the full extent of the law.

Axyl and Olympia

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

Jessica Petra

Esteemed Crit Justices and Fantabulous Backup Bailiff Axford. I come to you with a case of a scandalous accident and alignment changes. I was playing in one of my games (my group is all GMs so we have 4 games we rotate through to make sure nobody gets burnt out) and my brother was the DM. We were on an airship and my party's barbarian had just succumbed to lycanthropy and turned into a were boar while there was a fungal disease causing zombified chaos in the ship. The wereboar-barian jumped onto the deck and started mindlessly slaughtering the crew while my team rushed inside to try to stop her. Our druid, in the confusion, cast heat metal on stairs leading up that were choked with scared passengers. She mistakenly thought they were infected but they were just commoners with 4 hp and they all died. There were 12 innocent victims in all. My brother made our druid roll a wisdom save to keep her alignment N. She failed with a 10 and my brother said she was now NE. He then made her roll an animal handling check to make her animal companion (a hamster the size of a brown bear named Quincy) not be afraid. She also failed this and Quincy immediately started running away from her. Her character then collapsed on the floor in shock and remorse at what she did. I argued that this ruling was too harsh because there was just too much going on to make sound judgement in and out of game (the hat on a hat defense). Additionally her character acknowledged what she did and felt remorse but my brother kept his ruling. Alignment rules are weird at best but was this a good ruling or was my brother being harsh? I await your judgement. -Jess (she/her)

Luke Polito

May it please the court and beguile the backup bailiff. I am about to begin playing in a Curse of Strahd campaign. This will be only my 2nd time ever playing from a module and I'm really looking forward to it! However it has made me wonder the etiquette of something: is it considered cheating or playing in bad faith to use my personal DnD knowledge to get the advantage on creatures and situations my character might not necessarily have knowledge about? I know what a vampire or werewolf is vulnerable to, but is it unfair to give that knowledge to my character (i havent snooped at the module itself, of course, just general knowledge of DnD from playing and DMing myself)? Conversely, would I be considered a bad player for NOT using that knowledge in a potentially deadly situation for my party, all in the name of more honest RP? I don't want to be a Metagaming Marvin, but I don't want to be a Sandbagging Steven either.

Jake de Medeiros

May it please the court, I present the case of the table that went silent My party and I were on a stealth mission rescuing a nobleman’s twin daughters from a keep. We had the girls in our bag of holding (the DM accepted these shenanigans) and were making a swift exit. We passed a group stealth check, and then my friend made an in-character joke about wanting a slice of roast mutton. Our DM told us that one of the girls heard the joke from inside the bag, laughed, that we were heard by guards, and had entered combat… you could hear a pin drop. The energy had shifted. No more jokes were told, discussions were tense, and my friend told me a few days later he no longer wanted to play. Was my DM wrong for punishing a joke? Thank you, Jake

Sean L Byrne

May it please the oh-so-wise Justices, and the much, much, much better than Jake or even John, Bailiff Emily- About two years ago, I was playing in a campaign and the DM had allowed each player to select three new spells. Once all of our spells were final, we started the session, and before I had used any of my new spells, I found myself in a situation where it would be extremely helpful to use "comprehend languages", a spell I had not chosen initially. I asked the DM if we could just say that I HAD chosen comprehend languages (and thus drop one of the others) since I hadn't used any of my new spells yet, and though I expected a "sure", I was met with a firm "no". I of course accepted this judgment but was a little surprised by the resoluteness of his answer. Was the DM's call reasonable? Would you have made the same one? I put myself at the mercy of the Crit and await your judgment.

Asher Mendelsohn

To the very honourable Justices Axeford, Tanner, and Brian ...... and thank you Justice Iyengar for replacing that pitiful bailiff. I present to you the case of the circumvented Frogbox. One of the players in my regular dnd group wanted to try DMing for the first time, he's been running Locathah Rising, an Underwater combat-heavy 5ish-shot with our PCs currently at level 10. My friend (our regular DM) is playing as Gring the Grung, a cavalier fighter with the polearm master and sentinel feats. This allows him to opportunity attack any creature that enters, moves within, or leaves a 10ft radius square centered around Gring and reduce that creature's speed to 0. AKA the Frogbox. Somehow, through the mysterious gift of all-knowingness, every enemy we've faced is aware of the frogbox and actively avoids it. The DM has done everything in their power to prevent Gring from using his 2 feats and class features. To date, Gring has never even gotten the chance to roll for an opportunity attack. After 2 sessions of this (and other bad DM choices I won't get into), we were annoyed to say the least. But the 3rd session, oh lordy the 3rd session, was the straw that broke the frog's back. We got into combat against 2 kraken priests. A few rounds in, they called for backup from a Young Kraken, which the DM said was inside a sunken ship. Important note: Frogbox was covering the only entrnace/exit of that ship. The DM thought the Young Kraken could squeeze past the 2.5ft area of the entrance that wasn't in the frogbox. Seriously dude? After we asked for clarification, the DM said the Kraken was Huge; this meant they could not exit the ship without activating Frogbox. We erupted in cheer as we chanted FROGBOX FROGBOX FROGBOX. That was the best part of the night. The DM then ruled that the Kraken would actually break through the wall of the ship and fully avoid Frogbox. Not only that, but the Kraken broke through the wall without using an action, without affecting their movement, without using an ability, nothing. Just freely got to swim through the wall and have a full turn. I nearly blurted how BS that was and my Gring friend, in real life, just left to go paint some minis. After our session, the DM asked why my friend "shut down". Please Justices, I beg of you, who is in the wrong? Our DM who refuses to lose at the cost of ruining the night, or Gring the Grung who was foolish enough to take 2 feats that allows for a super awesome reaction they can only use once per round?

Shadow

To the extremely rad justices (especially Aabriya) and the wonderful Bailiff Emily: I was playing D&D with my friends, and before the first session of this new campaign, the DM told me how she was making a character in the game that was exactly my type and that she was excited for us to interact. She knew about my lack of success in real-life romance, so I was pleased to get an opportunity to try in the game. When my tiefling druid met the NPC, I rolled terribly. Then, the party’s bard, a pothead tabaxi named Garfield, rolled super well and entered a flirtation with the NPC that seemed to imply more would happen, while the NPC treated me like I was a weirdo. I didn’t say anything at the time because it felt petty, but I felt slighted by both my DM and my fellow player. Was she wrong for implying this character was essentially designed for me but then allowing one bad roll to ruin everything? Both people knew how socially awkward I can be, so the situation felt like rubbing salt in the wound. (my pronouns are they/them, by the way)

Trevor Wurtsmith

Dear honorable judges and hemp milk drinking bailiff Emily I had a DM who ran 2 different groups. We always joked about who the crazier party was, and who would win in a 4v4 lvl 10 pvp. Until finally it was set to happen. We all made characters, picked magic items (each team given 2 uncommon), and talked strategy for a whole week until the day before someone asked if 2 bags of holding within eachother was allowed in the context of our one shot. The DM said yes which launched some players into a fit of complaints, and others started trying to figure out how to use this loophole to astral nuke the other team away with no way of returning. Ultimately this controversy ended up causing the cancellation of the pvp and the disbandment of both groups. I ask you, were the players right to be upset? Would you allow the "Bag Nuke"?

Gnarrrwhal

May it please the Honored Justices and the lowly bailiff Elaine, today I would like to bring before you the case of the Heckled Heroes Feast. In my most recent campaign every time my players entered a settlement no matter how small they would immediately inquire about the blacksmith or magic item shop in the town. It did not matter if it was just a small farming village all of my players except one would immediately start asking about any magic items to buy or what armor/weapons were available. The one exception being my Lizardfolk Monk with the Chefs feat who would only go to the market and ask about what spices/foods were for sale and ask to spend time to learn with whoever he thought was the best chef in the market. As we ended our campaign at level 13 with a large Hobgoblin and Dragon army about to attack the city were the players were, I narrated that the night before the attack the Monk was able to combine all of the knowledge and ingredients he had compiled through the campaign into casting the spell Hero’s Feast and that was vehemently objected to by other players saying that was not a spell on their class list so they should not be able to cast it. To me, it was a payoff for a campaigns worth of Role Play, character investment and not constantly asking me for more magic items. No other player’s character was able to cast Heroe’s Feast and everyone was decked out in magic items by the end. So I ask was it wrong to allow a player to cast a spell outside of their class list?

Orangeleader398

May it please the honorable Crit Justices and talented Bailiff Axford. I was a new DM when my party was facing a young (teenage) white dragon. My invisible ranger rolled a NAT 20 on throwing a lust potion in the dragons mouth (ran up dragon Naruto style and slammed it in stopping the layer action that was next). He then became visible because he made an action. I had him and the rogue (next to dragon) give me luck checks to see who the dragon saw 1st and would lust over. The ranger lost and the dragon… lusted onto him and after combat ended the player quit. Was I wrong to take a joke that far? Or should the NAT 20 also have saved him from the dragons lustful eyes? I beg the courts omnipotent decision.

Gort Munchman

In the name of the DM, the Nat 1, and the holy spir-crit, it has been twenty sessions since my last confession. I am playing in a group where our current DM has been too busy to run the campaign, and asked if any of us players wanted to run a few one-shots in the meanwhile. I and another player volunteered, and we both went searching online for some premade adventures. In the spirit of the current season, I went hunting for a spooky campaign, reading through several until settling on one that I liked. We started the campaign of the other volunteer DM, and I was dismayed to learn he had chosen a campaign that I already read beginning-to-end. Not wanting to put him on edge or end the campaign before it even began, I pretended I didn't know what was happening, and acted surprised with all of the twists and turns. This all culminated in several puzzles to which I already knew the solution that I pretended I just could not figure out, as well as a trap that I deliberately triggered because the alternative was showing my hand and revealing I had read the whole adventure. I await Dice Christ's punishment or absolution with bated breath. Sincerely, Busted in Buffalo

Ben

May it please inscrutable Justices and the effervescent Bailiff Emily. I bring to you the case of the food order that ended a campaign. Back when 5e was still quite new, my friend wanted to take over my usual role as DM and move us from 4e to 5e. I was delighted by this as I wanted to take a little break from DMing... however this led to a few issues like a player (Jammy) rolling really a high investigation check on a trapdoor, being told it was safe, only open the door and be shot in the face by a crossbow KOing him immediately. However the main issue happened about 3 sessions later. To the DMs credit, the session was weird, 2 new players joined just for that session, someone was late, and someone's brother came to just watch. The brother needed to leave early so Jammy offered to take the brother home and get a food order for everyone at the table. When they left the DM ran an encounter whilst we were waiting. I was KO'd on the first round before even getting to take a move and waited for the food to arrive. The combat ended after a bit and Jammy got back with the food, all ends well... until after the session. The DM messaged the group and told everyone how much XP they got for the encounter and, Jammy getting 0 as his character wasn't there... even I got XP and all I did was lie on the floor bleeding out... Jammy argued that he was getting food IRL and should still get the XP. The argument ended the campaign and I've never used XP since. Mighty Justices, who was the asshole? I throw my friends at your mercy and am ready to enforce any punishments you may give.

Brogan

May it please the court, our godly and fair justices and the dark pulsating energy in the corner that is the bailiff axford. Today I present the case of talk shit get hit I play with a group of people I’ve known since highschool. For background, they were the ones who taught me how play dnd. Recently we were running a session that I was DMing that the party was very much not taking seriously. I’ll admit we all like to get our sillies out sometimes but I had asked them at the break to take the second half of the session more seriously. They agreed but almost immediately fell back into it. Interrupting me and not listening when I was talking. I had mentioned in my description of a certain area that the trees were very dense and would be easy to hide in. Almost none of my players were paying attention so I just said fuck it and kept going instead of repeating the description for a 5th time. The one person who did listen (and was as equally annoyed as me) tried to get the party to look around for clue in case people were following them. The party didn’t, continuing with trying to find the silliest solution to opening a locked trunk they had found earlier. The solution for the trunk was in the woods and they would just need to pass a few checks to get. I told them this as I was done at this point but they told me there’s no fun in just rolling dice and there’s more fun in trying to crack it in a dumb way. I gave the player who was listening a look and decided to say fuck it, it’s on. I made everyone role perception checks (in which everyone got under a 10) and then had them fight what was hiding in the woods. The group of orc bandits I had waiting for them robbed them blind and kidnapped the character of the player who was paying attention (I left them unharmed) and their beloved trunk was taken. My players got upset with me for forcing them to move on in the story without being done with what they were doing and told me I was meta gaming as the bandits “wouldn’t have known they had the trunk”. The player who was paying attention tried to defend me which made the fight worse. No one is talking to one another now and I feel like it’s my fault. Judges, am I in the wrong for throwing bandits at my players who weren’t paying attention? I humbly wait your response.

Harrison Attema

May it please the court and the incredibly wise bailiff Axford, I present to you the case of DM vs. The Pregnant Pegasus Player. In my very first campaign I had a player who wanted to play as a Pegasus cleric, which I foolishly allowed, and he also asked if his Pegasus could be pregnant and named Pregasus. I remind you, this was my first campaign and all of our first D&D experience, but I thought it was funny and allowed it. Fast forward to months of this player being a total loose canon and campaign derailing player. My players are fighting their tiefling rival bad guy in a volcano and everyone is in rough shape and our Pegasus cleric has done nothing to help the party in this combat. The Dragonborn fighter successfully grappled the tiefling and went to hold him under the lava while being waist deep in the lava field themselves. Next in intiative was Pregasus who instead of healing the Dragonborn casted create water. I was confused and he told me the water will harden the surface of the lava and keep the tiefling under. Me, getting tired of his shenanigans looked up how much water it takes to harden a surface of lava and I deemed the spell would not scientifically be able to create enough water to do what he was asking. We argued and in my frustration with the player said he cast it and the spell did nothing and moved on. On the next turn the Dragonborn went down and the bad guy escaped. My player accused me of rail roading and never allowing him to do anything and only wanting to force my story on them. He left the party and never played with us again. Admittedly I was very frustrated with the player after their behavior for months, but I ask, was I too harsh in not rewarding Pregasus’s creativity with the create water spell or was I just in denying the spell’s utility in the moment? I humbly await your judgement.

Just a lake troll napping in a long boat...

The case of the dragon and the disgruntled DM. May it please the court and the astonishing bailiff Aabria... I was invited to my very first game and was having the time of my life. During the campaign my party and I came across a red dragon guarding his hoard. The dm told us not to even try to fight the dragon as it was too strong and would kill us, well me being new to the game decided I wanted to try anyway and crit on my roll. The dm stated my arrow pierced the neck through the only missing scale causing the dragons head to explode when it attempted to breathe fire next round and was blocked by the large arrow. We cheered and the dm got so enraged he gave us the worse loot he could find and immediately made our next incounter against 2 giant stone golem resulting in a tpk. I ask should I have listened to the dm and not fought the dragon or was my party and myself wronged and cheated out of our victory over the dragon? I humbly await your judgment

Nurse LaCroix

To the dry dungeon justices and the aioli-oriented bailiff, I am not here for a trial but a legal complaint seeking a preemptive injunction. Can there be a mayonnaise elemental? It is one of the eight substances that can be poured infinitely from the alchemist's jar, a canon item from the Dungeon Master's guide, so there must be some kind of intrinsic metaphysical significance to this miraculous whip. Last time I was in a campaign with the alchemist's jar, my DM and co-players were upset with my Barbarian for their frequent mayo use (I was bulking) even though the jar saved our lives so I feel like there's a double-standard here. Can I get my condiment condoned as canon or should this legal complaint be brought to trial?

woodsorrel

To the Estimable Consideration of the Court, should this missive so please the Superior Bailiff Axford, I present the case of the reckless druid. Our druid (and only healer) tends to make group decisions the rest of the party doesn’t want, from deciding on our goals for the session to rash decisions that get us near-TPKed. In a recent session, it was important for another PC that we get to their hometown. On the way, we stumbled upon an abandoned cultists' lair. Despite my wizard character’s high investigation rolls indicating a certain chest was cursed, and the rest of the party's desire to continue our journey, the druid opened the chest. Several monsters came out, immediately downed the druid, and decimated the rest of the party. The fighter and I barely finished them off. No one died only because everyone succeeded on their death saves. The druid kept reminding me during my turns that he was down. He then confronted me after the battle and said that we should have healed him. I have no healing spells, a low medicine modifier, and no one had potions or goodberries. He went down right in front of the monsters, and if I tried to get that close, I probably would have died. Was there something I should have done to help him? It is worth noting that the DM always supports the druid.

Helen Killer

May it please the too hot to handle justices of the court, and the on par with John bailiff Emily. I present before you an issue with my player's silent but deadly wind. I am DMing, and my group was sneaking through Cannibal Castle. The ranger used Wind Wall to prevent 2 guards that noticed them from raising the alarm and I asked her is she was sure about this and she wanted to go through with it. I said that she managed to stop the guards, but the extremely loud wind alerted everyone else in the castle of their presence. They argued with me saying that the wind should be silent, and I told them that high winds are super loud especially wind that is strong enough to physically damage you. They shot back saying it is magic wind, so just chill bro. We eventually managed to come to a compromise of an arcana check from the ranger which they passed. Judges was it right to acquiesce to their argument, or should my players have been The Cannibal King's lunch?

Jacob Seely

Dear Supreme Crit Justices and The Bailiff who sounds different, I present the case of The Pointless Stunning Strike. I was playing a level 14 Kensei Monk who had taken Mage Slayer at level 12. This feat allows me to use a reaction to hit enemies in melee who cast a spell. Our party was facing a bbeg who had been harrying us for months of real world time. At the final battle we had reduced him to less than 20 HP but he began to cast teleport to escape. Since he was casting a spell I used my reaction to attack him, which I was able to hit. I used stunning strike to stun the target so he couldn’t take actions, but the DM ruled that he still teleported away while stunned. This was a huge blow to our party’s moral and even though we were able to track him down again and kill him next time, I can’t help but feel our party was robbed by our DM. I eagerly await your wise, just, and fair decision.

Lee Ann Tuohy

May it please the court, and the extra special Justice, Aabria! I present the case of the Heat Metal Meltdown I joined a roll20 paid DM adventure of The Curse of Stahd that had been playing for a few sessions before I had joined in. During our first adventure together, the experience was less than I had expected for $15 a week. The DM was vaping loudly into the mic every several seconds, and was taking work calls mid session. No one seemed to mind so I kept my mouth shut to not rock the boat. The problem came when we were facing down Rahadin, Strahd's loyal servant. The bard had cast a 4th level Heat Metal on the scimitar, which rahadin saved on so his weapon stayed in hand. After, the DM made 3 attacks on the cleric and claimed that since Heat Metal was still active, the cleric would have to roll saves or otherwise take the normal scimitar damage AND heat metal damage for EVERY strike. I was gobsmacked. I protested to which the DM said, "it's not your character so why do you care and also it works both ways, so it's fair." I told him on the spot I wasn't interested in continuing to play with such a lose rule interpretation and everyone in the group started to say I was being unreasonable and I should know whatever the DM says is law. So I ask you, was I wrong for leaving a campaign I was paying to participate in mid session because the DM behaved in ways I thought unacceptable?

Cam the Frog Man Swags Dry Cousin from Gladeholm

To the indubitably amazing crit justices, and missing bailiff Jason, I present the case of The Extra Car. Hello, I am running a campaign with my roommates and recently we got a third member, at the time of the 0layer joining, we were about to do a death race and my first 2 players got a shared car together, so to reconcile I let my new player have his own car as to not around suspicion on why a third person joined that team so randomly, In doing so I made one of my players mad because they had to share. This caused a discourse among the players for who should get control of what cars Was I wrong for giving the new player his own vehicle or should i have let him ioin the parties car, I humbly await your judgment

zack proudfoot

To the mighty, powerful, and benevolent I offer a "hey sweetie" and to jack, tucker told me to tell you rents due. I'm was a kobold champ fighter in a campaign that ran to level 20, during a session I was unfortunately knocked out and teleported away before the party could help. The next session I was narrated to awake in a coliseum with none of my equipment just pants and my familiar toast the lizard. I was offered one magic item of my choice and if I beat the challenge I was permitted freedom. I choose wave as my weapon and my challenge was a tarrasque, i won initiative and due to some lucky crits I killed it on my second attack. The DM the described a second new tarrasque walking in and effectively replacing the first, after more crits and I managed to kill it aswell before a third walked it. After 3 rounds of initiative more crits then I've ever had in my life and 7 tarrasque dead I was killed along side toast. My question is am I allowed to be bothered that I was in a no win situation or should I just accept that I was already dead the moment I was teleported away.

Miikra

DM made me roll saving throws for my enemies and I succeeded? To the most esteemed crit justices and the temporarily lowly bailiff, Our party had just foiled a political coup d'état in a city that resulted in the party having to fight off many mercenaries as we tried to chase down and capture would be usurper. Admittedly, a LOT was going on and the DM had a lot of things to keep track of. I had a pretty impressive turn and the DM asked me to roll a morale check for the mercenaries to see if they would stay or beat feet. I rolled a 17 and was pretty excited about rolling high. The DM narrated that the mercenaries' resolve hardened and were ready to die for the cause. I was confused because I had rolled pretty high, but the DM explained that I had literally rolled for the mercenaries and since I rolled high, the mercenaries were going to stay. I argued that I thought I was rolling for my benefit and me rolling high shouldn't be a boon for an enemy NPC. The DM argued that he just asked me to roll for him because he had to keep track of other aspects of the encounter and that the high roll was intended for the NPCs. Judges, was I right to be salty over a negative high roll or was the DM fair to ask me to roll for him and take that high roll for himself. I await your judgement.

J-Bru

To the all knowing Justices and the Brilliant Back up Baliff I present the case of Hex v DM. A player has been using Hex incorrectly for years now stating that the ability they chose when casting it caused the target to get disadvantage on saving throws. I recently looked up the exact wording and found out it causes disadvantage on ability checks not saving throws. We are starting a new campaign and I told the player that hey I'm using Hex the way it is written no more using it onnsaving throws this campaign. His argument is since this campaign takes place in the same world as the last campaign it should work the same way, I said we'll magic can change but it seemed to really bum him out as hex is one of his favorite spells (though I suspect that is because we've never used it correctly). I know I'll give in and eventually give him like an item or a boon that gives him Hex as he always used it but am I wrong to say hey this is a new campaign we've been playing this spell wrong in prior campaigns so no more? No one is really mad just annoyed/disappointed. Thank you for your judgement in this manner

Dez Magner

May it please the justices Murphy, Tanner and Iyengar, and the clearly superior bailiff Axeford. I present the case of the ignored character ending. I joined a high level game as a rogue working for a mob boss who had it out for the party, they agreed to help me take him down to free me. Once we were finally ready to face off against my boss it was revealed that he was a dragon in disguise and halfway through the fight, the guild master of a local guild, and the fighter’s father joined us to take down our foe .During the fight was revealed that my boss had killed my entire family and kept me enslaved under false pretenses for many years. The guild master ended up dying during the fight which ended the session focusing on the fighter's grief. Next session we played ended up focusing entirely on the funeral for the guild master and every other character and npc I talked to blamed me for his death, since it was my fault we fought the dragon, and wanted nothing to do with me. every time I tried to do anything but my DM dismissed it with a “you go do that” before going back to the funeral. After the session I told my DM I was a bit disappointed that I was pushed out of the narrative entirely surrounding the villain I had created for my backstory, the fighter agreed, saying he didn’t understand why he got the spotlight. The DM got mad at this saying I should have tried harder if I wanted to do anything and that it was unfair to be dissatisfied with my arc. So I ask you noble justices, was I justified in my disappointment or was my DM right that I should have tried harder? I humbly await your verdict.

Zach Collier

*i slam my briefcase on the defending table* My client pleads innocent on the grounds of unprecedented magic your honors. My artificer has found the understanding of how a world is formed using the blends of computer science and arcane magic inside of gems. Thereby altering certain objects and creatures on their abilities. (Aka i can shrink or grow objects and create the artifacts our party would like to have) We're here in this case because my client used his magic to shrink a dimensional space with the aspect of loki inside, measly to contain him and move the door to a safer location. When sadly when he reshaped the door he was met with a tragic site of an "empty" room with no physical site of the vessel of the previous god. My client wanted to ensure the npc's safety though didn't want the precaution of a God of illusion stalking their party, Judges i await your decision and hope you can find a proper call to Melk bending towards reality. Changlings will want to change the world for the better and didn't want this to be the vessels end.

Ross Gilliland

May it please the court and the unconventionally handsome bailiff, I was DMing a campaign for 6 of my best friends in college, and going into a certain session I made sure to remind my players that DnD is not a video game and there are real consequences to the things they do and say, as I felt like in previous sessions many jokes were made about what their characters did or said and I had to ask them "Are you sure you want to do that?" far too many times. Later in this same session, upon discovering that the home they were staying in during their travels was occupied by a friendly vampire, my real life best friend and most problematic player decided his character Hektor would petition the vampire for his assistance in a personal endeavor he was undertaking. The vampire, having no stakes in this ordeal, promptly told Hektor he would not be involving himself in the matter, and retreated back into his coffin. Hektor’s next words have lived in infamy ever since: “I light his coffin on fire.” As I had grown quite fond of my friend’s character despite his tomfoolery, I decided to spare Hektor by having the vampire mark him as his servant and informing Hektor that he would be forced to return to the vampire’s service should he ever call upon him. Most lawful court, was I too lenient in dealing with this action that (in my opinion) was obviously done with the intent to challenge my authority? I await your verdict.

Alex Joseph Dutka

Howdy Judges. Yeehaw Bailiff. The case of Schrodinger’s Fireball. Game is 5e, party of 4, level 5. The party stumbled upon a spooky town, which we knew was spooky because the Roll20 audio was playing ‘spooky music’ and the narrative description of the place was unsettling. It was a blizzard so we were forced into the tavern. I cast ‘detect thoughts’ to get a read on the situation – but the DM said there were no thoughts to detect, which only upped the paranoia of the party. For the final nail in the coffin of our sanity, there were rumours of doppleganger about in the town (more on that later). Two mysterious NPCs in the tavern approached our Evocation Wizard Grimp alone (he was a kobold because the guy who played him (Ray) always plays kobolds – nothing sexual). They gave few details but invited him to a clandestine meeting just outside town where they said they wanted to give him important “deep magical secrets”. It sounded sus, so Grimp the Kobold (nothing sexual) cast ‘invisibility’ before going out into the storm to the meeting point. The plan was that if a fight broke out, he would thunderwave/clap so we could hear the sound and rush to his rescue. The cold winds were blowing and as the two NPCs approached, Grimp got nervous and decided instead to cast a pre-emptive fireball. The DM paused for a beat, rolled the dex saves, and described how the NPCs were instantly incinerated. We have no way of knowing if the Fireball was warranted or not. The DM has delighted in keeping mum about the whole ordeal. For the past year, we have been calling Ray a murderer since he killed those NPCs in cold blood. Ray insists that the whole situation was spooky – he is a low HP wizard – and he did what any reasonable kobold would have done. He has gone so far as to call himself a hero! Dear Justices - Was Ray right? Should he have stuck to the ‘thunderwave’ plan? Or at least waited until the NPCs got closer – I mean he was invisible? Or is he an absolute lunatic? PS: It was me – I was the secret doppleganger. I keep feeling that if I had simply been upfront with my party, they would have been less suspicious and the two NPCs may never have been fireballed at all? Am I also to blame?

Noah Goodman

Oh wise justices and humblest of Baliffs Emily, if it may please the high crit, I present the case of the +10 Weapon. In a campaign, I play Zela, a barbarian whose culture and goals all revolve around strength. I built them to deal damage and made sure that, magic aside, they were the physically strongest member of the party. The DM decided to throw in some insanely powerful, god level magic items, including one that another player received, being a +10 Magic weapon. Suddenly they were getting the same benefits as I received with Great Weapon Master with no sacrifice and blowing anything I could do out of the water. Now, I understand that facing the idea of not being the strongest party member is a moment of character growth, but that was something I was already dealing with with a third (barb/fighter) PC. I felt like my character choices were completely invalidated, and my role in the party removed. Am I wrong to feel that this overpowered weapon was unfair, and that magic items should be given more though not to overshadow what makes the other characters special? Or should I suck it up and live with a character constantly feeling like her effort and hard work mean nothing? I humbly await the court's decision and will gladly accept any punishments delivered.

nick brown

Bailiff Emily and Friends, During our last game session my PCs were attempting to save an NPC from a Giant Iron Man Esq suit that was rigged to explode with her in it. We ran it as a skill challenge instead of combat allowing the players to come up with some super creative ideas associated with skills they were good at. At one point, a PC rolled sleight of hand super well and I narrated one of the arms of the robot falling off as the PC figured out a way to detach it. Another PC wanted to use the detached arm to pierce the robot (Ala Incredibles Style). I thought this was super creative and fun so I allowed for a check. The PC rolled a Nat 20, but it wasn't on the table. It landed on her notebook on the floor. In the beginning of the campaign we discussed that anything not rolled on the table does not count. You must reroll. So I made her reroll. She got a nat 1, and used her inspiration to roll again. Getting a 2. I feel horrible about this because it turned an amazing character moment into a failure. I await the verdict of Dice Christ. Nick Brown

The Iron Knight

To the most honorable High Crick and most seductive baeliff, I present before you, for your judgement, the case of succeeding to fail. A while back I was playing in a campaign set in a sci fi setting (Warhammer 40k) on a mountainous jungle planet with gravitational disturbances, as such it was popular method of transport in the setting to tame and fly upon winged dragon-like creatures. A couple sessions in our party (my fanatical tech priest, a ratling sniper surgeon, and a roguish gunslinger who happened to be Scottish in real life) finally managed to acquire a group of these pseudo dragons. At this point our GM described how each of our dragons has a different personality type we have to consider when trying to tame it, for example one was susceptible to intimidation but hated being treated like an animal. To me this seemed clear enough but later in the session when we finally tried to tame our degrassi drakes it became clear our Scottish Gunslinger did not understand as he attempted to use a skill which his drake hated. The DM however allowed him to roll for it without saying anything about it at the moment before the roll. The gunslinger rolled really high and succeeded and the DM proceeded to describe how his drake threw him off at the taming attempt. This upset the Gunslinger who asked why that happened since he rolled very high, at this point the DM clarified that because the Gunslinger used an approach that his drake hated, his roll did succeed but he succeeded in pissing his drake off instead of taming it. This did not console our Gunslinger who remained upset for the rest of the session and resulted in the campaign ending few days later when he left the party. Highest Crick, was the DM in the wrong for sticking to the rule he set and making the success have a negative effect or was it the Gunslinger’s fault for not understanding the rule and just using the highest skill he had? I demand the answer for the glory and thrice blessed magnificence of the Machine God!

tonytheoneandonly

I present my case to the Wise, Dexterous, Intelligent, Charismatic, Constitute and Strong Supreme Crit Justices. hey jake. Many years ago, my brother was DMing a campaign for me and my cousin. I was playing a Minotaur Barbarian named Brick. During an encounter with a pack of Dire Rats I asked my brother if I could roll a CHA check to charm the leader of the Dire Rat pack, since as a part animal, I understand their instincts. Reluctantly he agreed, l then proceeded to roll a nat 20. My brother described the Dire Rat as becoming incredibly enamored by my Minatour nose, as it is roughly the same shape and color as a Rat. On its turn, the Dire Rat lept onto my face and started attempting to make sweet Rat love to my nose. I objected. I argued that as a Minotaur I would be wearing a septum ring, which would block the entryway into my nostril. My brother ruled that cows have notoriously long nostrils so there would be ample clearance for a Rat's little dick. I seceeded, and Brick and the Dire Rat went on a few dates but nothing serious ever came of it, jk Brick killed the Rat. But a decade later and I still believe the Septum Ring Defense would have protected my nose from the Dire Rats advances, was I correct? I lie supine and humbly await the Supreme Crits opinion.

emilythecoffeewench

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the lowly back up Bailiff, In my longest campaign, I play a cleric/barbarian named Milo Whiskers. In our journeys, we were traveling to a few different planes, including the fey realm. I thought it would be a good idea to learn Sylvan, since that would be needed to speak with the fey courts, and my DM let me get a green owl familiar that would teach me Sylvan every single day. My DM didn’t tell me that I had signed my soul away and made a demon pact, and that if I ever forgot to practice my Sylvan, the owl would viciously attack me in the middle of combat, either casting a high-level bane or psychic damage. By the time we left the Fey Realms, I had a basic grasping of a few words in Sylvan but could not hold a conversation. We are now going into Hell, and I gave up on Sylvan for Deep Speech, but I am worried that I still won’t be able to learn it fast enough. Did my DM unnecessarily punish me, or was it unreasonable to assume with an 18 Int and 20 Wis it would take me more time to learn a dnd language? I await your fair judgement, Grayson

George Osborn

If it pleases our most esteemed justices and our much beloved backup bailiff, I come to you with the case of the halfling hallucination. My first game of D&D i decided to play a halfling druid with the outlander background. For fun I decided that in my halflings time alone in the wilderness they had become addicted to hallucinogenic berries and as a goof I popped some before we went into the first dungeon. After a riddle puzzle we unlocked a spiral stair that lead deep deep down. At that moment my DM told me to roll constitution Which I rolled a NAT 1 on. "You see the most desirable creature you've ever witnessed and you leap for them. Plummeting into the deep stairwell." The fall was pretty much an insta death and I had to appeal to Silvanus for aid (Since none of my team could get down the stairs fast enough.) I survived, but realized after it was all over that halflings have the lucky feat and none of this should have happened in the first place. I felt I had wasted a lot of time already and didn't want to push it since it was my first time, so i didnt say anything.. Your honors, would I have been within my right to negate my near death experience or is that what I deserved for being a rambunctious little guy? I await your verdict.

Joe Lenton

Greetings benevolent judges and the shamed, demoted role bailiff Emily, I bring you the case of the Hoodwinked DM vs Villain PC. I am a fairly seasoned DM who started a new in person group recently. One of the players is brand new to DnD, and wanted to play a character who was a bit edgy - selfish, murderous etc. Having experience deflecting this, I helped him work on the character in a way that benefits the whole party, however when I described the character to my girlfriend, she explained that that sounded exactly like a villain in Kingdom Hearts, a game I haven’t played, and the PCs name turned out to be the exact same, Ansem. I mentioned it to him and he said “dude, I thought you knew”. The character still behaves selfishly despite a heads up. We are not far into this campaign… Judges, am I allowed to kill this guy off and preemptively avoid a “you need new friends” moment, or is that too much of a buzzkill this early on? I await your decision as eagerly as I await the newest episode of Judge Iyengar’s AMAZING new season on Dimension 20.

Erin Hurm

Honorable judges and baliff, I am a player in a Pathfinder 2e game. This case concerns my party's final fight with the BBEG, a Bogeyman whose hideout was an abandoned mansion well outside the city our campaign was based in. As we explored the mansion and closed in on our quarry, the GM said we could hear faint piano music, and started playing it through our virtual tabletop so we could all hear it. We encountered a set of closed doors, behind which the music was coming from, with the implication that the Bogeyman was the one playing the piano. Our GM gave us the opportunity to make final preparations before rolling initiative, and we did so - getting out our weapons, starting our buffs, etc. However, one player, whose level 9 character had died and been replaced two sessions previously, took long enough to research one of their potential buff effects that the piano music track ended. Our GM said that this had not just happened in our virtual tabletop, our characters heard it stop as well. We broke the door down and the Bogeyman was nowhere to be seen, having fled elsewhere in the mansion because we "took too long". The other two PCs, having cast high-level spells with a duration of one minute, frantically tried to find the Bogeyman. Soon enough, the music started playing again, and we sprinted back to his room, having wasted a few rounds of our spell effects and ruined our cool entrance. My question is this: was this punishment warranted?

Craig Lewis

The Case of the “Non Flammable Grease” May it please the court, but especially the excellent bailiff. I play a pacifist gnome wizard that loves nothing more in combat that buffin’ his buds and trippin’ his foes with the grease spell. During a one shot fighting a gorgon. Near the end of the fight I preformed my signature move and used my portent to make the creature fall prone. The sorcerer next in the initiative order used lighting bolt, (which we then coined a tag team move “Grease Lightning”) When the Gorgan had taken the lightning damage we asked the DM if the grease would catch fire and take fire damage, Not wanting their big bad from that session killed by something that wouldn’t look out of place in a home alone movie he said that the grease wasn’t flammable! Should I be annoyed that my character was denied a part in this kill without breaking his oath or as a pacifist should I respect the DM’s wishes and let one of the other PC’s get the killing blow. I await your judgement

Richard Wyatt

Hey, hello, and howdy to this most esteemed court and its most high Bailiff of house Axford-Murphy. Today I beseech thee to examine the case of disappearing feat, which follows: For context, I was invited to join a campaign by a friend of mine several months back. They had just had a reshuffling of members, so were going to start something completely new. The person generously serving as DM for this adventure was really looking forward to running a crunchy AF campaign--to which I was aware before every sitting down to play. In continuation with this, he wanted to give everyone at the table a free feat startingat level 1--my first time ever getting to do so--but specified we would not get any increases to our ability scores those feats would normally grant. Other players took great feats like Alert and Tough (Lucky was banned, which I respect). I elected to take Polearm Master, knowing full well I would not be allowed to also take Sentinel at any later time. Additionally, as I was the party's only real tank and a Loxodon, I asked the DM if there was any way I could wield a shield in my trunk during combat. The racial trait specifically disallows this under normal circumstances, but he said--again generously--he would allow it if I didn't wear heavy armor, wield anything that had a d12 or 2d6's as its damage die, and had a Strength score of at least 16. We agreed I also couldn't use my trunk to do anything else while it held the shield. I thought this was beyond fair. Over the course of us playing, session after session, I got a handful of attacks on unsuspecting foes who came into my trusty halberd's 10-foot threatened area until, suddenly, in one combat, every enemy avoided the 10 feet around me while moving. I thought, "well that's fine; you can't always have everything." to myself in this instance. However, every enemy we encountered for the following 14 sessions has continued to do the same pattern, to the point that the friend who originally invited me to the party exchange a look every time it happens in combat as an inside joke. Tell me justices, please, am I being singled out unfairly by this continued avoidance by even less intelligent combatants or ought I just be content with the extra bonus action attack the feat otherwise awards me and the generous shield ruling for my character's trunk? If so, should I confront my DM about it one-on-one? I await your judgment humbly.

Jacob Twet

A monk, a death, and an unused wish To the esteemed and honorable justices and the lovely bailiff Emily. May it please the court I was DMing for a few of my friends in a world I created, to set the scene my players were at a port town that was under attack by kuo-toa during the battle the Monk went down and on his first death save rolled a nat 1 causing to fails. As the DM I decided to let his God reach out to him and let him use the wish spell he got from the deck of many things that he had not used yet. He replied okay what are my options? Flustered I gave him 2 options off the top of my head, but also said he could wish for almost anything, the 2 option I gave were 1. Him and his party benefit from a long rest right here and now and continue to fight Or 2. Only he gets the benefit of a long rest plus 20 extra temp hp and 1 use of a lvl3 paladin smite He then said those were wastes of a wish spell and proceeded to roll his last death save which ended up to be less than 10 and he died. Was I wrong for not giving him better options? I wait you decision and will take punishment if need be, thank you for your time

Niko R.

Dice Christ Confessional Hello, Saintly Servants of Dice Christ. I prostrate myself before you, for I have sinned. I just started DMing a new campaign. About 5 hours in, the group of level 2 players had been warned repeatedly when heading to the next area “DON’T FUCK WITH THE GEESE.” I know my friends well enough to know that they would react poorly when one naughty goose tried to pickpocket the Circle of Star Druid’s star chart and the druid immediately whiffed a guiding bolt. I had them roll initiative and then had to go pour myself a bourbon because the 12 geese (with Velociraptor stats) went before all four of them and the party’s sidekick. What happened next had everyone in stitches from laughing as I rolled better than ever before. The entire party went down and the DM sweat began a-flowin'. After the first round of death saves, I had everyone roll luck checks while I did mental math to figure out what that luck check was even going to mean. The group’s Vedalken got a 19 and I decided that meant they fell in a way that they were looking at the Rouge’s medallion which works the same as Bev’s amulet from Campaign One. During the next round, they were able to use health potions to help get everyone up and retreat. Everyone had fun and the geese did pickpocket all their gold, so I don’t think this is a sin. But in an effort to avoid a TPK, I fear as though I unleashed unplanned consequences by allowing the medallion to work on an unconscious character. I await your judgment and guidance so I may seek penitence.

NoahE07

May it please the d20 rollin justices and the Beautiful, blade weilded Bailiff Axeford. I present to you the case of the deaf Cannon Dwarf. I once DM'ed a small High level campaign for my entire family. At a dwarven market, my brother bought a shoulder mounted Cannon (a home brew weapon I made from a shoulder mounted railgun but with bludgeoning instead of piercing). I warned him insistently that he may need ear protection for when he fires it, to which he made no attempts to buy any. Come next fight he attempts to fire the weapon and rolls low, causing a misfire, to which he fails the Con saving throw. I tell him he now is temporarily deaf in his right ear as the Cannon just blew up on his shoulder. He would have to roll to see if he hears anyone on his right for the rest of the session. He argued with me saying since he is a dwarf he is used to the loud noises of the mines and could not be deafend. I ruled against this and he reluctantly pushed on. This later caused him to be blindsided by an ambush and subsequently die, taking too much damage from the Cannon blowing up and getting surprise attacked... He yelled at me calling me a "Shitty DM" and stormed out of the room, never came back to create a new character, and has rarely spoken to me since... I ask you, was I too cruel on my brother for making him deaf and killing him? I humbly await your judgements.

Luke Hallier

If it so pleases the High Crit, and the supreme Justices Murphy Tanner and Iyengar; this lowly DM beseeches the Omniscient Bailiff Acford to hear my case.

Rebecca Jolley

A Dice Christ confession: To the Dice, the Christ and the Holy Symbol. A few years ago, I was invited to join a friend’s DND game. When we rolled initiative for our first encounter, the DM asked us to roll a D12 for initiative instead of a D20. I thought this was weird, but it was my first time playing DND and I figured this was a strange house rule. Turns out, this group didn’t use D20s at all and rolled D12s for everything instead. When I asked why, they just said it’s what they preferred. Also, the DM randomly selected a familiar for my Beast Master Ranger by flipping to a random page in the Monster Manual and pointing at the first creature he saw. So my first level character had a Sea Hag familiar. I seek Dice Christ’s forgiveness for using this D12 based system and for not speaking up about my too-powerful familiar. - Roth, the D12 rolling, sea hag herding ranger

Gurt

The Case of Todd Perkins, CPA. To the honorable and esteemed justices Murphy, Tanner, Axford and Iyengar - and absolutely no one else- I present to you the case of Todd Perkins, CPA. Todd Perkins was my character. He was a certified public accountant and had fairly terrible stats, save for intelligence, which was at an 18. He was a wizard. The “event” occurred after I had missed a session and returned the following week to play and discover that my fellow players had left Todd Perkins, CPA in the hand of a tribe of goblins as collateral so that they could be allowed to venture into the goblin’s territory. Sure. Fine. Todd Perkins, CPA loves a challenge and immediately challenges the goblin leader to a one on one battle for control of the tribe. The goblin leader accepts and the battle begins. Now, the group had just accepted two new players who wanted to play with our group, one of whom explicitly wanted to play with us because we don’t really enjoy the murderhobo™️ experience and their previous group did. One of these new players had an elvish fighter who stumbled on the goblin camp during the fight between the goblin leader and one Todd Perkins, CPA. The fight was not going well for Todd Perkins CPA, his spells were not hitting and the goblin leader was rolling very well on saves, so it had come down to fisticuffs for Todd Perkins, CPA. And, even though he had a pretty bad strength score, (I think it was 11) he was doing some damage thanks to some jerry-rigged brass knuckles. It was at this point the other player declared that they were going to march right into the goblin camp demanding to know what was going on. Todd Perkins, CPA calmly explained that this was a battle for control of the tribe. And before I had said anything else, this player had their character cut off the goblin leader’s head. I was stunned and especially angry because I had spent a good 30 minutes on this fight with the rest of the table cheering Todd Perkins CPA on. (We took breaks after a couple of rounds to move back to the other group, so that I wasn’t monopolizing the game time) I was stunned at this player’s audacity and asked them what they were doing and they said they were making me win. And that this is how they had always played. I excused myself for a bit and after the session I spoke with the DM who was also not thrilled about it. I elected not to play with that group for a couple weeks to sort of let my feelings on the situation cool instead of continuing to play to see if things got better. The group dissolved a few weeks later due to unrelated scheduling conflicts. Was I incorrect in being upset and taking a hiatus or should I have continued to play Todd Perkins, CPA the (phony) goblin king? I await your merciful judgment. PS. I could have sworn there used to be another guy with you all…

Marina S

Honourable Justices and the Esteemed bailiff Emily, I present to you the case of the “Neglected Cleric”. I was playing in my first real campaign with a 6 person party in a homebrewed city-focused campaign. I was asked by my DM and other party members to play a cleric to be their defensive buffer / healer. I very enthusiastically took on the role, and I built a Halfling who was a bookish text-book carrying knowledge cleric who worked at the local museum. I was looking forward to using my skills to support my party. However, in nearly every fight, by the time it came around to my turn 1) no one wanted or needed buffing, 2) the Paladin or Bard already healed someone, 3) the sorcerer already buffed someone, or 4) someone took a potion from the party bag that I was literally left holding. I built my character and stocked spells according to the role assigned me so I wasn’t very strong, and often didn’t have enough offensive positions to take. It should also be noted that because of the city focused campaign we were not given a lot of long rests so I couldn’t changed up my spells. When I tried pulling more “band of boob” shenanigans or be more strategic with fighting and often my DM or other players would discourage me by saying “that’s not how that works”. Scheduling and the pandemic eventually ended the campaign, for which I am kind of grateful. However it still bugs me I couldn’t use my character to their fullest potential. Justices I ask you, am I wrong in thinking I was being neglected by my party? Or should my DM and party have given me more of an opportunity to live up to the role they assigned me? I humbly wait your decision.

Rednope

Hello to the Powerful Justices Iyengar, Tanner, and Murphy. Also hi, I guess, to bailiff what's their face. I present to you the multiple accounts of Unfair Grappling. In most games I'm in I like to play a pseudo rouge that works well with the party's actual rouge, like a Dex fighter or a Warlock/Ranger with big sneaks and blasting power. Because of this the DM will usually target us first and try to find a way to shut us down. This usually turns into the same scenarios of big beefy dudes grappling us in very awkward specific positions that doesn't let us do much. At this point I just quickly mention that RAW, It can be either Athletics or Acrobatics to escape a grapple with the player choosing which stat to use. 80% of the time I simply get told "no", 10% of the time I get told "oh ok" and am allowed to escape, and the other 10% of the time me and the rouge are told "nah dude", and are then punished by killing our characters. Most of the time this doesn't really bother me but I cannot simply stand by while the rouge is punished for my daring to speak up to the DM, and other players will also chime in to defend us which starts a big debate that will unnecessarily escalate way too quickly and has led to whole groups dissbanding. Should I simply stop mentioning the rules and go along with our characters just being stuck in grapples for whole combats (strength in the negatives lol) for the sake of the game? I await your judgement. (p.s. I do my best in just being casual when I bring up the rule I swear I hate being the "Um, Actually" sort of guy.)

Andy W.

May it please the increasingly attractive justices Murphy, Tanner and Iyengar as well as the relief bailiff Axeford. I present to you a case of annoying tweens. I run an afterschool D&D club at the middle school where I teach and to my surprise there were a large number of students that joined. I was able to organize them into groups, assign DMs get them Players Handbooks, adventure modules, and even help them through character creation. However there was one group that absolutely refused to read any of the rules, every time the group would meet it looked like they had made a new kid the DM. I sat them down and told them that I would help them along every step of the way, but if they wanted to play they would need to read at least parts of the PHB and learn the rules. A week later they came back and told me they had expected me to do all of the work for them, teach them the rules, DM their group and essentially make characters for them. None of them had read any of the rules yet. Justices, I want these students to play but I am tired and have so much other work I need to do. Please, help me vent my frustration at them by sentencing them in court.

Ian Reilly

The case of the Sister murder May it please the ever vigilant justices and the way too over criticized back up baliff Axford, i bring you the murder that destroyed my dms BBEG. We are in campaign where we are living on floating islands miles above land. The only way inbetween the islands is by using highly volatile crystals to power our flying ships. My characters sister and biggest rival, was put on our ship by the government to keep track of our progress. She betrayed us and tried to flee on a speedboat ship to report against us. We ended up on her boat and began battling over open air. I used a glyph of leomonds tiny hut to keep us from being thrown off the ship. My dm then said "are you sure you wanna do that? It would kill your sister by damaging the crystal and blowing up the ship. I will let you take it back and do something else" i said my character would not know that and i was just trying to defend my allies. The hut remained in place as the ship kept moving into it and it blew up the engine, killing my sister and her crew. We took some damage but were able to escape safely. My dm then told us that i destroyed his BBEG, my sister, and that he would have to rewrite the rest of the campaign. I ask you, should i have taken my action back to ensure that my dm didn't have to have change all of his plans on the fly or should i have honored my decision. I humbly await your judgement. -John (Ian's sister's boyfriend)

Aaron Caldwell

All praise the lovely Bailiff Axeford, and I guess the rest of yall, I bring to you the Atempt at Murder ( in game and out ) I played with my DM and a group or friends for close to 6 years, I was an on and off player due to work and personal heal problems. I as a joke would always give my characters my own personal allergies, I thought it was funny, well I am deathly allergic to Tea ( yes the plant and drink) and my dm knew this. So one game night our characters where invited to the kings manner for dinner. It was a simple dinner, a thank you for saving the village and what not, well at the dinner the Dm offered drinks to us, to represent the drinks the king was offering to our characters, I having allergies reminded the dm that I am deathly allergic to tea and it will kill me if he gives me the wrong drink. His response was " I know, don't worry". I have known this man for years so I trusted him. Well, he gave me and my character tea, I quickly administered my epi pen, so I would not die. His justification for what he did was " Well, I don't like your character so I wanted him to die so you could make a new one, and I didn't beleave you where really allergic to tea so I wanted to see for my self". Needless to say he is now in prison for attempt at murder. So was that a justifiable was to kill someone's character or was that a little over kill? Needless to say the group disbanded after that session.

EggBilly

Hey Emily, it's Jake. Can I please come back upstairs and be Bailiff again? If not, please have Tucker bring more 3D Doritos and squeeze cheese. Thanks.

jordy v.

To the honorable Supreme Justices and Jake, but with bangs. I bring you the case of the wrongfully cleaved arm. Years ago, I played a Tortle Tempest Cleric, who had lost his arm in a BBEG battle. While it was a badass moment, it was something I wasn’t exactly keen for, but I pushed through. Following this victory, my character spent the next (in-game) year finding the resources, spending the coin, and going through physical therapy to create and adjust to a new mechanical, steampunk-esque arm. Fast-forward to our second-to-last session of this campaign, and my party member, a Dragonborn Barbarian, was charmed by a powerful enemy during combat. The rest of the party failed to defeat him and his Dragontortle, and he had our Barbarian, still charmed, roll an attack on me as I kneeled there defeated. The Barbarian rolled a Nat 1, to my excitement because that was obviously a miss. Instead, however, my DM narrated that the Barbarian cleaved my other arm off with her axe. I was pretty upset that this occurred, as my Tortle had gone through so much to get a mechanical arm, only to have his other arm be cut off. I ask you, shouldn’t the Nat 1 have meant the axe would miss me? Was the DM targeting me to an unfair degree? I await your decision, and respect the sentence regardless of stance.

Myles Lee

This is a future case in the making I'm terrified of. My roommate and I are going to start a game with some of her friends. She's told me she wants to play a Gnome Artificer...not a big deal but she wants to have a "traffic cone of holding" that she will wear as a hat. She's offered me the solution that she can make saving throws not to fall into her own hat but I'm just afraid of the potential fuckery. Any suggestions? Please punish me if I need to just let her have her fun

Zoe Jones

I submit to the will of the merciful justices and the hot yet humble bailiff emily: the case of the missing brother I am currently DMing curse of strahd and one of the party members is my little brother. The other members are family too, including my husband. We've been playing CoS for over a year, and my brother has periodically flaked, sometimes for months at a time. His character (CN human warlock) has contributed little to nothing to the campaign. Now, the party is finally about to beat strahd, they've gotten all the special weapons and made it to the castle. However, when I casually mentioned that we are going to face off with the BBEG himself next session, my brother threw a fit about not including him. He wants us to wait for him to find a new job that has a better schedule so that we can all play, but my other players are begging to forget about him and just move forward. I'm afraid that moving on without him - even though he hasn't played half of the campaign and is three levels behind the group - he will never forgive me. I await your judgment. - Zoe

Shpipple

Hello Jill's side piece's back up, I come with a confession. Also hey hey hey, one for each priest, don't hog the heys. I come with a confession. 6 years ago my good friend came to me for advice about what class to play for his first dnd game. I recemented rogue because i figured that would fit his role play and gameplay style best. Fast forward to now, we have done 3 campaigns and multiple one shot and mini arcs. And all he has played is rogue, to the point that other players in our friend group have been annoyed that they cant play rogue. He refuses to change his ways no matter how much we talk to this person. To the point that I wish I never got them into dnd. I know I should be happy that my friend took this advice to heart but please. Send an angelic agent of Dice Christ themselves to save me from this never ending cycle.

HaysForHorses

Good morning, afternoon, or evening to the illustrious judges and who I assume must be Maria Odenkirk, the lesser known sister of renowned bailiff Bob Odenkirk. I humbly bring you the case of Hyper-Realism in a Fantasy Game. I was playing session 1 of my first ever campaign as a buff, silver-fox, Goliath Paladin who came from some snowy mountains within my DM's homebrew world. For my backstory, the DM and I had established together that I had witnessed my parents being killed by a group of gnomes that were part of the local mob. I alone had been able to escape and subsequently spent the next 10 years finding mercenary work to make a living in a relatively small town. As the metaphorical curtains opened on our DnD stage, the DM asked us where our characters would most likely be living in this town. When I suggested that I would be living in a 1-bedroom apartment (like a studio), the DM vehemently opposed this idea, saying that it was not something that would exist in this world. I argue that in a fantasy world with magic and monsters, a 1-bedroom living space would be plausible. I did not fight him on this at the time, as I want to respect their own creative agency, but this was not the primary offense, however. As we began our travels, we explored a snowy mountain range on the trail to the next town. I described how my character was feeling quite comfortable in an environment that would be similar to where he grew up. The DM suddenly asked me to roll a series of Wisdom Saving Throws as my character grappled with the memories of my dead family. After 4 or 5 of these saving throws (which I had so far succeeded on), I finally protested. As someone who watched my father die at a young age (more than 10 years ago), I argued that my wisdom is not at stake any time I encounter something that reminds me of him. Do you think my DM was right for enforcing this type of realism in this game, or can some aspects of realism be suspended when playing your first ever session of a DnD campaign? I buzz with excitement as I wait for your ruling. P.S. The DM and I get a good laugh out of this situation and are still great friends. We are even getting matching 2-crew tattoos this Friday before seeing your live show in NYC. <3

CW

Yo. I seek forgiveness, not justice. So please, dice Christ and his holy molies, allow me to confess for I think I have sinned. I played my first ever game of D&D about five years ago (and never since). My Muay Thai buddy invited me to join his group of friends for a one shot and they coaxed me through character creation. Having read beforehand to craft your character after another establish movie character for a quick start, I settled on Otis Driftwood from House of 1000 Corpses, an anarchistic, murderous, antichrist-like cult leader. My very first action as Otis was to ask if I could have cult followers and I passed a charisma check to roll a d4 to find my (two) followers. In our rowboat journey to the island, I made my followers row for me. Then I made them carry me up the beach. Then, shame on me, in our first fight, I refused to help. Instead, i used my followers as stepping stools, and climbed a tree. To make it infinitely worse, I got bored in real life and I left the party and never talked to my friend again. Can I be saved? I await your judgment.

In memoriam of Jens Lyndelle, shoutout to a real one. -three sets of three question marks-

Howdy howdy howdy, and may it tickle the judges under the nose with a feather causing them to sneeze, setting off a Rube Goldberg machine of consequences at the end of which the bailiff is cut a slice of birthday cake. I'm in a debate currently about what would happen if you were to drop a Sphere of Annihilation into a homebrew item, the Bag of Breadstick Holding (or Bag of All-You-Can-Eat Breadsticks). The bag is mechanically a Bag of Holding, except it only holds a truly infinite amount of breadsticks and already has so many you cannot place anything more into it, but since a Sphere of Annihilation destroys what it touches, I think it would clearly make room for itself. Mechanically, it works-ish, RAW the sphere is 2 foot diameter, as is the opening atop the bag, and there are rules for if the sphere passes into an extraplanar portal LIKE a bag of holding, but the debate is not on keeping the sphere OUT, it's about the consequences once the sphere is INSIDE. Does the infinitely repeating cycle of addition and subtraction have far-reaching consequences on the world at large? Is the breadstick dimension and its metaphysical baker at the bottom of the bag doomed to extinction while the person holding it is simply left with an empty and disappointingly normal canvas sack? Does the sphere simply exist amidst the roaring tides of breadsticks in this demiplane, and every time you grab a snack you risk losing your hand? Is there some fourth option we were too blind to see? I'd love also to hear other suggestions and uses for the bag, and I willfully and of my own volition accept any and all punishment bestowed forth. Yours in sincerity, cake and garlic butter, Marissa A PS, see y'all at Margarita Mayhem

Maria B

I present the case of a poor punched paladin and rusted armour to the honourable court. Long story short, we are a party containing of a rogue, a ranger a Druid and a paladin, with the paladin as the hit taking Melee combatant. During the second session of our first quest when looking around a cave, our party encountered an acid slug, which attacked and with its acid rusted the chain mail of our paladin ,permanently causing a -1 to AC until fixed. When our party returned to the city for the night and asked the local smithy the next morning to fix the chain mail we were told that there was no point in trying to fix the damage, our paladin would simply have to by a new chain mail or upgrade. Or DM uses the written rates and costs which put the price for removing the -1 ac penalty to 75 gold. Which is all above board. What has turned out to feel a bit stingy is that completing this first cave quest took us 5 weekly sessions (and added a side quest taking us another 3 sessions) and will reward our party a total of 30 gold when returning to the city. During all of these sessions we have found a total of 3 gold each; putting our paladin at a total of 10 gold since what we had was enough to cover our expenses for the journey. And levelling our party from lvl 3 to lvl 4. With these rates our paladin will not have played more than one session with her full AC. Side note: this resulted in our paladin almost dying. Due to her original AC 18 going down to 17. She got hit on her exact ac on two attacks, twice. (Yes, 4 times in a row hitting 17 exactly in the same fight) Dice Christ has blessed our dm to kill us. Am I being spoiled and salty thinking we should revive more money with such expenses?

Tony Alloco

Please read my name as CaptainFlacid May it please the Balif and I guess the court if they're there. I bring fourth the case of a disgruntled player. I recently started a new group with a couple of my wife's co workers. I took them through the sunless citadel published module and played a little fast and loose with the rules regarding long and short rests as it was 2 players very first time playing the game. the adventure went well with a few instances of the players getting knocked down. They ended the dungeon at level 3 and planning for the next session I decided to put it to a vote if they wanted something that was more along the lines of their level or something a little harder. 3/5 players voted for harder and one player the tank of the group claimed he didn't care either way. He then proceeded to question my decisions by saying his character would be fine but the rest of the party probably wouldnt survive. Then i found he out was freaking out at work the next day yelling at one our other players saying he doesn't want his character to die and he might just quit, and that we cheated to get through the first one and that we shouldn't be doing "hard mode." To quell this feeling I told him I was going to add a couple of low level magic items for purchase before the adventure to even out the playing field but that didnt really quell anything. I ask you am I wrong to push forward with my plan of running a harder adventure or is this player acting out of pocket?

Lauren Iliffe

If it pleases the court and also the radical bailiff Emiliy, I present to you the case of the disappointed double-crosser. My girlfriend’s character was killed during an encounter with a beholder. Everyone was obviously very upset, including the DM who had never killed a player character outright before then. As is customary, by the end of the session, my girlfriend had introduced a new character to the party. Unbeknownst to us (but planned with the DM), this new character was in cahoots with the villain with the goal of retrieving one character as a sacrifice and deciding to kill the others. She then proceeded to secretly run interference, including counterspelling my spells for no good reason (which as a warlock, are precious) attacking me while the players were split up, selling out our allied faction and killing characters off screen who had been created by friends as guests. Most of these, as much as I can tell, were done to be a jerk, not with the express intent of the character’s final goal. Once the player had been lured to the place the big bad wanted them to be, she then attempted to blind the PCs and was going to cast Cloud Kill. Before she could do this, her OLD player character was finally revealed to be alive, and she was swapped into playing this role again. The DM chose to have the big bad then kill the betraying character so that she wouldn’t be playing two characters. My girlfriend thought this was unceremonious and didn’t give her a chance to enjoy the party discovering she was a traitor. She stormed off and this led to arguments that lasted at least an hour. She got her original character back for free, without the use of resurrection magic, and it was only about 6 or so sessions, (but considering how sporadically we play and the pandemic, this was a long stretch of time). Does she have a point, or was she overreacting? I’m also starting to think that maybe she shouldn’t have played a traitor in the first place.

J Bush

Oh man I can't wait! The last eps w Aabria were so delightfully unhinged

Zed

Benevolent Bailiff! I submit to you, the case of the 'one day boat build'. In a campaign were I was playing an Orc artificer our party our party had a day to kill in a small town. I decided I wanted to use the day to build a simple boat. My dm said there's no way you could build a boat in a day but let me roll. With intelligence 20 and Armour of tools, I rolled a 34 to try and build a boat. My dm still said no. In a world where magic guns, dragons and teleportation exists, is it so crazy that an super intelligent engineer could make a boat in a day? I humbly await your decision that I am correct.

Muqtadaa Miandara

Honored justices Murphy, Iyengar, and Tanner, and our estimable Bailiff Axford who's honestly filling out that bailiff uniform really well and we're here for it, I present the case of the Stupidly Stumped Lich. My players are in a race to collect the lost shards of divine hearts (a concept inspired by Bahumia and Murph) as a fallen goddess seeks the same artifacts to reclaim her divinity and remake the world without magic, starting everything over with her chosen few (long story about magic being the reason she suffered). My players have worked with the newly minted Winter Queen that they helped put on the throne to uncover the lost tomb of the ancient Eladrin god, Corellon. They made their way through a goblin quarry that led to underground to the god's mausoleum, faced his Tomb Guardian of Whimsy, and answered the puzzle of the Door of Purpose (which asks the players what they seek, and the answer to unlock the door is, of course, that they seek to enter/open the door). Ultimately they ended up in a pocket of the Astral Plane housing the entombed corpse of Corellon. The players were confronted by an undead lich floating down to greet them who had set up shop on this outcrop, and told them they would have little to no luck unsealing the god's sarcophagus, as he'd been attempting the very same for nearly 2000 years. Instead he engaged them in a game-show style trivia competition I had setup to get the players back into the groove of the campaign (we haven't played in a while bc of life so I wanted to have them actively remember lore and backstory) and the players ended up winning some loot and the lich got bored and bid them good luck exploring the tomb. The players found the sarcophagus and investigated, and were quick to discover (with incredibly high investigation and perception checks) the presence of a pressure plate that, when stepped on, unsealed the casket. The players did so, retrieved the shard of a divine heart, and were confronted by the infuriated lich, who demanded to know how they'd retrieved his long sought-after prize. It turned out the lich had been floating over the pressure plate for 2 millennia and had never even come close to unlocking the tomb because he never deigned to walk. This of course turned into a fight where the lich was banished, and my players afterwards asked how it could be possible that the lich never investigated the floor like they had. In all honesty, I didn't have a mechanic for why the lich hadn't stolen the heart, I just wanted to run a game show and improvised the rest around that once I had the players in the setting and interacting with things. My players think it's a stretch, but what do you all think? Do I need to more carefully craft layers of intrigue and puzzle to explain why their enemies are stymied where they succeed? Am I in danger of copyright infringement if I start a show called Yet Another D&D Vodcast? Will Jill and Tucker ever tell Jake about their newly minted third, Jock Burlitz?? As I look forward to these answers, I also humbly await the judgement of this esteemed crit.

RoleforThat

If it pleases the most honorable and level-headed judges, and that beautiful son-of-a-bailiff Jake, I present to you the case of the ruined Christmas. A few years ago, I decided to make a Christmas one-shot for my friends. It was based in a town that was littered with classic Christmas references, like Jack Frost as the Mayor, a small dungeon crawl based on the house from Home Alone, Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman, and many others. I put a lot of effort into making props, including a brochure with a map of the town with all of the Christmas references. The one-shot centered around the PCs trying to find a missing Santa, and saving Christmas. Things were going along well enough, and the PCs headed towards a Christmas Market to pick up some holiday themed items, when things took an unexpected turn. One of my players, made his way to a stand that was being run by the Grinch. After talking to him for a bit, he discovered that the Grinch was selling some clearly stolen items. The player immediately attacked the Grinch, which I have to admit surprised me, and had not planned for it at all. Combat only lasted a bit, as I had the other merchants come in and break it up. It was in this moment that I froze a bit Judges, I had not planned at all for a player to essentially commit assault on a non-hostile NPC. I didn’t even have a jail or anything in this Christmas-themed town, and so went with the player being forced to go to town hall, where the Mayor said that he would let this go if the player just apologized to the Grinch. I should stress that at this point all I wanted was to resolve this issue quickly and get back to the rest of the one shot. This is why it was surprising to me when the player refused to apologize. We went back and forth in character about him needing to if he wanted to be let go, and admittedly things got heated enough that the argument went outside of the game. We essentially were yelling at each other for several minutes, me saying he needed to apologize, and him absolutely refusing. Eventually things calmed down, we got back to the game, the other players mounted a rescue, and we moved on. We finished the game a little while later with the PCs rescuing Santa from Jack Frost, and everyone seemed to have fun with it, but I can’t help but feel like it ruined the mood for the night. I ask you judges, was I in the right to be mad that the player wouldn’t simply apologize and ruined the mood of a one-shot that I put a lot of time and effort into or am I overreacting? I await your most excellent wisdom.

Abraham

May it please the scrumptious judges and noble backup bailiff, I hereby present the case of “Conjuration Blues.” I play a level 8 Circle of Dreams Druid in an online campaign that’s been going on for about two years now. The combat is fun, but very challenging, as the DM has special conditions limiting when we can take long rests. We once fought a dragon and then an Archdruid with only a short rest in between, though our characters did sleep. The encounters often also have us battling a big boss and waves of minions. As a way of trying to even these odds, I’ve been using the spell “Conjure Animals” in these situations, often to great effect. My DM has made no secret of his dislike for the spell, but he recently asked me directly to stop using it in combat, since it adds more moving parts to an encounter. We reached a compromise where I’ll only use Conjure spells in emergencies (or BBEG-level boss fights), but I ask you—was it fair for my DM to make this request? My Druid subclass is healing intensive, and I enjoyed the Conjure spell because it let me heal my party while also getting a few licks in. I most humbly await your verdict, and pray to Dice Christ that the bailiff deigns to lift my post into your just light.

Jay-Kher Wittz

To elenor, stand in for the great and illustrious Sir Baliff Jacob Hurwitz, from a great line of bailiffs, and those other 2 people people Conrad and Marty or something. May I present to you the case of the actual isekai. I run quite a few sessions and thought of doing an actual isekai adventure, with the focus being on adapting to a different culture and system of knowledge. I ran this by some online friends and they loved it, then I talked about using a different number system (I thought base 5 or base 3 depending on the number of fingers on the hands of the primary inhabitants) and have the first mystery be about realizing this and decoding a pin number. I thought it would be funny to run my players through this experience and once they realized it I would fade out the use of base 5 as I figured they would get sick of it and it would be narratively justified to say their characters learned it. I was called a monster and told this was a terrible idea, I was dissuaded from doing it. Fast forward years later I ask a friend and they say it sounds fun. So I ask, was I a fool for not believing in my own idea, or a maniac to think changing the number system could ever be fun?

Gavin French

Noble Justices and the Bailiff I guess. I come to you seeking forgiveness today not judgment. I played in an Online campaign where my character was a Multi-Class Monk/Fighter. More specifically with Way of the Open Hand and Battle Master Sub-Classes. I flavored this into a Wreslter character with a Tavern Brawler Feat so I could use improvised weapons ( Chairs, trash cans, and tables) and wreslting moves with my abilities. But my true confession is that while online I would often fudge my rolls so I could do cool Wreslting moves and finishers from popular Wreslting shows. I ask you all, was fudging some of my rolls worth it for the "Rule of Cool"? Or should I be ashamed and reprimanded for my actions. I humbly await your decision.

Jack M

To The High Justices of Glory and the kraven Bailiff Emma, I ask what really is a bonus action? Another player at my table argued that bonus action is for specific abilities and I couldn’t use my bonus action for an extra object interaction, IE, I bonus action dropped items for my ally and then used my object interaction to open a light a torch,(action was investigation check)DM said it was fine, there was no argument, besides one of those weird faces that the other player made in spite. Thoughts?

MyMomSaysImHot

To the honorable justices Murphy, Tanner, and Iyengar presiding, and back up bailiff Axford. Today I present to you the case of the self-destructive character intro, and the consequences there after. Many moons ago one of our party members (let’s call him Bryce) was getting bored of his current character and wanted to play a new one. He decided a great way to introduce his new character would be to have his new character (Bryce 2) enter from behind and kill his old character (Bryce 1) in front of the party. Naturally one of our other party members argued that our characters couldn’t let this slide, watching our friend die in front of us and had to retaliate. The rest of the party then initiated PVP and began to kill Bryce 2 as revenge for killing Bryce 1. It was a 5v1 and Bryce 2 was dead almost instantly and Bryce (the player) was evidently upset that we had slain his new character. It’s been a long time since this and everyone is still friends and Bryce’s new character Bryce 3 lived a long time but Justices, I ask you this: Were we wrong for avenging Bryce 1? I humbly await your judgement, but I will not go back to prison.

H2

(Corrected duplicate but I can't edit the earlier post) To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the lovely bailiff Axford. If it pleases the court, I bring you the case of the Honeymoon Hijinx. My party, which includes a Rogue player and Paladin player, recently had a session in which the Rogue was marrying her Cleric NPC gf. After saving the Cleric from some giant spiders, the DM was describing the Rogue and her new wife going into their marital home with a tasteful fade-to-black when the Paladin PC interrupted. He said that, over the course of the session, he had become enthralled with the Cleric's strength of character, and wanted to dedicate his Paladin oath to her, in a ceremony that would take all night. The Rogue argued that they could do this later, since it was her wedding night, but the Paladin insisted it had to be done immediately, leading to a fight and the Paladin ultimately leaving the group. Justices, I trust that you can determine who was in the right in this case.

Tommy K NOLA

May it please the court and the sultry bailiff, I present the case of the first-time spellcaster My friends ran a spin-off campaign of our main campaign, where we played level 15 characters. I rolled up a water genasi grave domain cleric, stepping out of my comfort zone of playing fighters or barbarians. We found ourselves surrounded by an oncoming army of undead. One whole side of the battlemap was full of zombies, tile-to-tile. My turn came around, I jumped into the action and used Turn Undead. There were so many within my 30 foot radius, the DM just rolled a percentile die to see how many would be affected. What he didn't know was they would be destroyed outright. I single-handedly destroyed 60 out of 80 zombies. Then next turn I dropped most of the rest of them when I dispelled my holy weapon spell. The DM was flummoxed, but loved it. Two players at the table were noticably annoyed. Am I in the wrong here? I didn't know there would be undead in the session, the DM didn't know I could hard-counter this encounter. And I'd never played a spell caster before. I'm at your mercy here

ehjs

Dear beautiful judges and more-than-normally-cool bailiff, My friends and I met a cool dude online to DM for us… but lore dumps and describes outfits for an hour straight (at least) in session and if we ask questions he doesn’t let us interact and ask questions or use what he says to RP he laughs at it then continues his rant. He ignored a nat 20 that I got and told me I couldn’t use my Svirfneblin Camouflage ability because it’s not rocky outside…. Only roll20 says it should be rocky to use it, actual D&D books say it’s anywhere. I await your judgement if I’m being dramatic or if my DM is a bit goofed up.

Charlotte

May it please the court and our noble chaos queen bailiff, Emily Axford, first of her name, keeper of the faith. I present you the case of "The Accidental Murder". In the latest session of an Icewind Dale campaign, we uncovered a plot of doppelgangers taking over as speakers of the ten towns, with nearly half of the town speakers being doppelgangers. Knowing this, we decided to start some light political assassinations. On one of these light political assassinations, the speaker called the guards on our wizard and our college of spirits bard, while the rest of the party was distracting the townsfolk. My character was not there, but my DM and the players said I was welcome to strategize with them out of character while they fought. The bard rolled a tale from the beyond and got tale of the phantom, which turned them invisible and made the next person they hit with an attack frightened of them. I suggested they hit one of the guards to get them out of the combat for a bit, and they did. The thing is that 11 points of damage outright killed him, meaning he had 5 or fewer hitpoints. The DM described us brutally murdering this guard when all we wanted to do is get him to leave us alone for a bit. Judges, was I wrong for suggesting hitting a guard, and assuming that he would survive one melee attack? I humbly await your judgement.

Elsa Miesch

If it may please the court I present to you the complaint of the 6th player. I recently started DMing, and used a local role playing Facebook page to recruit 6 players for my ghosts of Saltmarsh two-shot. After 5 hours of good fun that everybody seemed to have enjoyed very much, one of the players asked if he could ask me a few questions post-session, then proceeded to go through his two-page notes of things he hadn’t liked about our session. One of his main complaints was that 6 players were too many, because the DM had “less than 20% of his attention to give to each player”. Given that he was the 6th person to sign up for the game I did find this a bit rich, but I had heard before other DMs saying they didn’t like tables with more than 5 players, so I ask, venerable judges and okay bailiff: should D&D games not have more than 5 players around the table? And if so, should I ask him not to come back for the next session?

Miles

To the esteemed judges and steamy bailiff Jake, I am the DM to a cyber-punky 5e campaign. One of the NPCs the party has adopted is a junky robot named KT-2549, called “Katy” by the party (yes this is inspired by Onyx’s parasite). KT has a very robotic voice, and has gradually earned a larger place within the campaign’s story. The issue: her voice is very tiresome for me to act, and her inorganic cadence prolongs all dialogue by three times. I tried introducing a side quest in which KT feels left behind by the party leveling up and getting upgrades, and asks them to find her a new vocal processor so she can speak like them and feel “upgraded”. My party adamantly refused her request, calling me the DM lazy while making both KT and myself very sad. Am I in the wrong for trying to escape the consequences of my NPC’s characterization, or is the party in the wrong refusing to help their friend? I humbly await your judgement.

WunDarWun

To the most esteemed justices, I have a follow up for the Wanton Drowning case that Justice Iyengar pronounced judgment over! As per the council's mandate, I waterboarded myself immediately. We have played almost 10 sessions since you saw fit to pass judgment, and I'm happy to report that the party currently finds themselves carrying out tasks for Umberlee, Queen Bitch of the Sea, who -per your recommendation- sought them out with a monkey's paw offer in response to the dozens of drowned souls they paid tribute to her court with. They are appropriately terrified of her and find themselves desperately fulfilling her commands while searching for a way out from under her dusky gaze. I'll be sure to report how it ends up in the future!

Elijah Hoyt

I blinded a horse as it galloped away spooked to calm it (blindness/deafness), but everyone got mad at me for attacking a defenseless horse rather than thanking me for saving the horse. I know I am right, but please demean my opponents. (Note: the horse did gallop into a tree, but he was okay)

Andrey M

I have not a case, rather a plea for forgiveness—for this, I humbly ask for the benevolent vessels of Dice Christ to hear my confession. I call this heresy The Unholy Slap. My PC slapped the shit out of my BBG. The thing is, they don’t know he’s the BBG, but I have demonstrated that he’s the most powerful person in the realm. So much so, that as the Emperor of the largest nation, he’s never once been seen with a personal guard—he doesn’t need it. In a high tension dialogue, my PC got up and straight slapped him in the face. I RP’d that he’d grab their arm and submit them, they demanded a contested athletics—fair, but they lost. They cast misty-step, I burned resistance to counter-spell—they were fucked, but visibly upset that I didn’t let them get away with it. To save them, I simply rolled fake dice on a charisma saving throw and lied. “He realizes that your slap was in the moment, and not an insult to his station, and storms off”. I’ve been DMing for years, and have no idea why I fudged the dice so hard. May Dice Christ forgive me, for I am but a lost lamb 🎶rolling with the dice🎶

Junto

May it please the extremely hot Bailiff, and those judges too. I present the case of Bard left to die. During my first ever in-person campaign, our party found themselves taking a job to clear out some nearby bandits. In a lapse of judgment and mistake on the part of a few new players, we decided to go in without doing any investigation. This led to us getting into a pretty difficult fight for no reason which resulted in my bard going down, now being the only healer this seemed pretty dire but luckily we had a paladin who hadn't used their healing hands yet! But instead of bringing my pc back, he was on 2 death save fails, they instead opted to use his entire pool on himself. I was quite sad to see my character die but didn't press them about how they could have healed my character, after this they proceeded to never talk about this again and if it was ever brought up they would pretend it didn't happen. I ask the court: Were they right in healing themselves in an effort to beat the fight or should I of asked for him to heal me instead? I await your judgment. (P.S. This Paladin was not in any danger of being killed.)

Willowandthewind

Hello supreme justices and the bailiff jake's better colleague I come to you with the case of the suddenly smart bard. I play a high level wizard who's entire character is built around knowing about magic. As we approached level 15 our bard realized she had not taken her 10th level expertise, she choose arcana on a whim bumping her arcana to a +10. Her reason for this being that because she could casts and so would be good at arcana. I politely asked her after the game if she would be amendable to changing it as I wasn't able to get any expertise as a wizard and mentioned that arcana was distinct from her definition. She refused saying that she thinks she was right despite her reading the PHB definition of arcana (Keep in mind our campaign is very by the books) So justices I ask: Was I right to be upset about this or was I simply being to harsh to someone's character choices? I will except any punishment the justices cast upon me P.S It has been 4 sessions since she choose it and she has not used arcana once despite us being in a wizards house looking at their magic stuff for 3 of those sessions

Polly Theobald

I OBJECT!! QUEEN AABRIA I LOVE YOU😍😘 apologise to the judges but it had to be said. this is all, please proceed

Dimitar Vassilev

I write to this court and to my second favorite bailiff, to ask for forgiveness from dice christ! I believe I have offended dice christ and am now being punished. A couple sessions ago, after not playing for a long time because of work, I the DM, was finally able to let my dice out of the bag. Right off the bat, my 2 d20s started rolling all nat 20s!!!! A dream come true if I was a player, but alas I wasn't. It was an easy encounter that would have resulted in 2 player deaths if I let those 20s stand. I decided to not count a lot of the 20s I rolled against my players and just count them as regular hits. I believe this is when I angered dice christ because I haven't been able to roll double digits since, and my players have ran rampant with my challenging encounters becoming a walk in the park. I pray for forgiveness

Ben Kullerd

May it please the court and whomever is being bullied today: I’m running a homebrew campaign, and in a recent session, the party’s long rest was interrupted when one of the PC’s uncles was assassinated. The party gave chase, leaving an NPC bard behind to guard the room. I specifically asked my players what items they took with them, and they all confirmed in-session - and later in our text thread - that they only took their weapons. When they returned, they found the bard knocked out and their room raided. I told them their Bag of Holding had been stolen. My players argued with me that they never would’ve left it behind, even though they’d said otherwise and made no use of it during the chase encounter, and they wouldn’t let it go. I relented to keep things moving, but I regret giving in. Having the items stolen would’ve made a drastic impact on the story and the BBEG’s plans. Should I have held my ground?

MJMM

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

Dr. Bearkele

May it please the illustrious court and the lascivious bailiff, I present the case of the Player-DM Who Wants to Have His Cake and Eat It Too. I'm playing a campaign of Curse of Strahd with some friends, with my partner DMing. It's his first long-campaign that he's DMing amd DnD is for sure not his TTRPG system of choice, so it was really nice of him to run DnD for us anyways. A few sessions ago, one of our players announced that he was going to run Strahd for his friend group as well. This is problematic for a few reasons. Firstly, Strahd isn't a linear campaign, so this player is going to basically have all of the stat sheets for all of the bad guys, as well as all the NPC backgrounds and motivations. He claims that he can play his character as if he doesn't know those things, but us other players are skeptical about massive metagaming potential that could theoretically ruin all the fun for us. We also suggested perhaps that he start his campaign before his players get to Barovia, in order to let our campaign get ahead enough that the spoilers won't be such a big deal, but he suggested that without a module to follow, he had no interest. Finally, the last reason this is kind of crappy is because our game nights are also his date night with his wife. Since she and I are the foreigners in this country, my friend can't play in her husband's campaigns because she doesn't speak the language. So if we kill off his character, his wife is left playing the game without him and we might lose her as a player too, which we don't really want. Ultimately, we're wondering, what do we do with this player? Kick him out and ruin date night, or keep him in and have him potentially ruin the game for all the rest of us? (Ps: anytime we ask this player how he expects this to work, he just tells us it's fine and not to worry about it, in a way that makes us all think that he has not thought it through at all)

Cameron McEwan

I prostrate myself before the court and also the temporarily lowly bailiff Axford as I bring the case of the DM vs. the Druid’s zoo. I was running a campaign where we had reached a climatic session, the players facing off against the big bad of the arch, the winter prince at the open air top of his snow swept palace! I had planned a mechanic where each round, more of the Prince’s guards and supporters would show up to join the fray, while at the same time NPCs the players had meet and befriended would rush to their aid to hold these enemies at bay while the players fought the prince himself. I had made this very well balanced and pre rolled fights, the friendly NPCs having a slight advantage over the enemies. It would take a long time for combat to resolve but most of the friendly NPCs would survive. However the circle of stars Druid of the party had another idea. As I had described the palace as incredibly high and without a ceiling, he used conjure animals and created giant eagles and constrictor snakes. The snakes then proceeded to restrain my enemy NPCs and the eagles would then pick them up, now unable to avoid the grapple, and fly them out over the tower and drop them to their deaths. I made a ruling quickly that they couldn’t do this to the big bad, but he was still restrained by some of the snakes and couldn’t reach the Druid to break concentration. I created more enemy npcs on the fly to keep the stakes high but what ended up happening was all my players saw the underlings as the bigger threat and ignored the big bad, unaware he was still in his first of two forms, the second being much more powerful and dangerous. The Druid proceeded to use all three of his third level spells for a total of 24 of these animals. The fight which should have gone for 2hrs dragged out and took us over 7hrs to play through. Afterwards I approached the Druid and suggested in the future he use some other spells or create less, but stronger creatures. He got angry and told me that the only reason they won against the waves of enemies was because of his spell. Unaware those waves only existed because of his spell. I beg the court, was the Druid out of line or did I get whomped and should have just accepted my climatic combat get cut short by the druids zoo?

Jason Rodriguez

My it please the Dice Christ above and the most diligent disciples. I request for a blessing not for me, but for one of my players. When I started Dming at a local game store once a week, I helped a new player create her character, a dwarf battle master names Caroline. When it was time to roll her stats, she maxed out on her first stat roll. A few weeks later, I ran a one shot where I used the Giant Shredder mechanics and she wanted to roll up a new character, a halfling swarmkeeper ranger. We rolled her stats on dnd beyond using the digital dice and once again, maxed out on her first stat roll again. I hope Dice Christ is watching over her characters and would like to have her dice blessed for when she joins us again. She was gone from the table recovering from covid and we hope to have her back soon. Praise be to Dice Christ.

Gilgamesh

I come to the honorable crit justices Murphy, Tannner, and Iyengar as well as ballif Axford with a DM confession. My players were tracking some henchmen though a haunted castle and we’re about to be discovered. Asking them what they do while giving them a count down for tension my girlfriend, a newer player, used Thunderstep, grabbing one player, and jolting out of there. I asked her if she was sure and she said she was. I informed her that the spell does cause a loud boom which would alert the henchmen. She tried to take it back but since she had said she was sure and narrated specifically what she did I put my foot down as to try not give her special treatment as my partner. The session ended there and she was incredibly hard on herself for the two weeks into the next session. And even during that session she was even more hard on herself. I can’t help but feel responsible for this as in retrospect I feel I could have been less of a hard ass. So please tell me. Was I right to have her follow through? Or should I have been more forgiving? Either way I still feel bad and accept any punishment the courts gives out.

Marge and in charge

My it please the three court jesters Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and most importantly may it please Queen Iyengar. I am a first time DM and one of my players keeps insulting an important god in my campaign A huge aspect of the campaign is a pantheon of gods that I created. One of my players has insulted the god of knowledge face to face, in prayer, and via letter. Each time telling the god to “SMD”. I had this god kill and then resurrect them after the first time trying to teach the player a lesson, but after being resurrected they said “ok cool so no consequences” and have continued to insult the god. Currently the party is on their way to the knowledge temple because the god has information that they need. Would I be wrong in perma killing this PC on sight or should I give them the chance to apologize? I don’t want my personal dislike of the player (and character) to influence too much in my decision on their pc but I’m also scared I’m over correcting and projecting the PC from fair concequences. I await your judgement and thank you all for that you do!

Zabi Popal

I look upon the honorable judges and lower my head before the equally honorable but undeniably lowly lowly balif Eaxford for advice. I joined my first DnD session with some friends but quickly came to regret it. The rest of the party doesn’t like the Role Playing aspect in DnD as much as they like the combat and looting aspects. I wouldn’t mind this as much but I worked out a pretty cool backstory with the DM about my Tiefling Wild Magic Sorcerer named Pim but anytime it comes up and I role play with the DM the rest of the 4 party members check out and start talking with each other, or get up to pet the dog, or talk to significant others on the phone, until the RP is done with and we move on. The DM likes the RP and is happy to work with me on Pim’s backstory and how it ties in w/the lore of the world, and implementing it during gameplay but has given up on the rest of the party members and just throws in the occasional brothel or wacky NPC for them to interact with. I don’t want to stop the other players from playing the way they prefer but I’m playing DND for the story telling ya know? and I feel bad for taking up the time of the disinterested players when I RP. What should I do? It’s hard starting DND games so idk if I wanna miss out on playing, but maybe I should leave the party? Not so much of a case but I would love any help provided! - Zabi aka Pim the Tiefling sorcerer

Gabriel Felix

No case here, I just wanted to say I appreciate all the hard work each and every one of you bring to the table and thoroughly enjoy everything you bring to the podcast. <3

doctor worm

May it please the honorable justices Iyengar, Tanner and Murphy and the resplendent bailiff Axford – I bestow upon you the case of the Exhausted Cleric. Earlier this year I started playing in a group with some coworkers. The campaign is wonderful, and everything’s been going great – apart from the DM’s rules about exhaustion. When we began, the original rules for dropping to zero hit points and then getting healed was that you received 2 points of exhaustion (ie getting dropped to zero and healed 3 times without a long rest would auto-kill you). He’s revised the rules to only add one point of exhaustion after the first time going down (2 points, 1 pt, 1pt etc), which the rest of us begrudgingly accept at this point. The REAL problem comes in with my Second DM, who is a player in the first group, and uses the original exhaustion rules the first dm set. A few sessions ago we got in a rough battle, with just the artificer and cleric, and the cleric went down twice. After using her last healing spell to save the artificer she went down a 3rd time, meaning no matter what she would have been autokilled on any healing. Both DMs love this rule and all of us players are suffering because of it, and both campaigns are otherwise SUPER fun, but I miss my cleric friend! Please benevolent justices, what do I, as a player, have an obligation to do? Should we just never heal our comrades until we are safely out of battle?? I patiently await your judgement.

Josh

I come to the honorable justices Murphy, Tanner and Iyengar, as well as the previously honorable but now lowly bailiff Axford with the case of the Skeleton King. Some friends and I were fairly new to dnd, but had played a mini campaign with me as DM. After we finished, one of my players wanted to run Curse of Strand, and asked me separately to help if there were tricky rulings, as we were all new. The first few sessions went great. however, our oath-breaker paladin said he had a problem with his character, he wanted to summon the undead to fight alongside, but as a paladin he wouldn’t be able to do so effectively until much later. The Dm said we could reroll the character to fit that idea better, and I brought up maybe a wizard fighter multiclass, but he was adamant about staying a paladin. He asked the DM if he could get a “slight buff” to his class, with a once a day cast of the danse macabre spell. I tried to explain that as a fifth level spell he wouldn’t be able to cast it until 17th level, giving him a huge bonus over the rest of the level 4 party. This sparked an argument between us where he eventually said “lets just ask the DM!” Our flustered DM gave in, just trying to get us back on track, this spoiled the night and made the rest of the campaign a little awkward until that player eventually dropped out. I ask you this, was i overstepping my boundaries as a player to help the DM, or did i not do enough to help my friend who was new at DMing, i eagerly await your punishment. (Entirely unrelated p.s. but to Emily specifically the music that plays when Beatrice is mentioned is some of my favourite yet! Its so atmospheric and sets the mood for them so well, its perfect!)

Alex W

may it please the lofty and exalted justices, as well as the fallen but not forgotten baliff axford, i present to you the case of the squid diagram. i dm for a party made of up 6 players (including shrek the rogue! but he’s not the problem here), one of which is a graduate student studying deep sea marine biology. i had them facing a young kraken, and was asked about weak spots by my dad, who plays a human fighter. before i could say anything, the deep sea marine biologist immediately called out weak spots on giant squids and sent a diagram of the anatomy of a giant squid into the chat. i didn’t let them use the weak spots from the diagram, and they were able to beat the squid anyways. but now i’m wondering if i should have rewarded the squid diagram, and given them double damage when they hit the squid in certain spots. i lay my judgement at your feet honorable justices and adorable baliff

Joelle H

May it please the King of City Pigeons Murphy, the God of Goofs Caldwell, the Queen of Chaos Emily, the Amazon of All Iyengar and I guess Josh if he is there.. I bring to you the case of the Backseat DM. I am a first time DM of an amazing group of 5 that I have been dming for over a year. I run a high fantasy homebrewed campaign in my own world with my own gods filled with magic and classic fairytale twists... all is well in Wysteria but I have made a terrible mistake... of which I believe I should be punished. One of my players is my DM from another campaign and has a terrible case of backseat driver, she is constantly questioning the choices of me and the other players, metagaming to the max, and steamrolling everyone in the party. I cannot count the "um actually, and that's not how that spell works, or in my campaign..." that we hear every session. I am a firm believer of a healthy mix of the rule of cool, but any time I try to make a dm decision that isn't by the books I have to explain my choices.. I do not know what to do! Do I kick this problematic player and lose the only campaign I get to be a player when she inevitably kills my character? Or do I suck it up and try to reason with her yet again? Please help me, as a new DM I don't know what to do to save my party and myself from my heavenly but heavy handed DM

CommonCatepillat

May it please the contagiously effervescent lyengar and the Garfield, Odie and Nermal-esque justice Murphy, justice Tanner and Justice afford I come to you, not with a case, but to set a precedent. So often in this court we discuss the bombastic effects of a nat 20 and the preposterous downfalls caused by nat 1s but there's another number I feel goes often neglected. The nat 10. It feels just as special as the other two extremes in it's complete normality. So, might I ask the court, how can you make the baseline interesting. If a punishment is needed to appease the legal system of the crit, I don't need all my bones.

STEFANIE FARRINGTON

May it please Emily, I bring you the case of the Sinister Spell Secrets. My husband and I joined a Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign with a group of people he found on Reddit. The DM is a fan of DnD podcasts but this is his first time ever playing/DMing. When we had our session 0, the DM told us anything from a published DnD book was fair game for our character designs. One of the other PCs, a wizard, has been a DM for dozens of campaigns, and my husband and I both noticed that he frequently tries to take control of the narrative and spends lots of time meta-gaming situations with his character. There have been many sessions where the wizard will interrupt descriptions or conversations so that he can make a check or ask a question, unrelated to what the rest of the party is doing and shutting down some pretty cool role playing moments. He clearly has a deep knowledge of DnD, which he seems to be using to take advantage of our less experienced DM, and he seems to want to be the constant center of attention. In our most recent session, the wizard let slip that he has an ability called “Spell Secrets”. Curious, my husband looked this up and discovered that he is playing a Lore Mastery wizard - a wizard subclass from Unearthed Arcana. Not only is this not from a published DnD book, but this subclass is particularly good at meta-gaming. We are worried that this subclass will allow him to further meta game and ruin future encounters. I ask you, Emily, should we bring this up with our DM, or let it slide and just try to put up with the constant meta-gaming? Humbly, Stefi Joy

Canas_Colours

To the honarable Crit justices and the lovely radiant Bailiff Emily I present the case of "The piss bucket incident" My husband is DMing In a setting where you spend most time in one settlememt and interact with the factions there. The player in question is our (usual) forever DM. He plays Fiddler, a Gnome Rogue divorcee with nothing in his name (besides his mother's ashes) looking to reclaim a couch lost to his Ex. In town a girl named Emma gave us a paid tour upon arrival, during which Fiddler stole back the money we paid her. She noticed it gone right after the tour (it's a shady town) but being around 10-12yo she did the only thing she could: Tripping the shortest member of our party, Fiddler the gnome (every other PC is very tall) The player argued that this was meta-gamey but after a short discussion he conceeded but seemed a lottle butthurt Well Fiddler decided he would make jt his mission to ruin the girl. He tried to (in this order) -Burn down her house (DM did reprimand him for that one) -Frame her for attacking him after hurt himself while trying to break into an establishment -claim that she was racist aginst Gnomes (in session 0 DM established there'd be no in-game racism) to everyone he'd meet There was mild in- &out of character pushback and remarks but me and other about his excessive behavior but he kept messing with Emma. After a night of Drugs and Alcohol Fiddler filled a Bucket of Pee to the brim and essentially Booty trapped Emma's house so that whoever would come out first would soaked. I getting increasingly uncomfortable with how much Fiddler had tried bullying Emma & was going to address it after the session but then he went to Emma's House the nextday claiming to be a Detective and convinced her Father (who ended up being the victim of his prank) that she was the one who pranked him. At this point I voiced how genuinely upsetting his weird grudge against this child was& told him that I didn't want to keep playing if he wanted to do this for the rest of the campaign. He seemed dejected and once we comtinued, asked me of he could at least finish this bit. Things got a bit awkward and the session was ended not too long after My husband was going to talk to him after about his behavior, which I was not aware of. Because Fiddler seemed upset and kind of butthurt so I'm wondering was I justified in interrupting the session or should I have voiced my discomfort after? I humbly accept any punishment you may have for me!

David Ayres

May it Please the Court, the Wise Justices, The Fae Queen from visiting Court Aabria Iyengar, And the Laterally Moving but nor Pro- or De-moted Justice-Bailiff Axeford, I present the case of the Beholder PC. When I was 14 in my first d&d group, we had a member who was always a hardcore power gamer. Any character he ever wanted to play was always a monstrous race that had crazy stats and needed to be houseruled to be a PC in the first place. We were starting a new campaign and he presented several PCs he wanted to play such as giants, Dragons, etc.. I said no to all and I finally allowed him to be a Gauth, a small beholderkin with only PRETTY insane stats. When we began playing, he quickly became upset that he didn't have hands and therefore had to use magic to manipulate objects, Yelled at me that he couldn't equip standard weapons and armor (I let him wear magical armor because it reshapes to its wearer), and other things that were integral to the race he chose. He eventually ground a session to a full halt because I asked him to come up with a reason his Gauth lived among the more common humanoid races, and he called me a racist for asking why he'd need to come up with an RP reason. As an adult I now genuinely hate restricting players creativity, and I sort of regret how I handled it. Was I wrong to ask this player to actually roleplay the character he wanted to play? Was I overly harsh? Or am I right in assuming what he actually wanted was the stats? Your Humble Plaintiff Jackie Heart, The playing card themed warlock

Misa of House Inzunza

May It Please The chaos Queen Bailiff Emily and the Wise Supreme Court Justices Murphy, Tanner and Iyengar, I have a problem that has only festered with time and my inaction. As DM, I have a good friend and player who regularly fudges rolls. I’ve let it go because I have no proof and I tend to let Dice Christ do their thing However, a lot of my players have been getting suspicious and regularly don’t trust his rolls. When I’ve been a player with him I’ve seen it too. We have offhand brought it up and joked about this and now I have him roll in the Tower Of Terror for important rolls so that everyone may see it. It’s still seems to be a problem as my players complain, tension builds and our friendship is coming to a fever pitch. Please I beg you judges what do I do from here. I await the fire or salvation that May come my way

Donny

To the blessed priests and bishops of Dice Christ, please absolve me of my sins. I know not what I have done or whether it was an affront to Dice Christ or RPGehova, but players in my games won't stop using their stronger grasp on physics to completely blow up my world - literally. I keep trying to entice them to explore dungeons and bad guy hideouts for story beats, and they keep building bombs to blow up everything - bad guys, clues, etc. I don't want to railroad them, but I can't keep "yes, and"-ing these IEDs. What must I do to save the soul of my campaign?

Sawyer Rappa

To the almighty and all powerful supreme crit, and the bailiff who gets them coffee, I run a game that focuses a lot on deals and bargains. In our last session, half of the party went with the princesses of the realm to the thieves guild’s club to make an exchange for keys that lead to the last dragon egg for written information the party had on an artifact the thieves wanted. When our druid started walking away with the keys without the paper being handed over, daggers were drawn. The goal of the encounter was to beat feet, but when the sorcerer went down, the druid decided to broker a deal with the Head Thief- in exchange for healing the party & letting them walk away from the club unharmed (with a few other stipulations), they would give the thieves the paper and all of the keys (exact wording); It’s 1v4, my players got me when I allowed the sorcerer (who has personal beef with them regarding stolen facemasks) to be fully healed before the paper was sequestered away and he cast prestidigitation on it. I warned that setting it on fire might play out badly, so he covered it in ink, making it unreadable. It’s a really good move, but our argument came up on the longevity of the plan- my players argue that since soiling an object does not have the hour qualifier, the effect is permanent, while I argued that the duration applies to the spell as a whole. I couldn’t find anything definitive online, so I ask the court- does prestidigitation’s duration apply to all of its effects?

Lane H.

Dice Christ Confessional, I submit myself to the judgment of Dice Christ and his loyal disciples, please hear my apologies. I am a new DM running my first campaign. During a side quest fight with some 20cr monsters my players went down and only the DM NPC with was left with 10 hp. I rolled a nat 20 for the monster to hit which would have been a tpk. I lied and said it missed allowing the NPC to kill the monster and save the party. I am at the mercy of Dice Christ. I only wanted to let my party play on. I humbly accept my next nat 1.

Jay V

May it please the honourable justices of the crit and the venerable and luminant bailiff Axford. I was in a campaign that a friend was DMing. The campaign went well, but ended due to general differences in the group dynamic, and the aforementioned DM was the one to pull the plug. When I was in the next campaign from the same DM, set in a different world entirely, he introduced a new npc to the group; one that had been created by the two of us as part of the backstory of my character in the first campaign, and had already been introduced and interacted with in that campaign. When I asked him about this, he said all of his worlds were in a multiverse, and this character had joined some sort of program to explore the multiverse after my initial character in the first campaign had left. This feels weird to me, because as far as I was aware, my character wasn't... finished in that world, the story just stopped focusing on them. Should I stop being defensive over this character in a campaign that no longer exists, or is my DM crossing unwritten social rules of the game? I humbly await your judgment.

Max Piper

To the justices of the crit, and the betitted 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?

Katie Egg.

Holy dice christ Mother of crits Pray for us cheaters now And at the hour of our failed death saves I come to confession today with a case of selfimposed disadvantage. I am playing a cleric in a campaign run by a new dm with lots of players. Towards the end of a recent session, we were engaged in a climactic battle with a mad scientist and several of her creations. We were all rolling improbably well. The battle was expertly run, but we were getting through it very quickly and relatively unharmed, and I thought I caught a whiff of dm anxiety. As I cast guiding bolt on the badly injured scientist (since none of my in-range comrades needed heals) the table chatter was excited and the party was so big that no one except me noticed I had crit. Panicked at the idea that 8d6 damage could end this fun fight and ruin other peoples‘ chances to do cool shit, I covertly rerolled and missed on purpose. I have been rolling like shit ever since I shamed dice christ and all of their diceiples I beg your mercy and await your judgement as well as that of dice christ themself.

Zach VanMatre

To the illustrious and magnanimous supreme crit and the elder chaos goddess Bailiff Axford, I’ve been running a lunchtime DND group for my coworkers 2-3 days a week. We’ve introduced a new player to the game, gotten to know each other better because of it, and it’s added a real bright spot to the work week for all of us, so it’s really been a fantastic time. Then came the final battle of our first campaign. To set the scene for this final battle, the party consists of a warlock, a paladin and a ranger who are attempting to bring an NPC to safety in Sigil, the City of Doors. Standing in their way is a half orc barbarian PC and her team who betrayed the party. After a long battle between 3 separate factions on 2 different planes the half orc barbarian goes down. Combat continues and on her turn I ask for a death saving throw, which she rolls and succeeds. Shortly after I called the session as our lunch breaks are limited and we have to get back to work. On the way back to our lab the player approached me to tell me that “I” forgot her relentless endurance and that she should actually be up at one hit point. I apologize for the oversight and said that when we meet again to continue the battle she would absolutely be conscious again. She said that instead she wanted to feign death so that the other pcs were unaware that she was back up. I said that would be fine but between sessions I’d need a deception or performance roll from her against the other pcs perception. This is where things went off the rails as she proceeded to get angry and tell me that she shouldn’t have to make any rolls since I had skipped her turn by making her roll a death save instead of remembering her abilities. I held my ground and insisted on the roll, which she succeeded, but maintained until the bitter end that it should have been given to her since I “skipped her”. So I leave it to the court: should I have been responsible for remembering this players abilities and made up for skipping her, or was I right to insist on the roll?

Kelly McP

Dear Justices, I come to you with rage and confusion. How do we deal with intentionally problematic players? I took to the DM seat for the first time asking my usual cohort of players to be gentle and allow our regular DM a break. I asked since it was my first time they make reasonable characters and not the usual insane busted combinations we all love. They came with a tabaxi barbarian that can set land speed records, a cleric who keeps that tabaxi on a leash as an indentured servant with a self imposed no fap rule (I honestly don’t know what it had to do with anything). They killed all my weenies and everything else including every NPC they encountered even when prompted they have information. Is this normal? Does everyone get this when they first DM? We haven’t revisited this at my request but it still lets referenced as a campaign people are involved in. Am I wrong to let it die it is a post mortem required? Your firm loving hand of justice is what we all need. -A new DM who is just a baby and wanted to visit the under dark. Ps- my dice are out for the new moon now. 😉

Lorelei and Kyra Newly Weds

Oh wise Baliff Emily as well as her guests, I hope you're fairing well this day. The case I pose to you is one that hasn't taken place yet. My co worker was planning a campaign for some work buds including myself. The premise? Pirate ship that recruits monsters, eventually leading to spell jamming. This is all in good faith. However, in discussing backgrounds I mentioned my player had a crush on our deceased captains daughter. In the fun of it he decided he would also have a crush on her. The issue is that she is his sister in game (she is a dm PC don't worry). When I try talking to him about it he seems pretty dead set on trying to fuck his sister or anyone that looks like her. Our DM (and myself) plan to kill his player if he attempts this course of actions. Are my DM and I in the wrong for stopping our friend from pursuing his fun for his first and probably last real campaign? Or should we let him fuck his sister at some point? .PS. the sister died a couple years back in game and my player if given the option would revive her, this is really the only way she makes a return. Please don't punish us to fuck our sisters if you rule against us. This is my only request, thank you for your time I shall now return to my bean bag chair.

Grimma Lynx

Dear almighty Supreme Justices of the Crit, and pretty cool Baliff, I bring you the case of the manchild roleplayer. I must preface this, due to its absurd nature, with an assurance that everything I tell you today is absolutely true, swear on dice christ and the holy crit. I, as the DM, had just finished taking my party through curse of strahd, using it as a lead in to my first fully homebrew campaign world. The party was only three, and we were open to bringing in a fourth. Enter the fourth PC, who I will call Jerry for his privacy. This player, when he pitched Jerry to me, described him as an adult who grew up in an orphanage in a small village the players were going to visit immediately after escaping Barovia. Jerry decided to stay there as a caregiving bard for the children, and would use the gold he found from adventuring to fund said orphanage. I liked this idea, and signed off on it. So imagine my suprise when the character brought to the table was a literal manchild, complete with extremely child-like voice, a lack of will to participate in combat (opting to instead use every turn to do child-like antics such as looking for bugs), a creepy disposition to call our druid "auntie", and ideas such as derailing story encounters to go looking for an accordian, and a pet shop. My other players were understandably creeped out by this, with the druid stating she felt like she was being roped into a weird roleplay scenario she wanted nothing to do with. Still, we all agreed to give Jerry one more session to pick up on the vibe our game was going for and adjust his roleplaying accordingly. This did not happen. As the party flew an airship to a city only to find it in quarantine due to a mysterious plague, Jerry's first action upon making it through a screening checkpoint was to go looking for another pet shop. This was after he already purchased a dancing gecko in the last city. At this point I snapped and told him, and I quote "fine, you can go looking for a pet shop in the quarantined city, while the rest of the party engages with the story." Jerry didnt say much for the rest of that session. Afterwards, I spoke to him privately, informing him that everyone else didnt think Jerry was a good fit for the campaign, but that he could roll a new character if he wanted to continue playing. To his credit, the player did gracefully withdraw from the game. Supreme justices, were my players and I justified in telling off Jerry and refusing to allow such a character to exist in our campaign? Or should we have tried to work with him more to make his character fit? I humbly await your judgement and possible punishment.

Dan Healey

To the honorable judges, and the wonderful new bailiff taking over because Jake got cancelled or something... If it pleases the court, i give you the Case of the QUARANTINE RAGEQUIT DM During Quarantine, my monthly game moved online and a few other friends wanted to play, so my DM decided to make a new campaign with the 6 of us and we got to roll new characters. During the 4th session, we were aboard a ship returning from a mission when the NPC crew started to become hostile, the rogue and bard used persuasion and intimidation checks to try to diffuse but no matter what the DM said they failed and increased the tension. When the NPCs drew their weapons, the Wizard cast sleep at 3rd level to put them down but without even a check, the DM said it had no effect. It was at that point that the bard said in chat, "Screw it, if they want a fight, let's kill them!" And thats when the DM yelled, "FUCK THIS, I QUIT!" and signed off discord and then deleted our campaign on DND Beyond. We were all so stunned, we just stayed in the discord chatted for like another 20 min. The next day, the DM called the Wizard and claimed we weren't suppose to be hostile to the crew and we did things wrong. He also admitted he didnt know how Sleep worked and didnt want to look it up because there was ONE detail we all missed that would have fixed everything but no one saw it so, oh well! He then decided he wanted to kick the Bard out for not playing his character correctly because he multiclassed with Cleric, so he shouldn't act that way. He called the rest of us individually, except the Bard, campaigning for the Bard to be tossed and not apologizing for being a big baby. We sided with the Bard and the campaign never started up again. Were we right to take the bard's side and not try to compromise for another campaign? PS, that was 2 years ago and we've never played another TTRPG with that DM again, we've all been friends for almost 20 years, but since that episode, he kinded drifted out of our friend group and we all rarely talk to him anymore.

Sleepy Durgen

Dear High Justices of the Supreme Crit, the most benevolent bailiff I bring you the case of the wandering cleric. I am a first time DM running a game of all first time players except the druid, The cleric in this campaign keeps on wandering off during combat to do some side thing such as harvest pumpkin seeds which restore 1hp each or investigate a mural on a wall as his character is usually unaware that a battle has begun. The rest of the party never call out or try and get their attention which deprives them of their main healer. So far this hasn't had too many consequences but they keep almost dying and i'm concerned that if someone does die they might blame the cleric or me. So I ask you should I let the party continue as they are at risk of them being killed and blaming the cleric or should I step in and try pushing them to stick together as a group. I await your judgement and the advice hidden inside the unusual punishment that you decide upon.

Brandon

My dearest and most beloved Supreme Justices of the Crit, and the Magical Misfit herself, i bring to you a case of my players feeding me my own stupid medicine. I play with a group where we alternate between two campaigns each week. I DM one and my friend DM’s the other, this allows us to play each week but we also each get two weeks to prep in between the sessions we are in charge of running. In my friends campaign I play as a Grung, a small frog person, as a level 6 circle of spores druid. His name is Grung De’La’Toad, and he is very friendly but can get mean when backed into a corner. We were exploring a dungeon when the group got split, my 3 companions chasing down a bug bear while I stayed back to try and get through a locked door. After failing multiple checks to best this door, 2 bugbears break through from the other side hearing all my failed attempts to open and break the door. Time to panic plan. I go through my spells seeing what I can do, it gets to my turn and I ask my DM “how insane will you let me be one time? I don’t think it breaks the rules ‘technically’ and i’ll do it just this once”. He listened and allowed my previously established 1 foot tall, 24 pound frog cast gaseous form and force my weigh into a bugbears lung. Once inside he asked what i wanted to do next, I said “easy, i just want to stop concentrating on the spell.” This resulted in a 24 pound poisonous frog to appear in the bugbears throat (of course I said “whats wrong? Frog in your throat?”) and this essentially rendered the bugbear dead immediately. Everyone loves it, everyone laughs, good times all around. Fast forward a few minutes to after the combat. One of the other players starts talking about how they are going to learn gaseous form in the campaign I run so they can do that all the time, I told them in my campaign I will let it slide 1 time since it was allowed for me but they argued I was right and *sigh* “RAW backs it up” as he put it. I can’t possibly be wrong in this right? Surely this wasn’t the intended purpose of gaseous form, am I wrong for not letting then use this idea more than once?

Jackie

To the honorable, convivial, and insouciant justices of the supreme crit, as well as the Bailiff Axford I guess, I bring to you a case which caused my father to never play dnd again. My father and his friends played first edition dnd many decades ago and the party was around level 13 or 14 at the time of the disturbance. The party was running down a volcano, being pursued by lava flow. They would perform dex checks periodically in order to jump over lava streams and other obstacles. Unfortunately, my dad’s character rolled a nat 1 and was overtaken by the lava. The DM said my dad’s character was killed instantly and because the lava would burn the body, there was no possible way to resurrect them. My dad argued that he should have a chance to escape the lava since lava doesn’t ever kill someone instantly, but the DM was firm in his ruling and a big argument ensued. My dad left the group, swearing to never play again, and soon after the group stopped playing altogether. So, I ask was the DM right in his judgement or is my dad right to feel angry over losing a character he had played for a long time?

Stephen Mark

The honourable and irrefutable justices and the bailiff Estiban. I bring to you the case of the ambushed ranger and the too long campaign. Prior to this event we had spoken to the DM about finishing the campaign as we are now in month 15 of a supposed 6 month campaign with weekly sessions. I play a Ranger in Our party, we had received a threat from our sorcerers father. To keep her safe, her and our parties warlock went to a safe house and our cleric and I went back to the tavern as we promised to meet someone there. We were ambushed by 3 Bodaks and my ranger went down, I failed two death saves and cleric was running over to heal me but couldn’t get close enough to do cure wounds (was 10ft away) he took aura damage from the Bodak and I insisted that I would to as I was within range, thus killing my character outright. The DM told I didn’t have to take the death fail and I told him “this is the mechanic don’t remove the stakes of the game because you feel bad”. After the session ended and tears flowed the DM accused me of manipulating him and trying to end the campaign early. Was I wrong to insist my character would die because of the mechanics put in place or should I have accepted his mercy and not taken the death save fail? I humbly await your judgement.

Hamps

To the clergy of Dice Christ, I come to you with a Confession today. My wife and I had a beautiful wedding back in July, and we demonstrated our unity by rolling two dice down our dice tower. The officiant explained to the wedding attendees that we love playing Dungeons and Dragons and that the D20 was used frequently in the game, a 20 was pretty much a guarantee for success, and a 1 could lead to failure and difficult roads ahead. We went ahead and rolled our dice and I ended up rolling a natural 1. The officiant announced excitedly that I had rolled a 20, which he had said he would do regardless of the number. My wife rolled after me and actually got a natural 20, which ended with all of us legitimately being excited and incredibly surprised. The attendees cheered and seemed to love this unity ceremony. The officiant explained how amazing this was and that the statistics of actually getting two 20's was pretty rare. At the reception, our attendees kept saying how amazing this unity ceremony was and asking if our dice were weighted. So to the Clergy of Dice Christ, we ask you if Dice Christ would truly be offended by this small fibbage on the beautiful wedding day of two D&D nerds, or if Dice Christ would bless this ceremony and the newlyweds regardless. We patiently await your grace or your judgement.

Sam the BT

To the wonderful bailiffs and the reprehensible King John I present the case of “Airlock Sholmes and the Blowgun of Certain Death.” My ranger shot an NPC detective named Airlock Sholmes in the back of the head with the “Blowgun of Certain Death.” The DM said the detective died. I think this was unfair. Hear me out! We’re working through Candlekeep Mysteries and are currently working on a murder investigation given to us by the aforementioned detective. He was purposefully annoying and condescending to us, throwing out crazy “alternative” theories to any speculation we made. We were mean right back as he was making our characters miserable. It was a great time for all of us at the table. After a particularly stupid “But maybe that ghost was actually lying about her murder!” from the detective I wanted to hit him upside the head with some flair. I decided to use my blowgun for this. Now the name “Blowgun of Certain Death” is an ironic title. It is a blowgun that never misses but can never use special ammo. Its damage is always exactly 3. The joke being “with enough time certainly anyone will die.” I fired but then Airlock instantly went down and when I tried to heal him the DM informed us he only had a max HP of 1 and thus the 3 damage instantly killed him. This was a spry young man and my character never had murderous intent. As one who is usually the DM, I’m often the restrained character of the group, holding back my companions more murder hobo tendencies. Straight up murder is very much out of character. The DM wouldn’t budge. When speaking with the DM later I asked if Airlock needed to be out of the story and he was just taking advantage of an opening. The DM said no; that we were supposed to have him for most if not the of the adventure. The DM wanted us to know that Airlock was no good in combat. I guess we learned. Was Airlock really killed by my ranger, or was he more struck down by the DM.

Morgan Bounds

May it please the honorable Justices of the court, and the delightful new Bailiff who is an upgrade from the last guy. I bring to you the case of my “long-con” Guy Fieri one-shot vs a disappointed player. I recently ran a quick one-shot for a few friends. The premise was capitalistic oppression and corporate greed infiltrating their town, now affecting the place they all worked together. They wanted to fight back and unionize, and got information to seek a place called Van Wolftor where they could find help. On the way, they went to a 50s-style restaurant, a cave they could only navigate with a large vehicle, and lake they needed to exit through the bottom of. That’s right, a Diner, a Drive in, and a Dive. Upon finding Van Wolftor, they uscrambled the fallen sign pieces to discover it was actually Flavortown and promptly met Guy Fieri. This was generally received with shock and laughter, but one player was seriously annoyed and borderline angry. She tossed the letters she was unscrambling when she figured it out, called the game a waste of time, and later said she was disappointed that the story she was invested in was “all a big joke.” I humbly ask the judges, was I in the wrong to long-con my friends in a Guy Fieri one shot, or is my best friend in the world being a crybaby funsucker? (Note: the same player insisted their common workplace be a brothel named The Burning Bush, and named her character Clitoria Vulvicus. I was not the only one making the session a joke!)

Keanu DRAMAFACE

To the honorable supreme crit justices and that plucky new bailiff Emily! She’s going places for sure!! I bring a short but oh so fucking sweet question: Where do you draw the line on making a character strong as possible? For instance, is it too much to make a battle master fighter, with superior technique, and the martial adept feat for a total of 7 battle master maneuvers? Is that…like…too much? Please tell me as many DMs have told me I go too far with making characters as strong as possible

Augi5000

Are you there Pod? It's me, August. I'm not sure if this falls under justice or clergy, but I come to the crew with a NADDPOD Missed Connection. Back in June I went to the LA live show. I was flying solo and planned on meeting up with some people from the Discord after the show, but ended up not feeling well and went home instead. The next day at work though I had just gone to our back warehouse to look for an an item when a coworker pages me over the walkies saying a customer was looking for me. I head back up front thinking a friend had come by, but instead I'm greeted by a guy I've never seen before. He waves and says "Hey, were you at the NADDPOD show last night? I thought I recognized you." Now, I have a brightly colored mohawk and a lot of tattoos that make me pretty easily recognizable, so that didn't throw me. If anything, I was like sweet! Dice Christ has blessed me with a second chance to meet a fellow listener! I confirm that was me he saw, expecting to start a conversation, but he just says "Great show!" and starts to walk away!? I called out after him "Hi I'm Auggie! What's your name?" but I missed his response and then he was gone. Even my coworkers who witnessed the exchange were confused. Apparently he had tried to catch my attention up front, but lost me when I went into the warehouse, which is when he asked a coworker where I went. Was I supposed to follow him too? Did I look too frazzled to have a conversation? Did he just suddenly regret his choices? I don't know!! I figured hey, he knows where to find me now, maybe he'll come back another time? But it's been 3 months now and I haven't seen him since. I humbly ask Dice Christ for divine intervention to help me find this mystery live show man who doesn't do conversations, so I can finally know what the heck happened there???

Mike S

To the wonderful and esteemed Justices, and may the court's fancy be suitably tickled. I bring to you the case of the DMPC takeover and the fighter-turned-fool. I have been playing in a Dragonlance themed campaign that is quickly spiraling out of control. The DM has, in no uncertain terms, been absolutely brutal. No healing of any kind, no clerics/paladins/warlocks/sorcerers/druids, uncooperative NPCs, regularly interrupted short and long rests (and being called a "coward" for trying to take rests at all), etc. All of this under the auspices of worldbuilding and restrictions of the setting (god of healing disappeared so no one can use healing magic). That is all ~okay~ for the most part despite being tough to play in a system built around the ability to heal. We the players agreed to most of this coming in to the campaign, afterall, but now things have reached a boiling point after a player had to drop out. The DM took over his character (fighter) rather than killing them off and the group losing a much needed front-liner. Problem is: DM refuses to use any of that character's abilities, or do anything beside "(Character) attacks". We now essentially have a fighter DMPC who cannot use any fighter abilities, features, or maneuvers (they were a battle master), as well as splitting our XP 5 ways instead of 4 by counting this DMPC as a character despite them being functionally nonexistent at this point. Hell, the DM doesn't even know their stats and just guesses at modifiers to hit and whatnot. We have offered to run the character ourselves if it is important to the campaign to maintain this character, or at the very least take the load off the DM if that was an issue, but were roundly and vigorously rejected. Honorable Justices, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Should the DM make an effort to actually play the character? Is it too much to ask that a fighter actually BE a fighter? I humbly await your firm, yet tender justice.

Vince Mascoli

To the esteemed pontificate of the Church of Dice Christ: I come not with a confession but an exaltation of the story making power of Dice Christ. I am in a Weird West campaign with people I met through the 3 Black Halflings Discord. I play a Jackalope Harengon Spirits Bard. My character had a heart to heart with our Grung Aasimar Wild Magic Sorcerer who was also deeply afraid of surging and unintentionally casting fireball and hurting/killing people as it did in her backstory. My character said that she probably just needs to get some safe shooting practice in so it takes the pressure off her and proceeded to use a feature that granted her 10 temp HP by gathering a story from a spirit. Under a starry desert sky, she and I proceed to shoot old boxes of junk from my fortune teller’s wagon. I shoot a couple of cans with my gun to get started and she blows up a box with a chaos bolt. She rolls her for wild magic surge and hits a natural 1. We were astonished, but then Dice Christ truly spoke when she rolled on the d100 wild magic table and cast a third level fireball on us both. Cut to the party sitting quietly at the campfire when a sun erupts behind them. I made my dex save, but she failed, and were it not for the temp HP I gave her earlier she would’ve been down. My character reacted excitedly and congratulated her on getting the pressure off herself, though she was shaken. We ended the session with everyone in the party giving her a huge hug to comfort her and we all bonded more as a group. I don’t have any confessions other than I became a true Dice Christ believer that session!

Bubbalo Dee

To the wonderful and amazing justices of the Crit and to the better bailiff Axford I bring to you the case of the Goliath Cavalier riding the Moa (War ostrich from the creature codex) My DM is starting a new campaign set in New Zealand, where the first tribes arrived. Our characters have to build up and protect the land chosen by the DM. we players chose to play one race so that we feel more like a group from the same area. I wanted to play a goliath cavalier fighter that rides a Moa, which is a extinct flightless bird that was alive when the first tribes settled there. The DM said that was dumb and not fair to the other members of the party. I asked if I could do a series of animal handling checks to befriend or train a Moa and they said no Justices of the court, should have I gotten my big flightless bird, or should I get trampled by the dms decision

Boomclaw the Twice-Dead Kobold

To the honorable Supreme Crit justices and Jake too I guess, I come before you with a dilemma. In a recent session, one of my players, who is new to D&D, went off exploring on her own while everyone else was on the bus home. This led her into a confrontation with someone who was following the party at a distance. This tail tried to run, but the PC is a Monk and they couldn't outrun her. This turned into a combat, and in the first round, the stalker crit on her with a pistol loaded with poison bullets, dealing a staggering amount of damage. Rules as written, she probably should have died instantly from the massive damage rule. I was afraid to do so out of fear that she would be discouraged by the death of her character and maybe would quit the group. So, I stopped counting damage and simply told the player that the damage exceeded her current HP by a lot and downed her character. This gave her teammates the chance to find her (by following the sound of the gunshot) and resuscitate her, which they did. Was I too merciful in this case? If so, is it a mitigating factor that she is a new player? Is it wrong to take player experience into consideration like this? Please, justices, either resolve (or validate) my guilty feelings!

Paul D

Bishops of the Dice Diocese, please hear my confession to Dice Christ. I have stolen countless death-save critical successes from my players and party members for nearly a decade. I only realized the scope of my sins during the final boss fight of a recent campaign. Two PCs were down and the outcome was looking grim. Our artificer rolled a nat 20 on his death save and began to celebrate that he'd be back at 1 hp. I refuted this by literally saying, "No, it just counts as two successes. I think the 1 hp rule is only used by podcasts to keep the action moving." The GM agreed with me because that's how we've always done death saves. Thankfully another player double checked the rule and discovered my sinful error. The Artificer popped back up and attacked the big bad: another Nat 20. Big bad obliterated. Dice Christ may have blessed my party, but I still feel the taint of my arrogance and ignorance. What must I do to make amends?

Jake

Your Honors! And that meddlesome Bailiff too! I beg of your aid in comprehending the effects of a Wall of Force spell. In a session of a campaign wherein we are investigating and hunting down a mafia-esque assassin organization in our home city, we were ambushed on the road by some mercenaries and aforementioned assassins. I played a multi class Divination wizard/Knowledge cleric, whom I have since turned full cleric for roleplaying reasons. In what would turn out to be my FINAL use of a Portent roll, I cast Suggestion on the Spellcasting assassin boss to call off the attack and come speak to us, giving them a 2 on their Wisdom Save. My DM described how the spell was rebuffed, not seeming to connect, and revealed that a Wall of Force spell had been placed between us and the caster. I argued that Wall of Force states that nothing PHYSICAL can pass through the wall, and that Suggestion does not create a physical effect but rather places an enchantment on a creature, and thus wouldn't be affected by a physical barrier like Wall of Force. We went back and forth for a couple minutes, and I ultimately acquiesced to the DM's ruling, but the DM/rules lawyer in me is still perplexed by this rules snag. What can a Wall of Force negate, besides the love between a DM and their player? (P.S., just kidding we love each other, I can do all things through DM who strengthens me)

Jack Campau

Hello judges Murphy and Tanner as well as the amazingly superior Bailiff Emily. It’s a good thing the horse-hating bailiff Jacob is not at the court this day because I write to you with the case of the jumping centaur. I was a centaur monk player in a train heist one shot and needed to get on top of the train from between two of the cars. My DM insisted since I was half horse there was no way I could climb the ladder to the roof, so I just said I could jump up using my step of the wind. The DM did not let up and posed that the train was too tall for a standing jump and that the cars were too close together. I disagreed and looked up the height of the average train car to argue my point. This led to a playfully heated debate and ultimately I got my way but I pose the question to you: was my DM right to try and keep me from getting on top of the train or was I too pushy against the neigh sayer

Joseph Taylor McRae

To the beautiful bailiff and extraneous chumps, I present to you the case of Bruce Root, the hated mute. My friends and I began a (what I thought to be casual) pathfinder campaign asan antidote to years of a supremely brutal Warhammer role play campaign. Our characters include a witch named Ally McSpell, a Grippli boyscout, a Ratatouille themed swashbuckler and my character, Bruce Root, a cactuar leshy gunslinger. In our prior Warhammer campaign, I had played an obnoxious mature student alchemist called Rimstain who hadn’t taken alchemy as a skill. He was promptly permanently facially disfigured by bandits in the first session and so lost remaining any verbal dexterity or charm. Needless to say he was the heel of the campaign, and at points genuinely seemed to annoy my fellow players. This is relevant, as I intended Bruce to be a kind of peace offering. To this end, I made Bruce a mute, which was fitting given he was just a cactus in a pot holding a gun. However, this has been received poorly by one of our players. He argued that I should have consulted the group before foisting a mute PC upon them, as it makes many core aspects of the game difficult or impossible, and any perception or knowledge checks I make are worthless to the party. The party agreed with him. So I ask you, was it poor form to create a mute character without permission from the party, or are my fellow players being ungrateful for the gift of silence I have given them? In gratitude, J

Sarah

Dear Learned Justices, including the fabulous Aabria, and the foresaken Bailiff, fallen from her lofty perch. I present the case of the accidental re-killing of an undead PC. A couple of years ago I was DM in a campaign with a couple friends of mine. We had just began a new campaign, and one of the players came to me with a novel PC idea. He would play a character who was secretly undead. We came up with a couple mechanics, some good, some bad, but the relevant one for this story being that healing magic did not work on him (though potions would). On the second session, this PC was fleeing from a fight gone wrong, he had 1 hit point left, and was invisible. He narrated as he met back up with the party that he tapped another PC on the shoulder. That player joked that they would kick out at the invisible thing touching them, and I played along having the player roll an attack roll. It hit, doing 1 damage. The undead PC instantly went down, and the players crowded around him. The cleric cast healing word on him, and the spell fizzled having no effect. He then asked could he roll an medicine check to determine if the PC was still alive since they hadn’t used their action yet, I agreed and they rolled a 4, I said he looked dead to him. I then had the undead PC roll a death save, a 6, one death save. Another PC asked could they check as well, and confirm the firsts diagnosis. I said sure, they rolled, a 16! I informed the player, that despite everything this undead PC looked to be alive to them. They asked to roll a medicine check to stabilise the PC. I said sure, but just to be fair we'll roll one more death saving throw first since they had used their action investigating the PC. The undead PC rolled…. Nat 1. Two more death saving throws and the PC was dead. The player took it well, but all these years later I ask was I right to kill this PC?

Snackosaurus

To the wise and honorable justices & the benevolent backup bailiff Axford, I present to you the case of the non-descript old lady. My wife and I are currently playing the campaign, "Beyond the Witchlight" with a group we originally started playing D&D with about 5 years ago. Our DM is one of my wife's oldest friends... but he is notorious for expecting us to ask him every last detail. We recently came across a room in a hag's cottage (which we had so far managed to stealthily investigate). The room had several children's bunks with a sick dwarf child and a woman tending to him. This was our only description of the woman except when my wife asked for more information and he simply told us that she was an old woman and appeared to be on the hag's payroll. We entered the room and the woman began to run away, my wife (a rogue) panicked and threw a dagger at the woman promptly killing her. The DM then narrated the child leaping from the bed crying "mother!" When we made the point that he had never told us she was a dwarf, he replied "well you didn't ask." We were all frustrated, but decided to move on. The session ended shortly after this, but the child was one we had been specifically tasked to rescue and now we've inadvertently killed his mother. Should a relatively obvious description of surface appearances such as race be included in an NPCs description without having to ask? We humbly submit to your just decision.

Kevin Seery

Nat 1? Dice Christ has spoken, that PC was destined to die

Adriana B

To the honorable crit justices and backup bailiff Axford. I bring to you a confession and the case: How much DND is too much DND? In the summer of 2020 my best friend and I decided to try playing DND as his first time being a DM and mine in general. As everyone knows, that was the first summer in quarantine, and with uncertainty in the air, this campaign brought us endless joy of a different world. Until it didn't. The thing is that my friend and I didn't have anyone else to play DND with so he DM'ed me in a 1 PC campaign that was low stakes about collecting trinkets. We played so frequently, sometimes even playing both Saturdays and Sundays. We would wake up at 10 am, eat breakfast, then get right to it until 3pm-ish. One of our worst offense was a 12 hour session (obviously we had bio breaks and dinner but we didn’t stop playing until midnight). We did 19 sessions from Aug 14th - Nov 7th before reaching a burnout that left both of us frustratingly ending a session early. We didn't play again after that. (He's still my best bud tho) Was this too much DND or were we simply trying to (albeit unhealthily) cope with the living situation of the world? Since y’all do DND for a job how do you particularly cope with the desire to play more or less? I humbly await the decision of the court!

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

Its_Ven

To the esteemed justices Murphy, Tanner, and Iyengar and the delightful bailiff Axford. I present to you the case of the saved dmpc. I have been playing pathfinder with a group of 5. I am the healer (Bard). When we first started playing our dm introduced his swashbuckler kitsune. fully optimised to deal damage (leaving me to be the only healer). His dmpc rarely talks but when he does he tends to be very judgey, stern, or pushing us to continue w/ the dms story. We (the players) were not opposed to a dmpc as we were low level with almost all newbie players. However, as the sessions have gone on it is increasingly clear that his dmpc is incredibly strong and often overshadows us all in combat. Not a super big deal but when your on the sidelines either healing or only doing dinky damage, watching the dmpc last hit kill everything. you can imagine the increasing resentment. In the most recent combat he gave us. something miraculous happened. His dmpc went down. surrounded by kobolds and a skeleton. we managed to get to him and kill the rest of the monsters. This is where i may have messed up. My pc healed the dmpc. on instinct I brought him up. im not sure why i healed him. my pc didnt even like the dmpc as he was pretty rude to everyone. The decision made was met with groans of disappointment from a few players. I think i was meant to leave him to die. but even if my pc didnt like him i dont think she would just let him die and also the dm is my friend why wouldnt i bring his character back? I feel like its better to just ask the dmpc to leave as our dm would likely allow it. The other players however have now been rather annoyed at me after i made the decision as some were excited for the dmpc to die. So please honorable justices am I wrong for healing the dmpc?

Daniel Soto

Hi Emily, I don't have a case. Just wanted to wish you a great day! 😊

Laurawr

Dear Best Bailiff, one of my husbands good friends DMed a homebrew campaign in an original world for us for a year. His story telling is amazing and it was the most fun I've ever had playing DND. However as I got to know him I grew to severely dislike the DM as a person and human being. I really miss the game he ran for us and would love to play in that world again, is there a way to balance my distaste of him and my love of him as a DM?

Laurawr

PS since punishments are required I submit myself as offering, but would honestly prefer the other guy does

zack tompkins

To the exalted justices Murphy and Tanner, the more exalted bailiff Axford, and the most exalted justice Iyengar. I come seeking absolution or sentencing in the case of the Jerky Jerk. I was playing a warlock with the alternative noble background, which granted him four attendants who could do his bidding. While they stayed far away from combat, they would hang around town after our group left and clean up the mess once battles were over. However, instead of burying any bodies, they would take the corpses of bandits and pirates, strip the meat from their bones, and make an assortment of jerky strips for my warlock. We played in an adventurers league campaign, so there was plenty of downtime. We also rolled for the attendant’s stealth and how delicious the jerky was. Once delivered, my warlock would casually offer the “beef, pork, or chicken” jerky to NPC’s and other players, notably the lawful good paladin who HATED what I was doing but could never catch me due to consistently high deception rolls. He would begrudgingly take the jerky and eat it every time, knowing there was no in-character reason to deny delicious jerky. I fed our party humanoid jerky until the group went its separate ways; it was always a point of humor and contention. Was I wrong to set up this complex jerky ecosystem to make my fellow player go against their in-game gods? Should I have used my attendants to some other end? I humbly await your judgment and pray the punishment does not befit the crime.

ArmadillosKeepDigging

Most honorable judges, I submit my actions to the judgement of the court. My party was lost in the ethereal plane when a ghostly woman appeared. We tried to ask her where we were and how to get home. She said she would give us either the answer to any question or a magic item. Here is where our party of five fell into disagreement. Two players voted to choose the question and ask how to escape. I lobbied hard for the magic item. My friend said it could be something stupid that wouldn’t help our situation and we needed to ask how to get out. My argument was that our DM was crafting a story and if he offered a magic item it would probably help us escape. I convinced one other player and the final player left to break the tie panicked and chose the item. We took the item which ended up being a belt that protects against falling damage. Leaving us again wandering the ethereal plane. I ask you judges, was I wrong in campaigning so hard to be moved by the DM’s storytelling instead of making the logical decision? Please appease my guilt by delivering a verdict on my decision.

WreckBadger

May it please the illustrious justices and the highly qualified backup bailiff Axford, I submit the case of the converted light cleric: When I was but a brand new DnD player, I began in a game with a DM who told us to design players and come ready to introduce them at the first session. I spent many hours crafting a light cleric named Glorien with a soldier background that I adored. She was very stern and disciplined, and she had two mothers who had also been soldiers. Glorien had fought in an all-woman powered by their worship of a moon goddess of justice. Her company had disbanded at the end of the war and she now travelled seeking justice throughout the realm. When session zero arrived, the DM listened to my whole spiel and then told me I couldn’t have a moon goddess. Although he hadn’t told us before, we were playing in his created world that he’d been DMing for years. There were two gods - a good male sun god, and an evil, violent female moon goddess. He told me that if I worshipped the moon goddess, I would have to be evil and everyone in the realm would be frightened and suspicious of me. He completely changed my character to be a sun-worshipper, and martial in a very male-centric way. I spent our next few sessions quite salty but, for better or for worse, a great plague began (in 2020), I moved far away, and I never saw this DM again. Justices, I ask you, should I have settled into the DM’s world and worshipped his sun god? Or could he have bent a little for our brand new party and let his moon goddess be good?

JigMink

Dear Bailiff Axeford and Judges Tanner, Murphy, and Iyengar: I present to you a case of the giant spider action economy. In a recent game our party was attempting to sneak up on a young green dragon. I, a circle of the moon druid, cast bull's strength on myself before wildshaping into a giant spider (base str 14) so I could carry our Firbolg monk up to a on opening in the ceiling. I was holding the monk with two legs underneath the spider's body, so the monk was between the spider and the wall as I climbed. When we reached the hole I dropped the monk to the floor inside so I could use my action to shoot webbing at the dragon. However, the DM ruled that dropping the monk was my action and that was my turn. I didn't press my case at the time but sat in my chair and silently stewed. Should dropping a player you are holding be considered an action? Am I wrong to feel slighted about essentially losing my turn for dropping the monk? Or should I have still been allowed my action? (FYI we were able to defeat the dragon, barely.)

Benjamin Dale IV

The Case of the Failed Astral Pirate: Hello Honorable Judges and The Better Bailiff, I play in a campaign where the premise is essentially a villainous Hogwarts. The DM put me and another PC in a situation where we had to fight to the death. Being uncomfortable with PvP, I told my DM before the session I was planning on escaping to the Astral plane to avoid the combat altogether and was fine playing a new character. I looted the school's strongest magical items, said my goodbyes to my closest friends, and used a portable hole and bag of holding to launch myself into the Astral plane with the intention of becoming a planar pirate. My DM said after 6 hours I appeared back in the same spot from where I had left because my character decided to come back. I told my DM before the session I fully intended on writing off the character and was fine playing a new one (I even had one prepped), but since our game is streamed I didn't want to fight him about character motivation online even though I felt it made 0 sense for me to return. In the end, both PC's were killed as the victor of the fight was hit by a power word kill by the school's headmaster. Our bodies were then tossed into lava destroying any chance of revivify and all of our magic items. I ask you, was I wrong for trying to avoid the combat and send off my character to an epic space pirate epoch? Should I have accepted the PvP and put my feelings as a player/friend aside in an "evil" campaign? Also, this is hearsay, but the DM's girlfriend told me he had said the session before that me and the other PC "are cockroaches who refuse to die"... I eagerly await your decision.

Dekota Wagner

Honorable justices and well needed upgrade of a bailiff. I bring to your humble feet the case of Crask the Half-Orc Flex-o-mancer. A few years ago I was playing in a campaign focused around a mercenary organization who would take any job offered and lovecraftian 'esc secrets uncovered during those jobs. Due to some of the political implications in the campaign I was really wanting to play an half-orc. That being half elf, half orc affair baby. My DM allowed me to play a STR based caster aka flexomancer as a wild magic sorcerer but using STR instead of CHA. With the volatile nature as to which Crasks power develop i took full liberty of using the Tides of Chaos ability to get advantage on attack rolls with my Legendary Sword of Duck Summoning and then use wild magic surges to spice up encounters. The only issue Crask would run into was having low AC due to not wearing armor. So when we got to our first Ability Score Improvement I took the Eldritch Adept feat as our party's Warlock was a warlock of the Old One. With this feat I took Armor of Shadows, giving me access to the Mage Armor spell and allowing me to cast it without burning a spell slot. Dm had no issue with this plan and was actually excited for Crask to be less squishy and allow him to stop twin casting dragon's breath on a pair of ducks most combats. Or at least this was the case until a major plot point when our Party's Rogue's love Intrest was captured and being sapped of her life-force to summon lovecraftian creatures to come kill us. With the battle lasting multiple rounds, ducks unsummoned, and seeing the entire party on death's door and surrounded on all sides. With the last bit of her strength Annabelle (the love intrest) summoned a portal for us to escape saying and I quote "I promise I'll be right behind you". In a last stitch effort to cause some sort of moment for us to get Annabelle out with us and being out of spell slots, on Crasks turn to flee, I said I cast mage armor. Do I roll wild magic? My dm said no. And thus we were forced to leave our dying friend alone as was exited the portal and heard a massive explosion in the distance. My question to the judges is, Was I wrong to try and use my feat to force a wild magic surge. Or am I just being a buff baby and should let it go. I put myself at the mercy of the court. P.S. Crask also had a pigeon familiar named Sterling who wore a top hat made out of a thimble and would also cast Dragon's Breathe on. If this sways the vote of any.. Familiar sympathetic justices.....

Bob Prescott

May it please the Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Tanner and the Iconic Guest Justice Iyengar, as well as the lovely Bailiff Axford. I bring for the pleasure and judgment of the Court of the Supreme Crit, the Case of the Koala Dereliction of Dungeon Delving. A few years ago, I was running a Homebrew Adventure Zone campaign for my group as my first DMing gig. One of my players, also a DM, was intransigent throughout the PC creation process about wanting to play, in my opinion, silly and dumb things like a pet rock that only one of our other players could communicate with or a wizard trapped in a water slide based on an edited Doctor Strange video they saw or a slice of bread that has to be carried around with Mage Hand. I showed them a homebrew Bearkin lineage that I found and they decided they would play a Koala Bearkin. Fast forward to play, in RPing, our party’s Drag Queen bard made a light-hearted joke about the Koala having chlamydia, based on an article that had come out around the time. The joke was contained within a casting of Vicious Mockery because the Koala player kept trying to clearly sidetrack away from the main mission in the Level 1 adventure and the other player wanted to do the work the party had been contracted to do already. Koala player proceeded to get incredibly upset, increasingly drunk, and sulked in their corner of the couch for the remainder of the session. This included, during a fight with the dungeon boss, the Koala player deliberately leaving the fight and continuing to dash out of the dungeon on each of their turns. The party didn’t suffer for lack of Koala since the campaign was honestly optimized for 3 players anyway, and they were our fourth. Later that evening, the koala player told me that they didn’t want to play in the campaign because they didn’t like the players and they could look up how it would end anyway. I was fine with this, because I was going to suggest the same thing. It is now a few years later and they have mentioned a few times being interested in playing again in a new campaign I just started up. I have no interest in playing with them because of the past incident. Am I being too harsh for wanting to play with fully engaged players who won’t get drunk and create an awkward situation for our group? The koala player is also my roommate.

ArmadillosKeepDigging

Side note: after the magic item was revealed the dm told us he did not see us choosing that at all and thought for sure we would pick the question.🥲

Kimberly Sunderland

Hello esteemed supreme justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner, and especially your special guest Iyengar! I submit to you the case of the murder hobos and the pirate captain that was pushed too far. I was playing the captain in a long standing Pathfinder game in a pirate setting that has always been violent, but one session went completely off the rails. I missed a session, and when I came in the next time everyone was wearing vampire fangs, and the DM casually announced that we had all been cursed with vampirism and are now obligate cannibals, and our ship cleric, a former PC, had eaten or converted most of the crew. My crew had evidently spent the previous session killing and EATING random NPCs. I asked a trusted NPC if there was any way to cure the curse and was told no. I asked the party if we could explore reversing the process, and to my surprise no one was interested. I protested out of character and in character, said I wasn't comfortable with where this was going. Instead, we went on to the next quest point, stopping off on the way at a fishing village for 'supplies.' I spent a horrified TWO HOURS listening as my party mates gleefully role played murdering a group of villagers, throwing alchemist fire into a cave full of older women and babies and clubbing Grandmas on the head. At that point, my character and I both snapped, and I waited until we were on the high seas with no land in sight and summoned a fire elemental to burn the ship down. It killed the crew and my character, but the other PCs survived and drifted for 3 days before being found by a war ship from the local unfriendly demon worshiping nation. They then CONTINUED for another HOUR to roll play being tortured and converting to Asmodeus worship and being set to kill each other. My question is, was I justified in my extreme reaction? My character did absolutely murder her crew and get her party captured by Asmodeus, but look at the circumstances! Either way, I'm done with that group and I'm pretty sure they're very done with me, but I throw myself on the mercy of the Court. Am I a horrible fun killing prude, or is obligate PC cannibalism and gleeful massacre of innocents the sort of thing that should only be explored with consent? Sincerely, a pirate captain that destroyed her own ship and crew.

Merky Vids

Resplendent Justices, the Solid Bailiff Axford, and Her Dopeness, Justice Iyengar: if it may please the court, I present the case of How Much Player Agency is Too Much? I run an online game for Lost Mines of Phandelver and one of my players, we'll call them T, often took matters into their own hands. At first, T's behavior was innocuous and even funny. The morning after a huge battle, T took over the kitchen of an exhausted tavernkeeper and made a veritable feast for the town, nearly using all of the kitchen's stock while the keeper drunkenly protested. It was a funny bit, but whenever the man objected to T's actions, T would speak over me and continue doing what they were doing. Later on, the party acquired a goblin prisoner who agreed to help them. (As a note, T's backstory involved intense feelings against goblin-folk as a whole.) When the group was doing text RP in our Discord, T wrote that while they were working around camp, the goblin was afraid of them and would constantly scurry away. The goblin wouldn't have done much anyways (as I didn't have time to RP in the moment), but it felt like T was DMing on behalf of my NPC. I stepped in to message them not to do that again and they calmly replied that that's what the goblin would have done in every circumstance given that's how all goblins are programmed to act. T later left the game due to, we'll call it a creative disagreement, but I wonder if I could have done something differently earlier on. They were a joy to RP with and always cracked jokes, but in hindsight, I have doubts about those whether those little aspects were telling, or preventable. I eagerly await your judgment.

Marcus Heer

So this asshole named Brian Murphy keeps taking my dnd campaign ideas and using them before I can. Then he has the gull to make a podcast and put a bunch of my ideas in it. All my players listen to the podcast and so then I can’t use the ideas anymore because my players will think I’m stealing. I’ve had to scrap so many ideas like the cindersworn, dragon factions all living in one forest, a cursed piece of armour with an old warlord in it. Fuck you Brian Murphy. FUCK you. Punish his ass and let him drown. (PS in all reality I actually really look up to murph as a DM. My DMing style is very based on yours and you were the person who made me passionate about DMing. Wish you all the best)

Sander Goldman

May it please the court, illustrious judges, and the honored and lugubrious Bailiff, 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. So i put it to the court, was I wronged? or is armor denied the pleasures of giggling?

Renee Wild

May it please the court, the judges, and the beautiful bailiff - I present to you the case of the Over-Powered Staff of the Python. I'm a newish DM running a game for my parents. My mom, a druid, bought a Staff of the Python which is cool and wonderful but hugely overpowered - she can summon a Giant Constrictor Snake at will. This past weekend we played one session over two days, with a dungeon crawl and then a boss battle. Right before we started the second session, I told her that I wanted to change her Staff to "once per day" use as she had already used it to demolish one of my bad guys and I didn't want the BBEG fight to be over too fast. She accepted but seemed a bit embarrassed, and I immediately felt bad, like I took something away from one of my players right before a big battle. We had a great session, there were no hard feelings, the ending was exciting and they defeated the BBEG. However, I still feel bad and can't help but think I should have handled that differently. I beg for the wisdom of the judges and the mercy of the court, please and thank you.

SyrupSampson

May it please the court, my girlfriend is blessed by Dice Christ and I’m paying the price. I’m running a campaign where my girlfriend is one of the PCs and her rolls are insane. At first I thought the set of dice I bought her might be weighted but after making her roll with new dice it was the same result. I have never seen her roll below a 4 on a D6 leading her to have a very strong starting character, and she consistently outperforms the other members of the party based solely on her roll of the die. How do go about balancing this for my party? Is it sacrilegious to make the DC of checks higher for her so other players can have their moments in the spot light or should I obey the will of dice Christ and hope he give me a break from time to time. Much love, Sean

Deadeye614

May it please the illustrious, magnanimous, and stupendous Justices and the tepid, bland, and dull Bailiff. I was playing DND 3.5e as a paladin and we were in an evil god’s temple underneath a town. Through combat, only me and the bard were left standing when we confronted the god’s projection. I casted detect good/evil on it, and the DM said I pass out. I was slightly shocked it happened, but I let it go since it was my 2nd session. Only the bard was left to talk to the god and they learned some key information and were interested in working with the god. After everyone woke up, the bard chose to not divulge everything, which later down the line, caused my character to be killed. My question is, was the DM in the right to have me pass out after using detect good/evil.

Chelsea (Jennie) Deaner

May it please the court, the judges, and the badass bailiff: I submit to the supreme crit a crime that has gone unpunished for too long: Why can’t Emily have nice things??? The commentary on her gameplay is overly critical and unnecessary. Over the course of three campaigns, she has created engaging, complex characters that are beloved and hilariously traumatized. She plays to lift, explores unique configurations, and always has a fun voice—it’s a triple threat! These characters are either by-the-book in stats or re-flavored with DM approval via the Rule of Cool. Yet, despite the excellent stories she brings to life, there is regular commentary from the entire cast validating her choices to an apparently loud and RUDE group of listeners. Who the heckie thinks it’s okay to criticize her?? Why is she the only one significantly impacted by all the whining from the peaknuckle gallery?? It’s ducked up. Emily FUCKING SUCKS** and people should treat her with more respect. Will we standby and continue to listen to this slander or can we stuff the trolls up Bumpy’s butthole and set Emily loose to be her best, unhindered self??? I humbly request that the court makes people be nicer to Emily and encourage less criticism of strong, female presenting players. Duck bless. **Sucks like Duck Team aka she is FRIKKIN RAD!!

Amelia Chisholm

Esteemed Justices of the court, and bayliff Emily-John - may I present the case of the party name! Our rouge had to miss a session, during which, the rest of the party entered a tourney, and proceeded to dub themselves ‘Glam’. As this was an Official Tourney, when being hired by various nobles who saw them perform, they’re referred to as Glam - our party rogue returned to the next session, and was amused, but a little annoyed the party was named without her present. Should I, as DM, allow them to rebrand?

Tyler Foster

To my most gracious and fair judges, and Baliff Emily, who is a more than suitable replacement for the heathen Jake. I not so humbly bring to you, the case of conflicting feats. I used to run a home game in which many of the bad guys were humanoids. Every once in awhile I would spice things up by using PC stats for some of the enemies my party would fight. One such enemy had the Sentinel feat which allows a chracter to hit with an opportunity attack even if the target used the disengage action. The fight was going well and it seemed like everyone was having fun but I ran into a hiccup. One of my players had the Mobile feat which allows you to escape opportunity attacks without using a disengage action. Usually when I run into stuff like this I rule in favor of the players so it feels fair and we can keep moving. Another player however seemed disgruntled and when I asked why, they said they were dissatisfied with my ruling. I basically said i was sorry but i didnt want to get hung up on this issue. That player was pouty for the rest of the session and the rest of the party was having trouble maintaining a positive attitude because of it. Was my ruling incorrect? If so I implore you to swing the hammer of justice as hard as you may, for I have done wrong. As a note this player also had the sentinel feat and a few sessions later began regular attempts to incite violence within the party. I no longer play with them.

Chelsea (Jennie) Deaner

editor's note: I did not know the Badass Bailiff would be Emily for the episode, please understand that this was a naturally occurring righteous anger and not a query targeted for the duration of Bailiff Axford's interim service.

Old Dirty Blastoise

I aim to please both the illustrious judges of the Crit as well as our faithful Bailiff, who may or may not be naked. May I present to you the Case of the Emo Bladesinger vs the Half-Orc Barbarian: A Session One PVP Tale. About 6 months into the pandemic I was accepted into a Tyranny of Dragons campaign through roll20 with a group of random people. There were some early red flags, but I wanted to roll some dice. I was playing a Hot Boy Summer-inspired wannabe-Bard, emo Bladesinger named Cedars who sucked at Charisma and musical performance and misses his ex-girlfriend who had disappeared along with the rest of Evermeet. Our DM was actually very rad, and in our first session started the campaign with my character performing a booked gig at the local tavern. Cedars rolled very poorly on his lyre Performance check, no surprise, so my angsty “nah-nah-nahs” weren’t well received by the crowd, who started booing. Fun stuff so far. In bursts the Half Orc Barbarian. Already enraged, she said she’s heard terrible music and is looking for the source of it. My thought is “cool, she’s roleplaying along with my failed Performance check. Seems legit.” Then, she explains she is rolling a physical d20 off-screen to decide what her character is going to do. She says she fails her roll, Rages, walks up to Cedars and starts combat initiative by strangling him. She succeeds on the grapple check…and Crit Justices, shit is going down. Remember, this is 10, maybe 15 minutes into session 1. I am a level 2 Wizard starting initiative being grappled by a Barbarian who is supposed to be my teammate. Not sure of what to do, I have Cedars tell the Barbarian to “get fucked” in between breaths as I fail my grapple save. Next up in Initiative is our party’s Twilight Cleric…who hasn’t had a chance to even introduce his character yet…he storms into the tavern and casts Sleep on the both of us to try break up the fight, which I succeed and the Barbarian fails. After a tense introduction, we tentatively move on from the encounter and wake up and pacify our crazy Barbarian only to meet our other party member, a Lizardfolk who would go on to murder townsfolk and harvest their bones to make weapons over the next few sessions. Anyway, the barbarian continued to roll d20’s for the rest of the session to dictate her RP, and surprise surprise after 4-5 sessions everyone quit the campaign. (The Twilight Cleric quit after the first session.) I leave my humble fate to you, the Supreme Crit Justices (and Bailiff Jake) of this wizened and esteemed council, for a final verdict. I’m not sure what I could have done. Should PC’s roll dice to determine roleplaying decisions? Was this whole shit-show just bad roll20 luck everyone hears about? Should I give Cedars a second shot, since his first arc started so terribly, or am I biting too hard on Tread Nevers’ style? I beseech the court for guidance, as this experience has not rested well on my conscience.

MJ the BFG

Wise, honorable, and omnipotent justices, the Saga teller justice Aabriya, and the esteemed bailiff, I present the case the Cheese Talisman and hurting intestines. Setting: Small bachelor party happening in a condo townhouse in Mammoth, CA. We have been playing Descent into Avernus as the bachelor party celebration online for months and ran a whole bunch in person for the actual party. The bachelor himself is a Pact of the Talisman Warlock that has a wedge of cheese as his talisman. After much drinking as a fellow player, I decided that everytime my character used the talisman I would eat some cheese. Everyone else loved this and it became a weekend homebrew rule. This led to some interesting interactions with a massive consumption of cheese and bachelor party level of drinking alcohol. Did I mess up by encouraging massive cheese consumption mixed with heavy drinking or did the fun memories justify the body chemistry reactions. May the court have mercy on my well intentioned, but backed up, soul.

Drew Fitzpatrick

Salutations Crit Justices and Brillant Bailiff...I present the Case of Nerfed Summons. I play a halfling cleric with access to the 5th level spell, Summon Celestial, which the stat block for the Celestial Spirit reads for its weapon attacks "your spell attack modifier to hit". I assumed this this would be WIS bonus (+5) + proficiency bonus (+5) + (+1 bonus from amulet) for a +11, which is my attack bonus when casting other spell attacks, like guiding bolt. I asked our DM to clarify, and he ruled that my summon would have a +5 to hit, saying the WIS bonus was the spell modifier. The wording is really confusing and I'm not going to hold up combat, so I accepted the ruling. However, I think I was right, and if so our DM should be punished. Did our DM erroneously nerf our summons?

joshua marshall

May it please the court, and the ever clever bailiff. I had a case quickly turned dice Christ confession the more I thought about it. Wife v. wife killer I was in a low level (3-5) home brew campaign with a few new dnd friends and my wife. We discovered a Litch In a buried cathedral, frozen in stone right before we wrapped up the session for the day. The entire party couldn’t make the next session so our DM decided to do a little level 20 “evil” one shot to let us sling some high level spells around. I played a necromancer/aspiring litch. Long one shot short, we breezed through the DM’s gauntlet of baddies and we find ourselves in a half buried cathedral with a Litch frozen in stone. Knowing it had the potential to affect our other campaign my litch passed an arcana check to help the frozen litch regenerate slowly. Flash forward another week, back to the regular level 3 campaign, now faced with a weakened, but no longer frozen litch. The litch cast power word kill and outright killed my wife’s character. To this day she still blames me, the player, for freeing the litch during the one shot. I realized my folly as I started to utter the dreaded 6 words “it’s what my character would do” as my only defense. We revivified her in the end and the campaign went the way of most I’ve played and slowly fizzled out due to scheduling conflicts. May dice Christ punish me eternally for my transgressions.

Mason N.

To the Grand Court of Crit and f*ck you Jake, I am in a 10 person campaign and am playing the party's healer, a Life Domain Cleric named Coach Hawke Barski. As part of his backstory, he was always bullied during school and thus became a coach to put an end to bullying. While the party was sneaking past a group of guards, Coach Barski noticed a group of teens bullying a kid. He went over to confront the group and ended up getting punched in the nuts and getting table topped by the teens. For flair, the DM put him into a flash back of that exact thing happening to a young Hawke, and in the flashback I retaliated by punching the bully in the face. But in reality, he chose to be doing a 1st level Inflict Wounds uppercut to the teen bully in charge. It immediately killed the teen (who had commoner stats), and as a result, another party member, a Zealot Barbarian, did a reckless attack on me and downed me. Once the tension settled, and I was brought back up, I used all of my money and some of the other PC's money to do a Revivify on the teen. I get razzed about it from time to time, but I need to ask the court, am I in the wrong for playing along with the DM's flashback scenario and getting triggered by the trauma? Or should I have taken the high road and not retaliated? I await the court's decision in shame.

YourAnimeDad

To the most impartial and impeccable Justices Iyengar, Tanner& Murphy the very sharp and witty Bailiff Axeford I present The Party v. Elderbrain& Illithilich& Co. I've recently joined an ongoing game with a friend & their group from high-school. I play a Twilight Domain/ Circle of Stars Druid-Cleric @ 14th Lvl (2 Cleric/12 Druid). It's a party of 5-6 PCs & the DM really does an amazing job juggling all of us. Until the Illithilich. During this arc where we returned to a PCs hometown were we followed a trail of mysterious disappearances that lead to a den of Illithids. The Party is pretty experienced & has played for years, but even they weren't ready for this. After a close call & a fellow Druid/Monk wild shape Octopus/ Flurry of Blows combo, I decided we needed some insurance moving forward & I casted Freedom of Movement so we wouldn't get grappled. After being accused of metagaming & then being defended by the Party our DM laid off & proceeded to introduce the Illithid lieutenant miniboss and various henchmen, where we managed to roll very well and overpower them, before storming the antechamber of the Elder Brain that we had learned about earlier from some UnderGnomes. We expected more mindflayers as we entered, but we weren't ready for the Illithilich. We were quickly on the back foot with little slimy critters coming to storm the room from behind us. After a couple grueling rounds, the Illithilich begins to encase itself with a Antilife Shell and the Elder brains using a Wall of Force to separate us. Low on spell slots and health, I remembered a magic item I had recently received, and used it to dispel the Antilife Shell. The Illithilich proceeds to stun my martial comrades one by one, until my PC, and 1 other were the only ones left standing in front. My DM then proceeds to ask how much HP I have left and I say 78 HP. The Illithilich uses POWER WORD: Kill on me and I'm dead. Naturally I'm okay with it, until we immediately move on to the next PC. I'm given no closure, no acknowledgement of my PCs last moments and to top it off, we have a Paladin that can revive me but the Elderbrain moves the wall of force over my dead body. So our party gets fully stunned after this round and we end up playing 9 rounds of combat before anyone can break free (even with pets, sidekicks, etc.) giving them 1 round to try and revive me. We barely scraped out a dub but the mood was killed after the conclusion. I ask you this: Was it metagaming for me to cast freedom of movement on our party? Or was the DMs use of the Illithilich too heavy handed? I await your ruling with great anticipation!

Godot

I have no case, but I have a Dice Christ confession...or...testimonial? I play a big support/tank role for our party as an Artificer. Last session we leveled up and we all rolled our hit dice. I rolled mine and got a NAT 1. Our bard rolled his d8 and got an 8. DM said I could reroll the 1. I rolled again and got another 1. Our Rogue then rolled her d8 and got an 8 as well. I, of course, took my 1 HP with pride; like Dice Christ herself I will sacrifice myself for the party. Would I liked to have gotten more than 1 lousy HP point for my tank? Sure, but Dice Christ works in mysterious ways and you just have to respect that.

Banana

To the impeccable Justices Iyengar, Tanner, and Murph, and the Justice turned Backup Bailiff Axford: May I present the case of the world with one woman. Our party has been playing together for around three years at this point. At the beginning of the pandemic about one year into our game, we switched from a module to world our DM was creating. At this point, something strange began to occur. All the female NPCs started to vanish. Everywhere new we went we met male mercenaries, male bartenders, male bandits. Anytime gender was specified it was a guy. Our group (which is four women and three guys counting the DM) started to razz the DM about this. I will admit I took point on it a bit, but it was good spirited. The DM seemed to note our critique, and in the next bandit encounter deliberately included 1 woman bandit to go with the 15 male bandits our level 10 characters turned to paste. I started keeping a spreadsheet, and the worlds gender balance appears to be 1 woman for every 14.7 men. I've mentioned this to our DM privately but the gender ratio didn't change, the women just got more dnd "girlbossy" instead. Now all of them are tough (tm), with knives and stuff, and no time for a man. This is driving me crazy and an urge to make so much fun of him is really building within me. Am I being a maniac for keeping this spreadsheet and wanting to bsolutely bully my DM, or is my DM deserving of my data driven ridicule.

TeaPott

May it please the all knowing court and competent Bailiff Axeford. May I present the case of pissy guy I met on discord. I played in a game with a guy I'd been playing valorant with for some time. We talked about wanting to start a DnD game and finally did it, he beingthe DM and I a player. First red flag was when he asked me to invite some of my friends, then promptly rejected all my friends who tried to join saying it was "getting to big". So I made a campaign with the friends I promised DnD to (didn't want to be rude and say sorry he changed his mind). The first session of his campaign went alright, it was my girlfriend and I plus two of his friends. We'd all played before so I was very over the top with a character named pickles, a halfling drunken fist monk. His friends didn't seem into it so it was really just me and my girlfriend playing which was OK but odd to me he didn't let my friends join. Well I invited him to our session and he was by far the worst player I ever had. He would constantly be afk, and even when he was at his computer he would be watching tik tok videos so loud we could hear it on his mic. I tried talking to him after and he said "sorry, but that was the worst session of my life, I think I have PTSD". After talking with my friends who loved it I thought maybe it's just him. Well the next week on his session he killed Pickles. I decided to bow out because my session had really taken off and I didn't want to split my attention, and honestly i was a little upset with how he acted in my session and how he killed pickles (random mimic chest in a room after a big fight). So I politely told him I think I'd have to leave his campaign. He flipped out on me, saying if I leave the campaign is basically done because me and my girlfriend were the only ones who talked. He had his friend in the discord at the time and both were upset saying I was ruining their fun and campaign. I tried not to throw things in his face but after about 5 min of them yelling at me I decided to just leave his discord and block him and all his friends. Was I wrong for not sticking to a campaign I promised I would? Or am I in the right for leaving and running my own campaign. P.S. my game is still going strong and we've actually added two players since.

King of Pears

May it please the illustrious justices. I present thee with what may be the greatest ethical quandary of our age. Is it murder if you eat a fig that can talk? So, my PCs needed information from an elf. Now, did they talk to her like normal fucking people? No, no they did not. The pernicious goons demanded one of her figs in order to cast Speak with Plants. Annoyed, I made the fig undergo an existential crisis before it would answer questions. I confronted my players with the ethics of granting sentience to plants by having the fig ask what would happen to it when the spell ended. Immediately, the paladin reassured the fig that while it would definitely die, it could go to heaven if it answered their questions. As this was a Devotion Paladin (pledged to Melora), I asked if he was lying or whether his holy doctrine really had sentient, talking figs wandering about in heaven. The paladin said yes, so the fig cooperated. When they were done, the fig asked excitedly when it would go to heaven. The paladin instantly responded, “now.” Without waiting for Speak With Plants to wear off, he opened his mouth and took a big ol’ bite, forcing me to narrate the fig’s excited squeals change to wails of agony as the paladin crunched through its soft, tender flesh. I leave the paladin’s fate in the hands of the court. Is he a fig-killer, deserving of Melora’s wrath? Or am I making a big deal about someone having a snack?

James O'Connor

May it please the Honorable and Beautiful justices and the sometimes ok bailiff. I bring to you the case the spoiled PC. I enjoy bestowing upon my PCs a myriad of goodies. And when asked if I have a certain uncommon item, I usually have them roll to see if there is someone in the town that could find it for them. I generally mark up items that are found this way. My rogue asked for gloves of thievery, which I had them roll for and they were able to find the item. After a good roll, I only charged an extra 80 gold for an item that was originally 1000gp (much lower than what it can go for). He proceeded to pay for the item and then use the gloves of thievery to steal back his money and more. In an attempt to keep the game from turning into a steal everything campaign, I am having this NPC be a highly regarded member of the merchants guild. I want to punish the group by making dealings with all merchants much more difficult, and have uncommon items much harder to come by. Am I being vindictive or am I just doing what needs to be done?

Caitlin B

Dearly beloved justices and the bafflingly bashful beefy backup bailiff, I was in a campaign a friend created that followed the party making their way out of hell. Another player (the DM’s partner) played a Harengon whose core character trait was chronic lying. The lies were often long winded, and left no room to have fun RP moments. If any character wanted to call bullshit on the lies, the DM made us do an opposed check and 9/10 the Harengon won. It got to a point where 3/5 members of the party thought the lying was annoying and didn’t want to engage much. This all came to a head when their character came up with a nonsensical lie about a nightmare she had and the DM asked if anyone would like to roll and see if she’s telling the truth - the party unanimously said no and moved on. It got even worse because the DM then eventually texted just me to say the other player was getting a bad vibe from me and I should tone down my ‘disapproval’ since I only caught the lying in game once. I do want to note, other players found this character choice annoying, but I was the only one singled out. One player even brought up a possible arc/conversation where the Haregon explained their reason for lying so much and maybe learned to only lie to people outside of the party. This was immediately turned down as the DM’s partner just wanted to tell lies. So, I stand here before you to ask: was I/the party wrong to be annoyed with another player’s lying? Was the DM right for making us roll every time there was a lie? Should I have been the only one confronted? I await your judgment most graciously.

Bob Rover

May it please the illustrious and somewhat benevolent judges and the Bailiff stuck at mangia's. I present the case of the deathly greedy party My party which was very high level at this point around 18 was attending an auction for an extremely strong set of armor one of my players a oath of conquest paladin had been saving for ,the armor of invulnerability, he had been saving for a while (for context we play weekly and he's been saving since one of our sessions in early July) after arriving at the venue I allowed my player to easily get the item there was no reason for combat he had the trouble of low funds for months but after quick discussion they decided to stay a bit later and see what else the auction had after buying many items they decided to steal everything they liked and so in a fit of annoyance as they tried to get all these far too strong items for me too keep a sense of balance I narrated as a archmage they had sold from wishes that any items with a magical effect to it would be turned to a day of rations except my paladins armor and because of this show of sympathy my players still to this day accuse me of favoritism to the paladin and one of my players the rogue who initiated the heist drew the moon card from the deck of many things after pulling 10 cards in a fit of rage and desparity to get their items back but instead of wishing for his items to be restored he asked for+6 to his dex and the later died that same session to void So now I ask did I go too far or was I within my right to strike judgment upon my players, was I too nice to the paladin I humbly await your verdict

Shane Murphy

May it please the Illustrious Court, The one and only Justice Aabria and the Radiant Bailiff Axford I present the case of the unseen lockpicker. My party found themselves locked in prison cells and the DM made a point of telling us that the bars were too thick for us to slip through and the locks couldn't be picked from the inside. I, the plucky bard/monk cast unseen servant and handed it a lockpick asking the unseen servant to pick the lock... My DM and I agreed that this was likely outside what the servant could do and only a Nat20 would work. I ended up rolling the Nat20 and quickly let the rest of my party out. My DM revealed after the session that he had a whole escape room style dungeon planned and that's why the session ended two hours early. I feel awful but my DM insists that fairs fair... Should I be punished for taking my shenanigans a little too far. I throw myself on the mercy of the court.

MeekoCHAOS The Raccoon Boi

Bless me dice christ for I have sinned. It's been 12 years since my last game session. In these sessions I have witnessed cheating from a fellow player who would use a Magic the gathering 20sided life counter as a D20 and roll it in a way so he'd always get it to land on the higher numbers. He'd do this for every roll and every time I witnessed this and never said anything to the DM. I've been carrying this guilt with me and always think back on it and that I should've told my best friend who was the DM.

Dr. Bearkele

Oh my goodness, I am so sorry. You got boned, badly.

Spencer Hodgson

May it please the court, I present to you the case of the attempted TPK. Before the session our DM told us that things were going to get crazy and to trust him. We then went up against the two antagonists, who were heads of a wizarding order. We were a party of 6 level 6 players. One of the baddies had a vorpal sword, and they were both casting 9th level spells. In the first round of combat, things became very clear that we weren’t supposed to live. One player lost his head, and another was power word killed, all within the first few minutes of play. The rest of us, however did NOT go with it and die. We managed to kill one (with the aid of some shenanigans) and get away from the other. The DM had the two killed players take on some very cool new characters he had prepped for some sort of body swapping mission through a benevolent necromancer. He clearly had 6 bodies planned and a full mission to go on. So I ask you: should we have let ourselves go gentle into that good night, letting ourselves be killed for the good of an interesting story?

Liz

To my biggest role model (true story), the beautiful chaotic all powerful Bailiff Axford and anyone else who is there I guess. I present to you the case of Mara the Tiefling, the "flirty rogue". I am playing Dnd online with some friends (Im a male druid who was unconsciously influenced by moonshine) and we had to grab some people outside our normal group to make this new campaign work. My DM grabbed his current girlfriend. They are new to DND, a little younger then us and very excited. The campaign vibe is serious with moments of levity (important). His girlfriend decided to play a rogue tiefling named Mara and we were off. Maras personality is "flirty" so anytime we do anything they are flirting and trying to seduce them, including my PC (which i have expressed is not interested). Their response is that well their character is flirty so they are still gonna do that you can just say no and the dm agreed. Fine whatever but then they started missing battles because they were "too horny and had to hook up with someone" and wasting battles trying to hookup with the enemy (not to mention dying because of it and forcing me to revive them). Ok fine I can deal but God it's annoying. I mentioned it to my DM and he was like shes new it's not that bad and we need the extra player and to "lighten up". But then, in my characters big arc and development she then seduced my abusive father and "fell in love" basically making me a background character in my own quest (our dm made special quests for each of us). For context my character was raised in almost cult-like setting and was viciously abused by his father the leader of the church. Mara seduced him but this didnt change the fact that he was a monster who did unspeakable things to my character oh and he was still planning on doing his big evil plan just with Mara at his side. Mara then died in battle (because horny) and I am the only one who has revivify and reincarnation but I refused to do so because of their relationship with my father. The rest of the players side with me but the DM and Mara do not and think Im metagaming and being petty, claiming that there was lore supporting the way that Mara was acting and she wasn't doing it to be annoying. Has this gone too far or am I being prude? Was I right to refuse to revive their character for having sex with my ingame dad? EDIT: missing context and spelling and better greeting

Caroline Lear

May it please the court, I bring to you the case of the vengeful bard. Our DM led us to an all knowing oracle to help us get some information our paladin needed for his quest. As a bit of flavor, the dm mentioned that the high priests of old who created the oracle were banished from the material plane after asking a forbidden question. I play a grave cleric dedicated to the goddess of secrets, and so I thought it would be a good idea to know what the question was so I could protect it, so our party asked the oracle what the forbidden question was. It turned out that simply knowing the forbidden question was grounds for banishment, and my goddess arrived and banished us to the astral plane. The party felt as though my goddess betrayed us. However, this is not the problem. My dm and I had already decided that my player would remain a cleric of this goddess. I’ve been playing this cleric as a zealot who sees this banishment as a test of faith. I have no problem with the other party members being salty about it, though. The problem is that our bard has declared a vengeance quest against my goddess, saying his new goal is to slay her. I’ve repeatedly expressed that I am uncomfortable with this, as it would inevitably lead to PvP, since my character would defend her goddess. This is not a table that’s open to pvp. The whole party keeps suggesting alternatives for this player, since no one likes the weird tension that’s starting to develop at the table. I’ve even offered to write my character out of the campaign to resolve the issue, but the other party members would rather the bard just drop his vendetta. They’ve made it clear that if he challenges a goddess to a fight to the death, at level eight, that they will not help him and he will certainly fail. Judges, is it wrong to curb the bard’s in character choices to preserve the good vibes at the table? Or is our bard in the wrong for threatening those vibes in the first place? I leave it to you to decide.

Colton Merrifield

Hello beloved judge Iyengar, and honorable judges tanner and Murphy and the lovely bailiff axford, and a obligatory hello to the absent jake I got into dungeons and dragons(Ttrpg in general) in my mid 20s, my dm(has been dming for about a decade) had me interact with essentially a god who gave me a sending stone. The dm told me that the stone would send me to the god but no return ticket. With that huge drawback, I never used it. About a year later I started dming myself and came across the RAW sending stone. The RAW one could have been more useful and would have been used far more often. When I brought it up to the dm, he said that dms can flavor items to their tastes…but I feel like he was taking advantage of my naïveté, and mislead me intentionally. So I ask thee. Am I wrong for being upset about it or am I being just a whiny? I humbly await your ruling

I want the rock I need the rock

To the illustrious supreme crit justices and pretty cool bailiff, I present the case of the "undead" cleric. I've been playing in a campaign online for a few months now. We recently had a pretty rough encounter that left a few of out PCs dead, including our cleric. His player hadn't thought of any backup character ideas yet, but over the week pitched the idea to our DM of his cleric being brought back by his god as a Reborn, having not yet fulfilled his purpose on the material plane. Our DM approved this, but it seemed they hadn't hashed out all the details by the time of our next session. Before we got started, our DM told the cleric that, since he was now a Reborn, if he tried to use the channel divinity turn undead ability, he would also have to roll the saving throw (albeit with advantage). Our cleric got pissed and argued that it wouldn't make since for him to be affected by his own abilities like that, and if he had know the DM was going to bring this up he would have made a different character. They argued about this for several minutes, with myself and the other players occasionally chiming in with our thoughts and rule checks, but mostly just awkwardly listening. Technically, according to RAW, Reborn are classified as humanoids, not undead, but their race description says they are people who died and came back, are bloodless and don't need to eat, breathe, or sleep, which still sounds pretty undead. Plus, clerics have a lot of anti-undead abilities, so I can see why our DM figured our cleric should have some kind of penalty for using these himself. On the other hand, it's kind of hard to run away from yourself, and being affected by your own abilities like this does sound annoying, and may make a person less likely to use them. The cleric and our DM decided to table the discussion so we could play since we weren't fighting any undead that session but the question still remains: should "undead" races like Reborn and Dhampirs be negatively affected by their own cleric abilities? I await your all-knowing judgement.

ML Allswede

What did I do to anger dice christ? During my last campaign I played a Fire Genasi Genie Warlock with an Efreeti patron named after the god of fire. When the ranger and I decided to go out scouting ahead in the cursed forest to find the ranger's father, I proceeded to roll not one, not two, but six natural one's almost consecutively. This meant that when we came across a symbol that represented the fire god, my character could not recognize it and the ranger and I nearly got killed. What did I do to anger dice christ? How might I return to his good graces? I was already satisfied with my murph level luck, but what did I do to deserve this?

Audrey P

If it would please the court and the illustrious bailiff. My partner and I are going to be starting a new campaign soon. She will be DMing and I’ll be a player. I’ve decided to play a half-giant rune knight/bard, sort of a big charismatic himbo wife that both cheerleads the party and crushes foes into paste. As a rune knight, my pc will be able to become large a number of times equal to her proficiency bonus, per long rest. When making my character sheet, I asked my dm how much a non-magic large weapon would cost. I figured it wouldn’t be too powerful considering I could only use it a few times per day. She told me that large weapons are only for monsters, and even if I do find one, I would not be able to wield it. Yes, the rules for large weapons are in the “making a monster” section of the DMG. But it just says that they are weapons intended to be wielded by larger *creatures,* not just npc monsters. (Mechanically they function as normal weapons with an extra damage dice per size above medium) As a rune knight, I can be a large creature a few times per day. I just thought it would be a fun way to bring rune knights up to the damage output of other fighters My partner is worried that the extra damage while using giants might will make my pc too powerful. We bring this case to you very capable judges. Should the big lady get to use a big sword, or is that illegal. We await out terrible punishment/minor rules ruling.

Connor Tuftin

Your honourable Justices and Bailiff Amy....? I present to you the case of The Dragon Stepfather In my first dnd campaign I played as a Halfing Bard named Finnion Tosscoble who was raised on a farm, but raised in the stable with the pigs. Finnion had an affinity for animals and later in the campaign a baby Bronze Dragon named Banoot was brought into the party by Finnion. Banoot became beloved to the party and like a son to Finnion. He was with us for the majority of the campaign untill the end game when we were preparing to fight the BBEG. We found a group of ancient dragon priests who offered to take in Banoot and keep him safe. Ultimately the choice fell onto Finnion and I thought it would be safest to send Banoot with them to be taught the proper ways of his kind and wouldn't have to fight the BBEG. I have been roasted about this for almost 7 years of playing D&D by my group and Banoot even made an appearance in later campaigns obviously scorned by the choice I made as an elder dragon. I ask justices was I right in sending Banoot to be safe and with his own kind or should I be punished to the fullest extent for betraying the trust of my dragon son?

Cory Thomas

To the great and wise justices and the best bailiff next to bailiff John I bring you the case prepared spell that never came. I play a circle of stars druid in my brother's friend's campaign. Last week, in our campaign of Call to the Netherdeep. We were sneaking I to the camp of another group of adventurers . I decided to stay back and got ready from the camp 60 ft away. When initiative kicks off our warlock casts darkness and started running away from the camp towards me. I held my action to cast entangle if I saw any of the adventurers following him. By the warlocks next turn I get covered in his darkness since it was casted on an item he was holding and I have become blinded. The party of adventurers start to come out of the camp and chase after him. When it comes around to my turn the dm says that I needed to mark off a spell slot for entangle even though I couldn't cast it because my held action wasn't triggered. I asked if I had to because I never actually casted the spell since I didn't see anyone coming but he said it was rules as written that a prepared spell still uses a spell slot. After minor protest in the interest of moving things a long I mark off the spell slot but still feel like I wasted my spell slot since I never actually casted the spell. Was I cheated out of a spell slot even though our party was fine afterwards and the spell never actually went off? Or am I being a bit of a grump for thinking that my dm wanted to make my resources less damaging to give his npc's the upper hand? I await your verdict and will submit to whatever punishment awaits.

Mitchell Robinson

To the powerful judges and insert bailiff name here, I bring to you the case of the invisible cleric. I am a level 4 firbolg cleric. Last session our party encountered a troll, and through an unfortunate turn of events, I was left unconscious while my other party members fled. I succeeded my three death saves and awoke to find two goblins pointing their weapons at me. On my turn, I turned invisible using my bonus action (racial feature) and use my action to disengage and move my 30 ft away from the two goblins. However, my DM claimed that disengaging only applies to one enemy and the other goblin still had an attack of opportunity against me, even though I was invisible. They managed to hit me, dropping me back down to zero hit points where the DM ended the session. I beseech you, lay your judgment upon me. Was my DM right in attacking an invisible creature? Or am I in the wrong for not understanding how reactions work?

Justin Atols

My Just Justice's and Baffling Baliff, our group just finished the "Curse of Strahd" campaign. It was a great but there's one dm ruling I just can't get past. Another player (sorcerer) and I (warlock) both took took counter spell as soon as we could. Our dm shut us down every time we tried to use it. Example " the enemy casts vaporize" "Counter spell" "They already cast it you can't counter spell" No dex save or dice had been rolled. The dms reason was you have to cast counter spell before the spell is cast and you can see the caster beginning the spell. The dm never said opponents were starting to cast spells only said once they had been cast thus making counter spell unable to use. Did our dm just refuse us our counter spells or am I in the wrong?

80s cartoon sidekicks make the best PCs

May it please the justices of the court and titillate the bailiff, I have a case of Pack O’Derm, the Loxodon Grave Cleric, voiced as Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. His demeanor only changed when he found a broom of flying, and his only word he could say while flying was just WHEEEEEEEE! He was the party’s only healer, as a DM controlled PC, but my wife took over as DM and I moved to this PC full time. His 24 AC and high dex frustrated my wife, until one day she critted on a high level spell and took him down. The party finished the battle and ignored my character and the death saving throws that eventually killed him (they claimed they didn’t know I was making death throws). My wife DM looked at the party and said, “what do you want to do?” And their replies were “nothing” and “loot the bodies”, after which I rolled a 1 (we were in a mystical woods, far from healers, but the sorcerer had 12 potions of healing). The sorcerer later stole my broom of flying and burned my body. I returned as Shaggy from Scooby Doo as a bard and proceeded to just play music and run away (which led to clearing a tower of baddies meant to take a month in an hour in a sort of musical montage). Now I’ve had to retire Shaggy and resume as DM, but was my cleric robbed?

pyroclastic

May it please the court and the new and improved bailiff, I present the case of the Rakshasa vs Conjure Animals. I was DM-ing a party that was fighting a Rakshasa, a monster whos' main thing is that it is immune to all spells 6th level or lower. My druid had cast a third level Conjure Animals to get 2 giant eagles to carry them to the fight, and was still holding concentration so sent them to attack. I initially said that the eagles would not effect the Rakshasa as they were coming from a concentration spell, so would therefore count as a "spell". My druid made the point that the spell was just summoning them, and that the eagles themselves weren't actually the spell being concentrated on, he was just concentrating on keeping them there. In the moment I decided that was fair enough and let the eagles in on the fight. I got absolutely whomped in the fight and would have even if the eagles weren't there, but in the following years I have thought this over and still think that I was right the first time. This caused absolutely no conflict between me and my friend and has absolutely no stakes, however I am curious to hear what the court has to say on this.

Rae Leo

May it please court, the wondrous guest judge, Aabria and the bailiff of chaos, Emily: I’m in a heavy rp campaign with five players plus the dm that’s been going on regularly for the last 2 years. myself (she/her) and three of the other players are very into rping and seeking out each other for scenes. one player (he/him) who plays the rogue says that he’s more into combat, which would be perfectly valid, except that he doesn’t pay attention to anyone else’s turn in combat and takes forever on his turn deciding what to do. In general, whenever the scene isn’t about him alone he’s on his phone and only gives the other players short, non-committal replies when they try to interact with him. the dm does his best to include the rogue. this last session we were beat up from battle and taking refuge in a magic school that’s been abandoned for a thousand years in the middle of a desert. after a long rest the rogue went searching for food but given our location, there isn’t any. we don’t play gritty realism so we don’t even need to think about food. so four of the five players are all sitting in silence staring at each other as the rogue goes to different rooms and the dm has him roll investigation checks in a place where nothing has been edible for over a millennium. after several minutes of this not going anywhere, i finally speak up out-of-character and say, “can you just let him find something or not?” the other players agreed and wanted to move on since our plan was to investigate a vault the warlock found, then teleport, and go shopping so the rogue could just get food then. the dm quickly wrapped things up and moved on. the rogue went back to his phone the rest of the session. this is not the first time he’s gone off and done something completely off topic and away from the party and avoided interacting with the plot/group. I feel bad for cutting off the rogue rping, I’m afraid i’m guilty of yucking his yum, but the table was with me and had plot related things we wanted to do together as a party. Am i guilty for insisting that we move on? is the rogue guilty of not being a team player?

Cristian

That's such a tough spot to be in!

Lane H.

Please use name Shaggy if used 😬

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

Sarah Sherman

If it pleases the court, would present the case of the contemplated warlock-napping to Justices Iyengar, Murphy and Tanner, and Bailiff-Justice Axford. I am DMing a campaign of Tomb of Annihilation for a party that came together online from a D20 Fan Group. As the party formed, one player wanted to play a Reborn character, and we collaborated about how I could use his amnesia to tie in plot hooks, and it would be pretty engaging. A few sessions in, we lost a player due to life circumstances, and filled the slot with a friend (A) of another player(B). Great, all good so far. Now "B" asks if it's ok if they re-roll a new character, they aren't enjoying the first one they built. Sure, it's a game and games should be fun, we're not that far in anyway. I asked ahead of time that the PCs give me enough backstory to help give them a good tie in to the story, but nothing crazy long because, well, Annihilation is in the name of the campaign. Unfortunately these two came up with quite similar backstories, "I got into trouble, an evil thing helped me and then I fled and ended up here. Fast forward many sessions, and I'm weaving my Reborn players backstory in, and have tied in some lore to "A" and "B"s warlock patronage (yes they both multi-classed into warlock) and if they participate it will be an amazing story. But in the last session they missed calls for ability checks, and were not paying attention to the skill check puzzle the other players had already completed, instead needing the entire thing to be re-explained. The reborn player participates constantly and helps drive the story despite the characters lack of back story, and player 4 participates a ton as well -- so I know my DMing can't be too horrendous. Am I wrong for considering an "annihilation" of one or both of these distracted warlocks? It would be pretty easy to have a flying dinosaur person just come take them very, very far away. I await your judgement, and hope that you are not adversely swayed by my inconsistency with using letters, numbers, and race to identify my PCs.

🦋 Merryn C 🦋

If it please the court, the most holy and divine high priests of dice christ past and present, and the excommunicated former baliff Jake who (in absentia) remains still unworthy. Forgive me mother (Bailiff Emily), for I have sinned. I wish to prostrate myself at the holy feet of Dice Christ. In the most recent session of my home game I was doing a contested grapple check with the other player (there's only two of us and we play over zoom) but I only rolled a 6. I had been rolling shit all night and had just decided to use a new dice for this roll and it nearly landed on a 16 before landing on the 6 so I just decided to take the 16 to make sure I won. I immedietly felt bad though so I made the other player say what they got first and even with a 6 I still would have beaten him because i have a +7 to athletics. Because of this I uncheated and just went with the 6 but I still felt bad because I was going to cheat. I turned my dice over to have the 16 up and everything. I should have just trusted dice christ. I continued rolling bad the rest of the night so I think she was punishing me. I lay my (potential) sins at the feet of the court and await absolution.

MkA7L

That’s insane! How are you supposed to know they are casting something before they say it?