Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Dungeon Court Cases, Please! (Patreon)

Published:
2022-11-02 13:09:26
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Howdy folks. Humble Bailiff Jake here. The Supreme Crit is convening this afternoon, so submit your (BRIEF, I beg!) cases on this thread and we will bring you swift justice.

Humbly,

Jake

Comments

Nicolas Mallard

May it please the court(especially the judges, but shout out to the bailiff as well) I am a player that is soon to be breaking my dms campaign. I’m usually the forever dm, but one of my players started a campaign for our party at level 1. We are only level 3 now (I’m currently an armored artificer named Jake of State Farm) and at level 5 I plan to multi class. Eventually when we hit level 10 I would have 5 levels of each and I alone at a bare minimum would do over 60 damage in a turn with up to 200 if I can crit. He is going to need help balancing and I would like to get a reference from the court.(he is also a patron of y’all and I would love to surprise him that we got even mentioned by you). So my question is, how could he help balance our party of 7 without throwing a dragon just at me to distract? I’ll accept whatever judgement the court deems worthy a punishment

Tony Alloco

If this could be a bonus case please. 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?

nollie pollie ollie

Dear honorable justices and solid 7/10 Bailiff Josh, I present to you the case of 5e vs 3.5. A little while ago I decided to take the leap and DM my first campaign. I decided that I wanted it to be 5e because it was the first version I learned (from listening to the podcast and from the first home campaign I ever played). I spent two months writing all the lore for my world and helped my friends and boyfriend with character creation as it was some of their first times playing as well. This is when my boyfriend’s Ren of a brother (let’s call him David) found out and asked if he could play and I reluctantly agreed. It came to the day of our first session and I was really excited but that went down hill fast. The entire session David kept asking me to do things from 3.5 and kept comparing everything to his 3.5 campaign (i.e. “well in my 3.5 campaign I could do this) and it started to confuse the other players. I was confused with why he was doing this because he knew how the 5e mechanics worked because he was in my first home game that was 5e. I finally told him I was sorry but I don’t really know the mechanics of 3.5 so we’re just going to keep following the 5e rules so it’s not confusing for the newbies. He sort of just rolled his eyes and agreed but then kept bringing up 3.5 thing, so I figured I would do my best for now and hopefully things would get better next time. After the session ended David texted me and asked if we could switch the campaign to 3.5 and I told him “no I’m sorry I’m more comfortable with 5e and it’s my first time DMing.” He then proceeded to call me lazy for not wanting to learn 3.5 and telling me my first session was boring anyways so he won’t be playing again. So I ask you, should I have just switched the campaign to 3.5? I humbly await your judgement.

JakeMeOffBeforeYouGoGo

To the honorable justices Axford, who inspires me as a player, Murphy, who inspires me as a DM, Tenner, who's quick wit never fails to make me laugh, and that bearded guy I have absolutely no opinion about. May it please the court: I present you the case: should curiosity have “killed the cat”?! I'm DMing a game for some level 3 characters who recently got some weapons with minor magical effects that they rolled for on a table I found online. Apparently our rogue must have committed major sins against the ever righteous Dice Christ because her weapon got the following property making it almost impossible for her to stealth in many situations: Cat’s Paw: This +1 magical shortsword can retract its blade completely into its hilt. Also, the wearer attracts the attention of all cats within 100 ft, who follow them around yelling for food. Last session they encountered a foe that should be very well known to you: the drug lord of Ezry, Skullis. The ambush my PCs tried to set up failed horribly due to the rogues magic sword and got turned around on them: Skullis, rolling a nat 20 on a Stealth check, got a whole round of attacks on them as a surprise, leaving my PCs at great disadvantage. A round of combat later I mentioned Skullis' race being Tabaxi; something my players didn't know before. This was when my players started arguing because of him being basically a humanoid cat, he should have been effected by the sword as well, leaving his hide out and asking for a snack and therefore not being able to ambush them. I was honestly baffled by that line of argument wondering why I didn't think of that before. Not wanting to redo the whole combat I ruled against it but deep down I had to admit it would have been freaking hilarious. So I ask you honorable Justices and random hipster: was I right to let Skullis have his surprise round granted by a nat 20 or should I have decided differently in order of 'the rule of cool'? I humbly await your judgment!

Dave 3D Art

May it please the courts, and the honourable and tall Balliff Jake. Was briefly in a campaign in which potions only came in the form of enemas. I quit. There was no prior warning in a rather long list of questionable house rules. Was I right to quit or is that the kind of houserule that is acceptable to throw on a party in the first session without notice. There were other issues, but that was pretty wild, eh? I'm at the mercy of your verdict.

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?

Tyler Jackson

May it please the esteemed court, the rugged bailiff John, and a little place called Manja’s, I present the case of the anime tournament arc *gone wrong*. My DM, to have the party prove their strength and earn the respect of a powerful tribe of orcs, had us enter a classic, anime style bracketed fighting tournament - However, we had to all enter as individuals, and sure enough the first round of the tournament pitted the party’s martial forge cleric against the party’s way more optimized aasimar celestial warlock. As soon as the fight started, the warlock used their aasimar flight to fly above the arena (since only touching the ground disqualified you) cast darkness on the cleric, and proceeded to absolutely melt them with eldritch blasts from above, counterspelling the one AoE spell the cleric tried to cast. The mood at the table quickly soured, and the cleric was almost silent the rest of the session. The players all quickly became divided over who was to blame - the player for being so merciless, or the DM for putting us into PVP when some players were clearly more optimized than others. I leave it to the court to decide their fate.

Felix Principe-gillespie

To the honourable justices and the replacable bailiff, I come to you seeking justice. 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)

Squishy, Pawpaw's Brushtail Possum lover

To the most holy of Dice Crist's followers I offer this story. This is not a true confession, but a time in which I saw Dice Crist's power first hand. It was several months ago when I was creating my first dnd character, Astraea the tiefling rogue (and her pet rat Akakios), with the help of two more experienced players. We were making her on dnd beyond but rolling her stats manually. Once we had imputed all her stats it automatically calculated 51 hit points for her. The other player asked me if I wanted to keep that or roll for them. I wasn't sure, so he suggested we roll and take the highest number. This felt wrong to me, surley if I rolled I should be subject to that value, for better or worse. But he knew more than me, so I went along with it. When I rolled dice crist showed his true will, as I rolled thr exact same number 51. I apologise for briefly being lead astray from the good path, and thank Dice Crist for swiftly bringing me back. P.S. I love you guys so much (especially Emily ❤)

sooleh

to the reverent judiciary panel and the guy who reads the cases i bring before you the case of the magpie monk. i am a player in a 5e campaign set in a homebrew world. in this world are lots of cool magic items like the “ring of teleportation” which teleports the ring and not the wearer, or the “amulet of rain” which will tell you if it’s raining by lighting up, but it only works if you are outside. the dm has been very generous with these throwaway magic items, often giving us one or two in each session. enter the party’s aarakokra drunken fighter monk, who is role playing as a magpie. this player will, at every turn, pickpocket and directly wrestle these magic items off the other PC’s, i have already lost 2 items to him. the dm doesn’t allow us to roll sleight of hand to hide the ring from him and instead makes us roll opposed athletics checks, which he always wins due to his stats. my character, a human fighter, has spoken to his character in game and asked that he perhaps lets us have some of them, to no avail. and so i plead with you, am i being a diva roach supreme by being pissed about this, or should something be done about this pilfering pigeon. i await your just ruling.

Dez Magner

May it please the justices Murphy, Tanner and Axeford, and the lowly bailiff who's name I can't remember. 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 and the next session ended up focusing entirely on his funeral. The entire session no NPC wanted to talk to me and every time I tried to do anything but my DM dismissed it. 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.

James Brown AKA I LOVE YOU, FUCK YOU, EAT A RAT

D&D Court Submission The most honorable justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the most mediocre, yet relatable bailiff, Jake: I humbly bring to The Crit the Case of the Left-Handed Artificer. In a recent one-shot campaign, I played a lvl 4 Battle Smith artificer/lvl 2 wizard named Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist. My DM allowed me to use my Steel Defender to create my character’s suit of armor brother, Alfonse. My party was swept away by a modron through the Astral Plane, where my brother was disintegrated. I sacrificed my long rest to bring my Steel Defender back. However, my DM told me my brother’s soul would not remain intact. In the spirit of the anime, I was allowed to bond my brother’s soul back to the Steel Defender after sacrificing my remaining right arm and leg. My DM insisted that because I only had a left arm and leg automail, I only knew how to build left limbs. He allowed me to attach them backwards, making me an all left-limbed PC going into the final battle, essentially turning me into a spinning top of doom. Was it right for my DM to not allow me to tinker opposite limbs based on the limbs my character already had and knew how to replicate? I leave the decision in the capable hands of The Crit.

Abigail Martin

Hail and well crit, Justices. I bring to you the case of the Train Totaled Turn Undead. My party was embroiled in combat with a horde of undead aboard the Matron’s Bell when our cleric decided to turn undead. The leader of the zombies was currently grappling the warlock. I argued that since Turn Undead says he would take the fastest route, the zombie would jump out of the moving train, taking the warlock with him. Justices, they hated me. After much arguing, I decided to allow an acrobatics check to escape and a dexterity save to not fall out of the window. The warlock, failed both. Should I have allowed the skeleton to drop his target, or was I justified in sending my player onto the tracks? I await your fair and impartial judgement.

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 lay supine and humbly await the Supreme Crits opinion.

Dave 3D Art

It was a pirate themed campaign by the way. Which made it even weirder.

Andrew Schiessl

To the esteemed judges Murphy, axford,tanner, and to the rest they’re there I guess. I present to you the case of the anxious halfling. So I was at a home dnd game, and it was my first time playing and I was playing a halfling fighter. but right as we were starting playing, I had an anxiety attack where I had to leave the table and go lie down, missing a bout 2/3 of the first session. Fast forward to the next day, and in the dnd group chat, I see the other players mentioning that they wanna continue the campaign without me because I missed too much of the first session even after I expressed that I wanted to keep playing, I just had a bad night last time. These other party members have been friends of mine for years and normally I would dm for them in other sessions (see the old case where a chair was thrown) I ask humbly, are they just in kicking me out?

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?

Veronica Plante

May it please the court. The case of the teleporting corpse or, how hard to kill a pc: we were fighting a lich who killed our ranger. Before the cleric could get over and revivify the lich dimension doored away with the rangers corpse. When asked the dm said that corpses are objects not creatures, so the corpse didn’t need to be willing and could be teleported. A counterspelled counterspell against the teleport from my sorcerer, two timestops and a disintegrate later and the ranger was a pile of dust 1000 feet away from the party. So i ask you, was this trying too hard to kill a pc? Is it fair game to teleport a corpse away?

William Hampton

Dear judges and that bailiff dude jake, I bring you the case of the exploding people. In a previous session I ran, one of my players a plasmoid sorcerer named Schloop, wanted to use gaseous form to travel into an assassins nose and then end the spell to explode them from the inside. Thinking this was cool but also didn’t want to just give it to them. I made him roll an arcana check with a DC of 20 and he made it. Was I correct in this decision or should I have shut it down?

AnonymousDM

Esteemed Justices and Fine Bailiff, I present the case of the Neglected Mom. In the long running game I DM, the party started off as pirates that got drafted mid-job by a dying god to save her by finding — and being blessed by — all seven other gods. Since then, they have traveled the far reaches of the world to find them, from bustling cities to remote wilds. One of the PC’s sister has found him and told him off for neglecting their mother, who believes him to be dead, since he went on a pirate job, never came back, and never reached out in the months since. My friend was pissed! He insisted that *of course* his bard would’ve kept in touch with his mom — but it’s not like the party’s had prolonged moments of downtime. When they visit more developed settlements, I’ve mentioned rookeries they could use to send ravens or messages, and none of them have. Am I wrong to have this PC’s family miss him?

Angus MacIver

Dear honorable judges and handsome bailiff, I present my case. A few years ago, I entered a campaign with some friends. The character I created was a blind old man by the name of Gus Humphrey who was a divination wizard. I love creating weakness in character that are overcome by magical means, so obviously I was looking forward to having my character manage his disability with his divination abilities. Primarily, he was able to see through his owl familiar, but a few back-ups I had to manage his inability to see were that any spells I had were only touch or AoE on self (like Thunderwave) so that he could actually cast and not miss from ranged attacks. In our very first round of combat, our enemy shot down my familiar so I could no longer see. What followed was a combat encounter filled with accidental friendly-fire Thunderwaves and consequent verbal abuse from my party members. In the end, I allowed my DM to plot-kill Gus Humphrey at the beginning of session 2, and replaced him with big strong Barbarian, Bus Dumphrey. My question is this: am I wrong for having created Gus in the first place? Are my party members wrong for abusing Gus because of his inabilities? Or is the DM wrong for targeting the familiar so quickly? I humbly await your ruling.

PolarityBear

I do not come bearing a court case but a confessional: I fear I have cursed one of my players and need the forgiveness of Dice Christ. I am going to be running a Pathfinder 2e one-shot soon with the hopes of turning it into a campaign. My players include a Catfolk Gunslinger, a Foxfolk Magus, a Tiefling Cleric, and a Gnoll Barbarian. One day, when I was a little bored, I decided that I wanted to test how well Pathfinder 2's balance handled one single enemy against a party of four (D&D 5e has often left me unhappy with single enemy encounters) and I rolled a Nat 20 for the Gunslinger's initiative AND his first attack. That's right, the first two rolls for the character were Nat 20s and they weren't even rolled by the player. I fear that the universe will seek to balance the scales when it is in the player's hands and I do not want that to happen because I got overeager.

Keanu DRAMAFACE

Hello to the immeasurable crit Justices and…the small Barney bailiff. I come with the BRIEFEST QUESTION YOU HAVE EVER HAD. If I take a fly potion and cast fly on myself at the same time do I fly faster or does fly stay on longer? Thank you for your time you cute lil ducks. PS: praise be to dice Christ

Commander Shepherd

May it please the court *and the humble bailiff Jake*, in my recent campaign my players fell into an ambush where creatures were coming out a pair at a time, i would have my players roll a luck check to see which one the kobalds would attack, one of my players was having a bad rolls day and he ended up getting surrounded, while he didn't say anything to me directly it was clear he felt as if I was bullying him, was I in the wrong for allowing the die to make the story or should I have stepped in and changed the encounter despite making it clear before the die tell the story. I prostrate myself waiting for your judgment, (I'm also a 1st time DM with new players)

Alex W

to the magnificent and honorable supreme crit justices, and also the deplorable and dishonest baliff jake if he really wants, may i present the case of squid anatomy. I DM for a large group that has several rotating players. During a recent session, my 6 players were fighting a juvenile kraken. the foghter, played by my dad in his first campaign since the 80s, asked if the kraken has any weak spots. before i could say anything the cleric, played by my cousin currently getting her masters in deep sea marine biology, said that squids had circular brains that went around their heads and 3 hearts. she then sent a diagram into the chat of our zoom of squid anatomy. i was taken aback but said that this was a fantasy game and that the squid didn’t have any weak points. now i feel as though i should have rewarded the flex on squid anatomy and given the kraken vulnerability to attacks made at the head. was i wrong to say there were no weak points? my fate rests in your hands.

inkdrasil

May it please the right honorable justices and the sweet-smelling bailiff, I present the case of the Sponsorship Scandal. I'm a DM who runs homebrew campaigns for a group of friends. In a previous campaign, this group of players were participating in an airship grand prix race in a floating pirate city. They brought their busted old ship to a customs shop to get it kitted out for the race the next morning, but the proprietor was reluctant to squeeze them into his busy schedule -- until, that is, they succeeded on some Persuasion checks to convince him to agree to a sponsorship deal. In return for getting their air-ride pimped out, they had their hull and sails painted with the logo of the customs shop. Cool, good, a fun solution! EXCEPT. The lesson my players learned was they should attempt the same deal with every single vendor, shopkeeper, and NPC in the game. We're now in a new, totally different campaign and they're STILL asking Bob the Fuckin' Blacksmith or whatever if they can get that plate armor for free if they rent themselves out as ad space and slap his shop's logo on it. If I'm playing these NPC characters honestly, this would probably sound like a reasonable idea to many of them! But I'm reluctant to reward this absolutely goblinized behavior. Am I wrong to deny my players the chance to continuously become walking NASCAR ads? How can I encourage them to come up with new creative ways to swindle my NPCs?

Max Piper

To the justices of the crit, and the bad widdle bailiff. I present the case of the failed color spray. I was in a fight where my party interrupted a gaggle of bugbears torturing a small goblin. Upon intervening, the bugbears noticed me, a gnome wizard, and decided to gang up on me. I was thrown against a wall, and pummeled while my other party members tried to attack and distract them. In a rare turn where I was conscious, I decided to cast color spray in hopes it would aid my allies in saving me. I showed my DM in Roll20 where I was casting it, and rolled the HP. The DM narrated how the goblin, who they’d earlier described as hanging on to life by a thread and hiding under a bed with his hands over his head, was able to absorb more than enough of the HP pool that none of the bugbears were affected. 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?

Dokutori

To the esteemed elders in the church of dice Christ (and that lowly friar Jake) I bring a confession and baptism. My group was playing through the curse of Strahd campaign, and as expected had been thoroughly womped by Strahd, both by his maniacal machinations through our manipulating DM but also through our strong stupidity. After multiple dire set backs, including civilian deaths, a DM NPC death, and then what appeared to be the death of my tight jean wearing cowboy-styled oath of heroism paladin, a player at the table became frustrated by the set backs, blamed us for trying to copy NADDPOD style humor and not taking Strahd seriously and quit the campaign. We were stunned and tried to take him back in but he was set in his ways and decided to use the now free Saturday night to go on a blind date. 9 months later his blind date gave birth. Dice christ we come to confess our transgressions for causing our player to stray into the arms of a woman, but also bring the child to be baptized in the church.

emilythecoffeewench

To the resplendent Justices of the Court, and the lukewarm bailiff I guess, I come with a full party's admission of guilt. My dnd group has two weekly sessions, one being our main campaign and another night reserved for short games and oneshots. In our last main session, we established that our cleric's god looks like a yellow Keith Haring figure, but can manifest a dick when he wants, and the dick can walk away. We promptly lost the last quarter of the session to this goof. 6 days later, on our oneshot night with two people not in the main game, we brought this up again, laughing our asses off. I, in partnership with others, made a gif of said golden Godly penis walking off the Keith Haring figure and off screen. We once again lost a lot of time to laughing about our own dumb joke, losing our minds while the other two players were just sitting there politely. I come bearing our groups sins and humbly ask for forgiveness. P.S. I am willing to share said gif on the naddpod reddit if need be

November Snow

Honorable justices and courtly bailiff, I bring to you the case of the newbie trap springing rogue. The very first time I played d&d I made a rogue, thinking I would help keep my party safe from traps. Instead the three times that I detected traps successfully and then narrated what I thought would disarm them, the dm made my character activate the traps and grievously injure myself and the party because I, the player, misunderstood how the physical trap mechanisms worked. I argued that my character would have known that cutting a string would activate a trap, not disarm it, and that my knowledge as a dumb player should be superceded by my character's for specifics like that, but my DM stuck with their decision to make my character that bad of a rogue. Justices, was I in the right for arguing that character knowledge should trump player knowledge? I humbly await your decision.

Maxwell Keiles

May it please the the honorable crits and the sticker lover. I present the case of the book of life. I play a celestial warlock with the gift of the protector invocation. This makes it so if you are dropped to 0 but not killed outright, you are still at 1 hp. We fought a night stalker who has the ability to insta kill you at 0 with no death saving throws. This almost happened to me but I argued that because my hip never technically reached zero and the damage itself didn’t kill me, the ability should trigger. The dm argued that at such a high level this is too good against ability’s like this. We agreed that this time I would be spared but never again. Judges, is this a fair ruling, or is my main gimmick as a healer warlock being stifled. I leave it is your hospitable hand.

Wesley Ball

May it please the illustrious supreme crit justices and the “late jakeing” Bailiff “I’ve got no Jakes” Hurwitz. I present a crime and a confessional. We were playing a prewritten campaign, descent into a Avernus, and during a dungeon exploration, we cornered a sniveling little rat of an NPC to question him. I rolled a nat 20 intimidation, and the DM told me the NPC refuses to tell us anything. So we killed him. Here’s the confession. The copy of Descent into Avernus that we’re playing from is my copy, and after the session when everyone had gone home I flipped through the book to the part we’re playing and found the NPC in question was supposed to tell us everything on a DC 15 intimidation or persuasion! I know I’ve done wrong, but in my wrongdoing have I uncovered a more a egregious miscarriage of justice???? I await your judgement PS, The Pitwall made me buy an F1 TV subscription and has ruined my weekends. Thanks for nothing Hurwitz.

Blake Vaught

Oh beloved and esteemed crit justices, and their guest Jake who seems nice. I was playing in a modified Curse of strahd campaign as a warforged storm sorcerer, the last session I made a pact with a god which made me delusional and want to kill one of the fellow players. I downed them and attacked them while they rolled death saves. I got two attacks in, the second being a crit. I then used my last action to attack another player. The players in game "brother" then did the exact same to me, downed, then two attacks, the second being a crit. The player said the crit instantly killed me and I couldn't roll any death saves. I argued that I did the same to the player before and had I know the crit would have killed them I would have used my action to plane shift away instead of making another attack. The DM eventually allowed us to go back and the player I attacked was killed but I wasn't able to get away and the campaign ended 20 minutes later and hasn't gotten together since. Should I just have accepted my death and not fought against the table or was I in the right that my attacks should have killed the player? - Begrudged in Barovia

Rebecca Novark

To the esteemed justices and the juicy bailiff, I present my case to thee. The case of an introvert among extroverts. I play in a wildemount campaign. There's two of my friends, the DM, his girlfriend, and me. I love this campaign idea and I'm very attached to my celestial warlock. However, at times it feels like my two friends are very clique-y. Their characters have been friends since long before the campaign and they spend much time making jokes and speaking with each other. The DM also tends to favor his girlfriend who has never played before, letting her interrupt others and do crazy shenanigans that make no sense. I spend the grand majority of the sessions in silence, watching others play. My friends complain about the DMs girlfriend and how bad she is at the game so much that I get anxiety during combat because I'm scared of making a mistake and drawing the anger of my friends. I humbly ask you, what should I do? Is this my fault for not being more outgoing? Do I need to put on my big kid undies and just try to insert myself, or should I continue to let them play and just enjoy watching the story? Am I right to feel wronged? I humbly await your ruling and am prepared to act accordingly.

3 Minions in a trench coat

May it please the honorable justices, and Tucker’s girlfriend’s husband: I have been running a campaign for around a year now, and one of my players asked if he could take a turn DMing, a spooky mini campaign for Halloween. I was happy to let him, and it was my first chance to be a player. The problem is that we are entering the 5th week and there is seemingly no end in sight. I am having fun but want to return to our main campaign, am I the asshole if I ask him to cut out sections of whatever he has planned to finish this quickly? (All players are having fun in both settings and he has brought up alternating weeks but, much like kongo bongo island, this is getting ridiculous)

Dominic Stacey

Dear great justices and the ever humble bailiff, I bring you the case of the one you didn't want to be the very best May it please the court I was making a character for a new game my friend was DMing, who was focusing on summoning monsters. After replying to some messages the DM sent me about my character's backstory, he asked me what my characters goal was for the campaign, feeling I'd already answered that from previous questions I gave him a joke answer, to be the very best that no one ever was. The DM stopped messaging me after that, little did I know I'd made a mistake Later that same night I saw the DM in person and he was telling me all these rules and extra features he added into the game so that I could have pseudo-pokemon battles and win gym badges. While I liked his rules and thought they were really thought out, I didn't want to do any of that and when I tried to say, "I'm sorry that was a jok-" The DM cut me off stating, "it's too late now, this is happening," So I bit back any further comments and for the few sessions the campaign lasted I fought fake Ash and his not-quite Pikachu monster. I ask the court, was I in the wrong for the initial message, or should the DM have not used these rules when I tried to say I didn't want to do it? I await your verdict

Lemon Moon

I present a confession. When I first started playing dnd, my character was a bard, named Jimmy Crumble III. He was very good at persuasion, and when we went on a quest to stop a wizard from scamming this local village, I used my very high persuasion to convince him. The DM rewarded me for this by having the wizard give me a magic sword called “The Answerer”. My confession is this: every time I rolled an attack, I did so with advantage because I misread the text of the sword. It says that when a creature hits me, I can attack them as a reaction, and the attack has advantage. Since I was new, when I saw that I attack with advantage, I took that to mean I attack all the time with advantage. I didn’t realize I was wrong until much later. I don’t think it affected any combats in a major way, and Jimmy still died in the end, epically, in a duel, but I thought I should still confess.

Shadow

To the extremely rad justices and the bailiff, who sits beneath them: My story is one of bad rolls and heartbreak. Before the first session of a new campaign with my friends, 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 in trying to get her to like me. Then, the party's bard, a pothead tabaxi named Garfield, rolled super well and entered a flirtation with the PC 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. Both people knew how socially awkward and unlucky in romance I can be, so the situation felt like rubbing salt in the wound. Was my DM wrong for implying this character was essentially designed for me but then allowing one bad roll to ruin everything? (my pronouns are they/them, by the way)

Kiera Walshe-Urbancic

May it please the acclaimed justices and overworked bailiff. I wrote a campaign to play with my boyfriend and his friends, at the end of the story my boyfriend made a magical deal with the evil queen to fight for her and become her champion (and specifically stated he wouldn’t fight against her). I warned him that this promise would have dire consequences if broken, and immediately after she accepted he turned around and tried to attack her, breaking the promise, so I narrated him setting on flames, and his friends came in to carry him to safety. That was the end of the session, and he was obviously annoyed with me for ruining what was in the end a pretty cool plan, taking a teleportation potion to sneak up on her and attack. Was I wrong for not allowing the fight and having him burn?? I humbly await your verdict.

18 Wheels of Rubber and Steel

To the esteemed judges, and the bailiff too I suppose, I bring to you the case of the shove attack: I used to DM frequently for a party of four friends, and we had been playing together since high school. Two years ago our campaign ended after a heated disagreement over the actions economy of the Shove Attack. The party’s barbarian wanted to shove one of the bandits they were fighting over the edge of a wall and down into a river. I told him to roll an attack, and I would roll a dex save for the bandit to see if he could avoid falling. The barbarian crit, and the bandit got a 4 on his dex save, so he fell into the river. It is important to point out that the barbarian had already attacked that same bandit before shoving him. The disagreement began when the barbarian wanted to use his “second attack” to target a different bandit. I told him he had already used both of his attack actions for this turn, and that he couldn’t make another attack. This immediately ground combat to a halt. The player of the barbarian argues that the shove should have counted as a bonus action or free action, even though I had already shown him that according to the rules, shoving a creature is an attack action. The rest of the party chose not to get involved, and just watched us argue for almost 45 minutes. Ultimately, we never reached a solution, and the player (a long time friend) quit our group the next day. Without him, thumb energy off the group was always off, and the group slowly began meeting less and less, until one day we just stopped playing. I haven’t played D&D since, now I just listen to podcasts. Was I wrong to try and lay down the law over how shoving works, or should I have allowed the player to do more with their turn?

Polly P

To the honourable justices Murphy, Axford and Tanner and that one recurring guest whose name I have forgotten (Jork maybe?) may it please the court. In my first ever dnd campaign I had to come late to a session. I didn’t want to hold everyone up so I had given permission to the DM to jaeger my character while I was out. My character had been established as one who liked loot so when the DM messaged to say that she had come across some Mithral armour, would I like to take it? I said hell yeah. When I got back home and entered the voice chat it was to a session in disarray. Turns out the Mithral armour was the sole possession of a kind old farmer lady who lived alone and that my character had stolen it (this was context that the dm had not given me). Our party’s paladin had caught my character doing it and cast zone of truth and confronted them about stealing. Apparently my DM had given some very weird, antagonising responses in zone of truth on behalf of my character and the lawful good paladin was exceedingly unhappy with my pc. I didn’t know exactly what had been said and the session continued on with a very weird air but subsequently the player who played the paladin messaged the group to say that he needed to pull his character from the party as he had built a character who was “too morally good” to fit in with people like my character. This was all based on actions that had been performed on my characters behalf which I was not part of and never really got a chance to defend myself from. The situation devolved and the player ended up leaving. I have since never been able to trust a DM piloting my character and have massive trust issues with missing sessions in general. Was my DM wrong for taking such liberties with roleplaying my character or am I overreacting to a fairly normal DM takeover which was blown out of proportion by another player? P.S. Im aware that the player leaving was a weird overreaction so I’m less worried about adjudicating that aspect.

Keigan Z

Hello to the incredible justices and hi Jake. I bring you the case of The Too Challenging Encounter. A couple years back I was DMing for some friends I was in college with. We were at the end of our first major arc and move out from the starting town. I was having everyone tell me about what they wanted to do on their last day before leaving. Just a last bit of roleplay or a chance to gather some knowledge around town. This was going okay until I asked our Monk, a gnome named Grigoryy, what they wanted to do. Grig said they just wanted to meet a child. I was a little confused but set up a scene with a kid playing with a hoop and stick. After their conversation the kid went home and Grigoryy asked to follow the kid inside so they could steal the child’s toy. I asked if they wanted to sneak in or find a back door and they said they wanted to just walk in the front door. I explained that the door was locked so they’d need to unlock it or find another way in. It’s around this moment I notice Grigoryy is getting frustrated. After a couple unsuccessful attempts to sneak in they were caught and before I could describe what happened they yelled “WHY ARE YOU NOT LETTING ME PLAY THE GAME?” We were roommates and friends at the time and shortly after this we were neither. Judges I ask, was I putting too many obstacles in the way of my player’s goal or was I making justified challenges for the player?

Faeborn Saga

May it please the court, even the lowly-but-still-alright-with-me bailiff Jake, I present to you the case of A God in a Box. Last year, I finished DMing a 2-year campaign that ended well. However, there is a moment that remains a shadow (a dark stain if you will) on the whole experience. The party at the time was aboard an enemy ship, captained by a disgraced elven noble and his elven lover, Telga, an evil sorceress hell-bent on becoming a lich. (I used Drow Matron Mother stats with different spells.) She was secretly in possession of an evil, sentient book hidden away in a chest in her room, a book created by the god of death, the overall bbeg of the campaign. One of the party members, Ramen, a rogue/fighter, decided to have a private chat with Telga in her chambers. He attacked, casting Silence through his bow, a homebrew magic item. At the time, the bow was worded so it caused an effect like Silence, but a spell was not actually “cast” and therefore couldn’t be countered. After that, he grappled her, pinned her, and began making attacks, with her unable to do anything about it. She couldn't move (grappled), and Silence prevented her from using spells. Panicking, as this was the big bad for this arc of the campaign, I fear I may have cheated my way out of it. The sentient evil book rested in a chest not too far away. The book itself cast a Dominate Monster spell on Ramen, which he failed. With Silence dropped, Telga stood and opened a door to a demiplane and sent Ramen through it. After that, she gathered some of her belongings and teleported away. After this, the player brought back an old character, and the stakes of the plot became higher. Suddenly, it became a race to find Telga and bargain with her to get their boy back. Eventually they encountered Telga again, and the barbarian/warlock killed her before she could re-open the demiplane. Only a divine intervention was then able to bring Ramen back. So, Justices of the Court, though no feelings were hurt (the player was super on board after), and the campaign went on smoothly, I still feel I may have been in the wrong. Is it okay to bend the rules for story’s sake, or should I have let my player womp me?

Kinzie

The illustrious Bailiffs and, I want to say cake? I want to know, is it wrong for me to bring up to the group/our dm that I and some other players are bored of the system he is running and would like to get back to 5e. The issue is he saved up money and put a lot of time into building the world (the avatar rpg that recently dropped). But also when we were supposed to switch back to 5E he was delivered his kickstarter and said he wanted to dm now and we were playing this rpg. Maybe I’m a little salty because I was supposed to dm the 5e session. Anyway, what do I do, stay silent and wait it out (no end in sight) or tell him we are all bored

Connor

May it please the court (and also the recurring guest bailiff), I humbly request your judgment on the case of the airship disaster. In my DM's first ever campaign (set in an entirely homebrew world), our party was recruited by an adventurers' guild for a mission in a distant desert. The guild fenerously provides transportation in the form of an airship, piloted by a beloved NPC. En route, our airship was attacked and sustained considerable damage. The DM described an issue with the engine, as well as damage to the hot air balloon helping to keep the ship aloft. Our party split up to try to repair the ship, working under the assumption that this was a skill challenge: half of us went into the engine room and spent several rounds trying to understand the problem, but we failed our intelligence checks. The other half stayed on the deck to use fire and wind spells to right the hot air balloon, trying to blow it back into position and help heat the air (based on our IRL understanding of the physics behind hot air balloons). Despite our efforts, the ship crashed in the desert, leaving the party stranded and condemning our beloved captain to an uncertain fate. After a battle in the desert that nearly ended in a TPK, the DM called an end to the session and the entire campaign out of embarrassment. He later confessed that not only did he have no idea how hot air balloons work, there was no possible way for us to stop the ship from crashing: we were only meant to find a way to keep ourselves from dying in the collision. Our DM is still ashamed of this incident to this day, despite the entire party reassuring him and sticking around for another campaign. So I ask you: should our DM be burdened with shame for the rest of his life over this error? I will accept (and personally enact) any punishment you feel is appropriate.

Jake de Medeiros

May it please the court, I present the case of the Table that went Silent. The story takes place in a session where me and my other party members had to rescue a nobleman’s twin daughters from some bandits in a castle. We rescued the girls, and decided to sneak out of the castle by putting the twins in our bag of holding. The DM agreed. As we were climbing down the walls of the castle, my friend Dylan made a pretty unimportant in-character joke that his dwarf cleric PC “wanted some mutton”. The joke wasn’t unfunny, it was just inoffensive, and was largely just filling some silence at the table. This is where things get weird. Our DM heard the joke and immediately narrated that one of the daughters heard the joke from inside the bag and laughed, causing a guard to notice, and throwing us into combat. This was done without any rolling and was AFTER we rolled a successful stealth check. The fight was absolutely brutal and my PC was killed, the DM refused to apologize and said that joking during a stealth mission meant that he didn’t have to roll perception checks for the guards. Am I in the wrong for thinking this is unfair? I’ll leave it up to you. Cheers.

Jamie Bloyce-Hykel

Honourable court of Crick Justice. And Jake I guess too. While intra-party theft is often frowned upon, is it the lesser of two evils to steal The Deck of Many Things from the group's Druid after they have been knocked out during combat to prevent them from drawing from the deck (again). Combat had been resolved so while I was dragging them too safety I might have private messaged the DM to make a slight of hand check to obtain the Deck for safe keeping.

Hannah Osborne

I come with a confession for the the most holy church of Dice Christ, most hallowed be their name. I fear I have incurred their wrath. I purchased a set of fine gemstone dice a few years ago for my bard in a new campaign. They were beautiful, and sparkly, and rolled suspiciously well. We joked at the table that they were “well crafted”. A few years into the campaign, after a session where I rolled so many 18s, 19s, and 20s that I actually felt incredibly guilty, I retired the dice and bought a different set. But my luck quickly changed and several bad rolls with the new dice set in motion a series of unfortunate events that lead to my level 11 bard being trapped forever in a cursed ring after a deal with time devils went wrong. It was very narratively satisfying and a very exciting and memorable session. It was a worthy way to lose such a high level character. But I have to wonder, did I reject a gift from Dice Christ when I retired the original set of dice? Did my bard pay the price? I’m willing to accept any penance. Go with Dice. Praise be.

uudd

To our glorious supreme crit and the slightly ok bailiff Jose, I bring you the case that sparked an incredibly heated debate. I the dm used a creature who if they got a sneak attack the players entered into a surprise round before the battle. My player who has the alert feat said that they can't be surprised which I agreed, so I said the creature wouldn't be able to attack them before the full initiative started. He said that he gets a turn because since he can't be surprised he should be able to act. We used my way this time and agreed to try his next time. My question is this: before the game started we argued what determines a stripper, is it amount of clothes or area the clothes covers. I say it's number ie. If he takes off a shirt but adds a belt and 2 socks, he's wearing more clothes. My player says the shirt covers more so even if he adds clothes still less. We humbly await your ruling

Nick Powell

May it please the buff bailiff and the ever stern justices of the crit, I am currently playing in my 3rd long form campaign as a player, and have played in close to a dozen one shots since staring the hobby at the beginning of the pandemic. I love the game, the story you tell with your DM and fellow players, and the fun of planning out your character for each new campaign or one shot. However I've noticed what I consider to be a troubling trend. It feels like many DMs are, for lack of a better word, afraid of high level D&D. Every one shot I've participated in has involved some level of player involvement in determining what level the characters should be for the adventure. Like clockwork, as people throw out ideas such as "level 5 for extra attack" or "level 4 so we can get a feat or ASI", or my insistence that "we should do something awesome like be level 12 to try some new crazy abilities", we always - always - end up being level 3. Usually the DMs state that this is because "level 3 is the best level, it's where all the fun stuff triggers for most classes". Similarly with the long form campaigns I've played in, across the board the DMs explain that they're capping it at level 8 or 9, telling us not to think about our characters' abilities or options beyond that ceiling. I have also been DMing my own campaign since the beginning or the pandemic, and I just don't see the game that same way. I want my players to go wild, use new abilities, get to level 20 - and maybe beyond - and feel like super heroes. Is this just how the game is viewed by most DMs? My players are currently level 14 and 15, and I'm having more fun designing encounters for them now than I was when they were level 5 or 6 - is high level d&d that much of a burden? How can I convince my DMs that letting us play to higher levels or be higher levels for a one shot, where they can ratchet up the encounters and the tension with no backlash or consequence, is both exciting and fun for them as well as the players? Or am I being a big baby man and I should just be glad I get to play d&d with my friends as frequently as I do? I await your judgment!

foster the boneless duck

may it please the court, especially the effervescent axford, and the moderately okay bailiff jonathan, i bring you the case of the tpk by oath of vengeance paladin. i play dnd online a majority of the time because most people who play dnd within 1 hours drive are all white men who think they're the best thing to grace this earth since the inception of dnd 5e- you know the types. a few years back when i was but 19 i ventured to my closest nerdy club to finally play dnd in person! (online dnd is like the boss level of scheduling a dnd session) dimension 20 had inspired me and i had one regular game that i stood up at 5am for. upon arriving, i joined the club and a dnd game with some greek mythology vibes which is absolutely my shit. the group already had their characters made and i was told to play either a paladin or cleric to ensure a rounded party. i decided on a paladin and yes this is where this is going. i won't go into all the slight sharp comments i got about being a young, queer, femme presenting person at such a dnd game but you can guess. i have a thick skin though, and sarcasm for days, i didn't particularly care. but one day, as my paladin saved another pc from a certain and watery death with a 22 strength check while i gave him some, if i do say so myself, top tier banter at him being a barbarian and launching himself into a deadly current. to which he replied, "only in dnd could such a smart-mouthed girl also be as strong as a guy." i just snapped. i released him into the water and when i got the "you can't do that!" from the fighter, i drew my sword. that day, lycella clearwater became a villain, the dm who was insistent that dnd should be "realistic", ran the full combat as i absolutely murdered the other pcs and then walked away from the table. i came home to nothing but a message from the club president informing me that i had been banned. i lay myself at your feet and am absolutely ready to enact any and all justice in the name of this supreme crit and dice christ.

Miikra

To the honorable justices and the comical bailiff, I present to you the case of the overpowered barkeep: My group is playing a modified version of Rise of Tiamat where we start at 10th lvl. During character introductions, the barbarian and fighter got into a wrestling match to prove who was stronger. A few grapple checks later, the barkeep twin cast hold person on them to settle things down. We eventually made our way to a new town where the local inn keep was a dick to the party. Spitefully, my character, the warlock, cast disguise self to impersonate the inn keep to say the inn was full in order to drive away business. I was found out and the inn keep cast dispel magic to undo the disguise. I counterspelled his dispel magic but the barkeep counter spelled my counterspell. I argued he should have to roll as I autocast my spells at 5th lvl and the GM shot back the barkeep also cast his counterspell to 5th level. After some discussion, it was revealed to the players that every bar/inn keep was a 10th level sorcerer, the justification being that they had to be able to hold their own in this harsh world. As the players, we argued that the fact we were only as powerful as the common inn keep took away what made us feel special and capable of taking down Tiamat. Justices, were we right to be salty and disheartened or does the GM have the right to build a world where NPCs could band together and take care of the BBEG themselves?

Nathan Perez

To the all knowing Justices and the bailiff whose name rhymes with steak, I humbly present my case. I play an Armorer Artificer named Cole the Scavenger with a Magitek prosthetic gauntlet that I use to shoot lighting at my enemies with. However, my DM rules that whenever I roll a nat 1 on an attack roll, my gauntlet malfunctions and I need to cast mending on it to be able to use it again. It's gotten so bad that the last time I rolled a nat one, he ruled that my gauntlet arm fell completely off, leaving me literally disarmed. I was frustrated, but was able to salvage the situation by Catapulting my dismembered metal fist right through the forehead of the boss. But I digress. Justices, should my cool ass gauntlet arm still be able to shoot lightning even if I roll a one, or should I take it and shove it up my own ass for complaining? I beseech your judgement and will cook steak in the meantime. P.S. Gauntlet Guys unite Justice Caldwell

Andrew Brockman

To the most Honored and deified justices of the Supreme court, and Jake. May it please the court. I joined a homebrew campaign over the summer with a professional DM. The story was that the party was attempting to thwart the attempts of a dark deity from Shadowfell to attack the material plane. One night the party all rolled Wisdom saves and myself and the DMPC both failed. The DM said that his DMPC was saved because of “something” that his girlfriend did to him (I think it was the power of love or something?) and so I was the only one to face the consequences. I was marked for death and the BBEG would send swarms of enemies trying to kill me all night. We, a party of level 7s, had just faced off against the first wave only to be attacked by a Nightwalker and be forced to flee. They attacked me and I used one of the DMs homebrew spells to try to avoid the attack. The spell essentially made a near perfect copy of me and I was turned invisible for an entire round. The DM ruled that the enemy would attack the copy once, and then attack me (who was still invisible). I argued that they still could not see me, and so couldn’t attack me even though they know the fake wasn’t me. They quickly became annoyed and said “that’s what is happening. Full stop.” I stopped pleading my case because I could sense their frustration but a few days later they reached out to me and said they didn’t appreciate me “rules-lawyering them,” said it was a pet-peeve and that people at the table were uncomfortable! I apologized to everyone at the table but they either said they didn’t know what I was talking about, or it didn’t bother them. I humbly asked, is pleading your case rules-lawyering and did I commit the most egregious sin or was I unfairly treated? I submit myself to the blade if you deem it right. P.S. The DM one-shot me with a 7th level smite later that session and killed my character permanently, I submit for evidence that I did not complain about that.

Sanna Salomaa

To the joyously jubilant judges and the boisterously bombastic bailiff, I come to you with a grudge most dire. When I started my homebrew campaign, I had prepared for my players a theme of shipwrecks and secrets, of exploration and excitement, of a comprehension and discovery that would slowly dawn upon my players. That is to say, I started a campaign with the main trope revolving around the "discovery of the New World". I had prepared a full alphabet with added letters representing diphtongs, created the framework for a language, and populated the New World with native imperialists and fellow shipwreck survivors, with the strong intent of giving away a few phrases or a few letters per session to my players so that they'd slowly learn about their new surroundings. Up until my players came across the first stalker in the night, a scout for the native Empire, and the Bard cast Comprehend Languages and my plans for what I called "creeping comprehension" flew out the window. I should've accounted for the use of magical means in a fantasy setting, but this slumped me. So, dearest Judges, I ask of you: would I have been in the right to flatly deny the usage of the spell, or was I justly robbed due to my arrogance? Best regards, A linguist scorned

sasha

To the most Holy of Sweet Bishops of the Dice Christ, I have a confession. During the pandemic, I was playing in a game that was DM'd by my boss who had only had previous experience running games for his 3 children, all under the age of 12. He was... terrible. I have played DnD since I was 12 and I've never had a worse DM. He was a great advisor, but a terrible DM. In a battle, I tried to give the rest of the party time to get away (hoping to die) and was downed. I lied about getting a nat 1 on my second death save in order to get out of having to play in this game. I actually rolled a 17 or 18. Regardless, my boss interfered in a Deus Ex Machina way to save my character and I didn't die. I have felt guilty every since and I beg of you, please absolve me of this sin... in the name of Dice Christ.

DannyDM

To our Esteemed Justices Axford, Murphy, & Tenner & our rejuvenated Baliff John, I present to you the case of the 1-shot bug bear. We are playing our first campaign (LMOP) & they were going through Cragmaw Cave and are currently level 2. I'm sure Murph remembers this module but early-on in the cave, there is an optional Chimney that you can climb up to get a peek into the boss bug bear's room. The party did and saw a bugbear, a wolf, & a goblin around a fire. The party did not proceed and went around the cave the longer way. Fast forward and the party is fighting outside the boss room and 1 goblin escapes to the boss's room. When the party sneaks in, they cannot see anything other than the fire from before & a bunch of stolen barrels. Sticking out from the barrel is a wolf tail (the wolf did not roll well on stealth) & our paladin decided to go up to the wolf and tried to befriend it. Once she got there, the bug bear popped out from hiding and got a surprise attack on her and I rolled a nat 20 for the attack. I'm sure you already know how dangerous surprise attacks are for bugbears due to their special ability so the paladin was immediately full-killed in the first attack while her torso was separated from her legs and sent flying across the room to SPLAT against the wall while her legs were kept standing. My player argued that it was unfair for me to kill her PC like that without a warning, while I argued, her warning was the perception check & that they should have remember that there was a bugbear in this room with the wolf from earlier when they checked. My player wants to play the same character sheet as a "twin sister" to replace this one but I feel like that's cheating and we've been going back and forth about this for weeks and the campaign is at a standstill until we resolve this. Who was in the right here? I await your wise decisions and we will abide by all rulings humbly.

Casey Brenner

Thank you, you made me laugh really hard this morning with this case. I equally want to see “potion enemas” pitched to the No Chortles Tortle.

Fresh Beeps

May it please the mighty justices, and Tuckers spry, young cuck. I bring you the case of the sacrificial scion. Around 14 years ago we were deep within a campaign of 3 or so years. My friends character had gone through many a quests and adventures to work his way up an order made of snake and dragon people's. Each level in the homebrewed fighter class modifying his body a bit more. Towards the end of the campaign his greatest companion, the prince of the faction, asked him to pay a price for a ritual to save them all, but it would be deadly. My friend famously decided to roll a d20. On odds he would sacrifice himself. Safe to say Chargen died that day, and it was then made apparent that the prince was a fake and Chargen simply died for nothing. For years my friend was made fun of for killing his character based off evens or odds. His name and choices always compared to this moment. I am looking for damages in the form of defamation or some such legal word. Thank you.

Travis Perkins

Exalted bailiff and the other guys, I bring to you the case of the blind dragon heist. I'm running a 4th level campaign based on Rime of the Frostmaiden. Long story short, the party was investigating a shipwreck that a partially blind dragon was using as a temporary horde. The ancient white dragon (CE) has a +13 perception, but due to cataracts rolls with disadvantage. She once had a rider (an evil wizard), but he died and she now thinks that his corpse is still alive and active. After escaping from the ship and the enemies inside, the party managed to evade the dragon and make it back to the safety of their sleds. Thinking that this was the end of the session, the party began packing up. Out of nowhere, the party rogue stated that they're going back to the ship. They planned to climb onto the Dragons back and fly it back to its lair so they could steal all the treasure. Note that dexterity is the second lowest stat of this rogue, who only has a 12 Dex. I let them roll 3 stealth checks to get to the ship, onto the ship, then up to the dragon. The rogue having a +3 stealth vs the Dragons +13 perception with DA. Somehow, they beat the dragon each time. At 120 feet, I made them roll wisdom against dragon fear and they passed. They finally failed an acrobatics check to climb onto the dragon. I narrated that they pushed the corpse off but that the dragon noticed them. They rolled middling on a persuasion check to convince the dragon that they're the son of the wizard that was allied to the dragon. Realising that a dragon breath attack is enough to instantly kill the rogue, I narrated that the dragon was confused enough that they got away, not wanting to kill the character off in what was essentially an epilogue to the session. I know I should have just killed them. The party said they would have supported me if I had. The rogue states that they should have had more chances to convince the dragon. I beseech you, please tell me if killing the rogue was the right thing to do.

Connor Raftery

To the preening personable playful pontiffs of our lord and savior, Dice Christ, I ask for a brief confessional. In a dramatic showdown, where I introduced a team of villains to combat the party, I downed one of the parties NPC, their balnor equivalent. During the fight, the NPC rolled a natural 20 on their first death saving throw. But I didn’t tell the party, but acted as if he had failed. I kept the natural 20 in my back pocket until the dramatic climax of the scene where I said he rolled it on his third roll. Allowing him to dramatically come back. I wanted to keep the will of the dice, but wanted to keep the stakes high. Am i damned to the eternal hell of walking across a floor of D4’s with no shoes on? Or am I redeemable in deus dice-os’s eyes? In their name we pray. Amen.

Dale Colburn

Dear dice Christ, I have a confession. I was running a campaign for my girlfriend and a couple of her friends when they were fighting a wizard with fire ball. My gf was already downed and it did more the her hit point maximum and would have finished her. but seeing how upset she was knowing she might loose her character forever I fudged the damage roll and let her live until a party member could cast a healing spell. Can I ever reach the dice christs glory again or am I doomed to dice jail forever

kurtisybus

To the honourable justices and their mate who has frankly risen above his station. I'm currently DMing a campaign for my brother and his friends. We're all having a good time and it's fun to flex my world building muscle. Only one small issue. First play session our Cleric rocks up and - in a moment of chaotic energy - insisted that her God is none other than Taylor Swift. Now I'm no Taylor snob - to quote my man Brennan Lee Mulligan "Red bangs from beginning to end." But during our session 0 I made it clear that while this was an origional world, the cosmology was based off the Forgotten Realms. I attempted to compromise, saying that while I would prefer it if they picked a more traditional God, I would stretch my imagination and allow for the fact that somewhere in the world there was a prophet who's name was Taylor Swift who spread the good news via their music. The cleric alas, seemed and has continued to seem dissapointed. Thus I humbly ask, was I wrong to deny my cleric and Taylor the Godhood she so deserves?

Mitchell Kilgour

May it please the honorable justices and Jill’s roommate, I am running a sci fi campaign for my players. We were in between story arcs and I decided to run a fun inbetweener back to the future session where the party was in town and a delorian appeared out of nowhere, out came a white haired man in a lab coat who told them that he had lost his friend Marty in the past, medieval era, and had to ask the players to come back in time to help. A PC sneak attacked the professor and after an incredibly short fight they killed him and took the delorian. Onto my question, the PC’s just found out the BBEG’s identity and plan to use the delorian to go back in time and kill him as a baby, is there any way I can make this not work or still be challenging? Or do I have to be the mean DM and take away their toy?

Gavin French

May it please the court and the humble but lowly Bailiff. I present to you the case of the Impenetrable Door. A friend of mine really wanted to to try and DM a custom campaign he created off of a popular RPG so we created our characters and set out to a new Homebrew world. Once we arrived we were quickly apprehended, stripped of our gear and made into "Slaves" for the local authority. They allowed us to roam the city in exchange for helping them deal with rouge monsters their scientists created. Our investigation brought us to a small laboratory/dungeon. Upon finding doors, pathways, and storage contianers we were given one sentence remarks when asked about these things such as, "Its too dark to see/continue" "You can not tell what this item is without scientists explanation" (Which we could not talk to being Slaves) and "This door is Locked" This one particularly made me question our objectives because with a Knock Spell, Glyph of warding (blow up the door) and even using lightning based spells to Jumpstart the electricity would not allow the door to open. The energy at the table dissipated and we abandoned the lab much to our DMs chagrin. So I ask the court, should we have been able to open the door with the solutions we presented or should we have indulged our DM and continued forward at a snails pace. I leave my judgment to you.

Travis Perkins

It sounds like him not playing is the best case scenario. As a new dm, you shouldn't need to put up with that. It would be like organising a soccer league for a group of friends and then having one player continually ask if you could all ditch soccer and play baseball instead, after you had already bought the balls and rented a field.

Caleb A.

Oh heavenly host of Dice Christ, I lay prostrate before you and confess my rotten sins: I am a serial stat re-roller I rarely get to play often, and for each campaign that I’m invited to, there’s an extended period of time before the start where I can only think about my character sheet. Rolling stats is one of my favorite parts of creation and because I get to do it for a character I plan on playing so rarely, I often will reroll my stats over and over again just for the excitement. Eventually I call a final roll and take whatever results come out of it, but I do fear rolling stats anywhere between 10 and 30 times results in higher average stats because if I roll truly terrible for stats I’ll roll one more “final” time. I can only assume divine retribution from Dice Christ has led to most of these campaigns falling through after session zero, but I turn to the church to exorcise my sins. Please lead me to penance and truly allow The Almighty DC to take the dice next character creation

Two Deers Beep

I come humbly on my knees to ask forgiveness from dice Christ for I have sinned. I have lied about my investigation check and turned a 4 into a 16 for a total of 25 and it haunts my dreams. My DM has a tendency to let things stall in a dungeon of for example we can’t find a hidden door or lever or something I was getting a bit frustrated so when I rolled poorly I changed it to a higher roll to progress forward however I ended up finding a hidden magic weapon as well. Now with each swing of the sword I feel my lie each creature felled is a body I must hide in my closet. Please how can I cleanse my dice of this filth

Luke Polito

May it please the court and squeeze the Baliff, I come to you with a tale of a fallen hero, as of yet unavenged. The Ballad of Dougar Greystone I was part of a Tomb of Annihilation campaign playing a Dwarf Path of the Ancestral Guardian barbarian, Dougar Greystone. Son of a blacksmith, former gladiator turned bounty hunter, covered in tattoos honoring his mother and Moradin. My story for him was that of a man on a path of redemption, to go out and use his strength to bring peace to the world and not line the pockets of the rich. Also he sounded like Stone Cold Steve Austin. Campaign was going okay until we were set to take on a pirate lord. The other PCs, on the edge of the forest, spent about an hour debating over what the plan should be. That's fine, it happens, but it was all out of character and made it hard to stay attached to the moment. Once we stepped out with whatever the plan was we were immediately ambushed, surrounded by pirates, and threatened with death. A fight breaks out when he threatens to kill our sorcerer in cold blood, we are captured and bound. The captain will only let the party go back into the wilds if one of us takes the fall. A hero's death, Dougar thought. I sacrifice myself, tell the party to bring my cut of the gold back to my mother's shop, and Dougar is decapitated by the pirate captain via his own greatsword, a fairly metal way to go. " Great!" I think, "This will give the party some narrative motivation." Well that was the last time the campaign met as the DM lost interest. The final scene was his head hitting the deck of the ship as the captain cackled, claiming my greatsword for his own. So I ask you, cherished justices: If a dwarf redeems himself but no campaign is left to feel it, was he redeemed at all? Is Dougar allowed to sit at Moradin's forge or was he dragged into the pits for his past? I await your sage wisdom.

Quinn Killian

To the honorable Supreme Crit-Justices and the lowly but down to earth bailiff Jake, May it please the court I am here seeking judgment for my transgressions as DM. In the first campaign I ever DMed with a bunch of my friends from high school, one of my friends started to become a “problem player”. They were consistently on their phone, would commonly not show up to sessions without giving any heads up and on more then one occasion, they would show up disruptively drunk. And they would often try to justify this inebriation by claiming that their character would probably also be drunk. After many sessions being canceled due to this player not showing up, we eventually started playing without them where I would either play their character as an NPC or write them out of the session until the player returned. During one of these sessions where I played their character, all the players received a one time use item that would allow them to stay up with one hit point if they would otherwise be downed. One of my players, playing a rogue, asked if he could swipe this item off of the absent player’s character, whom I was playing as an NPC that session. Because at that time I was a little annoyed with the absent player, like all of the other players were, I decided to allow this. I had the rogue roll slight of hand against the absent player’s passive perception, which was low. The rogue succeeded in swiping the item and the absent player never found out. Was I wrong to let one of my players steal from a player not at the table or should I have maybe done something different, like make the absent player roll perception when they got back? I lay myself to the mercy of the court, May Dice christ and/or the Dice devil have mercy on my soul

Travis Perkins

Oh man, I feel like we had the same DM xD I was talking about joining a group and the DM sent us all a list of all the home-brew stuff he does. Like how goblin, orc and Goliath players have to have a -3 in int, and elves get to pick 2 skills that start as 20. Just completely unnecessary home-brew that makes the game weird.

Jacob Boers

May it please the court, but it will probably only please the bailiff. I present the case of the people vs the supreme crit. Ever since the introduction of guest justices to the crit there has been a sacred oath taken by every guest justice in order to become official justices of the supreme crit. In the episode where the oath was created only the players justice Wilson took the oath and no other members of the crit took the oath. It wasn’t until the episode where Emily first acted as bailiff that the issue began. In a fit on excitement Jake very quickly took the oath and served as justice for the first time. Ever since then there has been constant abuse slung upon Justice Hurwitz. The only TRUE JUSTICE in the courtroom. The people will stand for this no longer. I am prepared for whatever punishment the “justices” dish out to me for bringing this up. Nothing would please me more to become a martyr for my cause.

Benjamin Dale IV

The Case of the Failed Astral Pirate: Hello Honorable Judges and Little Buddy Bailiff Jake, I play in a campaign where the premise is 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 no sense. 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 along with all of our magic items. I ask you, was I wrong for trying to avoid the combat and send off my character the way I wanted? 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.

Tugsalot

May it please the all powerful Supreme Crit and may it also bring joy the far less great bailiff. I bring the case of the campaign that hasn't even started yet. I'm planning on DMing my first campaign for some friends, and we're going to have the PCs originate from different realms representing the colors of faces on a rubiks cube. We're not starting the campaign for a few months because we're going to wait for a player to move back to the state we're all from and do this campaign in person. In the mean time, we are all planning things, and I have given my players the freedom of fully creating the world/realm their character will be from if they so choose. Of the 4 players, 1 has decided they wanted the world which will be represented by the yellow face of the rubiks cube. In plain words, they want their world to be the world of Dune. I understand that I may receive backlash for this, but nonetheless, I have tried listening to the first 9.5 chapters of the audio book a few months before we even thought about this campaign, and I do not want to force myself to further listen through this overcomplicated, boredom ridden slog. Will I be doing my players a disservice if I, the dm, don't read the source material for a world my player wants his character to come from? Would I be within my rights to tell the player we're doing Tatooine instead? Should I enact Justice Murphy's favorite punishment of "get new friends" over this matter? I humbly await the decision of the Supreme Crit.

Lorelei and Kyra Newly Weds

Hey guys, I got a case for you that my coworker and I are worried about. A couple months back a co worker and I decided to start planning a pirate themed campaign with the base concept being monster recruitment ( like trolls, goblins, githyanki, etc.) We have managed to get a party of 5 players with most of them being new. The issue is that while making characters I decided a part of my background was that I had a crush on the captains daughter (who was my age), nothing to bad so far? Well the other person who also wanted to start as a pirate also wanted to to have a crush on the captains daughter, this player is the captains son. I plan on using illusions to represent my original dead crew always being with me, using the daughter as a visage when I'm serious. The problem player wants to basically sexually assault my player of make sexual remarks when I change into her specifically. We have only talked about this but it seems he is hellbent on keeping this as his first character. So I ask should we kick him before we even start? Or should we let him make the first move and plausibly kill him with pvp as soon as it happens? We both humbly await your judgement, thank you

Isaac

May it please the critiest of crit justices Murphy, Axford and Tanner. As well as the sweetest of sour patch bailiffs Jake. I present to you the case of THE PLAYER WHO’S NEVER PLAYED I am a huge D&D fan having found NADDPOD as my first intro to the game back in mid to late 2018. I have since introduced the podcast and game to most of my friends. Constantly trying to set up some campaign or one shot or anything to play with any of them that have expressed interest for YEARS via zoom, discord, literally anything. It has been difficult because we are out of college and most live in different cities and states. BUT a few months ago it was brought to my attention that 2 of my friends started a campaign together with some others. I asked them why they didn’t include me and they claimed something along the lines “we didn’t think you’d want to since you couldn’t be here in person”. I request reprimand for those who have done this and restitution for the crimes committed unto me. I humbly await your verdict. Thank you. P.S. To this day i have still not played a single roll of dnd. I am very introverted unless i know you then i am extremely extroverted. The mere thought of playing with strangers gives me a ton of anxiety. This is why i have yet to branch out and play online or in public settings(shops and such)

HaysForHorses

May it please the high-chaired justices, the lofty listeners, and either Jake or John, depending on Murph’s mood, I offer the case of Dead Dad DnD To comply with the request for brevity I will plainly state the offense. It was my first ever dnd campaign. Session 1 I mentioned that my Goliath paladin would likely live in something like a studio apartment (1 bedroom). My DM vehemently opposed the idea as “that wouldn’t exist in this world.” I did not want to challenge his creative agency as the DM, so I let it go. Then, as we continued, we entered a snowy biome, similar to where my character had grown up, so I expressed that I was feeling happy and comfortable for the first time in awhile. The DM then proceeded to have me roll wisdom saving throws as I “grappled with the memories of my dead parents.” After about 5 of these checks, I asked if I could stop doing these checks as my real-life dad is dead and I don’t have to grapple with the memories any time I am reminded of him, but he continued making me do the checks. Tell me, judges, do you feel like this realism was a bit much within my first dnd game, or was it reasonable to impose these limitations on my character? I humbly await your decree. P. S. He feels terrible about this but we are good friends now and just recently got matching 2-crew tattoos :)

Lorelei and Kyra Newly Weds

You did the right move my man, you kept the table happy while not holding up progress, good job

Jack H

May it please the kangaroo court of misfit justices and the sniveling bailiff who enables their corruption. Our party was at a magical tree that required us to solve a riddle to advance to the boss fight. The riddle went as follows: I cast a spell that affects the masses I am the whisper you hear among the branches When with many, I face scrutiny. But when alone, I’ve been mastered. I realized that the perfect answer to the riddle was a fart. A fart is, in fact, a whisper that affects the masses and is scrutinized among others. Everyone knows a fart is mastered when alone. However, our DM did not accept this answer and eventually gave us a hint which led to the real answer, A Song. This brought the party into a frenzy as we felt that fart was a more appropriate solution than a song. My question to you is, should a DM accept a creative answer to a riddle?

MakingMercien

To the omniscient justices and the favor bailiff John, may it please the court! In a recent game, our party was tracking down a rogue mind flayer hiding out in an ancient temple. During the final fight, my barbarian attacked recklessly to gain advantage on his attacks, absolutely destroying one of the mind flayers minions. When the DM rolled to attack me he got 2 18s which would both hit. Our Wizard then cast Silvery Barbs. Because both rolls the DM had just done would hit, when he rerolled one D20, he then took the other 18 that had not been rolled. Many of the players claimed that Silvery Barbs negated the advantage rolls entirely, and that the DM should have to use his reroll. While the DM and myself believed that the advantage still stands because I've still attacked recklessly. We're humbly await your verdict! P.S. I took the hit during that round and went down, but was able to relentless endurance back up to finish the fight.

Chandler B

To the honorable and esteemed justices - and the slightly below average bailiff with the thin ankles. I present to you the case of The Spotlit Gunslinger: My table is playing a narrative structured campaign in the world of Theros. Our (first time - bless his heart) DM has an interesting story prepared with plenty of mystery, plot twists, and intrigue. Our gunslinger, however, seems completely uninterested in the story provided. He seeks out any opportunity to split from the party and pursue goals for his character (seeking gunpowder so he can get a gun) and acts annoyed when the rest of us play within the story. We started this campaign eight months ago and just reached level 3 last session. This is in part due to scheduling conflicts, but also to the gunslinger’s distractions. Should the gunslinger learn to trust our DM and his story, or should we adapt our play style so this new player can enjoy his first D&D experience as well? I humbly await your verdict, A patient artificer.

Katie

To the exalted bishops of Dice Christ and the lowly altar boy, I humbly come to you today with a witnessing. I was told by my DM to make a deception roll to try to keep my powerful fae warlock patron (and dad), from knowing I’d been eavesdropping on him. I rolled my die, and it got stuck between the side of my dice tray and another die, presenting a somewhat cocked 16, which, with my modifier, would’ve led to a success. However, I knew in my heart that if the roll had been a poorer one, I would not have hesitated to reroll. So, with Dice Christ in my heart, I did so, and He rewarded me with a natural 20. Thank you, Dice Christ, for helping me lie to my dad. This is ridiculous.

Easton Moore

st night my party got TTK’d. We were in the death house side mission for the Straud campaign and fought hard through the house with a few members almost dying. We made it to the ritual basement and decided not to sacrifice a dog to the cult. Doing so made the house turn on us and we had to successfully pass 8 challenges to survive. According to this challenge after failing the third challenge the last person in the initiative order gets “lost to the houses threats”, per the rules with nothing else explaining what happens, aka dying. Problem is the DM stated all 5 had to roll for the save and all had 5 had to pass the save DC or it was considered a group fail even though the book clearly states “One check is sufficient enough for the entire party to advance beyond an obstacle, pass or fail.” Having 1 person pass for the group is much more manageable than all 5 especially when the dc’s were 10, 15, 12, 10, 12, 15, 15, 20 (we are lvl 3). Were we wronged for having to all pass these checks ,when commonly only half have to pass and here it was specifically stated that only one had to roll for the group, leading to a party wipe? For reference material check ReVamped: The Essential Curse of the Straud Campaign-Death House and the challenge is on the last page.

Tim

Dear Benevolent Judges and...honestly, pretty dope Baliff, My party and I were recently charged with following some guys to find their secret base and infiltrate it (classic D&D stuff). Before I started following the one group bad guys, I was spotted (unbeknownst to me) turning invisible by a different group of bad guys. I followed the first group to the base (invisibly), along with my two other party members. We got to the base door and descended in, all three of us invisible. For a reason that's not important, my other two party members were drawn back upstairs, outside the base. I was alone by myself in a 20 by 20 room, invisibly watching the bad guys. My DM then says that the main bad guy casually walks to the wall near where I'm hiding and stabs my character in the gut. She explained that the second group of bad guys came in and told the first group that there was some invisible people around and that's how the bad guy knew where I was. This was at the end of a session, and we haven't played again since, but I ask: Is that fair? We've haven't talked about it yet (I promise, we will), but I'm willing to concede that the big bad guy should get a surprise round, but I'm still invisible, so I think it should be with disadvantage, until he hits. I leave my judgement in your hands.

Eric McDaniel

May it please the gentle but firm Baliff and the esteemed Honorable Crit Judges, upholds of the dice christ. I bring to the case of the feat dual cast I dm' for a my group of friends, and gave them a hand picked feat starting at level 1 as I didn't see this short campaign turn into a 2 year long run due to player decisions. I gave dual cast to the sorcerer assuming he would mix two spells together, which for his privacy I shall call Mark. He never did always opting for just doubling damage as in lightning bolt, fire ball ect. He ended up getting the ring of haste each of these have 3 uses per long rest. As the game grew more complex it became apparent that this combo became way over powered I had to boost the health of most of creatures to survive at least 1-5 rounds of combat, I took the player aside and asked if we could find a way to balance or pick between haste or dual cast, after a debate he refused. I continued on with campaign part two ( part 1 they insulted a dimensional time dragon when he tried to recruit them to keep dimensional disruption is this universe, then proceeded to kill him assuming he was the big bad boss, after they too easily beat the real one previously.) Should I have been more adamant about nerfing the player or made the the big bads even badder by adjusting stats, or perhaps an option C im not seeing? I feel like adjusting stats is almost a sin against Dice Christ? I humbly await the courts decision. Thank you for your time. Eric Mcdaniel

Mister E

To the honorable justices and fine enough bailiff, I come to you in a moral mire. I am involved in 3 separate weekly games (both playing in and running) and I have a friend that wants to join in. The problem is that no one else is okay including them in as they have a LONG history of playing computer games at the table and not reading their abilities properly and is a bit immature. I feel bad since outside of dnd they are a fine friend and they have been really wanting to play. I caved and on top of my already busy gaming schedule offered to run a game for them if they wanted to gather some of their friends for one. We had our first session the other day and it was painful. Theyre all younger and have a more immature sense of humor and all decided to play joke characters (i had to talk someone that had never played dnd before out of not playing a sentient animal that they wanted to roll a will save each day to not turn on the other players). 4 weekly games is a lot, and I’m not having fun but my friend is happy to have this game and I did offer it so at what point can I end this painful weekly 2 hour commitment without being a bad person? I am at the courts mercy and moral high ground.

Peter Mack

To the sultry Crit Justices and the ...bailiff, I bring you the case of the stealthy gelatinous cube. Several years back, a few old school friends and I were running a campaign. We four PCs were all new at the game, and our DM was a professional DM doing it "pro-bono": a friend of one of the PCs. Everything started off well enough, but we all quickly noticed he was short on patience for any "beginner" mistakes. This all came to a boil when we were taking a bit too much time working through a dungeon. After a hard-fought battle with the big bad at the end, we make our way down into the final room where the DM asks "what do you do?" We ask to look around and he describes the room - no roll. We proceed to enter the room and are immediately ambushed by a gelatinous cube from the ceiling - no perception check or initiative roll. Being level 4 and low on health from the previous fight, we TPK near instantly. The DM contends that we did not say we looked up, so there would be no roll. But we believe he deliberately merced our characters because he wanted out. I ask the court, were we wrong to not look at the ceiling without healing, or was this slime out of line? We have not played together since.

Fancynonna

May it please the court and the ever excellent bailiff, I bring forth the case of the forced NPC/PC romance. I was playing a female tiefling cleric in a friend of a friend’s campaign. During a dungeon crawl in a temple we met some important NPCs we were looking for. One of them was also a tiefling, and the DM immediately started saying he was staring at my character. I wasn’t sure why, so I asked, but iirc I failed the insight check. However, the DM kept insisting every 5 mins or so that he was still staring, so I finally asked alright what’s up? Why are you staring? My character isn’t the confrontational type, but it seemed like the only way to get any answers. Turns out he did not know my character, but for some reason he “loved” her, thought she was beautiful and attractive etc. From that moment forth, since we were traveling with these NPCs, it’s been a continuous borderline harassment, I never said I was interested in any of this, and it seemed like the DM was trying to push me in the direction of eventually seducing the tiefling NPC to obtain info or help. I had a convo with the DM and, while initially he said the character was like this for important plot reasons he couldn’t reveal, he eventually agreed to let it go and retcon. Was I in the wrong for not wanting or not expecting this kind of interaction, since we never talked about any of this before the start of the campaign? Thanks!

maggs

To the benevolent judges and decent enough baliff, A couple months ago, I ran a game for my sister and two cousins. It was a more modern campaign, and they had recently been suspiciously kicked out of their superhero group. I mentioned to them that they should check out a room at the top of a skyscraper, because that was where the leaders of the group were before making the decision to kick them out. After this, my players decided to hijack a plane and crash it into the skyscraper. I gave them resistance along the way, with them having to scrounge together money (they got a nat 20) and when one of them, after helping empty the plane of passengers, leapt out of the plane with a parachute, I asked if their character knew how to use one, and upon answering no, their character died from copious amounts of fall damage. then the barbarian (my sister) steering the plane entered a rage to take all the damage from the crash, which she argued with me about until it was mostly fire damage, but also bludgeoning so she could take some off. she survived. the next day when we played again, i killed their characters and the one backup character. we didnt have much time together left anyways, and it felt like it was time to end. my cousins were completely fine with it, even the one that had died originally, because they felt that they deserved it, but my sister disagreed and yelled at me. was I wrong for killing my players after they killed hundreds of people for no reason?

Christopher Murphy

To our Supreme Crit Justices Most High, and the Lowly Baliff Jake, I present the case of the insufficiently railroaded noob. I play in a party of five, and we are all very new to DnD and are still getting to know one another. Leading up to the second session of our campaign the DM hinted to my wife (also a PC in the campaign) that there would be a tough 1v1 battle opportunity in the upcoming session that she, as a 2nd level Druid of the Moon, would be perfect for because she could leverage her wild shape ability. She was excited for this opportunity, but in the session, the DM opened the fight up to whoever in the group wanted to volunteer for it. Another PC was quicker on the trigger and ended up taking the fight himself, which then dominated the rest of the session. Was the DM right to let the inexperience group RP this freely, or should he have been more heavy handed in guiding the task to my wife’s character after teasing it before the session? Since I have no stake in this ruling, I volunteer to enforce your will upon the party.

AceAwes0me

To the amazing and jacked justices and still jacked and almost as amazing bailiff, I present the case of the Abjured Abjuration Wizard I'm playing a game with pretty good group with an eye for roleplaying and most of us have a good feel for our characters. I say "most of us" because we have an abjuration wizard who doesn't appear to know how his character and class is supposed to work. For example, we were facing these gargoyle type creatures controlling LARGER gargoyles and one faced our wizard down. He attempted to stop the creature by stoneshaping a hole in the ground to trap it. But it easily side-stepped that and one-hit KO'd him. As hilarious as that is (and was) if he knew about the core mechanics of his class, he either wouldn't have went down, or been harder to take out. He didn't even have mage armor up, so his AC was SUPER easy to hit. He even has a +2 staff to use, that he tried to use as a melee weapon. (There was also an effect on him at the time that could cause wild magic surges on every spell cast, but still, that shouldn't stop you. I'd argue that's more reason to cast stuff, but I digress) I tried talking with him about it, and he got weirdly defensive about it. I dropped the subject, but other players have brought up privately that they also don't think he knows how to play his character also. So I ask you, humble court, when is it the group's responsibility to take him aside and basically say "You're not playing pretend correctly"? P.S. Can't wait for the DC show, I already got my ticket!

Cameron McEwan

Judges. Jake. The case of Sir Pippin the stolen NPC. I was playing a campaign with some close friends and my fiancee. While in the fae wild, the players met an eladrin called Sir Pippin, who, over several sessions, with carefully thought out roleplay and some lucky rolls in combat endeared himself to the players. In particular my fiancee's Monk character, became quite close to Sir Pippin as he saved her life, risking his own in the process during a dire moment. Cut forward to the end of the arch in the fae wild and the players are saying their farewells to the fae they met when a deranged, whimsical old sorcerer appears and offers the players the deck of many things. Each player took a card and in the one picked up by our Druid was the Knight card. Rather than have a random new character appear, I decided in the moment to instead have the already beloved Sir Pippin become fatefully attached to the party. In my mind this would be the perfect chance to give him an excuse to continue tagging along outside of the fae wild, give some support in combats and could allow me to fan the spark of romance developing between him and the Monk. However as I was explaining this outcome, the Druid who pulled the card had a different read on the situation and insisted that Sir Pippin was, by the card's description, now his character. Unsure how to respond to this but agreeing he was technically in the right, I decided to let him build the character as a supportive role but I would continue to do any dialogue and roleplay for him. Unfortunately this wasn't to be, as the next session the Druid arrived with a fully min-maxed character sheet for Sir Pippin and immediately started talking for him. To keep it brief, Sir Pippin quickly began to outshine the other characters in the party during combat and in roleplay became incredibly two dimensional, a caricature of his former self. Also now that Sir Pippin was being played by my friend instead of me, my fiancee felt uncomfortable about trying to advance their relationship any further. The flame had been snuffed out. Should I have stayed firm and kept this NPC despite the card describing a different outcome? Has my druid gone too far by forcefully taking over my NPC and creating this minmaxed fighter?

borton.hears.a.woooh!

To the honorable Justices and Micah’s brother. It was a heist, and our party could clearly see into the window. In this office sat magical items and a relic the thieves guild demanded. It was under surveillance but our warlock had a plan: thunderstep and take someone with him into the room! However, this noise would clearly set off the alarm, so as the cleric I cast silence in a sphere that covered the entire room and the spot outside the window we stood. Air tight, right? This is the discrepancy: the thunder step set off a motion sensor on the windows. We debated, if there is silence, doesn’t this scientifically mean the air did not vibrate? The DM gave us a full minute in-game before guards discovered where the breach was. I ask: does silence affect spells that create thunder damage? Should we have alerted the guards or was it the perfect crime?

Deenaa

To the merciful judges and dastardly bailiff, I come to you humbly to confess a most elaborate deception. My shy friend was new to D&D when she joined my campaign and really wanted to play a centaur. Quickly, we ran into the problem that centaurs struggle to navigate places like buildings or cliffs, meaning the party often had to work around her limitations. My friend expressed anxiety that her character was a "bad fit" and often worried she was "holding everyone back". Knowing my party to be crafty and contrarian, I hatched a devious plan. On the next difficult encounter they faced, I had one of the "random" loot drops be Slippers of Spider Climbing, worn by an enemy that used them to easily navigate difficult terrain that the centaur also struggled with. Then I really laid it on thick about how these were slippers, and so the centaur couldn't wear them. As expected, my clever players proceeded to whip out the rulebook and show me that the centaur COULD in fact use the slippers just fine (since attuned items change shape to match the owner). I, of course, played the part of the baffled DM with no choice but to allow the centaur attune to the slippers (which became spats). To this day, my player will excitedly use the spider climb ability to navigate herself and the party out of all sorts of trouble, and every time it happens, I play up how the devious party's antics swindled me out of a roll or skill challenge. But I know, and Dice Christ knows, that this was all according to plan. I can only hope that my good intentions will allow me to be absolved in their eyes.

Jor Elare

*ahem* To the benevolent justices and... I want to say Jeff? I bring you a case of my own DM style coming to bite me. I run a campaign with several newish players who were initially uncomfortable with role play. Part of how I incentivised my players to RP is that on charisma checks I will give advantage or disadvantage based on the quality of the speech. This has caused one of my more eloquent players to do very well on several key checks despite having a +1 charisma score. While one of the theoretically more charismatic PCs feels like she's underperforming. Do I continue to reward smart arguments and good deceptions or should I allow the dice to cover some questionable decisions? I await your fair judgement

Damian McDoofenheiven

To the Cute Crit Justices and not Tucker, I bring you the case of the forced pc death. A few years ago, a few online friends and I were playing a campaign run by a (former) friend. They seemed to enjoy causing anguish, killing my squire npc and celebrating making me cry when I rarely do. This encounter was different, they warned us of this forest and warned us not to go in but put a major story hook for one pc in the forest. Pc goes in, we follow, we get separated, and my paladin and the bard run into a large ape. We begin a fight, ending in my character standing over the bard, protecting them as he would die for the party. I get knocked out, get melee'd for two death saves. Bard turn comes and the bard wanted to cast shatter, dm states that since I am knocked out in front of them they can't cast it past me, we all argue but they won't budge. I say it is fine, Bard casts the spell to save himself, killing Snow of the Mountain the Oath of Vengence paladin. The dm then has npcs scream at the bard. Tell me, oh great, court, were we in the wrong for arguing with the dm? Also for dropping this friend like a sack of potatoes?

anniemurphs

Illustriave Crit and Insurmountable Bitc- I mean... Insurmountable Baliff Jake. I present to you the case of the Unrequited Uncomfortable Crush: I was in a group with 3 of my friends, one of which was the dm. This dm had a crush on me, which I very obviously did not reciprocate but dude didn't seem to care. He'd still say and do things both in and outside of our games that made me and my friends feel uncomfortable. I got so uncomfortable, that I'd started to push back a little when he made inappropriate advances, especially after he commented on my "t*ts". Regardless of how I acted, he'd still come on to me, though he started treating one of my characters unfairly. For example: I rolled a nat 1 on a perception roll, but I was a swashbuckler rogue and had reliable talent and couldn't get below a 10 on perception checks, even with a nat 1. He ignored that, and a mimick got a sneak attack on me. I'd have been okay with getting attacked with such a poor roll, even with reliable talent, but I don't think a sneak attack was warranted. My character was fine but it left a sour taste in my mouth after. So, Honorable Crit, do you think this may have been petty treatment from this dude because I didn't have feelings for him? I humbly await your judgement.

Hopscotch

To the splendiforous justices and whoever else is around at the time, A few years ago, some friends and I were playing what we were told was 5e, but everyone was brand new to the game aside from our DM who was a fairly seasoned veteran. The only experience I had with d&d was listening to the Band of Boobs and watching Dimension 20 while my fellow party members had no experience at all. I noticed that he was making rules up as he went along when he decided we were doing too well for his liking and he denied it when called out. This was shitty DMing on his part, but that's not the issue at hand. The issue is this: when I double checked the rules and was sure that he was lying to newcomers, I confronted him and got little more than a shrug from him. I told the rest of the party and we decided that we just won't play with him again. He won't be a DM, he won't be a PC, nothing. After months of excuses out of us as to why we can't play, he caught on, and was apparently very hurt by this. Were we too harsh? Should we have played alongside him as a player in someone else's game? We play with him now and he's a great asset, but knowing that we hurt him still eats at me. I leave judgement up to you.

Guildedfangs

To the Supreme Crit and the critically crucial Baliff Jake, 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 told he made it better than 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?

Birthday Girl Cara

May it please the crit and bailiff John or whatever. I present the case of the scorched magic tree and the pissed off party. In my home game the original god of the world gave up her form to become the first tree and embue the world with magic. To this day this is where all magic comes from. My party had an encounter to rid the tree of an infestation in the branches and the sorcerer cast fireball. I narrated that the fire had caught a couple of the leaves on one of the branches and that more fire would be harmful to the tree. But the party decided the best way to deal with the infestation was to burn it out. By the end of the encounter, after many warnings from me, the tree was badly burnt and I told the magic users in the party that they could feel their magic leaving them as the core of all magic was dying. And now they're super pissed! Am I being a butt hole by taking away some of their magic or were my numerous warnings enough to rid my conscious of this guilt?

Donny

To the juicy justices and bottle-of-catsup bailiff, I bring the case of the unexpected explosion. I am running a game in the 5th edition Ravnica setting, and the story reached a point where the party had to infiltrate an Azorius prison complex to chat with an important NPC. I tried to give the PCs multiple options on how to settle the problem, but the party's sorcerer already had a solution: blow up the lobby. Unbeknownst to me, several of the random items he had purchased across multiple previous sessions - a bag of ball bearings, a pair of smooth hemispherical bowls, and some sovereign glue - were the ingredients to a bomb (with delayed blast fireball as the explosive charge). What's more, using his real-life math and science skills, the sorcerer was able to calculate the muzzle velocity of each ball bearing, compared it to falling damage, and claimed that his bomb would do 5,400 d6 of damage from the shrapnel alone. Because I am trying to be a "yes, and..." DM, I let him get away with killing a quarter of the prison staff and creating a new way into the prison, and all my players (who knew about the bomb at least one whole session before I did) loved it. But I am still feeling salty about having a bouncing betty introduced into my setting without my approval and about being told how much damage it would do. Justices, am I in the wrong for feeling this way? I humbly submit myself before the court and await any punishment you see fit to put upon me.

Skillful Ferret

If it would please the judges on high, will the bailiff down low 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.

Sendam6

To, the Supreme Crit Justices and Bailiff Jake, who I thought was pretty cool, I dunno... I present the case of the vanished loot, may it please the court. I ran a train heist one-shot where the characters had to infiltrate a train, locate a marked chest, and escape with the artifact inside. When they found the chest, one player crit on an arcana check to recognise the object, and I gave them the Dungeon Master's Guide and pointed to the description for the "Sphere of Annihilation". Since they couldn't touch the sphere directly, they shoved the whole chest into a Handy Haversack despite one of the players pointing out the possibility of an explosive interaction between these two particular items. They put the chest in, I rolled behind the screen, took a photo, and told them the chest went in fine. After a fight with a brass dragon on top of the train and a successful escape on chocobos, they returned to their contact and pulled out the chest, only to find it empty. I showed them the dice roll I had made earlier, and the table that showed that the Sphere had vanished without incident when they put it in the Haversack. I though that this was the perfect result for a group of criminals living on the edge, looking for one final job, only to end up right where they started. The players however seemed disappointed that their one-off characters didn't get the big payday. Was I wrong to let them lose their spoils like this?

The Brown Boy Wonder

To the impossibly sexy Justices and the 3/10 baliff I bring to you the case of the unrequited roleplay. I have a group of friends that I've played with consistently for about 10 years now, one player has a character that they really enjoy and have played multiple times recently. (Some variation of a Warlock preformer). Now that's all fine and dandy play what you wanna play but over 2 separate campaigns that character has borderline harassed my characters. Between declaring their love of me to the world and getting their patron to try and force me to love them, to almost completely ignoring every other PC and only roleplaying with my character to the point where I can't do any scene without them right there I've had enough. I've talked to them, the party, and the DM multiple times in and out of character but it never changes. I've completely ditched my current character and made a character that I think the warlock would hate so much they would leave me alone. I will be playing the character within the next few weeks but am having second thoughts about it. I ask you, is it okay to make a character in spite of another player for your independence? I await your judgement.

woodsorrel

To the Estimable Consideration of the Court, should this missive so please the lowly Bailiff, I present the case of the deadly druid: Our druid and only healer frequently makes unilateral decisions that hurt the rest of the party. Most recently, he opened a chest we knew to be cursed. Several monsters came out, downed him, and decimated the rest of the party. During the fight, the druid reminded me during my wizard’s turns that he was down, then confronted the whole party afterwards and said that we should have healed him. We were furious with him, not only for the near-TPK, but for taking up most of a session that was supposed to be about going to another PC’s home village. Should we have made more of an effort to perform medicine checks on him?

Patrick Schiller

To the honorable, dignified, and… sexy? Judges and also crank master Bailiff Jake I come to you with the case of the water guys. My players were in a kingdom on the back of a spider that wandered through a desert wasteland. They had to infiltrate the castle and instead of sneaking in they went to the front door and lied to the guard, saying that they were the “water guys” here to install a new water system. They rolled a nat 20 deception check. This has taken on a life of its own as every time they need to get in somewhere or are caught sneaking they lie and say they are the water guys. Schematics and business cards have been created to improve the lie and honestly they have so much fun with it I’ve been hesitant to bring down the hammer. I’ve introduced things such as a complicated bidet that someone asked them to fix in the middle of a murder mystery session and places where they just don’t drink water, or even hate water in the hopes of getting them to calm down and stop turning our D&D campaign into some sort of business plan to install water features. Am I at fault for not striking down their good time or are they weird for using this fantasy world to live out their dreams of working for some vague and fake water company that prides itself on its “top down water system” I humbly await your judgement

Charlotte Stone

To the honorable judges and the surprisingly tolerable Bailiff Jake, I present the case of Death By Interrogation. The first and only time I DMed, I made the mistake of not checking my players alignments. I ended up having a party of 6 neutral players. Two sessions in, the group defeated a wizard that taken over a town. On his person, they found a note with a clue to the next part of the journey. Two players insisted on keeping the wizard alive on 1 hit point for questioning. I had not planned very far ahead in the campaign (as it was homebrew) and I didn’t have much more information to give them other than the note and some cryptic lines of dialogue about the end of the world and a vague figure behind it. The two players proceeded to waterboard and torture the wizard, but I had no more information planned out to give them. Every time they injured the wizard (to which they argued they were doing non-lethal damage and he shouldn’t go below the 1 hit point), I had him roll a death save. When one of them decided to cut his Achilles tendon, I rolled once again, the wizard failed* his final death save and I told them he died. The two players argued against this but another player (our previous DM) shrugged it off and said it was a fair call to kill him. I ended up not DMing anymore as I didn’t feel very confident about what I was doing and they seemed annoyed that they didn’t get more out of the interaction. The two other players still argue with my decision to kill the wizard 4 years on, so I present the question to you — was I right to kill the wizard? I await your fair judgement so I can tell my friends to shove it or to grovel for forgiveness either way. *this is also a dice Christ confession, as I fudged the wizard’s final death save to kill him quicker.

Kate H.

I have a burden to lay at the feet of Dice Christ. May it please your holinesses, and honor the Dice in heaven above. I am a DM running a campaign with my 3 friends, and the level 5 party has just entered a new town escorted by 2 NPCs: a knight of the town, and a ranger. The knight has been laden with a burden by Dice Christ: he cannot succeed in any combat scenario. The party recently fought meenlocks, which have a frightening aura, and he only managed to succeed once or twice against being frightened (despite having advantage). He hit an AC 15 creature only once over 4-5 rounds of combat. My players and I have decided this NPC must be burnt out and needs a new direction in life. I ask Dice Christ, what must he do to be saved from these terrible rolls? How can he grow to be worthy of Dice Christ? I lay my questions at your feet.

Taylor

To the judicious justices and the baleful bailiff Jeff, if it pleasures the court I have a small claims case. In my game (run by my father) I am playing a shadar Kai archeologist grave domain cleric who discovered the raven queen on one of his digs. I said my character is 299 years old but the DM tried to tell me based on the canon lore that I would have to be way older. I pushed back saying that the world is home brew so the lore is whatever he wants it to be since he had not considered the raven queen until I wanted to play a shadar Kai. I am not sure if he listened to me or not since it hasn’t come up but was I in the wrong for trying to have my character be the age I chose for them?

Doglord Wetbottle

To the omnipresent Crit Justices and the B-b-b-baby boy bailiff

chocopaiboy

To our lovely judges and alright bailiff, I present to you the case of the classist dm. My dm, who is not new to dming, but is new to my d&d group, seemed to be a pretty normal person at first, but now, though she’s still very normal out-of-game, in game, she seems to hate my character/me. For every single little thing she forces me to roll, considering an automatic nat one if i refuse to roll. She does not do this to anyone else at the table. It is to the point where I have been asked to roll to drink water, to stand up after resting, to speak, and to use my normal movement while walking in our city, a floating island - not even in battle. I refused to roll (because my paladin should be able to do these things without having to try really hard), and she, considering it to be an automatic nat one, narrated that I tripped, fell off the edge of the island, and slammed into the ocean, taking max fall damage. We were level 3 characters, so my character immediately died. When I confronted her about this, she just told me “I need to hinder paladins because they’re too overpowered.” My paladin was arguably one of the weakest members of our party. I don’t know what to do. Please help.

Ben LaMay

To the honorable and resplendent Crit Justices and the incredibly charismatic (if its a good day for Jake)/ sweaty (if it a normal day) Bailiff I bring to you the case of the meta-gaming DM. Before I start I want to say that this incident was talked about in the group and we have moved past it but at the time I was quite upset and I want to know if I was justified. I have been playing with the same group of friends for almost 6 years now and a few years ago one of the members wanted to try his hand at DM-ing he was a little intimidated at the thought of making a homebrew world so he decided to run the premade module "Princes of the Apocalypse" (Spoilers ahead). At the start of the adventure the group is given a quest to track down elemental cults by a group of wyvern riding guards and over the course of the adventure you check back in with them. During these check-ins our barbarian grew very friendly with the guards to the point that they made him an honorary member. Now this is where issues began, shortly after this we uncover that the guards are actually the main force for the elemental cult of air and we track their leader to their hidden base clear it out and make ready to fight the boss. in the days leading up to the next session which we expect to be mostly boss fight 2 of the 6 players say they cant make it but the DM still want to play and everyone is good with that, but he secretly tells the Barbarian that the boss has a high level chain lighting spell that could auto down (not kill) most of the party that would be there. The session arrives and right before we go into battle out wizard attempts to pull something out of a howebrew magic item to help but instead is TELEPORTED BACK IN TIME AND TO A DIFFERENT CONTINENT. The rest of us not knowing what exactly happened assume the wizard just went to get a good position to fight from and we go to battle. My warlock is the first to act and at the end of my turn I position myself behind a pillar for some cover the Barbarian acts next walks up behind me and literally stabs me in the back then shows the cultists the insignia the wyvern guards gave him and claimed to be a friend this lead to the death of my character and our bard who was the only other character there, but because I was already a warlock I couldn't make a deal for my life but the Bard could and got revived mean while I had to make anew character. So I ask was I in the right to be upset at this outcome or should i have just taken my death quietly. I lay myself before the Court.

Pat N.

Hello creepy Crit Justices and Boo-liff Jake, In a recent session, my PC wanted to carefully inspect a spooky magic tree atop an ominous hill from afar as we approached it; our party had determined this to likely be the site of a powerful and evil Druidic cult, so my PC wanted caution and stealth to be the name of the game. Another player went on a cheeky little rant about how “D&D is for taking risks, you play to adventure not sneak around, what is your PC gonna do - hide in the woods forever and set up a little bakery or B&B for the forest critters?” etc. It felt like a lot and I crumbled. My PC went full send, full gung-ho towards the obviously dangerous site. We were immediately noticed, and the session ended on a cliffhanger with over a dozen druids and a lich storming down the hill towards us (so we will probably get TPKO’d at the start of next session). Crits, what have I done? Can I ask the party if we can retcon or erase the final moments of that session to pick up in a cleaner spot because I felt pressured and things got weird? Nobody has messaged the chat to start scheduling our next session yet, which typically happens rather quickly, so I’m afraid I have ruined this campaign. 😰 Have mercy, Pant

Ellie

DICE CHRIST CONFESSION: My humble supreme court justices/priests of dice Christ and whatever Jake is in this bit, I come to you with a confession. Over a year ago I was playing a campaign on roll 20 and I was a barbarian. My party was fighting some swamp creatures under the water and I was having a very bad roll day. On my turn I told my DM I was going to recklessly attack the creature and clicked the button to roll 2 d20s. After I clicked it he told me I would have disadvantage but I had already clicked the button and rolled a nat 1 and a nat 20. I told my DM I rolled a nat 20 even though the nat 1 was technically the first roll. It haunts me. This campaign has become a disaster due to scheduling and I can't help but feel I have been punished. I ask for forgiveness from dice christ.

Emily S

May it please the esteemed crit justices and stalwart bailiff. I bring before you the case of “A Birdbrained Brother”. My older brother and I both love dnd and enjoy listening to dnd podcasts, but while I consume funny, smart and very attractive dnd content like “Not Another D&D Podcast” , he prefers [Title Redacted]. I don’t mention this to pander, but rather to provide supporting evidence for my brother’s, lacking, character. We’ve tried playing together two separate times with neither going beyond the first session. In one session he was the DM and I played a gnome bard. We started in a scene where our boat was being capsized, effectively stranding us on a remote island. Without a clear idea of what we were supposed to do, I decided to cast Speak with Animals on a bird on the beach to get the lay of the land and figure out where we should go. My brother, however, insisted that the bird would be so low intelligence that it couldn’t provide any information about the island. I argued this effectively just wasted my spell slot, but he was unyielding. Eventually he created a character that ran from the forest to tell us to go into the forest, and then immediately killed that character off. Being the youngest sibling I was upset (As Is My Right) and have held on to this resentment for years. I argue, wasn’t it bogus of my brother not to deliver that plot hook via my bird babble? Was my spell slot unjustly spent?

Johnathon colin Rodaway

Dearest Justices Axford, Tanner, Murphey and baylif... i want to say james? I submit not a single case but a small compilation of things our forever DM has hit us with when he felt we were clearly doing better than he expected. He once told our tortle paladin that, despite the rules saying he could hold his breath for 4 minutes, he began to drown as soon as his head was pushed under water because he "didn't have time to breath in whilst being dragged to the fountain" He once told me that my 28 persuasion to tell a spider goddess she had nice eyes failed because "any deities automatically role nat 20s on any ability check" And finally, he once almost wiped out our entire party with wilowisps because he was using there life drain ability, that they can use when a creature is unconscious to kill them instantly, while we were all conscious and fighting. He did not homebrew them or change them. He just read it wrong and refused to acknowledge he'd made a mistake. The list is much longer but these are just the highlights. So justices and baylif Jason, i ask should i just drop this DM and go without any dnd instead of settling for this? Or am i in the wrong for being too picky? I humbly prostrate myself before you and await your judgement.

Nathan Perez

Pirate Enema Potions was not something I was ready to read at my desk in the office.

Jack M

To the High Priestess Axford, The Altar Boy Tanner, The Beloved Saint Murphy, and most of all Pope Hurwitz, I have a dice Christ confession. At the New York Live Show I had lovely seats, 3rd row and had a wonderful time attending, I went alone and still was able to overcome that anxiety and have a blast. As the show ended and you all threw dice in the crowd Pope Hurwitz looked at me and threw a perfect Pass right to me, a blue D 20 flew through the air landed on my hand bounced off and was no where to be found for me. I dropped such a beautiful pass of Dice? Is this because I am a sinner? Is this punishment? Do I still need to repent? I put myself at the mercy of the church. I am sorry.

Alex Weatherhead

To the accomplished and decorated Supreme Crit Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner as well as the former co-captain of his JV tennis team Bailiff Jake, I present the case Riddles v. Google LLC. May it please the court. Due to a scheduling issue, our group decided to move a session planned for later in the week to that very evening. As the DM, I had planned enough that I felt I could improvise the details. Unfortunately I forgot one of my enemies was a trickster who was supposed to have a series of riddles the players would have to solve to avoid a dangerous combat encounter. When we got there I realized I had prepared exactly zero riddles. I quickly looked some up and asked the first riddle. “What has many keys, but can't open a single door?” After a beat, one of the PCs, a barbarian with low INT, laughed saying “you just got this from riddles.com” and answered “a piano” revealing he had googled the riddle as I read it. Unhappy with this, I responded “No, it’s a dead janitor” and thus combat began. Normally I prefer not to use passive aggression at the table but I did not want to have a terse discussion in that particular moment. Was I justified in being petty and changing my riddle?

Daniel A Deshaies

The case of the Plagiarist DM: What do I do when a more experienced DM is copying my ideas and I am a player in their game? Dear benevolent judges, myself and another DM have been, as Murph would say, DM 69ing for about 6 months. After starting my first ever game, a homebrew campaign, my player/Daddy DM said he had an idea for a new campaign and invited me to join. However, after we started playing and whenever we started to learn lore about his world, I noticed a few similarities… and then a few more… and then more. Beat-for-beat the world was the same (but with different names and more animals now). I originally thought I was being paranoid, but when I told my fellow player about it he said “Oh yeah, [DM] told me that a lot of this was inspired by your game.” Normally I would be honored that someone wanted to use my ideas in their campaign, but I don’t want to PLAY in that game. How can I confront my player/daddy DM (who is on his 5th campaign now) about using my ideas in a game I’m in? I humbly await your judgement. -Dan

Mackenzie DeMello

To the jovial justices and bashful bailiff, Today I come to you with something a little different, more a civil case, rather than the typical criminal case. I DM a home campaign at college, we play weekly (mostly) and generally have a good enough time. This is the 2nd semester we’ve been playing, and as the campaign has developed, an issue has continued to rear its head: I have too many players. This campaign has 7 players. We started with so many because the 8 of us are a distinct friend group, and it would’ve been mean to exclude people. This has become a bigger issue as the campaign has developed, with 7 players, there’s like 20 things that people want to have happen at any given moment, and it actively impedes their ability to solve puzzles, and really drags combat. I can tell that a smaller party would be more enjoyable, as some of the most fun sessions have been when 2 or 3 people are missing, and the remaining 4 or 5 can better work together, and I don't have to try and split my attention 7 ways. I have a contingency that I haven’t used yet, of having a particularly deadly encounter to reduce the party’s number, to avoid having to pick and choose who gets to stay. I come to you with this, should some players effectively be punished (by dying in this scorched earth protocol) for the greater good of the campaign, should I try and keep the campaign going as is, or is there some other settlement? I humbly await your verdict.

Ali

To the empyrean justices and mephistophelian bailiff Jake, I present the case of the Accidental Decanter of Perpetual Drunkness. Near the start of the campaign two years ago, my party was given a decanter of magical healing wine. Depending on how much the PC drank of the wine, the healing potion would scale up but so would their DC Con Save to avoid getting drunk (acting as a level of exhaustion). Over the course of the campaign, the party has buffed the decanter to become a Decanter of Endless Wine and now they get drunk constantly. Before every fight, they drink their heart's content to max out HP and enter fights absolutely plastered and exhausted. One PC nearly drank himself dead by taking 5 levels of exhaustion during a fight which reduced his movement speed to 0. Justices, did I err in believing my item was balanced, or should I continue to encourage this alcoholism?

Connor Johnstone

To the exalted, immortal, all-knowing and all-powerful justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and the handsome and fair bailiff James; I humbly bring before the court the case of the Gaslit Warforged. In one of my first campaigns ever as a player I was playing a Warforged Barbarian named Sentry. Sentry was a decommissioned dungeon guard-bot who was no longer working for his employers. During one particular chapter of our adventure we were investigating a run down old tower looking for information, but were not getting anywhere with the local inhabitants. We were told there was a knowledgeable but stern shopkeeper nearby who could possibly shed light onto the situation, and we planned to go speak with him. I decided that I would boldly enter the shop and use my status as a former guard to gain an edge, trying to intimidate the shopkeeper. I described kicking open the door and stepping into the room confidently, at which point I was cut off by the DM and told that I was to take fire damage from the spell the shopkeeper immediately cast at me upon my entry. I protested, saying I hadn’t even had an opportunity to speak with them before they engaged me in mortal combat; but the DM told me that “kicking down the door was an act of violence” and the shopkeeper was responding in kind. I asserted that I kicked OPEN the door, not DOWN the door — but was told this is happening and it was too late to back out now. Fair enough, I was learning at the time and fancy myself a good sport so I decided to play along. Until once more the DM and I came to odds. As a Barbarian, I naturally entered a rage to make the most of my combat capabilities. After several rounds of combat it came to me to lay down the finishing blow. As our goal was to question this shopkeep I said I would like to apply non-lethal damage so that we could restrain them and continue our plan. The DM yet again stopped me, exclaiming “you can’t do non-lethal damage in a RAGE,” as if this was an obvious oversight I had made. I argued that enraged or not, I should not be so bloodthirsty as to murder a common man in his own shop. The DM held his ground and I ultimately decided to forego my turn and allow my teammates to knock out the shopkeeper. So gracious council, I ask you — was Sentry gaslit into a combat that was unjust, and further gaslit into acting outside of their scope and intention? Or was my DM right to punish me for my excess confidence and rage? I prostrate myself before you and beseech you to lay upon me the judgment you deem most fair. PS though the campaign in question has long since ended, I hold no hard feelings towards the DM. As I’ve now learned hosting games of my own, DMing can be hard and intense in the moment, and I appreciate the work that goes into running sessions for your players. Thanks for reading!

Devin Awe

Greetings to the improbably attractive justices of the court and their shlubby Bailiff, I present to you the case of the chilly haunted armor. In a recent mini-campaign, I played an Armorer Artificer, reflavored as a ghost possessing a suit of armor. During the final fight of the campaign, a Chill Metal spell (Heat Metal that did cold damage) was cast on me. I argued that since I didn't have a body in contact with the metal, I shouldn't take any damage. The DM allowed me to roll a con saving throw and I avoided taking any damage. In hindsight, I feel bad for asking because I had 27 AC and hadn't taken any damage yet over the entire adventure. Was I asking a prudent question or just being a big metal baby about it? I await your wise, just, and possibly extremely cruel, decision with a spirit of both fear and awe.

Kyle

To the lustful Supreme Crit Justices and the bailiff Jack. I have for you the case of the portable hole. I was the DM for a last minute one shot with a group of 4 close friends and my girlfriend. They all rolled random characters which took the better part of the evening. And I let them roll for magic items out of the players handbook. They got a lot of fun things like different potions and weapons but I did not expect them to get something so game breaking it completely tied my creative hands. A portable hole. This item was abused in such a fashion to where they used the hole for everything over the course of the session. There was not an event, npc, monster, interaction that I could come up with in that one shot that would beat the hole. They would hide in it or use it to trap things. It was infuriating for me personally but I knew they were having a blast so I really couldn’t get too upset. However I drew the line when my girlfriend (who rolled a half orc monk) tried to throw the hole frisbee style at the feet of a Draugr 30 feet away and have him cartoon style drop into the hole, immobilizing him. I finally said no and that the hole would just hit the front of his feet and crumple like a rug. They argued “If she rolls high enough you should allow it.” I denied this Tom foolery and the hole eventually landed on the ground next to the monster. They were heated I wouldn’t allow the trap but got over it as soon as they decided to just push him into the hole anyways. One contested strength check later and the fight was over before it started. Was I wrong for denying my girlfriend her cool move? Or were they wrong for abusing an obviously over powered item? I await your humble judgement.

Noah Goodman

High Judges and Sensual Baliff Jake, if it may please the Crit, I present the case of the uncertain resurrection. I am playing in a game of NADDPOD fans that got together shortly after NADDPOD began, and are still playing that same campaign. In this game, two of our PCs have fallen under the thrall of Tiamat and we had a split party of half evil, half good. The players knew, but the characters didn't. We did not metagame, the party stayed together, and it was all in good fun. This came to a climax in the game when our two evil characters (mine being one of them) were able to get one of the other two alone, and try to get him to join us via a cursed mask. A fight ensued, ending with the two good characters surviving, my character dead, and the other evil character and my pet wolf fleeing. After a break of a few weeks, we returned to the world with two new characters and an additional level, only to realize because of that level up my old character could now be resurrected, as our Cleric learned Raise Dead - which felt somewhat anticlimactic after all the new character building and replanning. We tried with it being a roll, and thankfully Dice Christ let Myron stay dead, but I am still torn by this decision. The situation just felt awkward for everyone - we all wanted Myron back, but from a story perspective it felt wrong. Humble Judges, were we even right to try and bring back this character? Or should spells gained from a level up not be able to apply to major moments, like this, even if timing technically checks out?

random user 123

To the Benevolent Baliff Jake and esteemed Crit-justices of the court. I DM an online game for a group of freinds. it runs weekly, but several players can't make every session for a variety of reasons so each week will be somewhere between 2 and 4 players plus me. we have been playing games this way for years and everybody is happy with that set up rather then it going to iregular and closer to monthly. My issue is that this is an investigation focused game, with the party taking on cases while also stumbling into unexpected problems and working towards personal goals with each others help. One of my players is trying to solve the mysterious death of their parents, something I and the other players were all happy to have at charachter gen, but I am struggling to find ways to incorporate this. because they are one of the players most likely to miss a session at short notice I've been hesitant to have major stuff come up so far and then end up with everyone except that player interogating an unexpected witness or finding a big clue. but subtler hints at things have also proved not very successfull because with them missing a good chunk of sessions I'll realise as i'm linking back to something small that happened last session for them, they don't actually remember it because it was 3 weeks ago and not central to what happened that session. How do I ensure my player actually gets to take part in this aspect of what they wanted from the game without making it a big enough part of a session that we just have to cancel a week if they unexpectedly aren't free?

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.

Noah Goodman

Oh wise justices and expendable but beloved Baliff Jake, 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.

Laurence&Ty

To the three Ascended Judges Axford, Murphy, Tanner, and the Quad-God Bailiff. My friends and I were delving into a dungeon which had us face trials in order to progress. One trial had us survive against waves of numerous fire elementals under a time limit as there was a circle of fire encroaching on us. During the second last round of combat my paladin used his decanter of endless water (magic item) using the command word "Geyser" into the air above us in hopes to do any kind of AOE damage to the surrounding enemies. However, my DM ruled that since these were beings of magical fire there was no effect. Effectively wasting the action of my turn. We barely succeeded in time thanks to some good damage rolls from my teammates, but I feel guilty that my attempt at being creative nearly cost us the mission. So, my question is should I have been able to do a bit of damage with my makeshift super soaker or should I have just kept hitting fire with a hammer? Thanks! 😊

CanaDM (Canadiam)

To the possibly flatulent bailiff and unfortunate judges who have to share the space, I present the Ruby Conundrum. I was running a homebrew campaign with friends and provided their own private backstory. One of the guys made a tiefling bard named Ruby. In one city there was a boat chase for a mcguffin and the target ship unveiled the flag of Ruby’s tormentor from their backstory, leading her to bail over board and swim back to shore. It is important to note that the party was unaware of the tiefling's backstory. The party later worked their way through the city and fought through several shape shifting demons imitating party members and eventually found the real Ruby through magical means. The party tried to talk her down and support, but she reacted with hostility to the party and quickly became a PvP. The session ended with Ruby being unconscious, bound and interrogated, thinking that this Ruby may have been a shape shifter as well. This led to a giant blow out between the players out of character - one being outraged that the party attacked a defenseless woman who wanted to leave, the others confused about the reaction having no context. As the DM I called the session but did not know if there was something I should have done to help defuse the situation. The end result was a hiatus for the campaign and two PC's introducing new characters, not wanting to continue with their current characters. I ask the court, of the three parties involved (the DM, Ruby and the rest of the party), is anyone at fault for this situation? Is it the DM for not asking for prior trauma in session 0 or throwing shapeshifters at them in a critical moment? Is it the bard for playing too true to their character and not meeting halfway for the campaign? Is it the rest of the party for tracking down their friend and knocking them unconscious when they just wanted to leave? I leave the fate of our suspended party in your hands.

Todd

To the most honorable of justices and decently respected Bailiff Jake, I wish to bring you the case of isolated possession. In a homebrew campaign from many years ago, there was a tree housing a spirit that my party had to investigate for clues about our current quest. While investigating, the spirit said we were free to investigate, but don’t open a specific door. My party agreed we wouldn’t antagonize the spirit, since the DM hinted that it would be a difficult fight at our current level. After completing our investigation, we decided to leave. Our monk decided to sneak off and try to open the forbidden door solo. After a failed stealth check, the spirit caught the monk approaching the door. The warning was uttered again, but the monk paid no heed. When he tried to open the door, the ghost possessed him. Since he failed his wisdom save, the ghost proceeded to smash his head into the wall until death took them. The monk complained that we should’ve done something to help, but he snuck away from the party successfully. Judges, should we have intervened on our monk’s behalf that we would’ve noticed their disappearance, or did they deserve the fate they wrought? Waiting for your judgement with anticipation.

Elana

Dearest respectable judges and the guy who's name I think starts with a J, I come to you with a case of the nonconsensual BBEG. I was a long time DM and my girlfriend at the time wanted to try her hand and running a game, I was excited to finally be a player and began thinking of what I'd have the most fun playing, the DM was oddly encouraging with me to make broken builds assuring me it wouldn't ruin the game and I was so excited to be a player for once I didn't think anything of it. Come to find out in the finale that she'd planned all along for me to be the bbeg the others fought, my concern is that I was never once approached with this idea nor did I make a character whose personality was the type to betray the party. I confronted her on this and she just said that she loves the betrayal twist in stories, I haven't played with her since. Was I wrong to be upset at the DM hinging the climax of the campaign on something I wasn't informed on with myown character, or should I have let her have her big twist ending that she'd thought of since the beginning. I await your just judgment .

Caliyah Parker

To the effervescent court and the unjustly persecuted bailiff: I present to you the case of the of the hoarded gold. I was playing in a 5e campaign with a group of friends a few years ago. My character (human gunslinger) and another players character (fire genasi rogue) were pirates with a pre-established backstory as they worked on the same ship, my character the captain, my friend’s the first mate. We were the only PCs who had linked backstories and part of it included us losing our ship in a game of cards. During the campaign we did your standard bullywog fighting and treasure hunting while we waited for the main plot to kick up. At one point, my character discovered a chest of treasure that she decided to keep from the other party members, only telling her first mate so they could split the gold and jewels to hide them. This gold was never used against the rest of the party to buy magic items weapons, potions, etc. nor was it ever going to be. We intended to keep the gold to buy a new pirate ship to replace the one lost in our backstory. The other players ribbed us for keeping the gold and not sharing it, even trying a few insight checks, but ultimately weren’t that upset about missing the treasure as they had already accumulated lots of other gold and gems from our adventure. The DM proceeded to try multiple times over the next few sessions to take the treasure from me and my friend (having guards randomly become suspicious of us and search out things having people make multiple insight checks against us, etc.) which all ultimately failed because of my high Deception score. Eventually, the DM had a group of thieves steal our bags in the night without letting us make any checks to notice the theft. I argued that it was unfair of the DM to try to take the treasure as we were not using it to get a leg up on the party, had a backstory reason to want that she already knew about, there was nowhere for any of us to even spend the gold at that time, and the rest of the party had other treasure from our adventures and weren’t caught up on our secret stash. This campaign was eventually discontinued for unrelated reasons but it still sticks with me. I ask the court, was the DM right to try multiple times to take the treasure back or were my friend and I justified in our secret stash? I await your ruling .

Josh Suich

Oh, luminous arbiters whose unerring judgements uphold the righteous and curtail the wicked, most virile and vigillaint baliff who keeps an unsullied court, I beseech thee... My gaming group of over a decade has taken to mercilessly mocking me for my requests to modify or amend my character's choices based on the clarifications of the DM and my post-facto comprehension of the situation. Given that I, alone, represent the grievance, I voluntarily concede that at times it is my misunderstanding of the exposition that leads to my dissatisfaction with a character action, however I do predominantly hold my peace in these situations. I mainly petition an amendment when the DM gives new information that I utter my epithet of ridicule, "If I had known that my character would have _____." Am I wrong to attempt an intermittent tweak? I place myself eagerly under the light of your judgement. Joshua of the Starfall Collective

Nomi Ross

To the illustrious judges Murphy, Axford and Tanner, and the infamous bailiff Jake: I bring to you the case of the wondering warlock. I played a warlock in a fun, futuristic campaign set on an air ship. The DM was relatively new but fairly competent overall, and as it was my first warlock, when I got called out on using a spell wrong I acquiesced gracefully. However, when we reached level 5, the DM sent down a ruling that has had me wondering for years now whether he was correct, or if I was wronged. As a 5th level warlock, I cast the hex spell which should be able to last for 8 hours. The DM said he doesn’t see concentration really working like that, and for the spell to be still going 8 hours later I would need to be fully concentrating on keeping it active the whole time, that it’s not a passive thing that just runs in the background, and I would need to recast the spell at subsequent battles unless my character spent all the intervening time focusing on the spell completely, which precludes roll play etc. Since warlocks only get two spells, suddenly hex seemed less enticing. I didn’t argue, it is the DM’s world after all, but I’ve been wondering ever since whether that’s really how that spell is meant to be used, of if the DM was misunderstanding the idea of an 8 hour “concentration” spell. Please send down your judgment upon us plebes- I humbly await your decision.

doctor worm

dear kind and benevolent justices and the guy thats also there sometimes, i have just a simple question. should a tiefling be able to disguise self as a velociraptor? this happened in one of my games and the dm VERY reluctantly allowed it, since the character has a tail (ie same basic arrangement of limbs) and had seen velociraptors before. is this just too silly though?? where does it end? at what point does disguise self become wildshape??? thank you for your time!

Joey Pace

To the very good looking justices, and the bailiff who I’m personally the most attracted to, I present the case of Rogue™️ v Petty Patty. Beginning at session zero, the rogue never entered the first town, never introduced themselves to us, and never spoke to us, including clues and items they eventually discovered regarding the plot we were doing. The worst offense in my opinion was after the Druid convinced the wolves in a bandit camp to leave us alone in exchange for not attacking any of them, since the rogue refused to be there when this happened tried to kill them all anyway, which almost led to pvp. After talking to the (lovable but deeply passive) dm and the rest of my (lovable but deeply non confrontational) party, I began discussing above table that we literally didn’t know the rogue at all, so they wouldn’t be included in group purchases like caravans or hotels, I constantly investigated for them, and cast light on their clothes so we could find their constant hiding. Was that too far? I checked in with my party if it was but they’d also not confront me, so I humbly await your judgement.

Clever Innuendo

To the exalted judges and the masochistic Jake, I offer a quick compromise to the former Wall of Wind debate from the recent DnD Court, if I may be so bold. Spells, Creatures, and other things that have special caveats always list them to show they are exceptions to the rules.  An Animated Object may not have eyes, but it's not limited to Tremor sense, because the rules don't say they are.  That sentient fork can come after you even if you're holding still. Compared to a spell like Thunderclap, Wall of Wind DOES NOT specify that it makes a loud noise.   So the court *must rule* that "The whole castle" being alerted is egregious, RAW. However, that said, the spell would be at least as loud as *any other spell*, because Subtle Spell 'is a thing'.  And, spells aside, certainly someone shouting loudly would be enough to at least get the attention of people nearby or maybe even a few rooms over, so this action would certainly at least have that effect. This compromise could at least leave a total melt-down being up to rolls on the table, or a ticking clock of situations they need to defuse before the rest of the castle actually does find out.  For the cost of my compromise, I ask that you keep and have blessing upon all your eggs.  I just want an audio clip of Jake saying that Allen came up with an insecure, Volcano-themed Water-Genasi Wildfire-Druid named 'Kaldera' months before NADDPOD season 3 came out, and he totally didn't borrow the name or concept, thank you very much.

Aaron Thomas

To the humble and radiant Supreme Justices and the other guy I think his name is Jack? I give you the case of the Double Crit. Me and my friends were playing a campaign with my uncle (5 years age difference between us) and it was one of his first times DMing. In combat he ran at my PC and attacked twice missing both times. I then let him know that another PC should get an opportunity attack on that enemy, and he said ok. He then proceeded to roll his 2 attacks again and got 2 Nat 20s. He argued that because of the opportunity attacks were supposed to happen first his previous round of combat didn't count. I argued that they did and 2 crits against my level 2 warlock was highly likely to kill my PC so he should just chill. We argued for 20 mins and I eventually told him I'm not taking the crits so he can either keep playing or kick rocks to which he kickethd rocks and I didn't talk to him for a couple weeks. Please pass judgement and tell me which one of us was right a d which was being a dirty Jake

Todd Jackson

To the baddies on the bench and the bodacious bailiff I bring to you the case of the “Familiar feeling” I played a home game that’s been going on for about a year biweekly and in the beginning of this campaign I was playing a pact of the chain warlock I was using my familiar in the ways described by the book to use their attack action as a bonus action on my turn because I had the correct invocations for it. To make a long story short my dm would always target my familiar to kill them which is understandable however I was later approached being told that my imp sting ability is too powerful and will be able to be used once a day instead of as their attack action. The same DM continued to nerf every other enhanced familiar you may use for pact of the chain resulting in me not having fun at the table and in later sessions allowing my character to die so I could simply roll a new one I have been playing a college of spirits bard which has been fun but the overall joy of the campaign has been lost and I’ve never used the find familiar spell since. I humbly ask the mighty court was I wronged or is pact of the chain broken?

Michael R

May it please the court, Honorable Supreme Crit Justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner, and also the First-time guest Bailiff Jake Hurwitz 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.

Caroline O

To the exceedingly wise Justices and balliff of the Supreme Crit: In a battle a few weeks ago, my monster was grappling a PC. The party's monk used a ki point and the "open hand technique" to knock my monster prone. The question: Does the grappled creature fall prone too? Is a grapple more of a full-body hug, or a firm grasp of the arm that can be broken with a fall? Google and various forums were unhelpful since no one can seem to agree.   Ultimately I had both the monster and the grappled PC roll contested strength checks, and since the PC won, I ruled that he stayed standing. Did I do right by my PC, or should I have stood up for my monster?  P.S. Everyone in my group is nice and we are all still friends.

Connor Rigney

To the unelected clerics on their high thrones and Bailiff John. I come before you today for advice on how to avoid a future lawsuit. I run a 5e campaign for a few of my fellow grad students. It's a pretty standard mind flayer campaign where the government of this world is controlled by an impenetrable hive mind, led by the Elder Brain, who is modeled after a Mind Flayer Lich, which is CR 22. My level 13 party is currently heading into the final battle. Usually I would just weaken the enemy, but in the canon of our campaign, the Elder Brain has Power Word Kill. How do I justify not PWKing a player right away, especially when the genius Mind Flayer hive mind would know that none of my players has resurrection magic? I've bandied about a bunch of different solutions but they all seem to be taking the satisfaction of the kill away from the party. Plus, I can't delay the final battle as we are all about to graduate and start jobs, inevitably killing the campaign. I humbly await your amicus brief.

Sawyer Rappa

To the almighty and all powerful supreme crit, and the guy 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 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 feat, 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 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?

Taylor Vittitoe

Dice Deacons and priests, forgive me for I have sinned. This year I broke up with my partner of six years. The relationship had become abusive and manipulative, and I realized the therapy we were trying would not make it better. On the day I decided to have the talk and leave, I pulled into the driveway and noticed a d20 in my car. In a moment of weakness, I asked the dice gods if it was the right decision to leave and rolled. It landed a nat 20, so I braced myself and didn’t look back. I know leaving was the right decision but I feel guilty for having a moment of weakness and leaning on dice Christ in a very serious, non-dnd related moment. Thank you for listening 🙏

LovelyLorelei

To the Attractive Justices and also pretty cute Bailiff, I present the case of the RetConed Cleric. I was in a campaign with my partner playing a grave cleric who would under no circumstances raise the dead as part of her holy oaths. Even when we found a scroll or resurrection and my partner's character wanted to use it to raise their father, my cleric refused. Everyone at the table seemed to be understanding but a few weeks later I had to leave the group because of a new job. My partner remained in the game and told me that the DM NPC'd my cleric, made her a reincarnation of a long dead Queen, rescind her oaths, raise their charters father and switch domains to life cleric. I was so pissed, when we confronted the DM about this he said that because I left the group I gave up control of my character. I told him that what he has now is a completely different character with the same name and he should have just made a new NPC. We got into a huge argument about it but he refused to make any changes. Now I ask you, was the DM right to make such changes, was my rage misplaced? I throw myself to the mercy of the court.

DnD Beyond Confused

To the incorruptible justices and the most likely an inside man bailiff Jake, I bring you the case of the second session obliteration. I was playing a lvl 2 changeling spy rouge in a homebrew campaign centered around the war and espionage of two nations that my good friend had built. We were traveling to the capital after being tasked to stop an assassination attempt on the king at his daughters wedding. We entered a town along the way to meet with a general who would escort us the rest of the journey and get us entry. On our way out of the town we were met with a hulking figure with black armor and red glowing eyes (later found it was a death knight cr 17). We decided to run but it used its hellfire orb, and in an attempt to stop a TPK I split from the group and got its attention as I ran. It hurled the orb at me, and I passed the DEX save DC; however, even with half damage I was immediately obliterated and insta killed. After a bit and due to story elements the death knight was teleported away and the main NPC we had with us at that time was cleric who had revivify so I was revived, but still feel like it was a little rough to put a CR17 against a party of 5 lvl 2’s. Was i wronged by being obliterated at lvl 2 with a hellfire orb, or am I over reacting. I await you infallible judgment. P.S. We encountered the Death Knight again much later in the campaign and defeated him including a moment where I was hit with the hellfire orb again, but using evasion and passing the DC I took no damage. We all still rib the DM about that moment and have a good laugh.

Alex Archambault

Oh Most Holy of the Dice Christ, I come before you seeking absolution because I fear my party has been rejected by the All Mighty. In the last seven sessions we have gotten double nat 1s on inspiration rolls fives times and are currently stuck in the belly of a Giant Worm. Our party includes a sorcerer who gained their power through a deal in the feywilds, an undead fox on the run from psychopomps, and the anti-Christ. We humbly seek your guidance on how we can regain the favor of Our Most Beloved Dice Christ?

80s cartoon sidekicks make the best PCs

Grand Supreme Bailiff Jake and other folks, may it please the court, I present the case of Pack O’Derm, the forgotten Loxodon grave cleric, voiced as Eeyore. Originally created as my DM PC that would be there to pick up the pieces when the murder hobos got into trouble, I was supplanted by my wife as DM, so I kept him going. In my evolution of the character as DM, I had beefed him to a 24AC, which frustrated my wife. Eventually she was able to down him, and the party ignored him as he bled out (combat was over, and DM asked what do you do, and their response was “nothing”). I came back as a multiversal NPC from another campaign, a useless pizza delivery bard that ran and hid more than helped (Shaggy from Scooby Doo), who accidentally cleared a tower designed for us to get through over a month in a single session via musical montage. I have resumed DM-ing, and just made the party face the spirit of Pack O’Derm and apologize to him, which they did half heartedly. I ask, was my character wronged, and if not, what punishment do I face?

Boomclaw the Twice-Dead Kobold

To the honorable justices and Jake, too, I guess, I come before you to appeal a disastrous ruling by a lower court. My character was recently swallowed by a giant dragon-eel thing after I was reduced to 0 hit points. One of my teammates, thinking fast, Banished the creature to free me. The DM ruled that I had been Banished as well and was now being digested in a demiplane. The only rationale I can conceive for this was that my unconscious and dissolving form somehow counted as one of the creature's possessions or as part of its body. Is that argument on the side of justice, or does it reek of the Dark Lord Ska'Lia? PS: I was saved with a clever use of Wither and Bloom, which does not require line of sight on the healee apparently.

Levaithan

To the ever honorable court justices and the cowerdly bailiff Jake fearer or birds. I come to you with the case of the disintegrated gunslinger. 1 year ago me and my friends were playing a home brew light magic campaign ( only classes with divine patrons or inherited magic can cast spells [no wizards or ranger/bards]) I was playing a gunslinger rougue named Cards, he was and still is my favorite character to RP to this day. He was the crews leader do to him running a gang in his past and was on the from the biggest oligarchy faction (I think that means religious government correct me if I'm wrong). The campaign was going well until we hit level 8 when I unlocked rougue assasin and level 5 gunslinger fighter. He was able to attack 4 times in opening combat do to action surge and got advantage on all attacks on people who haven't gone yet and had sharpshooter. This basically ment first round of combat he would do 30 damage to 4 different targets. My best friend and DM I don't think liked how most of his plebs would die in the first round of combat or be within fireball execute range or how all his flying combatants would get focused by him. 3 sessions after level 8 we encounter an elite 5 units that were said to be looking for cards and his past gang affiliations had already wiped out the old members of the gang. Cards rallied his new crew to help avenge his fallen friends. When we tracked down the 5 paladins responsible for there deaths the party set a trap killing 2 of them by blowing up there campsite. It was after the first round of combat things went sideways. The caster of the of the enemy group cast Ray of disintegration on cards and killed him install since it did more damage than he had max health. It instantly disintegrated him and all of the parties gold and quest items he was carrying. which was everything. I kinda just sat there shocked as my party ran in fear and didn't get to do anything for the next 2 hours of the session besides think of a new character. Was I slighted or did my somewhat OP whiskey enjoyer need to die from outshineing some of the other party members. PS I love you Jake you make my favorite characters in the podcast. Hard One will have a place in my heart and memory forever second only to maw maw.

Wilson Carroll

May it please the court and have some lesser effect on Bailiff Jake; I submit to you the case of the impossible song. I am dm-ing a modified Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign for an experienced group of three players. To initiate an encounter with the Redbrands, (the ruffian antagonists in Phandalin), the party sent in its Bard, wearing a Redbrand cloak, to parlez before launching an all-out attack. The Bard (my brother) tried to convince the Redbrands that he was in fact a member of the “West Haven Redbrands,” a distant chapter of their organization. To prove this, he offered to “sing the Redbrand theme song.” I had not established that there WAS a Redbrand theme song or that the party had heard any such song. Nevertheless, he rolled a performance/deception check, and got a 23 (18 on the die, +5). I ruled that a 23 was still too low to convince the Redbrands that whatever song he played (on the bagpipes) was the “Redbrand Theme Song,” and the encounter devolved into combat, which the party won. I still feel guilty about whether a 23 should have been good enough to allow the Bard to pass off the song—I humbly submit to the judgment of this honorable Court.

Renee Wild

May it please the Supreme Crit, the Ever-Honorable 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 for level 5 - 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 them to defeat my BBEG too easily. She accepted but turned red and 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, though I don’t know what would have been better. I beg for the wisdom of the judges and the mercy of the court, please and thank you.

Aaron Wisener

To the impeccable judge's and the mostly right bailiff. Not so much a right or wrong but asking for advice. I am a first time DM and I have a member of our party who has a very competitive personality and sees the gameplay as a DM vs PC because I control the enemies and story. How do I avoid conflict with someone who has a very competitive outlook? P.s this man is my boss at work. Sincerely, Aaron

ML Allswede

I come before ye, oh bishops of Dice Christ, not with a confession but a jubilation! This past weekend I ran a Curse of Strahd One shot with my coworker who was first time player and long time NADDPOD fan. Over the course of the six hours, she rolled not one, not two, but five critical hits (with the improved critical from the Champion Fighter ability) and managed to land the final blow on Strahd by, and I quote, "punching him in the dick." I offer praise and worship to Dice Christ for gifting this player with blesséd Beginner's Luck throughout her Hardwon inspired battlefield shenangins! All praise dice christ! May he convert another to his church!

Dylan C

Hello, and my it please the unquestionable court and the guest of a man Jonk Harrowitts. I am here to seek guidance on a course of action that might be taken against a new player. I am in a game where I am skeleton cowboy and the DM (my friend) invited someone to join the game (a new player). She plays a bard named Jack Black who just yells "I want to be a cowwwboyyy babyyyy" and wants to interact with everything even even traps by setting them off. I've tried to in game give some guidance since I'm a pretty seasoned player/dm. Some sessions the help/hints work and in others we (the rest of the party) has to do grapple checks to stop them from setting off traps or purposely ruin a sneak mission. I've even offered to teach them how to be a cowboy since I am one and they said no. I feel like I'm starting to overstep with my guidance and these grapples are feeling like PVP. What am I to do? Should we give the player time to understand the team aspect or shoot their character into the sun? I lay this choice to the honorable Justices.

Lauren Iliffe

If it pleases the court and also the ok bailiff Jake, I present to you the case of the disappointed double-crosser. My girlfriend’s character was killed a few sessions back. Everyone was obviously very upset, including the DM who had never killed a player character outright before then. 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. She then proceeded to secretly run interference, including counterspelling my spells, attacking me while the players were split up, and killing characters off screen who had been created by friends as guests. 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. 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. 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.

Stick Haul

To the venerable justices and swollen bailiff of the supreme crit, I request your judgement. The party I DM for was having a jolly time drinking tequila in a giant hollowed out cactus lodge run by goblins, when one of the guests, a pretentious elf, decided to take offense to their cavorting. He prompted a duel with the party’s trickster domain cleric, a gnome named Frasier. The elf armed himself with a rapier, and Frasier decided his weapon would be his penis. However, we had never discussed how large his penis was, and Frasier insisted it had to be very big. I like rolling dice a little too much in my games, though, and decided I would roll a d8 with a +2 modifier to determine its flaccid length in inches. I rolled a 4, giving him a reasonably large penis. Frasier won the duel, but after the game informed me that he should have been the one to roll for his dick size, but frankly, I didn’t trust him to be honest about his roll. Should I have risked having a gnome with a ten inch hog in my party? Or should Frasier be satisfied with a 6 incher on a tiny gnomish frame? His dick’s fate is in your hands.

Gabrielle Hall

May it please the Supreme crit justices and the sultry voiced Bailiff, I bring to you a civil suit between siblings. My brother regularly runs Call of Chuthulu campaigns for me, my older sister, and her boyfriend (jason) . Typically we always vibe well comically, but my older sister regularly relies on running goofs into the ground instead of crafting dynamic characters. In our current campaign she is playing an anthropologist, but she rolled a 90 for size so her character is fucking huge. She has been going through the game using Shaquille O'Neil as her roll 20 icon and oly makes jokes about how she needs to eat two lunches and that she takes up 3 seats wherever we go in-game. She hasn't done anything related to her character's field of research and I'm tired of hauling her nig ass through the plot of the campaign. Am I being a poopy pants grouch or should I send her a subpoena? I appreciate and humbly await your guidance your guidance. -Gab (and my partner Phoenix, who introduced me yo to your show)

Annalisa B

To the most honorable justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy and the unjustly maligned Bailiff Jake, I was part of a campaign with a group of friends in which we all played characters based on our real-life selves. At one point, our party was hired to hunt down a werewolf who was killing townsfolk. We ended up fighting a large pack of wolves, at which point we arrived at a cave, where a man charged at us. Before he could speak, our party's barbarian attacked and killed him. We found a living area in the cave and a young girl sedated and chained to the bed. We discovered some journal entries indicating that she was the werewolf who had been killing villagers, despite her father’s best efforts to keep her hidden. Our party was split 50/50 on if we should try and help the girl (who was now presumably an orphan without a pack) or kill her while she was incapacitated. After 20 minutes of stalemate discussion, I decided, for the safety of my party and the town, to stab the girl through the heart and kill her. Immediately, another party member attacked me and said he would kill me for what I had done. I dropped my weapon and refused to fight him, but he continued to attack. Our barbarian had to step in to stop him. After that session, the player never returned to our campaign and stopped hanging out with our friend group altogether. Through mutual acquaintances, we learned that, because we were playing "ourselves," he was struggling to disentangle the actions we had taken in game from how we'd act in real life. I know I made a controversial call, but the real-life consequences felt disproportionate to what happened. Did I make the wrong call in killing the werewolf girl? And, if so, was it wrong enough to merit the real-life consequences? I await and accept the righteous judgement of the Supreme Crit, whatever it may be!

BarbF

May it please the delightful, ethereal court justices and Tucker's dog walker, the lowly baliff Jake. I present to you the case of the rabbit-folk and his feces. I am in an online campaign with a few people, some I know IRL and others I met through the campaign. One of the PCs is a Harengon. Last session, we got into a whole debacle about what rabbits eat since this character is a vegetarian as a rabbit is IRL. This led to the discussion of another part of a rabbit's diet, namely that they are coprophages, which means they produce a special kind of excrement that they eat again to get certain nutrients. I, and I think most of the party, expected this character to laugh it off. Instead, he wanted to do it, and use his poop pellets as good berries since rabbits benefit from eating them. Most of us started laughing but the DM shut it down immediately. The Harengon continually brought it up during the session, and most of the players were laughing and taking it in stride. The DM started punishing the character everytime he brought it up, giving him disadvantage to checks and eventually disadvantage on attack rolls. I would like to point out here that the character was taking it all in good fun. While I understand the potential grossness of the situation, I found myself actively enjoying the idea and it does make sense. I and most of the players at the table thought the DM should have let him do it, and use it as a good berry. So I ask you, honorable supreme crit- Was the DM was right for punishing the character? Should the player have been allowed to consume and benefit from his nutritious feces? We humbly await your judgement.

Easton Moore

Update: I text him about the rule at question and he stated he changed the rules without our knowledge to do something homebrew outside of the Straud Book. Don’t like changing the rules to railroad us into a failure but sometimes railroadings is needed I guess.

Mason N.

May it please the Grand Court of Crit and fuck you Jake, I played 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, Hawke 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.

Tim The Enchanter

May it please the court, the captivating but equitable justices and the alluring but banal bailiff. 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, which he didn’t let anyone know until the next combat we got into. 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.

Meletios

May it please the court as well as the handsome bailiff, I present the case of Gak the Mantis. Last year I joined a campaign run by a college friend. One player’s character was a home brewed praying mantis-esque race, named Gak. My first session and my character hasn’t been introduced yet, Gak attempts to steal the sword of another party member. Gak is caught by the other player, and instead of giving the sword back, insists that he keep it because he, “didn’t have one.” This argument went on for twenty minutes. Eventually the other player attempted to unarm strike Gak, and in return Gak the Praying Mantis tried to stab the player with their own sword. PVP ensued. Two rounds later and Gak is exterminated. They are absolutely fuming and yelling that their character was unjustly killed. The party is in awkward silence while the other player tries to defend themselves and Gak is throwing a fit. Forty minutes later the session is cut short and my character (an old human sorcerer named Abner Doubleday) is never introduced. I never played with them again, much to my friend’s disappointment. Honorable court I ask of you, who was in the wrong here? Was Gak? Was the other player? Was the DM for not stepping in and stopping this cluster to begin with? I leave the fate of Gak’s memory in your honorable hands.

Santanaaaaa

May it please the most Magnificent Mediator Murphy, Astonishing Adjudicator Axford, Totally Tubular Tanner, and of course the guy who sleeps on Jill’s couch. I plee to thee I was in an inperson game with some new friends in highschool. I was playing a bard and put my dump stat in intelligence. These new friends were giving my character razzings for being a bard and saying he was all charisma no brains. At one point we were sent into the woods and our DM let me know there were owlbears in the woods. I immediately jumped and asked if I could do an owlbear call to try to call an owlbear. He said it would be hard but would let me roll performance (which i also had proficiency in) and I ended up getting a nat 20. I was ecstatic but one player jumped in and said what if my player was so dumb that when he did the call it was a perfect imitation of other beasts (cow, duck, and even an owl). This got a laugh at the table and the DM ended up ruling this over me doing an actual owlbear call. I laughed along too and tried to steer it back to an actual owl bear call, but people were having too much fun laughing at my character’s stupidity. Justices should I have just taken this as a light razzing or was I right to hold this grudge for 5 years. I beg for your indifference

Toaster J

To the honourable Justices and the kinda respected Balif, I bring you the case of The elequance pirate and his need for minions. I was DMing my first game for some friends. One of my players a Elequance Bard was trying to recrute a bar full of half drunk dock workers to enter the lair of a Big bad, we struggled to come to a decision that honoured his RP, his constant high charisma rolls, and what would realistically happen. I decided that roughly 20 people would be willing to help, all being commoners, but were fully committed to the cause. When they arrived at the abandoned mine, turned lair, the party sent some commoners ahead. They were swiftly torn apart by living shadows, the rest of the commoners were understandabley terrified and began to run. The Bard argues that because he rolled a high persuasion they should have stayed and given their lives, rather than fleeing and giving the party sandwich in condolence. Was I wrong to make the commoners flee or should I have let the Bard have his minions stay stay for a cause they had only just learnt about? I humbly await the courts decision.

Axle

May it please the High Crit Justices and the Low Crit Bailiff, I present the case of the Witch’s Frog. During a low level Halloween one shot, the party tracked down a gingerbread hag in her house of candy. We found her frog familiar outside and got some information about it, but it said that if it was missing for too long the witch would know. As a Druid, I had the idea to transform into a frog myself to pose as the familiar, but the DM initially vetoed the idea because I was level 3, and Druids can’t transform into creatures with a swim speed until fourth level. I promised him that I wouldn’t do any swimming, and he let me become a frog, but I wanted to elevate this court to the Supreme Crit to get your opinion. Should Druids be allowed to wild shape into creatures with a swim or fly speed before the appropriate levels, provided they don’t USE that swimming or flying ability? Or does a 3rd level Druid becoming a frog totally break the game of dnd?

Kyle J

I humbly prostrate myself to offer up this confession. In my first campaign as a player, I often sat next to a brand new player. He hated having a turn "wasted" by a miss and would change the results of his attack rolls to make sure that he hit. It seemed that I was the only one at the table who noticed but I didn't say anything to him or to our DM. In our new campaign, I have rarely rolled above an 8 on attack rolls, ability checks, etc and fear that this is the judgement of Dice Christ bearing down upon me. I fervently beg for the forgiveness of the church and Dice Christ

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 and 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 one of his date nights with his wife. Since she and I are the foreigners here, 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)

Rachel K

May it please the powerful and auspicious judges and the scrap scrounging bailiff, I bring to you the case of the homebrew car. My cousin L has been playing in a campaign I've dm'd for on and off for several years with my other cousins, and during the entire campaign he's pestered me to implement a magical Toyota FJ modeled after his irl FJ in the campaign. He wants the car to do things like climb walls, attack enemies unprompted, travel at speeds far greater than the normal speeds of creatures, and be able to cast its own spells. I've explained to him several times that I can't just give them an overpowered vehicle, but he always counters with the idea that I can just homebrew any monster to be just as overpowered as his FJ. How do I reconcile his wants with my desire to keep my campaign feeling balanced? I await your fair and just judgment.

Dylan Jackson

To the Supreme Crit Justices, of whom are of the most elegant, honorable, incorrigible, venerable, stunning, and exalted ranks, and also Bailiff Jake who presents the cases with an eloquence second only to the justice s themselves. I come humbly to the court with a confession. I was recently playing with 3 friends of mine, one of them who has been a fan of Dungeons and Dragons for a while now, and they were the DM, and the other two who were playing their second time with us were part of the party. We were in the underground area of a mountain, when I looked through the keyhole of a door, and saw a young silver dragon, our party was level ten and I said I wanted to throw a nearby spear through the door and try to startle the dragon. Our DM said that I should roll with disadvantage since I had no line of sight. I rolled and got a 3 & a 17. My friend then gave me the help action to nullify the disadvantage after I had already rolled. I rolled again, and I got a natural 20. I took the new roll, when the rules we used usually meant to just take the highest number of the two dice since I had already rolled. No one at the table noticed I had not done the proper thing. I ended up killing the dragon in one hit with that throw. Even though I had already told my party the truth afterwards, it has been weighing heavily on me since. I lay the fate of my being down before you in hopes that I may atone for my sins, and be judged fairly.

YourAnimeDad

To the Most impartial and Honorable Judges and the Plucky Persistent Bailiff, I present to the court THE CASE OF CONVOLUTED CAVERN CONFLICTS I play in a 5E Campaign with a lot of martial classes and low magic, as a Druid/Cleric. Our DM presented us with a wrap-up character arc for our Paladin during our journey for our Edgey Warlock. We ended up stumbling upon some Mindflayers and nearly getting TPK'd. The following session I casted a Freedom of Movement, which I prepared for our travels, to help us not get grappled like our previous encounter. During this we ran into more mindflayers, an Elder Brain, etc. Our party used up most of our spells, and I then used a magic item to dispel an Antilife Shell. Instead of being awarded for my quick thinking I was then Power Word Killed during the fierce encounter, put in a Wall of Force bubble for 9 rounds, stunned half the party, and then barely saved by a Revivify. I ask you, am I being a big baby about this encounter? Or should the DM have chilled the fuck out and took the womping? I leave it in your majestic and chaotic hands

Dr. Bearkele

Good grief, tell him to go run his own cars-themed campaign. This is mind-bogglingly ridiculous.

Argus Swift

To the honourable, respectable, and affable Justices and Bailiff, I humbly besmirch myself to you in the pursuit of clarity; Some years ago, I was in a Pathfinder: Kingmaker campaign with friends. It started with one very experienced DM and three players, two relative newbies and myself, the midling experienced. None of us had optimized builds, since the DM told us "Build what sounds cool, I'll balance accordingly." We successfully cleared and/or befriended the wildlands. We had plenty of in-character disagreements along the way, but we always came to agreeable compromises, and the arguments reduced as our characters grew. It felt great. Then the DM asked if we were cool with one of his friends joining. We didn't see why not. Said friend has played DnD much longer than everyone, even the DM, and in particular 3.5, which the DM allowed her to use for this Pathfinder game. Her stealth rogue build was absolutely broken, prompting the DM to make tougher encounters, which made the rest of us with less optimized builds feel left in the dust. To the DM's credit, he let us respec for free if we could justify it in character, but it still left a sour taste to me. But worse yet to me was that this new player became the defacto leader of our colony. The discussions and disagreements of yore were no more. She always suggested the best decision for every quandry, and phrased it in a way that made it feel like we'd be fools for not taking her suggestion. It came to a breaking point six months later when she was absent for a game, and we three OG players faced a tough opponent, disagreed and discussed, and came to a good compromise that left everyone happy. It felt great. Then the next session she came back and told us to make a different decision. Two players left, me being one of them. We'd had enough. But was that the right decision? Should we have stuck it through? Attempted to communicate our frustrations better? What would be your suggestion on how to approach this?

Nicole

May it please the elegant and resplendent Supreme Crit Justices and give the repugnant Bailiff Jake an unscratchable itch — I was DMing a Halloween one-shot for my husband, brother and sister in law. My brother was playing a bard, with the idea that his character was extremely famous, but only in his own head. I made sure he understood his fame was only to himself and nobody actually knew who he was. Cut to them sneaking onto a zombie pirate ship, my brother proceeds to wake up one of the crew thinking he’d be so excited to meet this famous bard. I ruled that this zombie pirate has no goddamn clue who you are and immediately begins to attack. I should note he also rolled a low stealth check and something like an 18 persuasion “to convince him he wanted my autograph.” I said absolutely not, and my brother got really salty with me for the rest of the session. I ask the court, should I have had the pirate recognize my idiot brother or was I correct in sticking to my guns? Signed, Plaintiff Nicole T., pronouns she/her

Heroic Soul

If it would please the Supreme-Crit justices and the quack above average bailiff Jake, I'd like to present the case of "Charming a rampaging Mindflayer" So I'm in the middle of a homebrew campaign where our DM introduce a mechanic that would allow us to introduce flaws into the mindflayer network: Pride, Hunger, Gluttony, Hedonism, and Wrath. One of the Wrath-filled Mindflayers trapped our poor halfling Druid and was about to eat her brain, when I decided to summon a Mirthful Fey in hopes of charming and asking them to stop. The Mindflayer failed their Wisdom save and we ended the session there in dramatic fashion. The following week the DM reached out to me and told me that while the charm succeeded they are still enraged and there is a tasty brain right in front of them. So they wouldn’t listen to you. I asked could I at least try to persuade them to push past their urges to eat my friend for now. But was told that it would at the very least not attack you. I still wonder to this day and ask you honorable justices could the power of charm sooth a raging beast or was my Druid simply fated to be reduce to brain food. I await your judgment!

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

Dearest Dice Christ bishops, I come to you with a dire case- I believe I am currently being haunted by a Dice Demon. I am a DM in one campaign and player in another. For the past two months we have been playing virtually using online dice rollers in each game. In each game, I have rolled below a 10 in an overwhelming amount of times- over 90%. This culminated in hitting no attacks across multiple sessions, and a stunning three nat 1's in a row, a-la Moonshine. It is truly frustrating. I worry that a Dice Demon is mocking me. Is it retribution for some unknown sin against Dice Christ? If so, how can I purge this spirit from befouling my virtual math rocks? Must I preach more about the 10 Dice Commandments? I look forward to your counsel, and may DC's blessing grace us all.

Trey MW

Honorable judges and ineffable bailiff, I present you the case of the Feywild Hangover Marriage. I was playing a flightless Aarakocra druid, and my party (rogue and mystic) was trying to escape the feywild. Eventually, I had to miss a session because of work. Our group usually still plays when we have 3 of 4 members present, so they went on with a session. Upon my return, I learn that there was a Hangover-esque adventure where everyone got drunk, the rogue got married to a feywild noble, and everyone had to go looking for me because I was missing. New session opens, and I am told that I was married to a goblin princess last night, and I was CURRENTLY strapped between the posts of a bed where obvious copulations had taken place. (No explicit details were described, just implied). I didn't know what to think and was just stunned speechless for a while. I didn't ask for anything to be changed, instead I figured out a line of reasoning that could have led to this. My druid was secretly bisexual and had a crush on the party's rogue this whole time (after being rescued from a ship by him). I figured, if I saw our rogue get married last night, my druid would be drunk, jealous, and sad enough to run into someone else's arms. It sucks for my druid, but I the player was semi-comfortable with that reasoning. My question is: was our DM within his right to make this huge decision while I was absent (up to and including the explicit activities)? For some context, we still play together, and I now DM our current underdark campaign.

Matt Renko

May it please the court and the elegant bailiff Josh. I bring you the curse of the pushed ghost. I was playing in a lower level campaign when we found an old abandoned house. As we searched we encounter a pack of ghosts in a large dining hall. We started the combat and everything was going smoothly until our warlock hit an eldritch blast and pushed one of the ghosts through the wall right behind me. As a player I thought that was pretty cool as ghost can phase so I just continued the combat. The ghosts turn came up shorty after and the ghost phases back through the wall, and hits me. As it does, the DM says that it is a critical hit and since i didn’t see it coming it gained sneak attack. The amount of damage it did with its critical sneak attack was enough to do all my current and HP and then enough to do half my max HP after hitting zero causing a coup de grace and killing my character . I argued that since I saw the ghost get pushed through I would know it would come back out to attack me so it shouldn’t have sneak attack. The DM refused and my character was dead. I made a new character and returned to the next session but the group didn’t stay together very long after that. Please let me know if I have been wronged and if I have not please punish me in any way you see fit. Thank you

Omvega

Illustrious and beneficent judges, and also jake, I bring before you the case of the deadly mold earth spell. I have been playing D&D with my friend J for years, and currently we play two regular games as well as some occasional pickup games and one-shots. J loves to push boundaries and stretch the limits of spells and rules, and her latest mad science is using the Mold Earth spell for unintended purposes. Her favorite new move is to use Mold Earth to excavate the 5-foot cube of earth below an enemy, and deposit the dirt back on top of them, essentially burying any medium creature alive. The DM who ran a one-shot allowed this, and the creatures that were buried at that time were under the effect of the suggestion spell so it was ruled they would not make any save or check to resist being buried. Later, J and I were debating this use of the spell, and I argued that a capable adventurer or monster could pretty easily break free of this. In my opinion they could pass a dex or strength check to not be completely buried, or to break free on their turn and possibly only suffer effects similar to standing up from prone. J argued that 5 feet of dirt is heavy enough to smother someone and would effectively incapacitate a creature unless they took a more costly or time-consuming action to escape, and that if the creature stayed buried for multiple rounds or if she did the spell again to deposit more dirt on top, they would be smothered to death. Judges, is this a creative (and maniacal) spin on the spell, or a misinterpretation of the effects? I am a fledgling DM planning on running more events for this group; would I be stifling J's creativity by bringing down the hammer on this free jazz approach to magic, or is it more fun when pushing boundaries doesn't always achieve the intended result? We humbly await your judgement. --- Ps: J is a very good sport and is not at all interested in ruining anyone's good time or breaking an entire combat. She just loves to test the limits of any game's rules and restrictions and thinks outside the box which often results in fun and unexpected scenarios and only occasionally results in frantic rule-searching and head-scratching. This also makes her a great DM. I am posting this with her permission. Our group is amazing so we have always been able to make that work and make it fun, and there are no big arguments except as goofs.

Kellie Cthulhu

May it please my queen Emily and the rest of the court (I guess Jake too), I was DMing for 6 new to DnD players in a world that is basically Zootopia pre-urbanization. So picture no maps no names of the world and small towns are only just forming. It was a mix of goofy little guys and trying to find your own way in a big newly forming world. One session they stumbled upon a possum man who owned basically a thrift store. One of the items was a used bag of holding. I described it full of cat hair, snack crumbs, a little bit of glitter, but otherwise empty. One of the newest players to the table said they simply dump out the contents. I told them because it is a bag of holding there is no way they can just dump out all the little particles left in the big ass bag. Chaos ensued that person and their friend argued that it was that simple while one of my players defended me and the rest said they didn't care either way (my boyfriend being one of them). I ruled that this was a stupid thing to get mad about with so many people having to schedule to be here and we moved on shelving the debate. That player and their friend never returned and the campaign fizzled. My question is was I too harsh wanting them to have a slightly inconveniencing bag or was this a petty fight? You may sentence my bf no matter what since he chose to not take a side which I feel means no matter who is in the wrong he also gets the punishment :)

I C

Genuinely not trying to be harsh, but why are you building a character that you know will break the game and setting up a situation where you know you'll have to step in to help the DM balance the campaign and put yourself back in a more DM-like position? If I were a first time DM, that would be a huge blow to my confidence and make me feel like I was wrong to explore DM-ing! I feel like the right question to ask isn't "how can I help him balance" but "should I reign in my character build to be something more manageable"

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 were 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 of if not all of 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.

Connor Tuftin

Your honourable Justices and Bailiff Jeff....? 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?

Nicolas Mallard

That’s fair, he has dmed before but I never really get to play and my brain just kinda took over because I rarely get to make a character for me. He knows that I really want to do this and is being a good sport about it. I also told him if my character needs to die I have a much less powerful back up if we want to do that instead. He also knows that if the party ends up all getting really low on health he can turn to my character who will essentially be a tank or at the very least a distraction from the other party members so they can regroup and heal. I just kinda feel bad now for wanting to play my character even though that it would be months before it’s game breaking. So I suppose I could turn it down a notch on power building

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.

Topher

May it behoove and beseem the court, I come to you with a heavy heart and guilty conscious. It has been 29 years since my last confession. I believe I have sinned and gone against the good faith. Please hear me. I have a party that meets weekly, every Monday. One week, I DM A homebrew campaign, and the next week, one of my players DMs for their own totally separate campaign. I have a d20 that must have been blessed by Dice Christ. I used it in the first ever game I DM'd and this dice is a statistical anomaly. It is the most disgusting yellow color. with neon green numbers, but in my memory I can't recall it ever rolling below a 10. I use it sparingly and only as a DM for important rolls and I always roll it in front of the screen. It has saved my BBEGs and players alike from impossible situations. Recently though, I forgot my player dice during my friends campaign but remembered my big bag of DM dice. During a pivotal moment where my Wizard was facing 2 failed death saves and 1 pass, I brought out the disgusting yellow color DM dice, blessed by christ, and I crit, saving my wizards life. The DM looked a little miffed that I used that holiest of dice that I reserve for my DMing but let it slide and after that game told me he thinks it may may skewed things in my favor because he knows all about the gross yellow dice. I have not used that dice since and am scared that dice christ will no longer smile upon me for abusing the gift I was given. I await your all knowing judgement and I throw myself at the suple feet of the justices and the humble myself before the balif. Signed, Topher F, he/him.

Sean L Byrne

To the Divine Vessels of Dice Christ, High Priests & Priestesses Murphy, Axford and Tanner, and altar boy Hurwitz, I humbly submit this Dice Christ Confession. For context- I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to rolls. I would never ever fudge one, especially as a player, or so I thought. During this one session over a year ago, my High Elf Bard had been rolling Nat Ones all session. I grew very frustrated. Later, I led the party to an inn where we began to socialize with some potential hirelings. I was asked to regale everyone with a song on my lute to impress them, so I whipped it out and was asked to do a performance check. I could hardly believes my eyes- another nat one. I have no idea what came over me, but in a panic I said it was cocked and rolled again. It was a Nat 20. I brought the house down! But as a stickler for rolls, it's always felt dirty and unearned, and I still can't believe I fudged it, especially considering how funny it would've been for me to absolutely shit the bed in front of the whole Inn. I ask- nay, I PLEAD for your forgiveness. Praise be to Dice Christ, peace be upon HER name. Amen.

Andrej Babic

This one seems particularly weird.. Winry built the Automail so following the story she would know how to build the other side, if you are the one building the automail in this world there's absolutely no narrative reason to not know how mirroring works..

Wolfgang

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

Bebs

Honored and Esteemed Justices Axford, Murphy, and Caldwell, as well as jacob. May it please the court. A few years ago my then-boyfriend (now husband) wanted to get a dnd group together with his friends, but to their avail, no one wanted to DM. Wanting my boyfriend and friends to have fun, I volunteered, but warned that I had never DM-ed before, and was fairly new to Dnd so I'd need some help with the combat and numbers. Everyone agreed, and I began to write my story. After a few sessions, one player, lets call him Mike, who was Chaotic Evil was starting to become a problem, running off to random towns and killiing innocent bystanders and completely derailing the sessions. My boyfriend and I came up with a cool item to give the party to solve this. Rings of binding, where one party member wore one ring and Mike wore the other. Anytime he moved more that 50 feet away from the other player, he'd take damage. Good solve right? WELL. this started a HEATED argument because apparently this was similar to a real item and was worth a butt ton of gold and the other players argued that no merchant would sell this for 2 gold. I said "okay, well in this world it's not worth that much" That did not calm the arguing and Mike ended up walking out of town, continually taking damage until he died. Then another player, lets call him John, started talking about how I knew nothing about DMing and how he should be the DM. At this point, I walked out of the room, overhearing my boyfriend say how no one wanted to DM and how I said I'd need help with the numbers and everyone agreed to this. This resolved by me resigning as DM, and John starting his own campaign, which only lasted 2 sessions before everyone got bored. I humbly ask the Court. Was I wrong to give my players this ring? Should I have let Mike have player agency and run around like a murderous maniac? Should I not have DM-ed with such little experience? I await your decision. PS We ended up taking Justice Murphy's advice and got new friends and I have ran many sucessful sessions since, one campaign even lasted over a year.

Ethan Hodge

I ask the humble vessels of dice Christ to please bless my first session as dm tomorrow night.

I C

Hey, if your DM is cool with it and it's fun for you (and the party/dm) to have a mega-powered player on board, follow your hearts! And if it's months before your character's power level would reach the point of being a standout, you can always switch things up if you change your mind about the character's direction. Knowing the DM is on board definitely changes the situation, at least in my view haha

Your Good Buddy Brandon

To the right honorable Justices and their pet the bailiff, I present a case of redo's, resentment, and zombie healthcare. My first time DMing I had a player who wanted to "re-spec" his character to multiclass after a few months of playing. I'm annoyed as he had done this many times in previous campaigns, but told him he could with the caveat that in story he would die and be resurected with his new abilities. He agreed, and was struck down the following session by and honest-to-Dice-Christ nat 20. Here's the issue, the party's trigger happy Necromancer zombified his corpse before the NPC Cleric I sent along could Gentle Repose him to prevent this, so now the healing guild's 1,000gp Ressurection spell won't work as it can't bring back undead. The only options are Reincarnate for 1,000gp (which he is against as it would almost certainly change his race) or True Ressurection for 25,000gp. Upon hearing this he became upset, stomped outside to hit his vape a few times and fumed silently while the rest of the party ended up giving all their money to cover the spell -- but he DID resurrect with his remade character. I fear I was too harsh. Should I have just ignored that some spells don't work on undead, was I wrong to try and punish this behavior I knew was coming? I throw myself upon the mercy of the court.

Bliss

Honorable Priest Justices and also Bailiff Jacob I present the case of the Bully Player vs. the Baby DM: I started a new campaign in the brand new Spelljammer module with a fairly new DM. The DM told us that backstory would be incredibly important to the campaign so I stayed up late the night before session zero creating my character Nova - an autognome ballerina who was created as an avant-garde advertisement for a music box store and has mysterious gears granting her clockwork soul sorcery abilities. Session zero went great, we went over our characters including a Minotaur Barbadian. We all left looking forward to our first session the next day. Ten minutes before the session our dm messages me saying she has a problem with my characters race and that I could either play a gnome named Nova who might someday fall in a vat of acid and become a robot gnome. I was baffled and logged in early to chat with the dm to see if we could figure this out before session. I asked if I could simply not use any racial abilities simply keeping the flavor of my backstory but use the mechanics of a gnome. She denied this and other players logged in offering their solutions as well. She denied each and one of the players said I was a “problem character” and not respecting the DM. I ended up quitting the campaign in tears and haven’t had the courage to look for another group since. I humbly submit myself for judgement. Should I have respected the new DMs ruling and played a gnome character instead?

Jac Gibson

Hello Lovley Justices and I think someone named J? I come to you today with the case if the rp vs Raw. I was playing a hombrew game as a battle Smith artificer. That is the subclass in which you get an iron defender. One day while my artificer was working on some of their projects I had my iron defender sit with my party. The party were having a conversation and I wished that I was there in some way. So I started to rp as my iron defender. My dm immediately shut it down as it wasn't RAW. I agreed but argued that it would be interesting rp. I eventually conceded but I always somewhat regretted it as i thiugh the idea of rping not only my artificer but also my iron defender slowly gaining consciousness. I will say I had no intention to do shenanigans with this ability and just wanted a bit more flavour though I understand I should've talked to my dm more first.

Easton Moore

Second Update: He lied about it being a homebrew thing. He realized he’d messed up when we failed 3 challenges in a row and were all going to die and instead of just saying he misread (after we initially had told him it didn’t sound right) and finding a way to fix it he just carried on and let us all die and wanted us to believe we all died and then was going to do something to get us all back and has requested I move to the other side of the table away from him because he believes I only knew he was wrong about the rule because I could see he was reading the book when in reality the rule sounded off from the start, we challenged it and I would have double checked later anyways. Man this has been a funnnnn adventure

Easton Moore

To the most honorable court justices and the lovable yet dimwitted bailiff, I bring you the case of the unwinnable challenge. Just last night my party got TPK’d. We were in the death house side mission for the Straud campaign and fought hard through the house with a few members almost dying. We made it to the ritual basement and decided not to sacrifice a dog to the cult. Doing so made the house turn on us and we had to successfully pass 8 challenges to survive. According to this challenge after failing the third challenge the last person in the initiative order gets “lost to the houses threats”, per the rules with nothing else explaining what happens, aka dying. Problem is the DM stated all 5 had to roll for the save and all had 5 had to pass the save DC or it was considered a group fail. We said that didn’t sound right but he doubled down. I later read the rule and the book clearly states “One check is sufficient enough for the entire party to advance beyond an obstacle, pass or fail.” With only one having to fail for us all to fail we died 1 by 1. (DC saves were 10, 15, 12, 10, 12, 15, 15, 20 & we are lvl 3). I didn’t bring anything else up at the table but messaged this morning stating I had reviewed the rules it wasn’t done properly and would have been much easier. He said it was a homebrew idea off of the book and we’d be fine. He later text me saying he lied and he actually misread the rule, noticed we were all dying (he’s an experienced DM), reread the rule noticing he messed up and continued to let us all believe we’d died and will find a way to fix it next session but for me not to tell the others and that I need to move away from him at the table because he believes I may be looking at his notes or something when in reality I knew the rule was odd, challenged it then, and then just verified it later and checked in with the DM discreetly. Am I wrong for wishing he would have just retconned the first few challenges so we all didn’t feel we got TTK’d on an easy challenge or should I just sit back and not challenge the DM’s rules. I humbly await the courts decision.

Chant Skai

To the most morally up right and handsome Bailiff Jake and I guess the the sorry excuses of Crit Justices Burph, Canner, Exford, I give you the case of a 21 perception check that saw nothing. One night my party and I were crashing a party of who at the time we assumed was a corrupt lord. We all took turns interacting with him, and one of us ended up letting some very important information slip to this lord. The lord then created a distraction by pushing a friend of our child npc over a banister to try and get away. At this point our DM asked for perception checks in which I THE RANGER rolled a 21. However when I gave my DM my result he said that since I was a satyr and thus 4' 11", that at this crowded party of people who loomed over me prohibited me from seeing anything. This then lead to my character being unable to prevent this lord from escaping. I ask you Jake, was my 21 on a check stolen from me because of the height of my character?

Joseph Taylor McRae

Dear Jake etc. In the dim and distant past when I was but a boy of 24, I was invited by a not that close friend to join a weekend long murder mystery micro campaign focussing on non-combat skills and role play. When we arrived, the DM handed us printed character sheets which were empty bar one statistic he had already assigned; intelligence. When pushed, he explained that he had given us intelligence scores based on his estimation of our real world intelligence. This was to ensure, he claimed, that we didn’t simply stumble into solving the mystery through lucky rolls. He went on to say that it was irrelevant anyways, because intelligence was an impossible skill to role play. If our brains could pretend to be smarter by pretending to do and say smarter things, then in the moment of pretence we were simply being more intelligent. While we are no longer friends for reasons which should be obvious, and the weekend naturally ended in petty bickering and an unsolved murder, I remain haunted by his rationale. Can one truly role play being more intelligent than one is, or is playing a high int D&D wizard simply the equivalent of wearing an Einstein wig to play at physicist?

Caitlin B

Dearly beloved justices and the bafflingly bashful beefy 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 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.

Sammi LaFlam

To the honorable Crit Justices and the handsome Bailiff, I bring you the case of the Speechless Bard. A while back, my friends and I were playing a good ol’ game of DnD, the campaign setting: Curse of Strad. It was myself, Perriwinkle the halfling wizard, Bork the half-orc barbarian, and Thomnus the lizard-folk bard. As we are introducing our characters, having a grand ol time with it, Thomnus, an experienced player who has been playing since First Edition, is introducing his player, going into full detail on his appearance and such, the mic drops with the conclusion of his character description: he is a mute. Now, for obvious reasons, we all went silent and had quizzical looks on our faces. The DM confirmed that he heard him right, and Yupp, he is a mute bard. Thomnus went on to say that “Even though I am a mute, I have cool ideas for how to play the part of Bard.” Thomnus and the DM are cousins, and seemed to trust one another, so we agreed and started to play. Thomnus proceeded to be silent for the rest of the session. He never spoke, in character, and anytime we would ask him for his help or opinion he would proceed with: “My character can’t speak the traditional way so figure out how else to communicate this to me.” We attempted to use Message, write messages (which he claimed he couldn’t respond to due to his lizard-folk hands), and even inquiring if there was someone in town who could cure him of his muteness. I even tried to roll play that my character new Sign Language to be able to communicate with him but he had the excuse that different races would have different styles of sign language. Bork, myself, and the DM were exasperated by the end of the 4 hour long session where we barely made any progress and the mute lizard just trailed behind us not doing anything. Needless to say, we didn’t make any effort to play with Thomnus again. The worst of it all: the DM and Thomnus were living together at the time. So he always had to make up some excuse as to why we weren’t going to be getting together to play another session. Were we wrong, and should we have tried harder to find ways to communicate and get him to communicate back to us? Or were we justified in excommunicating him from all future campaigns due to his lack of interaction and effort? I throw myself to the mercy of your judgement.

Canas_Colours

To the honarable Crit justices and the lovely radiant and ever great Bailiff Jake 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. 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 C

THIS IS INSANE it's so spiteful and weird!!!

andrewtl

Dear lovely crit justices and the excessively humble bailiff, I have a brief case about feather fall and dragons. My character was picked up by a dragon, flown up into the air, and then thrown back at the ground. In response I cast feather fall on myself. The DM said that I would still take damage, but I argued that the wording of featherfall states that you slow to specifically 60 feet per round, so regardless of the initial thrown speed, I should fall at the same speed no matter what. I ended up taking the damage anyways, but I still feel I was technically right. What say you?

A

Dearest honorable Justices and bailiff Jake I present you the case of The Petty DM (it's me, I'm the petty one): My experience with D and D is consuming as many play podcasts as possible and DMing a campaign for the last 2 years. I was beside myself with joy when a friend reached out and asked me if I wanted to visit to play in a one shot. I jumped at the chance to be a player and drove 8 hours to spend the day playing. The DM sets up a mystery of the city experiencing a high case of all furry creatures being attacked and killed and immediately I was hooked, but apparently the only one. The next 5 hours the only things that happened: a PC shopping for a ice chest that generates 1d4 beer every time it’s opened, a Kobald that sells spicy eggs, and finally after pushing the narrative to unravel the mystery revealing the BBEG was a Chimera and rolling initiative my friend, who up to this point had only watched and not participated, upon finding out it was “cute” out of character threw a fit that we couldn’t kill it. Claiming because this was her first time ever playing D and D we needed to play how she wanted. The other PCs were her friends (but strangers to me) who play regularly so they happily obliged her tantrum. It turned into a debate, the DM agreeing with me we kill the monster since it kills other “cute” creatures. Every time I started to attack the creature my friend would yell at the top of her lungs to wait until I stopped. Eventually the DM had an NPC appear and cast power word kill ending the session. Am I wrong for being upset the entire session turned into caving for my friends wishes and haven’t been back to visit in over a year? Since I have my own home game I DM for should I have been more chill and relented to my friends wishes? I humbly await your judgement.

Matthew R

Honorable and just Supreme Crit Justices and stunning baliff Jake: my partner and I play paid sessions with a DM who becomes very upset when we don't think his homebrew content is the most amazing material we've ever seen or heard. We tell him repeatedly that we do enjoy playing with him, however, he needs constant reassurance and if we become upset during a session for any reason, he takes it very personally. Once, he trapped 5 out of the 6 members of our party in different Forcecages during combat. We then proceeded to go through initiative with each player ending their turn stuck in the Forcecage (the sixth was magically put to sleep). He wouldn't end combat and was upset that we weren't having the time of our lives stuck in these Forcecages with little/nothing to do as we couldn't attack the casters and teleportation was not useable in the dungeon we were in. Sharing the feedback has made the DM sulk and then we have to make him feel better Should we pretend that we're having fun to avoid the DM sulking or should we figure out other ways around his tricks and traps? I throw us upon the mercy of the court.

Cam the Frog Man Swags Dry Cousin from Gladeholm

To the Amazing and Humble Justices. And the sly bailiff jork, I present the Case of The Disappearing Player. I run a 5e dnd game with some friends and recently we have had some scheduling issues with one player who has trouble showing up, two weeks in a row, he has not shown up, and this causes discord among the table, as some players wanted to give him more chances while I had one player put his foot down and tell him he shouldn't come again, and we played without him, was I wrong for kicking the player out or should I have let him have another chance

James Brown AKA I LOVE YOU, FUCK YOU, EAT A RAT

Since it was for a one-shot we did not incorporate Winry. However I’m pretty sure the battlesmith is the one who works on their own automail since it’s a sub-class trait. So I feel in theory I should have the the technological know how to accomplish the mirroring.

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

To the magnificent crit justices Axford, Tannor and Murphy and the ever so humble bailiff jake, I bring to you the case of the dragons loot and the disgruntled dm. It was quite a few years back when I was still new to dnd I was invited to a game (2nd edition I believe) by my brother and some friends. I was playing an elven ranger for my first time. During our adventure we came across a red dragon guarding his horde in a cavern and our dm told us to just avoid it because we had no chance of defeating the dragon. Me being a new player I wanted to try anyway even though I could see the anger in the dms face start to show. He finally gave in and let me roll my attack, I crit and everyone was cheering but the dm. He told us my arrow pierced the dragons neck through the only missing scale and when the dragon tried to use its breath attack the fire hit the lodged arrow and back fed in its throught causing its head to explode thus killing the dragon. Our dm was so angry he gave us the worst loot he could find as our reward and then made the very next encounter against 2 high lvl stone golem's which resulted in a tpk. I ask was I wrong to go against the dm's warning and take the shot or did I get robbed of my victory? I humbly await your judgment Ps. That was the last time I gamed with that dm. Now years later I not only am back playing the game I love but I also have my daughter's playing dnd with me😊

Reese Page

To the honorable and spicy justices as well as Jake. I have recently come into some table drama with one of my players(who also dm's) playing a changeling who bases his character off of deception like most new players tend to do, because it makes them feel cool or something. After an intense arc about the nature of changelings and what it means to be villianized by the media ie. An allegorical representation of minorities being villianized by far right or far left media. I had this player role a deception check against their insight. Deception had a plus 13 because of expertise and insight a plus 2. The roles you could only dream of deception a natural 1 and insight a natural 20. I proceeded to narrate the changeling no longer in a mask no longer wearing someone else's face; a poetic arc really. The player then says he runs and jumps off the radiant citadel killing his character and then proceeds to leave the table and not continue in the campaign any longer because I took agency away from his character and forced a choice his character would never do ever. In finality justices on one hand I believe the story was a great one but on the other I feel like I failed my friend and has left a hole in my dungeon master career as the moment I failed and couldn't live up to my players expectations. I humbly await your sentence and request my final meal to be spaghetti-o's.

Jacob Nadel

To the most esteemed Justices and sensual Bailiff, I humbly present to you the case of the level-stripping DM: I was playing a spooky Halloween one shot as a level 6 Paladin and one level of Hexblade Warlock, a build that I’ve been excited to try for a long time. During the final fight, with our entire party near death’s door and our enemies doing quite well, I received commands from my patron to stop attacking the big bad. After disregarding them, I failed a DC20 wisdom save and was told by the DM that I was stripped of my Warlock level, losing all abilities, weapons, and spells. I protested, especially since I was relying on my charisma for attack bonus and damage and had very little Strength. We eventually compromised that I could still attack with my hex weapon and stats, but with disadvantage. The party eventually won (with some VERY lucky rolls) and I got the final blow in a great character moment—so am I wrong to still feel a little miffed that my DM tried to strip me of my character’s defining abilities and reduce me to a lower level at a key moment in the final fight? Thank you for your wisdom, Jacob Nadel

Dylan Voth

To the esteemed council, and the bawdy and bulbous bailiff Jark. I supervise a high school DnD club. While I was a away on pat leave, a new player joined and established themselves (and thier character) within the club. Unfortunately, they inadvertently named thier character a racial slur. This group of students are very sweet, lovely and naive. Do I leave them in thier blissful ignorance and let the character be, or teach them a new slur and change the name?

Ian Reilly

May it please the court and the backup bailiff John: I bring you the murder that destroyed my dm’s bbeg. We are in a campaign where we are living on floating islands miles above land. The only way in between the islands is by using highly volatile crystals to power our flying ships. My character’s 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 leomund’s tiny hut to keep us from being thrown off the ship. My dm then said, “Are you sure you want to 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 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)

Banana

May it please the court, the sexy crit justices and the saucy bailiff Jake. Today I present the case of the romantically salty DM. My group has been playing together for three+ years. About a year into our campaign my DM asked me out (for the second time) and I gently said no (for the second time.) The previous time was before our game and I think when we started playing he got hopeful. Next month I got asked out by another guy in our dnd group and I said yes. I love him very much. Since the two of us told our group we were together, something weird has started happening. My character is a sorcerer and baddies started to hit me alot. I started keeping a spreadsheet: in our six person party, my sorcerer gets attacked first in 60% of encounters. I also get hit 87% of the time when I am attacked despite having a displacer cloak, mirror image, the shield spell, and AC 21. Me bringing it up multiple times has not changed anything. When I talk to my DM about it, he says that as a caster I'm a high value target or that I should make better decisions. I've died three times since my boyfriend and I told the group. All of the deaths were lame and fundamentally unsatisfying. Benevolent Justices I beg of you, is my DM a jackass, or am a I paranoid geek who likes excel too much? I throw myself upon the font of your wisdom.

Abby Snyder

May it please the court, the benevolent justices, and also Jake I guess. I present the case of the kneecapped PC. I play a reborn bard in a Strahd campaign. I picked the lineage because I thought it fit into the setting well, and I came up with a backstory that made sense with the lineage/story. However, I feel like my DM (who is very good, don’t get me wrong) has kneecapped me a bit based on my lineage choice. For example, I was out of town for a session and a bunch of our PCs died including me (the other PCs were okay with this). My DM let me live but at the expense of 2/3 of my knowledge of a past lifes. I normally have 3 uses but now only have 1, reducing my efficiency for ability checks and taking away the majority of a key mechanic of the lineage. They’ve also decided that as a reborn, I count as “undead” and therefore can’t be healed by our party’s cleric, any healing potions, or my own healing spells. In your opinion, does this seem fair? I know DMs tend to get final say, and there’s a chance that this is all for story-telling reasons. But I feel pretty useless as a bard since I’m less useful for skill checks and I can’t even heal myself. I humbly await and accept your judgement.

David S.

All-knowing justices and Jake, I present the case of the Bananian. I am a high school teacher who supervises and DM's for our school's DnD club. An enthusiastic new player came to me after a few sessions and told me he was homebrewing a race. I was glad to see he was really getting into it, but the next day he brought forth his creation: the Bananian, an animated humanoid banana. I asked him to describe it and he told me to "look up 'banana man' on Google," pointed to the first image, and said "just like that." I tried not to give a direct answer but suggested that he ought to keep working on it and save it for a day where we do a one-shot rather than suddenly transform his halfling rogue into a Bananian between sessions. He understood and continued playing as a halfling. Was I wrong to dash the hopes of a creative and enthusiastic newbie? Should I have welcomed the Bananian into my world and my heart? I humbly await your judgment.

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!

ChappyThoughts

To the Honorable Crit Justices and that beard-oil salesman moonlighting as a bailiff, I bring you the case of the Reverse Vinn Diagram Debate: I was running a viking-themed campaign off the Sword Coast of Faerun. The party lead their long ship into a harbor inhabited by a dragon turtle. After several rounds it became clear that the dragon turtle was too powerful and would tpk my party (which I accept was my mistake). However, the party had done such a good job during combat and inflicted enough damage that it made sense to me that the turtle would leave to find easier prey elsewhere and retreated. One of my players wanted to set off after it immediately. I didn't want to take away from their victory by blatantly saying I had intervened on their behalf and ruled that they would be unable to track a turtle (even a dragon one) through the ocean. My player believed that it would be possible. Here's the thing: he teaches outdoor survival but doesn't have a particular expertise on sea turtles and tracking through the ocean. I, on the other hand, am a former Navy submariner, but I also don't have a particular expertise on sea turtles or tracking through the ocean. We both were almost experts but not quite. A week after the turtle escaped, he sent me an article about how native Alaskans would track whales across the ocean, though it would sometimes take weeks. I ask: was I wrong to insist that we continue with the campaign and not spend weeks tracking a monster that would ultimately kill the whole party? I await your unbiased and very smart and handsome justice.

Patrick Monteith

To the venerable justices and stud muffin of a bailiff, I present to you the case of the ruined work friendship. My boss invited me to play in a pathfinder campaign with her and her husband. I played a half orc barbarian and developed a very George and Lenny esque friendship with her husbands character. One session our party was attacked by an enemy ranger who commanded a pack of fearsome dogs. While the whole party sought to neutralize the ranger, I choose to mow down the dogs who were attempting to kill a panther familiar I befriended in a previous session. The entire party was shocked at behavior, and in particular her husband and my in game best friend scolded me for my barbaric behavior, despite the fact that I had killed scores of wolves and broken humans fingers to obtain information not one or two sessions before without so much as a sideways glance from any of my fellow players or dm. The next time we played my bosses husband made a point to highlight my behavior in a negative context, so I proceeded to pointedly ask his permission in character before making any attack at all, even when faced with the evil necromancies bbeg. Her husband told me I was being a smart ass, I was uninvited from their game, and to this day my working relationship is s not nearly as friendly as it was before. I ask you court. Was this party being overly sensitive, or was I just a stubborn ass hole?

Bennett Lawson

May it please the wonderful and lovely justices and that guy who sells wallets, Jake, I present to you the case of forbidden hand chopping. I was running a campaign where the players were coworkers facing weird problems, one of which they ended up fighting the fantasy IRS, after the fight one of the npcs, barnaby, who was a loyal friend to the party, was recognized by an agent as an international criminal. The party rolled and noticed the look of recognition but didn’t know why. One of my players, Derrick, decided to intimidate barnaby, rolled and failed, he then looked me dead in the eyes and said he wanted to cut his hand off, I told him he failed the check and he can’t do that, he said he could and that this was a separate thing, I told him if he attacked a coworker he would most likely be fired from the job which this entire campaign was about working. He finally gave up, but was bitter and from there hated barnaby and frequently kept trying to cut his hand off instead of asking why the agent recognized him. So court I ask was I wrong from not allowing Derrick to cut off his coworkers hand? I await your decision -Bennett L

Tara Fedele

DnD Court My humble greetings to the honorable judges and the dutiful bailiff. I bring you the case of the most utter betrayal: my DM, who is also my partner, took away a critical hit. We were fighting a dragon and were hurt badly. The dragon was looking pretty hurt and my character crit for 4d8 plus 2d6 plus 2d4 of damage. At that moment, the DM decides to trigger a deal my character made with a demon. At the DMs discretion, my character owes a moment of her time and is teleported to the demons location for that moment, and then teleported back. My crit is nullified and my turn ends. To further put salt in the wound my DM admits he was going to teleport me earlier but forgot. While I understand my character made a bad deal, I think it’s a horrendous crime to deliberately take away a crit during an important moment. I ask you, did I get what I deserve, or did my DM wrongfully take away an important crit from me and my party? Added note, this hasn’t put any stress on the relationship, and we have agreed to honor your judgement. - Tara the Faithful Nerd

Teia Sebire

Holiest of Justices and potential new best friend Bailiff Jake. I present to you the case of the two hour queue. I had just moved to a new city and some friends invited me to join a one-shot. They live and breathe D&D and I was so excited to play with such experienced players. We were a registered adventuring party in a city full of adventuring parties. The adventuring guild opened, we joined the long queue to get our quest and we waited. The PCs waited and the players waited. The DM described seven or eight other adventuring parties ahead of us in great detail. We tried to bribe people to get the the front, we started distractions, we set fires, we tied shoelaces, desperate to get our quest. All to no avail. After two hours of real time waiting ‘in line’ we, the flustered players, finally received our quest to travel to another village and investigate its graveyard. By the time we left the line at the Adventurers Guild we had to wrap up. We never made it to the graveyard in game. But I am a lot closer in real life. I ask, should we have been given an opportunity to skip the line to get our adventure started or should we have accepted that this queue was the adventure all along? I trust in your ruling. Amen.

Pendergreen's Bowflex

May it please the wonderful judges and the family beard oil guy. I present the case of the butter knife. In the very first campaign I ever DMed, (in true Coldwell fashion) I gave my players whatever they wanted, including: “the butterknife”, a knife I came up with which can cut through any wood like butter. This gave my players some nice “dm womps” but eventually (soaking in DM sweat) I put a metal door in a place I didn’t want them easily getting in. This of course was met with exasperated uproar. Luckily this campaign eventually came to an end. I’m now DMing a homebrewed pirate campaign with one of the same players (a chaotic Druid) from this previous campaign and they are DEMANDING that I give them the butterknife once again. I can already see them wildshaping into a bear, jumping onto the enemies ship and just chopping up the hull. My Question: Have I given them a toy that I can no longer take back (and is this the end of my DMing career) or should I tell them to suck it up and tell them that they actually have to properly interact with my world now.

Dan Conlon

Dear illustrious, and infallible Justices… Hurwitz. I present the case of the unstudied players. I’m a newer DM running a homebrew that’s heavily inspired by campaign 1. Most of my players are new if not first timers. We had a great session 0 and they made interesting characters that I has a blast building into the world and thinking of twists for their backstories. I don’t have issues with their play style (they’re slowly but surely learning the ways of RP), but they keep neglecting to study or even level their character sheets! I will tell them they leveled and even send reminder texts between sessions to study and pick subclasses, but for two of them I’ve had to level them and pick their vow/domain before the session (leading to them not really knowing any of their abilities). Am I failing to accommodate for new players, or should I expect a little more preparation for all the time I spend building sessions. I prostrate myself before your splendor, and away your judgement.

Cameron Davis

May it please the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent deities we know as the Justices of the Supreme Crit, and Jake I guess. My players were in an unexpectedly deadly encounter against a group of Half-Dragon bandits, in which the Barbarian kept getting knocked down over and over again (mind you—she and the Fighter were the only ones in melee and she continued to insult the bandits, intentionally taking hits). It got dicey, to a point where the Barbarian was down to 2 failed death saves with a sword to her throat, when the Warlock wanted to cast Misty Step with the Barbarian in his arms to teleport them both back. I ruled, unfortunately however, that because Misty Step has both a Range and Target of Self, it could not be used in this way—further justifying the decision by stating that there are other spells such as Thunder Step that allow you to carry creatures with you, and I didn’t want to take the appeal away from taking those spells. Dear Justices, did I rule in a way that was fair and just, or did I rob the Warlock of what could’ve been a great moment? (P.S. the Barbarian survived the encounter, but they used 7 healing potions over the course of it, almost completely depleting them just to keep her alive.)

Rae Leo

May it please court and the oily bailiff, i present the case of the scrolling rogue: I’m (she/her) in a heavy rp campaign with five five other people. most of us are really good about seeking each other out for scenes between our characters except one player, the rogue (he/him), who says he’s more into combat. This would be valid, except that he doesn’t pay attention to what’s going on in combat, takes forever during his own turn deciding what to do, and doesn’t listen or participate in anyone else’s rp. In general, whenever the scene isn’t only about him he’s on his phone. When one of us try to find him to rp he only gives our character’s short, non-committal replies. the dm does his best to include the rogue. this last session, before the party woke up from their long rest, the rogue went searching for food in this abandoned building in the middle of nowhere where we were recovering after a boss fight. 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 teleport to a different town where the rogue could just buy himself breakfast. the dm quickly wrapped things up and the rogue went back to his phone for the rest of the session. 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?

Nina

For me this is a big overstep, especially the explicit stuff, even when it’s implied. Your DM could have come to you and said „how do you want to play your absence?“ But they made some huge moves for you without checking your comfort levels.

Some guy who likes chicken

No case today, just an update on the DRAMA from last month's episode. Things resolved happily but fair warning - it gets messier before it gets better. So I took y'all's advice and blew the situation up by telling my girlfriend everything about the DM's confession. Thankfully she didn't think I was overreacting, in fact she got a little pissed off I hadn't told her sooner. She found it really creepy that she'd been engaging in romantic roleplay without knowing just how much the DM was getting out of it. Fair point, I apologised. We decided to cut our losses and leave the campaign, so I texted the DM to let him know we wouldn't be back, and that his actions had made us both uncomfortable. He immediately called me. At first he apologised and said he understood, but tried to get us to return to the campaign. After a lengthy conversation where we held firm we did not want to come back, he said I was "overreacting" and asked "if you trust her, what are you afraid of?", at which point I hung up. Later that night, he texted my girlfriend "wuu2". He must have gone complaining to the other players because the next day I got a text from one of them saying I was being selfish and asking us again to resume the campaign. When I refused, he told me I had "ruined his year". I've never spoken to this guy outside of the sessions, by the way. I'm the end we both blocked the DM and the rude player, my GF isn't mad at me anymore, and we've resolved to follow Murphy's Law and find some new friends. Thanks for the advice!

Polina Milashevskaya

Oh I’ve been waiting for your updates! Happy to hear that you and your girlfriend are good!

Snugglegurts

All I want to say is that Caldwell might get elected Secretary of State in the State of Kansas due to a run of write in ballots from the NADDPOLES.

Oli

To the blessed priests, priestess and altar boy of dice christ. I have a confession for the church of dice christ for my sinful mistake of casting two spells in one turn in my first d&d battle in 5 years. I had not played d&d in almost 5 years before i joined this party. but i learned a lot of battle strategy and action economy from things like naddpod and dimension 20. so i was very excited to be actually use my skills during this fight. My party was ambushed by a group of spellcasters and soldiers trying to kidnap a eldritch god, we aptly named Jonathan. My character is a 2nd level barbarian and 1st level cleric. I was early in initiative. So in my excitement I casted sanctuary on jonathan with my bonus action and then charged the leader and hit her with inflict wounds. completely forgetting sanctuary is also a 1st level spell. my dm also didn’t realize this until the next round. we discussed it after the session and he said it was a good move. we even joked about me sending this confession in. in the end casting sanctuary saved the god and my party killed the leader. but I still feel guilt of forgetting spell rules and am pleading for forgiveness from the court. I humbly await your decision. blessed be dice christ and this court.

Finn

Dice Christ confessional Exalted litigious bishops and Jake – please hear my confession. I have been DMing a campaign with my very close friends for the last few years. It has had many amazing moments of love, heartbreak, family drama, character growth, and - of course - shenanigans. However, I fear it is all built upon a foundation of lies and sin. In our second ever session, the party was travelling through up a mountain with a caravan of traders. I had them ambushed by bandits on horseback, in what I had planned to be a cool chase encounter. Two of the party got the idea and escaped down the river with one of the wagons. However, the remaining player (a first-level rogue) decided to stay and fight – facing down 6 mounted combatants. Frantically trying to think of a way to give her character any chance of surviving, I had four of the bandits chase the other party members, and two remain to try and slay the rogue. The fight that ensued was incredibly tense, the rogue barely scraping through with clever use of the environment. It came right down to the wire, with both the rogue and the bandit leader at 2HP. It was the bandit leader’s turn. I rolled both attacks, knowing that a single hit would fell the rogue – and with no one around to help, most likely permanently kill her. The bandit leader rolled a 2, and then a 19. Already steeped in new DM-sweat, I did the only thing I could think of to keep the game fun and declared that both attacks missed. The rogue killed the bandit leader on her next turn, and it is a fight that the party still talks about to this day. I worry Dice Christ is still waiting for the right moment to punish me. I beseech you holy ones, please forgive my trespasses and save my DM soul. Thank you.

Mac

wow that dm sucks, good block dude. thanks for the update

The one they call Barlo

Congrats man. Always nice to hear open, honest dialogue between reasonable people winning the day. Forget that fool of a DM x

Myles Lee

NO CONFESSION JUST EVIDENCE OF DICE CHRIST My friend just gave me photo evidence of a critical hit on an attack with disadvantage. 2 Natural 20s when it mattered most!!

David P

I need the assistance of a rules attorney in paw: When casting detect thoughts, can you read the thoughts of a creature who speaks a language which you can’t understand yourself? I’d say yes, because magic, but some fellow player disagrees, since it would mean that you’re casting comprehend languages for free (so they claim). Who of us should be executed?

Emily M.G.

To the honorable justices and J daddy, I am the DM for a campaign and was running a fight where my players snuck onto a pirate ship that was docked at port. One of my players (who always plays as the dumb jock type) ruined the teams plans to sneak onboard quietly by yelling “I’m the captain now” and just walking onboard. A pirate went to grapple/fight him, but he rolled a nat 20 to throw the pirate overboard. I explained that the pirate comically falls into the water (and then he had to take his next turn to get back on the dock and up the gangplank). After two more rounds, my player insisted that he should have taken damage for falling in the water. I said that hitting the water would be negligible from the height (like people dive from high places all the time). My player still brings this up every encounter. Was I right to stand by my initial judgment?

A Bug in a Hug

To the Magnanimous Mystery Gang Justices and Mascot Jakey-Doo, may it please the court to hear the case of the slowly falling kobold: I am a player in a campaign playing as a wizard winged kobold with deformed wings. Her name is Bug and she is obsessed with "figuring out how to fly" and looking for her clan, who told her that they would wait for her when they flew off one day and then totally didn't. One strategy that I think is fun and adds some flavor is for her to occasionally leap and use Gust to push herself higher in the air a la Breath of the Wild's Revali's Gale. Before starting the campaign, my DM and I discussed this and essentially settled on "she can glide short distances" but never figured out the mechanics. During a chase scene we were rapidly losing, Bug asked a much larger NPC to pick her up and throw her across a canyon. I started my turn next to the NPC, so said I would use my action to cast Gust under her wings so that she wouldn't splat on the wall. The DM argued that because she cannot fly, she will immediately begin falling, and that Gust doesn't work because she can't cast it on herself. I argued that the language of Gust doesn't mean I can't cast it below myself and direct it upwards and that it can push an object 5 feet. The DM ultimately said that Gust can only be cast away from the wizard, and then made made me do a dexterity check??? I argued for an arcana check and also was not successful. I passed by the skin of my teeth but I am salty that using Gust had essentially no effect, and my wizard skillz were not helpful despite using Gust to gain altitude. I ask of you, oh noble and omnipotent mystery gang and jake, was I done a dirty?

TheMFHawg

To the esteemed justices and the balif whos name I can't remember. I bring to you the case of the magic exploding beans. Our part of five was in a cave confronting a goblin boss. To initiate combat while we were speaking with the boss, my character threw a bag of magic exploding beans at the boss and his subordinates. Before I had a chance to roll damage he DM states that I do 16 damage total. I say to him that he didn't even make dexterity saving throws (we had previously established that you could make a dex save to avoid half damage from these) for the enemies and that damage should've been mine to roll because I threw the beans. He then states "No that's not how it works". This made me very upset because 16 (each one is a d10) damage on these beans is an extremely low roll and I suspected he altered the damage so that I didn't instakill the boss. I be that upset about the damage if I had been the one to roll it and gotten a very bad set of rolls for myself. We argued throughout the session and never came to an agreement. I ask the esteemed judges and balif, was I dine dirty by my DM?

Dylan Miller

New DM here, so I have a problem with my pcs and more need advice So I’m my party is a homebrewed mud man with earth genasi with the base for the race and built around it and let him keep the ability to shape earth So my party keeps just having the mud man just make a hole and they start either throwing stuff in or have the rogue half dragon (has wings and flies but only allowed it since he doesn’t abuse it) but he will get perfect line of sight if I say he has disadvantage for trying to arc it into the hole And they even have a nickname for when the enemy is low they look at eachother and just say “the blender” That’s when our hexblade warlock does everything possible to do every bit of damage in that moment as possible and he jumps head first into the hole spinning to make the blender How do I keep my pcs from just making all of my baddies into smoothies Tried using large monsters like a large garlicbread snake and a garlic knot spider to counteract them trying it and finally got a good fight (in the food kingdom rn, similar to crown of candy) Any ideas without nerfing my pcs and ruining their time, help Tldr My pcs keep putting all of their enemies into holes and sending the hexblade warlock in to just shred them with everything he has after the rogue hits them a few times My pcs are making my npcs into smoothies

lilystarz

To the fantasticle, wonderful, and amazing justices. And the guy who plays Hardwon Surefoot. I bring a situation that happened a few months ago but me and my freind still argue about it. I was dming a small campaign with me and 2 other players. My freind was playing a vampiric rouge (homebrew). We made custom rules were he would take damage in water. He wouldn't be affected by light, etc. He was a new player but not his first session. We were playing over discord no map. My one friend who was playing a tiefling got into a fight with some kobolds. My friend asks so climb a tree and hide. So I let him, rolled a 17-18 and I said he jumped and attacked him. But he is now in water and would take damage at the start of his next turn. He got mad and said he didint know the water was there, and rolled high. I told him that I explained the situation and how the tiefling was also fighting in the water. No kobolds were out of the water. Should I have let him take his action back? I am at thy mercy