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Calling for Court Cases (Patreon)

Published:
2022-11-29 15:38:17
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Hello!

Bailiff Jack here. The Supreme Crit is convening this very day. Please submit your (BRIEF, ideally!) cases on this thread and we will bring you your due justice.

Love,

Josh or something like that

Comments

Luke Johnson

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

PuppetAnalingus

Not a court case but if the justices feel like investing: Shell-o to the magnanimous Turtles! I’m looking for a partner to bring a simple elegant solution to balance the classes of 5e. DND ONE introduced grouping for classes, such as Expertise, Marshal, Arcane, and Divine. Expertise being Rogues (Intelligence,) Rangers (wisdom,) and Bards (charisma.) Following this pattern I suggest that we change the primary casting ability for Clerics and Sorcerers. Clerics should be intelligence based, on the principal of devout study to their god, religious group, etc. Sorcerers should be Wisdom based, on the principal of needing to be in touch with themselves and the world to access their abilities. This would help break up the cluster of Charisma and Wisdom based casters and bring about some interesting new class combos. Like Sorcerer-Druid and Rogue-Cleric. Thank you, I look forward to working with almost any of you! PS: I plan to reject any offers made by Caldwell based off his track record of failed businesses…

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

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. PS. Can’t wait to see you all Saturday in Atlanta! Flying from New Orleans to watch!

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.

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.

Namtao

May it please the justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner, and also that guy who owes Tucker rent. I present the case of the pacifist DM. We have a rotating DM in our game, and this time, it's our friend's turn (let's call him YUGO) YUGO, the DM, has set up a carnival in the Underdark for us to explore, complete with carnival games, a kissing booth, test your strength, roller-coasters, and an exotic zoo. There's a mystery at the dark heart of the carnival, and we have to get to the bottom of it before it ends the world. COOL RIGHT? After session 1 we were excited!!!! After session 10 we are confused: THERE IS NO COMBAT ANYWHERE. Perchance I be punished for not perusing this pacifist playground? Or is the DM a curmudgeon because our cadre of characters are CLEARLY customised for combat. I throw myself at the court's and/or church's mercy and/or eggs.

Gnarrrwhal

Do we still get a campaign episode this week because the main feed was dark on Thanksgiving? Or are we doing a filler week because the last thing posted there was a campaign episode?

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.

Alex Weatherhead

To the accomplished and decorated Supreme Crit Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner as well as Bailiff Jake of Clickhole fame, 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 goblin 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?

Benfield Hicks

Any that needs 2 ATL tickets message me.

Dylan C

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

Star_Drek

May it please the court, and jack I guess: I am the player (he/him) and my DM (she/her) threw a lord of snails at us. We have another paladin in this story. We ran into this giant snail in a cave, who the DM described as “intelligent” and could speak in primordial. I, a wild magic sorcerer, ran up to it and attacked it via melee (don’t ask). The snail attacked me with two swipes of his pseudopods, and the paladin cast Shield of Faith on me to give me +2 AC. The snail then chose to cast Spit Acid on me to get around my AC (dex save) and downed me, leading me to my eventual death, and to the DMs credit, dramatic plot armor revival. Was the snail metagaming? I would argue yes, as it wouldn’t switch to an ability that ignores AC since my AC was boosted, regardless of the snails intelligence or whatever lands or titles this lord may claim who has lived in a cave his whole life. My DM argues that it could see a “shining force field” around me and might change its tactics, but I’m dubious of it switching directly to the perfect ability. I argue a better strategy would have just been to attack someone else or hit me harder. I await your ascendant verdict.

Robert Aronowitz

DND Court May it please the court (and any potential guests) and neg the bailiff I call this case: Roc v Wall of Force I know y'all just love bird cases, so here you go. As a party we were foreshadowed with this MASSIVE Roc flying around in the area. Our DM did such a great job talking it up with our perception checks that we wanted NOTHING to do with a fight at our current level. So we opted to avoid. We snuck around a nest with its babies to a structure to hunker down for the afternoon to wait for it to eventually stop hunting, we even sent a sac of meat decoy on a horse in the other direction when we finally did leave, but lo and behold it s perception was too high and it tried to come after us as we ran away. With some clever thinking our wizard and his super dope initiative roll went first and used wall of force to create an impenetrable sphere around it. What a great solution to avoid the fight, but our DM wasn’t having it. She wanted us to fight this bird and It turned into a big debate. She was ok with it temporarily slowing down the creature, but it would be too hard to trap it in a sphere. The wizard argued that even though it is such massive creature he has a high enough intelligence to know that he could time the wing flaps for when it wasn’t at full extension. "What flaps up, must come down." That way, as the wording of wall of force is written, anything that occupies where the wall ends up can be pushed to one side or the other. Well he created a sphere and chose to push it on the inside of that sphere. With much disdain and minimal fanfare, we were eventually let to escape by trapping that sessions big monster in a giant sphere but it still continues to be a subject for debate. I mean it was his only high level spell slot. So what’s the thought here Supreme Crits? Were we right to get away with this, or should we have been Roc food?

Brooke Sanders

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

Dave Large

May it please the Court. To enlightened justices of the Court and whichever version of bailiff Jake is reading the cases this time, I present the case of Real world time in Game. My friends and I were playing a one shot in the Monster of the Week system (great for quick one shots btw). The game was taking place in the real world and our characters asked to go to a local Walmart to stock up before the mission. Our dm, another friend, agreed! Little did we know, he googled the exact Walmart in real life we were going to and, unbeknownst to us, applied it’s real world closing hours to our journey! He made a joke of “Walmart will be closing in 5 minutes” and started a real world 5 minute timer without telling us. Our stock was cut short and we went in under prepared. I humbly ask, should we have been beholden to the real world hours of Walmart in our game or should we have been understanding of these fictional peoples scheduled out times?? I anxiously await your verdict.

Josh G

It really confused me momentarily when I saw the notification and then my own name. Was wondering if they had a script to personalize these posts for a second

MaeIsntClever

Forgive me Dice Christ for I have sinned. I'm a pretty experienced DM, having run a weekly game with rotating players for about 4 years weekly, but this past Sunday, I overestimated my players capabilities to hear disastrous results. They're a party of six, level 4, and I thought they would have no problem battling an ice devil and a chain devil in a winter setting. After one round of combat however I realized I was wrong, as the devil's nearly killed half the party after one turn. As to not ruin the session early on I not only began fudging rolls so the devil's wouldn't utterly whomp my players, but I also fudged their stat blocks making them capable of actually hitting the enemies or getting spells off. Most of the group had no idea that I handicapped the monsters so bad but I'm pretty sure some of my more experienced players knew something was up. I prostrate myself before the church in the eyes of Dice Christ themself and ask... Am I forgiven?

Aaaaaarushi An Anachronistic Enigma

Oi J boi, tell the supreme judges we said hi, Early on, I was dming for some mates, all medical students but I. Naturally, dragon flew up, fighter couldnt do much ranged stuff, so he decided to try and JUMP INTO THE DRAGONS MOUTH. I said hes made of molten gold, you will burn up and die. He says 'but only if i land, what if i jump in the mouth, and straight out the ear' . I made a fatal mistake: humouring him. I said 'that trajectory isnt possible without at least landing on his tongue, at which point youburn up and die'. What proceeded was a half hour argument with multiple medical textbooks and diagrams, as the whole table tried to convince me this was medically possible. We settled it with the Rule Of DM Said No. But even now, over a year later, it gets brought up, along with some medical textbooks and joking anger. What do you think? Was i too harsh and should i have caved to their medical knowledge, or was i right and should he have burned up and died?

bbyfendie

To the iron-fisted arbiters of justice, the dispensars of the will of the Crit nation, as well as jake from tru tv's passed-on pilot "Jake and Amir"; this isnt a case but more of a question. Before you did this as a career, how did u organize dnd sessions across friends with full schedules? Me and my friend group have endless unfinished campaigns that get lost in the winds due to conflicting schedules. Do we just need to do super short campaigns? For reference we are all mid 20 something's who are either in school or have 9-5s. Please advise. Oh and Jake? That's more than enough.

Ali

May it please the pulchritudinous court and please the Bailiff to a degree decided upon by the court moment of, 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. The party had to convince him out of taking another swig, which would bring his exhaustion to a 6 (death) upon a fail, after he kept chanting "I can beat it this time!" Justices, did I err in believing my item was balanced, or should I continue to encourage this alcoholism?

Beav

The Case of BEING PRONE WHILE FLYING Great and Honorable Justices and Above Average Baliff (unless we’re razzing Jake this week, in which case fuck you Baliff!), I bring to the court yet another case involving a bird race PC. I DM for a party with an Aarakocra PC that often whomps me with their ability to fly off whenever things get dicey. Fighting some cultist mages, the birdman gets low on HP and takes flight. A foe cast Taseous Hideous Laughter which, on a fail, knocks a creature prone. The feathered pc failed, so the question becomes, “what does prone while mid-flight mean?” Reading the 5e definition for the “prone“ condition, I ruled that the birdman fell out of the sky. They took enough falling damage to hit 0 hp, then expired after 2 death saves (a 7 then a nat 1). The PC argues that prone while flying would not have caused any falling damage, and their feathered PC would have glided safely to the ground, but I stand my decision. What say you? (slips $5 to bailiff)

Garrett Bennett

Dear exalted Court Justices and the guy who reads the cases, I was running the Lost Mine of Phandelver module from the DnD starter kit for a group of friends who I was trying to get interested in DnD. I was a longtime fan of DnD, but a first time DM. My players having never played dnd asked me what they could do. I said their imagination is the limit. To my surprise, when they reached the city of Phandalin, they looked for ice cream. Panicking, I said no because it wasn’t appropriate to the setting of the campaign. They argued for it, but I held firm. To this day, they razz me about how I didn’t give them ice cream every time I bring up playing DnD to the point where I always have an ice cream shop prepared in every one shot or campaign. I ask you oh mighty court, was I right in being true to the setting of the campaign, or was my panic getting in the way of the rule of cool? I humbly await your judgement.

Randy

I have a dice Christ confessional: In a previous 2 year campaign I played a tiefling sorcerer/cleric multiclass Named Andarisk. Our dm made us an offer for rolling stats. Roll your stats and put them where you want them to be OR roll straight down the stat list and take a feat. I’m a sucker for feats and rolled straight down. None of my stats were above a 13 and my finals role for charisma (I chose to be sorcerer more than cleric) was 6. I quickly rerolled and got a 10 which I kept. The campaign was very still a struggle for a bit but overall one of my favorite characters I’ve played. But did I still feel guilty over rerolling my charisma. ALSO the feat was more or less useless (flames of phlegethos) as my character disliked fire magic.

Luke Avritt

To the incredible judges and the powerful primordial John-Jake, lord of the court, I beseech Yee on a matter of player revenge! My friends and I are playing a Dante’s inferno type campaign, where we’re all sinners trying to escape hell. Recently, one of our players, a warlock, tried to sacrifice a npc without the consent of the party, saying he was the only one that was willing to do whatever it took to get out of hell. Another player, our ranger, proceeded to save the npc and run away with the rest of the party. Ultimately, this lead to a really nice development where the npc wasn’t killed and out PCs had some character growth, expect for the warlock who has now sworn revenge against the parties ranger. I call upon the wisdom of the judges, is the warlock in the wrong for wanting in/out of game revenge against our ranger for stopping his plan, or are we as the party in the wrong for actively going against another player. I await your merciful punishment.

Grant Kenny

To the Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner: I humbly bring my brief case to the bailiff Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt - Should a DM be allowed to set the rules of whether or not you use physical or virtual dice in an online only campaign? We use a Foundry online system for our Pathfinder 2e campaign and our DM refuses to let us use real dice as he wants to see all dice rolls in the chat as well as private/blind dice rolls (which this system uses) I offered to have my camera on for dice rolls so he would know I'm not going against dice Christ, but he refused. This wouldn't be an issue to me if I didn't roll so horribly every time I use the online dice roller. Please help for the sake of my characters rolls. I humbly await your decision. Grant

mary

may it please the most honorable justices and the good/bad bailiff jake i’m a new dm (just dmed my 3rd session) and in my most recent session, i had my players undergo a ritual to ensure that they would keep information they learned a secret. one of my players is playing a monk who is a bit morally gray, and he (in character) said that he did not want to partake in the ritual. i had not planned for any of my players to deny undergoing the ritual, so i spent the next five minutes quietly freaking out and trying to figure out a way to honor this decision while still fitting into the story i had planned. eventually, my player said that he would do the ritual if it would be easier on me, and i took him up on that offer and the rest of the session went smoothly. however, i feel bad that i was unable to improvise & honor my player’s choice on what he felt like his character would do. am i in the wrong for not trying harder to honor my player’s decision? i eagerly await the judgement of the court

Ross Gilliland

May it please the court and the unconventionally handsome bailiff, I present to you the case of the unrepentant player. I was DMing a campaign in college, and going into one 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, and going forward I would not go out of my way to protect their characters from the consequences of their own actions. Later in this same session, upon discovering that a home they were staying in 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 quest. The vampire, having no reason to involve himself in this matter, told Hektor he would not be helping him, and retreated back into his coffin. Hektor’s next words have lived in infamy ever since: “I light his coffin on fire.” I felt very challenged in that moment to uphold my promise from the beginning of the session by battling and inevitably killing my friend, but I chickened out and just had his character marked by the vampire to be his new thrall, meaning Hektor could be summoned at any point to serve him. Most lawful court, did I make a mistake by showing leniency after my authority was challenged so blatantly. I humbly await your decision.

AwkwardFish L

May it please the supreme crit justices and the beautiful bailiff Jank. Dice Christ forgive me for I believe I have sinned many times. As a dm I have a terrible habit of fudging rolls to make my players look better, for example making their enemies fail saves or miss on attacks. While I thought I was doing a service for my players, I fear I am not letting the dice tell their story. If you see fit, lay down a punishment for me to enact on myself. Thank you.

Chris Roman

Blessed archpriests and disciples of Dice Christ, I come to you with a confession, not of dice, but of the rule of Banishment. In a past game my wizard grew to using the spell banishment often in combat to help control the battlefield. However the first time I used it, I misread the spell, and assumed ANY creature is permanently banished after one minute, not just ones from other planes. In my ignorance, I never read it again. This resulted in several battles being easily won by our party, as I banished fire giants with ease and then hid in the bushes until a minute was up. Was I a coward? Maybe. But eventually our DM realized I was using the spell wrong, and I was horrified. As penance, I told our DM that at any point he could have the monsters I wrongly banished show up and kick the shit out of me. So priests and priestesses I ask, does this punishment fit the sin?

Ashley P

May it please the court, and the beautiful bailiff Jake. I am currently playing in a campaign with my long time friends and a first time DM. Our campaign is fairly new we have run about 4 long sessions at this point but what I wanted to bring up was one of the other players in the campaign is playing a war forge with two different personalities (he has dm'd many times before as well) The problem that I have with this is that these two personalities are two different classes, paladin and a rune knight fighter. He is able to switch from each character whenever he wants and whenever we level up both of his characters level up. So basically he is playing two different characters. I'm playing a druid and end up running out of spells fairly quickly because he says he fine and doesn't need to rest and then the rest of the party ends up agree. My question is, dear judge's is this fair for him to be playing two different characters or is he just taking advantage of our new DM?

Keanu DRAMAFACE

Dear Emily The Crass, Caldwell of the Spill, Murph the DMs champion, and Jerf: the one who scuffs their shoes to look like they skate, Once upon a time when I was DMing, I had a new player joining a year long campaign. I was excited until their character became highly antagonistic of the other party members. I thought it was just first session banter that would result in friendship later on, but it continued. One night, after the session, this mean player came to me and said they felt they didn’t get enough attention that session. I blew up and said it is because their character is mean to the other characters. They stopped showing up and I wrote them out of the story. I beseech the court to tell me if I was in the wrong in this heavily biased story.

Jacob A Huber

May it please the court (and especially the unflappable and unmatchable Bailiff Jake). I present the case of the enlarged eyeball. I am DMing for a group of my closest friends. One of my players, a wizard, is generally toeing the line of being a "murder hobo". During an altercation with some corrupt constables, he asked me if an eyeball counted as an object. IMMEDIATELY SUSPICIOUS, I asked him why he was asking. He said he wanted to cast "Enlarge" on one of the Constable's eyeballs. My first thought was that a body part doesn't count as a separate object, but he protested. So, I had him roll an Arcana check, and I rolled a constitution check for the constable as well (per enlarge's rules). My wizard rolled extremely well and the constable failed. So, the eyeball essentially exploded. The constable was not dead but immediately out of the fight. The party then used the commotion to escape. I ended up working it into the story and had the constable return as the Chief of the local police department with an eye patch and a grudge against the party, but I still wonder if I was right. Should a body part count as a separate object? Should it have killed the constable? I leave these questions with the esteemed court in the hopes I can put this behind me. Thanks, and merry early Critmas.

Jefe_Con_Leche

Dearest Model-esque Justices Murphy Axford and Tanner. Oh and that tall guy with the beard Jake. I come to you humbly and await your wise justice. I bring you the case of "The Retcon that got away" I have been running Tombs of Annihilation for a group of seven players for the last year or so. This tale has seen the death of one PC within the Tomb of the Nine gods. On one of the floors, at risk of spoiling the adventure for others, the group battled a monster. The dead PC's player made a monk that had its turn against this beast that was initially a missed attack due to its invisibility. After his turn was over, he did ask for a retcon that his modifier was incorrectly calculated and would've hit. I was reluctant to allow it but did in the name of fun and ended up being stunned by a stunning strike for two whole rounds. Justices and Jake, should I have let the retcon happen or adhere to the rule of if you forgot you forgot? For context, these are all experienced players. I await your judgment and or punishment.

Josh the Alchemist

To the esteemed, noble Supreme Crit Justices and that guy who played guitar good one time, I present the case of the Pacifist Player. I'm a DM of an online group that's been playing together for just over two years now. A spot opened up about halfway through our last campaign and one of the players asked to invite his girlfriend with the caveat that this would be her first real campaign. I had no issue with this, I like helping newbies learn the game. Everything's going fine until our first combat. She refuses to attack, saying that as a life domain cleric, her character abhors violence. We made it through the rest of that campaign with her never casting offensive magic. Now we're in a new game, Cyberpunk RED, and she's made a new pacifist, saying that she "thought she could get away with it again." Cyberpunk, just as an aside, not a game that caters to nonviolence. I'm tempted to ask her to leave with that comment, but I don't want to lose the friend we have in her boyfriend and she's otherwise a very pleasant person to be around. I ask you, what should I do here, Justices? I don't want to lose friends, but I can't see this going anywhere positive. I humbly await your decision.

Pamphleteer

Baliff Josh and the illustrious court, I beg of you to hear my case, the case of the missing Silvery Barbs. In a campaign currently playing a bard. At level one, both the sorcerer and I took Silvery Barbs. In the final boss battle of the opening arc, I could tell the DM was frustrated by the constant use (we negated three of his nat 20s with SB) and so when we leveled to 3 at the end of the arc, I decided to get rid of SB. I figured since I get cutting words at 3, I'd still have a good reaction to use. Flash forward to the most recent session, the rogue was about to be knocked out by a hit and called for someone to use Silvery Barbs. The sorcerer was too far away so they looked to me and I had to explain that I had gotten rid of it. Everyone was confused, and after we survived by the skin of our teeth the party turned on me! They felt I should have consulted the group before changing up spells since it can change their strategies as well. I feel that my spell management is 100% my business, but am I wrong? Should I have asked my party before getting rid of Silvery Barbs? I humbly throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Positive Nerdery

Honorable Justices and Stupid Sexy Jake, when DMing a campaign in college, I subject my players to a cross-dimensional trip. One of the dimensions was The Mushroom Kingdom. Immediately, a player got up and sat on a couch in the lounge as he refused to partake. That I did not mind, but what brings me here today is that during the climatic showdown with King Koopa, the rogue tried a backstab. King Koopa has a large shell on his back. I said that he was impervious to backstabs. The rogue insisted that it was possible to backstab a turtle. Judges, was I wrong in saying that King Koopa can not be backstabbed? Could you sneak up and backstab a turtle?

LeCurve52

May it please the high and honorable Bailiff Jake, without whom we would never know if court was in session, and also, I guess Justices Tanner and Axford cause they’re cool. I humbly beseech you with the case of the Potential PC Sacrifice. In the campaign I’m DMing, my Level 3 party recently ran into a wild Hoarfrost Drake that was intent on eating them. The party’s Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer began negotiating with the Drake for safe passage and rolled well enough on persuasion for the Drake to agree to let the most of the party live, if it could still eat the party’s Ranger. The Sorcerer agreed to this and tried to convince the Ranger that it was a “pretty decent deal, all things considered”. This almost led to PvP and the two PCs have not been able to reconcile since. I wonder, is this my fault for encouraging what I thought was a cheeky bit of negotiation, or should I have nipped any bit of PvP talks in the bud by refusing the Sorcerer’s proposal outright? (In my defense, the Drake was willing to just eat the Druid’s fox familiar, but the Sorcerer wanted to sweeten the deal).

Morgan

May it please the angry little guy Murph and his merry men and women; how exaggerated can flavor be? I recently was running a game for a beast master ranger (important) who was attacking with their beast, a mutated oversized Wombat named Smudge. On their first ever attack the ranger described their animal as doing an “amazing double backflip” before landing and attacking with their claws. I tepidly and meekly pushed back against the animal being so dexterous, but when it seemed to disappoint the player I changed my ruling and allowed it, it was really only a question of flavor after all. My question is this, was I right to set firm limitations on what the flavor of some attacks look like? Or should I have let The Amazing Acrobat Smudge finish their routine? I humbly await your decision, and Jake you look great today man

Brian Flake

May it please the esteemed justices and steam the unpleasant bailiff, I present the case of the found hound six feet underground. I was DM’ing a campaign in which I had created a dungeon that had many whimsical twists and turns. Through some silly luck on the part of my PCs, one of them befriended a hungry wolf in the dungeon which I allowed to become a pet (thinking the low challenge rating would not impact play) and the wolf subsequently stepped on a magical rug that had some randomized properties that resulted in enlarging it to the point it was considered a dire wolf. This is obviously a predicament of my own design at this point. I should also note here that my PCs were functionally playing power ranger style characters and had been gifted magical stones that made them their heroes but were at their core 10 years old. My PCs became very attached to this wolf both in and out of character and I mistakenly assumed this would be a good opportunity to add some stakes to the campaign without killing a character. So when they entered a fight with a green dragon (that I advised them not to fight both through NPCs and by directly telling them) I naturally targeted the dire wolf that was closest in range and the wolf, named “Number 2”, caught a full force breath attack that immediately vanquished him…. Unfortunately I made the decision to fully incinerate the wolf to ensure they did not pull any Caldwell shenanigans and clown me into reviving him, but this did greatly sadden my party and my friend still bemoans the loss of his best boy two years later. Justices, was this a case of easy come east go or should I be put to pasture like old yeller?

SpillboBaggins

To the honorable, estimable justices and the guy who, when my wife heard him speak said "He sounds like kind of a bro, right?" and then when she saw him at the live show said "I was right. He is kind of a bro", I present a case of whether tattling was justified. Playing a game with mostly new players, the druid in our party used the "Wild Companion" ability, which allows them to use Find Familiar. The player, being new, keyed in on the "When you cast the spell in this way, the familiar is a fey instead of a beast" part of the rule, and basically googled DND fey and said they summoned some named Fey Lord with absurd stats. Knowing they were new, I didn't say anything, expecting the DM to explain how the ability worked, but my eyebrows raised when the DM essentially said "Sounds good," and put a token with the Eladrin's face onto the Roll20 map. Thinking to myself "This must be flavor," I still remained quiet, until the DM let the "familiar" use their crazy stats to make a check. At this, I piped up explaining the way the ability worked, and it got a bit awkward. I know tattling was wrong, but if you see something like this are you justified in calling it out? I humbly throw myself at the court's mercy.

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?

Ben Kodet

Forgive me Dice parental figures for I have sinned. I am a DM for a relatively new campaign that includes my previous forever DM as a PC. During the first session we played , he was very excited about his character, Louis. Nearing the end of the session, Louis made a wrong move in front of 30 archers and was shot to death in front of his new party. Forever DM seemed fine with it and got excited for his next character. 5 or so sessions later, his new paladin character, Barnaby, used an ability that gave some spiders disadvantage against attacking anyone except him. I decided that I would roll them together for speed. Barnaby went down from a small amount of damage from the first spider and my forever DM turned PC reminded me that with each other spider that attacked him, he took 2 death save fails. At this moment I felt that he shouldn’t lose another character and took the decision away from dice Christ and instead had Barnaby meet the BBEG in a Demi plane and changed him from a paladin to a hexblade with the BBEG as his patron. So I ask the church, was I right to cover my own DMing blunder or should I have honored my dice’s will?

Birthday Girl Cara

May it please the court and, you know what, the bailiff too, why not! I present the party vs the DM in the case of the Magic Tree Fire Incident. In our home game that I DM, all magic stems from "the first tree", a tree that was created when the god who made the world wove herself into it and embued the world with magic. The party had an encounter in the branches of the tree and the sorcerer kept casting fireball. I narrated over and over, the increasing damage to the tree, at one point I straight up said it was a bad idea to be using fire but they continued. After the fight was over and the tree had been caught alight in several places - I told the parties magic users that they felt weak and that the magic in them was waning due to the damage caused to the tree. Everyone got real mad and practically cussed me out for punishing their "rad fire fight". Was I right to punish them for beating up the literal center of magic in the world or was I being a hard ass?

Kalleberg

May it please the court and that guy who looks like Harry Kane I am very new to DnD and so are my friends. We were playing a campaign where we are in the Moomin Universe (we are all finns) and we have a friend who is experienced and was the DM. Everything was fine and fun until we found out that the Big bad was Moomin himself. We all said that we didn't want to kill our childhood memories but the DM got angry and said we should respect his world and that he would never DM again for us if we didn't kill him. So we killed him and the DM made sure to describe all the gory details of his death. Was the DM in the right to get so angry and make us kill our childhood? I will await your judgement.

Kelly McP

Honorable Justices and just ok Bailiff, I come to you with an admission. I would not let a player kill the NPC sibling of another player character who wasn’t present. Am I too soft or is saving the emotional turmoil of a family death best served when the whole group is present? Was I wrong to give a hard no in favor of preserving player buy in? -A new(ish) DM with a ring wish spell and a dream.

Casey Fenton

May it please the court and cuckold the bailiff, I present my case "The Girlfriend Ultimatum". I am in a 3-person party and have played monthly virtual games for close to a year. The problem comes from the DM's girlfriend. Increasingly so, during sessions, she insists to sit with the DM on camera. However, she does not want to play. She has been offered multiple times to create a character and be part of the action but she insists she has no interest. Despite this, she insists to be included on camera, interrupt roleplay, comment and laugh at player choices, and so on. In a private text, us players all agreed to privately reach out to the DM and express our frustrations. I message and explain our position that if she does not want to play then her presence is a distraction. We offered a compromise of her staying off camera and not commenting during serious moments, but she can still listen and be part of it during downtime. He said he would speak with her and let us know what she said. Reasonable request, right? Wrong. The next session that weekend we logged into, the DM put on their camera... and promptly told us that his girlfriend broke up with him. Trying to be supportive friends, we expressed our condolences but also said he was better off, too good for her, etc. But that's when the girlfriend slid into the camera frame and revealed the breakup was "just a joke" but now she truly knows how we all feel about her. She immediately told the DM he had to choose between the group or her. He looked at us and said "Sorry guys" and then logged off. We haven't heard from him since. Were we the players in the wrong for bringing up our frustrations to the DM? Or is it clear that this girlfriend was just using this group for her own amusement? I welcome any and all punishments by this prestigious court. Thank you.

Ben Nisley

May it please the court There is a Dragonborn cleric in my game named Horatio Meatball. In a recent visit to Horatio’s home, his dad gave him a raccoon familiar that, after attunement, turns into a magical flail in battle. After the first battle where Horatio realized he now had a magical flail morphing raccoon, he asked me if he could send the raccoon to a climb up to a high place above enemies so it could jump off and turn into a flail, dealing damage to enemies. I told him no because I said the raccoon would only turn into a flail in his hands (due to his attunement). Was i wrong to say no and should i allow him to do this in the future? also how would damage even work for that? i did not think this through i just think animals turning into weapons is cool.

Jacob

Honourable Judges and Jake Herwits, I bring to you the case of the sweaty saviour session sour-er. I’m a fairly experienced DM, playing as a player for the first time in years. The DM and other players are fairly new. In one of our last sessions our DM set up a fun but obviously much too hard encounter. Seeing that our party was in trouble, I started giving hints to the other players about their abilities they had forgotten about (extra attacks, race features etc), and with a combination of good roles and my sweaty mechanics help, we started to turn the tides. It was a blast, and the table was super high energy as we started to take back the fight. Our DM started seeming nervous, and started throwing more and more enemies out of nowhere, which really soured the mood of the table. As players started getting knocked into death saves, she had a troop of nearby soldiers rescue the party, which was clearly what she had intended as it ended up tying into one player’s backstory. The players seemed annoyed with the DM, who was just doing the best that she could to move towards her story beat. I can’t help but feel that the encounter would have been much more satisfying if I had just sat back and let everyone play their characters. Did I ruin the session by sweating too hard? Love, Jacob

Justin Dorland

Hey Jark Please make sure your bosses see this. About a year ago, as a palette cleanser in between weekly Zoom sessions of an industrial fantasy game, we ran a one-shot in the grimy Undercity centered around a beloved NPC named Bones Malones. The gimmick of said oneshot was that every player had a deck of many things, but using real Tarot cards (78 in total) and could draw at any time. One player forgot his deck and thus I was drawing for him. In the endgame fight, he was hoping to get a Bag of Holding in order to throw it into the Feywild Portal and plunge everyone (including his Rat-son Yancy) into the astral sea. Because I was drawing for him and wanted a fun finale, I fibbed and said he got the bag of holding card, ending the session by the entire city popping out of the Material plane and ending on a grand cliffhanger. While the ending was a categorical banger, the guilt of my transgression has weighed heavily on me and I accept whatever punishment Dice Christ would levy against me.

Dan Healey

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

Jacob Bauer

To the most honorable justices Murphy, Axfod, and Tanner, and the most mundane baliff Jake. I humbly bring to you the case of the Patient Paladin. I was invited to join campaign at level 10 as they were starting up again after a long break from there game. When my character was introduced the rest of the party was in a car chase in Avernus. And my character was some distance away. When I asked the DM of how far away I was he said that I was 6 full dash rounds away and as the players were rusty turns took extra long. I got worried I would do nothing for the first session so asked to be added at the bottom of initiative to at least add a little flavor from a war song while packing a pipe readying myself for battle. I ask you esteemed members of the court was my time fairly spent on my 6 seconds of flavor per round before my character was introduced or should have there been other options for my introduction?

Brian

May it please the fair, polite, and well groomed Justices, and the craven bailiff Jack, who I don't know how he even got this gig, and should probably start working on his CV. In our home game, our Druid/Cleric Tiefling wanted to cast Air Bubble on herself, and then hide inside a bag of holding. The bag was empty, so there wasn't a weight issue, and we weren't in combat. It was just something that she wanted to do. The spell lasts 24 hours. Our DM said no, a person would not be able to survive in a Bag of Holding for that long, even if they could breathe. He didn't have ANY explanation, just a "no, that isn't how it works." The players at the table disagreed, saying that the only danger to being in a Bag of Holding is the lack of air, which the spell would resolve. I play a Warforged Artificer, and asked if I'd be able to stay in as long as I wanted, since I don't have to breathe, to which the DM said no, and then said he didn't know why, just that it wouldn't work. Justices, if the explanation don't fit, you must allow it. Are we right, and should we all be solo hotboxing in our own Bags of Holding, or is our DM right, and we all died inside for...reasons. I throw my party at your mercy, and await your ruling.

tony bakov

Hello, May it please the Murph, throw the court into dictatorship, and ignore Jake. I'm a new DM and in our campaign, the players got shrunk and had to battle the Rat king who had a bunch of bug and lizard creatures as his servants. Upon slaying a sleeping cockroach a druid player wanted to see if it was a flying cockroach, but rolled a nat one, so we all joked he thinks this is a beetle or something. Fast forward they're outside the Rat king throne room, and my player decided to try and wildshape into this cochroach. Even though my other players laughed and said that wouldn't work, he still did it anyway, the Rat king instantly recognized that he didn't have a beetle soldier and initiated combat. My player was very confused (even though the other players warned him multiple times) and argued that after the initial nature check they fought the cockroach and would've seen it. I argued that they just bashed the shit out of it, and all other players agreed with my decision before I even made it. Everything ended on good terms, but was I right to haunt my player with the aftermath of the nat 1? I'll take whatever punishment as long as you don't wildshape me into a corckroach, I beg of you

Three awakened gooses

Most illustrious justices and delightful or despicable bailiff Jorf (depending on the mood of the court) I present to you the case of the disappointed dad. In a home brew campaign I was a player in one of the PC’s decided to play a rogue who’s specialty was convincing others he was their dad and having them do his bidding by guilting them with disappointment. This wasn’t an issue it start however the PC got into an argument with my character and attempted to force me to do what he wanted to do with a persuasion roll. We explained you can’t use rolls to force players to take actions and he said we ruined his character and proceeded to be uncooperative and left the party to do his own thing in a brothel. The campaign quickly fizzled after. Should we have let him control our actions as our weird dad? I humbly submit myself to the whims of the court.

Hunter.osty

Dear Court justices and ___ (I’ll let Jake fill this one 🤝 I recently finished dming a newer group of players and we all thought it went well! Being stuck as the forever dm I was excited when two of my players voiced how they both wanted to dm and I loved both ideas! One was a home brew of a cyberpunk world and the other was a strixhaven highschool campaign. My only problem was that the friend who wanted to run the strixhaven one had very specific rules in mind that I didn’t like the sound of such as there being NO fighting and being very heavy handed on character creation including races and not allowing any martial classes since it was a magic school. I voiced my concerns and after he confirmed he wasnt willing to change them I opted out and the others in the group followed. We offered to play the cyberpunk home brew first and loop back to his later but he sent us a text saying he wanted nothing to do with us anymore since we didn’t want to play in his campaign, I ask the judges, was there a better way to go about this situation? Who’s in the wrong? I humbly await your judgement and or punishment.

gerard

May it please the court, I come to you with a confession to dice christ. It is the tale of the double crit. In my player's hour of need I wronged him. The tale is as follows, in my first game that I was running in a homebrew world, there was a series of break-ins and the players arrived just as the thief was robbing the jewel shop of a powerful ritual diamond ( mechanically a diamond that could be used for true resurrection ) and my players went to chase after the thief who jumped to the roof, the barbarian threw a javelin and wounded him, and their Bard rolled a Nat 20 to not only scale the building, bit on his investigation check and in my moment of DM Sweat, said that the thief wasn't there. The reason I did this was because if they had stayed at the scene of the crime I would have had the shopkeeper, a dwarven jewelsmith, explain what the thief stole. Conveniently leading them to the church because where else would the thief go. The rest of the session the player was bummed out and after having a chat with the whole group, irl friends, said that yeah it sucks but it's your first time DM'ing and you're doing amazing. So I leave myself to the judgement of Dice Christ and his mighty priest.

Alejandro

To the very honorable justices: Axford, Murphy, tanner, and uh…. I have come to give a bit of an update to my previous dice Christ confession! (The one in which I’d stated that I had fudged my d100 magic surge roll to avoid being fireballed) I believe that I have paid my price for my heinous and avoidant act, because during a recent session, and due to a magic item that I was given by my DM, my wild magic surge occurred multiple times, which caused me to shrink, turn into a sheep, and to top it all off, cast a fireball onto myself. This time I did accept it, and survived! It did put me rather low on health during our encounter, and yet we all won with no casualties! but I do understand now that I shan’t fudge the d100 roll any longer, because things just might go well after all.

Some guy who likes chicken

No case today, just an update on the DRAMA from a couple months ago. 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!

Ellie

May it please the court and the charming lovely bailiff Jacob, I propose the ban of my DM being able to play in one shots. I know what you're thinking- I should let him play because he DMs. I also DM on occasion so I understand the struggle. However, every time he plays in a one shot he plays the most obnoxious/unhelpful/unpleasant PCs. Most recently he played a robot cat that had human-like breasts and he would only talk through a text to speech generator that he would not prep, leaving 15-30 seconds of awkward prep. He played a cleric who wouldn't heal and got angry he fell in a trap so he was moody the rest of the session. This same session he threatened to kill a bunch of hobbit children and got upset when we wouldn't help him. There's several more instances of him refusing to listen, being obnoxious, withholding information, and getting upset about the rules of the game. I ask you humbly, do you think I have a right to ban him from one shots? It's just not fun to have him there.

Brogan

May it please the court, which is made up of pretty cool boomers that are trying their best with the teens, and the human embodiment of a kitten who fell in their milk bowl, Jack. I present the case of the pushy player DM I am a player in a group that regularly switches DMs and usually that goes pretty well. Recently we were playing a session in which one of our friends who’s newer to DMing was running it. Halfway through we got to a bar that was a cover for an underground potion market that had “illegal potions” that we could buy to boosts ourselves in a competition. As the DM was trying to explain what someone had heard about this place using a history check, one of our other DM friends (who was a player in this game) started messaging the players only chat (for every campaign we have group chats with only the players to plan things like battle organizing, etc.) they were saying that the DM was doing a bad job at setting everything up, and that they were bored with what they were doing. Multiple members of the party started messaging saying their doing their best, and to give them a bit since they were still setting things up, but this player was persistent in saying that the DM needed to plan more, needed to stumble over their words less, and saying their doing a shitty job. Once the rant was done in the chat, and everyone told them off for being mean, the player out loud in the discord call said something along the lines of “DM, are you sure you’ve planned enough for this? We can take a break and I can give you some pointers. You’re making the session a bit boring for everyone who isn’t interested in investigating” The DM, confused, declined and continued with the session before they were interrupted again, by the player trying to give pointers on how to be better at DMing. They made comments like “you never have enough fights, you should add more enemies with loot, you need to work on your character voices, and said that they should pay more attention when they are DMing in order to learn a few things”. This started an argument which lead to the DM asking to take a break and muting themselves while the rest of the party kept asking the other person why they would do that. The party agreed that the player should leave the session to give the DM space, and they made a big show of how we were kicking them out for having an opinion, before they hung up. The DM came back after a bit, sounding very upset, but we continued the session and by the end they seemed much happier as the party really got into it. We have not heard from the other party member since, accept for one of our friends being told that the player was telling some of our non dnd friends that we were assholes who kicked them out for not wanting to play our version of the game. So judges I ask you, should we have been as harsh as we were on the player, or did they get their justice. I’m eagerly waiting for your response

HaysForHorses

May it please the high-chaired justices and the guest-bailiff in bailiff Axford's place, 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 :)

Gearoid Cotter

To the right and honourable Supreme Crit Justices and to the no less honourable Bailiff Jake, I’m currently playing a campaign in the Tomb of Elemental Evil, and we are a party of 4 level 2 characters, unfortunately we the players roll terribly a lot, and the DM often rolls really well, and crits once or twice a session. Up until now, I hadn’t thought much of it, but in our last session, the DM surprised us with a grick and rolled a 29 twice to hit me the paladin/tank of the group. He said at the time these weren’t crits, so I found it odd that he could roll a 29. I admit, I may have sinned against dice christ, but after the session, I looked up the grick in the monsters manual, and even with a nat 20, there is no way he could have hit such a high number to hit, and this got me thinking back, and our DM does often roll over a 20 to hit and rarely misses. I put it to you the court that my DM has been juicing his rolls behind the screen, almost killing the party and committing a most grievous sin against dice christ and I request your swift and severe judgement for these transgressions!

thomas musgrave

May it satiate the super supreme crit justices and bewitch the bashful bailiff jackson, in a new campaign with veteran players our dm told me i wasnt allowed to do a bard, druid, and sorcery multiclass out of fear that it was too broken (even though its a rare multiclass choice and there arent combat synergies its for rp purposes only). He then allows the oathbreaker paladin assasin rogue multiclass to exist and proceed to almost oneshot the first two encounters, was i deeply slighted or am i just a dirty min maxer

nickynickynicky

May it please the court, the honorable Supreme Crit Justices, and the insouciant Bailiff Justin I present to you the case of the grappling tortle: My players were running through an underground dungeon that was actually a crashed space ship filled with automaton guards. Upon reaching the engine room they were met with a beefier robot guard meant to serve as the boss for the dungeon. Everyone in the party rolled very high on initiative, so before my battle bot could even get an attack out he was shrunk (via enlarge/reduce), grappled by the titular tortle player, and held in a cloud of daggers cast by the wizard. The robot used it's turn to attempt to escape the grapple but failed due to the imposed disadvantage from Reduce. During the next round the Tortle announced that he withdrew into his shell, putting his AC at 23 with a shield, natural armor and shell defense. I told him this would break his grapple but he insisted that nowhere in the rules did it say he would not still be grappling if he used his Shell Defense. I ultimately let it go and the party spent the fight whaling on a miniature metal man with spells from afar. Was I right to say the tortle's grapple would be broken from withdrawing into his shell? Or am I just feeling the DM sweat from a wildly unbalanced action economy that I brought on myself? I kneel to whatever judgement the court passes.

ronald.

Hey ghosts and ghouls of the Crit, I come to you with the case of the Betrayed Backstory Roughly a year ago I DMed a homebrew 5e game for a few of my close friends, one of which was playing an aasimar fighter with a long convoluted 50 page backstory which I was almost entirely denied access to regardless of my insistence that I, as the DM, needed to know these things. The player continued to be belligerent about allowing me access to their backstory except for when it served them, so I said "fuck it!" and freestyled some plot based on their family history. For the sake of keeping it brief, I presented the fighter with a revelation, that her aasimar heritage was due to one of her ancestors trapping an angel! After this was revealed in a dramatic moment, I gave the player a choice to either keep the angel trapped and live with that, or free it and no longer be an aasimar. To this, the player exploded at me, she said this went heavily against her backstory and that I was railroading her family history, that her unknown unnamed ancestor would have never done anything like that! So angels and archons of the crit, I ask, was I wrong to get jiggy with what I was given?

Ariel Diaz

Bailiff James continues to knock it out of the park

MyrMonkshood

To the lawful (and sometimes chaotic) crit justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, as well as the true neutral bailiff Hurwitz - I bring you the case of Accidental Murder by Sausage. My DM set up a fantastic campaign where our party of all Druids was kidnapped by treant monsters. This left it up to our band of animal familiars (an elk, an armadillo, a talking donkey, and a wolf - played by me) to rescue our Druid friends. During a battle, an npc banjo-playing krill named Krill Bill was left close to dying on the ground. Earlier in the session, I had found a shed full of sausages, and the DM decided that each link of sausage equaled 1 HP. I therefore attempted to feed my Krill companion 10 or so sausages to get him back on his many feet. My DM proceeded to narrate how my wolf-self dumped pounds of meat onto my companion thereby squishing him into doing death saving throws. A year later, I still feel the pain of my wolf-self who was so traumatized by this incident. I would have liked to have narrated how I carefully chewed up and baby-birded the sausage to Krill Bill. Did I deserve the chance to narrate this heroic action or was my DM right to decide that there was no safe way to administer these sausages? We await judgment.. may it be free of croissants..

Jess Kohler

To the transcendent and formidable justices (and Jake, wassup dude), I bring you a case that has irked me for some time now. When I first got into D&D, a friend/my best friend's boyfriend volunteered to DM for a small group of us that wanted to play for the first time. The group consisted of my best friend, my brother, my brother's girlfriend, myself, and the DM's best friend. It was his first time DMing and we rolled stats for a modified storyline within the Lost Mine of Phandelver. It seemed, though, that every NPC, including the ones that were supposed to be friendly with us, were always combative. We were sarcastic in kind, and the dynamic at the table never quite recovered from the DM vs Player mentality. It came to a head when we get to Kragmaw Hideout and I rolled high on insight to the goblins that were taking us to their bugbear boss, Klarg. They were sketchy and I didn't trust them, so we rolled initiative and scaled the cliff in the front right room to get right to Klarg. Our DM was pissed we were doing things out of order and now how he would, so he flooded the room with goblin archers and went hard at a TPK. I kept track of damage and we'd done over 62 points of damage to this bug bear and it still wasn't downed, which seemed excessive at level 1 or 2. Both mine and my brother's characters were perma-killed and everyone else left. DM told us to roll new characters, did a session without us, and had a friend play a lvl 20 cleric to revive our old characters 2 sessions later instead of letting us use our new characters we got excited about. The campaign fizzled out a few sessions later, it just wasn't fun for anyone anymore. I checked stats a year later because it was bugging me, and Klarg should have only had 45 HP max, which means our DM just kept hitting us until we died on purpose. We've since had a talk about it and worked it out, but won't play together anymore due to clasing styles (rule of cool vs gritty realism). I have to know - is it really okay for a DM to attempt a TPK if they're annoyed with their players for doing things their own way??? I await your judgement.

Daemic

To the Fanciest Supreme Crit Judge, and others present, I bring forth the not a case, but a request for a cease and desist. I, the DM, have been hosting a long sandbox campaign in a homebrew world of my own creation. Fitted with it's own pantheon, afterlife, nations and world structure. In total, the world had been lovingly generated over the course of 4 years, from its origins of a "Dungeon World" (tabletop game) one shot. The issue arises from one player who wanted to play a pirate. From the worlds internal logic and history, pirates did not exist. However, I was able to tweak a few things to allow for this new chunk of society to fit in, allowing for my player to be happy. With a campaign set to focus on being an exploration of a new continent under the pay of the Adventurers Guild, this player has been strong-arming the party to instead become a pirate crew, with the intent of circumventing exploring the land of the continent (where I have my prepared content), to instead pursue his characters personal goal of getting an airship. This has lead to numerous cases of pvp, no deaths so far. So I asked the court, is it right for me to want to shut down this behaviour, or have I opened myself to this possibility by having the campaign be sandbox? My judgement is in your hands, if the guy from State Farm chooses to select this for presentation. (Statsheet) 1 DM (Me) 5 players 1.75 year long campaign

Jake de Medeiros

May it please the court, I present the case of the pirate roundhouse kick! I am DM of a game that we play in my unfinished basement in Montréal, this is important. My party was fighting pirates who were tricky because I had them utilise all the various crates, barrels, and masts on their ship in order to get cover. My friend plays a monk and wanted to roundhouse kick a pirate standing behind a mast post, I told him that because of the post the pirate had full cover. My friend disagreed, and said that since he said it was a ‘roundhouse’ kick that it should only be half cover, as his leg is going ‘around’ the post. I disagreed. Both of us were slightly tipsy. He proposed that I stand on one side of a ceiling to floor support beam, he would stand on the other and try to roundhouse kick me. If he made contact I would not only admit that I was wrong but also let his monk hit without rolling. I agreed, everybody in the room was on the edge of their seat. As he prepared his kick his sock slipped on the concrete floor, he left the ground, and came crashing down onto his hip. Silence had never been louder as we watched him writhe in pain, catch his breath, stand up, and ask to try again. I denied his request, he insisted he get a fair attempt but I didn’t want him to hurt himself again, the party took his side in wanting one more attempt. Ultimately I had to shut it down and lay down the law. We finished the session though continued grumbling about how one more kick would’ve been fair. Was I wrong to deny the second kick? Much like a pirate captain, I fear a mutiny. Thanks, from Jake.

Lou

Dear Justices and dear bailiff Rose, I present the case of the wasted divine intervention: The party was fighting a huge bird Who had kidnapped and NPC and my humble arcana cleric was the only one that couldn't fly. I know, sad. I tried my divine intervention and it WORKED! I had prayed to "make the bird fall out of the sky". The DM then explained how an archangel of death appeared and chased the bird, but since the angel was slower, the bird got away. The angel then killed the bird and left, but we still had to got get the npc in the bird's nest. I asked you, was I robbed of my divine intervention? PS: We don't play with that guy anymore

Tanner Sulser

Dear vaulted crit justices and Tucker- wait sorry, it's Jake right? - I come to you with the case of the Monk vs. the T-Rex. I play an open hand monk in a party full of casters, so I naturally fight in the front line. Our party encountered a full size T-Rex in a jungle, and I was out in front of the group as usual. The T-Rex managed to grapple me, which the DM flavored as me being stuck in its jaws. On my turn, I took my attack and landed a hit through disadvantage, then spent a ki point to flurry of blows and again managed to and a hit despite disadvantage. My subclass allows me to impose and effect on a creature I hit with flurryof blows, one of which is to push the target back 15 feet. Of course the DM said it would be a little silly for me to push a dinosaur 15 feet away with a punch, but it felt bad to rob me of this cool moment that seems to play rules as written when all of the casters in the party are constantly doing crazy stuff with spells. Am I wrong to think I was robbed or am I asking too much of my punchy guy? I humbly await your decision. Sincerely, Brennus the Monk

Ross Gilliland

May it please the court and leave the bailiff feeling satisfied, I present to you a very deadly combo. This is a mechanics-heavy case, but I desperately need the court’s input. One time I was playing an Ancestral Guardian Barbarian, primarily for the purpose of using the Ancestral Protectors subclass feature to protect a friend who was new to DnD and playing a Rogue. However, in our first session my other friend who was playing a Cavalier Fighter, discovered that their Unwavering Mark feature applies the same effect (disadvantage against everyone other than the PC that applies the mark). He then suggested that we use both of these features against a single enemy, ensuring that they have disadvantage on EVERYONE (both of us included). Though the Ancestral Protectors feature doesn’t use the language of “applying a mark”, I tried to argue that though RAW that could work, it definitely shouldn’t be allowed RAI. Ultimately, our first-time DM decided to allow it and we cheesed the final fight of the session so bad that we never played in that campaign again. Oh just and impartial court, how do you read and interpret these rules and mechanics? Should we have been allowed to carry out this campaign-killer whomping?

Trevor Nicholson

Dice Christ confession, here. I recently started DMing my first game for my friends that had also never played before. We’re about 3 sessions in and in every session, the party’s high elf bard has taken enough damage to kill them outright. Because it’s everyone’s first time playing and creating characters took awhile, I have just cut the damage in half to knock the bard out but not kill them outright. At this point it feels like I am fighting against dice Christ’s desire to off the bard. Is there anything I can do to satiate Dice Christ’s bloodlust or do I need to step aside and let the dice fall where they may?

Alex C

To the esteemed Cardinal's of Dice Christ, I prostrate myself before you with a confession. As a DM, I prepared a combat encounter where my players were separated in a haunted woods and each had to fight something from their past that "Haunts" them. In total there was six separate fights happening, this unfortunately dragged on much longer than I expected and hour grew late. I could tell my group were getting tired and maybe a little bored. Rather than call it a night, I panicked and I fudged all my monster's rolls for the next 15 minutes in an effort to speed up the combat and get the party back together! I am sure my party (including my wife!) noticed but I have never spoken with them about it, I humbly ask forgiveness in the name of Dice Christ.

Trevor K Walker @twalker201

May it please the court and the sax playing bailiff Jake? Over the summer our group of friends ran a campaign with 3 DMs and 3 parties that came together in the final session to take on the big bosses. One of the DMs homebrewed a song/spell that would calm enemies if everyone gave up their action on their turn to sing it would calm the orcs we were fighting. Due to a scheduling issue another DM subbed on the day that song was used and argued that the players could only sing on their turn and not through the whole round leaving the orcs to wantonly attack on their turns and killing many villagers that the players were trying to protect. Were the players right to be upset about the DMs interpretation of how the mechanics of this song would work

Leftovers do no wrong

Hello Jake. I present the case of I know your character better than you do. Me and a group of friends were in a campaign running on 3+ years. Our characters were incredibly complex at this point and connected to all sorts of different myths and legends as we were playing minor gods. At one point in the campaign we are trying to save a pillar of reality and my character makes the sacrifice play, giving up part of themselves to prop up this pillar metaphorically. Play grinds to a halt as the DM and another player at the table insist that my character would never do such a thing saying im throwing the story out the window by having an inconsistent character. we argue about it for a while but I let it go so that we can keep playing this happens 3 more times before I decide to leave the group. My question is this should I have kept going and tried to understand their view of my character better or was I right to leave when I did?

Meghan

To the most magnanimous justices and that other guy who picks the cases: To set this up: I played in a campaign that was “drunk d&d” without the drinking because we played on Monday nights and everyone had work the next day. The rule from the beginning was “if you say something then it happens you can’t go back on what you just said because if we were drunk we’d speak without thinking.” We had just finished helping rescue a farmer from a band of Orcs who had ransacked his farm and, after the farmer said there was nothing there for him anymore and he was going to leave, our fighter decided to try to persuade him to give us the farm. (As a hideout). My DM said that it would need to be a 20 to succeed, so the fighter rolled and got a 19 on the die with a +4 to his persuasion. The DM then said “no I meant a Nat 20, he’s not giving you his farm.” We argued that per our drunk D&D rules she should have given us the farm but she stood by her secondary statement and said that since she’d meant a Nat 20 that we couldn’t have the farm. I ask the court: per our drunk d&d rules, and the wording of her statement, should we have been given this farm that the farmer was already planning to leave? I prostrate myself before your judgement and will accept any punishment you pass down! PS: the DM listens to your podcast as do I and she does not know I submitted this case. PPS: due to scheduling issues, we haven’t played this campaign in a while.

ML Allswede

To the honorable judges, jury, and bailiff of the Dungeon Court, I bring before you, not a case, but a plea for legal dice advice. I work in an awesome comic shop with some of the best coworkers I could have asked for. One of my coworkers has started a game, or more like a competition, where we role a d20 to determine who checks out a customer (lowest roll gets the customer). He even made a cardboard "Arena" that we role in. At the beginning of the shift we make up a DnD style "class" where we determine bonuses to add to our roles. Previous "classes" and assigned bonuses have been Mistress of Merchants (+2 if a customer needs a price check), Lift-O (+1 for every bag a customer brings into the store), Dog-O (+4 for dog), The Flayed Man (+3 for people carrying or wearing helmets) and the Oracle (+2 if a customer asks about upcoming comic releases). I humbly beseech you, oh creative and venerable court, to help me come up with more fun Comic Shop Classes with their associated bonuses that me and my coworkers could use for our dice rolling competitions. Thank you for your time and talent!

Timothy Hardy

To the unbiased Supreme Crit Justices and the dependable and eloquent Bailiff Johnson, May it please the court. I am a DM running a homebrew campaign and had my players in Helms Deep like combat encounter, with hoards of orcs sieging a Dwarven city. I had the DM PC cast polymorph on the kobold fighter and turn her into a T Rex. The fighter was ecstatic to stomp and chomp some orcs, but the rogue got mad saying the Bard could have never seen a T Rex so she would not be able to polymorph anyone into that. Later, she cast feather fall on the other Bard that jumped off a 300 ft wall, and on her turn cast mass healing word, and again the same rogue argued that she couldn't cast two spells and that people were out of range of healing word. I ruled that thus Bard had been to many planes and would have encountered a T Rex, and painstakingly explained spell action economy to this rogue. The rogue was mad enough to leave the campaign, which honestly was a relief to the other players. Was I wrong for ruling that the Bard had seen a T Rex before? I plead my case to the mercy of the court.

An_Armed_Bear

To the honorably justices and whatever word the justices are using to describe the bailiff this week. I recently played in an online one-shot with random people that had one of the most insane players I've ever seen. A short list of things he did include: -Deciding to completely change his character and class twice during the session, once at the beginning and once after we had already had a combat. This wasn't some multi-personality thing, the player just seemed incredibly indecisive. -Just having a 2d10+5 gun weapon without asking (We were only level 3), which he used to kill the boss encounter in one shot with a crit. -Almost never speaking and just doing all his rolls without asking or announcing them, often making his attack rolls before combat even started and when his turn came up saying "Oh I already rolled." The DM was brand new and so didn't seem to understand how abnormal this behavior was and just went with it. I wanted to call the player out, but decided it would bog down the game and potentially sour the DM's first experience if his players were arguing. But I also worry this one player may have hurt his first experience just as much. Was I wrong to not speak up?

Cody B

To the Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the actually pretty chill Bailiff Josh or whatever, I present one (of many!) pieces of evidence supporting my absolute refusal to run games for my best friend or play in a game he is running. Several years ago I was invited to play in a dnd game by my best friend of several years (and still to this day, spoiler alert). I threw together a pretty typical halfling bard focused on crowd control spells as I was a late addition to the party and I’m a serial role-filler in that I prefer to play characters that provide utility other party members can’t or don’t want to. This usually ends with me playing healers or wizards focused on a certain school, or, typically, bards as they can do pretty much everything. Anyway, the first session goes great, the party does some low level town shenanigans and we find our way to a kobold warren on a mission from the local law, at which point we break for the session. A week later, session 2. We start out rolling initiative for the initial fight into the warren and I nat 20 my way to the top of the initiative roster. Faced with a gaggle of goons and six shiny, fresh spell slots, I knew just what I wanted to do. I whipped out my guitar and strummed a sweet lullaby, casting Sleep. I rolled near max (37 out of a possible 40) and should have put at least six of the ten kobolds on the floor. Cue exhibit A. The DM, my friend of nearly two decades at that point, said all of the kobolds “resisted” the spell (to which there is no saving throw) because they “didn’t like the music.” Your honors, I am not too proud to admit I lost my cool at that. It was a last straw situation at the time to be fair, but words were exchanged and that ended up being the last time I ever played a character in campaign he runs. We do great as players together but cannot seem to help butting heads otherwise. I ask the court to side with me in labelling that DM’s call ludicrous horse crockery and I respectfully await your wise and canny judgement.

IvyclericHayley

May it please the court and Baliff Hake Jerwitz I present to you the Case of the Gelatinous Cube Mech Suit I'm currently playing an Alchemist Artificer with the Homoculous Servant Infusion, for flavour my Homoculous Servant take the form of a tiny Gelatinous Cube she made, named Brick. The campaign is run by my partner and I am soon to get the feature Spell Stored Item which I will obviously be giving to My Little Guy and i want to flavour it as Making them a Tiny Mecha Suit, a la a tiny version of the Power Loader from Aliens However my partner thinks it's "fucking absurd" and says "We're playing D&D not writing an anime" But has agreed to let me make Brick a mecha suit if the Judges rule in my favour. Please head my cause oh Benevolent Judges I want my sweet Gooey Child to live out their Neon Genesis Evan-gelatenous dreams.

SkyGuy

JUDGES! A kiss on the hand for the lady of beauty and chaos, a fist bump for a fellow normal ass dude, a tired nod of fatherhood to a fellow father, and last but not least an elaborate handshake that ends in a chest bump to the bailiff. I present the Death of Twirlynn (merlin with a twirl) Shadetree. In a potion heavy campaign a few years back, it had been established that pouring a potion on a downed PC would give them half the rolled HP, potion juice going into open wounds and the like. My PCs best friend Twirlynn was down and failed his first death save, having used my movement I said that I wanted to chuck a potion at his downed body, DM asked where, I blurted his horns so it'll break! I rolled a 19 and the DM narrated my buddy dying, horribly. I politely asked 'the fuck are you doing?' he said the impact of the potion caused another failed save, ok fine, and the glass cuts caused the third failed save. My real life and PCs best friend was dead. A 2-3 min turst discussion ensued which ended with us all agreeing with the DM. I am still razzed to this day and any time I ask my best friend to hand me something he will chuck it at me. What do yall think?? PS. Besides one friend we lost, fuck cancer, we are all still good friends and play when we can all get together.

Ally

To the grand honorable justices and that guy that isn't Amir. I bring to you the case of Midnight Blade a curse of my own making. In a campaign I've been running for a year now with some friends they've recently gone back to the rouge's home town where he used to be in a gang of mean teens called the Lucky Ducks. We had a fun session where this very calm and collected rouge introduced all the party to the Lucky Ducks which gave away that he also used to be an edgy teen. The arc is also a noir mystery arc so working with the rouge's old crew made sense but the issue came when the party took a special liking to the most pathetic of all the Lucky Ducks, Midnight Blade. He was meant to just be a jokey background member who has no good stats but a edgy magic sword. Midnight Blade asked to come with them to help coz he wants to be a "sick ass adventurer who kicks ass and looks sick with a sword". I thought they'd turn down this obviously useless NPC because he's annoying but they didn't and now the party keep taking him on missions with them because they like how edgy and embarrassing he is. The issue is they are level 9 and Midnight Blade has 10hp and 10AC. HE IS ALWAYS IN DANGER. I've told them his stats and warned them he could die but they keep taking him into danger and he goes down on almost every fight and in the latest combat went to two failed death saves before they were able to save him. My players have accused me of trying to kill off Midnight Blade and claim that I should level him up because they keep taking him on adventures. I've argued that if Midnight Blade does start gaining levels and become powerful he would be the worst party NPC possible due to his awful personality. My question is are my players right, should I level up this edgy sword wielding NPC or am I right to keep Midnight Blade his pathetic edge lord self?

Devin Awe

Greetings to the improbably attractive justices of the court and their frumpy Bailiff, I present to you the case of the haunted chilly 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 judgment with a spirit of both fear and awe.

OceanTorrent

To the Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the lowly, lowly, lowly, lowly, lowly Bailiff (or potentially mid Bailiff if you're feeling higher than usual) I present to the court the case or Rainy Sight Genasi. So I was DMing a horror adventure book with some friends online who are not quite adept at 5e. The player in question was a Water Genasi cleric and the act in contention was the group wandering around the dark forest at night in the heavy rain. The group came upon a campfire in the distance and I had them roll for perception at disadvantage due to the night/rain and the distance from the campfire as they were trying to stay hidden. Water Genasi claimed that they should not have to roll with disadvantage because they had both darkvision and as a water Genasi they shouldn't be hindered by water, i.e. they could swim underwater and not be hindered sight wise. I countered with there being a difference between falling water and being submerged, which they accepted at the time. Later however they posted on Facebook about it, even tagging me in the post and I'm wondering if maybe I should have just played it more fast and loose if it was that important to them. I humbly await your judgement.

Mason N.

May it please the Grand Court of Crit and fuck you Jonke, 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.

A Random Yeti

To the esteemed justices, and that one guy that reads cases. I present to you the case of The Dark Souls DM I am in a group of players, (about 8 of us), that constantly rotate DMs. In my campaigns, I do something I quite like which is tough and engaging combat. Usually there is a weakness to the boss, or environmental factors that can give the PCs an edge to win. There is a bit of a problem with that, my players, (for the most part), don't RP, don't talk, and don't ask questions or think in combat, something I always do as a PC. This has led to a problem with my friends hating combat, because it is hard, and calling my campaigns, "slogging through a bad Dark souls game". Am I the bad guy here for not catering to my PCs simple combat flow, or should my players try to be more engaged with the game? I await your judgment.

Colleen Fennessy

To the wise and fair justices and the hardworking and wimpy bailiff (depending on if you’re bullying him or not today): I write with a case of disallowed PVP. I am a music teacher who also teaches D&D class to middle schoolers, and this semester have a class of eight 5th grade students who I’m running a modified version of Wild Beyond the Witchlight with. Being 10 year olds who are new to the game, they want to push limits and do silly things, which I am all for. For reasons not pertinent to this case, one student wound up disguising himself as the bad guy without telling his party in game. He then said, “well wouldn’t you all attack me, since you think I’m the bad guy?” His party thought that was funny, so I allowed it since it seemed like everyone was having a good time. Unfortunately, this opened up a PVP can of worms, and whenever someone disagreed a little bit with their party-mate, they asked if they could punch or attack them. I tried desperately to explain that in dnd you can talk your disagreements out just like in real life, and eventually just had to ban PVP altogether. Should I have disallowed the first instance of PVP and avoided this headache, am I hindering their creativity by banning it now, or is this just the reality of playing with 10 year olds? I humbly await your judgment (and any advice you have for DMing a party with 8 people in it!).

Beau W.

My dearest Justices and the merely adjacent bailiff: I bring you the case of the razzed veteran. I have been playing with the same group for about 4 years now. When we first got together, I had been the only person with experience in TTRPG's. The players (and sometimes the dm's often turn to me for clarifications and spell info, etc. HOWEVER, they table doesn't seem to like my optimized characters. For four years, there have been snide 'lil comments about min-maxing and cheating. I know it's probably all in good fun, but are they being reasonable? Are optimized characters a reason for razzing? I lay myself out to the court for any punishment deemed worthy.

Kettlebird

May it please the most fair, kind, and true justices of the court, and also that guy who's also here, I lay before you the case of Feste the Unfortunate. Back a few years ago, I had joined a campaign run by a previous player of mine who had learned DnD from me. As a forever DM, I was excited to play, and everything went well for a while- until my powerful tiefling paladin was killed in battle, and I had to roll a new character. Now, this DM made us roll 3d6 for stats, and you get what you get. The dice were against  me that day, and I ended up rolling absolutely dogshit stats (not a single one above a 13, most below 10), which my DM would not let me reroll. Trying to make the best of a crummy situation, I decided to build a character that was good at not dying so he'd stand a chance of lasting more than a session. However, this meant that he was not particularly good in combat, but as our campaign was more puzzle-solving and character interactions anyways, I didn't think it would be a big deal. Thus, Feste the Wimpy Half-orc Grave Cleric was born. I thought he would last at most two sessions, but my pre-planning actually turned out to be useful, and Feste actually managed to narrowly survive several near- TPKs. However, I started to notice my DM was harder on me while playing him, making him do more random skill checks than the others, randomly hurting him more, etc- it was clear that he was trying to kill off Feste, but at this point Feste had managed to find a place in the group dynamic and was continually surviving his attempts. Eventually, the DM told me that he was taking a hiatus from the group, and I thought nothing of it until recently, when I was talking to a friend from that group and he told me he was sad I didn't play with their group anymore. It turns out that my DM had not gone on Hiatus, but had told me he had to get me to leave and told the other players I had left because I wasn't having fun with my character. I know this was several years ago, but I can't feel a little snubbed for being left out in the cold. On the other hand, I know my character was weak, so I ask you- am I right to be mad, or should I have let Feste die to keep the peace?

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 croissanting or punishing. Thank you.

Austin Rousseau

May it please the court, and honestly, probably my third favorite, baliff Jake. I play a wizard in one of my campaigns with my cousins and my brother. We found some cool homebrew time spells cause I wanted to be a time wizard. At one point, we accidently burned a map that was important. I got clever and asked if I burned a 3rd level spell slot( my highest at the time) If I could bring it back using the mending cantrip. Essentially, I wanted to be Doctor Strange with the time stone and the apple. He said sure and asked me to roll for it. I rolled poorly and used a luck point. I got a 17! We were excited but my cousin said that nothing happened and it didn't work. I honestly felt pretty defeated. I tried to convince him to let it happen but he wouldn't budge. I sacrificed a lot for that to work and it kinda feels like it was never gonna happen anyways. Should he have let it happen, was I wrong to ask, or should he have just said no to begin with. I humbly await your judgment!!

Caroline

Praise be upon the judges, the bailiff, and the priests of Dice Christ! If I may be so bold, since there is no separation of church and state in this lawful and holy space, I wish to speak to all of you at once. Last session, we were trying to defeat a sea monster. Our bard cast Shatter, so the beast had to do a Constitution saving throw. I sit next to our DM at the table, and I accidentally peeked the Con saving throw that he rolled - the beast failed the roll by 1 (by this point I had gleaned what the monster’s Con score was) - but my DM declared that he passed. Of course, I said nothing. I trust our DM. The fight went on to be terrifying and amazing. I ask the judges to go easy on him for either doing bad math or making a judgment call; I ask the judges to go easy on me for accidentally peeking his roll. I ask Dice Christ to forgive both our souls, so we can continue this amazing adventure together. Also - the DM is my boyfriend. Judges, Bailiff, and Priests: I thank you for all that you do. PS: My DM/boyfriend and I can’t wait to see you live in Boston in January!!

Hootie_McBootie

To the highest of courts and buffest of bailiffs. I present The Crudest of Crimes Our longtime dnd group including 4 longtime friends picked up another buddy of ours for Storm Kings Thunder. He was new but has said for months he has a character made for any scenario if we ever want to let him join. First sessions go well, and his PC “Freegs” is kinda doing lewd sexual things which we just laugh off. But things turn sour around session 4-5 when he starts wanting to rape every bad guy will kill or every pc we come across.. To the point where our usually chill DM made an encounter specifically to kill Freegs, to which none of us revived him on his last death throw. Our buddy took it on the chin and said thanks for having him, but no one has talked to him since then and we haven’t played a session of SKT since his death. My question: did we go to far in killing his desired PC, or did he go to far trying to fuck anything. P.S. we asked him multiple times if he wanted to try something other than raping as his motives for adventuring but he we set in stone.

Silvaspoon11

May it please the court, the crit and that stinky pit Jeff. My first campaign that I played in was online found from Reddit. At one point we had someone from the original group, leaving the campaign due to life reasons. So as a group decided to fill that spot, again from the same sub Reddit. The DM screened a couple people, and eventually chose the replacement Jon. Jon was the most “character driven” of all the PCs. So much so that he played a bard that had no combat spell and he chose to actively run away from fights. He claimed that his character was selfish and a coward. Also taking front and center and basically leading the sessions. Our sessions were numbered after Jon joined. So my question is was Jon justified to play his character how he wants?

Nettle

May it please the ineffable Court and the adequate bailiff, I present: The Case of the Indiscriminate Licker. My first time DM’ing, I ran a one-shot where one of my players, an aarakocra bard, was licking every object (and several NPCs) I introduced. It was funny at first but got old rather quickly, so I tried to gently discourage them by saying “The NPC says please don’t” and “Licking the cursed ring might be a bad idea.” The PC pushed back and swallowed the ring whole, so I said it gave them terrible stomach pain and diarrhea. After shitting out the ring, I tried to move the adventure along but the PC had turned sour and asked if I was “just going to punish them every time they had fun” and insisted that licking or swallowing a cursed ring shouldn’t have the same effect as if they wore it. Was I being a funsucker for giving them diarrhea? I await your judgement

NoLifeKitty

May it please the court! I bring to the judges (and handsome bailiff Jake) the case of the sad old Lich. During a playing of Curse of Strahd my wife (eladrin rogue) was told of a old lich losing his memory and becoming lonely from solitude. Being a kind soul irl she immediately decided there’s no need to fight the lich and befriended it. Rolling well and convincing our Druid player to cast minor restoration to help him, she managed to befriend the lich and he walked us through the back half of a dungeon where he shared some gold and told us of the item we needed to kill Strahd. My wife told the lich she wanted to stay in touch (purely for his benefit not for a powerful ally) and our DM (my brother) immediately disagreed out of game and said he’s too powerful to be called up. My wife argued she would never call upon him for anything but company and to keep him in good spirits. Eventually the DM relented and allowed my wife 3 scrolls she could use to contact the lich. She accepted but ultimately never used the scrolls, she simply wanted a pen pal lich but got 3’single use scrolls that she’s too scared to use because she just wanted a lich friend. Should our DM have just given her a cute lich buddy or was he right to stifle this relationship?

Cam WH

if it so please the court, the reverent and deferential judges, and the lowly, lowly lowly, lowly lowly lowly bailiff. My character, a level 7 Grung drunken master monk named Plup (who is oft found within the baby bjorn of his fellow Goliath adventurer Zabak), was climbing a mountain with his comrades in search of a blue dragon scale. We arrived at a particularly hazardous section of the mountain with the next steps having to climb up and over an edge that would include an upside-down horizontal section (forgive me, I don't know the proper climbing terms). The party decided to tie all of our remaining hempen rope together (resulting in 150ft of slack), and fastened one end to Plup (a 30lb frog) and the other to Zabak (a 350lb goliath), with Plup attempting the climb to then find a rock or something he could tie it to, to assist the others in the climb. Unfortunately, just as Plup was reaching the end of the climb I rolled a natural 1 and slipped from the rock. Zabak was easily able to hold the weight, however Plup effectively became a 30lb pendulum hurtling down and towards the cliff face. The DM ruled I was about 100ft away from Zabak which meant a 100ft "circular fall" towards the cliff face, resulting in 10d6 damage. I then mentioned the Monk trait 'slow fall' however the DM ruled due to the nature and angular momentum of this incident, it isn't a fall and Plup would take the full damage. Plup smashed headfirst into the cliff face, immediately entering death saving throws while his party scrambled to pull him up and bring him back to consciousness. I accepted the DMs word, however I feel as though my little froggy friend had been slighted in this ruling. Should Plup's Slow Fall (use reaction to reduce fall damage by 35) have affected this incident, despite it's divaricated curve? Is there justice to be found within this plain brick building, just down the road from a little place called Mangias? I await your just ruling. Extra side lore: Plup is part of a Grung tribe whos names are decided by the sound they make as they are being born into the Great Pond.

Sawyer hawhee

May it please the court of the honored Supreme Crit Justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner, and the bailiff if I must. I humbly bring you a brief story of our final session in our campaign. I was a player in a campaign that started out as dungeon of the mad mage and detoured to Out of the Abyss. I played a Loxodon Rune knight named Throom, but when creating my character our DM had me roll up a sidekick. The DM said that because I’m a fighter that the sidekick would have to be a mage to be different, and that I can use any undead monster up to a certain level for this sidekick. The problem is that mage sidekicks use intelligence as their save/attack modifier, and all undead monsters have incredibly low intelligence. The entire campaign the sidekick was pretty much useless because the modifier was so low anyone could beat it. But in our final session/conclusion, I found a potential use for him to save one of our players. We killed the big bad and I used my enlarge ability of a rune knight to grow large enough to break the pillars holding the cave up of the big bad to cause a cave in. I had my sidekick waiting at the exit of the cave with a hold action. Everyone began to run out as the rocks fell from above. I then asked to use the hold action to have the sidekick use mold earth to stop one of the rocks from falling and hitting our cleric. The DM ruled that this wouldn’t work as this cave-in is larger than 5ft, and the cleric was knocked out. I argued that rocks falling to the ground would count as loose earth, and I was only targeting the rocks that were about to hit the cleric not the entire cave. The DM continued to rule against me so I stopped arguing, the campaign ended, and my sidekick that I was forced to take was pretty much useless. I ask the court, was I wrong in trying to have a cool final moment for my sidekick in helping a fellow party member? Or was this sidekick doomed to just be our shadow from the start? I humbly await your judgement.

Laurence&Ty

To the three Ascended Judge-Connoisseurs Snaxford, Murphy-O, Jammer, and the so-called rotisserie chicken eater, Bake: 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 (wasting my action). We barely succeeded in time thanks to some clutch damage rolls from my teammates, but I feel guilty that my attempt at creative-thinking nearly cost us the mission. So, my question is, should I have been able to do any damage with my makeshift sprinkler system or should I have just kept hitting fire with a hammer? Thanks! 😊

Jacob S Warner

May it please the court, and I guess the Bailiff as well, I present to you the cameo gone wrong. I'm on my 2nd time dm'ing The Prince of Apocalypse campaign and rather have npc faction leaders I had my OG crew make cameos as the faction leaders instead and time warped 50 years into the future One of those, a human fighter named Para, got with me said since charachter is now 80 he would to give a warriors death. We came up with how it would happen and proceeded into that session. When we got to the end for flavor and story telling instead of just casting power word kill I had the BBEG shoot a beam instead. Using his beloved mirror shield he had obtained during their playthrough to try to deflect spell i had it shatter thus hitting him in the chest. I gave him a chance to give a small message before he died and he used that to yell at me "MY MIRROR. I said kill me not my shield." So I ask did I go to for in the sake of story telling or should have ran it by Para first. I leave my fate in your hands.

Fergus Woods

May it please the court, and crumb boy, I present the case of the role play fireball gone too far. When I was originally starting out playing DnD, it was during COVID, and therefore online. Saying this, I had listened to/watched a lot of DnD before, so I had a vague grasp of the rules and probably too much of an imagination . I found a game with some cool people and DM, Mike. I played a flame based wizard racked with paranoia and thought he could hear the whispers of his enemies everywhere. I joined the campaign part of the way through, and was kinda weirded out by the relationship roleplay Mike had with all the female characters of the group, as well as having a “ruggedly sexy” level 20 druid DMPC but brushed it off, and the rest of the session went well. In my second session, as we left the town, Mike asked me to roll a con save seemingly out of nowhere. As a level 5 wizard I rolled a 16 and felt pretty ok, only to have Mike say that I failed, and I was now haunted by a demon in my head that was slowly taking over and was forcing me to act against the party. I was kinda shocked and really didnt want it in my characters head, so when we had some spare time, I asked if I could go into the nearby woods. I begged with the demon to leave or at least come to a deal, but it refused to even budge. I, trying to think of what my character would do, eventually threatened to blast it out of my head with a fireball as an act of desperation. After some back and forth, I figured the funny/in-character option was to do it. I cast the spell, which Mike immediately replied “ok you’re dead”. He ruled that it was both an immediate crit and full damage since I had done it on myself so close. I was left a bunch of ashes and 2 boots. I left the game and was sad for the loss of my first ever real character. No one said anything but a couple had some nervous laughter. I then went through the rest of the session silent with no character, and left by the next session. Am I in the right to be upset, or was this a plot hook that I didn’t grab? I fireball myself at your feet

YourAnimeDad

To the Crit Justices of croissanting, and Jake the Human, I present THE CASE OF CONVOLUTED CAVERN CONFLICTS I play in a 5E Campaign with a party of 6, as a Druid/Cleric. Our DM presented us with a wrap-up character arc for our Paladin as side quest during our Edgey Warlock's arc. We ended up stumbling upon a Mindflayer Colony deep underground that kidnapped Paladin's hometown population. During the battle we nearly got TPK'd. The following session I casted a Freedom of Movement as we spelunked. We ran into more mindflayers, an Elder Brain, etc. This clearly caused our DM squirm. Our party used up most of our resources, and during the elder brain encounter I then used a magic item to dispel an Antilife Shell. Instead of being awarded for my creativity I was then had an Illithilich cast Power Word Kill, put in a Wall of Force bubble for 9 rounds, stunned half the party, and then barely saved by a Revivify. I ask you, Did our DM throw too big of a tantrum by having the Illithilich use a spell outside its statblock Or should he have honored the WOMPing and gracefully accepted defeat? I await your ruling

Joseph Collison

To the high honorable crit justices and any special guest that may be there. J-dawg hello. I would like the court to settle an argument amongst my fiance and myself and set a new precedent for the land. We both play and we both DM different campaigns but we have different house rules for natural 20s. Yes natural 20s are criticals for weapons but what about other things such as skill checks and DCs. If a Sea God has a spell DC of 27 and you roll a 20 and only have a bonus of 5, do you succeed or do you still fail. I believe that it should still fail where my fiance says that it is an auto success because of the 20. We debate it everytime we play and would like a firm ruling to set in place as we start our new home together and want to live by the same rules ! Thank you judges and Jeff , we will see you in Nashville!!! - J&K

pief

Dear honorable justices and tucker's girlfriend's roommate: I submit to you my very first case. I'm playing as a Level 5 Tabaxi Ranger in a fairly intense homebrew campaign which I'm mostly enjoying, however when I last got to pick a new spell, I went for Summon Beast, not knowing that my druidic focus did not negate the material component with a monetary value (in this case, a gilded acorn worth 200gp). Ive been unsuccessful in finding or buying said acorn, therefore, I can't use the spell. Since being told about this, I've asked the DM if i could change it for a 2nd level spell that I can actually use - healing spirit - but he says if he lets me do that, then he opens the door for other players asking to change spells. I wouldn't have picked the spell had i known about the restriction, and i am now left with two useless 2nd level spell slots, and constantly getting downed in our combat encounters. I've said i wouldn't bring it up after getting shut down, but I'd like your opinion on whether you think this is fair.

Topher

May it please the feverishly good looking justices and the man, the myth, the balif, Jake, I present the case of dungeon court within dungeon court. I DM a pretty long running 5e campaign in which one of my players has been falsely accused of murder. The reality of the situation can be summed up with this: the accused player is a Paladin who has made it his life's goal to banish demons from the material plane. As part of his backstory we discussed him having a demonic nemesis, a shape-shifting devil. This devil found its way to the material plane and has been committing atrocities while disguised as the paladin and killing innocent people. The party arrived in a new city to find wanted posters of the paladin who was confronted by the city guard and arrested. I spoke with the player about the options. We talked about a jail break, but he claimed his character would not avoid this situation and was determined to prove his innocence. I spent the next couple weeks creating a court trial session for the party. I wanted everyone involved in it, so I let everyone discuss their roles. One of my players became his defense attorney, one was a witness, and the other 2 players controlled the jury while I acted as the persecution. The judge was simply an npc that was going to keep order and make the final decision based of what the jury wanted. I gave my players a week to prepare their arguments, questions, etc, for the trial. The day of the trial comes and we roleplay this fantasy court and it actually goes better than expected. The players got really into it and had a good time, they did a much better job and took it more seriously than I initially thought they would and the session lasted about 4 hours. At the end though, the players that controlled the jury came to a guilty verdict. The players knew in real life that the paladin did not commit the murders, and their characters in game knew this as well, but they said that based on the evidence and the arguments made, a reasonable jury would have found the paladin guilty, which to be honest they were right, the evidence was damning. I did not think this was going to happen, and I didn't want to kill the paladin outright, so the judge handed down a life sentence in prison as punishment. I talked to the paladin after and he was not super upset, as I reminded him it could be fun to do a prison break arc if he wanted to keep the paladin, but he felt betrayed by the other players that controlled the jury. So I ask you, justices if the Supreme crit to judge this humble local court. Was I wrong to give so much power to my players? Or did they simply to do a good job of not meta gaming and really getting into the role of the jury? Should I have tried harder to save the innocent paladin? Nobody is overly upset but I feel as if this whole trial may have been a mistake. A lowly and humble servant of the court, Topher F

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 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.

Emily S

To the burrito supreme crit justices and a thimble full of yogurt, may it please the court. I humbly bring you the case of the Broken Glass Cannon. During the pandemic I played a year long campaign with a group of friends online. In total we probably played 20 sessions. Some of the players were fairly new to tabletop RPGs and weren’t very knowledgeable with the mechanics. Because of this, our DM provided ample support NPCs, cool objects for us to use, and provided solutions to beef up some of the playing characters. Unfortunately, despite all of this, most of the party played, mechanically speaking, like garbage. It got to the point where our Sorcerer at level 6 had a natural armor class of 19, was wearing heavy plate with no negative effects, and had in their inventory no less than 5 wondrous items. Despite this, I’m certain I only ever saw them cast Chaos Bolt when in combat. To top it off I don’t think the DM would ever target them in combat because the player would get upset anytime they took damage and lament the number of hit points they had. Ultimately, the group fell apart, which is a shame because the DM is pretty great with building combat, worldbuilding and able to still enjoy a goof. I bring this to your judgement. Is this lethargic and unlosable game on the players or is this on our DM for yielding to fair-weather players?

Justin Dorland

May it edge the court to hear the case of the animal-lover goblin My partner runs a game for me and my friends in which I play a Goblin Druid named Hooch. When we had our session zero, one of my big character traits (as well as a boundary I set) is that I do not like violence against animals and will exhaust every other resource before attacking them. In the course of the first couple episodes, there have been 4 combat encounters against Beasts - during all of which I used spells and food to convince the animals we mean them no harm, which worked to eliminate the danger about 2/3rds of the time. Despite this, the group's Minotaur Paladin constantly jabs me for not contributing to killing the animals. Even when out of combat, this player brings up that I wouldn't help kill animals in past sessions. It's mostly joking but quite hard to tell with this person's sense of humor - and I think the other party members have started to notice the tension. Most honorable justices, what should I do? Do I need Hooch to have a reckoning moment where he recognizes the lives of his party are more important than random animals? Or do I accept the friction this boundary creates with another party member.

Dr. Bearkele

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

Daniel Backal

If it pleases the most bodacious judicial body of the crit court, and also Tucker's girlfriend's roommate, may I present a case that technically has precedent, in an attempt to overrule? In past campaigns, you have allowed the infamous scoop, where party members carry others for their movement to help with escaping (most noticable to this case, Onyx flying her simulacrum and vice versa at the end of Trinnyvale). While I support this, I feel as a player wronged from a campaign run years ago, and would like to hear an official ruling. In our case, we were storming a goblin camp to save a kidnapped girl. In the most classic of cases, this camp was lead by not one, but two bugbears. These beasts decided to grab the cage the girl was trapped in and run when they realized things weren't going their way. However, the dm ruled that they could both take their movement, and also still attack, meaning the cage travelled 60 feet per round. I tried chasing them, to no avail, and recognizing this, a party member ran up and misty stepped on top of the cage. Well, since apparently they could move each other, and still attack, they moved the cage another 60 feet away from me, and then took a turn downing the party member. The party member ended up dying out of reach of our whole party. Did I mention this was our first session? I ended up going with it, but after attempting to explain that they were effectively getting a dash action for free, the dm and the other members of the party seemed to not care. So tell me, was I wrong to insist that the bugbears should have stayed closer, or was this encounter set up to fail from the start? I humbly accept your ruling, thank you Also private side note hypothetically if I was making something akin to a PowerPoint where would I send that link? Hypothetically of course

Robin Tedford

To the Tubular Justices: Daddy Tanner, Smurphy, and Axe Lord as well as the Original Rad Lad Jacque. So may it please the court: I present myself up to the Crit for judgement and appropriate punishment. I started DM-ing my first D&D campaign with four friends. I was super green and nervous but felt that I had a pretty solid handle on running a fun but fair game. We were running a pretty heavily modified Lost Mine game to get us started. My party's warlock, who was a bit of a wild card, started asking around the town and various vendors for high-nitrogen top soil. I figured that there exists farmers so there'd be a market for soil and fertilizers. I did some rolls and decided that there'd be some of the specific soil he was looking for for sale. He spent all of his gold and bought as much as he possibly could. So now I have this warlock completely loaded up with dirt. He was happy and I didn't think much of it so we moved on. Later, the party was met with a caved in tunnel and had to take a longer way around to get past. The warlock perked up and started to prepare the nitrogen-rich soil explaining, basically, that he'd made a makeshift explosive. He went to school for and used to work in chemical engineering so I took his word for it. I asked some questions about how this would work and then asked for some luck checks to determine the explosive yield of this dirt bomb. When he rolled poorly I described the a soft rumble as it exploded failing to move any of the debris. My player seemed dejected but moved on well enough going on to free my BBEG by letting them escape into the warlock's own psyche, but that's another story. My question is this, should I have just let this work? By making them roll, did I take away a cool moment from my player due to my own inexperience and sliiiight panic? I thank the Crit for its time and its service to the community.

Niche Veraldi

To the honorable Justices and either the mealy worm that is the bailiff, or if we like him today, the good-haired boy bailiff, I present to you the case of the unexpected singing. I joined an open Reddit campaign a few weeks ago, and was told that the theme of the campaign was “a school of magic like Hogwarts.” I rolled up an Illusion Wizard and got ready for some magic shenanigans. In the first ten minutes of play, we were all asked to roll Perception checks. I rolled a Nat 20, and was told that I didn’t really notice anything out of place. A few minutes after that check, a Halfling Bard teacher popped out of a nearby desk and demanded that we all write a 2 bar poem that we would sing over the Zoom live. He gave us the first line, we just needed to finish the verse. I was confused at this point, because I wasn’t sure if he was serious about us singing. He then announced to the Zoom that “we’re not moving on until everyone sings.” I have pretty severe social anxiety, and the idea of singing to strangers from Reddit started giving me a panic attack. I texted my wife and asked her to unplug the modem so I could pretend that my internet went down, which she did. I joined up later after “fixing my internet” so I could hopefully skip the singing. We were in a different part of the session, but when I re-joined the Zoom room, the DM asked me to sing again. I told him that I wanted to think about it, but he kept pestering me. Eventually, I left the game entirely. Judges, was I wrong for pulling a stunt to get out of (semi-)public embarrassment, or was the DM wrong for forcing me to sing?

nollie pollie ollie

Dear honorable justices and solid 7/10 Bailiff Josh, I submit to you the case of the gnome sorcerer. My friend and I were really interested in getting into our first game of dnd and we were lucky enough to have friends invite us to our new campaigns. Given little to no backstory, we made our characters, me a halfling rogue and my friend a gnome sorcerer (important). The day comes of our first session and we learn that gnomes are an extremely hated race in this campaign because of a previous campaign. Gnomes we’re the sworn enemy of 80% of the party. This session and the sessions that followed seemed to always come back to how much the party despised my friends player. Just when we thought the party was lightening up a bit, when we finally got to a storyline that involved the gnome sorcerers backstory and family the party killed every gnome they saw including our gnome sorcerers parents. Eventually that friend stop playing all together. So I ask, should my friend have been warned about the predetermined gnome hate before starting this campaign? We humbly await your judgement.

Aaron Yi

To the most honorable bailiff Jake Hurwitz, a belated thank you for existing: I love you. Your willingness to jump onto a podcast playing a game you've never played with such amazing folks has been a boon to me and my friends. When introducing people to DnD, I often point them to the first arc of this podcast, when the Bullywugs stole the Green Teens, and I tell them to pay special attention to you, Jake, a bumbling know nothing, who feels so joyous to romp around and throw dice willy nilly while having the time of your life. To me, that is the essence of DnD. To know so blissfully little and still have the time of your life. And to see you grow fully into your other characters with some thought and intention has been amazing to witness. No longer the wide eyed blank stare of a DnD child, now you have grown into a DnD man. Please know you are loved, you are cherished.

Bebs

May it please the philanthropic supreme justices as well as Jacob. I present a case from an incident that happened a few years ago when I was a first time DM and fairly new to DnD in general. My then-boyfriend (now husband) and his friends wanted to get a group together but no one wanted to DM, so I volunteered, but caveated that I'd need help with combat and numbers and such. Everyone agreed and so we started. One of our players, lets call him Mike, kept straying away from the group to random villages and killing random NPCs, since he was chaotic evil. My boyfriend and I came up with a set of rings to give the other PCs, that when worn, the other person couldn't stray farther than say 60 feet from the other to keep Mike in line and the story moving. I gave these to them for practically free since I really wanted them to have them but apparently that was not ok. A couple other players starting a whole uproar and yelling match that those rings are a real item and would be worth so much more. I said that in this world they aren't worth that much, but that it not settle the situation. This argument ended the campaign with another player calling me a bad DM and said that he will be DMing from now on. Judges, was I wrong to give my players these rings? Was I railroading them? I humbly await your judgement. PS I ended up taking Justice Murphy's advice and getting new friends and have since had years of successful DMing and campaigns!

Jonathan Yarberough

A dice christ confession, more like a miracle, or me being put in my place. Last week I started hoarde of the dragon queen with some experienced players. Instead of starting level 1 I made them level 2 cause being badass is fuuun. Being level 2 doesn't exactly protect them from the ADULT BLUE DRAGON flying in town launching deadly lightning breath. One player (whom is my original dm and the first dm to ever kill my PC) snuck into the middle of the town where the dragon was attacking. I rolled the dragon's breath weapon die to see if it recharged, and it did not. I wanted this encounter to truly scare my players, so I lied and had the breath weapon recharge anyway. So when this CR 16 dragon flew from the sky and breathed lightning onto my level 2 wizard, I had him roll his dex save. A dex save that he rolled a nat 20 on! My homebrew is a nat 20 save negates the damage entirely, that nat 20 gave my group chills. I wanted it but didn't believe it would happen, but at the table I asked dice christ to me merciful on my player, and dice christ answered.

Noah Jay

I hope Jake spots this and they cover the update. Then you can send the ruling to those other players and tell them to suck eggs.

WitchKingofAngmar

To the highly venerated supreme crit justices and the crumbly croissant connoisseur who gets his buttery finger prints all over the cases I present to you the case of the salty rage quit. I’ve been the DM of a campaign that’s been going on for over a year now it started with 4, gained another player to make 5, then after an incident went back to four and there’s been no issue since but I digress. My players had just arrived to a city and were hot on the trail of a group of people heavily tied into a characters back story. The rogue was able to track down clues and find out the crews hideout and decided to bring the party with him. Before doing so he specifically told one player (the edgy loner blood hunter who had been an issue from the first session ) to refrain from antagonizing these people as he was known to do because they needed answers. Well to no one’s surprise the blood hunter ran his mouth and it ended up getting him and the party into a fight with people that outmatched them at their current level. The battle was quick, the enemy npcs knocked out three of five players before the other two decided to surrender. Our session ended there and the blood hunter signed off of discord without saying anything. Feeling the tension I reached out to him and asked if everything was ok. He then proceeded to say I must be cheating with my rolls because I was rolling a lot of crits and demanded that I start rolling digitally so that everyone could see my rolls. I told him that I was rolling a lot of dice so my chances of high rolls like that were greater. And that even if we were at a table the dungeon screen would be between me and them and they wouldn’t see my rolls anyways. He began to try and rope the rest of the party into the argument saying they all felt the same way (to which I reached out and confirmed that they weren’t). I told him without trust we couldn’t play this game together and I asked him to leave the game to which he responded to with insults saying that him expressing his opinion shouldn’t get him thrown out of the game. The game has ran smooth ever since then so I don’t think I made a bad call but I stand here before the supreme crit to ask: was I right to remove this player after he rage quit and called me a liar or should I have given him a chance to continue? Side note*- this session happened right after a session where I had two of the character tied and paralyzed by bandit/mages and was rolling so poorly I couldn’t hit a player laying dead still on the ground. My dice rolls weren’t an issue then.

Jacob Stasuik

To the most holy mouth pieces of our Savior of saves, dice Christ. I have a confession, I was DMing a particular 5e one shot, involving sheep and unstable polymorphic wands (trying to avoid spoilers), for some friends who play Pathfinder, being experienced players they rolled over every encounter, which is fine with me. The issue comes in the final encounter, the parties Tortle drunken master monk managed to climb onto the BBEG's polymorphed flying monster and grapple away the unstable wand of polymorph. He then proceeded to free fall from said monster stating that he wished to smash the wand onto the ground breaking it. I asked him to roll a luck check, he rolled low. I decided to roll a spell attack roll against his AC. I rolled low but said I rolled high to hit. He was then polymorphed into a horrid blob of flesh monster. The party lost the encounter the remaining two fleeing. My friends all said they had a blast but should I have stayed true to the rolls? I humbly await your interpretation of the dice lords judgement.

A Spicy Lad of the Shadowkeep

May it please, tickle, and amuse the court, including that guy reading the cases who has clearly failed D&D law school but resigned himself to Bailiff-dom. My case is simple, but the potential ramifications of it going unsentenced are anything but. I'm a long time DM, running games for groups of varying levels of experience, but have recently taken on a group comprised entirely of new players. Some are really getting into it, understanding the rules and roleplaying often, but others are proving slightly problematic; including one who, after three sessions, proudly proclaimed that he was ready to DM for another group. It's perhaps this confidence and 'access to knowledge behind the screen' that allows him to feel that he can look up stats for monsters during encounters. I've reminded players to go into encounters blind, but whenever I throw something at them, he already says how he knows whether his attack (rolled off camera, of course) hits the enemy, as well as what DCs he or players need to beat when the creatures use their abilities. If you think this is paranoia, then rest assured that the damning evidence is that, when I say what the monster is and I start describing what it looks like, he cuts me off by saying he's posted a picture of it to the chat, which is always clearly a snipped screenshot from D&D Beyond. My beloved judges (and Josh), what say you? How do I handle this problematic player, lest his influence and bad habits spread to new players? I lay myself at your feet for a fair judgement.

Sebastian Lecha

May it please the court and Tucker, I present the case of the sneaky bathroom break I am currently running a campaign where the party has become the moderators of peace talks between the warring wizard and druid nations. Enter the tabaxi rouge, during the peace talks his PC always asks to go the the bathroom. What kind of reasonable wizard king would i be if i said no? Problem is that he uses this time to sneak around the castle and try to dig up dirt on the king. Fun idea the first time, but he keeps doing it. What king says no to allowing someone go to the bathroom? It's not so much the sneaking I have a problem with, but it definitely ruins the energy of the peace negotiations when I have to cut to him sneaking around. Some of the players are worried that it goes against their plans for peace. Getting caught could ruin everything. Any ideas on how to stop this? I accept or will administer and cruel and unusual punishment.

Ollie Bear

To the Honorable Justices and the handsome, yet self-effacing Bailiff Jake, I submit to you the case of of the Banshee and the Bubble. This case begins in the long abandoned city of Myth Drannor. Our party had settled down for the night in a hollowed out building surrounded by the ghosts and ghouls of cataclysms past. My drag queen glamour bard, Miss Deanne Dee, had cast the spell Leomund’s Tiny Hut to keep us safe and warm. During the night, our encampment was approached by a banshee. She used her Wail ability, on which my poor bard failed her save, dropping her to zero hit points. My DM ruled that this dispelled the Tiny Hut and allowed for more monsters to descend upon us. I argued that spells cannot penetrate the Tiny Hut, but he countered that Wail is not a spell, but an ability. Ultimately I conceded with his ruling, because it’s his call to make, but I still disagree with the ruling. I would classify a banshee wail as a magical effect, thus preventing it from passing through the dome. We prevailed in the end, but this thorn continues to prick. Justices, I humbly await your judgment on this matter.

Steven Hamonic

May it Please the Court. And do something for the Bailiff. I present: "the case of Player V. DM & Dice Christ" I ran an encounter where the party was trying to escape the realm of death. They had to fight a Nightveil Specter, an enemy from the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica- and quite a challenge for them. The party were under the effects of a Heroes' Feast from an NPC, so they had advantage on wisdom saving throws, there's also a paladin in the group with a +4 Aura. The Specter attacks with its Mind Twist (a DC15 wisdom save) and everyone except the rogue passed. He became *Stunned* and could make the save again on his next turn. He failed, complaining that he didn't get to do anything that round. The party fought the specter and it kept attacking, the Rogue fails **again**, now complaining more. He failed 5 times total, with advantage, the paladin's Aura, and his Wis Save. He never rolled above an 8 during the fight. He complained that "( I ) should have made the DC easier" and "Stunned is an unfair mechanic" Your Honours, is Dice Christ at fault, or did I make a mistake using an enemy with a Stun attack?

Beth C

If it may please the court (and either displease or please the bailiff depending on the court's mood today) I present: The Case of the Do-over DM I was in a game with some classmates of mine from university. We only managed to play a couple sessions before people got busy with assignments and the game dropped off for a while. When we were able to play again, the DM told us we would be starting a new campaign in a new setting rather than continuing. I was a little annoyed by this as I felt I had wasted a cool character concept (goblin pirate druid), but I went along with it and made a new character, a pixie chronomancy wizard, for the new feywild inspired setting. The first session wasn't great (he forgot my character was there in the big set up scene where we were all given our quest so I had to be like "I decide to come along too", and he insisted we use hex maps which no one understood and slowed down play massively) but I had fun interacting with my fellow players who had some really cool characters and was excited to continue. However, the DM said the next day he wasn't happy with the first session and wanted to start again in the same setting and with the same hook but with some changes. This time he said we could use the same characters, except he was now banning fey PCs, which meant I specifically would have to come up with another new character. I ended up quitting because I didn't want to waste more time getting invested in a new character in case he decided to start over again, which was a shame because I did really enjoy playing with the other PCs. Should I have given the DM another chance or was I right to quit? Is it ever okay to fully restart a campaign? I humbly await your judgment. (For context, he was not a new DM, he told us he was very experienced and had actually DM'd professionally before.)

Nicolas Mallard

To the honorable judges and the sensible yet simple bailiff Josh, I present the case against the rageless barbarian. My party is level 4 and we were playing Ghost of salt marsh. We were about to leave a different plain of existence to go back home but we were stopped before the portal and started combat. Our dm has given us magic items that we won in a mirror match now give us double damage. Our party’s barbarian David who is a Goliath, only went into rage once at the beginning but because he didn’t hit anything and no one attacked he he dropped out of rage. We had 9 more rounds with everyone depleting spell slots and almost getting tpkd, with him refusing to use his other 2 rages because he “was rolling low”. He also refuses to use his relentless attacks even though I was imposing disadvantage on the enemy so they could roll regularly against him. My question is am I in the right to be irritated at the almost TPK because he refused to use any of his class abilities or am I just being petty? P.S. He got sad from not hitting on his attacks and because so sad he was bringing down the whole table and made me almost put away my dice forever

Muqtadaa Miandara

I present the case of the Game Show, the Lich, and the Pressure Plate, may it please the Crit. Honored justices Murphy, Axford, Tanner, any potential guest justices, and our estimable Bailiff Jank Howitzer, thank you for your time. My players recently faced an undead lich guarding the sarcophagus of a dead god, whose heart my players needed to stymie the BBEG from retrieving it. The lich told them they would have little to no luck unsealing the god's sarcophagus, as he'd been attempting the very same for nearly 2000 years. Instead he engaged them in a game-show style trivia competition I had setup to get the players back into the groove of the campaign. We haven't played in a while because of life's demands, so I wanted to have them actively remember lore and backstory, and thought a trivia gameshow was a fun way to do it. The players ended up winning some loot, had a great time using skill checks and abilities to communicate info to each other for questions that were harder for some players than others, and the lich got bored and bid them good luck exploring the tomb. confident they would be unsuccessful. The players found the sarcophagus and investigated, and were quick to discover (with incredibly high investigation and perception checks (30+ with mods)) the presence of a pressure plate that, when stepped on, unsealed the casket. The players did so, retrieved the shard of a divine heart, and were confronted by the infuriated lich, who demanded to know how they'd retrieved his long sought-after prize. It turned out the lich had been floating over the pressure plate for 2 millennia and had never even come close to unlocking the tomb because he never designed to walk. This of course turned into a fight where the lich was banished, and my players afterwards asked how it could be possible that the lich never investigated the floor like they had. In all honesty, I didn't have a mechanic for why the lich hadn't stolen the heart, or how the sarcophagus was sealed, I just wanted to run a game show and improvised the rest around that once I had the players in the setting and interacting with things. One player in particular complained that I was destroying their immersion and their suspension of disbelief, and I know it's a stretch, but what do you all think? Do I need to more carefully craft layers of intrigue and puzzle to explain why their enemies are stymied where they succeed? Am I in danger of copyright infringement if I start a show called Yet Another D&D Vodcast? Will Jill and Tucker ever tell Jake about their third, Emil? As I look forward to these answers, I also humbly await the judgement of this esteemed crit. PS I INCLUDED BACKSTORY STUFF IN A REPLY COMMENT IN CASE IT NEEDS TO BE REFERENCED

Tia Dia

Benevolent Clerics and Persnickety Usher, Dice Christ, forgive me for being stubborn in an argument and stalling the session because "it's what my Chaotic Evil character would do". My first character was as edgy as I could make her. Thia Naïlo is a chaotic evil drow warlock and former-leader of a violent resistance movement. She's more of a Bennington than a Shinoda, but both energies are present. One of our missions was to steal magic diamonds that some rich people used to live forever using periodic human sacrifice. My character, being chaotic evil, was very greedy about them. She wanted to steal the crystals and run so she could work forever on her plans (destroying all heirarchies, and bringing Lolth to the material world). While the other players were divided on what to do, none of them really wanted to keep the crystals or become immortal via repeated murder (I suspect none of them wanted spiders everywhere, either). The others were not in full agreement, but mostly due to my insistence in the name of character integrity, we debated this for most of a session - about two hours! It even got a little heated, and we eventually settled on a ranked-choice vote. The result: we would deliver the crystals as promised. Good thing, too: we then found out that our secret client was Xanathar himself! It would have been...*unwise* for us to displease him in that campaign. I felt bad about dragging on the argument. I could have expressed my character's greed and let the group move on when nobody was interested in her arguments. My character might've wanted to steal the crystals and run, but *I* wanted to play DnD with my friends. Dice Christ, forgive me for slowing things down and frustrating my party.

Muqtadaa Miandara

My players are in a race to collect the lost shards of divine hearts (a concept inspired by Bahumia and Murph) as a fallen goddess seeks the same artifacts to reclaim her divinity and remake the world without magic, starting everything over with her chosen few (long story about magic being the reason she suffered). My players discovered from the newly minted Winter Queen that they helped put on the throne to uncover the lost tomb of the ancient Eladrin god, Corellon. The made their way through a goblin quarry that led to underground tunnels to the god's mausoleum, faced his Tomb Guardian of Whimsy, and answered the puzzle of the Door of Purpose (which asks the players what they seek; the answer to unlock the door is, of course, that they seek to enter/open the door). Ultimately they ended up in a pocket of the Astral Plane housing the entombed corpse of Corellon in an abandoned temple. I also built all of those settings in TaleSpire for my players to enjoy (the Tomb of Corellon is on TalesTavern if anyone wants to check it out)

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.

The CPawx Centre for People Who Can't D&D Good and Who Wanna Learn to do Other TTRPG Stuff Good Too

To the honourable, all-knowing, and attractive Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner (as well as any guests) and the Jake: I present to you the Case of the Wild Magic Letdown. In a recent campaign, I played a Wild Magic Barbarian - each time I raged, I would roll on a wild magic table and have an effect occur. However, since the Barbarian table was only a d8, and all boons for my character, I switched to a table we found online. This table involved rolling a d100, THEN a d20 to determine one of three "levels" of the effect - meaning there were 300 possible outcomes. Since the table wasn't meant for a barbarian, some of the effects didn't apply, such as losing sorcery points or not being able to cast a spell, etc. When one of these came up, the DM would instead make up a negative outcome for my Barbarian, such as losing a rage. I went along with this, as it seemed fair. However, late in the campaign we were fighting a beastmaster, who sent their two tigers to attack us. I raged and rolled on the table, and by some miracle of the crit gods, got an effect that cast Speak With Animals on myself. I attempted to speak with the tigers, but the DM refused to engage in conversation - no roll, no debate, just flat refusal. I contended that this 1/300 chance was surely a divine sign, but to no avail. I begrudgingly accepted this, but afterward quietly switched back to the original surge table that only gives positive effects. Was I wrong in thinking the DM didn't balance the table fairly? Yours in the humblest subserviance, Bumkrum Peters

Nicolas Mallard

P.S. p.s. our dm balanced the encounter for him to use his rage more than just once

The Witch of the Well-Struck Flint

May it please the court and Baliff Grape, I present to you the case of Baggy. Before an intense combat, my party came up with the idea to construct a kind of scarecrow out of the bard's bagpipes as the head and some broom handles as the body/limbs, fill the bagpipes with an explosive we'd found earlier in the campaign, apply a potion of sentience to this construction, and have it walk up to the enemy lines and explode. We even roleplayed painting a face on the bagpipes, and dubbed our creation 'Baggy'. As soon as we gave this thing sentience, it dawned on us that we'd done a terrible thing. We did not send our sentient bomb Baggy off to explode at the enemies- instead, we sent him to live with a wizard in a tower after protecting him during the combat. This was WEEKS ago. We recently had to visit the same wizard. As we enter the tower, one of our players asked 'is Baggy here??'. The DM paused before asking '...can we perhaps agree to retcon Baggy?' We all agreed, and I was relieved that our monstrosity was erased from existence. However, the other players then started role-playing as if Baggy was there in the wizard tower. I halted and said 'C'mon guys. No Baggy. We retconned Baggy'. I was agreed with, but felt a bit bad that I'd insisted on changing history. So, was I wrong to insist on retconning Baggy? Do we deserve judgement for creating Baggy in the first place? I humbly await your judgement.

beckthebold

Hi honorable justices and [choose your favorite adjective, Jake] bailiff: No case, I just wanted to share that my partner's parents, who we visited for Thanksgiving, live down the street from a little place called Mangia Mangia. https://linksharing.samsungcloud.com/5OjBmaTHc6am (sorry for the image quality, my partner's mom was driving and I didn't want to explain an inside joke from a dnd podcast to ask her to slow down)

Christopher Samson

Oh blessed clerics and paladins of Dice Christ - this is a plea for mercy and deliverance from an terrible curse from the Nine Hells. The week before Thanksgiving, I ran a Thanksgiving themed one shot for my friends. The adventure involved all the turkeys being stolen from the city, threatening to ruin Turkey Day forever & to put the city at risk of starvation in the coming winter. The culprit turned out to be a young hot Benjamin Franklin (played by Henry Cavill) who attempted to use dark magic and the turkeys as unwilling sacrifices to summon a Turducken kaiju monster from the Feywild to serve him. Prior to this story hook, the story started with a rowdy night at a local tavern - but the festivities were interrupted by a group of witless cultists accidentally summoning a vengeful fowl spirit called the Poultrygeist - aware and enraged at Benjamin Franklin's crimes happening elsewhere in the city. The party commenced battle with the Poultrygeist. But at the beginning of the battle, I rolled FOUR natural ones in a row using four different dice. The rest of the combat had me roll constant shout outs to the 2 Crew as well. My friends in Dice Christ - what I have done to anger the gods of RNG? Am I being punished for some terrible, mortal sin? Do you have any insight into how I can exorcise all of my cursed dice?

Jazami

May it please the radiant high justices and the effervescent bailiff, was I in the wrong for destroying the world my DM created? It sounds bad but hear me out We were playing in a MtG inspired world, split into sections for each 'colour' nation, and an inner circle of "white" in the middle blocked off by a huge wall. We were told it would be a mostly grimdark campaign, but we made it clear we wanted some levity. Safe to say, levity there was not - every single npc was hostile and wholly unlikeable. There was no real gratification in what we were doing. A few sessions in, the DM then started railroading us into a prison break - without setting up any reason why we would be arrested. We broke away and made our way to the wall of the inner circle. If any one nation breached the wall, all others would be notified and essentially war would break out. We, feeling anarchistic, decided to start a war between these shitty, detestable nations. And so, at LEVEL THREE we were able to scale this end of campaign wall with a simple spider climb and made it over. In the centre we found a nation of clockwork monsters - but all of them still. None attacking or threatening us at all. We then found a throne of creation, said to be able to change the world with a simple thought. My spring eladrin bard with a crit on the wisdom save wished for nature to reign over this corrupt world - imagining it reclaiming the land. He said that instead, demonic plant creatures grew and took over making the world even worse. After that session he messaged us saying he didn't want to DM anymore as we clearly hated his world. To this day I stand by my actions (the rest of the party was on my side) but now and then I have moments of doubt so - was I wrong?

Jon McGinn

May it please the court, I humbly submit the tale of the Tundra Town Screw Job. I have been DMing for my close group of friends for about four years now. We have played a couple standard fantasy games and decided for the new game we would get super weird. We decided on a Miami Vice 80’s themed game, but based in the Zootopia universe. Yadda Yadda Yadda we are three sessions deep exploring the seedy underbelly of Tundra Town when my heroes get a tip on a Night Howlers deal going down on the docks. They make it to the warehouse, my dirty cop Snow Leopard decides to go around the back. None of the other players know he is dirty and to be fair I haven't given him too many chances to be super dirty. He climbs up the scaffolding and who does he see but the mafia boss climbing out the window. So obviously the Elderly Badger Boss offers our PC a deal. To my surprise he didn't even think twice and gleefully arrested the boss. Well I was too stunned to put up a fight and he cuffed the first real antagonist they were presented with without firing a shot. Was I wrong to assume he would see the same opportunities for story moments? Should I have been more obvious? I will wait for your ruling and abide by your decision.

Vicarbatman

May it please the honorable crit and the most honorable and venerated bailiff, the case of the No Hit Nat 20. During a campaign with some friends, I was playing an ice-centric eldritch knight in a party who was trying to stop a local doomsday cult from destroying the city and the bar that we worked hard to get. To do so we had fought many battles, with me using Ice Knife as my signature move. During one session the party was at a gala with some nobles to learn where the cult was about to hit and were suddenly ambushed by said cult. We were all level 5 at the time, not much in the way of skills but enough to handle most fights. So we take the battle head-on and it evolves into a chariot battle with tank mechanics for our chariot. I seek out the cult’s leader for this attack and find them. As I come up to attack them I use Ice Knife and attack hitting a natural 20. However, the DM stated that it did not hit. As it turns out the leader was the archdevil Zariel in disguise, and this was supposed to be a runaway encounter, which we did. During the fight, I felt slightly dejected after my attack faltered on a nat 20, but understood if it didn’t hit the AC. After the session, the DM did say he felt bad that my attack didn’t hit, but stayed consistent with his ruling that it needed to meet the AC or higher. So I ask the crit, even if the AC of an opponent exceeds the highest attack possible should the DM have honored the nat 20 and given a pity attack of something like 1d4 damage or should I just take it in stride that sometimes a nat 20 doesn’t always hit? Your’s forever faithful, Vicarbatman

Bryant

May it please the honorable Justices and that pretty okay guy who lives with Tuckers girlfriend: I present the Case of the Cat and the Carpet. My Tabaxi rogue was doing a heist and got tangled in a living rug. The Tabaxi used his claw attack to attempt to free himself. The DM said that since the claw attack caused damage to the rug, that damage was transferred to the cat within (case law citation, rules state that any damage to the rug transfers to the creature it’s constricting.) I argued that because the claw damage was coming from inside the rug, the damage transfer shouldn’t apply. The DM disagreed and my Tabaxi rogue was knocked unconscious by his claw damage and subsequently killed by the rug. Judges, I humbly ask you: was my character murdered, or did I deserve it for playing a Tabaxi?

Clever Innuendo

To the illustrious judges and the Baliff that always wakes up with a Solid 9, may I get right into my case without spoiling it with a clever title: I have a bad habit of spending nights crafting concepts and personalities for my PC's backstory associates, but by the time they come up in the campaign, I tend to be lacking in my roleplay of them showing up or dying off. So for our newest 'season', I wanted to play a real fish out of water type to get past that entirely. I spent a half hour with my longtime DM in a private Session 0.5 where I described my character's family for the sake of painting his personality, but he asked me if I was expecting them to be part of the story later and I said "No". We all agreed on a Rags to Riches campaign, where we arrived by chance at a bazaar in a dangerous desert region. My character is a Water Genasi Wildfire Druid that got banished from the water plane because his clan didn't understand his volcanic 'spirit animal', and ended up the first Genasi to land in our early-lore homebrew world. I figured the desert was a perfect place to get banished to for a Water genasi. It seems like hell, but he could start his journey where his contrast could make the most difference. What NPC's mattered to my story would be up to the interactions I made and the fear of outsiders the PC overcame. And then... not 10 minutes after I did my character introduction... it turns out A SISTER I NEVER AGREED TO got here ahead of me somehow. So not only do all of the people in the starting town know what's up about the Genasi, but even the aspects of my Firey backstory as well. I feel like my intention was completely undercut, but my DM is beaming that he "immediately put a twist on my neutral story", and he seems genuinely thrilled by this storyline that came to him in 'a brainwave'. I have to admit I do want to know what that means, but am I right to feel betrayed? Is this a red flag to bail on, or should I charge at it like a bull to the matador? P.S.: Win or lose can I please get a recording of Jake saying that Allen came up with this druid concept and named him "Kaldera" months before season 3 came out, and that it's just a coincidence because it took so long for this campaign to get off the ground, thank you very much.

David Wieser

To the holy Justices and transcendent Bailiff, I prostrate myself to the Church of the Crit, for I have sinned by railroading my party into a TPK. I’m running a Curse of Strahd campaign, however, I learned up front that my party was really uncomfortable with the idea of character death. I promised not to kill them, but a lot of the themes in Curse of Strahd revolve around life and death, so I wanted to have a higher power resurrect my party for plot reasons. At the end of a long, drawn-out fight that took most of the session, I cast Cloudkill on the level 7 party repeatedly in a small room until they died. I felt like I had “won”, but at the end of the session, my players were so visibly dejected and upset about getting systematically murdered that my heart sank, and I realized I hadn’t been keeping The Rule of Cool in mind. To repent, I thought about what my players would really have fun with, and changed my plan completely. The next session, the party woke up in the silly and light-hearted Plane of Corn, where my corn-magic cleric player’s deity resided. They met an entire society of Corn Elementals, saw the source of corn magic, met a whole corn society (including a corn elementary school, corn ghost hunters, and corn city hall), and they had a blast. It’s been months since, and that session has been their favorite of the campaign so far. I hope that the Holy Court can forgive my sin, and that my repentance is worthy of Dice Christ.

Chelsea Thompson

May it please the court, I present to you the case of the over-talking/over-communicating DM. I have been in an online campaign for a while now and I love my character and the other PCs. We all get along great and do our best to work together and have a blast. I hesitate to contribute any of the funsies to the DM as the majority of the time she is trying to talk over us when we are describing our own actions that we already rolled for and passed. Is it wrong for me to want to describe how I skewer a baddie with my flame tongue sword using dimension door after my successful rolls?! When entering a new town she tells us we know things when we’ve never been to this town before, some of us have never even been in this world before the beginning of the campaign. We are either left to discover info in the town on our own which is like pulling teeth or are given wholly irrelevant information about anything to do with the campaign. Not only that but a PC will will narrate some action and the DM will get sidetracked and completely forget about the action (oftentimes we PCs get the feeling that it was completely intentional). Last night I had to describe my character leaving a conversation FOUR TIMES because she talked over me (it felt very intentional) every time. I even waited until no one was speaking to narrate my character leaving because she was mad at the NPC. I’m not the only one in the party who has an issue with this. Any ideas how to get this train wreck back on track? Thank you for your time. PS - There is also a feeling of favoritism (seemingly unwanted attention) between a specific character and the DM, who may or may not be related to each other.

JC

To the dazzling Justice Axford, mirthful Justice Tanner, pioneering Justice Murph, and Joshua, Jacob, or Jim depending on how your feeling. I was playing in homebrew campaign where everyone was a superhero and had a power called an attribute (like My Hero Academia quirks). My druid had Dream and Sleep manipulation powers. In one of the final combats I was rematching one of the most terrifying villains we had ever fought, The Giant, who's attribute allowed him to physically adapt to any problem: gets hit with fire, becomes immune to fire; gets stuck underwater, can breathe underwater; etc. My druid, at 1 or 2 HP in a moment of desperation cast Mental Prison on him. He failed the saving throw. I got an idea in the moment and decided to describe the illusory prison as trapping him in space. I explained that bc The Giant adapts to survive in any environment and he believed he was in space that his body would adapt to the pressureless environment, but bc it was an illusion and was actually on earth he would then kill himself by adapting, basically causing him to explode. The DM after some consideration described how he began to struggle and turned red but a few turns before anything could happen the BBEG came and dispelled it. I didn't argue but I was slightly miffed that my plan didn't work especially bc I've fought him twice before and barely escaped with my life. What do you think? Do you think the plan should've worked? I leave myself to the mercy of the court.

Catrina Negut

May it please the honorable Supreme Crit justices and Tucker’s placeholder John? I played a campaign with a couple of friends and we were having our first session. Our DM led us into a town and we had to figure out why all the animals were fleeing. One of the characters named Borg had speak with animals stocked, however his alignment was Chaotic Neutral. As we were walking through the forest we found 3 horses, and as Borg approached the horses he said that he was going to talk with them to see what was going on. However, instead he decided he wanted to roll the break all their hooves. While the rest of the party protested this, the DM let him roll and he got a nat 20. Borg proceeded to gruesomely break all the hooves of all 3 horses and they would no longer talk to us. The session ended pretty quick after that and we never played again. Was the DM wrong to allow this to happen, or were we too hard on Borg. I await your deliberation and righteous order.

Sarah

May it please the the impeccable Justices Murphy, Axford and Tanner, and the peccable bailiff Jake. I present the case of the Immovable Drowning Monk. I was playing a Goblin Monk with the Acrobat feat and a backstory that suggested a lot of nimble, second-story thieving work. Our party had recently chartered a ship and found ourselves besieged at sea by a mind flayer riding on the back of a kraken and a nautical battle ensued. As the only party member without any ranged abilities, I got the idea to jump onto the kraken's back and fight the mind flayer 1 v 1. I told the DM that I was going to leap from the ship, pulling out my immovable rod, and press the button on the rod just in time to catch myself in place above the kraken's head within striking distance of the mind flayer - using the rod to essential levitate in mid-air where I could attack. He told me to roll an acrobatic check to jump the distance - I succeeded. I had already declared that I had leaped off the ship when I was informed that because the jump was so long it counted as my movement and action, and I wouldn't be able to press the immovable rod button on my turn, and that my character fell into the water. I argued that I should be able to use my action to press the button, and that I was willing to make another acrobatics check to time everything right and I would use my whole turn just to get into place to attack next round. My DM argued that I'd already used my movement and action to make the jump, and that I wouldn't be able to make the check needed to stay in place. I let it go, and ended up spending the rest of the battle underwater. I missed out on the entire epic sea battle, my character nearly drowned, and I lost my immovablerod. Should I have been allowed to do this ridiculous acrobatic stunt? Did my DM rob me of an epic 1v1 aerial battle? Or was he right to knock me down in an effort to maintain some control over what was, admittedly, a complex encounter for him to run. I await the court's judgement.

Tara

May it please the court, including (maybe especially?) the fan-favorite scamp of a bailiff, Jake. This case might be too spicy for y’all, and no hard feelings if so. I'll take my answer off the air, or on the short rest, or not at all, whichever suits you. I was playing my first ever session of D&D, and we had our quintessential "you meet in a tavern" moment. All was going really beautifully until two players we just met introduced their characters. The first character was the annoying "princess with infinite gold" trope, but the Kill Bill sirens didn't start until her partner, a white 30-year-old man IRL, introduced his character as a woman of color who was in servitude to this "elven" princess character. After an audible "hold on, what?" my wife (who was also playing) and I looked at each other and silently left the call. They got really mad and defensive but.. yanno.. who gives a shit. Obviously, this is beyond insane, but my question is, in the opinion of the court, is there any room in fantasy roleplaying for player characters specifically to inhabit identities and experiences well outside their own and if so, where is the line? Again, it’s completely fine if you ignore this. I probably would to be completely tbh. Love, Tara

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.

Masterwildcrash P

To the Masters of Fate that also happens to rule over the Supreme Court Justice and that other guy who is pretty cool I guess, I bring you the case of the intimidation roll that halted a whole campaign. I was DM'ing a homebrew campaign set in Ravnica in a small ancient underground dwarven city that's sole purpose was to house all the death row inmates from the mega city above. Within the first session after being brought there a small information guilds tavern brought them in and gave them everything they need to know, especially how to identify the most dangerous form of guilds. Immediately after I ran an encounter a single individual from one of the danger guilds collecting "protection money" from the bar's patrons. Two of my characters morals went against this and even after explicitly being warned not to they approached and confronted the individual anyway. After the bards first successful intimidation roll the individual backed off. Few moments after his departure and the party celebrating their success bombs flew into the windows and destroyed most of the tavern. To armored individuals and two robed individuals stepped in. After seeing at work the first time the bard attempted a second intimidation roll and rolled a natural 20. After being so excited in his success he played to what I'm sure was a JoJo bizarre adventure theme over his mic as he monologue about how much he scared these guys. Unbeknownst to them the four individuals were mindless automatons ruling to myself that they could not know fear and did not back down and stabbed the Bard in the middle of his speech. The bard was immediately upset saying that the nat 20 should have worked and there should be no reason they should attack. I couldn't tell him why it worked because I wanted it to be a surprise as to who the individuals were. This led to an hour long argument while the other two players sat in quiet doing nothing at while points trying to help the situation but inevitably gave up as they saw they could not help. Even after pulling out the ruling, that I don't usually like to use, of skill checks cannot be crited on the bard was not backing down. Even after it was finally revealed that they were automatons he argued they should have grown a consciousness and be afraid anyway. After this whole thing happened we never convened again and the campaign never move forward. Was I wrong to make the automatons not be afraid or should I have awarded the natural 20? I leave my fate in your godly hands.

Mica K

To the creative and charming Justices and Bailiff Jake or Josh or Jim or James or something, I present you the case of the Wasted Haste. I am currently playing an Out of the Abyss campaign, and I play a divination wizard (Pez). They stock mostly support spells, with very few damage spells. We recently got into combat with two Gelatinous cubes, and at the beginning of the fight, I cast Haste on the Rogue, hoping that it would allow them to move around and sneak attack wherever they could. However, instead, the player decided to only use their actions to cast spells from magic items, and every turn, when reminded of the extra action Haste provides, they acted like it was an inconvenience and didn't want to use it. The DM was kind enough to remind them every turn and try to help them use the Haste, but the player refused. However, they decided to stay in melee with the cubes, meaning that if I broke Haste and cast a spell on another player, they would likely be "consumed" by the cubes and take a lot of damage. I ended up not casting another concentration spell, but casting and holding Haste limited what I could do in combat. I ended up telling the player that I wasn't going to cast Haste on them again, and they called me "petty" and said that this "wasn't the right combat" for me to cast Haste. Supreme Crit Justices, I ask you this, should I still cast Haste on this player, or am I being petty?

Bearnardo

Dearest High Priests of our lord and savior Dice Christ, I come to you seeking forgiveness. Early on in my time as a DM, I wanted to play a trick on my party by introducing a shapeshifted character who would betray them. Unable to brainstorm a way to gain their trust immediately, I resorted to the lowest tactic imaginable: having the trickster present themselves as a tabaxi named after my friends’ real-life cat Sophie. Needless to say it worked, and my friends were so delighted that they refused to roll an insight check on this character, and this imposter got away with quite of bit of thievery at the party’s expense. By praying on their meta-love of a cat that actually exists, I clearly robbed not only their gold, but their roll of the dice. I humbly await Dice Christ’s judgement.

Heather Sanders

(Actually from Jonathan S., I use my girlfriend’s Patreon) To the honorable justices Murphy, Axford, & Tanner, as well as Jaliff Bake, I present to you the Case of Railroading (in more than one way) A few months ago, the girl I had just started dating invited me to join her party for a session. I played a gnome druid named Seebo for what was essentially a Session Zero, and was later asked to join the party. My first official session, the DM asked me how I wanted Seebo to be introduced to the party. I told the DM “whatever works narratively for you”, so he placed Seebo in an NPC’s bedroom and told the party, including my new girlfriend, that my PC was sleeping with the lady of the house, actively cuckolding the husband, and had a 15-inch penis. This was NOT previously decided upon between us, and, from then on, it was canonically known my PC was a sexually promiscuous exhibitionist with a massive penis. In the 6 sessions since, the DM has made Seebo flirt or sleep with 4 NPCs. I ask the court, did the DM take away my player agency? Do I have the right to feel upset that the DM gave my PC a massive hog? I humbly await your response, and hope it is not a hung jury. (Note there is a connected Dice Christ Confessional)

Noah Goodman

High Judges and Sensual Baliff Dag Swaniels, 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?

Grimma Lynx

Supreme justices of the Crit and uh... Jeff? I present to the court the case of the stealth dragon. Back from before I became the forever DM, I was playing in a higher level campaign with some college friends. Our party had been tasked with hunting down a series of ancient dragons. We had throughly womped the black and white dragons, and were climbing a mountain in the blue dragon's territory when the DM described how a massive bolt of lightning tore through the party, and we had to make saves with disadvantage. Appatently, the dragon had snuck up on us, in flight, and at no point were we given the chance to see it coming. We argued a bit with the DM about this, and his defense was that, since we were in this dragon's territory, it was able to silently sneak up on us. Our argument was that a giant dragon flapping its wings could in no way be totally silent. We still managed to win the fight, just barely, but the mood was kinda soured after that. The next session, the DM ended the campaign by having a tarrasque burst out of the ground and kill everyone since he "just wasnt feeling it anymore". Who was in the wrong here? Was our DM correct in saying that a dragon was capable of flawlessly sneaking up on a party of adventurers in its territory? Or were we correct in that we should have at least been given a perception check to hear it coming? I humbly await your judgement

Noah Goodman

Oh wise justices and expendable but beloved Baliff Jacob, 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.

Heather Sanders

To the Cardinals of the Holy Dice Christ Church I come to you not with a confession of dice dishonesty, but one of unintentional party trickery. My new boyfriend was joining my D&D party, & I told them they should mess with his PC. One party member suggested she overtly flirt with his PC, then the DM said he had an idea. Later, during the session, the DM said my boyfriend’s PC was sleeping with an NPC, cuckolding the husband, and had a massive penis. He was rather upset on the drive home about the DM railroading his backstory, & to this day does not know I initiated it. I humbly ask for your advice & forgiveness. (There is a connected Dungeon Court case submitted)

Foster’s Bewildered Veterinarian

Greetings most noble crit justices and also the bailiff whose name and descriptor word will be chosen by Murph right now I bring you the case of the selective shatter In a campaign with a party of all orcs trying to acclimate to humanoid society I play an orc cleric who hands out pamphlets written in orcish to convert people to the religion of Kord (but that’s besides the point) We were fighting a group of orcs from the army we defected from and one of my party members got surrounded by multiple orcs went down. On my turn I asked the DM if my party member had gone unconscious and fallen to the ground, to which she responded yes. I said that I wanted to cast shatter at a point above the group so that it would only hit the standing enemies and not my prone party member. She did not want to allow me to do it with that level of accuracy, and after some lighthearted back and forth she agreed to let me do it this once but said in any future combat I would hit my downed party member and give them a -1 death save. I humbly ask the court, did I use the spell correctly, and should I have been allowed to keep creative freedom with my rad radiuses, or was my DM correct and I was indeed committing a geometric grievance?

Tara

Couldn’t agree more, Dr. Silverback. My wife and I still talk about it like we survived a war.

JetTheCrow

May it please the court, and tickle bailiff Jeremy. I submit the case of the Ass Bag of Holding. My players were meeting a BBEG and knowing they had an invisible assassin employee they brought glitter to try to counteract them. In the meeting the players blow the glitter early and so the villain asks them to hand the glitter to him. The player holding the glitter proceeds to roll slight of hand to hide some of the glitter in his ass. He rolls a 3. Having it noticed the villain asks one of his henchmen to retrieve the glitter from the asshole of the players. The player proceeds to ask to swallow the henchmen with his ass. I immediately say no thats not how this works, but after arguing I jokingly say fine roll me 2 nat 20s and we can talk about this. The entire table proceeds to turn in all of their inspiration dice to give a chance to reroll. The cleric also proceeds to use their divine intervention ability. As players do they get the nat 20 and the cleric succeeds in their divine intervention roll. Having noted earlier in the session that the party didn't have a bag of holding. I say that through the divine intervention the asshole is enchanted to be a bag of holding. So when the henchmen reaches into it he falls into it the now asshole bag of holding The players were very excited to get this to work but was I wrong to even give the players a shot at this? Should I have given something as ridiculous as this even the smallest opportunity to work?

Neeork

May it please the glorious justices and the incomparable bailiff. I'm a DM and in a recent session a fight that we've been waiting a year for finally came. Our druid has a personal vendetta against this enemy more so than any other character (members of her family had been killed by this enemy) and thus it was emotional fight for them. Due to a combo of rolls and in character roleplay the druid wasn't able to be in the fight much till the end. I could tell this discouraged her so I did my best to get her back in the fight, fudging a few things on my end. At a certain point it became clear the party was going to win but I fudged a little more giving the enemy some more health so the final blow could be had by the druid with a spell she had been saving for this enemy. She was thrilled and had an amazing character moment with it. After the session though a player came to me and said he had been tracking the enemies health and there was no way they had that much HP and he 'understood why but I cheated and in a way robbed all the other players' Is this true? No other character had such a dynamic with this enemy and I only extended the fight a round or two so it could be narratively satisfying. Should I have let this arch nemesis of this pc die with that pc getting next to no hand in their death and obeyed the will of the dice?

TeaPott

To the chicken eating justices and starved bailiff, I bring before you the case of the stoned snake. I was DM'ing tomb of annihilation and while in the jungle my party ran into undead basilisk. While fighting them the druid (my wife) used her staff of the python and summoned her giant constrictor. During the battle the snake failed its save (twice) against the basilisk and was petrified. My wife argued that the snake should have been turned back into a staff. I argued that the language of the petrified condition states that the snake is now an inanimate object and must have a greatest restoration cast before it can become a staff again. She was a little argumentative, but we kept playing and moved past it... or so I thought. Once the session ended and we got off discord she brogue it up again and sparked a two hour long argument on the logistics of petrified and what constitutes wearable magic items. I ask you, was I wrong for ruling as I did in the moment? Or is my wife in the right? I await your judgment. P.S. we've been together for 5 years and have never argued like that before or since, but don't worry we're good.

Maxim Bourgeois

To the fabulous Crit Justices and to the Porta potty toilet paper of a bailiff I present you the case of the flying machine. When i first started out DM'ing, my players created this flying apparatus with some twigs, rope, net, an barbarian aarakocra and a portable hole. Wich i thought, at the time is was a great idea. Turns out they used it to avoid plot points, all combat by fleeing or staying out of enemy range. I tried many thing to rebalance my incounters, rolling checks ect. Even asked then to stop using it out of traveling needs(out of game). I ended up making a acid cloud that the barbarian failed to see and destroyed the machine (but not the portable hole) Was i wrong to remove this thing rhat i hated?

Kiya Marshall

To the honorable justices and Jeremiah? I present to you the case of the metagamer. I (22 female) was invited to a dnd group of my work friend (29 male) I was informed ahead of time that I would in fact be the only girl. I was ecstatic, I had my character sheet, backstory and accent all ready for the session. I made cookies and brownies to bring because I was raised to never go empty handed to someone's home. I get their and its great everyone was nice and helped me get setup. Then the problems happened. Our party were going up some stairs at the very beginning and the warforge in front said he stopped on top of the stairs and refuses to move any farther. I asked him why he won't move and he turned to me and said "The warforge will not answer a stupid question". So I did a dex check and went around him.  The moment I did a wraith appeared in front if me. The rest of the party was trying to get to me but the warforge said he won't move for them to help me. We were all only level one so I died in one turn. I broke into tears. I excused myself and went to the restroom and had a private cry like moonshine.  When i came out I started to pack my things up because I was very much ready to go home. The warforge began to chastise me saying I should have rolled a perception check or something. I asked him why didn't he. He confessed he had GMed for a group this exact module. That pushed me over the edge. I took my things and stormed out. My co worker and I didn't really talk about it after that. Then 2 days ago he asked me if I wanted to come back. The warforge guy had been kicked out. Im not sure if I should go back because none of them tried to help me during the game. I ask you all Justices and Jeremy, should I join their party again? I await for your message Humbly Kiya.

LuckyBear

To the honorable Justices of the Supreme Crit and the guy who would absolutely not be able to eat a whole rotisserie chicken, I bring to you a case of thunderwave V pirates. I am the DM and my players were traveling by sea and for the random travel encounter they rolled a storm. I asked them to roll a luck check and on a nat 1 I asked for a quick break and hurriedly built a high seas pirate combat. After some silly and clichéd dialogue the pirates boarded the ship and right before I asked for initiative the bard of the group emphatically shouted that they cast thunderwave. I told my player that if she wanted to cast thunderwave it would have to be on her turn after initiatives were rolled as the pirate crew had just boarded and were about to murder everyone on board. She argued that because I hadn't asked for initiative she should get to go first at the very least and the rest of the tabled agreed with her. We argued and it got a little heated so I escaped to the restroom to collect my thoughts...you see I'm a bit biased as this player is my partner. I ultimately disagreed but relented as I wanted my players to have fun and honestly it was a brilliant move. However, because we play theater of the mind and positioning is a bit free-form I had her roll a d8 to see how many pirates were in the AoE of thunderwave. She rolled an 8 and after 7 failed saves from me, a chronically cursed roller DM, what was supposed to be a high stakes encounter with two storm lair actions turned into a one and a half round womping. Was I wrong to allow my player to go first? Should I have held my ground? Did I give in because of my bias? I leave myself at the mercy of the court and the dainty chicken eater.

evans-endeavors

To the illustrious, wise, and foxy Supreme Crit Justices and the baliff Jake who deserves those same adjectives I guess. I’m a DM running a Hades inspired dungeon crawl. My three players are demigods attempting to reach the depths of the Underworld together while encountering different Greek Myths I enjoy that the game didn’t explore. While in Tartarus a player met the Titan Hyperion who offered him his crown. The crown offered some buffs, but was ultimately cursed. The player accepted the crown without hesitation. After the session he was quiet, so I talked to him. He was upset, and said he felt like he was put in a position where he couldn’t refuse (being alone and face to face with a deity). I had fully planned on denying the object being an option. We talked and came to a better understanding. So all is good now. But I want to know for the future. How can I present things like cursed objects better so my players don’t feel like they’re doomed to accept it? I await your judgement.

bspurrs

Not a case but a suggestion, may it please the court. In this court we have the political compass with north being 20, or player leaning, and south being 1, or DM leaning. While this works well, there is still an East-West axis available, and I think I have a idea for it: Rule of Cool vs Rules as Written. For an example of its usefulness, look at justices Tanner and Wilson. While both are certainly player’s justices, Justice Tanner is willing to ignore the rules for all manner of goof and gaff, making him a northeastern judge. Justice Wilson meanwhile leans northwestern, defending players from within the system and punishing DMs for their rule breaking

Thomas Hegarty

You don’t owe them a return. They shoulda had your back. The DM 100% should have done something and you have no garuntee they will be there for you for any other situations down the road

Paul D

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

Timothy Hardy

Dude that is an awesome suggestion!

Jack McAlevey

May it please the righteous justices and the cretinous bailiff. I bring to you today the case of Embarrassed DM vs Horny Party. This case began when I, the DM, allowed a player to name a cafe they were staking out. The player chose "La Petite Mort", which I approved before learning that even though the literal translation is "the small death", in French it is a euphemism for orgasm. I decided to play into it, eventually creating a secret brothel in the upper level of it. This was a decision that I almost immediately regretted as my players decided to go there as soon as possible, enjoying an absolute buffet of experiences which they delighted in describing, expecting me to fully narrate their experiences. I pushed back somewhat but did more or less acquiesce, as they were having so much fun trying to embarrass me and goaded me into it. They continued this trend, with several characters attempting to have "on-screen" romantic encounters (often just to get me to blush) before I put my foot down and said that each person would get one sex scene for the remainder of the campaign, and that any other time we would instantly fade to black. Fair justices I beseech your guidance - was I wrong to deny my players this experience??

bspurrs

I made a community post a little bit ago with my thoughts on the other justices

Dave 3D Art

Posted this update in the last Court Thread. Potion Enema Case Update: So yeah, I left the game without vocalizing that the potion enemas made me uncomfortable. I was not invested in playing with the DM enough to attempt to convince him to change for my benefit. I think fundamentally even without the enemas I wouldn't have vibed with him long-term. Judging by his choice of character voices he was running a Rick and Morty campaign on a pirate ship than anything I would want to play. Some of the houserules I begrudgingly accepted were: multiclassing being punished by substantially increased challenge rating, homebrewed hand-to-hand rules that ruined every martial class, most skills being limited to the point of uselessness or being explicitly disallowed (like no insight checks period) and a drastically small selection of race and subclasses that felt arbitrary and didn't even adhere to the established game setting. I tolerated them because I wanted to be a player for the first time in years instead of being a dungeon master. These rules were at least laid down when I signed up. The enemas just popped up out of nowhere. I should mention that this was an in store game that I paid money for. The store was kind enough to refund my fifty bucks for the campaign (it was supposed to be five sessions total). Which was good customer service at least. -Dave 3D Art.

Lakeboss

To the magnanimous supreme Crit Justices and John I bring the case of the Jurassic Pixies. In the game I'm running, the warlock recently took Conjure Woodland Beings (he's playing a homebrew warlock subclass that gives access to druid-cleric spell lists) and now for every encounter he summons 8 pixies, they all cast polymorph on the party, and because they're level 8 they all turn into t-rex's. They recently swept an encounter taking massive amounts of damage from frost giants and hags, but because the T-rex has a high constitution, the warlock never broke concentration. Even though I graphically described them throwing up the things they ate as T-rex's and made them RP an intelligence of 4, they seem to want to stick to this strategy. So I present my case...Should I let my players just go full Jurassic every encounter or start planning my encounters around the fact that they'll be T-rex's or always have enemies with dispel magic around. I await your judgement and death if it is deemed necessary!

Timothy Hardy

I agree. In the wise words of Justice Murphy, you need new friends.

DowdMusic

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

Diggy Dordugler

I come to the church with a troubled soul. I met up with some people and we set up a new D&D group. About a month ago, my character had a very important persuasion check and I rolled a 2 on the die. I dropped my hand on the table in defeat and my friend next to me said "oh my god he got a 20!" I looked down and saw that, when my hand hit the table, it rocked the die over to a 20. I went with the 20 but have been conflicted. Was it the dice devil whispering evil in my ear to lie, or did dice Christ move the die? I humbly await your judgement.

Timothy Hardy

I absolutely love the state farm reference

Jacob Nadel

To the most esteemed Justices and that guy 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 and I humbly await your judgement. Jacob

Martin

Honorable Bailiff Herwitz and those three other judges, I bring to you the case of the optimized multiclasser. After taking a break from my campaign over the summer, my group of players recently returned and I allowed them to roll new characters if they wanted. Most players kept the same characters, but one player rerolled a multi class character. Three levels in barbarian for ancestral guardian, five levels in fighter for echo knight and second attack, and two levels in cleric for some other BS. Basically, the player wanted to be able to impose disadvantage on whoever he attacked if they choose not to attack him, using the echo knight feature to attack from range and the ancestral guardian feature to impose disadvantage. Long story short, it made all combat very unfun to play for myself and all of the players, since I had the choice of attacking the barbarian meatball or attacking anyone else with disadvantage. The other players felt like they never had a serious sense of danger from single-boss fights, and I never felt like I had options in fights to deal with him. I ended up having the BBEG grapple the barbarian and drag him into an erupting volcano to finally get rid of the problem. The player was very frustrated that I did that and hasn’t played the character since. (Because he’s dead ha ha) Was it wrong of me to drag the optimized pc into the volcano with no chance at being revivified, or was it sweet sweet DM justice for having to deal with an antifun character build for many sessions? I await your decision.

DowdMusic

Damn - your DM out you in a trap IRL. That is some toxic shit.

Max Piper

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

Eric Anderson

To the holy papacy of Dice Christ and the severely overaged choir boy: I have served Dice Christ faithfully for the last 8 years and never fudged a roll per the holy commandments. I am a forever-DM but got my first opportunity to play a few weeks ago. I chose to be a level 4 Echo Knight at the beginning of a Strahd campaign. As combat began, I could feel the warm presence of Dice Christ leave me. With 14 attempts throughout the day, I could not hit a single target. The other players went out of their way to give me advantage or bless during encounters. 12 attempts later with Faerie Fire, Bless, Flanking, Action Surge, and anything else I could use, I still could not hit. As we reached the last enemy, my faith in DC was still strong. I accidentally rolled off the table and it ended up being a natural 20. Our rule has always been floor rolls don't count. As I picked up the die, they all looked at me sheepishly and said "just take the 20, man". I refused to abandon my morals and rolled again on the table. I got a natural 1. I have clearly angered Dice Christ. I ask not for how deserving I was, only how I can atone for my sins. I prostrate myself at your feet. Eric

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 who was also a player 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? P.S. I do not play with this person anymore.

Ayn Like Ryan

To the holy crit confessional I bow before you today to confess a sin(?) I use a dice bag that has pockets for your dice and expands into a rolling tray, that I would rate a 6/10, but the dice bag has mushrooms on it and I love it so I use it. The problem lies here .... When I roll too close to the edges the fabric of the dice bag sometimes that means my dice lands cocked and it doesn't show a single number, but is in between two. When that happens I re-roll, even if it's cocked low or high. I worry the dice Christs will look upon me with disdain so I ask, have I angered the gods or am I okay to keep re-rolling when it's cocked?

Noah Kyle

To the venerable court and that bendy straw lookin guy over there, I present the case of Russian crick elves. So a little while ago I ran bahumia as a module for some friends of mine, from moonstone to the watchman’s tower, and we had a great time. However, I might have made a mistake when a player made her character. She wanted to be a half crick-elf that was raised in the crick who wanted to learn who her daddy was. She said when she was creating the character that she wanted to have a Russian accent. After hemming and hawing over it I told her she couldn’t, because there was already an established people in the world with Russian accents (the frost dwarves) and it would muddy the world building. I thought that she was ok with this, but later a friend of mine also in the game told me that player was sad because she had wanted to do a Russian accent so bad. Since then I’ve felt dirty, like I ruined a player’s fun. I throw myself before the crit and await their righteous judgement.

Rob

Dear honorable justices and the equally (but differently) honorable bailiff, I present to you the case of the blind watchman. I was recently invited to join a campaign with coworkers, DMed by the office receptionist. She warned us that her campaign style was brutal and unforgiving, and I was excited by the prospect of difficult fights. I created a variant human fighter who had been the night watchman of his village before being called to adventure. To compliment this background, I chose the Skill Expert feat from Tasha's, and gained expertise in perception. During our first session, I was leading our party on a mountain trail in search of orcs when I was asked to make an investigation check. Not knowing the reason, I rolled and got a 7. Our DM announced that I had failed to spot a hole in the trail, and I fell 200 feet into a cave and died instantly. I argued that with my perception expertise, I would have noticed such a large hole, and that investigation had noting to do with noticing dangers in the terrain. She replied that since I had already rolled, it was too late to change the skill needed for the check. Was I justified in protesting my new character's death? Or was I an acceptable casualty of a "brutal and unforgiving" campaign?

Trey MW

Honorable judges and ineffable bailiff, I bring you the case of Winter Court Woes. My party had become trapped in the feywild's winter court with no way of returning to the prime material. I was playing a flightless-Aarakocra Circle of Dreams druid, and was surprised to find my magic was dangerously unstable in the feywild, causing wild-magic like effects to happen. Various mishaps include: lightning randomly striking all creatures nearby, me aging 1d10 years (Aarakocra life span is only 30), instantly gaining so much weight that my speed is reduced by half, summoning a Fomorian that cursed me, teleporting me in random directions, and so on. The reason for all of this, I learned, is because Circle of Dreams is tied to the SUMMER Court in the feywild. The logical makes sense, but it still felt unfairly punishing to my character. Judges, should I have pushed back against these magical misfortunes, or was the DM right to incur the winter court's wrath against me?

garett144

May it please the court and especially Caldwell because this is some Looney Toons shenanigans. I present the case of the joker golem. I was playing a rune knight with carving proficiency, my cousin joined as a guest for one session but instead of rolling a character he used a clay golem stat block. During a purple worm fight an attack from the worm did something screwy to him and he started attacking all of us. Upon a 22 insight check all the DM gave me was "he just looks angry" what it was was an enrage mechanic in the golem player. Kinda miffed that thats what a 22 got me. I decided to hold down the golem and carve his face into a smile to see if that stopped him from "looking angry" It didn't. Was I being salty at the DM, or was my interpretation of "he just LOOKS angry" fair? In the end we all had a laugh at this so there are no hard feelings at the table.

Ayn Like Ryan

Absolutely not. If you're uncomfortable with sex in the game, you're the DM you can say no. This game is about everyone's comfort and you're part of that

Leith H.

Oh humble clerics of the D&Diocese, hear my words of confession I have rollers guilt, we are starting a new campaign and rolled stats as a group during session 0. My friends and compatriots rolled a little below standard, with their highest being like 16 I, in front of dice christ and everyone ended up (after racial bonus) with a 20, 18, 18, 16,15 and 12 at level 1 I feel bad because it seems like it will give me an unfair advantage, is it wrong of me to want to cast away this gift freely given by dice christ?

Jack Nathe

The balif Jack thing really threw me off for a second because I thought for a second that Naddpod was calling me out

jordy v.

To the esteemed judges of the Supreme Court, and their bailiff who is also there. I bring you the case of the player and his two Tabaxi Rangers. Years ago, my friends and I started a traditional 5e campaign, four PCs and a DM. As time grew on, we eventually made another friend, who we’ll call Eric, was interested in playing with us. He was introduced as a Tabaxi Ranger, which is cool, but he eventually just became the player who stole from every NPC we encountered. This was funny at first, but became increasingly annoying to deal with as we tried to gather information and intel. Nevertheless, we moved on. Fast forward to a time-skip in the game world, and everyone had the option to play a new character or retain their old one. Eric decided to play a new character. This new character? A Tabaxi Ranger. But instead of being a stealing-hobo, he was a murder-hobo (an arguably worse variant of hobos). I was incredibly annoyed that he would be fundamentally the same character, and half-joking/half-seriously banned him from playing Tabaxis and Rangers. And while this has became a funny bit among our friend group, I ask you judges who is in the right here? Am I right to ban him from playing certain races and classes? Is my friend right to play the same character, just a different brand of annoying? I await your decision.

MC

Honorable Justices Murphy, Axford and Tanner, as well as Joe the Bailiff, if it please the court, I present to you The Case of the Murderous Santa Claus. I was writing a Christmas-themed one shot for some friends and one of my friends (let’s call her Courtney) told me that she had always wanted to try DMing, since usually I DM our weekly campaign sessions. I told her this was great and gave her all my plans and everything I had written to help her with the one shot, but to make sure I didn’t metagame, I told her to change a few things to make it her own. The story of the one shot was originally supposed to be our party arriving in a town suffering from a curse because they didn’t have enough Christmas spirit - and after a few fights with goblins around town and puzzles surrounding missing presents, the town would have enough Christmas spirit to summon Santa and he would undo the Curse and save the town. Courtney didn’t change any of the story, the only thing she changed is that when Santa finally came, he demanded the town worship him as a God, and when he was questioned by a townsperson, he and his elves stabbed them. The mood at the table audibly shifted. Afterwards, Courtney said it was my fault for not writing a good enough ending and for making her change things and create her own BBEG. I ask the court - should I have told her not to change anything? Was this my fault? I humbly accept any and all judgements.

Izzy R

To the Rowdy Judges and regular bailiff jorsh, last week I played the wild sheep chase with a group from roll20. To get inside the tower we stacked ourselves under a cloak and disguised ourselves as a talking bear. The dm gave us advantage on stealth while sneaking in as “we were all working together” to sneak in. Later on the way out we failed our stealth checks with three nat ones out of four roles. I asked the dm if we could get advantage as we were all still working together under the cloak but he said no because our cover was blown already, even though we had just rolled and the dm hadn’t said what happened next. Was I right in wanting the same advantage since the circumstances of our sneakery hadn’t changed, or was the dm justified in denying us a chance? I await your judgement forsooth

Ken

May it please the High Sweeties and the Sour Bailiff: This has haunted me for over a year and I fear I will not be able to move on without one of your sentences. As a first time DM, I created a homebrew campaign for my close friends. They were also first time players. I thought it would be fun to start the campaign with them waking up in an abandoned underground lab where they had been experimented on, giving them new and unknown powers. As soon as they escaped however, they wanted nothing to do with the nearby town or npcs, and insisted their characters just wanted to go straight home. I tried to get them to engage in several story points, including hatching a cool chimera that would help them on their journey, but still they insisted on going home. So I ask the court: was my inexperience as a dm the cause of this lack of interest in the story or were my friends being party poopers? Or did I just get too butt hurt? I await your judgment. P.S. The campaign died shortly after this and I have been too nervous to try DMing since, but I want to try to get a bigger group together and start over.

Hootie_McBootie

To the justices of crit and the bailiff we deserve , I bring forward the case of our lord and savior . Group of 4 experienced players and 1 newbie ,all friends. Our DM is chill and played for years, and allows alot of goofs, but our new player (cleric) is bringing some weird vibes. He chose Jesus as his diety to serve, and some of our players think it breaks immersion. He absolutely loves Jesus( in game ,not religious in real life), and everything is flavored that way. Example: his spiritual weapon he summons is literally Jesus on a cross, spinning and cutting his way into his foes. The entire crew basically want to kill him for a new PC. My question to the court: is immersion breaking to this extent deserve capital punishment, or are we just being agnostic?

Aalexander Knight

May it please Jake the God of Bailiffs (and the other people I guess); I request your judgement in the case of the Dicey Diet. Our group doesn't get to play too often, so we make a meal out of the occasions when we do- literally. We take it in turns to buy takeout for our sessions (except the DM, since we use her place and she's the DM). It was my turn to provide food for the session, and I had everyone in our group chat send me dice rolls for 'a surprise that you'll see later'. Normally, the person buying the food would show up and everyone would decide what to eat, then whoever was paying would either get it delivered or go pick up the food. This time, I arrived to the session with the food already in hand. I'd gone to a Chinese takeout place (which we've all enjoyed several times in the past) and ordered everyone the meal whose menu number corresponded with the dice roll they had sent me (the menu has 26 'main' dishes and I had them roll D20s so it wasn't a perfect system, but I thought it would be fun). I did also get a broad selection of side dishes for people to pick and choose from as well. At first people seemed to find the idea kind of amusing, but it ended up with most people swapping their meal for someone else's and one meal didn't get eaten at all, with one player (who allegedly rolled a nat 20 on their menu item) complaining that 'no nat 20 should punish me with a meal this mid'. I thought it was a fun surprise idea, but I do feel bad that some people enjoyed their food less because I left their meal up to Dice Christ. Was I wrong to try and spice up mealtime with some RNG or is it not that big of a deal when, ultimately, I'm still providing free food for everyone? I am at the mercy of the most honorable Jacob and the so-so Justices.

Zane Chapman

Dear honorable judges and the bailiff who is either dishonorable or honorable depending on the vibe, I present the case of the Warlock who spit on Vecna. I was running a homebrew campaign of 5E, with an undead Warlock whose patron was Vecna. After dying in a combat encounter, I had originally planned to have Vecna step in to aid them as a means to manipulate them. However, when the conversation started the Warlock started berating Vecna, and spit on him. Deciding that Vecna would not put up with this, I had him destory the Warlock’s soul through the connection they established with Vecna, and killed them for good. Everyone at the table was fine with it, but I feel bad about the outcome. Was it right for me to have Vecna dispose of an unruly pawn in such a manner, or should I have allowed a bit of leniency in the moment? I sit in waiting for the crit’s judgment.

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.

Georgie Grey

Hono(u)rable Judges, and that tallish normal looking dude that lingers with you. Picture this. It was the final battle, the Tyranny of Dragons was to end with an epic fight against Tiamat herself - the battle forced by our DM because going without was boring. After a wicked hit of 300+ damage (crit + grave cleric ability + multiclass storm sorcerer/Tempest cleric) it was breath weapon time. The save was 28 Dex- a save that only our rogue was able to make, my lowly cleric with her Con and Wis didn’t have a chance until I rolled a natural 20. I had the only healing at the table and we cheered my crit. Until my DM denied my 24 was enough - despite the crit. I was forced to give up my cleric as the damages exceeded my max hit to the negative and had to sit for another 40+ minutes without anything to aid my party. And thru a clericless epilogue. Was my crit robbed? At your Mercy Judges and pseudo talented Josh/Jack/Jake

Leith H.

Oh great and awe inspiring bailiff Josh, and the kinda cool judges, I come to you with the case of the divisive table snacks. Now, rotarisserie chicken aside, I may have found a new low We were playing directly after work so I was unable to eat before going (no issue we always have snacks) But the usual fare of chips and monster energy drinks weren't cutting it, so I asked our host, a friend of over 10 years if I could snag a meal from his cupboard (a somewhat regular occourance) as I was wasting away, he agreed happily and I found a can of chef boyardee ravioli. Now, admittedly not my proudest moment, but I opened the can grabbed a fork and sat back down at the table ready to keep playing, and ready to eat the cold ravioli out of the can, my friend kindly informed me if I did not heat up the ravioli, I would be removed from his home a la the watchman and Beverley. This incident spawned the great food temperature debate, and has led me on a ongoing journey through the razzberry patch So I ask judges, am I in the wrong for not heating up the ravioli in my caloric quest I humbly await what I can only assume will be razzing

Sarah Gardner

To the Honorable and Holy Crit Justices and also I guess the Bailiff Jake, I present to you the Case of the Street Chase Gone WrongTM. My party was investigating a string of robberies in a town that our Fighter was born and raised in. Our party split up (something that we do pretty regularly) to chase different leads in different parts of the city. The Fighter and another party member were leaving a shady tavern and the DM gave them a choice of taking the main road back to our rooms or to take an "awesome" side street shortcut that would get them back to the rooms faster. Since the Fighter was from this town, she chose to take the shortcut as she would be familiar with that route. The only weird thing about the shortcut was that there were a few grimy-looking kids running in that direction. Upon making this choice, the Fighter and other party member were jumped by a gang of children/teens, brutally beaten up despite trying to reason with the children, and kidnapped. After the epic battle in which the Fighter drop kicked many six year olds, the DM said that the Fighter made a bad choice and should have taken the main road as it would have guards and be safer for them. However, the Fighter argued that the DM’s hint of side streets being faster indicated that she would be familiar with that way and should have been just as safe. I ask - nay humbly beg - Crit Justices, who was right in this argument? PS This was a mostly fun argument with the two kidnap-ees being frustrated with the clarity of the hint and the tenacity of the children fighting them, but it all worked in the end as the Fighter is now dating the NPC Leader of the Gang (who is an adult)

Kathryn G.

To the enchanting crit justices and their lovely secretary, I bring to you a case I believe to fall within table manners. About a year ago now, I was set to DM the first session of a new campaign. The weather took a turn for the worse and we agreed to meet online. When I jumped on call at the planned time, much to my surprise, all three of my players were gathered in the same room and were communicating with me through a single smartphone. The session went smoothly, but my enjoyment was dampened as they joked about things off-screen and I thought on the fact that they decided to organize their meeting outside of our shared group chat. As I dmed for the jovial group, it felt a bit like friends had joined for a regular game night except I was the game console. I implore the supreme crit's wisdom, was I the victim of bad luck in an infamously hard to schedule game (i was likely the one most directly effected by the weather), or did my players infringe upon unwritten rules in the treatment of one's DM?

Frankenchin

May it edge the court and leave Jill's once-beloved wanting more, I bring a case of the Paladin caught in an extramarital affair: I played as a level 8 Oath of the Crown Paladin Dragonborn devoted to the ruling kingdom in our telenovela-style campaign. Devotion turned to marriage with the Prince of the kingdom but soon turned to betrayal as my character realized his husband was secretly an evil man intent on wiping out all non-divine spellcasters starting with my party and the King. I decided to bring the Prince's intentions to his father the King via a secret meeting. Before I could bring this betrayal up to him, the DM revealed that the King was in love with the Paladin, and proceeded to narrate our "meeting" in funny over-the-top graphic detail once the King made the first move. We were interrupted by the Prince in the middle of our meeting and forced to fight off several charmed guards (along with the rest of the party in the castle who were in the midst of pursuing their own love interests). The DM said that my oath was now broken as I cheated with my husband in the eyes of the Kingdom and turned into an Oathbreaker Paladin. I argued that it shouldn't have broken since my marriage was not a prerequisite for my subclass and I was still intent on serving the kingdom. In the end, we compromised and changed my subclass to redemption instead. Should I have changed my subclass based on these actions? Should cheating on a member of the court with the main Daddy of the court be grounds to change my character on a subclass level?

anniemurphs

Honorable Judges Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and the most appreciated and decorated Baliff Tucker. May it please the court: I was in a group with my friends, one of which was our dm. This dm had a crush on me, which I very obviously did not reciprocate and told him as much, but he 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 and eventually I'd started to push back a little when he made inappropriate advances. Regardless, he'd still come on to me, though he did start treating one of my characters unfairly. For example: I rolled a nat 1 on a perception check, but I was playing a swashbuckler rogue and had reliable talent. From what I've read of it, I 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. There has since been other drama with this dm and we no longer play with or speak to him but this still leaves a sour taste in my mouth. So, Honorable Crit, do you think this may have been petty treatment from this dude because I pushed back against his unwanted advances? I humbly await your judgement.

Nick T

May it please the court, the esteemed and inscrutable justices, and hey - is that John the bailiff? Way to go, John! I bring to you the case of the Patch Adams paradox. I work at a children's hospital as a therapeutic clown (kind of like Patch Adams, Emily!), where I spend my days developing friendships and playing with hospitalized kids. After listening to your podcast religiously, I decided to try to start a game with some of my long term patients. It was the first group social activity we've been able to do since the start of the pandemic, and it started off so well. We're now a few weeks in, and one of my player's nurses has taken an interest in our game. It's gotten to the point where he's feeding my player information about the campaign we're running (an abbreviated version of Storm King's Thunder module). This player seems to know every enemy weakness, and has an uncanny sense of where the story is going. I'm torn, because as a therapeutic clown my role is to empower kids and provide them opportunities for skill mastery, but this nurse is butchering the party dynamics and overpowering this one kid. Do I confront the nurse? Do I go completely off book? I patiently await your verdict.

Emerson

Praise be! I aim in every aspect of my life to walk in the light as a born-again child of D-Christ. However, my hollinesses, some of my friends who are also just as new just aren’t “good” at DnD. It sounds awful but I put a lot of effort into my sessions and alack I feel the energy isn’t reciprocated. When I DM I nudge and nudge(nud nud) my players with helpful tips, creative plot lines and cool NPCs. We are 10 sessions into this epic adventure with 10 more to go. I am beginning to question my faith. Must I pine silently? Have I gone against the will of the Lord? What the hell is Mangias?

Deenaa

May it please the fair and righteous justices and my close personal friend the Baliff: I request arbitration in the case of the cliff climbing centaur. My player is running a centaur Tasha's variant ranger, and has recently reached the level where they get "Roving", which grants them a climbing speed that matches their walking speed. Centaurs however have a built in penalty to climbing thanks to their horse bodies - they expend 4ft of movement per 1ft moved. My player has been arguing that the climbing speed should negate this penalty, while I believe that they stack - she might be a talented climber, but she's still got a whole horse body. In response to this, my player has argued that since her particular centaur actually has a deer body, her hooves are similar to a mountain goat, and therefore it's fine. I've been getting a lot of videos of goats on cliffs while this argument rages on, and I need to make a call soon. Should this centaur be allowed to run wild and free, or am I right to undermine her rock climbing career before it begins?

tacticalgrandma

Hello justices & bailiff- I come to you with a confession. I had been playing in a game based off a module for a while when, one session, things took a very sharp turn. In the fortress of an evil ice god, our party of heroes was forced to undergo trials. The first of these saw us all in identical, separate rooms all hearing the same voice begging to come in. Having come out of that trial with the understanding that that was disturbing but impossible to actually have happened, we went on to the next. In this one, we were transported to the monastery where most of our characters’ surviving friends and family were staying, and were told we would have to choose people to kill pass. Upon exiting that trial, we were told via Sending by an npc that those people had, in fact, perished in the real world. Our DM had not prompted any checks or intervened as we had all arrived at the conclusion during the trial that this was not real either. When we voiced discomfort at the fact that we were now murderers of dear friends, he laughed at us. Nothing else in the module or game had come close to this shift in tone & darkness, or made our characters suddenly monsters in this way. In my anger and confusion, I committed a grave violation of Dice Christ: I looked up the module. It turns out that the trials were not anywhere near that dark and in particular, for the one where we were tricked into killing friends, the trial was supposed to be saving a newly orphaned child from being eaten by a wolf. I left the game shortly after when the DM refused to listen to my concerns about the session and not wanting to suddenly play a murder hobo. However, I recognize that my breach of faith is what truly severed me from the table, and from the Rolly Spirit. I beg you to pray for my soul. And also for the DM, he had some thing going on in his personal life that I think might have contributed to how weird that game got.

Matt Solomon

To the magnanimous bailiff Jim, who I have definitely seen house an entire rotisserie chicken in one sitting; and the other three people he works with who I bet couldn’t even finish a leg in one day, I present to you the case of Fighter v. Common Sense. One arc of the homebrew campaign I’m running involved sailing for a few days, and fighting a kraken. One of my characters is a fighter who has made some questionable decisions in the past. As soon as he was up in initiative, he asked to jump straight into the Kraken’s mouth to “kill it from the inside”. I gave him three checks. First I asked him if he was aware that by doing that, he’d be liable for some pretty severe acid damage; he said he would take the chance. I asked him if he was sure; he said he was. I even asked him out-of-character if he REALLY wanted to do that; he told me to shut up and let him do it. So I did. He jumped into the Kraken’s mouth, and, over the course of the battle; chose to stay in the Kraken’s stomach and be digested. I even allowed his hits to do more damage because I felt bad. His character ended up dying in there and as soon as he did that, he got up in my face and SCREAMED at how unfair that was, and that he should have been able to leave the Kraken’s stomach at any time. I beseech you, was I in the wrong for even allowing that to happen in the first place, or was I in the right? I await your judgment with bated breath.

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.

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.

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😊

tacticalgrandma

Ah yes The Deer, an animal best known for Being An Entirely Different Thing Than A Goat

Jason Rodriguez

I've come to court and church with a confession for a wrong doing I've made against a beginner dm, but most importantly my girlfriend. I normally dm a public Friday game at a local game store every week. My girlfriend has been a player for a year and a half and wanted to run a one shot for the regulars during the Halloween season. As a forever dm, I was excited to play and had the perfect character idea brewing for months at that point. An earth genasi echo knight fighter (level 5) and trickery domain cleric (level 2). I had my character sheet ready and even 3 minis primed and painted for a fun visual on the battle map. Here's where I did wrong. During the final fight against Mothman and his minions at his manor, one of his minions gave me the frightened condition and was the only one not being attacked. It was my moment as a moved my mini towards the creature, placed my other 2 minis next to it, and said, "I challenge you to a three on one duel!". I was to into the combat that I forgot that I was frightened and didn't realize until later that night. Also, with three minis of my character on the map, it was confusing to my girlfriend who was trying to ask where my character was. I eventually told her and she agreed that it was a lot during combat, but I still feel bad about what I have done.

Daniel Barnes

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

Ian Hanson

May it please the punctual and poignant judges and barley bolster the bothered and beaten bailiff. I present to you the case of game issues carrying into the real world. I was DMing a game that was a sequel to my first campaign. It was set many years in the future and all magic had been destroyed and the party was relearning how to cast spells. One of our players a artificer was trying to experiment with magic but in doing so started destroying their house revealing their powers. This was bad as the government was repressing any form of fantasy magic or creatures. This cause a spiraling series of problems that lead to multiple party members captured or dead. Eventually causing the party to sacrifice much if their powers and items and connections to each others and NPC's to reset time. Of course emotions were high but some people were very angry and blamed the artificer. After much argument the party in real life kicked the artificer out of our game and banned him from my table. My question to you judges should I have been more lenient on the artificer and intervened on their behalf or was my party right to kick him out of our table? I patiently await your answer! Ps so excited to see my first NADDPOD live show Sunday December 4th at 7 in Atlanta Jake time!

Gig ⭐️

To the epic justices and the swag bailiff Jake, I bring you the case of the less than great drop in session. A cafe in my area does a weekly drop in dnd night and a few months ago I decided to go. I made a brand new character to play as, a lvl 2 air genasi bard named Waltz. Upon arrival, The DM said my character had to change races to fit their home-brew world and about halfway into the session said I was not allowed to give anyone bardic anymore even though I had some left and that I had to change all my stats because I had used the 27 point system instead of plugging in the 6 pre decided numbers. These acts are not the problem I bring to you, the real problem was small hallways. In one fight, I had been the first to act so I went down a 5ft wide hallway and ended up getting bombarded by a ton of enemies and getting knocked out. After the party members got there, they weren't allowed to fight the enemies because the DM said the hallways were too tight to pass me or shoot around me. This led to them using a lot of there spells to heal me because i kept getting killed and they weren't really allowed to do much else. This made me feel very bad and I think it annoyed them a lot as well, I couldn't even do any good damage because I had no spells left. After like 3 rounds I just said to stop healing me and I sat there awkwardly eating my irl soup while the party shot at the enemies over me. I overall had a less than great session. And so I ask, Could the other party members have gone around my PC, or even over them while they were unconscious? or is a 5ft wide hallway just to small? I accept any punishments you may have

james_in_space

Hi Justices! Hello, Jake. So I was DMing and my players helped save a halfling farmer who had a mastiff named Fig Newton fighting alongside her. Of course my players fell in love with Fig Newton the mastiff, as I expected. Having cute NPCs is a treat for your players. But then as they were leaving, the party’s sorcerer tried to essentially steal Fig Newton by attempting to lie to the farmer that the adventurers needed the dog to help save the world. She rolled a 23 on Deception, so I allowed it, but I was sure to describe how sad the farewell was, and how Fig Newton kept looking back to the farm as they left. Fig Newton helped them since he’s friendly and they rolled high on Animal Handling, but since I kept saying how despondent the dog seemed, one of my players ordered him to go home— I immediately said he happily trotted off back to the farm. Now my sorcerer is pissed at me! She says if I was just going to ruin the fun and take the dog away I shouldn’t have let her roll for it in the first place. Justices, should I have just told her she couldn’t take Fig Newton?

Joey

Fellow justices! Is hex blade's curse considered a 'curse' as the title states? Was fighting a villain who the dm had announced was immune to curses and didn't allow me to put my hexblade curse or cast hex on him. I thought this was really just for the spell bestow curse or whatever. Is my DM correct mechanically? I await your humble conclusion that I couldn't seem to find in an online thread.

Charlotte F

Dear Auspicious Justices and Totally Regular Guy Jake, I come not with a case, but with a confession. Some time ago, my long-running DND campaign took a brief break to play a temporary short arc set in the same world but as new characters, meant to last about 3-4 sessions. I played a Level 9 Minotaur Battlemaster Fighter named Luuk van der Luuk, who was specc’d entirely for melee combat and nothing else. During the third session, our party was attacked by a ghost. The ghost attempted to possess Luuk, and I failed my saving throw due to my very low charisma. I then asked my DM what to do, and they said I should act as normal but attack the rest of the party. Unfortunately, both my DM and I, in our quick scan of the possession rules, missed that a ghost is not meant to have access to the class features (including feats) or proficiencies of the body it is possessing. This meant that I, in subsequent turns, had full access to things like Extra Attack, Action Surge, Second Wind, Polearm Master Bonus Attack and Opportunity Attack, Sentinel Attack, and all of my Battlemaster Maneuvers. I completely annihilated the rest of the party, except for one who fled to safety. Since this was meant to be a temporary campaign anyway and it was a great story for the character who remained alive, everyone in the party had a fun time and we still talk about it to this day as a cool and tragic happening. However, I can’t help but feel that had I actually been playing by the rules of ghost possession, I wouldn’t have beaten everyone else so easily, and this was a win/epic moment I didn’t deserve. I beg forgiveness from Dice Christ and ask to be blessed once more in His light.

Josh Meier

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

W1ck Chungus

To the honorable justices and the guy from animorphs. I wish to show the court the case of insight check saving throw. I am currently playing in a goofy non traditional dnd campaign run by a story and combat dm. Most recently the combat dm did a story session, both of them switching roles. While we were wondering through the inside of a wail, the dm described flashing lights and asked for an insight check. I assumed something was weird about the lights and that why they asked but after failing was told I was charmed by a an illusion created by the light. I didn’t question the fact it was not a saving throw but asked since this is a charm affect I get advantage on the roll at least (I’m playing a wood elf). I was denied and was charmed till the one non-charmed figured out how to get the rest of us out of the charm. The rest of the session went fine but I ask, should this have been a saving throw and should have I got my advantage on charm based saves or was their ruling fair, I leave the ruling in your graceful hands.

Boomuppercut

To the effervescent supreme Crit justices and Jort, the bailiff: I present to you the case of the dead heroes and the clock that rewound time. Our party of four found ourselves out matched by a mind flayer. After the warlock, (played by someone who hadn't played DnD since 3rd edition), and the rogue, (also a returning player), died at the hands of the Mind Flayer, I managed to escape with the artificer. The warlock and the rogue were sullen and sad. They had backup characters but were really not into playing their backups after investing time into their mains. The DM called a break, and when we came back, the DM handed me(an oath of glory paladin) a clock that would rewind time, thereby restoring the dead characters to life. I used this moment as a character moment where I said that there is no greater glory than to die in battle and refused to use the clock. The others were flummoxed. Why wouldn't I use the clock? I responded saying that it's unnatural and that those characters are feasting with the god of war. The rest of the session continued but was subdued. The DM sided with me but was in a rock and a hard place as the warlock is his brother. Tell me justices and Jort, was i wrong to not use the clock and restore my party or was this a moment where I was just being a dick? I accept all punishment that you may stow upon me.

Bennett Lawson

May it please the wonderful and lovely justices and that guy who sells wallets, Jake, I present to you the case of fantasy chlamydia. I was running a group of 7 people and there was a rule that if 3 people couldn’t make it the session was cancelled. One of my players decided he was going to go watch the bachelor to flirt with his friends roommates, and when I asked if he would be at the table he said he would. He then would go to try and convince a player to not go so it would be cancelled, again without telling me he wouldn’t be there. For reference another player had an anniversary that day, but he told me so there was no issue. So during the session I gave his player fantasy chlamydia. So I ask the court did I go too far and am I a terrible friend? I humbly await your decision. Stat block for fantasy chlamydia Afflicted person loose 1 hp per day after a long rest. The 1 hp is returned to the player whenever they clap. Lasts for 1 week. No lasting damage is left on the player.

Matthew R

To the humble members of the court, I submit to your wisdom. My partner and I play with a professional DM whom we pay to run sessions for us. Recently, we were interrogating a wizard and Druid who were magically roofie-ing villagers to convince these villagers to enter a dimensional rift to retrieve a dark artifact. We had done everything to get the truth out of them (zone of truth that both suspects failed the check and high rolled insight checks on our part) and we were given very little information. We proceeded through the crypt to the rift and we were met with a near deadly encounter that we feel should’ve been hinted at from our interrogation. We feel like he’s trying to “win” D&D and TPK us at nearly every turn. Is there anything we could’ve done differently to try and prepare for this better?

ShrimplyAwesome

To the ear pleasing judges, and the more than a bit grating bailiff, I present the case of the Dragon, the Litch, and the Hydra. Back when I first started DMing I ran a modified dragon of icespire peak module for a group of friends over discord. This all started when I noticed I had multiple players who where playing intelligence based characters, and as such thought it would be fun to throw a mystery their way. Having heard stories of false hydras I decided that would be perfect for a first time DM like me, I only later realized how wrong I was. So after a couple of sessions of some weird disappearances and the Pc’s “forgetting” a few things, such as a character who’s player had left the campaign after a heated debate over manticores, the players finally decided to investigate. Unfortunately our party ranger decided that this session of all session he would fail the wisdom saving throw id been giving him once a session due to his dreams of the night a litch and his army of undead murdered his entire village and unbenounced to him turned him into a phylactory Voldemort style, and promptly fell into a coma. Dragon of icespire peak also has a mechanic where you roll a dice every time your players enter an area to see if the dragon happens to be looking for food there and wouldn’t you know it Ol’ ice breath McGee decided this session of all sessions he was going to attack the town they were all staying in. So two of my players are underground investigating the false hydras layer, one of them is unconscious fighting a litch in his head, and the remaining two are battling a white dragon with some townsfolk. All of this culminated in the ranger missing the entire battle, the dragon being defeated, and the false hydra dragging its body down to its layer. Needless to say this left everyone feeling a bit over where’d and for than a few people slightly upset the ranger most of all. They did eventually defeat the false hydra and collect some of the dragons horde along with their missing memories. I had intended for the other party members to be able to help the ranger in his fight against the litch but the dice had other plans. So I ask was a right to follow the will of the dice or should I have ignored the roll of the dice if only for that one session as not to overwhelm my players with 3 separate fights all happening at once.

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)

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 Booby 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 humbly await your judgement

DonutHoo

To the honorable crit justices and the vile, contemptible, oft-erroneous bailiff. Unless this is a day where we're being nice to Jake in which case: To the honorable crit justices and the inspirational, sensational, and oft-underappreciated bailiff. Or...wait, is he John today? Oh crap, he could be going by another name entirely. I didn't even think about that. Alright, I'm gonna cycle through all the J names. I can't get razzed by Murph for getting it wrong even though we can't possibly know what his mood is gonna be today. My little heart can't take it. Jack, John, Jon, Josh, Jace, Jasper, Josiah, James--is that good coverage? Is that enough? What do you want from us, Justices? What is the pattern? What are the rules?! I can't take it! Just tell me how to treat the bailiff! Please! I don't understand! I've sought patterns where there are none, and the definition of insanity has enraptured me in her clutches. What sin have we committed that we may never know what standing this lowly (or passable, or respectful) bailiff has in this court and must consistently hope we fall on a mean day for Jack?! Or John?! I can't even remember what his stupid name even was! What have you done to me this day, Justices?! Why? WHY?! Anyway, my player asked for advantage without cause so I gave him disadvantage. Boil him in oil or whatever.

Niko Grace

To the most benevolent, beautiful, breath taking judges and Jill's Ex I submit the case of the duel custody PC. This year I started DMing a party campaign with my family. I currently have 7 players (My aunt, two uncles, my two brothers, my mom, my best friend, and my little sister who likes to watch) . As you can imagine, a 7 person party is a little hard to manage and even to harder plan meet ups with. We've been going for 6 months now and have only gotten to meet up around 5 or 6 times. For the last two sessions one of my brothers couldn't show up due to work reasons. He plays a tiefling ranger named Julius looking for his estranged mother. Not wanting to miss our first session in 2 months I allowed my sister to play his character with on the condition she took good notes and had my bro's consent. She played Julius perfect and I thought all was well until she approached me the other night saying that she wanted to keep playing with us, as Julius. I told her that it was a one time thing and that if she wanted to play I could organize a campaign for her and her friends. However she's INSISTANT that she wants to play with us. Judges, I don't know what to do. I don't think I could manage an 8 person party but at the same time I can't let my brothers beloved PC be taken by my sister. Is this my fault for allowing it to get this far? I await your judgement and your punishment.

JessMayWin

May it please the court and the criminally underrated bailiff Jamie. In a game a few years ago we were tasked with kidnapping the daughter of a wealthy merchant to get information about the location of a valuable artifact - the only problem was, according to the DM, 'she never leaves her mansion and has at least 2 guards with her at all times and if they are alerted or attacked her father and his entire guard force will be mobilised immediately and you will all be imprisoned and later killed'. We spent over 3 sessions trying to solve this issue in a variety of ways, which the DM continued to shoot down (ok can we infiltrate the merchant's militia and try and get on her guard shift? No. Can we pose as merchants and try to get an audience with her? No. Start a fire at her estate to smoke her out? You get the idea). In desperation I suggested that our bard polymorph into a fly and try to sneak through a crack in the window while she was on the loo and then dimension door out of the manion, as I reasoned that surely she would have to be alone while doing her business. The DM flat out refused, saying the guards would also accompany her to the toilet. The whole thing left us feeling pretty.... crap.... to be honest. I humbly ask the court - would someone being guarded at all times expect their guards to be with them when they are on the can, or was my idea, as gross as it was, a viable one? p.s. after this same in game day continued with no further success for another 2 SESSIONS i took the murph solution and dumped that group and have found new people to play with - they really are the shit!

Helena H

To the supreme crit justices (and the other one), May I present the case of the metagaming breakup. In the campaign I DM, one of characters (Pin) has picked up a sweet but useless DMPC boyfriend (Herman). It's a party of three so I wanted to round out the gang with a healer (he's a divine sorcerer/ sex toy artificer, long story). The characters have been dating for a few weeks in game and things were fine and cute UNTIL: To make running combat easier , I asked Pin's player if she could run Herman during a fight. At this point she realised that Herman is two levels lower than the rest of the party, and poorly optimised. In- character she started comparing him to her ex and said she felt she deserved someone way more powerful: she's basically dumping him because she metagame realised he was batting way out of his league by dating Pin. Is Pin's player right to have them break up because she looked at his character sheet? I made Herman to be a sad little loveable guy, and now his manic pixie dream girl girlfriend has literally dragged him through hell in their adventuring party only to dump him because she found he couldn't cast Bless. Should I let this metagaming stand?

Kyle Metzler

Hey you 3, here's my case. I DM a pretty great group of people. Good roleplay, decent combat, good dick jokes. Yet during combat in one of our most recent sessions there was a bit of turmoil brewing. I let my players know early on that when they hit level 5, the kid gloves are off and in combat I will take it quite seriously. They understood and liked the challenges I placed before them. So to the combat.. a couple of turns in, my genetically modified homebrew monster, a 'Cascan' (mix of a spider, and chuul) are womping on my party. They specialize in paralyzing and running away with their opponent so that's what they were doing! My front line fighters were not doing well so as an act of heroism my sorcerer runs in to the room blind and without caution. What she then discovered were 2 more on the walls behind her character. So I do what I told them I would do long long ago and according to what the Cascan would do, they paralyzed her and ran off nearly killing her (luckily the druid turned into a bee). She got angry at me saying I was targeting her character and that I WANTED to kill her. I don't necessarily want to kill anyone but whatever happens happens. Some time passes and I realize she didn't have fun with that and I didn't want that so I apologized and admitted maybe I was playing too hard and was ignoring the players fun. But in the court there are not feelings, only facts and logic, so judges and Larry(?) How would you have ruled? I thank thee for thine kindness and I accept the answer.

Joshua Lawerson

Sup Jake? ;) Long story short, I dm a group running through Curse of Strahd, a typically brutal campaign. One of my players has built a ratfolk gunslinger, sick, love it. They are insisting however that their ratfolk character only has 1hp as he's "just a little guy". I tried explaining the rules aorund instant death if the characters hp goes to it's max as a negative, i.e. literally 2damage will kill this rat outright. But my player is really pushing that he wants this. Our games are now slowly becoming more about the party trying to keep this rat alive than anything else. I worry how everyone will react when this rat is absolutely fucking wrecked by a spider or something. Am I wrong in trying to insist that my player actually roll HP? Or should I just roll with their choises? Thanks Jake ;)

Hal Martenson

May the morning light cast its radiance on our three glorious supreme crit justices and may Bailiff Jake be forgiven his trespasses. I present the case of the werewolves and the silver tongue Bard. I run a home brew campaign set in the golden age of Hollywood, and the party was rescuing the monk’s parents from a gang of werewolves in Tijuana. The party’s bard, a college of eloquence bard, wanted to talk his way into the hideout, despite my warnings that the werewolves only spoke Spanish, and his character had not taken Spanish as one of his languages. He tried anyway, and rolled an 18 on his persuasion check in English, which is the lowest he can roll due to his Silver Tongue ability. I said it failed, the werewolves attacked. Afterward, the bard became sullen and withdrawn from the battle. We talked it out later and he told me he thought that his Eloquence abilities should work in any language, because his words are magical. We’re both emotionally intelligent people, talked it through, and have been playing happily together ever since, but I ask you: should a silver tongued bard be persuasive in any language?

Lizard Breath

Dear Josh, Howdy! I am the non-casting tank in a 3-person party. I do my best to soak damage so our wizard (and cleric, but mostly the wizard) can stay standing. However, this is made difficult because our wizard refuses to stock any damage spells that aren't Area of Effect. The wizard gets irritated at me because as a melee fighter, I'm "in the way" of what she wants to do, but will cast the AOE spell anyway. While leveling up, I've requested that she take something like Magic Missile that does damage that wouldn't hurt my character so that I could continue fighting up close and taking damage for the party, and she can keep doing ranged damage to enemies. She refused and said it's not as effective. My question for the court is: is it fair to out-of-character ask someone else to take spells their character wouldn't choose? At this point, it's kind of her thing to do AOE spells. But is it meta-gaming for me to do this, since I know it's against her character's pattern of behavior? It's ultimately not very important to me, but I was curious to hear y'alls take.

T

To Jacob (pronounced yak-ob) and the Justices of the Crit. I have a simple case. I DM for a table that includes a squishy, low HP druid. During our last session, the party was in a township on top of a humongous turtle out in the sea and doing some shopping. The druid asked if they could buy studded leather armor so I told them the standard price and they bought it. The Druid was acting real sus and eventually asked if it was /really OK/ if they wore the armor because according to the PHB (pg. 65) it states that "druids will not wear armor or use shields made of metal"). I decided that since the historical accuracy of studded leather is up for debate that a druid could totally wear studded leather armor. I think my player was surprised by the ruling at the table. I ask the court for an interpretation under Supreme Crit Rules 65.11.01, 65.11.02; 65.11.03, can a druid wear studded leather armor? Some additional context, we are a ~1 session per month table that eschews some of the crunchier rules like carrying capacity and rations. The phrase "The cream rises to the top" has come up naturally more than once during play. Tyler, the Studded DM Ahavion

Jonathan Craven

May it please the court, My 3 brothers and I have been playing random TTRPGs since I (the oldest) was in high school. (There is roughly a seven year spread between me and the youngest, for more context). We are all adults living in separate areas of our home state and haven't been able to play a session together in over 10 years. After listening to all of your backlog l found myself feeling the itch enough for me to take the plunge and take on the role of DM, so we might be able to get a semi-regular low pressure campaign going between the 4 of us. I warned them all that, being a dad of 2 with a 3rd on the way at the time, that I would not have the bandwidth to run anything todo indepth. I decided at the time that the simplest way to run the campaign was to use a D&D adventure module. I decided that we should probably have a session 0 to get everyone used to the Roll20 platform that we would be using and to try and avoid the "why are we together?" problem. After a bit of a rough start figuring out the technology we finally finished getting the characters created. By this point I was starting to get a little nervous because one of my brothers (lets call him Jeff) had decided that they would stick with the default settings in the character creator (and acolyte warlock) regardless of the other players backstories just to avoid having to deal with the tech issues I mentioned. As we started to try and find a narrative to stitch their stories together Jeff suggested that maybe his character hired the other too for protection (because he was a fugitive). I shot this idea down because I didn't think having one player wielding some authority over the others was a good idea. After a few other suggestions that Jeff didn't like, he got frustrated and suggested that we just role play it. I reluctantly agreed and after a quick disclaimer that I had not read the module yet, opened the first town map and started reading the descriptions. At first it seemed like things would be fine. The players started in the proverbial tavern and we were starting to play scenes. *Sigh* Then Jeff decides his character would leave the tavern (before actually talking to anyone including the other players) to avoid being noticed (he was nervous about being followed). The other 2 players found excuses to also leave the tavern so their characters could actually meet Jeff's character. By this point Jeff had gone to a random abandoned house poked around looking for "adventure" and we'd already had a minor argument when all he found in the house was some vandalism from the town's local teens. He had then left that house and gone to sleep on the ground outside (again to avoid being noticed by other people). When the other two characters finally stumbled across his camp after a lucky roll. Jeff proceeded to make his character freak out and attack the other 2 (because his character would have assumed he was being ambushed. The rest of the session quickly devolved into an argument between he and I, where I was trying to understand why he couldn't find a way to guide his character to join the party, while he kept accusing me of not running the module right since we had been playing for an hour and nothing had happened yet. After we both lost our cool he hung up and the rest of us tried to unpack what happened. We thought we might try to keep going without him but after several scheduling conflicts the second session never came. This incident has stuck with me since then, this was a year ago now, partly because I can't help but think that I might have been able to prevent things from escalating, but also because I was really hoping that this might be a way to spend more time with my brothers. Justices, was there any way I could have handled the situation better? I await your judgement, -Kravenoff

samuel dymock

May it please the court, the lustrous justices and the wretched yet thicc as overnight oats bailiff. I was organising an online session with strangers out of sheer desperation. And came across 3 players who liked the setting of the campaign. One player in particular wanted to base their character on the Witcher (fine I thought) but then they said the setting had to be changed to include mostly their favoured terrain as a ranger (less fine,but ok I thought) then they said that they needed cantrips and special weapons and equipment because Geralt has them in the show (bit much I thought) on refusing he said that another player playing a Lyn artificer could make them for him as their infusions (hmmm I thought) and finally the players made their characters on DnD beyond and rolled up their stats themselves on the app, he then started boasting how he didn’t roll any of his stats below a 15 (hmmmm I thought again) so I checked and low and behold he had rolled his stats four times and taken the highest from each. I cancelled the campaign after this as it had already been difficult to organise, and received some backlash about it. I put it to you, was I unreasonable for scrapping the campaign as at this point I didn’t want to waste the work I had done planning on these “people”?

Fabrizio Moreno

Dear priests and bible camp counselor, I've come today to ask for forgiveness and redemption presenting you the "Jawa Incident". 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?

Travis Perkins

Dear supreme crits and the honourable bailiff. I present to you the case of the supplied skills. A coworker of mine has been interested in running a game because he is a huge LOTR and Tolkein fanboy. This was his first time DMing, and I was giving him some help. It was a party of 4, 2 Elves, a half-orc and my goblin. During our session zero, the DM announced that we would not be rolling for our stats or using the standard array. instead, the DM would assign us our stats based on what he thought of our characters. Upon receiving our updated character sheets, I was annoyed to see that as a goblin ranger, I had a 13 in DEX and no other skills above a 9. The DM explained that "goblins aren't very good at anything." The half-orc got a similar deal. Low INT, WIS and CHA, but at least he got a 19 in STR. Now for the two elves. I was outraged to learn that they had been assigned 20s in INT, WIS and CHA, and their other skills were all above 13. After the session zero ended, I messaged the DM and told him that, unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to attend the next session. This has somewhat strained our working relationship as I haven't been back to play again, and from what I heard the party quickly broke up. I ask, was I wrong to back out of a situation I wasn't comfortable with, or should I have explained to him the problems I had with it and tried to find a midway solution?

Tophat Pete

With all due respect, may it please the court; I am DMing for the first time, doing a solo campaign for a far more experienced player, set during the Napolenic Wars. In one session the PC (a vampire) was stranded on the Moon. While she and an NPC were sneaking through a tunnel they were ambushed by a Moon Gecko which spat teeth at the NPC. When the attack missed, the player joked that the teeth hit her character instead. I decided this was a good idea and had her roll a luck check, which she failed. Was the player right that she should be immune to single target attacks which are aimed at someone else? Or is it fair to say that inaccurately aimed projectiles have to end up somewhere, and sometimes unlucky bystanders take the hit? If I am found guilty, I reserve the right to appeal against cruel and unusual punishments.

Varenum_The_Cleric

May it please the court, the illustrious crit judges, and that bailiff guy who can't finish a whole chicken. I submit to you today the case of the Shady Gnomish Dogpile. We are playing a Curse of Strahd campaign, with my character being a lvl 8 gnomish GOO warlock/trickery cleric named Peek. Through a serious of poor choices Peek became embroiled in a one vs seven throwdown with some guards, all little weaklings with 1HP. I didn't want to kill them, but our DM rules that we can't choose non-lethal damage when spellcasting. So, I did the old 'cast Darkness while using devils sight trick', thinking I could bonk them all on the head with advantage before they could get in too many hits in the dark. After 1 round, the guards then opted to grapple attack, which the DM said did not require an attack roll, just a strength check. My tricky little gnome (tee hee) of course got swarmed and overpowered by a tidal wave of goons, all rolling straight. I managed to escape with some illusionary shenanigans, and the party managed to negotiate with the guards and their captain, but I still feel like I was robbed of my John Wick-esque fight scene. Am I right to feel this way and that the DM should have imposed some disadvantage because of the darkness, or did this gnome get exactly what gnomes deserve? I await the honour of your judgement and will take my punishment with all the grace of a city pigeon.

CanaDM (Canadiam)

To the possibly flatulent bailiff and unfortunate judges who have to share the space, I was running a homebrew campaign with friends and each was allowed to make 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 worked their way through the city and fought through several shape shifting demons imitating party members and eventually found the real Ruby. 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.

Cody Carson

If it may please the glorious crit and the unbaliffable Jake, I would like to submit the case of plot favoritism. I have been running a home brew campaign for over a year with a massive party of 7 PCs of various D&D experience levels. Over this time I have found some players really buy into the story and help me push it forward with great role play and investing into the narrative while others are more quiet and only want to participate in the goofs which I don’t mind. However it is becoming apparent that I’m structuring the narrative of the campaign more to the active role players storylines instead of the goofy gangsters and feel I might be doing them a disservice by not spending more time trying to hook them into role play but after a year, I have found a groove with the current status quo. I humble myself before the crit and accept all possible punishment.

Raustie Scho

A Beef with Franks Dear Honorable and Hungry judges Murphy, Axford and Tanner and bailiff Frank. My table is currently playing in an 80’s New York action film themed D&D game that has come to a gastric impasse. In the hopes of emulating the video game trope of instantly eating food for health, I, the DM, proposed that instead of healing potions, adventurers in our world would slam back a hot dog during combat. In addition of glizzie realism, I offered that players could make a CON saving throw to see if their character can get an action and a hot dog in the same turn, or if they choke on their own healing. My players immediately began arguing that their characters should not need to make CON saves, as 6 seconds would be more than enough time for their characters to eat a hotdog and perform their action. To prove this, we decided to have the players try to snarf a dog in under 6 seconds. After diligent testing we found that 6 seconds is, in fact, not enough time for my players to consume a pork missile. However, they continued to argue, saying that their characters would be great glizzie guzzlers, given the amount of practice they would have. And, while I don’t expect my players to achieve Joey Chestnut level of hot dog horking in the real world, I still want it to be a challenge to be rewarded with healing and an action. So I ask you, do you think 6 seconds is enough time to hork a hotdog and perform your combat action? We await your judgment.

Crits

"hey you 3" really got me lol

Andy W.

May it please the court, delight the honorable Judges and bemuse the bailiff. I seek your advice regarding the case of the scoffed crit. (I did change minor details for the sake of anonymity) I run an afterschool dnd club at a middle school and out of the many stories I have this one stood out. To set the scene, I was lounging at my desk as four groups were playing. Two table groups over the party was losing a rough encounter: four level one characters against a ghost. Players were going to start to die in the next round, but the rogue crit on an attack, causing the entire group to jump up and cheer. When I looked over at the commotion I noticed one player not cheering. As I watched the player snatched the dice and placed it in their mouth. The cheers immediately stopped, I quickly walked over and made the player spit out and clean the die. They claimed they were trying to “absorb the power of the crit”. The session ended a couple minutes later and I had to have a super uncomfortable conversation with the players parents. I am worried for the group. It was their first game changing crit and it is now tied to this memory. I am also struggling to figure out how to reintroduce this player to the group, or if I even should. Please, I humbly seek your advice.

Crits

Distinguished judges and Tucker's roommate, I humbly present to you the case of the back talking paladin. I'll preface this by saying this is more of a joke argument than an actual dispute: I was DMing a campaign with a lich as the BBEG. One of the PCs was his phylactery/son and the lich (nicknamed "daddy lich") wanted to convince this character to see things his way. So, he gave a heartfelt villain monologue about his motivations. Throughout his deeply personal backstory reveal/father-son moment, the party's paladin, who was known to put his foot in his mouth, interrupted with comments about how his motivation was stupid. After failing to convince his son to join him, daddy lich said he would teleport the party back to their camp because he wanted to give his son one more chance to back down, to which the paladin replied that they would "kick his ass" next time they crossed paths. Annoyed, daddy lich said if the paladin said one more word he would kill him. Right as he began to teleport them away, the paladin said "word" and daddy lich casted Power Word Kill on him. He was later revived by a cleric NPC with Raise Dead, which gives penalty to all attack rolls, saving throws, and ability checks. Although nobody was actually mad about this situation, we still lightheartedly argue about whether daddy lich's reaction was warranted or if I should've let the joke slip. Judges, I await your infallible ruling.

Woody

May it please the court, the Ethereal Justices, and the bailiff, long may he serve. I bring you the case of Monk Vs Bard. I DM a group of 4 but this happened between 2 of my players, open hand monk and swords bard in the last session A a couple of sessions back the monk lost an arm in an unfortunate "nat-1-buzz-saw-trap-incident" and so they set off to go find an Automail expert to try build him an arm. They find an armourer artificer NPC I flavoured as an Automail engineer,and they built him an arm. Now how I as the DM did this is i modified the Arcane armour of Propulsion infusion from TCoE, it gives no AC bonus and has no thrown property to the gauntlet, but has the 1d8 melee attack damage. The monk loved it. The problem comes in, in the last session, our monk was doing his "run and hit things alot" routine and wanted to use flurry of blows with one attack using his Automail arm, therefor 1d8 damage, instead of his current 1d6, which then activates his way of the open hand abilities. I though this was a cool and logical idea so I allowed it, but my bard kept arguing that the gauntlet was a weapon and therefore could not be used for unarmed strikes, this led the session grinding to a halt, and me, the monk, and the bard debating it out. I eventually ruled it was fine and that was the end of it. Did I make a mistake here or is it much ado about nothing and the bard is getting sour over nothing? I humbly await your judgement and am ready to meter out any punishment you deem fit.

miguel cantu

Dearest Supreme crit Justices and the guy who isn’t censored next to Amir in China. I prostrate myself before the court with a confession. This happened in our Strahd campaign where we rolled very poorly on an encounter check. We had eight bandits and 23 dire wolves in said encounter. The Tiefling bard cast speak with animals and was after me in initiative order. I held my turn thinking he was going to do a performance check to get all of the wolves to go in a conga line so our wizard could cast lightning bolt and end the encounter quickly. This did not happen. Instead the bard jumped into the middle of the wolves and cast shatter centered on himself to hit the wolves. My character is a domain of light cleric who on my turn readied Fireball just in case the original plan didn’t work, or something else happened. The bard now being in the dead center of the wolves was now in the way and in quite a bit of danger. The DM told me to release my prepared spell, and I told everyone the bard was in the way. The bard shouted, “SEND IT!” Noting that Tieflings have fire resistance. I sent it. The bard went down. Was I wrong to almost kill my buddy? I await the court’s judgement.

Dippity_Dip

To the Justices - beloved as the dawning sun amid the churning sea - and Jerk, I offer my case of the anti-80s rescue. I had been invited to a Curse a Strahd game which had already been started a couple months back. I agreed, and played my first session as a tiefling bard whose instrument was a synthesizer. One of the encounters we had was rescuing a fellow player from a group of cultists; I pulled out my synth and started playing as a distraction but the DM thought it was hilarious and with a good performance check, we were able to defeat the cultists with a group 80s rock number. The issue comes in with the Bloodhunter at the table who, despite all our attempts to involve him, refused to be included. He instead walked away from the group and went into the woods, talking down to our characters when he came back. Even after the cultists were defeated, he remained mad at the rest of us for being silly and was really passive aggressive out of game when we talked about it. I thought we had a really good time at the table and was happy with the session, but I couldn’t help feeling bad about my friend who just wanted to play a serious campaign. Should we have toned down the sillyness, or should that player have loosened up a bit? I leave it to the mercy of the court.

A Mo

To the illustrious bailiff and honorable robed hooligans, I present...The Case of the Dainty Dice. A fellow PC has insisted on using sets of miniature dice at the table. Each die is roughly 40% the normal size and have ruffled my feathers in the following manner: 1. The dice lack a normal heft, and are not nearly as satisfying to chuck. The clack of baby dice rings hollow in my ears. 2. These freaking tiny dice have equally tiny numbers. This requires squinting at a d20 every time it is rolled to see the outcome. Imagine the postponed joy of a nat 20 as you try to determine what the hell you just rolled! Don't even get me started on the d4s.... 3. Finally, these sinful lil dice are an affront to our Lord and savior Dice Christ™. The holy polygonal light has been hidden under a bushel, the word of the lord constrained to a mere millimeter. Who are we to limit the message of this highest power? Let it be known this PC has not one but TWO sets of regular-sized dice, one of which I gifted them. They say that these mini dice "save space", but I call bullhonky. I play with 3-4 sets of regular dice and have NEVER felt claustrophobic at the table. I seek damages for the strain put on my eyeballs, and a prayer for this sinner's soul. May your wisdom bring peace to this troubled table.

Shakespearmint

To the radiant vessels of Dice Christ's light, I submit to you a confessional on behalf of my party: My group of life-long friends have been playing DnD every Sat for a few years now. Recently we played a loosely-structured monster of the week type episodic adventure wherein we were encouraged to swap out characters and play around with builds more than focusing on storytelling. I created Gidget, a gnome artificer with big brains, little social intelligence. Against all odds, she had won over much of the party, especially the Warforged monk, Chronos. Gidget is overly confident and a mechanical genius, which is often thrown back in her face with my terrible rolls. Despite her preparations, she managed to be knocked out or restrained in the first round of every combat she took part in. The last time I played her, she was paralyzed by a beholder beam and sent back to the ship via teleporter where, unbeknownst to them, her paralysis was completed and she turned into a stone statue. Unable to address this myself, I brought different characters to subsequent sessions waiting for someone to ask about Gidget. Our DM even made references for other players, that they saw the captain of the ship pulling Gidget in a cart down the hall, etc. Nothing. Finally I made one of her quadruplet sisters, Fidget, come looking for her after they stopped receiving reports back home. It was a simultaneously hilarious and gut wrenching scene as she confronted the other characters about her sister's stoney condition. I found the whole situation very funny and understandable but to this day the other players, particularly Chronos, feel very guilty about it. I humbly beseech a pardon on their behalf to assuage their guilt and maybe find a cure someday in the future for the lil stone gnome. P.S. her humunculus is an animated backpack named B-BOE(Big Bag of Everything). Not important, just fun.

Maggie!

To the honorable justices and their... assistant. May it please the court: I played in a home game with my Boyfriend as the dm and two other couples as PC's. We had played for a little over two years and were coming to a conclusion of a particular arc. The arc had included my character, her in-game sister, and the Big Bad of the arc.. I'll spare you all of the details but suffice to say that my character's sister had been corrupted and locked in a weird abusive relationship with the Big Bad and had betrayed her sister and the party. We were finally in the endgame, the battle for the world (the feywild and material plane were merging) but also for the Sister's soul. It was emotional, tensions were high, but it was gearing up to be an emotionally satisfying end. Then it went to shit. Two other players, one of the couples, had fast-tracked the waves of enemies the DM had put in place to get to the powerful object that had caused the planes to merge (and when used correctly could essentially change reality/grant a wish). In the rest of the battle I was attempting to make it to the BBEG and my pc's sister was trying to stop me. The other couple wished the BBEG dead, the planes returned to normal, and then the session had to end because we had gone over time. I felt I had been robbed of an important character moment, as did the player that played my sister. The DM felt bad for having such a powerful item in game and allowing the couple to take the session off the rails and the couple sensed nothing was wrong. We ended up abandoning this campaign for a few other reasons but all related to actions like that. We were wrong for being angry and essentially ending the campaign, or was the couple valid for making the wish to end the combat or is my boyfriend at fault for allowing them to make that choice? I await your judgement and accept any punishment you may deem necessary.

Sydney with an F

To all y'all, yer mamas n 'em, in the bright-glowin' light of our lawd n kettle-sweet savorer, the flavorsome Dice Christ: I dun fucked up. I used to DM a series of international 5e homebrew 1- or 2-shot games. I would run each story twice, so everyone had an opportunity to play regardless of their timezone. Every session lasted about 5 hours and was centered in the same world around a "Help Wanted" job board, so people could use one character without being obligated to show up to every session, some of which even included music with puzzles in the lyrics I wrote and recorded. I say all of that to make me sound really good before I divulge in my sin. I used a project management tool called Trello, where I built out a DM screen with reference material and a system to track combat. It allowed me to put everyone's HP, abilities, and conditions on stacked cards in labeled lists, like Excel but with drag and drop arrangements. I could drop players' cards into the stack of my NPCs based on their initiative, and move cards to the bottom of the stack after each of their turns. Instead of rolling for NPCs initiative, I would assign them an initiative based on nothing more than where I thought they should go. The BBEG of each fight would start at initiative 20, and their minions would be evenly distributed throughout the order. My players never caught on, but it was rare that more than one PC would have turns sequentially after each other, and the BBEG was always one of the first to go. In an attempt to lessen the burden of my sin, I will leave you with this: Our Dice Christ, who ne'er critically fails, balanced be thy scales. Thy dice box come, thy rolls be done with honesty and without deception. Give us this day our daily crits, as we forgive those who crit against us. And lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from cheating. For thine is the honestly rolled nat 20, nat 1, and even the middling 10, forever and ever. Ramen.

Trevor McDaniel

To the honorable justices and their esteemed bailiff. May it please the court… i was running a homebrew and I had a player, which is no longer allowed at my table for a slew of reasons including making others at the table incredibly uncomfortable and railroading combat at every corner. With that ground work laid it was the 3rd to last session of a 2 year game. From the start of the game I told them I told them all there actions had consequences. It was a preparation episode for the bbeg/war that I had been building up to for months. The player decided to kill a blacksmith that was the crowns personal armorer, and who’s children where in the shop. He was so mad that he was arrested and put on trial for this cold blooded murder because the children where able to get the town guard and have him arrested. He was sentenced to death by dice role but he pleaded with his warlock patron for help which he was spared. I then had the other members of the part reach out saying they where not playing with him anymore as he was very rude and disrespectful. Did I make the right choice? I am now humbling awaiting your judgment and whatever punishment you see fit

Dr. Tulkas

Long time listener first time commenter. Simple case: In my first campaign I played an Eldritch knight. We had to save a town being attacked by gnolls and then save people taken as prisoners. Turns out the Gnolls were in a cult to a shadow demon. During the final battle I cast burning hands to damage witherling gnolls and then attempted to action surge to cast chromatic orb at the shadow demon. The DM and the other plays scoffed and told me that I could not cast two action spells in a single turn as it would break the single spell a turn rule (unless you cast a bonus action and then a cantrip)At the time I was new to the game so I ended up accepting it. Just a little egg on the face. Later after reviewing the rules there does not seem to be an issue with casting two action spells if you had action surge. The rule only applies to a spell cast as a bonus action I brought it up to the DM and they still do not let me cast two spells with an action surge, even when the spells are low levels due to being an Eldritch knight. I get that the DM generally has the final say, but what are your judgments on saying it’s RAW but they are wrong about the ruling?

Dr. Bearkele

I cannot understand these characters that whine when their party gets stronger. Do you not like winning fights? Uuuugh

Alexander Robinson-Gabel

To the honorable Justices and their makeup artist bailiff James Charles I humbly submit my case. About a year and a half ago I was in a campaign and I was introducing a brand new character. Now I died many times in this campaign before because it was pretty hard-core and I’m a bit stupid but I do try to honestly keep them alive. My little goblin named Loogie wound up rolling terrible wisdom saving throws against a hag and was turned into a one intelligence goblin. The saving throws were due to touching various items in the hags shop (I’m just a lil guy. Very curious). However, instead of helping my character, or even leaving them alone, a different player, character decided to sell my one intelligence goblin player, character to the hag in order to barter for better armor, succeeded on their roll and sold me off. I was promptly forced to flesh out a new character. Feeling a little salty I had a new character and a revenge scheme. So when we were exploring a cave under a house I found some undead residue that was so stinky it had mechanical effects in game. My new character being a rogue, I was able to slight of hand the goop into his pockets. The GM ruled this essentially gave him the poison condition until he rolled a perception check high enough to find it. Wisdom was his dump stat. The stank lasted through 2 different 4hr sessions and then he found it. He took lots of damage and failed just absolutely so many rolls because of it. He was furious. Was I justified in my retaliation as a player? I place myself at the mercy of the court and will allow bailiff james Charles to do my makeup if he so pleases.