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

Calling for Cases (Patreon)

Published:
2023-01-02 14:40:24
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Hey there friends. Bailiff Jake here. The Supreme Crit is convening this afternoon, so submit your (BRIEF, AKA 1-2 paragraphs!) cases on this thread and we will bring you true justice.

Love,

Jake

Comments

David Moelker

I bring a Case to both the court and the Church. (I would like to say before the case, that everything I say here is the truth and that is sworn on the Players handbook.) If it pleases the judges, fathers and mother of the church, and Jeremy, this is the case of a Congregation vs Me. At Christmas time I went to my parents house and since they were going to church on Sunday I tagged along. In the adult class prior to service the Leader, rather than simply telling us to open to John or something, handed out sheets. He then said, "today we will be doing Christian roleplay". The character sheets he handed out were a crime against Dice church itself. Rather than the six basic stats it used the fruit of the Spirit for each person's stats and power. Here's the second piece of heresy, there were NO DICE. If your stat was too low you'd just fail every challenge. The story than began and we were the shepherds in the Christmas story. Believe it or not most people were not too into roleplaying and it was slow. Here comes the next offense, instead of starting in a tavern we passed one and had to have the Self-control to not go intp it. My instant response was "I don't need to check my stat, I Go In.". Instead of the chuckles I expected, I received awkward stares and was asked to leave until they were done. So, was I kicked out of the Adult class since I fought against heresy? Or was I to leave them in peace?

Dave 3D Art

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.

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.

The Stu

SPILLTACULAR PT.2 PLEEEEEEASE

Court Davies

May it please the saucy court and even saucier bailiff, I recently DM'd an encounter with the BBEG in which our wizard casted Otilukes Resilient Sphere, fully encasing the villain. This meant that no solid object or spell effect could pass through the barrier. Fearing that the fight would be brought to a standstill, I had the villain cast misty step to teleport themself out of the sphere. The wizard player argued that the villain should not have been able to do this since that was a spell effect. However I ruled that because the nature of teleportation is the act of disappearing from one place and reappearing elsewhere, no spell effect actually crossed the barrier. Was I incorrect with my ruling? Or should our wizard teleport themselves to a better attitude? I humbly await your judgement.

Mr. Baggins

To the pinnacle of supreme justices and matchmakers, as well as the often overlooked because he is so low people dont see him bailiff, I ask your judgement on players accidentally causing the apocalypse. I DM a level 20 and beyond campaign in the 9 Hells. The players recently acquired a cursed item that lets a demon lord possess the user and open a portal to the Abyss. The players expressed interest in selling the cursed item to a devil. They believed that the devils would trick the demon lord into opening a portal at a convenient location in the 9 Hells. However, the players (in character and out of character) know that devils have previously caused demons to invade the Material Plane so demons have to split their forces between the Material Plane and the 9 Hells. I let my players hold onto the item for a few weeks before they found a devil willing to buy it for an exorbitant price. The devil will deliver it to their boss, who is now going to implement a grand scheme to send demon lords to the Material Plane and split the demon army on two fronts. When the players return to the Material Plane, they will find that they missed out on a war that devastated the planet. The BBEG is now motivated by wanting revenge and to destroy the demon cultists who caused this apocalypse, aka the players, even though it was accidental. My plan for the campaign always involved some form of apocalypse during their time in the 9 hells to make the world more unique than just the regular sword coast, but is letting the players be responsible but unaware of it too harsh of a plot line despite them having background information and the right idea about the devils' uses of this item. I await your decision on whether this would make me the real BBEG of the story. PS: I am indebted to the Band of Boobs and the great DM of Bahumia, as listening to Campaign 1 inspired me to DM, which led to me starting a campaign with my middle school sweetheart, who, as of last year, became my fiancee. Thank you all for your inspiration. You definitely provided the Help Action on the Performance check.

Nicolas Mallard

To the honorable justices and bailiff Josh, I am once again trying to hear for the case of the rage less barbarian. My party was level 4 and my Dm had balance an encounter for our party of 7. Our barbarian rolled low and went out of his first rage and refused to go into another one for the next 9 rounds of combat. He is a Goliath barbarian(named David) and could shrug off damage using stones endurance but also refuses to use that as well. We haven’t played now in over a month and a half since. My question is do I have a right to be upset with him or am I blowing this out of the water?

Skootsby

To the illustrious judges of the supreme crit and the bailiff who both sucks and rules until the judges collapse the quantum Jakeform and let us know. I bring the case of the unteachable kenku. I had been in a campaign for a year and my rogue had unfortunately died, but luckily we had the resources to reincarnate him. He was brought back as a kenku, and my DM told me I could only communicate via mimicking sound because of the kenku's Vocal Mimicry trait. This was a fun challenge for a bit, but it quickly became very tedious trying to remember what people had said recently to speak, and I was frequently asked how I was communicating things. The next time we were in town, I asked my DM if I could pay a town person to recite a bunch of individual syllables so I could, vocaloid Hatsune Miku style, speak robotically but not have to work so hard just to talk. He told me no. Ultimately I ended up leaving the campaign because communication was so difficult. Should I have been allowed to learn how to speak or was I just cuckoo for trying to weasel my way around this limitation of the race?

Fuzzboxx

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

Felix Principe-gillespie

To the honourable justices and the solid 6/10 bailiff Jake I come to you with a murder most foul, the case of the dying genie! In one of our groups first outings we went up against a genie guarding a precious orb, we fought long and hard, it was a brutal fight, we lost many an item, potion and spell and when he was defeated he offered the party a wish, in exchange for his life. In a fit of rage my character chose to bash the genies head in with said precious orb instead of take his offer. The group seemed to enjoy this outburst of anger, but the DM was less impressed. For each session onwards the DM would remind us of how helpful that wish would have been and how much of the story they’d had to change to accommodate my PC’s outburst. Judges, I ask, was our anger misplaced, should we have shown mercy as the DM clearly wanted, I await your judgement…

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?

Chase

To the honorable Justices, and maybe Jake if he is behaving. I was playing a blood hunter/paladin multiclass who got screwed over in a deal to the god of trash and bile. The main curse that he had was that he couldn't say the name of the God he "follows". I never let it slip until me and the party's wizard were talking about it out of game. The next session, the wizard then tells the entire party about it. When me and the DM BOTH said that he wouldn't know that at all, he said that because he has an 19 intelligence, he pretty much figured it out. I ask you fair judges, does Characters intelligence mean they can metagame to this extent? I await your judgment.

DnD Emporium

Dearest bailiff and most honorable justices, I submit for judgment to both the court and Dice Christ: the case of too many crits. I DM online for a number of strangers, and have been doing so for more than a year. One of my players thinks another player is fudging rolls to succeed on the majority of consequential checks and attacks. Since I’ve started focusing on his rolls, I agree that it is statistically unlikely that he hits on nearly every attack and crits multiple times per session. In order to confront this issue, I’ve been tracking his rolls and taking a look at the statistics. Would I be wrong to give this player just one warning and let him know that I’ve been watching his rolls? Or would DC smile upon me for enforcing equitable access to success? Please grant me guidance.

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.

Court Davies

To the clergy of Crit, I have a most solemn confession to Dice Christ. I was blessed with a string of excellent rolls in a recent session. I had rolled two Nat 20s in the span of only several minutes. Imagine my glee when I rolled a third! But since we played virtually, yet still rolled physical dice, we usually went with the honor system when announcing our rolls. Fearing that my DM would become suspicious that I was cheating, I lied and treated my third Nat 20 as a 19. I humbly seek absolution for taking the gifts of Dice Christ for granted.

Daniel Kreider

Honorable judges and bailiff George, I present to you the case of the water lungs. I am the teacher sponsor for the D&D club for students at my school. In a recent session, the party was up against a giant camel spider. The druid attempted to use create or destroy water to fill the spider’s lungs and force him to “drown from the inside out.” Their argument was water can be created in an open container and lungs are empty bags. The DM disagreed and brought it to me for arbitration. I sided with the DM because I don’t think that’s the purpose of the spell and it would be super overpowered. Did I stifle the creativity of our country’s young minds? I accept all punishments on behalf of my students.

Maia Savich

To sovereign ruler Hurwitz and his loyal judges, I recently dmed a one shot where the pcs started with no memories and soon found out that they each had to kill someone with a specific tattoo on their neck in order to get their memories back. I also had been hinting at other routes rather than killing their targets. The target for one PC named Cinder was the teenaged leader of a Frostwind bad lad-esque crew named Helja. After a dance battle and even some bonding, Cinder killed her in cold blood and instantly vaporized the other teens with a spell. So here's my question: did i mess up by making the target a teen, or is the fault with Cinder? There was this awful awkward silence afterwards, and it just felt so weird that this good friend of ours would just tpk this group of children. Please lay judgement upon me, o fair court.

Ally Grant

Dear honourable Judges, and Tucker's bed warmer, I bring you the case of "am I a bad DM, or are my friends idiots?" I've been running a 1920s Great Depression/New York themed campaign with some friends of mine. I thought it'd be fun to have the party have to battle their way to the top of a (still being built) Empire State Building. In one section I had them climb scaffolding on the outside of it, multiple storeys high. I gave them lots of warning that they would have to be careful climbing up the building, or they could fall to their death. (I made a mechanic, where they had multiple rolls depending on how carefully they climbed, and only had to pass one). Cut to one friend adamantly saying they wanted to be swung on a rope to a higher level. I was feeling generous, even though this was clearly stupid. I gave them 3 attempts to pass the DC (which was low ~15). He failed all three. Throughout he was saying that he was fine if I killed his character. However when it came to it, there was definitely an atmosphere going forward. We resolved it, by saying that he was in a jazz trio with his brothers. They all wore the same coat, like when the Muppets do the Muppet man. Lo and behold his brother Fart Deceaux was in a jazz conference in the empire state building.

Ben Kullerd

May it please the Court and tickle the Bailiff’s fancy; I present to you the Case of the Delayed Spellbook Additions. I’m playing an Order of Scribes Wizard in a campaign with a new DM who uses XP rather than milestones for leveling up. We’re all having a blast, but my one complaint is that every time my character levels up, there are 1-2 sessions where our DM delays my adding new spells to the ol’ spellbook, citing the need for some sort of narrative reason for the additions. I’m a DM myself and would almost never argue with another DM, but it’s frustrating to have the excitement of a level-up, only to not get to access the best part of being a Wizard: new spells! Is my DM wrong to delay the additions, or am I being a whiny baby mage who just needs to suck it up?

Deenaa

If it would please the court and my close personal friend, the Baliff: My player is a centaur ranger. As a ranger, she gets the ability Roving, which grants her a matching climbing speed to her impressive walking speed. As a centaur however, she has the Equine Build ability, which means it costs her 4 feet of movement per 1 foot to climb due to her horse body. My player has focused her build on speed, with the Mobile feat and an enabling party member casting Haste. Her current maximum speed is 330ft per round. She is arguing that due to Roving, her climbing speed matches this output, and thus she can also scale a cliff at 330ft per round. I in turn argue that Equine Build still applies, reducing her max output to a much more humble 84ft per round. My players have passionately argued against my decision, and have been sending me videos of mountain goats to prove that having hooves does not disqualify you from climbing fast. Thus, I seek arbitration from the court to settle this once and for all: what is the maximum climbing speed of a centaur?

Dan Healey

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

Carlos Gonzales

To the most esteemed judges and the however we’re feeling bailiff this week, I have a dice christ confession. It was my first campaign and I made an echo knight fighter(thank you Jake) who wielded the Sunblade since I joined in the middle of a years long campaign. My confession comes with this, at first I used Sunblade and would ask if things were undead to get the extra damage, a few sessions in and the DM said just to add the additional d8, and I thought nothing of it. I feel as if I had cheated my way to the end of the campaign doing more damage than I should have. Oh great crit, I will take whatever punishment you seem fit.

ChefJustinLane

An Exaltation of Dice Christ, Brothers and sisters in Dice Christ, a miracle hath occurred. I was at both Georgia live shows recently (I was the guy in Savannah playing the lute for our epic One Big Bed singalong). At the Atlanta show, I caught Murph’s D20–the D20 he couldn’t hit the broadside of the grandma tree with--and rightfully sentenced it to immediate jail-time for letting Murph get absolutely womped. Fast forward to our Critmas one shot: I can’t roll above a 10 to save my life, so in a fit of desperation I retrieve the Murph die from its prison. The first roll on the die? A natural 20. I crit on the BBEG and in an ode to Calliope I threw in a defensive flourish and my highest level smite for 92 points of damage. Two turns later, the BBEG was gone and we rescued the mall from a raging rpg wielding Santa Claus. I see this as a proud reminder to my other underperforming dice that with due penance, they too can stop rolling like hot garbage. Dice Christ Bless Us, Every One. Yours in Dice Christ, Justin M (TheBrunch Guild)

Michael Lewis

To the honourable, powerful, fair-minded and straight up svelte justices and the honestly unremarkable bailif Jorts. I bring before you the case of the undead sandwiches nat-1. I DM for an Eberron campaign where the party was attempting to sneak into a fort of undead soldiers, loyal to an enemy nation. They decided to pose as sandwich salespeople to do so. One of my players wanted to know if the undead soldiers had autonomy and were, for all intents and purposes, people or if they were just mindless husks. They rolled a nat 1 on their check and I told them that they think they are not just mindless husks (the wrong answer). This player then got frustrated with me and told me not to tell them what they think. They argued that on a failure I should just say that they don't know, not purposely give them the wrong information. I argued that they got a nat-1 and having the wrong info could lead to some funny situations and potentially lead to a dangerous encounter (giving the roll some actual stakes). What do you think, was I in the right? Or should a DM never tell a PC what they think?

The Narcoleptic Penguin

To the most honorable supreme Crit judges, and the lowest of bailiffs I present you with the case of the City Watch and the homebrew world. We have a home game where we rotate dm's every session and each of the players, when not dming are members of the City Watch and get called to whatever is ailing the city. We have been playing for a while and we are all now level 8. One of the players is constantly trying to take us out of the city and wants to take the city watch into one of his homebrew worlds that we tried to play but it didn't really work. The reason we believe this works is because it is in the city. Am I wrong for wanting to keep this in our mutually created city, or am I suppressing our experience by not expanding our world? (Or I guess it would be his world)

Madz

To the honourable judges Murphy Tanner and Axford The real person in charge Baliff Hurwitz. I bring the murder hobo turned DM. We are about to start a new campaign! And me the forever DM was excited when another player said he had written a campaign. Session one happens my partner who also plays my best friend all had our new characters back stories written and ready to go! We were starting at level 6 and told to expect a high intensity campaign with very little chances to level up. We started the campaign and immediately went into combat. All for the DM to spend, killing our characters with 3 gods with stats that sounded very much the same as the thiala god fight the boobs did. He ended up killing all 3 characters. We where all worried about this when he said he would run a campaign... Given he plays murder hobo characters, I'm constantly trying to control when I DM am I wrong for getting angry at him for causing a TPK or should I expected this?

Jacob S Warner

Dear Supreme crit justice's and the bayliff we all need but don't deserve, I submit to you the case of the cameo gone wrong. For new players I run the princes of Apocalypse module campaign. For the current group I thought it would be fun to bring back some of the previous groups PCs and let them play as the different faction leaders as the time was now 75 years later since when they played. One cameo was Para a human fighter who had an obsession with a home brew mirror shield he had obtained during his campaign. Para approached me before his cameo and said he wanted to have Para die during his cameo as he was now 90 and a battlefield death was better than old age. So during a fight as flavor I used power word kill but as a beam being sent at a different Pc letting Para jump in front and take the shot after a successful dice roll. In describing the scene I said "and as you have done so many times you aim to block the the spell with your shield and at first all seems well but than you hear a Crack and shatter as your shield gives out and the beam hits you in the chest." Para sat in silencr for a moment and than yelled at me MY SHIELD. I said kill me not destroy my shield and was upset for the rest of the session and for a time afterwards. So I ask did I go to far in flavoring a hero's death or I was in the right since Paras death had already been pre determined. I am at your mercy and humbly accept any punishment given.

Ahmad Al-mousawi

At my last DM session I had an encounter with a homebrew BBEG named the Count. He had a hole city inslaved with mine trick and the party was about to get badly beaten by him and become his slaves. But the fighter in the party didn't like that he had slaves and told him that it was morally incorrect. I had him roll a persuasive check just to see how bad the count would react. He rolled a 13 and I rolled a check for the count to see if it would work I gave him plus 10 to the check so there wouldn't be many rolls for him to get changed. I rolled Infront of everyone and it was a nat one. So know I had to change everything I had prepared because my player told the BBEG I was bad and should change his mind. Then the druid og the grouped asked the Count if he wanted to be there patreon. The chock from having to improvise a hole 6 hour session made me just say okay because I couldn't think of something else. But know they have an evil guy like their patreon even though they all are good in nature. So is it wrong for me to give them a patreon of evil if he they are not evil in nature? Ps it was hard to make a total improv 6 hour session but it was still the best session to date.

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 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. The PC’s were unaware of the each others’ backstories. 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, then interrogated, with the party thinking that Ruby may have actually 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, how can I as a DM avoid this in the future? Was this my fault for not intervening sooner, or a PC for how their RP?

Jack M

To the honorable Bailiff and his lowly justices Alfred, Turner, And Nurph I bring to you a case perhaps close to home Having heard of the silent grenade escapade of Duck Team Fame, myself and fellow player who also listens wanted to try it out, our dm does not listen. When silence was casted and we threw a makeshift bomb at a group of guards camping out in a valley, our DM claimed that the explosion would be silence but it would cause tremors in the ground. Alerting those within a reasonable range(perception of 10 for creatures within 60 feet, higher DC increasing out to 240 feet) I see it as a fair ruling and we are friends so our table doesn’t deliberate for more than like 2 minutes(except high tier shenanigans) I ask, are tremors or the ground shaking cancelled out by the silence spell? We silently await your ruling?

Eric Applegate

To the honorable supreme crit justices, and the very funny Jake from Hardly Working videos. I submit to you the case of Fun vs. sobriety inducing insanity. We started our 4th session in the campaign going over mechanics for a fellow players insanity which is held at bay if he keeps drinking and not if he starts. That’s Problem #1. Also, The player has something similar to wild magic surge table attached to outcomes when he has to roll. So far we have seen him attack me during combat and and another while we were sleeping. This of course started with him cackling in the dead of night during a long rest so loud it alerted a band of orcs. I tried to handle this in game bringing up that he can’t be a part of this group if we have to worry about him doing something dangerous . 2nd, out of game I brought up why do none of the characters know of this if our group’s backstory was that we have been traveling for 3 years. There response to this by all members and DM was “it’s fine” I usually don’t get too heated about stuff like this but I ended up not taking two players home afterwards as I said I would because I was so pissed. Please settle this matter so I can emotionally recover

Ananth Bhat

Honored Supreme Crit Justices and Jake.....I guess......I bring you a case of the Tiefling Love Vs Party Safety. We were in a campaign where I was a half-orc samurai and one of the other pcs was a tiefling warlock, lets call her Julia! Our characters in game never really got along but i had always assumed this was only in character. Eventually we fought an npc villain who was a fellow tiefling. Julia got really smitten with this villain to a creepy degree by asking about his body and asking for constant rolls of seduction even though the dm hinted at him being aromantic. Eventually we beat him and found him responsible for terrible crimes and instead of taking him to prison, Julia decided to adopt him into our party and trust him. None of us were comfortable and hated this decision, he backstabbed us, was in on our plans and informed his cult of our schemes, even fought us in important combats. I decided it was enough, and proceeded to kill him and julia began to scream at me, not in character but out about how i was a tiefling racist, how I always was jelous of her and the villains love and wish i could have him to myself. The game soon ended after Was I wrong justices....and jake you can give your opinion I guess? Was i right in killing the tiefling or was I just jealous of love

Kate Herrold

Honorable bailiff and supreme justices, I am presenting the case of the brown mold TPK. After completing our objectives in the dungeon, my character made the fatal mistake of searching the remaining rooms. My perception check was too low to notice the very harmful - fatal, in fact - brown mold present in one room and after a failed con save, I was knocked out. The other players came to check on me and were also knocked out. We then took two automatic death fails as the mold persisted, and each rolled another death fail. One character got a nat 20 and popped back up, but had no hope as the mold poisoned him again before he could leave the range. Justices, it was the most unsatisfying and upsetting TPK I have ever experienced. The entire party was upset and we ended both the session and whole campaign. The DM simply said we should have been more careful. I argued that he had plenty of opportunity to make it a dangerous but not fatal encounter (for example, there was an NPC with us that could have helped but died with us instead). I ask, was this fair? Should the DM have found a way out of this for us, or should we players expect to wipe at any time due to environmental hazards? I await your judgment.

Ben_the_DM

To the honorable judges and the okayish bailiff Josh. I present the case of the frog of ruin. I recently had a campaign I DMd fall apart after one player took his character lore too far, causing me to lose passion for my game. The player in question is heavily into the lore he builds for his characters, regardless of the world they're in. When building the character he asked to play a grung that is leaving its strict caste system to adventure and further his race. Obviously the ideology has huge potential to be, problematic at best... I agreed thinking it would be a character going on an eye opening adventure to see the errors of this supremacy based culture. I was wrong. Every turn this player would make remarks at every other PC, shopkeeper, lawmaker, even a lm emperor about how he was the true ruler. I tried discussing that that's not the game I wanted to run, and it all culminated with the rest of the party giving his character an ultimatum. Change or leave. He picked neither. That his character doesn't respect the party and he is their leader. THAT was the last straw for me. I asked the player to leave the group as respectfully as I could, though the experience left a bad taste in my mouth and I shortly after ended the campaign. Was I wrong for letting things go so far to ruin the while campaign? Or was this a case of "no DnD is better than bad DnD"?

Carly Collette

To the chummy judges and brandied bailiff (yes, I did just listen to the oh mr toad episode), I present the case of the actual Direct Messenger— I play in an online game and my DM recently discovered AI generated dungeon masters, which he has begun using for our own games— generating and then using as a script. I didn’t mind the set ups that, but he enjoys it so much that he’ll have us wait after rolls while he generates what happens next. He’s even, a few times now, direct messaged us content he generated for our PCs to say! I’ve raised concerns over other decisions in the past (splitting my character in two to make me play a baddie and myself, a case for another day) and have been shut down all around as everyone has been friends for and played together longer, but am I wrong to feel like this isn’t genuine play anymore?

Fabrizio Moreno

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

Hemlock

Esteemed Cardinals of Dice Christ, I bring to you word of his miracles. This past weekend was the finale of a campaign I've been running where a beloved NPC, Jean, was killed by the BBEG, Tiona, and eventually Jean was resurrected as an Avatar of the God of Vengeance. During their final fight with Tiona, Jean rolled three nat 20s in a row to deal a fatal final blow to the person that had ended her own life. I'm not one to usually enjoy an NPC taking the final blow, especially on the Thiala of my campaign but it was so poetic and the players were so overjoyed that their friend for her vengeance that it just has to be the work of Dice Christ.

Ross Gilliland

May it please the court and the unconventionally handsome bailiff, I present to you the case of the unrepentant player. While DMing a campaign in college, I made sure to remind my players that DnD is not a video game, 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, my real life best friend and most problematic player decided his character (Hektor) would petition a friendly vampire for his assistance in a personal quest. The vampire told Hektor he would not be helping him since it didn’t concern 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 initiating combat, but I didn’t want my friend’s character to be killed so I 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.

Ross Gilliland

May it please the court and leave the bailiff feeling satisfied, I present to you a very deadly combo. One time I was playing an Ancestral Guardian Barbarian, mainly for the purpose of using the Ancestral Protectors subclass feature. In our first session, my 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 (ourselves 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-killing whomp?

JC

May it please the court and delight bailiff Jake or John or however he is feeling. I bring to you a homebrew mechanic called Roleplay Checks that one of my DMs used in their campaign. This was a homebrew rule where in order to overcome an obstacle, you had to role play doing it and depending on how well you roleplayed the DM would give you a bonus to the check. The rule was a little off-putting to me but I didn't say anything. Eventually, my character, a literal rat (inspired by Cugrash), and the warlock had to repair our ships engine (as it's a spacefairing campaign). We had to role play handing each other tools and shouting at each other for loosening the wrong thing and what not. After describing the whole process of fixing it the DM gave us a bountiful bonus and we passed the check with flying colors. He then narrated that instead of doing anything of what we said we did during the Roleplay check and that we fixed it by putting some duct tape on it and smacking it on the side. Normally I wouldn't mind a silly description of how we solve a problem, but we had just described how we solved it and the warlock was a mechanic who was very adept with working on ships. So, my question: are Roleplay Checks a fine rule to have in your games or was it just my DM that used them wrong? I await my judgment

Foster’s Bewildered Veterinarian

Greetings most noble crit justices and also the bailiff whose name and description will be chosen by Murph right now I bring you the case of the selective shatter may it please the court 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 unintelligible 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 enemies and 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?

woodsorrel

To the Most Honorable Supreme Crit and the Mostly Honorable Bailiff: I bring the case of the death-prone druid. Our party has one healer, a druid. She has a tendency to make unilateral decisions for the party, often to our detriment. Most recently, we were in a cultists’ lair in a random encounter on our way to another PC’s home village. It was important we reach the village quickly. The rest of the party investigated and marked the lair as something we should return to later. The druid then opened a sarcophagus we knew was cursed. Snake monsters poured out, instantly downed the druid, and led to a near-TPK. On reaching the village much later than we were supposed to, she yelled at us, saying that we should have healed her and that she had to sit through a long battle with nothing to do. I couldn’t do anything to help her, but another PC later admitted they thought about helping her with a health potion but was too mad. The rest of the party, myself included, was similarly furious. Should we have made more of an effort to heal her? Or was that the consequence of her actions?

Pamphleteer

Honorable justices, I respect the bailiff's time so much that I will make this short and sweet: Running a simple campaign for my young niblings. Beast Master really enjoying collecting beasts and commanding them in battle. They will into existence a pokemon-like tournament to show off their beast partners. I agree, it's very fun. Two weeks later my SIL calls and asks if I'm teaching her kid about dogfighting. It occurs to me that they do have a mastiff and dire wolf that they fight with a lot. I try to explain pokemon, this is not accepted. I apologized but I think the game is probably over. Was I wrong to introduce what may be considered by some to be imaginary dogfighting? Should I be banned from running roleplaying games for impressionable youths?

Xavier

Forgive me Dice Christ for I have fudged.. I was running a level 5, Dungeon of the Mad Mage session, when they arrived at a goblin market. Knowing their tendencies, I added a few extra guards from what was advised in the campaign manual. As expected, the bard casted Charm Person on a clerk, trying to get his hands on a magic item they were not supposed to get just yet. I ruled that a guard would notice the spell being cast and escorted him to see their leader. As the party was looking to go full fighting mode in this market that should've become a familiar hub, I fudged the guard's initiative whom had rolled a Nat 1. I then described how they were all holding their attack action around the Bard to avoid an all out fight which would've led to a certain TPK. Should I let them dig their own grave, or was my straying from Dice Christ justified?

MyrMonkshood

To the chaotic judges and true neutral bailiff, I bring you the case of death my sausage. I was playing in a dope campaign where we all played druids who were kidnapped leaving our animal familiars (played by us) to go rescue their druid companions - oppa homeward bound style. At one point an npc named Krill Bill who was a banjo playing krill - was very injured in battle. My wolf character tried to feed him life saving elk sausages (which my DM had decided equated 1 hp per link - much to the chagrin of my companion Starbuck who was an elk herself) - but my DM said that my healing efforts resulted in me squishing my tiny krill friend into doing death saving throws with heavy sausage links. This happened a while ago, but my wolf-self is still haunted by my actions. Should I have been able to heal my small friend in this manner? Or was it always a doomed way to administer aid? We await your ruling, may it be free of croissants.

Bryant

May it please the magnanimous justices and cause indifference in that guy Jimmy who rents a room from Tucker’s fiancé: I present the case of the Cat in the Carpet. My party was executing a daring heist when my Tabaxi rogue got caught in a Rug of Smothering. (Citation https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Rug%20of%20Smothering#content) My party quickly learned about the Damage Transfer and stopped attacking the rug, choosing instead to find alternative ways to rescue me from my woven foe. I attacked the rug from the inside using my claws, figuring that since the attack was coming from inside the rug it shouldn’t trigger the Damage Transfer. My DM disagreed and my character died. While this decision may have been in line with the letter of the law, it doesn’t make sense to me that an outwardly-aimed attack from inside the rug would hurt a creature inside. Was I murdered, or did I deserve it for playing a Tabaxi? P.S. Greetings from Bashville and thanks for a jeancredible live show!

Rigo Bautista

To the honorable supreme justices and the actually pretty rad bailiff Jake, I bring the case of the frozen party debacle. Years ago, I volunteered to dm for some college friends who wanted to play and it was my first time DMing so I used the Star Wars Edge of Empire system since it was the only one I was familiar with. The final session saw the party of nearly 8 players handily defeat the BBEG and come face to face with his second of command, a young but evil child who was heavily outnumbered and desperate. He immediately activated a trap: carbonite freezing tubes. The players immediately began freezing but argued they should’ve had a chance to escape after the process had begun. So high court I ask, should I have leniently given my players more chances to escape their fate or was it simply too late. P.S. the characters did not die and in a mini (planned) epilogue were rescued by another party of heroes decades later which wouldve led to the next campaign of hunting down the child turned new BBEG.

Travis Perkins

Supreme crit justices, and the honourable bailiff. Although my case comes from Australia (see you in Perth), I hope your jurisdiction extends beyond the borders man created. To make a long story short, a colleague of mine wanted to DM his first game. There were 4 of us players (elf ranger, elf sorcerer, Goliath fighter, and my goblin ranger). It's our session zero, and we're getting characters made. I ask if he wants us to roll for stats or if we use standard array. He tells me he'll do the stats for us. Rather than use any sort of recognised format, he had decided he wanted to ASSIGN us ability scores based on what he thought of our characters. I laugh thinking it was a novel idea I hadn't seen yet, so we go ahead. Turns out he's a huge fan of LoTRs, and based our stats off that. To the two elves in our party, he assigned 20s in INT, WIS and CHA, and no other score under 14/15. To the Goliath, he assigned a 17 in STR and mostly 9-10s for the rest. For my Goblin, I had one 14 for DEX and nothing else over a 10. We played that session and after I went home messaged him asking if I could remake my character in line with the 5e rules. He said no, so I thanked him for that session but said I would be too busy for any future sessions. Was I wrong to try and make a usable character, or should he have cared less about LoTRs and more about the game mechanics? Thank you for your time.

Spencer

To the Ineffable Supreme Crit Justices and the very-much-effable bailiff jake: a few years ago, I ran a session in which I had my party ambushed by a group of yugoloths, led by a very clever arcanaloth (a kind of demon-jackal-wizard). This was always designed to be a tough fight that the party had many avenues to avoid, such as fleeing or surrendering. However, as D&D parties are wont to do, they chose to fight to the bitter end instead. While most of the party was split across the arcanaloth’s minions, the party’s bladesinging wizard engaged with the arcanaloth himself. The wizard casted Shadow Blade, which replaces his weapon and deals psychic damage. Earlier in the day, though, I had the arcanaloth cast Mind Blank, which makes him immune to having his thoughts read and, more importantly, makes him immune to psychic damage. The wizard proceeds to wail on the arcanaloth for multiple rounds, but since psychic damage has no physical evidence of being dealt and the arcanaloth was VERY clever, I deemed it would be possible for him to “fake” being injured by the shadow blade, and I did not indicate to the player this was happening. As the arcanaloth continued to cast devastating spells on the party, the wizard’s turns were unknowingly being wasted with his attacks. The fight ended with the wizard being killed (but later resurrected) and the arcanaloth getting away, with me hinting that the wizard’s psychic damage did nothing only in the final round of combat. Needless to say, the player was pissed, and this led to an argument that lasted the rest of the session and him thinking his character death was unjustified. Was I wrong to think it’s plausible for a creature of high intellect to “act” injured by psychic damage, or was it simply the unfortunate result of the way the battle had been split? I eagerly await your judgment with fairness that I may—or may not have—afforded my own players.

Dylan Jackson

This is a jubilation! We are in 2023 and we open it with a DUNGEON COURT HELL YEAH!

James Lloyd

If it pleases the court, I believe I was a naughty player (it was past my bedtime) but I would like to know if you will spare me due to the mitigating circumstances. I was playing a aberrant mind Sorcerer in a friend's one-shot that had now turned into a 6 shot. My background I had agreed with the DM was an elf who had become infected with a Mind Flayer parasite that died leaving me unchanged except for physic and magic powers (as suggested in Tasha's). I wanted to RP my own experiences with Chronic pain with this new character concept, he gets powers but also pain from the failed infection. All good cosmetic RP so far. End of session 2 I look through the remains of foe and feel sick, a Con save is failed and I say my character vomits as a result for additional flavour. All good. I then act out being unwell and standing off to the side while the rest of the party decide what to do and in character tell the party I am unwell so they should lead the way. As we enter the next room I decided to "roll a Con save" to see if my RP being ill ends. It was a personal thing for RP as I was not technically using any game mechanic to make me sick. But I say this out loud and the DM tells me off for rolling without permission. I 100% agree with him and the Court's previous ruling on the matter, under normal conditions of play, but as this was for a personal RP decision, I feel that it should be except. Later on, the DM the decides to ask me for another Con save to see if I am feeling better at the end of the session, I ask if he will accept my Nat 1 from before (because it would be funny) and he refuses and I roll a 19, meaning my character is feeling better) but I as a player am disappointed.

kimikoroi

May it please the court, the honourable crit justices, and the handsome bailiff jake. I recently joined a Strahd campaign as a paladin and asked if I could have a little black cat named Clover. My DM said he would allow it, but she would be "purely cosmetic with no combat purpose" which I was fine with. The problem started when my DM began describing Clover drinking the blood of any enemies we defeated, eventually culminating in her drinking werewolf blood and becoming a werecat. She started rapidly growing in size, and would spend the night murdering and eating other local pet cats. To prevent this I was told I'd need to feed her 1gp worth of meat from the butcher’s every day, which I agreed to do. I did use telepathy to ask her if she wanted to be cured, but she said no. Clover is now the size of a panther and in a recent combat the DM rolled her initiative and was in control of her attacks. I know I agreed I wouldn’t use her in combat, but I didn't expect the DM to either, and it kinda feels like he gets to have all the fun. Should I be allowed to pilot Clover instead?

Paul Bateman

May it please the court, as well as the esteemed Bailiff, AKA the godfather to many godchildren: I bring you the case of the prestidigitation apocalypse. One of my players/best friends, out of game, recently asked me if prestidigitation could be used as a nuke. He argued that the spell says you can “warm a substance,” but does not specify by how MUCH you can warm a substance, hence, he argued, there is no limit. So, if a single atom was warmed to nuclear fusion levels, it could be used as a nuke. Aside from me arguing back that it’s just a fucking cantrip, I argued “warming” isn’t as strong of a term as “heating,” and the spell would have said “heating” if it was intending to allow temperatures beyond 90ish degrees Fahrenheit. He retorted that the spell language is vague, so there should at least be the possibility of a DC30 dice roll to determine if a nuke is created. Was I right to scoff at his (frankly, nuclear) suggestion, or should my players be allowed the possibility of decimating civilizations without expending a spell slot, if they had the appropriate knowledge? I humbly await your judgment. P.S - my party and I were once members of a collegiate mock trial national championship team, so we love the show and genuinely applaud Jake on his apparent knowledge of proper procedure.

Amos Polglaze

To the Splendiferous Supreme Crit Justices, as well as that guy who used to hang out with Amir. I bring to you the case of the Stolen Honour. I play a warforged samurai known as R0N1N. Think anime robot, obsessed with his honour. Months ago we met a character that would become a running pain in R0N1Ns life. He was a anthropomorphic hellbeast in passionate lust with R0N1N but would torment him to show him his love (not dissimilar to Hellraiser). This was done because my DM knew I despised this character both in game and out (although my DM and I had agreed it was a great part of R0N1Ns story to take him out for good) In our last session we finally squared off with Road Dog and had him on the ropes when R0N1N went down, failing 2 death saving throws before being revived, by the very player that comes into question. The DM admits that as Road Dog is down to just 3 HP and the next turn was R0N1N. Since it had become such a part of R0N1Ns character to finally kill this beast, the DM decided without rolling that R0N1N could walk over and cleave his head. The other player spoke up because I shouldn't just get a shot off and he wanted to kill him too. We both rolled and both missed, this went on 4 more times until eventually the other player killed my white whale. In game R0N1N told the other player to prepare for a duel when they next meet. But out of game this is yet to resolved. Am I right to want justice for my character after the DM had made his call or should I just accept that the dice fell the way they did?

Koty Kai

To the honorable justices and the less honorable but still okay bailiff, I recently started a campaign. Before the first session, everyone (except for me) was throwing back drinks. It had been a long time since many of the players had seen each other, so I let them have their fun. However, the entire group is comprised of brand new players, and I a brand new DM; when it came time to make character sheets, everyone was pretty fucked up and struggling to get things done. Here's the thing: I am almost 4 years sober. It felt really awkward being the only person not drinking, and it felt like herding cats trying to get them to focus. I'm worried that if I ban drinks, I'll be raining on everyone's parade and I'll be a no-fun DM. But I also hate feeling so uncomfortable when I'm trying to have fun with friends. So I ask you: am I right to ask my players not to drink at the table, or is there some sort of compromise that makes everyone happy?

Travis Perkins

I can one up you for players like that xD my friends level 4 rogue decided it was fine to try to sneak up on an ancient white dragon, climb on top of it, and ride it back to its lair to steal all of its treasure. The dragon has a +13 perception but rolls with disadvantage due to partial blindness. She has a +4 stealth due to dumping her DEX :P basically had to narrate that the dragon was so confused that it let her go without one-shotting her

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.

roolt

To the honorable Justices and I guess if that bailiff guys there too: I was running a session on my birthday that was meant to be split into two parts, one part in which the party gambled for a variety of magic items and another where they fought a werewolf. After the gambling the only item that hadn’t been won by our warlock was a Bag of Beans won by our monk. When the party came into initiative with the werewolf the first thing the monk wanted to do was try to force feed him a bean or many in hope of growing a pyramid in his stomach or something like that. After combing the internet and finding nothing I simply said “it can do some poison damage, but because the beans have to be planted to work I don’t think it would make sense for anything crazy to happen.” The monk didn’t fight me, but he seemed a bit disappointed but went on with the fight. In the end, the werewolf surrendered (as I had intended him to do the whole time) and we had had a very fun session in which the monk had contracted lycanthropy (something I knew the player would have fun with) but I can’t help but wonder if I was being a bit of a buzzkill? I await your fair and just punishment

Ilana Galpert

Greetings Honored Justices of the Court. I have need of your council, should you be generous enough to grant it. Our friend and forever DM is running a noir campaign set in Eberron. The campaign brutal. Characters have been one-hit downed 5 times and we're only level 4. We've been candid about our unhappiness, voicing objections in private and in public. Our DM insists that "being part of a one sided system is sadly a very much core concept of a noir anything and a lot of noir stories are about fighting the system and the best outcome being everybody loses." Our DM is a really good guy and puts up with a lot of our bullshit, but we're all really frustrated. I beseech thee, wise Justices, should we embrace the grim world he built for us and accept that losing is a theme of noir?

Hunter.osty

To the supreme crit justices, and the bailiff who is just alright. I bring forth the case of the unapologetic veteran player. Me and my friends all just finished mines of phandelver and were loving dnd, when we mentioned we wanted to play again our dm said he did too but none of us had dmed before, no worries I took up the mantle and started running descent into avernus and before I even finished the intro our vet player cut me off to attack an npc I was describing, I sign of what’s to come in the future. Our vet friend (the only one who had played more than 1 campaign or even dmed) then went on to be rude to his party members purposefully not going with them, stealing from them and rules lawyering, or saying “that’s just my character” whenever I’d have conversations outside of the game to fix it. It all came to a boiling point when he tried to kill a very important npc when the party had enough and shot him in the back with a bow, not realizing how low his health was and downing him. We continued to talk to the npc when the vet said “I’m dead” confused we looked to him and he said he rolled his death saves while we were roleplaying and he died, I ask you judges, was this ultimately a good thing or should I feel shame as a dm for not being able to fix his character before it came to this point?

Lorne Mintz

Hello esteemed Crit Justices and the Bailiff Jake who is in a constant state of social status flux. I bring to you the case of the Deck of Many Things and the Card that wasn't pulled. So this may or may not also be a confessional but here is the situation. I play in a long-term campaign a character named Allister who is a Adolescent Bugbear Pirate who is both a Champion Fighter and Swashbuckler Rogue and has a backstory as a thief. Suffice to say I put a lot of thought and care into my character, especially in regards to his stats, in which both strength and DEX are quite important. This leads us to the case that I bring before you. Me and my party having just defeated a slime boss in a pocket dimension were on our way back to meet up with our questgiver when our DM offered up an interaction to the party of a man who was trying to entice us with the Deck of Many Things. Now having myself listened to Naddpod and for some in our party likely already knowing about this item, we were not willing to partake in such a dangerous gamble. However, seeing as how our DM really wanted to get someone to pull a card, I asked him to roll persuasion to see if my character would be convinced to try it. He rolled a 13 and my character a 12, and so I swallowed my pride and decided for the sake of fun I would pull a card. Now here is where I should mention that we play online, and often the dm chooses to roll for certain things like luck or percentage dies (usually shopping related), however; I had in this instance asked to roll for my result as my fate was in the hands of the deck, but he said he was using a website and therefore couldn't have it done that way. So inevitably he pulled a card for me and he spoke the result, and to my surprise I received a +2 to my highest stat. Since my STR was already max I increased my DEX from 16 to 18. I was quite happy with this result and we all moved on with no one else pulling a card. Here is now where the problem occurs, at the end of the session my DM sends me a private discord message letting me know that I didn't actually pull the +2 card, and that in fact had pulled a card to decrease my intelligence by 3. He felt bad and didn't want to have to see my character lose stats which is a nice gesture I suppose but he probably should have just given me the actual result. I have an INT of 11 and lowering that to 8 would just be a -1 which I would have just ran with. But when the DM asked me if I wanted to keep my +2 DEX or take the -3 INT, I told him I'd like to keep the DEX. My logic here is that I had no say in the fact that what I thought was my card result was not actually true, and since the DM told me I got what I got, that is now kind of the canon result in the story, and if I had to choose, I'd rather keep a buff than retcon it to a debuff. While obviously the DM probably should have just told me the real result, was I in the wrong for not taking the -3 or is it fair of me to keep my now tainted result as the dm had chosen that to be my character's fate and not me. I await your council.

foster the boneless duck

to the pretty solid bailiff and the judges, especially the effervescent judge axford, may it please the court i bring to you the case of bob the boulder vs the water. in playing one of my first ever campaigns of dnd a few years ago with brand new friends, i met at the game store, we were playing a super cool campaign based on greek mythology which i'm obsessed with. i was told to play a paladin for party balance and though it wasn't what i wanted to play i was happy to be a team player and try my hand at some of the most foreign concepts to my weak ass- being buff and cool. the only part of the game that i didn't like was that the dm focused heavily on things being "realistic" like precisely calculating the days and hours in game as well as ammunition or insisting on more realistic rules about being in the water with heavy armor or having beat someone on a contested initiative roll to cast counterspell in time. at some point we got to some fast running water in which was the orb we needed to retrieve. the fighter, bob the boulder, jumped in and almost drowned. the dm explained that he would be immediately dead if he failed strength save due to the flow of the water as he had not explicitly said he had take off his armor. he did fail but the dm let me use my paladin's interception ability to try and get him out before he was fully dead. he said the dc would be higher but to everyone's relief, i rolled a nat 20 and my paladin, galataya (taya for short), was able to drag him to safety. i laughed at bob's recklessness after the dm's nudge-wink about the water and was trying to figure out a combination of my net and trident to snag the orb. apparently my laughing at him, admittedly maybe a bit too gleefully, did not go over well and bob pushed taya into the stream. ridiculously, i rolled a nat 1 which got a chorus of giggles from the rest of my table. before thea was announced dead, i remembered that i had a point of inspiration which i then used to reroll and got a 22 (the exact dc) which i was super stoked about and after getting safely out without help i decided that taya should push bob back into the water. he rolled a 2 and i decided not to intervene and he died. everyone got super quiet so i decided to leave early and was kicked off the group chat by the time i got home. note for context: it may not be relevant but please consider the fact that bob's pc name was also bob. was i wrong for trying to pay back bob knowing he was very likely to fail the save with his dex based fighter? i humble myself at your oh so high chairs and will be following through on your punishment should the axe of guilt fall upon my head. ~ foster (all pronouns)

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.

Max Telmer

Really hope they do this one

Kellie Cthulhu

May it please the delightful justices and the suspicious bailiff, I present the case of the dirty bag of holding. My first ever campaign I ran was basically if the movie Zootopia was in ancient times where towns are barely forming and maps are non-existent. My party of 6 stumbled upon a small shack of goods ran by an opossum. All of the items he had for sale were used but in fair condition. One of the players wanted to buy a bag of holding which I had described as full of cat hair, crumbs, and bits of glitter. All items placed in the bag would get dirty but it was at least something to hold their items. It was at this point I have no clue what happened. One of the newer players said they simply empty the bag out. I thought it would be funnier if they had to deal with this mild inconvenience and told them dumping it out wouldn't fully get it clean since it is a nearly infinite bag. The player who brought this person then defended them while two of the other players jumped to defend my explanation. Soon voices were raised and it turned into a full blown argument. It is important to note my boyfriend was a player and decided to be one of the people who stayed neutral. I had to step in and say we could table this argument for another time and made everyone move on but the two angry players never returned. Was I wrong to want a silly bag or did they overreact to getting a dirty bag of holding? Whoever you sentence you may punish my boyfriend as well since he decided to be neutral :)

Chris Coppel

To the viperous justices of the Supreme Crit and the poor cuckolded bailiff, today I do not bring a case from my own table, but an accusation against the Court itself. Recently, I resolved myself to listen to the full catalogue of 8 Bit Book Club. I have thoroughly enjoyed myself, though regrettably, I have become noticeably dumber in the process. However, my joyful decent into stupidity was brought to a sudden halt when I reached the episode, “The Angry Birds Movie: The Junior Novel” and discovered evidence of a truly heinous conspiracy. I have transcribed an exchange between the justices below that I ask is entered into the Court records: Justice Murphy: Emily and I have a 14-year-old boy’s taste in media. Justice Axford: I thought you were going to say we had a 14-year-old boy… We have a 14-year-old-boy. Justice Tanner: When are you going to have Tucker on the show? Justice Murphy: We had children when we were 16. Justice Tanner: When is Tucker Axford-Murphy going to come on the show? Justice Murphy: I don’t know, he’s getting ready for college now so he’s a little busy. Justice Tanner: So smart, your boy. Justice Axford: We have a 14-year-old boy, so we do have a child to support. Justice Murphy: We have a child to support. Justice Axford: He plays hockey, which is the most expensive of sports, so it’s been really taxing. We’re going to start a Patreon to pay for his college. Tucker. Jill’s Tucker? It must be. This episode was released on 2/21/17 and based on the evidence that he was already preparing for college, I can only assume that a short few years later he left home and met Jill. I ask the Court, does the Bailiff know that his wife/comedy partner was stolen by the Justices’ own son? Is NADDPOD simply a front to pay for his college and hockey expenses? Should my accusations be false, I will accept any punishment, but if they are true, I demand justice for Jake. P.S. – Justice Tanner later makes a claim in the same episode that he also has a son named Tucker, but I took this to be in jest… I hope

james_in_space

Hi Justices! Hello, Jake. So I'm a first-time DM for a crew of improvisers who've never played DnD before. Second session, my players helped save a halfling farmer from an evil scarecrow. The farmer had a loyal mastiff named Fig Newton who fought alongside her, even serving as the halfling's steed. 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, claiming 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 whining and looking back to the farm as they left. Fig Newton helped the party on their way, and since he’s friendly and his owner had told him to help them, I gave the Animal Handling checks a low DC, so they were no problem for the sorcerer. But since I kept mentioning how despondent the dog seemed, one of my players (not the sorcerer) finally took the hint and ordered Fig Newton to go home. I immediately narrated how, with a delighted "RUFF", the mastiff trotted off back toward the farm. Happy ending, right? But now my sorcerer is pissed at me! She says if I was just going to "ruin the fun" and take the dog away, I should never have allowed her to make the Deception roll at all. Justices, should I have just told her she couldn’t take Fig Newton in the first place?

Ella

I prostrate myself before the honorable court of Dice Christ and beg his forgiveness. May the justices find it in their hearts to help a lost soul and may the bailiff find a heart. A few months ago I finally convinced my friends to let me dm a campaign for them. They are all first time players so I made sure to sit down with them individually and talk them through the rules and the character making process. When I sat down with one of my friends she repeatedly warned me that she had really bad luck when rolling dice. I brushed away her concerns, trusting Dice Christ to do his work. Ten sessions later, I realize there was much truth to her words. We’ve gone entire sessions without her rolling above a ten. She is being a great team player and puts up with her terrible roles, but I fear that the continued terrible rolls are making her D&D experience fall flat. So I ask, have we sinned? What has my friend done to offend Dice Christ, and how may we redeem ourselves in his eyes? Should I introduce a game mechanic to help her roll better or just wait it out?

Trey MW

Honorable judges and ineffable bailiff, am I in the wrong for making my players fight 3 swarms of cranium rats? The party has five level 8 characters (plus one magical chest named Chester). The biggest concern is that a swarm of cranium rats can cast Dominate Monster once per day. Even though only one player failed their saving throw during the session, was this too harsh on my players?

Ros

(The name on this account is my deadname please don't say it if my case is presented my name is Bugs now ty) To the baliff Josh and the mighty crit justices, I come to the court asking a simple question. Would a chicken nugget pc take damage in water? I dm a game for my friends who are new to DnD. We are playing an early 2000s adventuring school campaign (think Sky High) Since they're so new, I wanted to encourage them to be creative in their character creation, so when my longtime best friend said she wanted to play a chicken nugget cleric, I went along with it. Fast forward to now, the party is level 6 and they have been on a spring break cruise where they happened to run into an enemy they had been looking for these past few sessions. When they found him pounding back mimosas in the pool bar at 11am, a scuffle ensued and our nugget cleric was thrown off the side of the boat. I narrated that she took 20 points of acid damage at the end of her turn and my sweet nugget was very upset and said that because she is a magic talking cleric nugget, she does not flake or lose her breading in water. The rest of the party was quick to come to her aid ("how else would she take showers?" blah blah blah) so I quickly relented and said that she didn't take the damage. Was I wrong to say that a nugget would sog in water? Or should my nugget cleric have learned the consequences of being a literal chicken nugget that day?

Eric Walker

To the honorable and all knowing justices Murphy, Axford and Tanner and the dude who works for them, I ask for your help with a recent issue. My 12 year old son has recently become obsessed with D&D so I decided to create and run a one shot over our Christmas break. He was able to convince a few people to play with us, including my wife. We had played a few times before and my wife made it very clear that she found traditional combat boring. To help with that I designed a campaign around Home Alone, which is her favourite Christmas movie. The campaign started with a puzzle in order to get into the house (which was intentional on my part specifically for my wife). Her response to the puzzle was “Ugh! I don’t want to have to think! This is too hard!” Although the rest of the campaign went well and she did end up enjoying herself, am I justified in feeling upset with her response to my personalized campaign? If I am justified, what can I do, since I don’t think I can follow Justice Murphy’s mantra of finding new friends!

Hootie_McBootie

UPDATE to Jesus worshipping cleric. The group had a session recently, and I showed up early to the DM’s house to play him the crit hearing and get his thoughts. He said he’s been in contact with the cleric over the past weeks and can’t get him to choose another path to follow. But we both LOVED the rapture idea given from the justices. We give it a try. The Cleric bites on the rapture bait, believing it was destiny for his character, gives a 10 minute cringe Jesus filled speech before being taken by angels. He then pulls out a NEW character sheet…. Of a completely normal boring bard named Angus. I think our prayers have been answered and thank the courts for everything.

Kelly Roberts

To the honorable Justices and the really very good Bailiff (I stand my ground, Jake is my FRIEND!) I worriedly present the case of the Failed Censor… I work at the school district in my small town and really want to start a DND group with some students who have shown interest (middle school, 6-8th graders ranging in age from 12-15) I have shown some of my fellow teachers the amazing shows that got me into DND in the first place like NADDPOD, Dimension 20, and TAZ. When I shared with them my idea to start a student campaign they balked and insinuated that maybe I should not, because the “reference material” is so crude. (One of said colleagues had to stop listening after Dragon Genitals, so I don’t think she even finished episode 1) After some convincing I’ve swayed them to my favor but the general agreement was reached that I should not officially endorse any of the aforementioned shows/campaigns due to inappropriate material. THE PROBLEM is that several of the students interested in the club are already (and separately from me) in-the-know and huge fans (like for real, some my students are probably listening to this right now) How do I discourage discussion of these banned topics OR how do I circumvent these restrictions and tactfully ask the students to not tell the other teachers/the principal? Thank you for your time and judgement! Love, “Trying not to be a Scoutmaster Denny”

James Hoebbel

The Case of the Tone Salad Dear jubilant justices and bodacious bailiff, We bring before you today the case of the tone salad. A friend of ours invited us and a bunch of other friends (all experienced players) to a historic campaign he wanted to run. The DM made it very clear that this is going to be a campaign based on real historical events with a more serious tone, and challenged us to create characters outside of our usual comfort zones. (Mostly silly characters) The problem is, he doesn’t always fully plan out his sessions, and his default is meme-centric goofs. So we’ll go from a session that’s dishearteningly dark (such as fighting to save an oppressed people group, and then returning to see they’ve all been massacred and we couldn’t stop a genocide.) And then we’ll have a session where we have to do tasks for various cartoon characters, and we’re treated like spoilsports for being kind of bummed out. Additionally, he keeps adding in self-insert NPCs who flip between being cries for help and class clowns, who are trying to sleep with all the PCs and make jokes at inappropriate times, like just after a beloved pet miscarries and dies. Whenever PCs express anything negative toward these self-insert NPCs, the DM takes it personally and gets upset. Are we wrong for wanting the campaign to be one way or the other? A gritty, serious period piece or a goof fest? Would we be justified to murder a self-insert NPC? Do you have any suggestions on the best way to do so? We patiently await your judgement, The Tired Trio

Ros

I should mention that everyone else in the campaign, including the other party members, are normal DnD races and classes

WitchKingofAngmar

To the most Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the bailiff of which I can only assume is now Bob Odenkirk: I present to you the case of the suspiciously combative DM. I (leonin paladin/fighter)play in a Mythic Odyssey of Theros campaign with two others (another leonin barb/fighter, and a Minotaur spores Druid). Our group has been tasked with stopping a betrayer god from awakening elemental titans and destroying the world. This has been a fun story and each of our characters have an interesting backstory and build/gimmick we follow. Lately, it seems like our DM has been doing everything he can to shut down our moments of awesomeness: the barbarian/fighter who built his character around grappling suddenly finds himself up against creatures who are immune to grapple pretty much shutting down his build. There are other occurrences but the latest one really got me. We had just fought a huge battle to save my hometown from my uncle who had killed my father and cast the savanna into turmoil (I’m essentially playing out the lion king) and after being victorious we left to continue to attempt to thwart the evil gods plans. We stumbled across a group of about 10 orcs who demanded 50 gold for us to pass. I consulted the other players as it wasn’t a large amount of gold and it wouldn’t be so bad to just pay and go. Well being the new leader of the savanna my comrades and I decided maybe this was a time to show that my clan was back in power so I looked back to the orcs and had a cool guy line prepared and said turning to the head orc, patting my pockets, “it seems like it’s your unlucky day friend, I’m fresh out of coin.” Then I narrated that my character went into his lycanthrope form (I had been bitten by a weretiger a few sessions back) but my DM interrupts and says an archer had hit me with an arrow as I try and change thus initiating combat and not allowing us to pop any of our stuff before the battle. Fine we have to use an action to do it instead, annoying but we dealt with it. Head orc summons a spiritual weapon, ok we’ve got a cleric let’s def get him outta the way. But we also have 9 other orcs to deal with. Druid finally gets his turn and goes to transmute rock. Plans to make everything around us difficult terrain which we can move through. The head orc counter spells it, 5th level spell gone. Leaving us in the party out of game to wonder how the hell that’s possible that this orc can even cast that but more so feeling like ok we aren’t gonna be able to do dope shit anymore (the barbarian hasn’t even tried grappling since finding out the enemies are just immune). The battle went for a few rounds after that ultimately ending with the orcs recognizing my station and asking for our forgiveness which I gave stating that they were strong fighters and the savanna and the world may need them so we went our separate ways but it left us with a negative feeling. We had just come off of a great boss battle and war for my homeland only to be skunked by a group of orcs on a random encounter table roll. I leave this case in your more than capable hands to determine if we’ve entered a dm vs player type of situation or if we should heed the mighty words of hakuna matata and keep pushing forward accepting what fate throws at us. Thank you and happy belated hoglidays to you all.

henwarto

To the honorable Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner and the (insert how the justices are feeling about Jake here) Bailiff Jake. I humbly bring my case before you and accept your judgment I bring you the case of “The Lost Players Pantheon”. Starting at session 0 of my most recent campaign one of my character spent time creating a full religion based off of the teletubby baby in the sun. They named all of the parts of their religion off of different kids shows. They named their holy city “The Holy City if Sesame Street” and their mortal enemies “The Doodlebobs”. These similarities continue on and on with notable members of the religion being named “Saint Robert the Builder, Saint Elmo the prophet, and even Saint Clifford and his holy guard The Paw Patrol” I allowed them to add them all this to the world because I knew it would enhance their engagement and I asked all the players to add backstory to enrich the world. However, the issue comes across because this player left my game three session in. Since then the other players have mostly lost interest in the religion part of this world since it is mostly I high magic campaign. So I defer to you justices, must I include this pantheon and religion in my game going forward or do I get rid of my lost players world building borrowed from children’s shows?

Dani Sharkey

To the happy new year justices and the auld lang syne bailiff , I present to you the Debate of Lac-Toad Intolerance: During a fight against a Froghemoth, my goblin artificer was unfortunately swallowed by the beast. Despite all the restraints this effect put me under, however, I was able to whip out an Alchemy Jug from my bag of holding. Being able to summon any liquid, I asked my DM if filling the Froghemoth's belly with milk would immediately cause the beast to hurl me up. He said no, but the other players and I argued that if your stomach was filled with something you physically can't digest, (as google confirmed amphibians are lactose intolerant), it would definitely make you vomit right away. The DM proposed a compromise, letting me summon the max 12 gallons of saltwater with the jug, and while it wouldn't release me from the beast on my turn, it would give me advantage on my saving throws next round. Ultimately we still had a blast in our session, but we need your ruling Justices-- should this legen-dairy trick be able to slide in combat, or was I too caught up in the bit to admit its impracticality?

Aalexander Knight

If it may please the Court, I have an update on the case of the Dicey Diet from the previous episode. After you all took me to the razz-berry patch and Murph shot me in the back of the head, I DMd my DM and asked to host the next session at my place. She was skeptical because we've only ever played at her house before, but I mentioned I wanted to make amends for the food faux-pas by cooking for everyone. She said she was fine with it if everyone else was, so I floated the idea to the group and everyone was fine with it (although I got razzed a bit more, as expected) so I asked for everyone's Christmas dinner preferences (BEFORE they showed up, which was a novel concept to me) and started planning the meal. What they didn't know was that in addition to making the meal, I was concocting another surprise. With RNGesus's blessing I baked 40 Mince Pies (not sure if they're common in America but they're basically sweet little pies eaten around Christmas) but with unique fillings. I made 40 so there were two pies for each filling in case anyone rolled a number we'd already gotten. Some weren't too bad, containing unusual but still sweet fillings like nutella or marshmallows- and some were horrible, with fillings like baked beans, marmite, or smushed Brussels sprouts. I used icing sugar on the top of each pie to number them from 1 to 20 (from worst to best) and after dinner I presented them to the group. The guy who rolled the Nat 20 for his 'mid meal' last time got to roll once with advantage and I rolled twice with disadvantage, landing me with a Sriracha Prawn pie and a peanut butter & chilli-jam pie (which was actually pretty good). Overall they went down a lot better than a randomized meal (although I did find out in conversation that the DM had actually enjoyed the meal she got last session so much that she'd ordered it again since we played previously, so it wasn't all bad!) and I got to give the group an adventurous food experience without making their meal malignant.

Aalexander Knight

P.S.- not to defend myself too much since I agree it was a bad idea when I did it with the Chinese food, but I should've added that when I said I got a selection of sides I meant I spent like 4-5x what we normally do on sides and got all sorts of stuff like chilli beef, dumplings, Peking duck etc. so everyone had at least SOMETHING they liked. Also for the commenter who said what I did was a 'rude, dangerous violation', I obviously know these people well and am aware of their dietary needs. I wasn't about to poison anyone with something they're allergic to.

ananarama

It would be wild to listen to a dungeon court ep that’s only cases from naddpod guests. Though they all seem like chill people so maybe they don’t have cases to bring to the supreme crit

Eli Tornøe

To the honourable justices! I present: The Case of Wasted Haste (Disclaimer: This is not my own story, I heard of the events from TikTok, but your insight is needed) The previous session had ended right before an important battle, and after a week of anticipation the party could finally roll initiative. Our subject (let's call them John) rolled last and had to wait for the other PCs and enemies to make their moves. The group's wizard imbued John with Haste, but right before they could take their turn, the DM suddenly introduced a new big enemy on the field. This enemy attacked the wizard who lost concentration on the Haste spell. The DM ruled John lost their turn, even though they never got to use any of the benefits of the spell. The combat proceeded to the beginning of initiative. By the time the combat reached John's next turn, it was mostly over, and 45 minutes had passed without John getting to do anything. While yes, this is air tight rules-as-written, I think the DM could have been softer, allowing John to at least take a normal turn or something similar. Was the DM's ruling fair or sweaty? Should John have gotten an action? Should I put an end to my snooping on other's tables? I await your honorable ruling and will accept any punishment

Muqtadaa Miandara

I present the case of the Game Show, the Lich, and the Pressure Plate. Honored justices Murphy, Axford, Tanner, any potential guest justices, and our estimable Bailiff Juke 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 get to stymie the BBEG from retrieving for their own purposes. 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 use their old notes to 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. Everything to do with the pressure plate was purely post-facto justification and rationalization on my part. A player 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 enemies are stymied where the heroes 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, Juke? As I look forward to these answers, I also humbly await the judgement of this esteemed crit.

Muqtadaa Miandara

BACKSTORY FOR ANYONE INTERESTED: 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)

DanDrako

May it please the court and the hit or miss bailiff Jake. I present the case of the Renegade Undead Shapechanger player. During an escape from a lich, sneaky undead got onto the airship and began infecting survivors. In the confusion, two undead shapechangers switched places with PCs. It was fun, but one of the players avoided detection and essentially joined the party as a double agent. Which at the time I thought was pretty awesome. So we are now months later real time and the party is all in prison for conspiracy to commit murder after the doppelganger player disguised himself as another player's father and attempted to poison the king. None of the other players knew this subplot was happening as it had all been in sneaky 1 on 1 sessions, so they thought that this dirty dad had done the deed. The King brought the party forth and I had a guard reveal they were the traitorous player's original character in disguise. The player rolled with it well, launching into a dramatic villain speech before the shapechanger melted away menacingly. Afterwards he told me it wasn't the reveal he'd imagined but after months of sneaking around, I was so eager to finally pull the mask off. I ask you, should I have let the Player have more control in the time for their reveal, or was this the right call?

Anson Jager

Most honorable Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and that guy who seems that hang around a lot... I think his name is John. I submit the case of the woodland whomping and the unusable spell. I have been playing in a campaign with my close friends for the pasted couple of years. Our DM is very strict on the rules, which has only been an issue when he feels like we take him by surprise and outplay his encounters. I am currently playing a druid and have unlocked 4th level spells. I have been excited to get to this point because I have wanted to use the spell "summon woodland beings" for a long time. We were recently ending our session with a surprise encounter as Raiders attacked our camp. I used the spell to summon 8 pixies. When their turn came I had them cast polymorph on all of us to turn us into giant apes. I had prepared my DM that wanted to do this for a while and when it happened we completely whomped the encounter. My DM was visibly uncomfortable as he felt the encounter had turned meaningless. Being a good friend I offer to only use the spell at certain times or only in an emergency situation or even to have half as many pixies. I explained I understand that it may seem broken but I am the only character who can act as a healer in our party and have been relegated to support in most cases. My DM was not happy with any of my solutions. He has proposed that I keep the spell and only summon one pixie... Which I basically a longer version of me casting polymorph or doing something more worthwhile. We have had a back-and-forth for a while and I just had to say I won't take the spell, which I think is what is desire was. I humbly ask is my DM being too harsh by essentially making my spell not worth using? And also, how would you all fix the spell to have me use it in the future?

Kyle David Perry

To the Honorable Supreme CRICK Justices and the very kind bailiff Jail, I present to you the case of the Confusing Cow. My party of three in our very close knit home game were traveling on a ship and I decided my character wanted to do something nice for the crew. So the party Druid wildshaped into a cow so that we could provide milk for everyone on board. Our DM asked me to role an animal handling check, and though untrained I rolled a Nat 20. My DM then went on to explain that when I tried to milk the cow I instead caused it to orgasm. In asking him if I had also accomplished gathering any milk from my actions the DM said No. Should I have been granted milk for the crew or was our DM astute in his givings and takings. I humbly await your judgement, Kyle David Perry

petraG

Oh, Most High Harbingers of Hilarity! You Juiciest of Justices, You Beneficent Baliff! I beg you hear this, Case of The Teenage Tort Resorter: Micro-Meta v. Barrister of Beauracracy A Fire Genasi Artificer, Arachnoid Centaur Centurion, and Birdfolk Bard of Blades camp down for the night near a lake. Upon realizing that an intruder has infiltrated camp on their watch, the Atificer attempts to engage single-handedly, leaving the others to compose dreamscapes with the GM on their turns. In a moment of meta, the Bard dreamily suggests—sotto voce—that calling out might increase the chance of one's fellows awakening, to which this Advocate of Anal Retention replies that waking someone constitutes an action. The GM weighs in, ruling that the conscious character could use a free action to try to rouse their somniloquizing associates, but this Solicitor of Stodginess refuses to do so, very nearly leading to the loss of a key quest item. While the drama amused, this refusal to abide by the word of the ultimate arbiter grated. Though I did relish a dirty dip into the sin of meta as the Bard, and do not wish to dissuade the youthful Artificer from play, in my heart of hearts, I know this whelp and I are both deserving of your tender ministrations. I reverently raise up this PvP offering, and await the judicious application of this most Supreme Crit's wise mercy. Your Prostrate Penitent, petraG

Kathryn B

Oh sweet Dice Christ and members of the church, I have a confession to make. I recently began DMing for the first time for a group of my friends who are new to the game. On the first session of our home brew campaign, they met a mysterious woman in a tavern who gave them a quest with the promise of riches should they succeed. They asked how they knew that she was faithful to her word and she pulled out a sack of gold and gave them each ten pieces as a deposit. As she was leaving, the group decided “fuck it” and instead of doing the story that I had planned, they wanted to rob her blind, throwing the campaign into mayhem. The rogue of the group rolled well with a stealth check and the woman rolled a nat 1. But she had a cat familiar and so I said that the cat should get to roll, too… but it also rolled a nat 1. In a moment of panic at seeing all the prep I had done for our home brew go down the drain, I said the cat rolled a nat 20 instead. Dice Christ, please forgive me for this cardinal sin. My first meal of the new year was D&D waffles as a sort of penance but I know I must confess in order to truly be saved. Thank you for listening to my crimes and may Dice Christ have mercy.

Brooke Sanders

May it please the Court and their acquaintance Jim. I being you a case of Binky Fiasco. My school has put together a D&D group. At the Session Zero, the club leader/DM treated everyone as if they had never played before even though we were all experienced players. Additionally, he refused to tell us anything about the campaign world other than that it was “high fantasy” but still expected fully fleshed out backstories by the next session. Frustrated by this, I created Binky Fiasco, a homeless 12 year old kobold Wild Magic Sorcerer whose parents were ex-dragon slayers looking for their child. Binky also has anxiety and rolls for wild magic anytime they have a panic attack. My question is this: Did my DM deserve to deal with notorious Binky Fiasco? P.S. if this affects anything, he also treats me and my character worse because I am the only girl at the table.

Ziel

To Patriarch Jake and the Honored elders: may it please the court, I present to you; my broken back. I play a bladesinger and am in a party of 3 others, a monk, fighter, and barbarian (all level 7). Because we have so many damage dealers that I decided to go with a more utility roll. We were traveling to another town and had a rough fight, and so we decided to take a long rest, unfortunately, we failed an encounter check. Long story short, I was the last player alive facing off against the barbarian chieftain and gang. Low on spells, I taunted the chief to tackle me, and he took the bait, at that point I dimensioned doored us 500 ft in the air. At first the DM didn’t allow it as you need to be willing to go with me for the spell, I argued that because the chief took my taunt and tackled me that he was willing to grapple/be with me. The DM begrudgingly allow it and as we were falling, I used my last 2nd level spell to misty step out of his grapple at the last second. At that point the DM said that because of the speed that I was falling I would still be taking the fall damage, even though I said that I would misty step parallel to the ground, hitting a tree and killing my character. Honored Patriarch and elders, was I robbed of my moment to shine, or did I simply fall to my death? I humbly await your verdict.

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 stayed hovering in midair, but I stand my decision. What say you? (slips $5 to bailiff)

Summer Tribe

May it please the whole juicy court This wasn't an issue at my table but it does demand resolution. I was discussing with another player the possibility of riding the Artificer - Atillerist's Eldritch Cannon, NOT mounting it, as that comes with its own rules, merely standing on an object that is capable of moving, and this other player was disputing that it shouldn't be possible. Unless your weight overcomes its strength score (the rules say treat it as tho it has a 10 in each score for checks, provides no details about carrying capacity) surely it should still be capable of movement as you stand on it, which would be awesome and tantamount to riding your gun like it was a skateboard. The only benefit this would provide would be potentially increasing your movement speed by 15 on some rounds, which hardly seems gamebreaking. I eagerly await your wise and fair verdict, the skeleton is in the mail from your last one

Jake de Medeiros

May it please the court, I present to you the case of Erupting Earth vs. Half Cover. I was DM’ing an encounter in a warehouse full of crates and barrels, a PC chose to hide inside a barrel during combat and I granted them half cover. A few turns later said PC was still in the barrel, they would poke their head out to shoot a crossbow and then hide again, they are not a rogue, they just used their movement. I had a mage cast erupting earth below the barrel and argued that since it was an explosion coming from below, it would ignore and remove their cover. They employed the Niagara Falls defence, and insisted that if a barrel could survive such an incredible drop, it could survive erupting earth. I hope you can shine some light on this, thanks. Jake.

TJBA

Honorable justices and Jake because he don't need no title, I ask was I too kind to my hard-headed player? I run a sci-fi ttrpg with some online friends and we are just about to round out the first day as they were just getting off of a ship, tired after a long cryostasis. One of my players decided that they would like to scout ahead in a dangerous swamp where it was prefaced that there may be some mysterious movement out in the dark. They convinced the night guard that they were fine to go on their own despite his warnings and then proceeded to fail three separate checks. She rolls a 5 and gets hopelessly lost in the swamp, rolls -2 getting stuck in the mud as mysterious machinery comes closer, and finally a -1 to pull herself free with an ax and collapses a tree near her and is picked up by a mech where the scene cuts. After the session had ended that night and I asked how everyone was feeling, I was surprised to find that all of my players and especially the one who had been kidnapped had fully expected that she had died in that scene. Although it was more work on my end as I had to readjust the final combat, it had turned out to be a very exciting but difficult fight as the players had to work with one less PC in an ambush turned rescue mission in which they succeeded. So I ask again, should I have been more harsh in my ruling after laying out the risks and dangers or is it all right to not want your players to die in what was our first session? I humbly lay myself at the feet of the court.

EightACactus

May it please the court and the Burp-less Bailiff, I present the case of the dancing druid. The only D&D campaign I've ever played in was soured by a druid who tried to seduce almost every NPC and bad guy we encountered. In an early encounter, she tried to do a "sexy goblin dance" to distract some goblins we encountered. She rolled a nat 20 and honestly it was pretty funny as the rest of the party killed them while she kept them busy. This success emboldened her to the point where she tried to dance her way through every subsequent encounter for the rest of our short-lived campaign. She also wild-shaped into a horse at one point and wanted the DM to narrate her mating with an inn keeper's horse. She picked a fight with any NPC who didn't fall for her "charms" and just generally made every encounter all about her and whether or not she could "get some". The rest of the party quickly got tired of this behavior and the game dissolved after 4 or 5 sessions of her nonsense. Please punish this behavior so that it is not inflicted on anyone else unlucky enough to play with her in the future.

Banana Bread

May it please the court, the righteous judges, and the mysterious loner bailiff. I present the case of Edgy Paladin v. Monster Mobsters. I am one of two DMs in a West March campaign and this particular case involves a Lawful Evil Conquest Paladin/Hexblade Warlock character named Morrigan. She and her party ventured to a lawless city of monstrous races where chaos reigned supreme, named Olgard or, colloquially, New Orc City. Morrigan wanted to use the opportunity to kill as much as possible so she could send souls to her patron, but the other two Good-aligned characters were able to steer her towards the actual quest, working with a gang of Gnolls who were being harassed by a gang of noseless goblins to gain allies inside the city. They went on to fight a purple worm that was being healed by 5 cultists, quite a long combat. However, even though the mission had been completed and the party was wounded, Morrigan wanted to attack the entire camp. It took about fifteen real minutes for the party to get her to leave, where they then returned to the Gnoll leader for reward. The rest of the party took their reward and began to head to HQ, but Morrigan circled back and attempted to steal a magic sword that was for sale. She rolled very poor stealth, so I told her to roll initiative. A slog ensued, where she was the only player involved for two to three rounds of running around, until her fellow party found her. The party begged her to come back. She refused. Me and the other DM both agreed on an ultimatum, because it was 2 in the morning, leave the sword or roll a d20. On an 11 or higher, she got the sword, on a 10 or lower, she dies. A private shouting match ensued, where she said that she would've been able to get out if initiative hadn't been rolled, and I responded saying that it was a intense situation and it was prompted. She eventually relented. upset, but I’ve always wondered if me and my partner DM were too harsh! So I ask, were we too strict in our ruling, or was Morrigan being too chaotic for New Orc City? P.S. No one in the party used swords, my co-DM was a player in that particular session, and this all happened at around two or three in the morning.

Pat N.

May it please the youngstices and the babe-liff Jakey, My friends and I just started in a new campaign in which the DM and 2 of us PCs are somewhat experienced D&D-ers, but we have a 1st timer. The newbie is role playing her character aggressively at odds with us other PCs, thinking we are beneath her station and not worth her time, she merely entertains our existence occasionally bc of a common end goal. Me and the other lowly PC started role playing accordingly, telling the DM we want to go off on our own and keeping actual secrets from the newbie and her PC. Is this a toxic table or just immersive role playing?! Thanks, Pat For example, every time we go into a shop, she makes us let her go in 5 minutes ahead of her bc she doesn’t want to be seen with us. 🙄

David Silva

May it please the stunning and magnanimous Justice Murphy and everyone else...I guess, I come to you with the case of the Retconned Rescue. My Conquest Paladin had sought vengeance against a sea elf empress who destroyed his kingdom and elected to toss the corpse of a sahuagin with the name of its commander into the sea as a message of sorts. This provoked an overwhelming attack on the small coastal town we were in. For two sessions we fought, holding the line at first and slowly losing ground as weresharks, priestesses and octopi started moving in with the aid of some kind of warlock raising the water level. NPCs were dying, the other PCs were getting evac'd by a mage with Dimension Door because they had been knocked out or too injured to keep going and my paladin was left by himself. Despite being dropped twice, he got up from death saves TWICE. Fully tapped out of resources and the only one on the battlefield, I drank a mystery potion and became large and was ready to die there. The next round passed without me getting hit and the made made it back to save me with Dimension Door. It was tense and my character had made peace with his coming death, but survived anyways. After the session, my DM messaged me to inform me that I was actually too big to be Dimension Doored and that I would technically have died there. There was a discussion and ultimately he allowed my character to live but I wonder, should I have accepted the fate that the rules decided or was I right to believe we should stick to what we played?

Kelslay

To the honorable judges and highly sought after bailiff Jack (unless the judges are against him today) I submit a simple case of narcolepsy in the party. I used to DM for three good friends, and at the best of times we could hold a session once a month. Our first few sessions were perfect, they'd be about 6 hours long and every one had a great time. The issue arose around session 4, and one of our party members would stop participating about an hour into the sessions. I, as the DM, kept them rolling as the other two were still very engaged. As hour 2 or 3 would roll around the other player would eventually disappear or simply get up from the table and go to the couch and promptly FALL ASLEEP. Well again, me and the other two party members were still having fun so we kept on rolling. After the sessions the sleepy party member would always complain to me about how we continued on without them, and now they didn't know what was going on in the campaign (and also expected to level up with the party). However, they never said they were tired, or bored, or anything! They would simply just go off and fall asleep, and that was after barely participaing in the first hour. So, I humbly ask the court, were we wrong in continuing our sessions? We did eventually get rid of this member (and Murph we're not friends now!), but at the time we honestly weren't missing much. I await my fate.

Carl, The Lubricated

Dear Johnerable Hustices and a man with fond memories of pee shivers, Jayliff Bake, I present to you the case of the narcoleptic dnd coworker: I’m a player (lvl 3 Atavist Goliath - a big tentacled blood-render) on Roll20 playing with a DM I work with but never talk to in person. Its weird. There are 3 other random reddit players, and they all tend toward extreme caution. Its gotten so bad that the last three sessions I have fallen asleep for up to an hour of gameplay, waking up with a start, then trying to seamlessly re-enter the discussion. This has been to mixed success. Our last session, we had just levelled up and I was excited to use my new subclass features. Instead, we chatted with a priest and a butcher for the ENTIRE 4 HOUR SESSION. Don’t get me wrong, I like social encounters as much as combat, but at a certain point, let me kill a goatman with a bloody whip. I ask ye fair court, should I take on the emotionally exhausting task of constantly pushing the group along and risk more inopportune slumber, or is it time to say adieu and hang out with my girlfriend on Monday evenings. What will the office say 😨

Whichendup

To the exemplary Honored Justices, and probably the Bailiff Trevor's roommate. I present the case of the off-screen character death. I had the rare opportunity to play a character rather than DM in a D&D campaign. The campaign was going well, as I was playinhg a scout style character rogue+ranger multiclass. My role in the party was mostly to disarm traps, track targets, and bring information to the party. We ended a session and the DM said "we'll pick back up next week after a few days have passed in game, what are your characters doing?" I told the DM that my scout would scout out the enemy base that we were looking to infiltrate, and report back to the party, then help with infiltration preparations. Next session, the DM went around the table and narrated simple events the other PCs had been getting up to based on the previous prompt until they turned to me last. The DM spun a narrative about how my character was captured during the scouting mission, tortured, and killed, but luckily a fellow prisoner was a cleric and cast in revivify to restore my poor scout to life, who then escaped without any of his equipment back to the party camp. When we infiltrated the camp we recovered his gear, freed all the prisoners, and annihilated the enemy. Equipment notwithstanding. Did the DM have the narrative authority to kill my character off off-screen between sessions?

Miranda G

Oh Holy Justices of the Supreme Church of Dice Christ, please help me find forgiveness! (Is this how you do a confession? I never went to church). My group concluded our 2 year campaign a couple of weeks ago. One of the last things we did was send off the ghost of an ancient silver dragon who had aided us throughout the campaign. He had served as my paladin’s patron while we were in a land that gods couldn’t reach, so I had a particular attachment to this npc. The scene was so epic, the dragon was so cool, and I was feeling so emotional about the campaign ending that I struggled to come up with anything at all to say. I wanted to tell him how grateful I was for his help, and how I’d try to follow in his footsteps in my paladin-y pursuit of justice… but all I managed was a few “oh my god”s and “thanks”. I told my DM how I was feeling afterwards, and he assured me that getting flustered was in character for my PC. But I’ve still been feeling real-life guilt over my weak farewell for weeks. Dice Christ, please help me overcome this guilt and let go of this made-up character who’s making me feel real-life emotions!

Kal and her cats Portland, Star, and Berlin

I wonder if there’s a way to call for court cases and implement a character/word limit. Like maybe creating a google doc or something and share the link on patreon for it? Just so that you don’t have to keep explaining what brief is 😅 No case! Just an idea to maybe help out

Tim Paul

To the venerable justices of the Supreme Crit, and… Jake… I present to thee the case of “Character Secrets Gone Wrong.” During character creation for a new campaign, it came up that all the PC’s got a “secret” that was to stay between me (the DM) and the individual PC. They were a bit open ended - things like “A ghost killed one of your family members” or “you are being hunted by a royal family for stealing documents” and I let the players come up with their own flavor for them (with my help if needed). Things got weird almost instantly: one of the players got the aforementioned “stolen documents” secret, and decided that he would be none other than… Jared from Subway… Yuhp, that’s right. The content of his documents? I’m going to let you infer. Needless to say I vetoed it immediately on grounds that I refused to work that into the campaign, and he spent the next WEEK trying convince me that it wasn’t a bad idea and that “the pants jokes would be hilarious.” Justices, was I wrong to deny my player the Freedom of Backstory put forth in the first amendment of the Players Bill of Rights? I humbly await thy verdict.

ML Allswede

Honorable Justices! Merciful bailiff! I come before you to cry murder, MURDER before the court! A few years back my Barbarain/Druid stood by helplessly while a magical tower killed his son (another PC). After that scarring and traumatic experience, he found a small monkey that he began to raise and rear on his own, sort of like John Wick with the puppy from his wife before the plot begins. This monkey mostly did nothing mechanically, and was largely for role-play purposes. Then, two adventures later our party was trapped in a gladiatorial combat wherein we had to escape via gaseous form. I cast fog cloud to cover the escape and then transformed my party. Last but not least, however, was my monkey. When I asked my DM if I could transform the monkey with me, the DM paused, went "I forgot about the monkey. Let me see if he gets attacked." Rolled an attack from the crowd, and then narrated how my monkey was one shot killed by a tomato flung from the crowds. JUDGES this violence still cankers my relationship with this DM. So I ask, was my DM right to kill my therapy monkey, or was it my fault as a negligent father bringing a 1hp creature on an adventure? (PS the DM later tried to give me an owl in game as an apology, but both my character and I could not find it in us to love again.)

Brittney Bee

I have a confession to dice Christ. I was once in a pirate themed campaign and we got into a major battle session one that would then lead us to joining the crew of a ship. We were very low level and I was in the single digits when it came to hit points. Our DM asked for a Dexterity saving throw which I quickly failed, and I knew I was going to go down so I asked how much damage I was going to take and the DM just said I was fine, before telling those who succeed the halves amount of damage they took, with a little bit of math I figured out that I should have been perma killed from that and brought it up to my DM to which he repeated “no you’re fine”. I let it slide but to this day I still feel guilty that the situation went like that.

Jay3001

To the honorable justices Axford, Tanner, Murphy and also bailiff jake I guess, I present the case of the high player. I did an abroad gap year program about 4 years ago, and when we started to drift apart about a year after the program I asked if people would be interested in an online summer only dnd game that I would run. The 5 others agreed to play a heavily modified Curse of Strahd though they’d mostly never played dnd before. I told them I’d walk them thru everything but it can get complicated so to just show up sober enough to keep track of stuff like spell slots and plot. While most of my players adhere to this rule and only show up slightly high if at all, I have one friend who keeps pushing the limit and our last session of last summer he showed up high on shrooms to the session. My friends all laughed and said it was “dedication” but that player barely talked the entire session. I had to call his name multiple times when it was his turn in battle and more than once he said “idk my character does his strongest spell, you pick”. I’m a fairly new DM and already feel in over my head during combats with helping my 5 friends understand their powers, playing an NPC they picked up, and ofc the villains, I don’t have the ability to basically play his character as well! I’m frustrated that I don’t think this player has ever showed up sober (or near sober) when I put a lot of effort into this game. But seeing as this is really the only way that my friends from this gap year hang out, am I wrong for wanting to kick this player out? I humbly accept your judgement

Jay S.

To the greatly honorable justices and the man who reads our humble words, today I submit the case of Rebuking the Simulacrum. My boyfriend and I (both of us both players & DMs) were debating the limits and possibilities of certain spells and strategies when he casually suggested creating a Trojan bomb. He proposed that (at the appropriate levels of course) that one member of the party could create a simulacrum for a combat with another member being a paladin. The BBEG could mistake the cast simulacrum for a PC and cast a spell on it like Finger of Death for example. The plan would cause no damage to your party but the paladin would be able to Rebuke the whole HECK TON of violence being done to the simulacrum. Here’s the thing, rules as written, the simulacrum is a creature and Finger of Death affects a creature. But, I disagreed and said the simulacrum is an illusory duplicate so not a true creature. Am I correct in saying that this simulacrum wouldn’t be affected by Finger of Death? We dutifully accept the judgment of the wise and benevolent court and any punishments or favors granted by it. P.S. The stakes aren’t high here but my god, my boyfriend and I lovingly competitive! <3

Oily Josh

May it please the quixotic court and whichever strong independent bailiff is keeping the order this week I present a case against my player but beg you treat them lightly as they know not what they do. I run a fully homebrewed campaign where the party is advancing through a tower with each "floor" being a demi plane with whole different world contained within. They've progressed from standard fantasy world to an infinite giant forest to the current pirate utopia named Paradise. As a result of completing several insane level challenges and my ADHD wanting to give them new, powerful things they are all decked out in massively magical and amazing gear. The only issue is they never use any of the cool abilities or powers I've given them. This is up to and including each of them having a vestige of divergence and some having an Arm of the Betrayer gods as well. Dear justices how can I sate my new for novel things when my party seems to have less object permanece than I do. Thanks, Attention Deficit DM

Axle

To the honourable Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, as well as the Equally Honourable/Slightly Less Honourable/Depraved and Lowly (circle one) Bailiff Jake, I present the case of the Wild Shaped Familiar For Halloween this year, I played a Druid in a Hansel and Gretel one shot. When we got to the gingerbread lair, we captured the Sugar Hag’s frog familiar. As a Druid, I suggested I wild shape into a frog and take its place to spy on the witch, but the DM said no, because frogs have a swimming speed and at level 3, I couldn’t wild shape into animals with a swim speed yet. I argued that I wasn’t going to try and swim, and that Rules As Intended was that Druids couldn’t access animals with a flying or swimming speed too early so that they couldn’t gain the effects of the spells Water Breathing or Fly before other classes. I further posited that if I turned into a frog and was forced to swim, I would happily drown to support my case, but the DM said no and we moved on. We still had a fun time fighting gingerbread golems, but I believe this ruling, while technically RAW, is worth appealing to the Higher Crits.

Megan Adams

To the honored justices and frankly deplorable bailiff, I present the case of flirtation woes: I DM a 5e campaign for a group of friends, with this particular campaign having run for about 4 years. Two of our players -- our cleric and our gunslinger -- are a married couple IRL, with the cleric being a wonderful lady and the gunslinger being a great dude. The cleric tends to go through her characters like a kid through candy, whereas the gunslinger has had his character since session one. With that being said, the gunslinger will resolutely flirt with any of his wife's characters, no matter what. This has made her uncomfortable in the past (she's not a demonstrative person or a big RP'er), and there's been times when she'll mute her end of the call and she'll let me know that the reason it's silent over there is because she's chewing her husband out. The couple got things mostly figured out, which relieved me because a) they're my friends and b) I really didn't want to have to step in to that situation as a DM. However: while the gunslinger no longer flirts with his wife's characters, he now flirts with most female NPCs, because he enjoys playing his character as a sort of luckless Lothario. While I understand that the gunslinger is only doing this as a joke... the flirting still makes his wife uncomfortable, even though it's no longer her characters taking the brunt of some truly god-awful pickup lines. As both a DM who wants everyone at the table to have a good time, and as a person who wants her loved friends to be happy, what's the wisest move to make here?

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.

Mitch

Dear Emily, Jake, Caldwell, and Murph, who I consider to just be regular people, was well as any other special guest. My friend recently started a pirate themed campaign, and inside a pub we saw a person we had fought before. While the rest of the party talked, I decided to throw a stool at him. I was told to roll and subsequently did 1d4 of damage. But there were no consequences. Here is where I maybe was a jerk. My friend is fairly new at DMimg, and so I decided to throw another stool. The guy was still talking to the party. Again no backlash. I threw an additional seven stools before he became bloodied and decided to fight back. Guys, am I wrong to continue to do something that kept working despite playing on the inexperience of my DM?

Unfitmoviebuff

To the honorable justices Emilio, Rian, and Caulder, and the lowly bailiff Diddle. I present the case of The Rock style Ambush. It was my first campaign as a player and our group met on Roll20. We were playing Lost Mines into Storm Kings Thunder for over a year by this point, level 7 or 8, and grew to be good friends. After climbing up an ice wall riddled with harpies we arrived at the doors of the giant temple. After some frustration we couldn’t figure out a way in because the giant stone doors were too heavy for us to lift up so our noble wizard flew up to the roof and found a small crevice for him to squeeze through and enter hoping to find a way to open it from the inside. Well, what was awaiting us was a tribe of about a dozen exiled Goliath barbarians and their pet guard drake. Our giant companion Harshnag eventually reached us as he had to get to the temple a separate way and he lifted the stone doors for us. Our barbarian PC challenged their leader in hopes to free our wizard from their capture but of course as exiled barbarians do, as soon as our PC was getting the upper hand they all started to attack us. Now, the layout of the room had us and some barbarians in a lower section and two sides of the room had 15 foot high ledges where barbarians were firing ranged attacks on us. It was very much like the marine ambush scene from Nick Cage’s The Rock. Brutal and traumatic. If only we could smell what the DM was cookin’. Long story short 4 of our party members died to rounds of failed death saves after fighting for our lives. 2 players barely survived. We even tried intimidating the barbarians after killing their leader but failed. We asked why our giant ally Harshnag wasn’t jumping into the fray and our DM said it was because he was holding the door up and even when he joined the fight he left his great axe to prop the stone door up making his attacks much weaker. I ask you justices, was our DM being needlessly brutal. The temple was an important location to the main quest and we weren’t just going to leave party members behind when all hell broke loose. A few sessions before the encounter we as a party complained to the DM about recent encounters being unimportant and needlessly difficult where the DM just responded with “I personally like my encounters crunchy.” P.S. we disbanded the group sessions later as new characters were just not the same dynamic and encounters remained extremely difficult. We all remained friends on discord minus the DM.

Matty Young

To the most slammin' of Justices, Judge Axeford Murphy and Tanner, and in passing glance to the supremely dunkable bailiff Jim, I present the case of the copycat campaign. Just two short years ago, my partner and I sat ourselves down to a new campaign with a new set of characters. In my case, a Tiefling Forge Cleric, and in her case a Kenku Battle master Fighter. We begin our campaign in a swampy setting saving some lost teens from a swamp, find ourselves under a bubbled city and interacting with a cleric turned evil God and wandering through the elemental planes while dealing with a plague affecting a local community. Sound familiar? This would all be well and good, as campaign inspiration comes from all over. Except, during character creation our backstories were suddenly changed to my Tiefling growing up at the Dwarphanage, and my partner's Kenku family suddenly being made huge and very Crick-themed. Secret reveals during the campaign such as being my Tiefling being named Elias Stormborn, there being a mystical fungal "Bird Rot" that affected my partner's character, and a warlock of Asmodeus suddenly being treated like an honored paladin of Pelor. The higher we leveled up, the more we were put on very specific rails until one day I started a new podcast. NADDPOD. I not only heard inspiration, but a literal beat for beat retelling of the campaign we had just been going through for months, having random details of our characters changed and nerfed randomly for no explanation. Turns out, if we deviated from your preexisting pathways, the rules stopped working until a DM narration got us back on track. When we brought this up, the DM wordlessly dissolved the in person campaign between weeks and we are not in contact with them much more. PS they also claimed your maps and art as their own, and eventually we had our own bizarre Mavrus as well as my girlfriend swapped into a divine soul sorcerer Tiefling, love the show and think y'all are amazing and it was like experiencing a timeline shift listening to campaign 1

Thomas Hegarty

May it tickle the court and intrigue the bailiff. I present the case of the problem former DM. I’m running my first campaign and one of the players is a former DM. While I was initially excited to have someone to lean on if I forgot any rules. He had quickly turned into my only problem player. In character creation he tried to police two of the other player’s characters back story slash class and told them all despite my insistence that this was not true that they didn’t have to worry about frontline because he would be playing a way of the long death monk. Two sessions ago he nearly got the party tpkd by walking up to a group of guards after being reminded that party was seen mid crime by a high ranking member of the police faction. Last session his thorn was that, while he was two hp and still in the same city, he insulted the person that came up to them with a copy of their wanted posters and I didn’t have him roll initiative when the guy punched him. I did ask him are you sure you insult this got? I thought I was being nice because I allowed a rewind of the scene and to me the rest of the party shouldn’t suffer. Also initiative to me in that case would mean that other guards would then show up. I was allowing them an out. In the rewind the party member who is from that section of the city took the lead in the scene and they ended up getting a short rest before escaping. So I ask your court was I wrong for not rolling initiative before letting a guard clock this problem player’s pc? Or should he learn how to read situations better?

Erica Payne

May it please the court and mystify the bailif. I have been playing with a group of my co-workers for several months. During our last session, one member arrived an hour late and already drunk (drove himself). Throughout the session, he continued drink more and became extremely disruptive. This person plays a seriously underwhelming bard named Duke. He often insults the other PCs in his out of combat roleplaying, and will insult people IRL but pretend to be in character. When we finally killed the boss, he began yelling at all of us about how he couldn't believe we did something as morally reprehensible as killing the boss. He became completely belligerent in character and out of character, much to the confusion and discomfort of the other players and the DMs. We tried to roleplay a conversation in character about why we had to kill the boss, but Duke was not having it. The rest of the players were clearly uncomfortable and upset, and the DMs awarded Duke a point of inspiration for his "committed role-playing," which didn't seem right to me, because Duke had been taking part in the fight and attempting to kill the boss only minutes before. Also because he was being a serious jackass. I felt the spirit of a problem player rising up in me. During the fight, Duke had been knocked out twice and was at very low HP when we finished. At the peak of the conflict, I refrained from attempting to kill Duke in character just to shut him up. I'm not sure if the DM would have even allowed me to try and kill him, but I am certain that the other players would have made no motion to stop me. Likewise, I am certain that my more optimized character could have easily destroyed him. I was ready to go nuclear, but I used my better judgement and did not murder his character in order to make working with him in the future slightly less horrible. I have since abandoned the group, as I have no desire to be insulted for hours by a rowdy 45 year-old man. Honorable justices, I ask you this: should I have just gone crazy on this fool? Is there ever a time when becoming a problem player is the right thing to do? I await your punishment, as nothing you can sentence me to is worse than interacting with this man in real life.

Ghostedflakes

To the Honorable Justices and slightly less Honorable bailiff, I present the case of Strength v. Charm Person. At the end of an arc while the rest of the party fought off the possessed head librarian, our paladin and I were baracaded on the balcony attempting to purify a demonic book that caused the corruption. My character was performing the ritual while the paladin held the door. Here's where things go wrong: once the head librarian is defeated and the book is purified the DM described what remained of the book as a blank tome bound in an elvish style that had been lost to time, the perfect item for my cleric whose entire mission was a search for lost knowledge. She even specified that our sense evil did not pick up anything. However before I could say anything, the paladin narrated ripping the tome in two citing a fear that the book was somehow still possessed. I argued that since I did the ritual the book was in my hands and so the paladin did a strength check to grab it from me and succeeded. I then used charm person to try and get it back to which the paladin’s player argued that we weren't allowed to impose actions on eachother through magic, a rule that we generally employ. Normally I would agree but I argued that he had just imposed an action on me using his strength modifier and so I should be allowed to do the same with my spell save DC. It was agreed by the rest of the party that I could not cast a spell on him and he threw the book off the balcony which lead to my character jumping off after it since my character was always described as a religious fanatic for books. My DM ultimately resolved the issue outside of the game, confirming that the book was meant for me and was not evil. The situation was retconned and the paladin apologized but I still wonder if I was wrong to try a Charm Person after he used his strength to pull the book out of my hands. I await the court's judgement.

Michael Dawson

I was DMing session one of my first completely homebrewed campaign. The opening premise was a "Suicide Squad" setup where an evil King was drafting prisoners and convicts -including the players- into his army. They were being sent into another country across the sea that had been destroyed by undead to retrieve a magical artifact that the King wanted, with the promise that whoever managed to bring it to him would receive a full pardon regardless of their crimes. Unfortunately they didn't even make it out of the opening before the drama began. The players were brought before the King, bound in chains, while he explained what he was planning to do with them. Suddenly, the Divine Soul Sorcerer made an obscene comment about the King's mother. Specifically, that "he was only King because his mother spread her legs for the right cock". I admit, I was flabbergasted by this. I tried to give him two outs, first via the old "Are you SURE you want to say that?" routine, and second a persuasion check to pass it off as an absurd joke, which he refused. The player was adamant the King wouldn't do anything because he "needed" them. I tried to explain that was not the case, he had sent dozens of other prisoners to their deaths and had no reason to believe the players' group would be any different, but the player held firm. I was left with the impression that the player was metagaming -making his insult on the assumption that I, the DM, would let him off with a slap on the wrist rather than what would realistically happen in-universe in that circumstance- so I called his theoretical bluff. The King had him executed on the spot. Obviously, the player was very upset, as he had put a fair bit of effort into his character in preparation for the campaign. I tried to make it up to him by saying he could basically just reuse his build and backstory for his new character if he wanted to since none of the other players knew it anyway, but I could tell he'd lost interest and he ended up dropping out of the campaign a couple sessions later. Should I have just let it go? As a DM, I think it damages immersion when players can do whatever they want without regard for the consequences of their actions. But in hindsight, I think I might have picked too small a hill to kill on, and this interaction wasn't worth losing a player over.

Birthday Girl Cara

May it please the justices in their high chairs and the bailiff in his tiny baby stool for babies, I present the case of the protagonist paladin. I DM for a group of new players who have all been really excited about starting a proper home campaign. We played a couple one shots to get them used to the rules etc and we finally had our first session of the real story. One of my players introduces their character, a paladin who is the child of the King, being chased by the forces of evil which only they can stop. I tried to find a middle ground between letting them having their character while also letting them know that this is a collaborative story telling experience, so I offered the caviat that their kingdom is on another plane and though that stuff might not impact our plane right now, it *could* some time later in the campaign. They were completely bummed out and bailed on the whole character, opting instead to basically not have a backstory. Gracious judges and also Jack, I ask, was I being a major buzz kill? Or was my fear that the other players might be relegated to sidekicks justified? If I must be punished, I opt to be croissanted or blasted by grandma in leu of serving time

Strafe Stopper

Hi Jake :) And Hello Wizards of the crit, I present the case of the possible cheated set of ability scores. We are doing a module (Decent into Avernus) to have a few of our newest players practice for a big campaign/podcast I have been writing for the better part of 2022. We all made characters and stuff. I said we should roll stats at the table. Anyway, he rolled his stats while we were running an errand and before anyone else was at our place. His rolls were (with added bonuses that his class 5 him): 20, 16, 19, 15, 16, 14. Mathematally, this is possible. But it just seems absolutely nuts that he rolled this well. It probably helps to add that we have suspected that he lies about things semi-often. It also sucks cause he lost his job and apartment, and his parents wouldn't tame him in. So he moved across the US into our apartment. Other issues with him make me not want him in my big campaign as well. The chemistry is wrong with him and the rest of my players. He also flat out makes them uncomfortable. Anyway, while he was at work we played Decent into Avernus without him and are going to lie about not being able to play sessions with him. We are probably gonna find a way to start out big campaign and show without him. I'm sure we made the correct decision in this case as your history of brutal "get new friends" blanket statements seem to dictate. Have a pleasant day, Jake :)

Steven Hoffart

To the honourable judges, bound by law, and the bailiff, Jake, bound in servitude. Recently a player in my campaign changed her subclass to reflect the change her character experienced after a near death battle. She gained a transformation power from this subclass and did a big reveal of it after becoming bloodied in a fight. The reveal was epic and the table seemed really excited and into this change the PC had experienced. However, in the same fight, only 10 minutes later, our Monk was bloodied and he too revealed a transformation but it was not something we discussed, was not in his subclass or his backstory. After the session I confronted him and he said “no, it was always part of his character.” Am I wrong for asking him to apologize or was this truly a crime. For context, he is a Mercy Monk.

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.

Ethan H

If it satisfies the Justices, and somewhat satiate the bailiff... I would like this the highest of courts to review the following. This campaign was to be a short quest capped at level five. It was going to be 3 to 5 sesions. Unfortunately we only made it to two sessions. As the DM moved out of state. We were going to travel by boat through a series of islands. Starting in a low fantasy country that was empovrished and finishing in a high fantasy land that had many an opportunity for us. I was playing a human monk named Bohdi (I was watching Ranking of Kings at the time and wanted to play Boji but wanted the charecter to fit in universe) who was inspired by listening to the Hexbloods. This was my first dnd game and I really liked those eps from Eldermourne. I have been listening to Ya'lls POD since the Moonstone chronicles, and I finally got enough people together that wanted to play. But this my justices is where my case lies. The DM had colluded with the player at the table who had the most experience with DnD. This player was to be a secret heel who was trying to get us killed on our journey. This caused a division amongst the players would just go along with what the Heel would say (partially cause he was basically teaching the newer players the rules as we played). I at the time didn't know he was playing a heel so i challenged him on some choices that were pretty dangerous to the group. This meant that we became a little separated as a crew and I often ended up doing my own thing while everyone else followed the Heel. So Justices this is where I ask you for judgment as I am a bit salty. Is it ok as a DM to plant a mole? And was it maybe the wrong campaign to do it in as we had 3 first time players? Or am I just being a bit salty about the other players not listening to my input? Thank you for your swift and righteous judgment, Eytan

Dennis J. Dolan

(Strahd spoilers, if you care) (Also, language) To the truly venerable and ever merciful justices, Urphy, Axelwel and Taylor and the honestly ok-ish… I want to say Balif Jake, but I don’t think that’s right. Regardless I come to your hallowed halls hoping to get an answer to an inquiry. We fucked up, but who is responsible for us fucking up? I’ve been playing Curse of Strahd with a group of 5, a DM and 4 players (I’m a player). We’ve made it to level 5 at the time of writing this, but despite that our party had built a reputation for being a bit gung-ho about combat and often getting into a lot of trouble because of our cavalier attitudes (myself included). This particular story, however, is perhaps the most trouble we’ve ever gotten into. The story takes place at one of Vallaki’s many festivals held by the town’s Burgamaster, Dmitri Krezkov. Suddenly, an audience member laughs at Dmitri’s expense (we’ll call this audience member Tucker for the sake of this story and Jake's psyche). Dmitri arrests Tucker on the spot and ties him to his horse with the intent to drag him across the pavement. The party knew we needed to do something and our changeling bard quickly took charge and told us to make a distraction as he shifted into Tucker to make the guards think they grabbed the wrong guy. He ended up shouting at Dmitri, telling him to suck a fat one and Dmirti took offense to that, telling the guards to kill all who are involved with this hanous insult. Things were looking grim, so our half-elf ranger tried to move quickly to cut the ropes off Tucker as our half-elf blood hunter and I, human warlock, attempted to buy him time. This took the form of him transforming in his lycan form and me crown of madnessing a guard and forcing them to attack Dmitri. However, this only made things EVEN worse as Dmitri flead in terror, dragging Tucker almost to his death just as the ranger managed to free him. After that, the fight was on and our goals were simple, 1. Kill Dmitri, 2. Get Tucker to safety and 3. Get THE HELL outta town. But that was easier said than done, as what followed was perhaps THE most stressful combat encounter I have ever experienced in my short time playing D&D. Over the course of two sessions, we battled our way through dozens of guards, missed nearly all our attacks on Dmirti and even encountered a minor antagonist that we weren’t supposed to encounter just yet in Isek, Dmitri’s right hand man and scientist with a weird lobster hand. What this whole thing ultimately led to was Dmitri escaping to his home, our bard managing to get a severely wounded Tucker to safety, the two half elves picking off guards one by one before eventually fleaing the scene and my character distracting and leading Isek and the guards away from the party, which ended with my first ever PC death playing D&D. Now to be %1000 clear, none of us in our group hold any ill will towards one another for this incident. If anything, it’s brought us closer as a group, as it’s one of the most memorable moments of our campaign and the sheer ballsiness of it is something that we will all cherish from our time playing this game together. HOWEVER, we know that someone MASSIVELY fucked up and we would like to know who exactly is to blame for it. So on behave of our playing group, I ask you again. Who is responsible for us fucking up?

BeuligXander

May it please the esteemed justices and bailiff also Caldwell, i bring you the case of planning vs execution: My dnd group is doing an aspiring super villain campaign set in a modernist world. (Think The Venture Bros) The first session was supposed to be the heist of an armored car. They started the game split and one player decided to execute an elaborate plan to start a riot around the armored car, while the other two party members having no knowledge of this plan in game decided to steal a truck and crash it into the armored car. Needless to say, many civilians died, and neither plan went particularly well, and somehow this result is seen as my fault. Was i right to allow the split party to make two contradictory plans and execute both simultaneously? Is the loss of NPC life on my hands?

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😊

Dr. Bearkele

May it please the illustrious court and the lascivious bailiff, I present the case of the Player-DM Who Wants to Have His Cake and Eat It Too. I'm playing a campaign of Curse of Strahd with some friends, with my partner DMing. It's his first long-campaign that he's DMing and DnD is for sure not his TTRPG system of choice, so it was really nice of him to run DnD for us anyways. A few sessions ago, one of our players announced that he was going to run Strahd for his friend group as well. This is problematic for a few reasons. Firstly, Strahd isn't a linear campaign, so this player is going to basically have all of the stat sheets for all of the bad guys, as well as all the NPC backgrounds and motivations. He claims that he can play his character as if he doesn't know those things, but us other players are skeptical about massive metagaming potential that could theoretically ruin all the fun for us. We also suggested perhaps that he start his campaign before his players get to Barovia, in order to let our campaign get ahead enough that the spoilers won't be such a big deal, but he suggested that without a module to follow, he had no interest. Finally, the last reason this is kind of crappy is because our game nights are also 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)

Dr. Bearkele

This feels a bit less like a DnD court entry and more like you know what's up and you know what you have to do, but it's hard bc they live at your house. Best of luck sorting it out, I know honesty can create crushing drama, but you can't let this person ruin something personal that you put hard work into. If they can't respect that, sounds like a personal problem for the player, not you...

Raustie Scho

Party Will be at the Boston Show. I present a you 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.

Dr. Bearkele

I forgive you bc you said "down under blunder" 👌🏼

Samwell54

To the terse bailiff and the debate lords , I present to the crit the case of the mind reading sea leviathan. I was playing a very specific build that maximized counter damage. A Danny Devito sized tiefling Phoenix sorcerer named Boy that uses spells like fire shield and armor of Agathas to do damage when he got hit. We were fighting a sea leviathan boss that the dm said could read our minds and therefor wouldn’t hit me because it knew how my gimmick worked. It ended up getting away with low health but I did the math and I definitely would’ve killed it if it hit me. Was I robbed?! I explore you to convene on this matter and dispense justice accordingly

Samwell54

this is the specific combo. Fire shield+armor of agathas+mantle of flame(class ability) + flames of phlegethos(feat)+ hellish rebuke 1d4+2d8+3d10+(charisma modifier)+(armor of Agatha’s dmg)

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.

Armadon the only

Dear honorable judges and the overworked bailiff/clerk of court Jack. I present the deadly test encounter I ran a theme game where the players, a full crew of 6 were staring at 10th level. Their opening task was to recruit the last player and help him did a swamp of a black dragon. I chose a CR 14 black dragon just to test the strength of the group. 6 rounds later battle over most of the party had died once but all survived and were spell exhausted. I let them full rest gave them magic items but got annoyed talking to that the fight was too much too soon. All I said was ok, and didn’t explain my reasons after that because I don’t think I need too. Should I have explained my reasons

TheNoodleDoodler

Dear Honourable Judges and whatever the current consensus on the bailiff may be I present the case of the uneven item advantage I DM a game that is a bunch of linked one shots. instead of leveling up characters at the end of every one shot I give a randomly decided uncommon to rare magic item to each player that participated one player frequently doesn't attend my sessions usually providing an excuse like not feeling like playing or playing video games instead. in the most recent oneshot the players asked for pvp so we did arena style combat. the often absent player quickly grew mad when he realized everyone had a lot more magic toys to use saying this was unfair and I shouldn't have let them use the magic items since he had so many less. he ended up quitting the session partway through should I have tried to balance this pvp more or was I right to let everyone play with the toys they earned from their adventures?

Storybored

[Keep my name anonymous if read] To the illustrious judges and luxurious bailiff, I played as a mana-draining warforged named Syphon in a fun role-play focused campaign. 6 sessions in, we encountered a powerful witch who knew the location of a prisoner needed to avert an upcoming apocalypse. The witch said she'd help us for half our remaining lifespans, which the party wasn't into. We negotiated for a while, making alternate terms and offers but she was firm. It was half our lives or nothing. So naturally Syphon swung at her knees with a warhammer and implored her to reconsider. This only got her real peeved, so another PC decapitated her before she could repair her bones and attack us. Worth noting is all our alignments were lowered due to Ent related shenanigans, making Syphon lawful evil from nuetral. This was a fun scene that the party enjoyed, but apparently this witch was truly the ONLY person who knew the location, and this prisoner was the ONLY way to save the world. So the world ended. True the negotiation tactic failed, but Syphon and a few other PCs would never have accepted the deal as presented, yet apparently we had to or the game ends. Should the DM have let us find another way to complete the quest, or was our rigid role-play doomed to bring about ragnarok?

Storybored

P.S: I always visualized Moonshine as Merideth from Brave, so it was honestly jarring to see Emily on the youtube channel was a human being and not the animated Scottish princess I envisioned her as

Tess Bre

May it please the honourable court and possibly displease the cheeky bailiff Jake, this is the case of the Terrible Tarrasque fight that resulted in a table of 6 out of 7 players leaving a game overnight. This was a group that met played on Roll20 and had been for 3 years. It had been a long campaign before this, but the main thing is we (the party) ended up being tricked into releasing the Tarrasque by the DM in order to have this story beat. The DM ran this fight very strangely. The Tarrasque had: - Endless Legendary Resistances - Not immune to physical damages from ranged weapons but not close range - Reflected only fire spell damage (we had a Fire Sorcerer in the party) - EG: lvl 12 Rouge simply gave the help action 9 turns in a row for lack of anything else to do. - There were canons on the battlefield that required DC 25 INT check to operate but only did 1d6 damage after passing the check The fight and session ended with no deaths or death saves. But not two days later both myself and another player quietly left the campaign, and I found out that 4 of the others also left at the same time after a massive argument. Leaving the DM and his GF to continue the campaign solo. Judges, were we wrong to leave over this kinda boring Tarrasque fight? I place myself on your sword and wait your judgment. (P.S. We had tried communicating with the DM several times before about issues we had before this fight began but we went ignored, this was kind of the last straw)

Samwell54

May it please the venerable justices who decree law and the lowly justice who keeps people in the courtroom while court is in session I present the case of the Oni and the player that wanted 20k exp. We were playing a rokugan game, a fantasy inspired feudal Japan setting, and we ended up fighting the leader of a zombie infested town who was secretly an Oni. My character mondo went down in the first round and almost got finished off by the boss but the rest of the party saved me. It was awesome. The problem happened after the fight when BOBO, a new player in the group, demanded 20k exp for killing the Oni. A random number he found online for a similar boss which wasn’t even the stats used for the boss we fought . The Dm refused but BOBO didn’t back down. It got so bad he was kicked out from the group. Should BOBO have gotten his exp. I leave it to the court to decide

Sally Anne

To the venerable, scrupulous judges on high (and old mate, who I suppose is there too). I humbly submit this question for your consideration: what does taking the "hide" action get you in combat? In our most recent combat I wanted to try out my new rogue ability, the "cunning action", which allows you to "Dash, Disengage, or Hide" as a bonus action. I rolled to "hide" as my bonus, rolling a 26 stealth, and I also moved my character around a corner and flush with the wall of a building out of direct eyesight of combatants, to ensure the action made story sense with the imagined gameplay. The DM (my girlfriend, who is usually gracious and fair) told me that my stealth roll would go against other combatants' passive perception, as anticipated. This was fine until a combatant in pursuit of another PC moved around the building to the area near where I was "hidden" (or so I thought!), and the DM stated that the combatant was now engaged with me. I said, "but I took the hide action?", to which she replied that because the other character moved to within eyeline of my position, and there were no obvious large objects (e.g. a crate) to hide behind visible on the real battle map we were using, I could now be seen irrespective of what I'd rolled for stealth. My thinking was that not every item one could possibly hide behind is going to be visible on a battle map (for example, an old piece of cloth hanging from a rafter, deep shadow). Moreover, if a "hide" check is just about moving behind a building or large object, then in many circumstances how is it any different than just using your movement to get out of eyesight for cover? Surely within reasonable bounds, using part of your action economy to "hide" should get you some extra benefit, especially when it is built into your class abilities as is with rogues? Would it not be fair to say that the stealth roll itself is determining both a) your skill in using the available materials/conditions to hide yourself and b) by extension, how conducive the environment is to hiding you? Given my stealth roll in this instance was so high it felt like quite the shock to be foiled. Please judges, kindly lend your considerable brains and experience to this conundrum. Do you think I'm being a greedy guts or has my girlfriend unreasonably hamstrung one of my core abilities? Yours very humbly 💛 P.S: A note to the kind bailiff, who I actually think is also venerable and wise, but being rude to you appears to be everyone's kink (?) and who am I to stand in the way of four boners. Please please please do not reveal this information until after you've thoroughly discussed my case, as I am concerned that it will prejudice the court, but I have nonetheless included it because I thought it would be funny. In particular I believe it will prejudice Justice Murphy, because I know from careful listening to previous cases that he will fucking loath my build. My girl is a level 8 aarakocra, 6 levels ranger (monster slayer subclass) and 2 levels rogue, with the archery fighting style and sharpshooter feat. She is a fucking nightmare with a longbow. However, I promise that I'm a reasonable player (and person) who tries not to get up to total shenanigans, I do in fact frequently get hit, and I mostly use my powers to protect my beloved party (especially the even squishier cleric). Also, she was the first character I ever created, and it was my girlfriend who stepped me through the creation process back when I had no idea what any of it really meant (in order for me to play a solo one-shot she made me specially for my birthday back in 2020, my first ever DnD session!). So basically, I'm suggesting that if my girlfriend doesn't like it, it's her own damn fault for making me like this in the first place 😂 She also bought us both tickets to see you in Melbourne soon and we're both beyond excited!! 💕

Alejandro

May it please the uh… I present a simple question to somewhat set a precedent. Without going too much into details to keep it brief, if you (the player) miss a session, but the rest of the party (including your character) continues with a certain mission or quest. Is the player at fault for not knowing the information that the CHARACTER you play would know? Essentially, I had to miss out on a session but I told my fellow players and dm to continue playing without me, and the next session I asked what I had missed and was told a majority of what I had missed. But when I went to investigate a room, I unknowingly set off a trap that dealt a bunch of damage that nearly killed my character. When I asked about the trap, the other players of the party told me that they had already found that trap and knew about it. Was I at fault for not knowing what I wasn’t there for, even though my character would have seen and known about this?

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.

Camy Matsuda

To the brilliant justices of the court and the awesome bailiff, if it may please the court, I come to you with the case of the Codependent Character. This was a couple of years ago and it was the first time I was invited to play on a D&D table. I admit I was unsure at first, considering 2 things: 1st: the DM, my friend, decided the party would be more interesting if no one knew each other IRL. Inviting one of each of his friends groups to play, so the first time meeting would be “more authentic” in the campaign. 2nd: The DM actually invited one of our friends in common, which happened to be my partner for the final project presentation in College at that time. The second part wouldn’t be a problem except for one detail: my partner opted to be a non-verbal Kobold, that would follow me, a Dragonborn, around. Choosing me as his master and pretty much interpreter. As you can imagine, this made us spend a looong time together, in college and outside of it, besides putting me under a lot of pressure as a first time player. We argued for the first time in our friendship IRL leading him to be despondent at our table. Not interacting with the other players and removing himself from roleplay. Eventually I broke and told the DM I couldn’t play at that table anymore if it meant keeping my friend from having fun. We since have recovered our friendship but as the DM announced his next campaign he invited both of us to the table again, making me unsure of what to do. So judges I have to know: should I try to play at this table again, or should I kindly refuse? I humbly await your advice and judgment.

Nova

May it please the beautiful justices and lightly razz the bailiff, this isn’t as much of a case as a quandary. My friend and are both really jonesing for some D&D so we decided he will DM and I will play 2 PCs. One is an artificer and her great great grandad who accidentally full metal alchemized himself into a nimblewright. AKA the closest thing to a war forged in Faerun. Nimblewrights don’t talk in 5E. Which was good for RP purposes, since I’m the only player, but bad because he’s a paladin and 90% of paladin spells require verbal components. Luckily my DM isn’t insane and said we could just overlook it. But I’m still wondering in a more rule hard campaign how could a mute character work? Or even a kenku who can only repeat things they’ve heard? I await your sage wisdom and or razzing for not having more friends. PS if I must be punished please sentence me to picking ticks off Pawpaw.

Sebastian M.

To the shining light of justice represented by the almighty court and the morally ambiguous bailiff: I DM for a group of close friends and have got a player who’s taken the role of an annoyingly lawful good tiefling bard who never wants to steal anything from any NPC’s or bad guys lair/safe/locker etc. not even a freaking piece of paper with lore on it. this has led to some conflict. Especially with, you guessed it, the tabaxi rogue (who is played by my wife). When she introduced her character, he showed her the cold shoulder and was generally pretty mean, because he “hated their guts for their loose morale.” BUT: After a session, after we got home, the bards player sent us a picture – he had IRL stolen my wife’s new set of dice that she got for her character and claimed they where “now his”. My wife was pretty upset about this, especially because they did not clear the air after the session and she did not know if he (the player) really didn’t like her character, or, if this was just roleplay. My question is: Am I allowed to sacrifice the stealing Bard to an archdevil of greed for the actions of his player – or would this be considered unruly, as I’m legally wed to one of the fighting parties in this case? Also, how do you prevent players from misinterpreting bad words, fights and other bad stuff from the characters as being directed at the players? Thank you!

Nico

Greetings to the wonderful judges, Emily and Murph’s cats, Caldwell’s lovely daughter, Tucker and Jill, and that other guy! I am here today to request your wisdom more so than your judgment, if that’s okay. I invited a coworker to play a oneshot with my group (the DM was okay with this) and after, the DM invited him to join us permanently. We’d been a group for almost 3 years before this, but we started Strahd so there’s nothing he’s missing. The thing is, he commits to the RP more than anyone else and his character is meant to be annoying and self-centered, although in a sheltered noble/harmless way. We’ve played less than 10 sessions and he already has combative relationships with other PCs and is otherwise disliked by the rest, and has gotten into multiple PC-on-PC fights. In the last session, his character told someone else to leave the party during an in-character argument. The DM even wanted to start the campaign with an explicit reason for the PCs to stick together, but we’re already falling apart because no one likes his character. I even avoid interacting with his character because he has a silly but irritating nickname for my PC that would cause a combative reaction if I RP’d her honestly and start yet another argument, and I just don’t want to do that. Should the DM intervene in interparty conflict? Is it too late to restart the entire campaign? Did I make a huge mistake inviting this guy to play with us? I await your insight.

Bighradjoe

Forgive me  Holy saints of dice christ and the benevolent lord Dice Christ himself, for I have sinned, and turned my younger siblings into Gods. I am a DM of 6 years and play a homebrew campaign with my 3 youngest siblings (Telanderal the human circle of shepards druid, Spawn the tiefling sin-struck barbarian, and noble the half-elf battle master fighter) and it wasn't until listening to your show I realized I was taught slightly wrong. I thought damage modifiers also doubled with a critical, and that holding concentration stopped you from casting other spells. This unfair favoritism towards martial classes lead me to give our only caster an item that we later learned just let her play by normal rules... Realizing that, and that I couldn't take away the martial classes broken home-rule they've used for 12 levels, i allowed her to just hold two concentration spells. The issues came with them realizing that Spawn has a times three brutal critical and 2-3 tries to crit per attack, and that Telanderal will be able to cast and hold  two high lvl conjure animal spells while casting non-con spells and cantrips, leading Noble to decide his role is to rack up defense and npcs (that they take very good care of) in ways I couldn't morally stop like having the variant feat from the knight background, taking 3 lvls of ranger, using the deck of many things, etc.. It's fun to find over the top ways to be able to actually scare them without just dropping a flying tarrasque or one shotting them, and they act like their own different kind of anime protagonist with huge personality flaws,  but I worry this will stop them from enjoying future campaigns. Or at least that it'll be hard to make it nearly as cool for them later. I kneel at the altar, and await judgement from the one true lord, and his 4 truest saints.

Jam

May it please the court (Bailiff optional)... I run a long term (4 years) DnD group with some friends over zoom every other week. During this time we have been running a slow paced, grindy campaign and the players are heavily invested in their backstories and overall lore of the world. It is really difficult for me to keep up with all the details of the six players that participate. As such, I have recorded every single session since session zero and often review the recording for notekeeping and session prep.

G.X. Barnett

Ok, fair warning to the esteemed wanderers of the landscape of fantasy legality and my fellow Brooklynite Bailiff, this one is deep. I was the only male player in a party of 7 with a female dm. The Dm had come up with a backstory for my Warforged Celestial Warlock which was a secret to me, so I was completely on board. The group was a semi-regular collective that we turned into an online home game. I made it a point to confirm that my character, a robot, was completely asexual to reduce any lingering misogynistic implications there may develop from my role on the team. My character was given “the song of the cosmos” by their patron, a melody that could only be comprehensible by an automaton as it’s sound would drive a mortal crazy (think the voice of God from Dogma). At one point I shared the song with another Warforged NPC, who told my character that it was very difficult to adjust to. Later on, trying to out game the DM, my character shared the song with an npc goblin bard that traveled with the party. Unknowingly on my part, this caused the bard to have to make wisdom saving throws every time the song came up. This is where things took a turn. One of the players constantly brought up the fact that I, not my character, didn’t understand consent and was what was wrong with D&D. After approximately 6 weeks or the same treatment I opted out of the game. Did I overreact or should I have never have been put in that position?

Chris Coulier

To the highest officiants of the church of Dice Christ, I have a confession; I recently finished a long-term online campaign with friends, in which I was regularly fudging dice rolls. Before casting judgment please do allow me the opportunity to explain. I am our group's long-term forever DM, so I jumped at the opportunity to be a player. This campaign was the DM's first time DMing. I have been badly backseat DM'd before, so I made it a point not to do that. But sometimes this DM would, in my opinion, misuse rolls. Sometimes if an NPC asked the party to do something, the NPC would roll a persuasion check which would be contested by our insight. If the NPC rolled a higher persuasion check, we were supposed to have "been persuaded" by the NPC to do whatever they asked. This would sometimes lead to the party being forced against our desires, to work directly for villains or take jobs we didn't want. One time this even led to a situation where the DM persisted that, without magic, an Assassin had "seduced" our Barbarian and that he had to follow that Assassin back to their room. The Barbarian obliged, went to the room, where he was fully killed by 4 assassins' sneak attack. Another time the DM wanted the characters to take party drugs because they thought it'd be funny. My character was straight edge, so he declined. However, throughout this party, the DM tried to force feed my character drugs, forcing me to roll contested athletics/acrobatics checks to prevent it. These are the rolls I would fudge, but since everyone else seemed mostly fine with them, as arbiters of Dice Christ's Law, I commit myself to the punishment you deem fit.

Adele Chatfield-Taylor

To the esteemed, radiant Justices, and to also sup to Jim, I present to you a case that deals with the future of a party. Over the holidays, I DMed a holiday themed one-shot with spooky winter/holiday lore as the combat encounters, with Krampus as the BBEG. All of the other creatures the party encountered were optional combat encounters, and the party found ways to either befriend, or avoid the other creatures. Krampus however, was planned to be a good ole fashioned fight. This is where things go awry. As some flavor, and to point them in Krampus’ direction, I had them find a journal written by the mysterious gajillionaire benefactor of the camp they worked for, Melon Husk, who was actually a rich trying to summon Krampus to take his power, but had messed up and had thrown the holiday soiree the group was attending in order to distract Krampus and his hunger long enough for him to get away. My players, along with some incredible persuasion checks and role-play, convinced Krampus to summon Melon Husk instead. I asked them, with an evil grin they said they could hear through the mic, if they were sure. Several times. I said okay, and ended the session. Now here is where I need your judgement, Your Honors. Would I be committing a heinous crime by putting my party of 3 level 5s against a undead billionaire lich? It would be a TPK for sure. But they literally asked for it. Several times. I await your judgement, O Great Justices.

aiyana graham art

I know this is for the justices and Jim, but im gonna go out on a limb and say absolutely yes that would be a heinous crime. typically when DMs do the "are you sure?????" its during the session and not really a moment you can cut away from. whereas here, you literally ended the session, meaning you will have plenty of time to rebalance the encounter so you don't kill them for no reason. if your players are cool with a tpk then thats fine, but it seems like there's absolutely zero reason to not reskin a different monster so that the fight is balanced

Amy Elizabeth Reinhart

To the honorable clergy of the church of Dice Christ, my confession is also a case to be judged. In 2009, My Ex-boyfriend really wanted me to share all his hobbies, one of which was D&D. I had been rejected by a group when I was 12 for being too young & a girl, so I wanted to at least try playing. I joined his group for a session, bringing some cupcakes as a thank you for letting my join. The group liked me, I liked them, and for a while it worked well. As we all kept playing for the next 6 months, the group kept gelling together...except him. He would create and play characters that would want to do their own story rather than the groups. One campaign, he modeled his half orc after Shrek. The next, he tried to be Doc Brown and spent missions building "robot friends" instead of being part of the group. The group tried to coach him into play, but he wouldn't take the hint or plot hooks. During this time, I tried to keep peace with a supply of endless baked goods hoping they would like him if they liked me. After we broke up (we were together like 8 months total), we tried to stay friends and keep playing as a group, since I was determined not to Yoko a D&D group. One night, my ex couldn't join. That night, I came to the game with my brownies & found out that since he wasn't coming, they were going to hold a vote to remove him. When it came time to vote, I abstained since I didn't feel like I could vote him out of the group he brought me into. It was unanimous with one abstention, and he was asked not to return. He then blamed me for his removal. I never tried to correct him and let it end any remnants of friendship. While it is a weight lifted to vent this, was I wrong to not leave the group when we broke up? Should I have tried to stop the voting? I still feel guilty at times for how it went down those years ago. I await your judgement and my Hail Balnors.

Michael Dawson

You didn't get robbed of your victory, you got handed one. You can't kill a dragon with a single crit. Sounds like the DM just didn't know how to resolve the situation so he just threw his hands up and said you won. Then he decided he didn't want to play with you anymore and ended the game.

Adele Chatfield-Taylor

So, two things. One: they are completely aware it’s a lich, and I ended the session after they committed to what they were doing. Two: I am completely planning on letting them live lol I submitted this more for the silliness of the situation, and if selected, maybe some creative ways to punish my silly players for their hubris, without TPKing them. After all, how could I resist having Melon Husk come back again and again every holiday to ruin it! And it’s also been ridiculously fun to tell them all that they’re gonna get vaporized by power word kill next session :P but I’m not a monster! Mostly.

Thomas Richardson

To the honorable justices *bows* and the deplorable bailif *bows deeply* I would first like to say that I have never done anything wrong in my life. Therefore this should be a fairly open and shut case. Its was my first time as GM and during session zero we settled on an Arabian themed homebrew sandbox adventure with players deciding the direction of the story. It took a lot of work but by the start of the next session I had a setting with 4 distinct regions, multiple antagonists yada yada yada. I had the party meet in a hookah bar, gave a brief explanation of the worldthen asked them what they would like to do. They spent the entirety of the first session gambling on scorpions in the local fighting pits. This is not what I was hoping for for this game of epic adventure so at the start of the next session I had a local burst into the parlor and exclaim that their son had been kidnapped by kobolds! I was immediately accused of railroading! I defended my decision, but even after that one of the players said 'well I suppose we better go on the adventure, of thats what the GM wants us to do'. In the end, they did go rescue the kid, and this did lead to a game thats still going strong a year later but I still get derided for 'dictating their choices'. Should I get a slap on the wrist for giving the players some guidance, or should the players be dealt with cruelly for questioning me? I oh so humbly await your verdict.

Corvo_CB

Dice Christ Confession: Dear Bailiff Jake & the Grandly Bearded Judges! I am a first time DM, attempting to teach some of my grade school cousins D&D. I feel I have failed Dice Christ by not letting the dice ruthlessly murder one of the PC's in our first session, with all lvl 1, first characters they ever built.... The party was clearing a farm of zombies; they were winning, with only one zombie left! The party had sustained damage and everyone had just a few HP left, when BOOM! The rogue is hit by a nat 20 crit, and I rolled max slam damage! Rather than outright kill the PC he starts his death saving throws.... nat 1.... his next turn.... nat 1.... rather than having him die I let the PC use their Hero Point to reroll.... another nat 1.... before the other players see the result, I knock their dice tray changing the roll to an 11, only the dying player saw me do that. His look of horror changed to hope. After that roll he was healed by the cleric. Did I teach this Player to blaspheme the Will of Dice Christ or save a new player from being disappointed he made a bad character with a CON dumb stat? I await the judgment.

Stephen Corston

If it pleases the court, I present the Case of the Stolen Spellbook: In a campaign I DM’d over Discord, the party’s Blood Hunter found a spellbook in a barn the party later burned down. The Blood Hunter kept their discovery a secret from the rest of the party, most notably, from the party’s Wizard, who I imagined the Blood Hunter would pass the book onto when it was discovered. A few sessions later the Wizard was making meta game-y comments about how they “sure wish they found a spellbook in this quest” and said they were “heartbroken” with the Blood Hunter. Later, the Blood Hunter privately inspected the spell book, when I told them it was just a “young wizard’s book, Nothing notable or special” The Blood Hunter joked that the book was worthless and didn’t elaborate further. I felt like the Blood Hunter was picking on the Wizard and when I voiced this concern almost the entire group got upset with me and things escalated hard and fast. Long story short, that initial message resulted in an implosion of the group and me quitting as DM. With me being told my message was uncalled for, paranoid, and that I was making a big deal over nothing. Was I wrong to expect a player to naturally pass along discovered loot and publicly voice my discomfort with events of the session or should I kept the conversation private and leave things be. I await your judgement -Stephen C.

Michael Griego

May it please the court and the great and powerful bailiff I present the case of the 100 arrows. My friends and I were running a 5e campaign with one of my friends being the DM and the rest of us players. The adventure lead us to a forest wherein once we entered the guardians of the forest opened fire upon our wizard, downing him instantly. The DM refused to roll hit and damage rolls for the arrows claiming the amount was simply enough to down the wizard, while the rest of us argued that it is a requirement because the nature of dnd is in the randomness of dice (and the blessings of dice Christ). However the DM continued to refuse and the game abruptly ended with us no longer engaging in dnd. We're still friends but haven't played for 2 years. Was the DM in the right or should the rolls have been made?

Julian Muhr

To the 3 hottest Bois who are not mavrus, and the honorable dosun : I present the case of Baby the Dwarf QUESTION: is sanctuary faster to cast than a regular attack out of initiative? At the end of the first act of our first ever DND campaign comprised of myself and my best friend playing and my wife DMing, we brought on another close friend of ours to expand our group. This was ALL of our first campaigns, but it was this new addition's first exposure to DND and after naming his horny Dwarf "Baby" he was running amok. I'm talking bard levels of fucking everything, and Leroy Jenkins everywhere (it was great), and it was obvious he hadn't really taken in the roll play portion like the rest of us. Fast forward a few sessions after we just successfully talked down the frost dragon, convincing him to take roost at a sea island where he would be bothered less. Props to our DM, it was an awesome debate we actively participated in with rolling, including Baby. But, upon our success, Baby's player realized he wouldn't get to fight a dragon and said, "well I attack it with my ax." He was standing next to it as were the rest of us and we were no longer in initiative. I hurriedly said, "I cast sanctuary ," a spell I had stocked as a cleric. After failing the wisdom save, Baby was forced to abandon his attack. And after going back and forth on how he could not get around the sanctuary through various means the DM decided that the dragon was insulted. Baby was eaten, and cryovain left our land in peace. The player went on to create a character he loved roll playing in a meaningful way. But it has always bothered me, that even my reaction time as a player wasn't super fast after being dumbfounded. Should there have been some other kind of test for Baby to attack faster?

Kylie Conover

My it please the court and the lovely bailiff who is the one that picks the best cases. May I present the case of the sleepy player. I have been playing with a group over discord for over a year now. We have a great time and for the most part I have no complaints or issues. Except One of the players has a tendency to fall asleep mid game. Often unbeknownst to us (due to combat initiatives or some sort of narrative moment that is happening that hasn't involved his character.) If this was simply a home game it wouldn't irk me so much but we record for a podcast and sometimes that messes up our recording flow. It is not all of the time- but it has happened enough that I am getting a little tired of it. I am not sure if our DM has talked to this person about it or not but if so I am not aware. Am I the bad person for feeling so annoyed? Should I bring it up for all of us to talk about it? KC

Lil’ Stinky

Dearest justices and Jake who I genuinely respect and admire, I have not an injustice to bring before you, but a request for crunchy caselaw. Can you counterspell a counterspell? I.e. if an enemy counterspells your spell, can you use your reaction to counterspell their counterspell, allowing your original spell to be realized? My arguments in favor are as follows: (1) the PHB never actually specifies that you cannot cast 2 leveled spells in one turn, only that you can’t cast a leveled spell as a bonus action if your action was a leveled spell (and vice versa). 2) Using a reaction is not part of your turn - in fact, your turn can be said to have ended. You are merely using your reaction for the round. My DM disagrees and I’m not going to argue with him. He’s my boi and I would never disrespect his authority, which is why he definitely does not need new friends. But the community needs answers. What say you, revered justices and - dare I say it - parasocial friends…? Xoxo Lil Stinky

sarah may

may it please the court and jake, that guy who is just solid. just a solid guy! May I present the case of the gate and the cat. I was in a campaign of 6, we had just gotten through an encampment of drow. We had defeated the priestess in charge, and were escaping when we had a chance to save some slaves. The dm said there were about 50-60 in this jail, myself and another player(monk) said we needed to free them, but the others said it was too risky. So while the others moved to find out how to open the locked gate, we went back to look at the locks (i was a bugbear barb and was hoping to be able to brute them open) and figured we could get our wizard with Fabricate to make the key and release a few slaves and then give them the key to release the others as we open the gate and sneak out. Great idea, right? Well, while we were coming up with this plan we hadnt realised the rest of the party was ganging up on our cat wizard. While coming up with an idea for the gate, the wizard had tried to smooth talk the guard, but our vampire cleric (with a strong moral code of "good" even if it was directly against the party) decided that he didnt like that idea and cast magic circle and silence on the cat. our dm allowed it, but the cat was asking for the save dc to try and get out and everyone refused and kept saying how bad the cats idea was (talking over the player) and when we finally got to what the dc was, the cat passed and cast fireball on the gate (made of wood) thus leading to the guards noticing and starting to come over. this lead to every other party member (excluding myself and the other who was with me at the slaves) started berating the cat and saying how when things go wrong its the cats fault (regularly got us out of bad situations that the vampire put us in) and that this fight is the cats fault and we should just leave the cat to die(very breif, it was a lot more and a lot louder) This resulted in an obvious fight, the cat who only wanted to help ended up storming out (understandably) but was the one who got kicked out of the group and no longer plays. (should mention that the cat had been playing with this group for almost 4 years, different campaigns, and was always the but of the joke but always played fairly and was always a help to the party) Sorry this was long your honours, but you agree that this was unjust and the vampire was actually the issue here? thanks guyssss xoxoxox

Michelle Muzny

I’m not one of the justices, but Moonshine does this in I think Episode 97! I think it’s happened in a few other instances on the pod as well, it’s definitely allowed.

Gavin French

To the Ultimate All Seeing Masters of the Supreme Crit, and Jim. You have shared the weight of our Burdens for too long so let us, the congregation, carry some of the weight of your burdens. Please bless us with your confessions if you have any

Rene the Monster Captain

If it may please the court and Tucker’s boyfriend-in-law: Jake I started DMing about 5 months ago with a group of 6 player, with everyone starting off at Level 1 and we have been progressing through so levels since. About two months ago 2 of the players stopped coming to the sessions letting everyone know that they were busy and couldn’t make it, no problem. Their characters ended up staying in one of the towns to help and the other 4 moved on. Recently, those players decided to come back and seemed excited so we reintroduced them back in. One of those returning players is upset because the Core 4 players that stayed are a level above them and is also upset because they received some magical gifts during our Holiday Session. Justices: am I in the wrong for not leveling up their players and giving them Christmas goodies or am I justified in my actions? I await your judgement

laura rosen

Dearest Balif and most beautiful judges, my group has been split. We are currently fighting an Ilithid who rook over a halfling's body but has now fully transformed into an all white four tentacled mind flayed. Our wizard is dying to use banishment (check out the spell) but the argument has arose whether or not our wizard would banish this illisquid back to the Astral plane or the plane the original body was from which would be the material plane? Help us dearest judges we ended the session fighting and won't play for 2 weeks because my boyfriend and I (who don't agree) will be in Jamaica. Help us 🙏 see yall in Boston

Shane Murphy

May it please the Illustrious Court and Part time Bailiff Jake. I present the case of the unseen lockpicker. My party found themselves locked in anti-magic prison cells. the DM made a point of telling us that the bars were too thick for us to slip through and the locks couldn't be picked from the inside. I, the plucky bard/monk cast unseen servant and handed it a lockpick asking the unseen servant to pick the lock... My DM and I agreed that this was likely outside what the servant could do and only a Nat20 persuasion would work to talk them through it. I ended up rolling the Nat20 and quickly let the rest of my party out, since I was outside and could use my own lock picking skill thereafter. My DM then revealed that he had worked hard on a whole escape room style dungeon and the session ended two hours early. In 5 years of playing together I'd never seen him so dejected and he has since requested a break from being the DM. The other party members are mad at me. Should I be punished for taking my shenanigans a little too far? or should all parties honor the Nat20? I throw myself on the mercy of the court.

Mira

May it please the miraculous court and Jake. Let me present my case. I play in a party of 4 and we stumbled on this person laying by a tree almost dead. We all fought on what we should do, me saying to just leave this man and go and my father saying to kill the man. Meanwhile another party member had healed the person back to half. My dad then preceded to fire bolt this mans brains out and almost kill him. Our whole party then erupted In anger saying that he just wasted the potion and we should of just left him to find his way home. My dad still thinks that he was right with the argument of, he would have died in the cold, I’m saving him. Was it right for him to play god? I await your response.

Genaro Morales

Not a case, but it would be fun if Caldwell was the courtroom sketch artist. He draws his interpretation of the PC on the stand. Or maybe that could be left for one of his streams.

lilac

bailiff jake because of you i read Lord of the rings. i just finished return of the king and sobbed like a baby so for that reason you are very lowly indeed.

Commander Shepherd

To the fabulous justices and strong bailiff I prostate myself to you in my time of need as I a new young DM belive I may have sinned in my previous session I gave one of my player the mystical bag of beans to which they promptly used while escaping from monsters that invaded the small village they were in, this sprung the massive lair of a mummy lord, they are a level 5 party, clearly not being high enough level to face such an advisory I am stuck deciding if I should allow them to face the mummy lord as a result of their actions, or should I find a way to nerf the mummy lord to make it more of a fair fight? I humbly wait any punishment I may receive for my misjudged bag

Pearl of a Girl Nursery (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-05 07:00 Tess from Virginia Beach (shoutout to belly chains…which I’ve actually never in my life seen here) Justices Murphy, Tanner, and my Queen and Multiclass inspiration Justice Axford: I bring you the case of the incompatible party. I run a campaign that’s about to start streaming on the 9th, with a DM of 30 years experience and 6-8 alternating players. Our DM has gone above and beyond with multiple session zeros, even solos for each one of us and small groups as we joined together leading up to the first stream. However, this has brought to light that certain characters are going to be extremely hard to mesh. For example, an assassin whose first words to my 17-year-old Sorcerer/Wizard were “I’m just here to kill people” as he had just arrived in my home city where my family lived. DM gives so much freedom, and I sometimes wonder as someone who NADDPODs and Dimension20s religiously if there is such a thing as too much. I’ve grown to love the boundaries I see set by Murph &amp; Brennan. Conversations have been had and no one seems to think that our characters getting along is important. I guess I don’t need them to get along either but DM has set my character as the one to bring the others together, and the one with the most information on the campaign’s hook - repairing a broken, apocalyptic rift in time itself (my Wizard levels are Chronomancy). I’m especially interested in Em’s insight as I know it couldn’t have been easy playing Saccharina in ACOC when the party seemed to split. What do you guys think? Should the DM be doing more to guide PCs into being team players, or is that up to us? If I’m to sit with some characters having a rift but needing to work together, any tips?
2023-01-05 06:40 Tess from Virginia Beach (shoutout to belly chains…which I’ve actually never in my life seen here) Justices Murphy, Tanner, and my Queen and Multiclass inspiration Justice Axford: I bring you the case of the incompatible party. I run a campaign that’s about to start streaming on the 9th, with a DM of 30 years experience and 6-8 alternating players. Our DM has gone above and beyond with multiple session zeros, even solos for each one of us and small groups as we joined together leading up to the first stream. However, this has brought to light that certain characters are going to be extremely hard to mesh. For example, an assassin whose first words to my 17-year-old Sorcerer/Wizard were “I’m just here to kill people” as he had just arrived in my home city where my family lived. DM gives so much freedom, and I sometimes wonder as someone who NADDPODs and Dimension20s religiously if there is such a thing as too much. I’ve grown to love the boundaries I see set by Murph & Brennan. Conversations have been had and no one seems to think that our characters getting along is important. I guess I don’t need them to get along either but DM has set my character as the one to bring the others together, and the one with the most information on the campaign’s hook - repairing a broken, apocalyptic rift in time itself (my Wizard levels are Chronomancy). I’m especially interested in Em’s insight as I know it couldn’t have been easy playing Saccharina in ACOC when the party seemed to split. What do you guys think? Should the DM be doing more to guide PCs into being team players, or is that up to us? If I’m to sit with some characters having a rift but needing to work together, any tips?

Tess from Virginia Beach (shoutout to belly chains…which I’ve actually never in my life seen here) Justices Murphy, Tanner, and my Queen and Multiclass inspiration Justice Axford: I bring you the case of the incompatible party. I run a campaign that’s about to start streaming on the 9th, with a DM of 30 years experience and 6-8 alternating players. Our DM has gone above and beyond with multiple session zeros, even solos for each one of us and small groups as we joined together leading up to the first stream. However, this has brought to light that certain characters are going to be extremely hard to mesh. For example, an assassin whose first words to my 17-year-old Sorcerer/Wizard were “I’m just here to kill people” as he had just arrived in my home city where my family lived. DM gives so much freedom, and I sometimes wonder as someone who NADDPODs and Dimension20s religiously if there is such a thing as too much. I’ve grown to love the boundaries I see set by Murph & Brennan. Conversations have been had and no one seems to think that our characters getting along is important. I guess I don’t need them to get along either but DM has set my character as the one to bring the others together, and the one with the most information on the campaign’s hook - repairing a broken, apocalyptic rift in time itself (my Wizard levels are Chronomancy). I’m especially interested in Em’s insight as I know it couldn’t have been easy playing Saccharina in ACOC when the party seemed to split. What do you guys think? Should the DM be doing more to guide PCs into being team players, or is that up to us? If I’m to sit with some characters having a rift but needing to work together, any tips?

Ben Hunter

Honorable Justices Murphy, Tanner, Axford, and the untenable Baliff, I present the case of the Foolish Fighter. I've been part of a game for about a year with friends. One of the players rolled a very low intelligence fighter. As something of a jokester, this player leans very heavily on that character trait while playing the game, usually in a way that is good fun for the whole table. However recently, magical items were handed out to the party including a Rod of the Pact Keeper, an item obviously meant for our only Warlock. The Fighter was the one who found the items and did an investigation check, netting himself a natural one on the roll. The DM said that the Rod of the Pact Keeper looked like an excellent mace, prompting the Fighter to insist that he keep it when the group collected and started Identifying the items. At first it was taken as a joke, but eventually the conversation moved from in-character to out-of-character with the Warlock quite frustrated that they would get a +1 Longsword instead of the Rod. The Fighter player eventually acquiesced and said he wouldn't hold onto it long, as once his character used it for one fight he would see it is worthless as a melee weapon. In our next encounter, the Fighter swung with the Rod and the DM asked for a luck roll. The Fighter got a two, and the DM said the Rod snapped in his hands when he swung it. The Warlock became incredibly quiet, and after about fifteen minutes more of gameplay they silently left the discord call. Obviously this situation was not good, and resulted in the session ending early. However, in our next session, the Warlock player apologized to the DM and the Fighter, saying it was them who acted poorly. The DM responded by saying the Warlock could have a Rod of the Pact Keeper, but the Warlock refused and said they would earn it again later. the Fighter suggested they make this somewhat canon and that his character would work to repair the rod. Again, the Warlock refused and said they should just continue playing. So I pose to you, Justices, was the Fighter at fault, or the DM? Are the actions of the Warlock somewhat sour considering the other two parties attempted to work something out? I leave it in your honorable hands.

Sunshine

It sounds like you could ‚justify‘ that as a surprise round if you needed to defend it to him *shrugs* talk shit get hit and all that

RavensBinch

To the honourable, venerable Justices Axford, Tanner and Murphy and the sometimes working Bailiff, I submit the case of the ungodly cleric brawl. In a recent all-clerics one-shot, I was playing a multiclassed crown paladin order cleric who was fiercely devoted to the king of the nation all our PCs had been dispatched from. Right towards the end of the session, one of the other players revealed their intention to betray our orders and the king and deliver the lich heart we had painstakingly retrieved to a priestess of a rival nation. Naturally this kicked up tension with my character and I moved to attack them, knowing that the other players would back up the other character and I would get to die in a blaze of glory following my king's instructions. What happened instead however, was one of the other players casting modify memory on mine and attempting to re-write his memory of the encounter so that he had witnessed no betrayal, I argued that the DM should not allow this as if would take away my agency as a player and that that other player should instead just attack me. The DM ruled in their favour and when I failed the save, my character walked away thinking the mission was a success and that none of the others had betrayed their orders. Was I wrong to protest the DM's decision or should spells that take away a player's choices be restricted to casting at NPCs? I humbly await your collective judgement

Nick Yorio

To the esteemed Justices of the Crit and that one guy who was in that thing, I present the case of the Metagaming Lie Detectors. After playing in a campaign for 2 years as a goody two shoes cleric I was bored with the character and wanted to try my hand at playing an "evil" character. The new character was a tiefling warlock of the genie that used its powers to be a selfish conman and thief with the actor feat, making him adept at lying. I had no intentions of robbing or conning the party however, I just wanted to introduce a character to the party that had like-minded goals but motivations for doing so that were not "good" at heart. I introduced the character with the DM's blessing by smuggling onto their ship and hiding in my Genie lamp, and upon being discovered claimed that I was just a humble adventurer looking for a group (the plan was to eventually tease more and more that I was not an honest person but still very much on their side). They rolled an insight check, and I was asked to roll Deception out loud in front of the party. I passed with something insane like a 26 to the 13 insight check, but the party still refused to believe I was telling the truth. They peppered me with questions for a half hour, grinding the session to a halt, until I finally rolled low enough to discover I was lying and ejected from the ship, which meant I had to roll a new character. Was it just a bad idea to introduce a morally challenged character to the group, or should the party have abided by the rules of the check and accept the answer despite knowing OOG that it was a Deception? I feel I was wronged and not given the benefit of the doubt but I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Tara Fedele

My humble greetings to the honorable judges and the dutiful bailiff. I bring you the case of the Demon Deal Gone Wrong: my DM, who is also my partner, took away a critical hit. We were fighting a dragon and were hurt badly. The dragon was looking pretty hurt and my character crit for 4d8 plus 2d6 plus 2d4 of damage. At that moment, the DM decides to trigger a deal my character made with a demon. I had no real knowledge of how it worked, I just “owed a moment of my time.” At the DMs discretion, my character is teleported to the demons location for that moment, and then teleported back. My crit is nullified and my turn ends. To further put salt in the wound my DM admits he was going to teleport me earlier but forgot. While I understand my character made a bad deal, I think it’s a horrendous crime to deliberately take away a crit during an important moment, especially when my DM agreed from previous rulings that taking one away is awful. I ask you, did I get what I deserve, or did my DM wrongfully take away an important crit from me and my party? Added note, this hasn’t put any stress on the relationship, and we have agreed to honor your judgement. - Tara the Faithful Nerd

villager72 (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-05 07:00 To the slayest of judges and phantasmagoric bailiff. I bring forth the case of the Total Party Mishap. I ran a murder mystery one-shot a few months back with some friends...yet it still haunts me. There were four players and the idea was they were kids at a summer camp, everyone had their characters and was ready to go. One player I chose to be the killer, we planned for about a month on how it would work, and seeing that the other three were level 4 I made him level 9. I use a 5-level formula for big bosses in all my gameplay for party fights, so I know this works (or should). Anyways two of the other players were newer to D&amp;D and the rules were fine, but this did not work for the actual session. With a few hints pushing the idea that the killer was amongst them, they still did not pick up on it, even when an NPC mentioned: "the person was about his height" (gesturing to the actual killer). They continued to believe it was the camp nurse who had a single piece of evidence and they went off to find more clues they split up. The killer player though had a familiar (all in the rules of their class) and used it to attack one of the players resulting in their death. Then they continued on and one of the other players was killed right when they were about to find more evidence, leaving one person who managed to kill the murderer. After the session, I and the murderer player left our call, but the other players stayed on. My friend on the call later told me of what happened and how they were upset by the leveling system and the fact they weren't given any clues or warnings. However, there were multiple clues that matched with the character description/whereabouts and what have you. They also were annoyed by the level difference, yet the ultimate plan was a big boss fight, which they failed to get to because of their lack of teamwork. So was I in the wrong for making the boss five levels higher, should I have made the clues stick out more than they were, or were they just clueless? Please help in my hopes of moving past this trauma. -Alex
2023-01-05 20:59 To the slayest of judges and phantasmagoric bailiff. I bring forth the case of the Total Party Mishap. I ran a murder mystery one-shot a few months back with some friends...yet it still haunts me. There were four players and the idea was they were kids at a summer camp, everyone had their characters and was ready to go. One player I chose to be the killer, we planned for about a month on how it would work, and seeing that the other three were level 4 I made him level 9. I use a 5-level formula for big bosses in all my gameplay for party fights, so I know this works (or should). Anyways two of the other players were newer to D&D and the rules were fine, but this did not work for the actual session. With a few hints pushing the idea that the killer was amongst them, they still did not pick up on it, even when an NPC mentioned: "the person was about his height" (gesturing to the actual killer). They continued to believe it was the camp nurse who had a single piece of evidence and they went off to find more clues they split up. The killer player though had a familiar (all in the rules of their class) and used it to attack one of the players resulting in their death. Then they continued on and one of the other players was killed right when they were about to find more evidence, leaving one person who managed to kill the murderer. After the session, I and the murderer player left our call, but the other players stayed on. My friend on the call later told me of what happened and how they were upset by the leveling system and the fact they weren't given any clues or warnings. However, there were multiple clues that matched with the character description/whereabouts and what have you. They also were annoyed by the level difference, yet the ultimate plan was a big boss fight, which they failed to get to because of their lack of teamwork. So was I in the wrong for making the boss five levels higher, should I have made the clues stick out more than they were, or were they just clueless? Please help in my hopes of moving past this trauma. -Alex

To the slayest of judges and phantasmagoric bailiff. I bring forth the case of the Total Party Mishap. I ran a murder mystery one-shot a few months back with some friends...yet it still haunts me. There were four players and the idea was they were kids at a summer camp, everyone had their characters and was ready to go. One player I chose to be the killer, we planned for about a month on how it would work, and seeing that the other three were level 4 I made him level 9. I use a 5-level formula for big bosses in all my gameplay for party fights, so I know this works (or should). Anyways two of the other players were newer to D&D and the rules were fine, but this did not work for the actual session. With a few hints pushing the idea that the killer was amongst them, they still did not pick up on it, even when an NPC mentioned: "the person was about his height" (gesturing to the actual killer). They continued to believe it was the camp nurse who had a single piece of evidence and they went off to find more clues they split up. The killer player though had a familiar (all in the rules of their class) and used it to attack one of the players resulting in their death. Then they continued on and one of the other players was killed right when they were about to find more evidence, leaving one person who managed to kill the murderer. After the session, I and the murderer player left our call, but the other players stayed on. My friend on the call later told me of what happened and how they were upset by the leveling system and the fact they weren't given any clues or warnings. However, there were multiple clues that matched with the character description/whereabouts and what have you. They also were annoyed by the level difference, yet the ultimate plan was a big boss fight, which they failed to get to because of their lack of teamwork. So was I in the wrong for making the boss five levels higher, should I have made the clues stick out more than they were, or were they just clueless? Please help in my hopes of moving past this trauma. -Alex

Stephanie F (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-05 07:00 To the venerable judges and the underdog bailiff, I come to the court seeking legal counsel. This happened a couple years ago, but it still weighs heavy on everyone involved. My husband spent years building his own campaign from scratch and was very proud of it. I convinced him to run the campaign with our regular D&amp;D group, which included me, his best friend &amp; his wife, and his other close friend. He was super pumped and spent weeks role playing imaginary situations with each of us to help build NPCs and develop our characters. During our very first session, things went well until the last 20 minutes we played. My tiefling sorceress Fierna rolled a nat 20 diplomacy check to talk to a group of starving orphans to convince them to come with her. My intent was to bring them to our gnome swashbuckler who was a therapist, but before I could even speak, our cleric Gelbus (played by my husband's close friend) started talking over me and took over the Entire encounter without doing any kind of roll. This dissolved into a terrible situation where I was called a 'stupid bitch' by the player and the campaign halted. I told the player that he was not welcome in my home until he apologized to me. He stated he shouldn't have to, because he was "doing what his character would have done" and he didn't do anything wrong. After 2 months of arguing, he finally apologized to me but told my husband that he didn't think he could play in the campaign with me anymore. We don't know many people who play D&amp;D, and he knows this, so he was basically holding my husband's campaign hostage. Since then, we've all reconciled, Gelbus's player has made a new character, and we've agreed to have Gelbus become an NPC. However my husband is still very uneasy about restarting the campaign because of what happened. Judges, what should I do? Should I try to convince my husband to give the campaign another shot? Or should I let sleeping dogs lie until he feels confident that he can run it again, possibly with a different crew? (Note: we are still playing D&amp;D in a different campaign, but tension is still there between me and the former Gelbus) I humbly await your advice.
2023-01-06 13:15 To the venerable judges and the underdog bailiff, I come to the court seeking legal counsel. This happened a couple years ago, but it still weighs heavy on everyone involved. My husband spent years building his own campaign from scratch and was very proud of it. I convinced him to run the campaign with our regular D&D group, which included me, his best friend & his wife, and his other close friend. He was super pumped and spent weeks role playing imaginary situations with each of us to help build NPCs and develop our characters. During our very first session, things went well until the last 20 minutes we played. My tiefling sorceress Fierna rolled a nat 20 diplomacy check to talk to a group of starving orphans to convince them to come with her. My intent was to bring them to our gnome swashbuckler who was a therapist, but before I could even speak, our cleric Gelbus (played by my husband's close friend) started talking over me and took over the Entire encounter without doing any kind of roll. This dissolved into a terrible situation where I was called a 'stupid bitch' by the player and the campaign halted. I told the player that he was not welcome in my home until he apologized to me. He stated he shouldn't have to, because he was "doing what his character would have done" and he didn't do anything wrong. After 2 months of arguing, he finally apologized to me but told my husband that he didn't think he could play in the campaign with me anymore. We don't know many people who play D&D, and he knows this, so he was basically holding my husband's campaign hostage. Since then, we've all reconciled, Gelbus's player has made a new character, and we've agreed to have Gelbus become an NPC. However my husband is still very uneasy about restarting the campaign because of what happened. Judges, what should I do? Should I try to convince my husband to give the campaign another shot? Or should I let sleeping dogs lie until he feels confident that he can run it again, possibly with a different crew? (Note: we are still playing D&D in a different campaign, but tension is still there between me and the former Gelbus) I humbly await your advice.

To the venerable judges and the underdog bailiff, I come to the court seeking legal counsel. This happened a couple years ago, but it still weighs heavy on everyone involved. My husband spent years building his own campaign from scratch and was very proud of it. I convinced him to run the campaign with our regular D&D group, which included me, his best friend & his wife, and his other close friend. He was super pumped and spent weeks role playing imaginary situations with each of us to help build NPCs and develop our characters. During our very first session, things went well until the last 20 minutes we played. My tiefling sorceress Fierna rolled a nat 20 diplomacy check to talk to a group of starving orphans to convince them to come with her. My intent was to bring them to our gnome swashbuckler who was a therapist, but before I could even speak, our cleric Gelbus (played by my husband's close friend) started talking over me and took over the Entire encounter without doing any kind of roll. This dissolved into a terrible situation where I was called a 'stupid bitch' by the player and the campaign halted. I told the player that he was not welcome in my home until he apologized to me. He stated he shouldn't have to, because he was "doing what his character would have done" and he didn't do anything wrong. After 2 months of arguing, he finally apologized to me but told my husband that he didn't think he could play in the campaign with me anymore. We don't know many people who play D&D, and he knows this, so he was basically holding my husband's campaign hostage. Since then, we've all reconciled, Gelbus's player has made a new character, and we've agreed to have Gelbus become an NPC. However my husband is still very uneasy about restarting the campaign because of what happened. Judges, what should I do? Should I try to convince my husband to give the campaign another shot? Or should I let sleeping dogs lie until he feels confident that he can run it again, possibly with a different crew? (Note: we are still playing D&D in a different campaign, but tension is still there between me and the former Gelbus) I humbly await your advice.

Nicolas Mallard

I implore you to hear my case duck team, just because of my last name

Banana

To the wise judges and try hard bailiff Jake, I come bearing the case with a question: My boyfriend and I are in law school and the same dnd party. Our group has historically met every Sunday for most of the day. The game is so fun but it makes it difficult to do things on the weekends like clean, spend time together, or finish the schoolwork we need to. As it stands we are constantly harshing the vibe by leaving early or not being able to come to session at all. Are we being assholes by not quitting and subjecting our friends to our rudely sporadic attendance? I await your scouring judgment.

Emily R

Two of the three characters involved in this story will be at the live Dungeon Court in Boston, so would love to have it read there if you decide to select it!! :) Good evening your honors and the humble, wise Bailiff John, and may it please the court. I bring to you the case of the ranger-kabob, a moment from our first campaign that our group still talks about more than five years later. Our party was fighting a massive ghost shark on a ship deck and my character, a multi-classed Phoenix Sorcerer and paladin half-elf with an explicit fire theme, used a fire AOE spell to burn up the shark from the inside. Our dwarf fighter took a few points of damage from the spell, hurting her but not causing significant damage. However, the fighter had previously told the party that she was afraid of fire several times (didn’t explain why) and in character repeatedly told the sorcerer not to use fire. Pissed off by the fire spell, the fighter (in her dope half-werewolf form) attacked my character in retaliation, swiping the sorcerer with her claws. In self-defense, my character swung her sword at the fighter’s legs to avoid lethal damage. In the heat of the moment, our DM ruled that a slashing damage attack with a sword could not be non-lethal. Enraged, the fighter attacked again, disarming my character and sending her sword flying. The DM narrated that the sword flew toward our elf ranger, who was standing nearby. She failed her DEX saving throw and was impaled by the sword, getting pinned to the wall of the ship. On the heels of a tough fight against the ghost shark and its minions, it was a tense healing moment to bring her back to safety. The debate over who was at fault for impaling our ranger pal raged on for a loooong time, both passionately in character and – after a couple drinks – sometimes in person. We ask you now, honorable justices, who should be blamed for this near-death experience?

Romlette

To the honourable, Justices Axford, Tanner and Murphy and the underpaid BAILif Jake, may it please the court. I bring the case of the impounded ship. I am playing my first sci-fi campaign set in the Astral Frontier, a play by post. We have a 'space ship' that we go around in, and this is the first time we've ever docked it at a crowded place with actual people. When we were leaving the ship on the second day to go into the sewers of this space station, I asked the DM if it would be alright to just leave our ship alone like this for so long. His answer was 'it was what you did yesterday', and on that day, nothing bad happened to our ship. Cut to us down in the sewer, after a particularly nasty fight and phone call with my characters mother. His sister, who was a political figure on the space ship texted him during out short rest to freak out over the conversation. Their relationship is very contentious, and the day before she even cast Geas on him to try and convince him that the crew was only friends with him to sell his body parts on the black market. She antagonized him, and he taunted her with the fact that their mother never says that she loves her. This resulted in the characters sister IMPOUNDING our ship, with us deep in the sewers and no way to stop it. One of our party seems to keep harping on this fact, but I personally don't think its fair for me to have expected that consequence when I didn't even know impound lots exist. We just found out phones exist in this world, and where the technology starts and ends is unclear, since we've been in space for most of the campaign. I ask, with the due diligence I did before hand with asking about our ship, and the implication the DM gave me that it would be fine, do I deserve to be put out in the airlock? I humbly await your deliberation.

Summer Tribe

i'm not caught up on listening but god I hope this gets covered some day

MkA7L

May it please the court. I play in an Adventure League game at a local game store with a DM who tends to be pretty stingy when it comes to letting us find magic items and loot. In one quest my character found a pearl that I knew (out of character) was something valued at 500gp. At a later time after we had leveled up, I used Distort Value on the pearl and tried to sell it. The NPC jeweler offered 700gp, stating that they were only a traveling merchant and would still have to resell the pearl. I was annoyed because the spell is supposed to double the value of the item. I didn’t push the issue and moved on, but I feel that using a specific spell for something like this as it is intended should be honored. He insists on going by the book whenever the PCs want to do things, but always seems to skew things away from giving us gold or cool items. Am I wrong?

Victoria Shotts

People counterspell counter spells alllllllllllllllllllll the time. Tell you DM about the rule of cool. If you get to, so does he!